Tag Archives: War on Drugs

Brave Cops and Foolish Subversives

25 Thursday Jun 2020

Posted by in Police Bias, racism

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It’s difficult to put oneself in the shoes of a cop, but it seems clear that many partisans lack an appreciation for the intensity and danger of police work, which is fundamentally about protecting the public from threats to life and property. Confrontation is an unavoidable part of the job, whether it involves a domestic disturbance, drunk and disorderly conduct, property crime, or a shooting. Situations are adversarial and officers often face significant mortal risk. These are very brave people.

It would be impossible to do a cop’s job without legal authorization and occasional use force, but it can be very hard to judge when that’s necessary. A cop’s beat can feel like a war zone. There’s not much time to think. Things happen fast. Bad things happen really fast. Calm is restored in the best of circumstances, but arrests may be necessary, and sometimes a situation escalates or is already so fraught that it ends in tragedy. Sound procedures help police do their jobs better, but outcomes are capricious, and it is all too easy to make harsh judgements about split-second decisions in hindsight. Like any other accused, when a police matter ends badly, the cop is entitled to due process. Depending on circumstances and evidence, that means cops deserve a fair margin of error in the conduct of their duties.

To take a recent example, the police shooting of Rayshard Brooks in Atlanta occurred after Brooks wrestled with officers when they attempted to put him in handcuffs. Brooks broke free and snatched one of their tasers. As he ran, an officer pursued him at fairly close range. Brooks turned and fired the taser at the officer, shooting too high as it turned out. But the officer returned fire within an instant, three shots, striking Brooks in the back twice. Was that justified or reckless? The videos shown on the networks are in slow motion, but decisions like that can’t be made in slow-mo. The taser might have struck and disabled the officer, or in rare circumstances even killed him. And some tasers fire more than once; if one or both officers were disabled, their guns were potentially up for grabs. Either way, the use of his firearm seems to have been within Georgia law and Atlanta Police Department guidelines. No one should pretend there was time for careful deliberation. However, none of that dissuaded the Fulton County DA from filing immediate murder charges in a politically charged atmosphere. That’s hardly due process.

Of course there are bad cops and racist cops, but they comprise a distinct minority. Certain reforms might help to keep them from abusing their power, get them off the force, or convict them, depending on the nature of the offense. Qualified immunity gives excessive cover to bad cops and has protected far too many from prosecution. It’s regrettable that Senate Republicans have refused to consider modifications to qualified immunity, but perhaps they are holding it back as a negotiating ploy. Monitoring the conduct of officers is obviously important, and anonymous peer review within departments would be an excellent mechanism for identifying problem officers. Some reform proposals would certainly reduce the likelihood that police actions will be unjust, regardless of individual attitudes: ending no-knock raids and decriminalizing drugs would be major steps forward on that front.

The brutal murder of George Floyd has brought much more radical calls for changes in policing — even defunding or dismantling entire departments. These are based on widespread assertions that police are biased against blacks and that unjust police violence is directed at blacks. There is conflicting evidence on that point, however. Harvard Professor Roland Fryer concludes that while there is no evidence of racial bias in the use of lethal force by police, there is some evidence of bias in the use of non-lethal force. Other facts make the latter conclusion seem dubious, however. Consider the patterns of criminal activity described at the last link by Barry Latzer, CUNY Professor of Criminal Justice:

“The latest police data collected by the FBI indicates that blacks comprised 58 percent of all murder arrests and 40 percent of those apprehended for all violent crimes. This disproportional involvement of African Americans in violent crime turns out to be the most significant factor of all in explaining the use of force against blacks by police.

It will be no surprise that violent criminals in the United States are commonly armed and dangerous. For assaults, for instance, 71 percent of arrested persons carried firearms. Among suspected murderers, 58 percent had guns, as did 42 percent of apprehended robbery suspects. This tally doesn’t include the knives or blunt instruments recovered from violent offenders, including over 48,000 cutting instruments possessed by those arrested for assault alone.”

Latzer cites a number of studies of lethal force by police. One of these studies found:

“… after controlling for numerous factors, that blacks were 27.4 percent less likely than non-Hispanic whites to be fatally shot by police.”

Other researchers have noted:

“… the absence of any correlation between the race of the officer and that of the victim. That is, after controlling for other factors, white police officers were no more likely than black officers to fatally shoot black civilians. In fact, the more black officers on a police force, the more African Americans were fatally shot.” 

Another finding by the same study:

“[O]fficer race, sex, or experience did not predict the race of a person fatally shot beyond relationships explained by county demographics. On the other hand, race-specific violent crime strongly predicted the race of a civilian fatally shot by police, explaining over 40% of the variance in civilian race. These results bolster claims to take into account violent crime rates when examining fatal police shootings.”

The most tragic aspect of all this is that the vast majority of black crime victims are victimized by other blacks. Here are 2018 statistics for homicides. While blacks account for about 13.5% of the U.S. population, black offenders accounted for nearly 45% of homicides in 2018, and black-on-black homicide accounted for nearly 40% of all homicides.

Crime in the black community, and its economic costs, are inflicted almost exclusively on other blacks. If there was ever a need for good policing, this is it. The reasons for disproportionate crime and violence in the black community are complex. The notion that there is “systemic racism” at play here might be correct, but again, the evidence suggests it is not the fault of police. The welfare state plays a major role, as Walter Williams has long asserted. There are many more children living without fathers in the black community, a product of misdirected social policy that awards greater benefits to single-parents households. High rates of male incarceration obviously compound this problem. Blame can also be ascribed to a dysfunctional system of public education, and our nation’s continuing insistent on prosecuting the War on Drugs is highly destructive.

The campaign against police is promoted by a number of leftist organizations, the most prominent of which are Black Lives Matter and Antifa. Other well-meaning leftists do not question the rhetoric of police racism, and they also tend to fall for the illusion of collectivist virtue. Don’t accept this bullshit! It won’t help blacks as a class. We’ve known for some time that BLM is a Marxist organization, as is Antifa. Lawrence Person quotes BLM co-founder Patrice Cullors: “We are trained Marxists.”

According to Alexandra Phillips:

“BLM happily self-identifies as a neo-Marxist movement with various far left objectives, including defunding the police (an evolution of the [Black] Panther position of public open-carry to control the police), to dismantling capitalism and the patriarchal system, disrupting the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure, seeking reparations from slavery to redistribute wealth and via various offshoot appeals, to raise money to bail black prisoners awaiting trial. The notion of seizing control of the apportionment of capital, dismantling the frameworks of society and neutralising and undermining law enforcement are not just Marxist, but anarchic.”

Identity politics provides a rich trove of grievance, guilt projection, and intimidation. But it won’t end there. They will use any and all means to subvert civil society in order to gain power, and there will be a high cost in terms of freedom, lives and human well being. These people are ruthless morons. One doesn’t have to look far to learn that the histories of Marxist revolution and attempts at governance are uniform in their failure and bloody mayhem.

Too many “nice people”, media, businesses, and other institutions are all too willing to accept BLM and Antifa propaganda unquestioningly, including their stupefying lies about disproportionate police violence against blacks. Yes, there are black victims of police brutality, and there are many white victims as well — criminal justice and police reform is not to be dismissed. Unfortunately, there is a large disproportion of violent crime committed by blacks against blacks. Many in the black community know all too well that good policing is desperately needed. Quite simply: no cops, no peace, no justice.

Rioters Inflict Racial Injustice

02 Tuesday Jun 2020

Posted by in Free Speech, racism, Terrorism

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My fervent hope is that the reaction of horror to George Floyd’s murder is universal. However, my perspective on the violence that’s erupted over the week since is also one of disgust. The perpetrators are using Floyd’s death as an opportunity to unleash attacks that undermine civil society and often hurt people of color more than anyone.

The peaceful protests against police brutality and racism in cities across the country are earnest calls for reform, and they also represent fine tributes to all victims of racism. But a different dynamic takes hold when peaceful protesters are infiltrated by violent elements. Agitators use the cover of the protests and typically begin to dominate the scene as darkness falls, though sometimes it happens in broad daylight. The violence, arson, looting, and shooting are perpetrated by a combination of those whose political motivations go well beyond needed reforms to the justice system and other opportunists who are primarily interested in loot, or just a riotous a good time. There are also some otherwise non-violent protesters emboldened by the agitators to cheer on these acts of violence.

As others have said, the rioting does not serve to honor George Floyd in any way, and it does nothing to end racism or racial victimization. By cheering on these malefactors you lose any legitimate claim as an enemy of racism. The rioting, if anything, brings harm to the black community. Black lives are lost in the strife, such as the retired police captain in St. Louis who was shot Monday night defending his friend’s pawn shop. Blacks are also losing their livelihoods as a consequence of the destruction.

The left-wing, anarchist agitators are modern blackshirts masquerading as anti-fascists. Their interest, and delusion, is the violent overthrow of our government. They are largely white millennials, mostly male, and largely unemployed as a result of the ill-advised coronavirus lockdowns imposed in many states. Antifa has been prominent in these attacks, often running under Black Lives Matter flags, and the radical wing of BLM participates as well.

These pigs have been coddled by leftist state and local government officials in many cities, who send outmanned police forces to try to keep the damage in check while releasing those arrested the next day. President Trump was absolutely right on Monday to call out the national guard and raise the possibility of deploying military forces where state and local officials are incapable or unwilling to bring these situations under control.

And here’s the thing: all it takes is a few agitators, along with their enthusiastic but less ideological recruits, to destroy communities. There have been larger numbers in big cities, perhaps a few thousand hard-core shit disturbers. Slowly but surely, perhaps due to Trump’s prodding, state and local politicians are awakening and enabling law enforcement to effectively quell the unrest. The agitators, who are fairly well organized, are being infiltrated by moles who will undermine their operations and perhaps aid in prosecuting higher-level organizers and funders at the federal level. In the end, the force of anarchists is fairly small and the local support they manage to stir is fleeting.

While we recoil at the harm inflicted by the riots, another perspective is offered by the equity markets, which have been relatively unfazed through the turmoil. The values of firms in the security business have risen, but otherwise, as one investment strategist says:

“‘Right now it’s limited enough that it’s not perceived as having a meaningful economic impact,’ said Willie Delwiche, investment strategist at Baird. ‘The risk to the market right now is excessive optimism,’ and headlines from protests could simply be dampening that optimism a bit, he added.”

The riots are destructive of lives and economic value, and while we mourn those caught up in these tragedies, the situation does not portend a total social collapse. The overall impact on the U.S. economy expected by markets is not of a magnitude suggesting great instability. This too shall pass, though not easily for the small businesses and employees being ruined by the double jolt of lockdowns and riots.

Besides the outright harm to the black community by the riots, there are other disturbing elements that must be confronted. I keep hearing “White silence = violence”. No, “white silence” is neither responsible for the actions of George Floyd’s killer nor the riots in the streets. What must one say to avoid personal responsibility for the aberrant behavior of Derrick Chauvin and the rioters? What I hear are ignorant excuses and accusations: the violence is inexcusable and it is no one’s fault but the participants, whatever their circumstances.

People of good faith oppose the brutality inflicted by bad cops and a system that tolerates them. It is surely time for some reforms, as the following suggests:

And there are still other promising criminal justice reforms to consider. We need to end the drug war, which is particularly harmful to minority communities.

I bemoan the poor circumstances and education that have burdened many of the disaffected protesters, and even the rioters. I advocate for policies that I believe promote improved education and family stability. I have advocated for a safety net. I have shared my distaste for the unnecessary COVID-19 lockdowns that forced so many of these individuals out of their jobs for several months. But from some quarters, the demands have no end. Not until I bow down on my hands and knees to apologize for the sins of generations past. Who cares if they weren’t my ancestors? I’m white! The next demand is reparation payments to today’s generations of blacks. Don’t complain that impoverished whites won’t share in the gains, though there are more than twice as many of them. They simply failed to capitalize on the opportunity afforded by their privilege. I’m sorry for the sarcasm….

Please mourn George Floyd’s horrible death and support the protests against the brutality that killed him, but do not pretend for a moment that the violence is in any way justified, or that it will create a healthier society. Don’t root for that shit. And don’t cast aspirations at your fellow men and women as if the color of their skin is responsible for the social ills you’ve taken up as a cause. It does nothing to further solutions.

Living Constitution, Dying Liberty

14 Saturday Mar 2020

Posted by in Living Constitution, Originalism

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What would a “living Constitution” mean if the right wing “gave it life”, as it were? Your answer ought to reveal a truth you’ve probably overlooked if you’re a “living constitutionalist”.

The U.S. Constitution protects the rights of individuals against the coercive power of the state. It offers a thorough bulwark against that power not only by enumerating certain rights, such as the rights to free speech and free association, but also by recognizing the existence and sanctity of a complementary set of unenumerated rights. The Ninth Amendment states:

“The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” 

The nearly 250 years since the nation’s founding have seen a debate in judicial case law about whether the Constitution should be interpreted based on its original language, or whether modern social and technological realities should change the way it is interpreted. This pits constitutional “originalists” against advocates of a so-called “living Constitution”.

Antiquated? Or Inconvenient?

For example, there is disagreement about whether the Second Amendment right to bear arms is broad, or limited to certain very small arms, or whether it should permit no private ownership of arms at all. Another example: do modern sensitivities men that constitutionally unprotected “fighting words” now encompass opinions that are merely controversial? Do expressions of support for such policies as flexible wages really fall under the rubric of racism, “hate speech”, or fighting words? Here’s one more: does the (unenumerated) right to life allow the state (and so the law) to claim a greater interest in protecting the contentment of a healthy, but reluctant, prospective mother than in the life of her unborn child?

Three years ago, Randy Barnett asked a question about the living constitution amid the debate over the confirmation of Justice Neal Gorsuch, an avowed originalist. Barnett asked:

“Why would you possibly want a nonoriginalist ‘living constitutionalist’ conservative judge or justice who can bend the meaning of the text to make it evolve to conform to conservative political principles and ends? However much you disagree with it, wouldn’t you rather a conservative justice consider himself constrained by the text of the Constitution like, say, the Emoluments Clause?”

That question was followed-up recently by Glenn Reynolds: his thought experiment asks how a right-wing majority might fashion a “living Constitution”, an exercise that should chasten “living constitutionalists” on the Left. He first notes that efforts to fight terrorism can become a real threat to civil liberties. As such, they represent a form of living constitutionalism. Will your on-line behavior and your phone calls be closely monitored, perhaps searching for various keywords? Will formerly unreasonable searches and seizures be sanctioned by an anti-terror, living Constitution? We haven’t gone very far in that direction, even in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, but it’s easy to imagine a wave of support for such a revision under certain circumstances.

We’ve certainly witnessed erosions of civil liberties under the so-called “War on Drugs”. The courts have not always stood in the way of extra-Constitutional actions by law enforcement. A right-wing living Constitution might sanction certain searches, seizures, and confiscation of private property, to say nothing of the intrusion into the choices of individuals to use drugs privately. The same is true of the “War on Prostitution”.

Imagine a right-wing judiciary interpreting various forms of audio, video, and virtual reality content as violations of standards of “decency”. Imagine a case involving a restrictive FCC ruling of this nature, and the Court finding the FCC’s censorship constitutional at the federal level, not merely at a community’s level.

Imagine state legislation that forces the Court to weigh-in on whether federalism and states’ rights outlined in the Tenth Amendment outweigh the federal regulatory powers conferred by Article I’s Interstate Commerce Clause. Crazy? Maybe, but a conservative Court could decide that such an interpretation could permit state taxes, pollutants, or other restrictions on residents or businesses domiciled in other states.

Originalism? Or “Stretch” Originalism?

Reynolds mentions a few other possibilities, but without more detail, some of these examples seem muddled because the hypothetical interpretations could, conceivably, represent sound originalism, as opposed to conservative distortions of original intent. But perhaps these are all matters of degree, rather than kind. This includes the possibility of a conservative Court rolling back New Deal Court decisions related to price supports, wage supports, labor practices, and Social Security.

The same ambiguity applies to Reynolds’ brief discussion “one-man, one-vote” decisions of the 1960s, which leaned upon the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause to effectively prohibit states from apportioning either congressional districts or state legislative districts in any way other than proportional representation. This can result in discrimination against certain interests in states having diverse geographies with dissimilar economies or cultures. A conservative court might well chip away at the one-man, one-vote principle out of deference to original intent. This might not be an unreasonable interpretation of the unenumerated powers of states contemplated by the Tenth Amendment.

Then there are so-called reproductive rights. The pro-abortion Left would be aghast, but not surprised, to see a conservative court reverse key decisions that have been made in their favor. The rights to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” are mentioned explicitly in the Declaration of Independence, but not the Constitution. Nevertheless, they are presumed to be among those unenumerated rights recognized by the Ninth Amendment. Thus, with respect to abortion, the dividing line between original intent and living-constitutional overreach by a conservative Court is somewhat muddy. But in the view of the Left, a conservative Court might well reach radical decisions regarding the right to life.

Conclusion

The Constitution exists as a set of governing principles, but the founders’ intent was to  shield rights from fickle waves of majoritarianism, or even would-be despots. You might despise conservatism or statism, but this recognition should serve as a warning to heed the original text and its intent, not to view it as a mere nuisance to the interests of one’s agenda and fellow travelers.

I’ll close with Reynolds’ admonition to “living constitutionalists” of the Left:

“All of these [decisions] would be catastrophic for the left, and I’m sure I could come up with many more examples given time and space. Fortunately for the left, Judge Gorsuch appears to be devoted to interpreting the Constitution as it was understood by the Framers (in terms of its ‘original public meaning,’ to use the law professor definition), and not to embracing a living Constitution. … But my advice to those on the left attacking originalist approaches is this: Be careful what you ask for, because you won’t like it if you get it.”

Mass Shootings and Mass Manipulation

21 Wednesday Aug 2019

Posted by in Gun Control, Second Amendment

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The drumbeat for gun control from Leftist authoritarians never stops, and the recent mass shootings in Dayton OH, El Paso TX, and Gilroy CA, have been greeted with so much political agitation that the victims have become mere footnotes. Attempting to marshal facts in this debate can be quite confusing due to the variety of definitions of “mass shootings”. This variety contributes to certain myths about guns and gun violence that are often repeated by the media to a brow-beaten public. The confusion also motivates anti-gun policy prescriptions that are likely to be ineffective at best, and in all likelihood, counter-productive.

What constitutes a “mass shooting”? The traditional FBI definition counted an incident as a mass killling if four or more people were killed, not including the perpetrator. Broader definitions include cases in which 4 or more people are killed or injured, including the perpetrator. Gun rights opponents seem to prefer expansive definitions, including those that count gang-related killings, domestic shootings, or those occurring in the commission of another criminal act. Criminologist John Lott contends that these kinds of killings are driven by fundamentally different social forces than the mass public shootings that are at the center of this debate. For example, with respect to gang killings, Lott says:

“... the causes and solutions to drug gang violence are dramatically different than for the vast majority of mass public shootings, where attacks are designed to kill or wound as many people as possible. Padding the numbers by lumping the two together doesn’t make much sense.”

The more expansive definitions give rise to the notion that mass shootings have been trending-up dramatically in America. In fact, as Christopher J. Ferguson reports, data from The USA TODAY/AP/Northeastern University mass killings database show that the rate of mass shooting incidents per year has been flat since the early 1990s and are not much higher than the averages of the 1970s.

Another prominent distortion often accepted uncritically is that the U.S. leads the world in mass shootings. The U.S. totals are often inflated, but part of the reason for this misperception is that it’s easy to undercount foreign mass shootings. They do not always receive the same intensity of news coverage as mass shootings in the U.S., and tracking reports published in other languages is inherently more difficult for researchers. Lott says the following:

“Of the 86 countries where we have identified mass public shootings, the US ranks 56th per capita in its rate of attacks and 61st in mass public shooting murder rate. Norway, Finland, Switzerland and Russia all have at least 45 percent higher rates of murder from mass public shootings than the United States.”

The tragic nature of mass shootings should not prevent us from keeping the magnitude of these events in perspective, as Chris Buskirk explains in “Everything They’re Telling You About Mass Shootings Is Wrong“. For example, almost three-quarters of U.S. mass shootings in 2018 (four or more killed or injured) were associated with criminal activity, bar fights, and the like. And of course other social problems dwarf public mass shootings, such as the 70,000 opioid deaths that occurred in 2018, a phenomenon not coincidentally associated with the War on Drugs. And as Buskirk reminds us, the number of fatalities in public mass shootings is infinitesimal relative to the total number of defensive gun uses.

The Left’s reaction to these events is wrongheaded and their policy prescriptions are dangerous. A simple example is the widespread designation of buildings and public spaces as “gun-free zones”. However, it is highly likely that ending these designations would be an effective preventative against mass public shootings. John Lott writes in “How gun-free zones invite mass shootings” that 98% of the mass public shootings since 1950 occurred in areas where guns were prohibited. And we know that mass shootings are indeed prevented by armed citizens. Yet the Left staunchly opposes such a change and promotes the futile and foolish elimination of gun rights in general (also see this).

Leah Libresco, a statistician and former news writer at Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight, was highly disillusioned after devoting considerable effort to researching gun deaths. She expected to find that broad gun control measures were the answer. Instead, she says:

“… the case for the policies I’d lobbied for crumbled when I examined the evidence. The best ideas left standing were narrowly tailored interventions to protect subtypes of potential victims, not broad attempts to limit the lethality of guns. 

I researched the strictly tightened gun laws in Britain and Australia and concluded that they didn’t prove much about what America’s policy should be. Neither nation experienced drops in mass shootings or other gun related-crime that could be attributed to their buybacks and bans.”

Then there are the continuing, uninformed calls to ban “assault weapons”. As Libresco explains:

 “… no gunowner walks into the store to buy an ‘assault weapon.’ It’s an invented classification that includes any semi-automatic that has two or more features, such as a bayonet mount, arocket-propelled grenade-launcher mount, a folding stock or a pistol grip. But guns are modular, and any hobbyist can easily add these features at home, just as if they were snapping together Legos.”

Bill Clinton weighed into the debate last week by claiming that his assault weapons “ban”, which began in 1994, was so effective that we should be eager to accede to plans recently put forward by Democrats. Mark Overstreet quickly called him out as a liar, and on no less than six counts. Not only were existing “assault weapons” exempted under Clinton’s “ban”, but Americans actually added to their private stocks of weapons that met the law’s criteria during its enforcement. Existing large ammunition magazines were exempted, as well as imports of such magazines. Thus, Clinton’s so-called ban did not even approach the draconian measures now being proposed, which range from manufacturing and import prohibitions all the way up to confiscation.

Also preposterous are the Left’s routine characterizations of mass shooters as “right-wing extremists”. The truth is hardly clear cut. For example, despite expressing strong anti-immigrant sentiment, the shooters in El Paso and Christchurch, New Zealand were both environmental radicals or “eco-fascists”, in the Christchurch shooter’s words. The Dayton shooter was a self-described socialist and a supporter of Bernie Sanders, as was James T. Hodgkinson, the gunman who attacked a group of Republican legislators at a baseball practice, seriously injuring Congressman Steve Scalese. These madmen clearly weren’t crazed right-wing zealots. If anything, their profiles usually reflect severe psychological as well as ideological confusion.

Even one public mass shooting is too many, but their prevalence in the U.S. has been exaggerated in several ways. The hyperbole is often politically-motivated, intended to create negative public sentiment toward Second Amendment rights. But you can’t stop public mass shootings by foolishly disarming or criminalizing the very law-abiding citizens who are often the only force capable of providing an immediate defensive response.

Portugal’s Successful Détente With Drug Users

14 Thursday Jun 2018

Posted by in Liberty, Prohibition, War On Drugs

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The U.S. wastes vast quantities of resources on the War on Drugs with nothing to show for it but counterproductive results. Drug use today is as commonplace as ever, despite the cumulative expenditure of many billions of dollars on law enforcement and judicial costs. We have ceded drug markets to organized crime, tolerated corruption of public officials, incurred the human and economic costs of millions of life-years wasted behind bars, and subjected users to impure and dangerous forms of contraband. And in the process, we have encouraged addiction, disease and death while dedicating relatively few resources to programs that might have helped these troubled souls.

Contrast that with Portugal’s approach to drug policy. The country’s decriminalization of drug use as well as harm reduction and treatment programs both deserve consideration in this context. Decriminalization took place in 2001: drugs are still illegal, but the penalties are very light. Treatment programs include a system of needle exchanges beginning in the early 1990s as well as various forms of outreach instituted in 2003-2005. Before the advent of these policies, Portugal had an extremely high rate of drug abuse; many feared that decriminalization would lead to further degeneracy, but no increase in drug use transpired, and the liberalized policies are credited with a drastic reduction in drug deaths and other tragic fallout. Consider the following:

  • a dramatic decline in the number of people who died from using an illicit drug to a rate of drug-induced death well below the EU average;
  • newly-diagnosed HIV cases among intravenous drug users fell by more than 95%;
  • drug-offenses declined by about 2/3;
  • the proportion of offenders imprisoned for offenses under the influence of drugs fell in half;
  • With the exception of cannabis, estimates of drug use among 15-34 year-olds have decreased, with lifetime and recent use rates below EU averages;

These facts are taken from this discussion of the effects of Portugal’s drug policies, this Wikipedia entry, and the 2018 Portugal Country Drug Report from the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction.

As a fiscal matter, some of the strongest objections to Portuguese drug policy have to do with the granting of public aid to drug addicts, who usually have themselves to blame for their predicament. And in fact, decriminalization was accompanied by a decision to transfer funds associated with enforcing drug laws and punishing offenders into treatment and rehabilitation of addicts. This includes subsidized housing and jobs as well as loans for certain productive efforts. These strike me as better uses of public funds than a drug war, and by all accounts the programs have been successful. And to the extent that recovered addicts are able to lead productive lives, they add to the strength of Portugal’s economy. In an ideal, classically-liberal order, privately-funded lifetime insurability would avoid the need for public funding of these programs, but that is a reform for another day.

Like any prohibition of activity in which a plurality engages, laws against drug use are generally ineffective and counterproductive (also see here). Portugal’s enlightened approach to drug policy is praiseworthy, sets a great example for other countries, and might be more politically feasible than full legalization. However, as long as there are any penalties for drug possession, there will be a wedge through which rents can be extracted by the underworld. Full legalization would do the most to attenuate crime and other risks associated with drug use, and it would also maximize the resources available to address problems faced by addicts and drug-dependents.

Note: the poster above is from 2014… the numbers are larger now!

American Homicide Rates: Which America?

12 Thursday Oct 2017

Posted by in Discrimination, Gun Control, Immigration

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A heterogenious society and the successful assimilation of minorities are two very different things, as much as we might wish otherwise. Two populations within a region will come into contact, but conditions promoting real assimilation are complex. (I’m avoiding use of the term “diversity” because it has come to imply the successful assimilation of distinct groups.) While cultural differences can enrich the lives of both populations, sharp economic gaps between minority and majority populations (and even some cultural differences) will tend to slow the process of assimilation. This is often associated with social dysfunction, such as high crime and homicide rates, especially among the minority group. This is a fairly common phenomenon in countries with racial and ethnic minority or immigrant populations, as Ryan McMaken writes in a recent piece on international differences in heterogeneity and homicide rates.

Heterogeneity In the West

Countries in the Western Hemisphere tend to have relatively high immigrant and minority populations, as McMaken describes:

“… when considering the Americas, … nation-states are in most cases frontier states with populations heavily affected by immigration, a history of conflict with indigenous populations, and institutionalized chattel slavery that lasted until the 19th century. The factors are significant through the region, and the United States cannot be held apart in this regard from the Caribbean, Brazil, Colombia, and other states impacted by all these factors. 

Importantly, these factors also make the Americas significantly different from Western Europe and other areas — Japan and Korea, for example — where the present situation is marked by much higher levels of cultural uniformity and quite different recent histories and current demographic trends.“

Homicides

McMaken questions popular theories of cross-country differences in homicide rates based on the degree of gun control and gun ownership rates. Homicides and violent victimization have been declining in the U.S. for many years even as gun ownership has soared. Furthermore, international comparisons are traditionally plagued by arbitrary country classifications and exclusions, as well as inconsistent definitions of homocide and gun ownership. However, McMaken points to other explanations for violent crime found to be fairly robust in the academic literature: poverty and population heterogeneity:

“… these factors contribute to lower levels of social cohesion, and thus higher levels of criminality and other socially-undesirable behaviors.“

McMaken cites research involving ethnic minority populations of Slavs in Germany, Italians in Argentina and the U.S., and Arabs in Europe, all of whom had crime rates far exceeding those in their countries of origin. The connection between heterogeneity and crime might have nothing to do with particular ethnic groups, though it seems all too easy for observers within individual countries to blame specific “others” for crime. It is a symptom of alienation from the majority as well as economic desperation and vulnerability to opportunities and threats arising from the underground economy. Illegal activities might truly provide the best alternatives available to low-skilled, minority job seekers. Needless to say, underground economic activity, such as the drug trade, involves high risk and often violence among users and between competing factions. This is an important source of the high crime and victimization that typifies many minority communities.

Despite declines since the 1970s, the U.S. still has a higher homicide rate than many other industrialized countries. Beyond the weakness cited above, such comparisons fail to control for other confounding effects, including the degree of heterogeneity across countries.

Policies

Heterogeneity poses a problem in the context of involuntary and often voluntary segregation of sub-cultures. If you don’t believe the “voluntary” part, take a close look at the different clusters of individuals in the cafeteria at almost any “diverse” university or corporate office. Judge for yourself. Differences in language, fertility, demographics, religion and cultural traditions may be noteworthy, but where crime is associated with effectively segregated minorities, there is usually a gap in economic status and mobility relative to society at large.

What policies can mitigate these conditions and their impact on crime? It would be nice to approach this question strictly from the perspective that heterogeneity is a given, but the degree of heterogeneity is, to some extent, an endogenous outcome. Restrictive immigration policies might leap to mind as a way of restraining heterogeneity, and there is little doubt that illegal immigrants are less likely to assimilate (many contend that their crime rate is low). Policies allowing less restricted flows of legal immigrants tend to be salutary if they are based on domestic economic need, economic potential, or compassion for those seeking asylum or a haven from political oppression. A legal immigrant receiving a welcome on new shores is more likely to assimilate successfully than an illegal immigrant, all else equal. Citizenship and language education are avenues through which assimilation might be encouraged. And there could be ways to improve sponsorships and even temporary visa programs so as to encourage assimilation.

What can be done to encourage more effective assimilation of all minorities? And what can be done to reduce the crime associated with unassimilated populations? One major corrective is a strong economy. Policies that encourage economic growth will lead to greater participation in markets and society, with consequent interaction and mixing of sub-cultures. Growth policies include low and non-distortionary taxes and light regulation.

The war on drugs also accounts for a major share of homicides, and that war interacts with non-assimilation in perverse ways. It is crippling to disadvantaged communities precisely because it creates risky “opportunities” in the underground economy. It also produces high levels of incarceration and dangerous forms of “cut” contraband. As I’ll discuss in my next post, ending the war on drugs would reduce violent crime and lead to safer drugs in relatively short order.

A short list of other policies that would foster assimilation and economic mobility would include: improved education: school choice and apprenticeship programs; better labor market outcomes: reduce the minimum wage or create sub-minimum wage categories to enhance opportunities to gain experience and skills; better housing: eliminate rent controls.

Assimilation is always more effective when it occurs “organically”. Affirmative action and forced diversity initiatives often fail to achieve effective assimilation. Beyond the obvious infringement on liberty, these policies may sow resentment among those who suffer reverse discrimination, and among those who witness it, to the probable detriment of efforts to eliminate bias. Even worse, these policies often put their intended beneficiaries into vulnerable, un-winnable situations: jobs or programs for which their skills are not adequate. There are undoubtedly excellent candidates among those placed in positions under quotas, but there is a likelihood that many will be unsuccessful in their roles.

Conclusion

The anti-gun left is eager to attribute differences in homicide rates to the impact of gun control policies, but a close examination of the facts reveals better explanations. A prominent factor contributing to differences in homicide rates is the degree of heterogeneity across countries. Those with more homogeneous populations tend to have lower homicide rates and vice versa. But the problem is not merely heterogeneity, but the difficulty of economic and cultural assimilation of minority populations. These factors appear to lead to greater crime within many minority populations. The U.S. is not unique in its experience with high minority crime rates, but it is a relatively heterogenous nation. This is an important factor in explaining why the homicide rate tends to be higher in the U.S. than in other industrialized countries. To close, I’ll offer something cogent from Bretigne Shaffer’s On the Banks blog, in which she offers this quote from an individual named Michael Owen (the soccer player?):

“... we don’t really have a single America with a moderately high rate of gun deaths. Instead, we have two Americas, one of which has very high rates of gun ownership but very low murder rates, very comparable to the rest of the First World democracies such as those in western & northern Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Japan, South Korea. The other America has much lower rates of gun ownership but much, much higher murder rates, akin to violent third world countries.“

Race and Crime, Cops and Race

09 Saturday Jul 2016

Posted by in Discrimination, racism

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Good Cop Bad Cop

Blacks are arrested in the U.S. at a disproportionately high rate relative to their share of the population, and they are killed by police at a disproportionately high rate as well. Does that prove that police target blacks unfairly? No, it depends on additional considerations not revealed by a simple comparison of police actions against blacks to their representation in the overall population.

This matter was put into perspective earlier this year by Heather Mac Donald in the Wall Street Journal (the link is to a Google search that should get around the WSJ paywall). Her analysis relies in part on a data base of fatal police shootings in 2015-16 maintained by the Washington Post, available here. Some of the most telling points noted by Mac Donald were the following:

  •  “… in 2015 officers killed 662 whites and Hispanics, and 258 blacks. (The overwhelming majority of all those police-shooting victims were attacking the officer, often with a gun.)” The most recent data for 2016 are incomplete, but of the 509 police shootings recorded so far this year, the proportion involving blacks appears to be roughly consistent with the 2015 figures.
  • “There were 6,095 black homicide deaths in 2014—the most recent year for which such data are available—compared with 5,397 homicide deaths for whites and Hispanics combined. Almost all of those black homicide victims had black killers.“
  • “Over the past decade, according to FBI data, 40% of cop killers have been black. Officers are killed by blacks at a rate 2.5 times higher than the rate at which blacks are killed by police.“
  • “According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, blacks were charged with 62% of all robberies, 57% of murders and 45% of assaults in the 75 largest U.S. counties in 2009, though they made up roughly 15% of the population there.“
  • “Such a concentration of criminal violence in minority communities means that officers will be disproportionately confronting armed and often resisting suspects in those communities, raising officers’ own risk of using lethal force.“
  • “A March 2015 Justice Department report on the Philadelphia Police Department found that black and Hispanic officers were much more likely than white officers to shoot blacks based on “threat misperception”—that is, the mistaken belief that a civilian is armed.“
  • “A 2015 study by University of Pennsylvania criminologist Greg Ridgeway … found that, at a crime scene where gunfire is involved, black officers in the New York City Police Department were 3.3 times more likely to discharge their weapons than other officers at the scene.“

It is a tragic fact that the black community is plagued disproportionately by crime and violence. However, that has nothing to do with the manner in which police perform their duties when confronted with danger. Rather, it has to do with historical inequities, poor educational institutions, dismal economic opportunities, and a number of misguided government policies. The latter include minimum wages that diminish opportunities for black workers to gain job experience, anti-poverty initiatives that destroy work incentives and undermine family structure, a failed public school system, and the misguided war on drugs. Drug prohibition ensnares those who face insidious alternatives to legal market activity, which is often unavailable. Unfortunately, all of these policies have a disproportionate effect on the black community.

Any assessment of police conduct must acknowledge the circumstances under which officers work. If a particular demographic is disproportionately involved in crime, and affected by crime, then it is reasonable to expect that police action will be disproportionately focused on that group. This is not prima facie evidence of racism in police work. Quite the contrary: it is evidence that the police are fulfilling their obligation to protect innocents within that demographic, even if other institutions are aggravating the social dysfunction.

 

Leftist Ad Hominid Species Screams “White Racists!”

03 Wednesday Feb 2016

Posted by in Discrimination, Equality, racism

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Lately I hear that all white people are racists, and I feel compelled to examine the intellectual grounding of such an inflamatory claim. Consciousness of race is not racism, as some would suggest. Indeed, solutions to racial division offered by activists usually require that we bear race in mind as a primary differentiator. Insofar as one must consider the worth of another person in any context, people of good faith simply do not care about a person’s race. Rather, they care about traits that count, such as honesty, skills, work ethic and perhaps affability. Should they somehow care more? What would vindicate them?

Inflammatory Claims

There are probably several motives for the charge of universal white racism. On one level, it represents political agitation. Posts carrying the charge on social media always involve a measure of “virtue signaling” to like-minded friends, or perhaps before the Gods. (I’m sure the posters will be forgiven.) Such posts might represent acts of social contrition to allay deep-seated feelings of guilt. The posters might fancy that they are raising the consciousness of others, proudly imagining the important lesson they are teaching. The bad news for them is that most people of good faith are rightly skeptical of proselytization like this. In fact, the agitation probably does more to breed skepticism than anything else.

Voluntary Sorting Behavior

What some view as racial division is often an innocent consequence of voluntary sorting based upon the shared subcultures most compelling to individuals at a given time. There are many subcultures into which a person might fit: work, school, profession, sports, music, religion, politics, hobbies, geography, ancestry, ethnicity and race. And there are micro-cultures within all of these categories. These cultural segments differ in many respects, and they may overlap in many cases. The extent of sub-cultural overlap may be viewed as a gauge of assimilation.

In any given context, people tend to voluntarily sort themselves into the sub-culture they find most compelling. This voluntary sorting does not yield a fixed social distribution of individuals across groups. Individuals can choose to associate with different sub-cultures to which they belong on a day-to-day basis.

There is a pronounced tendency for sorting to occur within larger “populations”, such as cafeteria-goers in a large office or in a large school. People from particular work groups might sit together: there is some sorting by age, by gender, and by race. African-Americans often sit together. There is mixing of members of these subgroups as well. People are brought together by work or school, but the shared work or school culture is frequently less compelling to individuals in their choice of a lunch table than other sub-cultures to which they belong.

Isolation or Assimilation

Assimilation does not mean that cultural differences must disappear, but it does mean that subcultures must at least be tolerant of others. A key question is whether one subgroup would welcome a member of another subgroup to join them. There might be reasons to refuse in some circumstances, such as a group of accountants who wish to avoid economists. Lol. However, a group of Caucasians who prefer to remain exclusive, making African Americans feel unwelcome, are guilty of racism, and vice-versa. As for the converse, an African American individual who prefers not to join a group of Caucasians, and vice versa, there is usually a good rationale for presuming the individual to be innocent of racism: they are simply choosing a more compelling sub-culture.

Certain sub-cultures may be especially amenable to selection from across sub-groups. For example, team sports often foster racial mixing, as do music and various professions. Religion and economic stratum can be powerful shared sub-cultures, drawing members across racial groups. In other words, mixing of sub-cultures will occur when a compelling sub-culture is shared. That is a form of successful assimilation.

When voluntary sorting takes place, the parties seek commonalities. That’s a form of discrimination that may be quite healthy and not racist in any way. On the other hand, accepting diversity implies respect for other cultures and subcultures. Voluntary sorting allows those cultures to function, but it does not necessarily imply exclusion of others who might be curious and wish to learn and take part in a culture’s traditions, or who might even wish to become a part of a different community.

Counterproductive Compulsion

The insistence that racism is widespread is often an expression of support for compelled remedies or paying reparations of some kind to alleged victims. In a free society, the kind of voluntary sorting discussed above will always be a reality; any attempt to prevent it would require extreme coercion. Reparations for historical injustices, legal or economic, raise ethical questions about the treatment of those who must bear the costs. They also carry high administrative costs and tend to breed resentment and division. There are well-known downsides to quotas in hiring and in school admissions. Not only do quotas lead to reverse discrimination, they also can place the intended beneficiaries into situations of vulnerability to failure.

Markets Are Not Racist

Then there is the allegation that private markets are a source of “systemic racism”, having “disparate impacts” on certain minorities. However, it should be noted that the market mechanism tends to penalize racism. A consumer who chooses to avoid sellers of a different race will tend to pay a higher price for the privilege. An employer with a “taste for discrimination” must choose from a smaller labor pool and may lose the opportunity to hire the best talent. In other words, racists must pay for their preference. They also forego the creative benefits that diverse organizations tend to enjoy.

Certain minorities have struggled to achieve success in the private economy, but there are much better explanations for that difficulty than market forces, which provide the best opportunity for growth and assimilation. There is no question that institutional obstacles have had extremely harsh effects on groups starting from lower rungs of the socioeconomic ladder. A few examples: the failed public education has been especially burdensome for urban and rural minorities; various public policies have effectively excluded minorities from markets, including Jim Crow laws, the minimum wage and the Davis-Bacon Act; the so-called social safety net is rife with features that penalize work and reward fragmentation of families, making it as much a trap as a net; the drug war creates illicit market opportunities which present catastrophic but unappreciated risks for both the participants and their families; rent controls, zoning laws and restrictions on new construction limit the stock of affordable housing; heavy regulation makes starting a business difficult for those without the financial and legal resources to deal with it; and the ugly tradition of cronyism tends to reduce social mobility by entrenching privilege rather than rewarding economic value. The deck is stacked in many ways against economic mobility by public policy, and racial minirities have borne much of the burden.

Immigration Hotspot

Another controversy is whether racism is manifest in the negative views of many Americans toward immigrants. These claims allege ethnic and religious discrimination, including the hatred of Muslims. No doubt there are Americans who harbor racist attitudes toward immigrants. Some of this is grounded in unreasonable economic fears. There are also fears that terrorists may be among new immigrant populations, especially refugees, but that fear is hardly unreasonable given the recent experience of Europe and the difficulty of establishing reliable background information on some of these individuals.

Sharing Freedom

Racism still exists and it will never go away entirely. However, our dedication to freedom compels us to protect speech as long as it is not threatening. Racial discrimination by participants in markets can be difficult to detect, but racists must pay an economic price imposed by the market mechanism, and there are often legal remedies if racial discrimination in markets can be proven. Fortunately, racism today is not as widespread as the agitators would have you believe. The best policy for assimilation and acceptance is to promote a shared culture of freedom and economic opportunity.

Wanna Help People? End the Drug War!

03 Tuesday Nov 2015

Posted by in War On Drugs

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August 20, 2013

We’re taught that illegal drugs are a scourge on humanity, that their use is immoral and that legalization is out of the question. Yet far more of us, our friends, and our loved ones have been intimate with the destructive effects of alcohol and dependency on legal drugs than on illegal drugs. Pharmacologically, the “worst effects” of illegal drugs are no worse than the well-known effects of alcohol abuse. In fact, the “worst effects” have more to do with prohibition than with the illegal drugs themselves.

Rules are codified into law successfully when widespread agreement exists among the citizenry that a rule is sensible. This should trouble drug prohibitionists: a substantial proportion of the population has used illegal drugs as adults, indicating a strong lack of consensus that recreational drugs should be illegal. For this reason alone, drug prohibition is and always will be ineffectual.

The great economist Milton Friedman was a long-time critic of the drug war. Several of his articles on the topic are linked at this site. One of the links is this interview from 1992, which is lengthy but sticks primarily to the issue of the drug war. I’m not sure that all of the facts Friedman cites have held up over time, especially with respect to trends in alcohol consumption. Nevertheless, it is a great interview:

“There are [sic] an enormous number of innocent victims now. You’ve got the people whose purses are stolen, who are bashed over the head by people trying to get enough money for their next fix. You’ve got the people killed in the random drug wars. You’ve got the corruption of the legal establishment. You’ve got the innocent victims who are taxpayers who have to pay for more and more prisons, and more and more prisoners, and more and more police. You’ve got the rest of us who don’t get decent law enforcement because all the law enforcement officials are busy trying to do the impossible.“

Here is a brief list of the pernicious effects of drug prohibition:

  • Prices are driven upward by the legal risk inherent in black market trade;
  • High prices lead to more crime as heavy users seek means of payment;
  • Impure and more dangerous variants are traded in attempts to stretch quantities and increase potency;
  • Dealers advance “samples” to gain trust and cultivate dependency among users;
  • Addiction is stubbornly resistant to legal barriers;
  • Unnecessary deaths from impure and excessively potent drug varieties;
  • Black market trade leads to violent crime as underworld elements seek to control markets and enforce discipline in their organizations;
  • Unnecessary deaths from gangland violence;
  • Arrest, imprisonment and ruined lives for victimless crimes;
  • A huge burden on taxpayers;
  • A huge burden on the criminal justice system;
  • Inevitable corruption in law enforcement as officials face hefty rewards for protecting the drug trade;
  • Innocent people become casualties of violence instigated by gangs and sometimes by police actions.

A fascinating dynamic of the black market in drugs is the tendency toward monopolization at the top: Large cartels dominate the importation of supplies due to the risk and expense of such operations. As Friedman noted, the war on drugs contributes to the difficulty of entering into competition with established players. At the same time, the drug war guarantees huge rewards to the cartels by inflating drug prices:

“What more could a monopolist want? He’s got a government who makes it very hard for all his competitors and who keeps the price of his products high.“

The drug war creates greater danger for users. In “Prohibition Kills“, Jacob Sullum discusses four recent examples of more dangerous and even deadly drug variants that have been developed as a direct consequence of prohibition. Friedman is often quoted as saying that crack cocaine was a direct consequence of the drug war. Sullum asks whether this could be an intentional strategy by drug warriors for discouraging consumption. I’m not convinced they are quite so nefarious, but it’s something to ponder.

More dangerous varieties of drugs would not vanish overnight if drugs were legalized, though the incentive to develop them would diminish. Of course, if legalization brings prices and risks down, as we’d expect, it would encourage greater recreational use. That should not be viewed as a “bad” any more than better access to cocktails at happy hour. Abuse is unlikely to increase because problem users tend to be undeterred by prohibition. And as unsavory as an increase in recreational drug use might seem to the temperance faction, it would still represent only a small fraction of the real costs of ruined lives imposed by prohibition and the drug war.

Legalization would bring other complexities, as Colorado’s experience with marijuana shows. For example, rules with respect to driving under the influence must be updated, as well as laws prohibiting possession by minors. Colorado went so far as to regulate packaging, and tax treatment of the drug trade will stoke debate, as governments will hope for something of a tax bonanza. But the more that government attempts to regulate and tax drugs, the more that problems similar to those associated with drug prohibition will persist, albeit on a smaller scale.

Economically, legalization should eliminate a burden on taxpayers. It would free up law enforcement resources to battle real crime and should make more funds available for treatment programs. It would also help to improve lives and safety in inner cities and other areas ravaged by black market drug trade and the violence it foments. And of course, legalization would put an end to the ruin of lives caused by the arrest of individuals for victimless crimes.

Prohibition of drugs belongs to a larger class of social problems brought on by efforts to bring the police power of government to bear on private behavior. I already mentioned that alcohol prohibition had similar consequences. To lesser degrees, similar harmful consequences are associated with laws against prostitution, large soft drink containers, sugary foods, and practicing almost any commercial art without a license. The same can be said for price regulations like rent control and the minimum wage. The former has led to the destruction of vast quantities of housing; the latter harms low-skilled workers along non-wage dimensions and makes it difficult for unskilled workers to gain valuable experience in the job market. Government interference with individual liberty might well restrain certain activities deemed “undesirable” by busybodies, but it it also leads to higher prices, greater risk, black market activity, violence, unnecessary legal actions against individuals, and greater expense for society.

Degrees of Poverty and The Social Safety Trap

01 Thursday Oct 2015

Posted by in Poverty

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Income Dist Chart

The poor in the United States are extremely well-off by international standards. That is clear in the chart above, which David Henderson discusses in “The Role of Luck In The Income Distribution“. By luck, Henderson means that one’s country of birth has a huge impact on their ultimate place in the global income distribution. The chart compares positions in a single country’s income distribution with corresponding points in the global distribution (2008 data). For example, an individual in the 20th percentile of the U.S. income distribution (20 on the horizontal axis) is in roughly the 86th percentile of the global distribution (from the vertical axis). Those at the very bottom of the U.S. income distribution have a greater income than half of the individuals in the world. The average U.S. earner in the lowest 20% earns more than nearly 75% of all earners globally. Individuals across the entire income distribution in the U.S. have higher incomes than their counterparts elsewhere.

Within the U.S., we often use the term “impoverished” in a fairly parochial sense: compared to our compatriots, not to the rest of the world. Robert Rector discusses the living standards of the poor in America in “How Do America’s Poor Really Live? Examining the Census Poverty Report“. The actual census report released this month is discussed in The Atlantic here. Rector states the following:

“According to the government’s own reports, the typical American defined as poor by the Census Bureau has a car, air conditioning, and cable or satellite TV. Half of the poor have computers, 43 percent have Internet, and 40 percent have a wide-screen plasma or LCD TV. … Far from being overcrowded, poor Americans have more living space in their home than the average non-poor person in Western Europe.“

Rector notes that the Census Bureau’s measure of poverty is based on a flawed definition of income, one that is inconsistent with how income is defined in calculating official measures of poverty in other countries. The Census definition excludes most welfare benefits, and taxes aren’t always subtracted from income by other countries. The Rector post linked above contains an incorrect link to this recent article on international comparisons of poverty rates. When the measurement inconsistencies are corrected, the official U.S. poverty rate is similar to the advanced economies of Europe, and it is lower than Eurooean poverty rates based on a more inclusive definition preferred by many on the left. And again, the actual standard of living of those below the official poverty level in the U.S. is impressive compared to the rest of the world. It is also impressive from a historical perspective.

Rector discusses the failure of the welfare state and the War on Poverty to lift the impoverished out of dependency. This has been covered here on Sacred Cow Chips several times (see here and here). The terrible structure of incentives built into many anti-poverty programs is one of the primary causes, as well as the failure of public education. Also at fault are minimum wage legislation, the War on Drugs, tax policy and a regulatory regime that discourages job creation by punishing new capital investment and business creation.

The left often claims that the distribution of income in the U.S. is becoming increasingly skewed toward high-income households. In “Myths and Causes of Income Inequality“, James D. Agresti demonstrates that the real causes of this phenomenon are demographic. The splintering of families at low income levels has increased the number of low-income households and reduced average incomes among those households. At the level of individual earners, there is no discernible trend in income inequality. According to Agresti:

“… the rise of household income inequality stems from family disintegration driven by changing attitudes toward sex, marital fidelity, and familial responsibility.“

Agresti stops short of drawing a link between anti-poverty policies and the disintegration of the family, though there are reasons to suspect pernicious connections along those lines.

It is easy to exaggerate the extent and severity of poverty in the U.S.; doing so is of obvious value in promoting the leftist agenda. In reality, the poor in this country are provided with a standard of living through public assistance that is high relative to their counterparts across the globe, and it is similar to other advanced economies. In addition, when changes in the structure of households are neutralized, there has been no upward trend in income inequality, contrary to assertions from the left. Our long-term objective should be to lift able recipients out of dependency, consistent with President Johnson’s original goals for the War on Poverty. That will require major reforms to our anti-poverty efforts, public education and many other aspects of public policy. Most poor families in the U.S. receive support that is enviable to the poor elsewhere. Nevertheless, their plight of dependency has dispiriting and self-reinforcing effects.