David Lapp for the Institute for Family Studies: In my experience, there’s plenty of judgment to go around for the low-income man who strolls into the local Rent-to-Own to buy that huge flat-screen TV. But is there a similar stigma against the more affluent salesperson who opts for the $300,000 home, a choice that means that his family might only have a month’s worth of liquid savings in the event of a job loss? Not among the people I know.
Instead, we admire the high-income salesperson for his responsibility and hard work, but judge the low-income man for his “irresponsibility” and “poor work ethic.” Never mind that the low-income man has to work two jobs just to make ends meet, and even then he’s often struggling to make ends meet.
The idea is not to start a class brawl about who’s more financially responsible. Rather, it’s to point out that we’re all living in the same extraordinary age of excess — a time when low-income families think little about buying big-screen TVs and new furniture, and high-income families think little of dishing out half a million dollars to buy a home …
We’re all drinking from the same cultural fountain, imbibing the same norms and trying to pay the bills and give our kids the standard of living that we think they deserve — and provide ourselves a little bit of comfort along the way. And in that environment, it’s just hard for many of us to adequately save.
Uncle Sam can’t drive
Randal O’Toole for the Cato Institute: While I’ve been a proponent of self-driving cars since 2010, I believe the Obama administration is making as big a mistake with its latest $4 billion proposal as it made with high-speed rail and streetcars.
The problem is that the technology the government wants is very different from the technology being developed by Google, Volkswagen, Ford and other companies. The cars designed by these private companies rely on GPS, on-board sensors and extremely precise maps of existing roadways and other infrastructure. A company called HERE, which was started by Nokia but recently bought by BMW, Daimler and Volkswagen, has already mapped about two-thirds of the paved roads in the United States and makes millions of updates to its maps every day.
Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx proposes to spend most of the $4 billion on a very different technology called “connected vehicle” or vehicle-to-infrastructure communications. In this system, the government would have to install new electronic infrastructure in all streets and highways that would help guide self-driving cars. But states and cities currently can’t fill potholes or keep traffic lights coordinated, so they are unlikely to be able to install an entirely new infrastructure system in any reasonable amount of time.
The fixed infrastructure used for connected corridors will quickly become obsolete. Upgrading the hardware could take years and might never happen due to the expense. Thus, Foxx’s plan would lock us into a system that will be obsolete long before it is fully implemented.
Corporal punishment is still around
Dick Startz for the Brookings Institution: In public schools in the United States, black children are twice as likely as white children to be subject to corporal punishment … The continuing disproportionate corporal punishment of black children is a reminder that some aspects of the “bad old days” are not fully behind us.
The 42,000 reported incidents of black boys being beaten, and 15,000 incidents for black girls, by educators in their school reflects two facts. First, black students are more likely to be located in states that use corporal punishment extensively. Second, in many states, black students are disproportionately likely to be singled out for corporal punishment …
While corporal punishment is used in almost every state, seven states account for 80 percent of school corporal punishment in the United States: Mississippi, Texas, Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Tennessee and Oklahoma. For black students, six of these states (Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Arkansas, Texas, and Tennessee) plus Louisiana account for 90 percent of corporal punishment. One reason that black students are subject to more corporal punishment is that they live in those states responsible for most of the corporal punishment of all children.
Where is corporal punishment racially disproportionate? Essentially, and sadly unsurprisingly, black students are disproportionately beaten in parts of the Deep South.
Compiled by Joseph Lawler from reports published by the various think tanks.
