Political Inequality

1) Princeton economist Paul Krugman gives an account of the relative income distribution of the wealthy and the rest of us in the USA over the last 100 years. What trends does he identify? Does any part of this story surprise you?

2) What does Krugman tell us about the trends in the pay rate of CEOs? Why do CEOs get paid so much more than they did 30-40 years ago? Krugman suggests it simply doesn't make sense to say they're doing their jobs that much better, given the economic performance of firms in the relative eras. So what's going on here?

3) Everyone knows you can't have capitalism without economic inequality. What Krugman shows is that even within the same country, you can have a very wide degree of levels of inequality while still retaining a capitalist economy. Why does the current high levels of inequality worry Krugman?

4) Krugman argues that globalization is at best a minor factor in the story of modern American inequality. What reasons does he give for this?

5) Krugman poses some difficult questions for how we should normatively evaluate economic growth. The fact that the GDP per capita of Sweden is about the same as the GDP per capita of Mississippi is, Krugman suggests, very misleading. Why?

6) What is the harm Krugman is afraid our current high levels of inequality will do to American society? Are his fears justified?

Reposting the link here.

1) Compare the Ontario college admissions process of Gladwell's youth (about 25 years ago) to the college admissions process today. What are the advantages of each system? Which, in your estimation, is more "fair"?

2) What have been the primary goals of the Harvard admissions process over the years? What do you think of Harvard's goals? Why do you think they have them? Bigotry was almost certainly one reason Harvard wanted to keep the Jewish portion of the student body down--are there other reasons?

3) It is widely thought that student-athletes, because they are often granted admission with grades and/or test scores that would not have allowed them admission otherwise, are granted a share of a scarce resource they don't 'deserve.' Gladwell suggests there is evidence that this account is wholly incomplete. What is this evidence? How do we evaluate whether people "deserve" their share of a scarce resource?

4) Do you think college is a "treatment-effect institution" or a "selection-effect institution"? Should this distinction have any impact on admissions policies?

5) Admission to Harvard is, quite clearly, a scarce resource. There are many people who would like it, and would probably do just fine with it, than can ever hope to have it. But Gladwell concludes that this particular scarce resource to be not a particularly big deal. His conclusion--Harvard's admissions policies, while often odd, quaint, and based on stereotypes, are no big deal. Non-admission to Harvard doesn't constitute a harm so society shouldn't care how this resource is distributed. Do you agree with Gladwell? Why/not?

6) A broader question associated with #5: There are lots of scarce resources out there. For some of them, society is rightfully very concerned with how we allocate them. Take, for example, the job of President of the United States. Lots of people want it, but only one person can have it. It's a very scarce resource. But we as a society make a pretty big deal about how we distribute this resource. If, for example, Bob Dole had somehow managed to replace George W. Bush after the 2004 election, despite not even running that year, many of us (including those of us who think Bob Dole would probably be better at the job) would be pretty concerned.

Another scarce resource is access to high quality, freshly roasted, properly prepared coffee. We in Seattle are huge beneficiaries of this scarce resource--most people in the country are looking to Starbucks as their best option, while we have half a dozen micro roasters of exceptional quality to choose from. Now, I think this is too bad for those people, and I don't envy them, but I also don't think society should worry about this too much. Maybe this resource will spread around a bit more and maybe it won't, but it doesn't matter much one way or the other.

Lots of important stuff, including Harvard admissions, intuitively falls somewhere in the middle. So, my question is this: How should we decide whether the distributional patterns of a particular scarce resource are something society as a whole ought to be conerned about or not?

Of course, your own topics and questions are welcome.

Here's the link again.
Those of you in my class last term know this article. I manage to find reasons to assign it in a wide variety of classes because, well, I think it's great, theoretically interesting, and exceedingly thoughtful and well-written. Her essays now form a book, which I hope to read someday.

But on this essay: much to discuss, and I'm interested in any of your reflections and reactions. In this class, we're primarily interested in what this essay can tell us about inequality in society.

A preliminary note about Singer: discussion on this essay often turns to Singer's strange philosophical vision. He's a very smart and clever thinker, who is best known for his vigorous and uncompromising defense of animal rights. I can't and won't try to explain the argument for infanticide he makes (although for the truly curious I'd be happy to point you to the sections of his book, Practical Ethics, where he spells out the argument. A few points about Singer's argument:

1) The permissibility depends on a distinction between human beings and persons. We are all persons now, but we weren't always, and some of us will cease to be persons someday. Personhood has to do with, amongst other things, a minimum level of brain function. Most infants become persons, in Singer's sense, at around 18 months.
2) Singer allows for infanticide under a utilitarian theory of future predicted happiness, based on his utilitarian philosophy--the idea that a different, non-disabled "replacement child" could be happier herself and cause her parents less pain and more pleasure. This ceases to matter once we become persons, since persons can't be killed without their permission, for obvious reasons.
3) Even if this sounds appalling to you, if I were to walk you through all the technical steps in Singer's argument, you'd be forced to admit he makes it all sound pretty compelling if you share his utilitarian premises.

Now that that's out of the way, a few discussion questions:

1) Most of us would look at Harriet McBryde Johnson and say that she's someone who is suffering from what we might call "natural inequality"--that is, inequality that comes from the random luck of natural endowments. She is unlucky in the same way that supermodels, geniouses, and Tiger Woods are lucky.

Do you think she would agree with this assessment of the nature of her 'inequality'? How would she describe the "inequality" she suffers from?

2) Why is it so hard for Johnson to respect Singer in theory? Why is it so easy for her to respect him in practice? Why is the issue of mutual respect important when thinking about political equality?

3) What does she mean when she takes the "tragic view" of Peter Singer?

4) Think for a moment about the two argument about assisted suicide she discusses (Batavia and Gill) about 2/3 of the way through this essay. Which seems more compelling to you? Which seems most consistent with "equal respect" for the disabled?

(there's so much more to discuss here, bring up whatever you'd like about this essay)

Old Link is dead.

New strategy for access. Go to the University of Washington library homepage.

If you are off campus go here. Log in. Click the link under "Click here to start the proxy."

Click "research databases"

Under L, find "Lexis-Nexis-academic"

Confirm that you are, indeed, an authorized user (which you are).

There are many searches one could use to find it, but here's what I did: Under date I switched it to last month, and I put the following in the search window:

"Price of Oil" Maass

The article, from the Dec. 18th New York Times, comes up as the third hit right now (although that may change).

More posts on these articles forthcoming tomorrow or the next day.

UPDATE (12/27):
Let's use this post for a discussion of the article. Some discussion questions:

1) This article identifies a phenomenon in international politics known as "the resource curse." What is the resource curse? Why does it function the way it does? Can you think of ways the resource curse might be overcome?

2) If you listen to politicians left to right, energy independence is often lauded as a valuable goal. Yet there is little effort to explore for oil off the coasts of Florida and California, and try as they might, the Republican party can't seem to unite strongly enough to pass a bill to open ANWR to oil-drilling. How does this article explain this puzzling phenomenon?

3) This article is just one example of the inequality of environmental consequences. Can you think of other examples? Why is this problem pervasive? Is there any way it might be overcome?

(these questions shouldn't limit your discussion; post about anything you like with relation to this article)

Note: this is not the final syllabus. There will be some more detail, policies, fewer typos, etc. in the final syllabus. Still, this is the gist of it and I thought I'd post it before I go away from work and internet access for the holidays so y'all can take a look if you wish.

I'll put an update in this post when the syllabus is updated and completed.

UPDATE #1: The syllabus has not been updated but the link has been fixed.

UPDATE #2: The syllabus linked here is now the final copy.

A syllabus will be up shortly, tomorrow morning or early afternoon.

This class is going to be a bit shorter than a typical class, as we'll lose 15% of our classtime to scheduling, holidays, etc. (We'll meet on 10 Wednesdays, but only 7 Mondays because the term starts on a Tuesday and there are 2 Monday holidays).

With that in mind, I'd like to have a substantive discussion on January 4th, rather than the usual introduction. I've selected a series of perhaps seemingly unrelated newspaper and magazine stories. It's not crucial that everyone read every one of these, but I hope you'll each read most of them. I'll post the links now, and sometime shortly after Christmas I'll post separate comments on each of them with some discussion questions. If you'd like to begin the discussion early, by all means do so. If not, please try to read some of the articles and be prepared to discuss them on January 4th.

They are:

Paul Krugman, "For Richer..."

Harriet McBryde Johnson, "Unspeakable Conversations"

Malcolm Gladwell, "Getting In"

Alan Krueger, "Sticks and stones can break bones, but the wrong name can make a job hard to find"

Peter Maass, "The Price of Oil"

The last link might stop working soon, so you might want to print or save it ASAP even if you're not going to read it at this time. If it does stop working, I'll create an alternate way to access it.

This is the home on the internets for BIS 393b, Special Topics, "Political Inequality", University of Washington-Bothell, Winter 2006.

More information will be forthcoming quite soon.