Category Archives: Social Sciences

The Achievement Gap—Turns Out Family Income Trumps Race

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Increasingly, the widening gap between rich and poor is in the news. Despite the complexity of the problem, and the fact that inequality has steadily worsened over time, expectations for solving the problem unfairly rest on teachers. Teachers are expected to help African-American and Latino students achieve at similar levels as white and Asian-American ones so that we can compete in the global economy and maintain our standard of living. The repeated refrain to teachers is “close the achievement gap”.

Now social scientists are finding gaps in academic achievement are tied much more significantly to differences in family income.

As reported on in the New York Times recently.

Researchers are finding that while the achievement gap between white and black students has narrowed significantly over the past few decades, the gap between rich and poor students has grown substantially during the same period.

Sean F. Reardon, a Stanford University sociologist, is the author of a study that found that the gap in standardized test scores between affluent and low-income students had grown by about 40 percent since the 1960s, and is now double the testing gap between blacks and whites.

In another study, by researchers from the University of Michigan, the imbalance between rich and poor children in college completion — the single most important predictor of success in the work force — has grown by about 50 percent since the late 1980s.

The changes are tectonic, a result of social and economic processes unfolding over many decades. The data from most of these studies end in 2007 and 2008, before the recession’s full impact was felt. Researchers said that based on experiences during past recessions, the recent downturn was likely to have aggravated the trend.

Nevermind that the problem is complex and it’s completely unrealistic to expect teachers to close the achievement gap on their own. If you’re a teacher expect the “close the achievement gap” mantra to be updated.  In the updated version teachers will be expected to help students from poor, mostly single parent homes (or series of apartments or homeless shelters) achieve at similar levels as middle-income and well-to-do students.

Apple Cares About Profit Margins Not Its Chinese Workers

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My conclusion after carefully reading Charles Duhigg’s and David Babroz’s NYT article, “In China, Human Costs are Built Into an iPad“. Major props to Duhigg and Barboz for the thoroughly researched, fair, convincing, damning description of Apple’s negligent, laissez faire approach to working conditions in its suppliers’ factories in places like Chengdu, China where I once lived for a few months and toured the largest television factory in the world.

In fairness to Apple, I should read Tim Cook’s “we care about every worker in our supply chain” email to Apple employees, but Duhigg’s and Babroz’s analysis convinced me that Cook’s email is most likely hollow, public relations spin.

Apple recently reported their 2011 fourth quarter results—$13.06b in profit on $46.3b in sales. The sales number is remarkable, but given industry norms, the profit margin even more so. I’ll return to it later. As a result of the record quarter, my AAPL holdings increased in value way more than the cost of the MacBook Air I bought the GalPal for Christmas and the iPad 3 I’ll be buying myself in March. I divulge that to point out I am complicit in Apple’s pernicious business practices.

I have a responsibility to carefully consider Apple’s relationship with its suppliers in China because I help create demand for Apple products. I also think of myself as a global citizen with a social conscience, I have praised the company in previous posts, and I own individual shares of AAPL both directly and through stock index ETFs.

Some key excerpts from Duhigg’s and Barboz’s article:

“We’ve known about labor abuses in some factories for four years, and they’re still going on,” said one former Apple executive who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity because of confidentiality agreements. “Why? Because the system works for us. Suppliers would change everything tomorrow if Apple told them they didn’t have another choice.”

Foxconn is one of the few manufacturers in the world with the scale to build sufficient numbers of iPhones and iPads. So Apple is “not going to leave Foxconn and they’re not going to leave China,” said Heather White, a research fellow at Harvard and a former member of the Monitoring International Labor Standards committee at the National Academy of Sciences. “There’s a lot of rationalization.”

Granted, China is still a developing country with a serious urban/rural imbalance. Young people are choosing, of their own free will, to migrate to its cities to work in factory jobs that require, by our standards, long hours in tough conditions. Even when adjusting for where China is in its development, Apple is failing its Chinese workers who had no idea they’d have to suffer grievous injury and in some cases death as a result of toxic chemicals, aluminum dust, and large-scale explosions.

Three quarters through the article I sadly concluded Apple is to technology as Walmart is to retail—so large and influential that it can dictate conditions to suppliers. Apple says to suppliers, “Get us this product, tomorrow, at this price.” In order to make money, the supplier has to figure out how to do things more efficiently or cheaper, which often means cutting corners on implementing Apple’s ineffectual code of conduct. Then, Apple pays suppliers less each year and looks the other way when they fail to implement the code of conduct.

What makes this unconscionable is Apple’s unprecedented profit margins. If Apple users and shareholders like me take the baton from Duhigg and Babroz and put serious pressure on Apple to truly enforce their code of conduct, they could not only match the global labor practices of Intel, H.P., and the ubiquitous swoosh, they could raise the bar for every other multinational operating in China.

More key excerpts:

“If you see the same pattern of problems, year after year, that means the company’s ignoring the issue rather than solving it,” said one former Apple executive with firsthand knowledge of the supplier responsibility group. “Noncompliance is tolerated, as long as the suppliers promise to try harder next time. If we meant business, core violations would disappear.”

“You can set all the rules you want, but they’re meaningless if you don’t give suppliers enough profit to treat workers well,” said one former Apple executive with firsthand knowledge of the supplier responsibility group. “If you squeeze margins, you’re forcing them to cut safety.”

“It is gross negligence, after an explosion occurs, not to realize that every factory should be inspected,” said Nicholas Ashford, the occupational safety expert, who is now at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “If it were terribly difficult to deal with aluminum dust, I would understand. But do you know how easy dust is to control? It’s called ventilation. We solved this problem over a century ago.”

But ultimately, say former Apple executives, there are few real outside pressures for change. Apple is one of the most admired brands.

People like Ms. White of Harvard say that until consumers demand better conditions in overseas factories — as they did for companies like Nike and Gap, which today have overhauled conditions among suppliers — or regulators act, there is little impetus for radical change. Some Apple insiders agree.

Will Dughizz’s and Babroz’s reporting create a groundswell of pressure that forces Apple to care—even in a Chinese context—about the quality of life of their Chinese workers? ”Right now,” Harvard’s White says, ”customers care more about a new iPhone than working conditions in China.“

Near the end of the article a “current Apple executive” is quoted as saying, “You can either manufacture in comfortable, worker-friendly factories, or you can reinvent the product every year, and make it better and faster and cheaper, which requires factories that seem harsh by American standards.” That’s flat out wrong. Given Apple’s unprecedented profit margins, here’s what the exec should have said, “You can manufacture in comfortable, worker-friendly factories, reinvent the product every year, and make it better and faster and cheaper in factories that supersede existing Chinese standards if stockholders—especially my Apple execs and me—are willing to accept smaller profit margins that are more typical for the industry.”

I’m not ready to sell all my shares and boycott the products until work conditions in China truly improve, but I am willing to accept slower growth in AAPL’s share price as a result of smaller profit margins.

What the Hell is the Presidency For?

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The on-line magazine The Root recently asked, “Should Obama endorse gay marriage?” And then suggested, “Doing so before the election has some risks, but it could re-energize segments of his base.” Notice their question doesn’t have anything to do with whether it’s the right thing to do or not.

I’m so accustomed to “what will get me re-elected” political thinking, I had to read these two paragraphs about Lyndon Baines Johnson from my first book of 2012, Republic Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress–and a Plan to Stop It by Lawrence Lessig several times. Based on the assumption you may also be in need of inspiration, I share them with you as an abbreviated refresher on bold political leadership:

In his first speech to Congress, he (Johnson) placed civil rights at the core of his new administration, and hence at the core of the values of the Democratic Party. The decision was profoundly controversial. In a six-hour meeting before the speech, Johnson was advised strongly against making civil rights so central to his administration. As described by Randall Woods, Johnson was told, “Passage [of the Civil Rights Act]… looked pretty hopeless; the issue was as divisive as any… ; it would be suicide to wage and lose such a battle.” The safe bet was against the fight. Johnson replied, “Well, what the hell is the presidency for?” These were not the words of a triangulator from the U.S. Senate, but of a man who had grown tired of that game, and wanted to try something new.

When he decided to make civil rights central to his party’s platform, Johnson knew that he was forever changing the political dominance of the Democrats. His decision to pass the most important civil rights legislation in history was a guarantee that the Republicans would again become competitive. Yet his loyalty was more to truth, or justice, or his legacy—you pick—than to party politics. To that end, whichever it was, he was willing to sacrifice a Democratic majority of tomorrow in order to use the Democratic majority of today.

Indeed, what the hell is the presidency for?

The True Costs of War

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Sorry if you were wanting to ease into the weekend with a new girl scout cookie review.

In a chapter titled “Economics Confronts the Earth,” Juliet Schor, the author of True Wealth, writes about a group of economists, natural scientists, engineers, systems dynamic researchers, and other who came together twenty-five years ago around the view that ecosystems should be at the core of economic analysis.

“They were especially interested in what conventional economics wasn’t measuring or studying,” Schor explains. “These dissenters recognized a fundamental point about how our system has been operating. If the market economy gets large, and nature remains external to it, threats to basic ecosystem functioning will arise.” “Ecological economics,” she notes, “has mostly been ignored by the mainstream.” 

And she adds, “Environmental economics has also been closely intertwined with energy economics, which in turn has ties to energy companies and interests. And in the last few decades, special interests acting against environmental protection, often from the energy sector, have enlisted economics to water down regulations and forestall action.”

Put most simply, mainstream economists, by ignoring ecosystems, underestimate the true costs of production and consumption. Similarly, we grossly underestimate the true costs of war by slighting the devastation inflicted both upon civilians in the war zone and upon our surviving soldiers and their families following their return from combat. This MIT-based “The Human Cost of the War” website touches upon unaccounted for domestic costs, but is an especially good place to start to learn about the war’s devastating impact on Iraqis.

When economists total up the costs of the Iraqi war, they calculate the costs of the planes, artillery, food, energy, equipment, training, salaries, and Veteran Administration hospital costs. But they don’t factor in a litany of qualitative, post traumatic stress-related costs including substance abuse, depression, conflict-filled marriages, separated families, violent crimes including murder, and suicides.

More specifically, they don’t factor in Benjamin Colton Barnes and vets like him who can’t shake the violence of their war experience. They don’t factor in the loss of Margaret Anderson, the Mount Rainier park ranger that Barnes recently shot to death before fleeing and dying himself. They don’t factor in what Eric Anderson’s life is like, Margaret’s husband, also a Rainier ranger. And they don’t factor in what Eric Anderson’s 1 and 3 year old daughters lives are like now without their mother.

Just as many special interests that don’t want environmental economists to highlight economic costs to ecosystems, many others don’t want a full accounting of war’s costs. The tragedy of this failed accounting is aptly described on the MIT “The True Cost of War” website—”. . . if there is no accountability for the human toll of war, the urge to deploy military assets will remain powerful.”

Our Passive Acceptance of Evil

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I’ve been subjecting my unlucky, long-suffering wife to a string of intense foreign flicks. Most recently, In a Better World, which won the Oscar for the 2011 Best Foreign Language Film. One reviewer explains that “the film examines the different ways people react to injustice, and looks at how what counts as ‘revenge’, as opposed to ‘justice’, is a matter of perception.” Watch it and let me know what you think.

How do you react to injustice? What, if anything, do you do when you see an adult hit a child in public? What, if anything, do you do when you learn someone is a victim of domestic abuse? What, if anything do you when your tax dollars make it possible for drones to kill bad guys and innocent civilians anonymously from the sky?

I know what you do when an evil person, family, or cadre in Zimbabwe or North Korea hits, impoverishes, and imprisons on a national scale. Nothing. Most people cope with the atrocities of those regimes by not paying attention to them. If we don’t even know where Zimbabwe and North Korea are, who Kim Jong-un and Robert Mugabe are, or what Zimbabweans’ and North Koreans’ lives are like, it’s so much easier to just make fun of how backward the countries are.

On the other hand, if we’re better than our popular culture, and press pause long enough to learn what life is like for fellow humans who were born in the wrong place at the wrong time, it’s impossible to watch the North Korean succession without getting sick to your stomach.

The North Korean tragedy is nearly impossible to grasp, but here’s an imperfect analogy. If your politics are anything like mine, after John McCain picked Sarah Palin to be his running mate during the 2008 U.S. presidential election, you had a few “Oh shit, there’s a possibility of an ill-informed, right wing dilettante becoming president” moments. Forget President Sarah Palin. Instead imagine if the vote was canceled and Jenna Bush was appointed President. Jenna, not Barbara because she revealed a greater capacity for cruelty. One of Jong-un’s alleged childhood pastimes was torturing small animals.

I miss Christopher Hitchens’ writing. This incredibly vacuous New Yorker essay on North Korea’s Kim Jong-il’s funeral ceremony/performance begs a question—who will fill his shoes? Without Hitchens’ passionate, populist voice the Kim Jong-un succession has even more of a feel of inevitability.

I get it, the immediacy of the evil in North Korea pales in comparison to the violence in our own neighborhoods and communities, but the scale of human suffering deserves more of our attention. We can and should be committed to a more peaceful and just 2012 both in our own communities and on the Korean Peninsula.

Still Watching

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A follow up to my brilliant “In Defense of Eavesdropping” post from yesteryear. Well, if not brilliant, clever?

I am still watching you.

In particular on airplanes. Think the proliferation of e-readers makes eavesdropping more difficult? Wrong. I’m spying your e-book between the gap between the seats. Steinbeck huh, nice choice.

Too much curiosity to stop.

Based on a quick glance at his iPhone, Skater Dude next to me on the plane was listening to NPR podcasts. Disappointed I couldn’t make out any titles. And come on dude, update your apps already. A fiftyish woman one row up and in the aisle seat is in almost full view. Classy dresser, designer glasses, reading the New York Times Magazine during take-off. A young Diane Keaton maybe? Not even close. Diane Keaton would be reading a script right? Fiftyish Woman played Angry Birds and other stupid games on her iPhone the entire flight. Same with Tatted Up Guy sitting next to Steinbeck Reader.

All this while watching Bridesmaids on Nineteen’s laptop from across the aisle. Add mad multitasking skills to my list of amazing attributes. Eldest was even nice enough to offer up an earpiece for the funniest scenes. And all this people and movie watching while finally finishing up True Wealth by Juilet Schor.

Reading about environmental degradation, economics, and sustainability is a great deterrent to eavesdropping, but our privacy is sacrificed the second we step outdoors (and of course, connect to the internet). Near the end of lunch at the San Luis Obispo California Pizza Kitchen (vegetarian with japanese eggplant) I asked about directions to Art’s Cyclery. On the way out a woman at the adjacent table said, “I heard you asking where Art’s Cyclery is located. They’ve moved. My daughter looked it up on her phone. Here you go.”

Once outside, Sixteen and I spontaneoulsy did a little jig titled “Completely Weirded Out.” Karma is real. What goes around, comes around.

The Most Difficult Three and a Half Words

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A close friend has been experiencing extreme leg pain for over a year. She’s seen a medical conference worth of docs, had tons of tests, and is still lacking the thing she wants most—a diagnosis.

A month ago I went with her to an appointment with a rheumatologist who said the root problem was not rheumatological. Unable to string together the most difficult three and half words, he offered up a boilerplate myofascial something or other hypothesis.

Today we travelled long distance to see The Man at the Pain Center at the hospital in the Big City. I am always in awe of ace doctors. Dr. Ace studied her file for a long time, asked clarifying questions, and then continued with more questions during a physical exam.

In the end, he said, “I’m not clever enough to know what’s wrong.” I dig the way Brits use “clever” instead of “smart”. It’s clever. “There’s still a lot we don’t know about the brain,” he explained. Deeply disappointed, my long-suffering friend pleaded with him for a diagnosis. “I just want to know what’s wrong with me.” At which point he said the three and a half words, “I don’t know.”

Imagine if we lived in a world where one political candidate attacked another about flip-flopping and asked, “How can we be sure you’re not going to change your mind again?” And the candidate responded, “I don’t know.”

Or one in which every financial analyst asked to make predictions about the market in 2012 said, “I don’t know.”

Or one in which a Westpoint political science prof when asked about the lessons of the Iraq War said, “I don’t know.”

Or one in which Christopher Hitchens, when pressed to explain why he was so sure there’s no God had said, “I don’t know.”

Or one in which a man driving aimlessly in a car, when asked by a woman whether he’s going in the right direction said, “I don’t know.”

Or one in which Billy Graham, when asked to explain why he’s so sure there’s life after death said, “I don’t know.”

Or one in which Hilary Clinton, when asked what will be required to bring genuine Middle East peace said, “I don’t know.”

Or one in which Tom Friedman, when asked what the United States must do to reclaim it’s greatness said, “I don’t know.”

Or one in which Bill Gates, when asked why he thinks his teacher evaluation plan is going to improve schooling said, “I don’t know.”

Or one in which a blogger, when asked why he thinks everyone would be well served by greater humility and honesty said, “I don’t know.”

This Is Our Only Home

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I’m currently reading True Wealth by Juliet B. Schor. Subtitle: How and Why Millions of Americans Are Creating a Time-Rich, Ecologically Light, Small-Scale, High-Satisfaction Economy. Halfway through I’m depressed by the extent of our environmental problems, especially global warming, and our lack of resolve to reduce emissions. Here’s a December 2010, twenty-minute long global warming TED Talk by the always excellent Naomi Klein.

What We Can Learn From the Cain Train

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I know, I said I wasn’t going to follow Presidential politics for another ten months, but Cain Truth is one entertaining website, and I just can’t help myself. And I know I’m supposed to assume a person is innocent until proven guilty, but I just can’t help myself.

Dig this headline from the website, “Cain Attacked by Accuser; Will Not Stop His Effort to Renew America.” Here’s what that conjures up in my pea brain. The Hermanator is walking down Main Street, suit coat over his shoulder, touching  and healing struggling business owners while simultaneously pushing a steady stream of slowly approaching bimbos out of the way. The initial draft headline read, “This Week’s Skank Won’t Sidetrack the Cain Train from Fixing America.”

Cain is a heaven sent joke in response to all the peeps, like one of my friends, who thinks all of our political problems will disappear if we’d just elect a flesh and blood businessman.

From Slate.com: Cain initially called Ginger White’s claims “more false allegations.” But stopped short of accusing White of lying. Still, he nonetheless stressed that he had never had sex with her and that he did not consider their relationship to have constituted an affair.

Mrs. Cain Train is going to love that explanation.

If we’ve learned anything about the Cain Train, we’ve learned the more it talks, the further it goes off track. “At this point I’m just simply saying these things are going to come out and until we know what they are, then my attorney doesn’t know what to respond to.” The drip, drip, drip really is unfair to his attorney. If the women were more considerate, they’d do one large group presser. If you like gore, gather round, this is going to be a long, drawn out train wreck.

In the middle of rebutting the allegation, our Business Knight in Slimy Armor pivots. If you watch closely, you can see the wheels start turning in his big business brain. Damn, he suddenly realizes, after thirteen years maybe she’s got some evidence of our non-affair. Quoting again from Slate.com. . . the Republican did concede that the woman making the claim was “someone that I know who is an acquaintance that I thought was a friend.”

That’s what I hate about women, they just can’t keep non-affairs on the down-low. Asked if he had sex with the woman, Cain responded no twice. If you close your eyes, you can see a gaggle of Saturday Night Live writers excusing themselves from their dinner guests and sprinting to their respective laptops. The gift that keeps on giving.

Again, Slate.com. . . in a written statement Cain’s lawyer, Lin Wood, took a significantly different tack, suggesting that the issue was a private matter and that it was out of bounds in terms of what the media should be focused on. Now we’re getting somewhere.

Didn’t anyone from the RNC vet this guy? Have the “skeleton” talk with him? Granted, it would have been a long convo, but why do national politicians have to re-learn the Nixon take-away over and over, the coverup is always worse than the initial mistake/crime/non-affair.

If you are thinking of running for president sometime in the future, or just want to be a more authentic human being, ask yourself, “What would Herman do?” and then do the opposite.

If the King of Kapitalism really wanted to be President, he should have begun by talking honestly about his moral shortcomings and hoped that the electorate would have appreciated his honesty and separated his personal shortcomings from his political promise.

Coping With Narcissists

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Is it just me or is it seemingly impossible to get along with narcissists? Of course if you caught my betrothed after one of our spats, she’d say I’m a self-centered sad sack.

I’m three-quarters the way through Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs and I can’t help but make connections between it and Whybrow’s American Mania.

Don’t know if I’ve ever been so conflicted about one person. There are at least three Steve Jobs—1) the counter-cultural Zen Buddhist, exquisite designer, artist-philosopher, modern Stoic, vegan; 2) the focused, driven, scarily perfectionist, extremely mercurial, control-freak, business genius; and 3) the sometimes cruel, heartless, empathy impaired human being.

Readers of the bio are probably most interested in Jobs 2, but I find the human nature/human being story far more interesting.

I need to finish the book and think some more about it before reconciling my schizophrenic thoughts. For now I can say Jobs 3, the uncaring, mean, empathy impaired knucklehead often repulses me. Which brings to mind Whybrow’s insights on empathy. He writes, “. . . the experience of intimacy and the stability of the attachments one has in early years ultimately shape our capacity to understand the feelings of others. Human empathy is largely a learned behavior, much as is language. . .”

So we’re not hardwired to care about others? Whybrow says empathic understanding results from “social anchors” or a “. . . wellspring of healthy families and the nurturance of supportive, economically viable communities. . .” In other words, immerse young children in caring families, schools, religious and civic organizations and they will follow the caring adults’ lead and end up empathetic young adults.

Could the fact that Jobs was adopted have compromised the stability of his attachments so much that he never “learned empathy” in the way he learned English? I wouldn’t think so because he was months old when adopted and his adopted parents were stable, supportive, and loving.

After deciding not to marry Jobs, one of the two women he was closest to in his life found a psychiatric manual, read about Narcissistic Personality Disorder, and concluded that Jobs embodied all of the symptoms. (Here’s hoping Betrothed never stumbles upon that.) She said, “It fits so well and explained so much of what we had strugled with, that I realized expecting him to be nicer or less self-centered was like expecting a blind man to see.” “I think the issue is empathy,” she added, “the capacity for empathy is lacking.“

I’m clueless as to the root causes of Jobs’s lack of empathy, but the larger, more important takeaway is that empathy is learned. Whybrow convincingly argues that empathy results from a “wellspring of healthy families and nurturance of supportive, economically viable communities.” Sadly, some families aren’t sufficiently healthy, nurturing, supportive, or economically stable enough to pass on empathetic understanding to the young in their charge.

If expecting narcissists to someday be nicer or less self-centered is like expecting blind people to someday see, the best way to cope with them is to stop expecting them to return personal interest and care with similar curiosity and kindness. Far easier said then done.

Narcissus admiring himself shortly before his first triathlon