Author Archives: JohnM

About JohnM

Academy Founder

Most under-appreciated song of the last 100 years?

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My choice is…

“Smile” was written by Charlie Chaplin, most famously sung by Nat King Cole,
and was the favorite song of Michael Jackson who knew a thing or two about music.

Smile though your heart is aching
Smile even though it’s breaking.
When there are clouds in the sky
you’ll get by.
If you smile through your fear and sorrow
Smile and maybe tomorrow
You’ll see the sun come shining through
For you.
Light up your face with gladness,
Hide every trace of sadness.
Although a tear may be ever so near

Mother Teresa was known for saying that what the world’s neediest want most is a smile.

Is the American dream dead?

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Let’s start with a little quiz. What do you think the chances are that a child born into the bottom quintile of income rises out of it? a.) 5-10% , b.)11- 20%, c.) 21-30%, d.) 31-40%, e.)41-50%, f.) over 50%. How high would those chances have to be for the American dream to be alive and well? Please make your best estimate before proceeding. 

I have been asking these questions of Harvard undergraduates, graduate students and faculty for the last 8 years. There is an overwhelming consensus that the American dream is not what it used to be, that it is rare for those at the bottom to pull themselves out of the bottom. This decline in mobility is attributed to a rise in inequality. The general feeling is that between 5 and 15% of those born to bottom quintile earners succeed in pulling themselves out of that quintile and that if 30-40% of them did so that the American dream would be alive again. How does your best guess square with the estimates of these students and faculty?

As of 2007, the most comprehensive quantitative study of economic mobility In America was the Brookings/Pew Study.  What did that study find?

In fact, close to 60% of children born into bottom quintile families end up doing better than their parents economically as measured by rising out of the bottom quintile of earners. Conversely, roughly 60% of those who were lucky enough to be born into the top quintile were destined to end in a lower quintile themselves.

When I read this report in 2011, my eyes popped out of my head and my jaw fell to the floor.The data were so at odds with my own assumptions. Where does the colossal gap between current perceptions of the American dream and the reality come from?  Why such a discrepancy between perceptions and reality? A most remarkable thing is that the conclusions of the Brookings/Pew study were at odds with their own data if you assume the common sense view that a 60% figure is a remarkably high number indicating that the American dream is alive and well.

The authors conclusion however was that the American dream is a myth because if it were true 80% of the bottom quintile would rise out! This is the result that would be dictated by pure chance. It is the conclusion of the study not the data itself that got the press.

In 2014 an even more comprehensive quantitative study by Raj Chetty concluded that the American dream is as alive and well as ever and the fact that the rungs of the ladder of opportunity had gotten further and further apart had not made the ladder harder to climb. This part of his study got virtually no press.

Why? Confirmation bias. Partisan agendas – on the Left and the Right. Both parties tell the story that America is going to hell in a handbasket and that they are America’s only hope.

What is your dream for America and the world?

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My dream for America is that every child born reaches her full potential for joy and productivity.

Four principal obstacles lie in the path of the realization of that dream: the zip code safety gap, the schools gap, the family structure gap, and the values gap.

The zip code safety gap: the first job of government is to provide physical security for its citizens. A state that fails to do so is a failed state. In most zip codes in America children can walk to school and to the playground without fear of physical harm. In others, no.

The schools gap: 120 years after Plessy v Ferguson schools are very separate and very unequal. Some public schools have high quality academic, artistic, and athletic programs, others don’t. Some have high standards of discipline. Others don’t.

Some have high quality teachers, others don’t. To change this requires action on many fronts. Two steps to be taken on the legal front are overturning San Antonio v Rodriguez (ie. the funding of schools from local property taxes) and affirming Vergara v California (that tenure is incompatible with the equal protection clause.

The family structure gap: complex and unstable families are not conducive to children reaching their full potential. The latest social science research (Chetty, Edin, Brookings-AEI) confirms the critical importance of family structure to social mobility. The elimination of marriage penalties to welfare eligibility and equal access to long-acting reversible contraceptives are two specific steps to be taken.

The values gap: high standards and high expectations matter. The relative academic success of Asian and Jewish children reflects the relatively high importance placed on education by their cultural traditions. Higher expectations drive higher performance. The incarnation of this principle is Jaime Escalante, the Bolivian-American calculus teacher immortalized in the film “Stand and Deliver.”

What is beauty?

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Beauty delights the mind, body, heart, and soul. Beauty can be measured by the intensity of the delight. Extreme beauty takes your breath away and stops you in your tracks.

Put differently the true measure of beauty is love. And love can be measured in units of time. The power of love can be measured in terms of time spent thinking about its object.

A practical measure of the beauty of a poem then is the number of people who have memorized it and cherished it throughout their lives. Similarly, the relative beauty of a song could be the number of artists who have covered it.

By this metric, perhaps the most beautiful poem of all time is “Night Thoughts” by Li Bai. Written in 720 Ad during the Tang Dynasty, it is known by heart by every child born in China – whether north, south, east or west, Taiwan of mainland.

In the words of one Chinese woman “Even Mao couldn’t kill it.”

Another measure of beauty is the universality of its appeal across cultures and across time. By this metric, certainly, the music of Beethoven and the Beatles would rank very highly.

Yet another measure of beauty is economy. In the case of poetry this would mean saying more in fewer syllables. “Night Thoughts” by Li Bai scores highly here too – it is only twenty syllables. Mozart’s “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” and, further afield,

Einstein’s E = mc2” are also noteworthy highlights of human culture.

The reading lists in elementary school, high school and college should consist of the most beautiful texts ever written because they are keys to hearts, minds, and souls of all those who have loved them. And they are models of economy.

This is far from the case.

Another item on the agenda for educational reformers.

What is the American dream?

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Whether or not the American dream is dead ultimately depends on how you define it. Who is qualified to do so? An historian? an economist? a statistician? a sociologist? Who is trained to separate partisan bias from rigorous science or even truly balanced analysis of this issue? Are all definitions created equal?

As an historian, I would say that the American dream as most widely understood is the chance for a decent life if you work hard, hustle, and have a little bit of luck. The two fundamental forms of the dream are the immigrant version and the native born version. For immigrants the American dream is about having a better chance than they would have had in their home country. This version has never been more a reality than today when the difference between home country standards of living and American standards is wider than ever. With respect to the native born version, there is no doubt that Americans as a rule have decent lives by any absolute historical standard and that technology has made the quality of life dramatically better whether in terms of the quality of health care or accessibility of educational opportunities. The internet has given to even the poorest access more information and world class teachers than even the richest Americans had 30 years ago. Never in human history has it been possible for a motivated child to leverage his talent so rapidly as now.

But, wait. What about other definitions? What about the chances of getting out of the bottom quintile definition used in the 2007 study? Are there others?

In 2016 Raj Chetty came out with a different angle on social mobility in America.

This time he defined the American dream as making more than your parents which he calls “absolute mobility” versus “relative mobility.”  But this is tricky. First, it is clear that you could have a very decent life without making more than your parents because your parents already had a decent life. In the 1950s making more than your parents meant merely escaping the destitution of the Great Depression – a very low bar. Making more than your parents when they lived in the affluent sixties or the roaring 1980s is a much higher bar. The law of diminishing returns is powerful and ineluctable. If you can have a decent life without working at all and instead playing a complex social welfare system, well then why bother? If you are taught that you are a victim of a corrupt system and that it does not make sense to work hard, why should you? If you are taught to follow your dream and avoid the standard rat race and instead of studying to be an engineer or accountant be rock star, athlete, or shoot for the moon and be the next Bill Gates, would it be surprising that your income is not higher than your parents on average?

The gap between common sense and  so-called social science is widening.

I am more and more convinced that social “science” at least to the extent that it touches on policy related issues is really no more than partisan ranting in drag.

What is the case for and against the minimum wage?

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The moral case for a $15 minimum wage is simple and straightforward. In the words of Robert Reich, the Harvard professor and former Secretary of Labor: “no one should work full time and still remain in poverty.” For Reich the job loss that might follow is insignificant. Jobs that don’t provide a living wage are not worth having. For him, this is analogous to laws restricting child labor or sweatshop conditions. The economic case for a higher minimum wage wrests on multiple grounds – that on an inflation-adjusted basis the wage is lower than it was fifty years ago, that the increase would reduce economic inequality, that employment could actually rise as a study by Card and Krueger showed occurred in the 1990s, that the increase would boost the economy by boosting demand. The political case for the minimum wage is irrefutable – it is extremely popular among Republicans and Democrats. How can you possibly be against helping the country’s neediest?

The moral case against the minimum wage is first, that it violates the principle of freedom of contract, second that the consequence is apartheid for the least skilled.

The moral case is bolstered by a study of the history of minimum wage in both the United States and South Africa where minimum wage laws had their origin in the attempts by white workers to price relatively low skilled blacks out of the market. It worked. The economic case against the minimum wage is closely related. The first law of economics is “tax it get less of it, subsidize it get more of it.” Raise the price of labor, demand for labor will go down. To raise the minimum wage is to rip the bottom rung from the ladder of opportunity for the youngest and least skilled.Two touchstones are critical in assessing any social policy: the leakage rate and the coverage rate. The leakage rate measures those not in the targeted population who benefit from it. The coverage rate is the percentage of the targeted population that benefit. The minimum wage has a high leakage rate – most people with minimum wage jobs are not poor – was well as a low coverage rate – most poor people do not work at minimum wage jobs. If you care about poor people, target them directly. A means-tested basic income program or an expanded earned income tax credit are social programs that are consistent with reducing want and encouraging work without violating freedom of contract or the basic laws of economics. A carbon tax makes sense because it taxes something that is bad (carbon burning). A minimum wage is bad because it taxes something that is good (job creation).