Social Mobility?

Please see original article for links it refers to.

http://understandingsociety.blogspot.com/2009/08/social-mobility.html

Wednesday, August 19, 2009
We often think of the United States as a place with a lot of social mobility. What exactly does this mean? And is it true? Ironically, the answer appears to be a fairly decisive "no." In fact, here's a graph from a 2005 New York Times series on income mobility that shows that the United States ranks second to last among Great Britain, US, France, Canada, and Denmark when it comes to the rate of income improvement over four generations for poor families. And here are two very interesting recent studies that come to similar conclusions -- a report on social mobility by the Center for American Progress and a 2007 academic study by researchers at Kent State, Wisconsin and Syracuse. Here is how Professor Kathryn Wilson, associate professor of economics at Kent State University, summarizes the main finding of the latter study: “People like to think of America as the land of opportunities. The irony is that our country actually has less social mobility and more inequality than most developed countries”.

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City drops request for Internet passwords

I saw this earlier today, before the request for passwords was dropped, and I'm glad to see the policy was changed. There are times when the ACLU gets carried away, but this shows why they are needed.

patricia_shan18@hotmail.com

By Matt Gouras
updated 8:42 p.m. ET, Fri., June 19, 2009

HELENA, Mont. - A flood of criticism has prompted a Montana city to drop its request that government job applicants turn over their user names and passwords to Internet social networking and Web groups.

The city of Bozeman abruptly suspended the practice Friday, saying it "appears to have exceeded that which is acceptable to our community."

"We appreciate the concern many citizens have expressed regarding this practice and apologize for the negative impact this issue is having on the City of Bozeman," City Manager Chris A. Kukulski said in a release.

Since KBZK-TV of Bozeman reported on the policy Wednesday, Web forums have been abuzz over the issue. The American Civil Liberties Union of Montana immediately questioned the legality of the policy.

"I liken it to them saying they want to look at your love letters and your family photos," said Amy Cannata of the Montana ACLU. "I think this policy certainly crosses the privacy line."

The city initially argued that it only used the information to verify application information. People who refused to provide the information wouldn't be penalized, the city said.

An excerpt from the city application form said, "Please list any and all current personal or business Web sites, Web pages or memberships on any Internet-based chat rooms, social clubs or forums, to include, but not limited to: Facebook, Google, Yahoo, YouTube.com, MySpace, etc."
.....

The ACLU has not found another government body that asks for such information, Cannata said.

"It's one thing, and I think totally reasonable, if someone has a public profile to go check it out," she said.

But private groups and profile could reveal information employers could not legally base hiring decisions on, such as a person's religion, she added.

Inequality

http://www.bigthink.com/business-economics/1765

Bright students, as measured by tests in 8th grade, from poor families are less likely to get thru college than not very bright, bottom quartile, students from high-income families.

Compact Fluorescent Lighting: Are We Trading Energy Conservation For Toxic Mercury Emissions?

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/10/081001093454.htm

ScienceDaily (Oct. 3, 2008) — A team of Yale scientists has found that certain countries and some U.S. states stand to benefit from the use of compact fluorescent lighting more than others in the fight against global warming. Some places may even produce more mercury emissions by switching from incandescent light bulbs to compact fluorescent lighting.

The study, which appears online October 1 in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, looked at all 50 states and 130 countries to determine the impact of fluorescent lighting on total mercury emissions in those regions.

Estonia, which relies heavily on coal-powered energy generation, tops the list as the country that would see the greatest reduction in mercury emissions for every incandescent bulb it replaces with a compact fluorescent light bulb (CFL). However, given its similar reliance on coal-fired plants, coupled with its huge population, China stands to reduce its mercury emissions by the greatest overall amount. Other countries near the top of the list include Romania, Bulgaria and Greece; within the U.S., North Dakota, New Mexico and West Virginia have the greatest potential to reduce their mercury emissions.

But much of South America, Africa, the Middle East and parts of Europe, along with Alaska, California, Oregon, Idaho and several New England states, would actually increase their mercury emissions by making the switch from incandescent to fluorescent lighting. The results depend on a complex relationship between a number of factors, including how dependent a region is on coal-powered energy generation, the chemical makeup of the coal used in those plants, and existing recycling programs for CFLs.

"Compact fluorescent lighting is an area where we're really pushing this alternative and all these policies are being enacted, but we're not looking at the potential unintended consequences of what we're doing," said study author Julie Beth Zimmerman, an assistant professor in Yale's Department of Chemical Engineering and its School of Forestry & Environmental Studies.

Touted as a greener alternative to traditional lighting, CFLs are about four times more energy-efficient than incandescent bulbs and last up to 10 times longer. This increased efficiency lessens the energy demand on generating stations powered by fossil fuels and reduces greenhouse gas emissions, as well as the amount of packaging and old light bulbs that end up in landfills. But unlike incandescent light bulbs, CFLs contain mercury, a toxin with potentially hazardous effects that can be released during manufacturing and disposal.

"It's always good to promote energy efficiency, but it's always a tradeoff," said lead author Matthew Eckelman, a graduate student in Yale's Department of Chemistry and the Center for Industrial Ecology. "You may get a lower energy bill at home, but you don't see the emissions or the runoff downstream."

While the researchers stress that their study isn't an excuse to ignore the energy problem and stick with old, inefficient technologies, they caution that nation-wide strategies such as recent bans on incandescent bulbs, adopted by several countries including the U.S., may be too general. "All sustainability issues are local," said Zimmerman. "We need to ask if we should be making decisions on a national level, or if this is something better left to local governments."

When The Powerless Rise Up

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/06/080616124931.htm

ScienceDaily (Jun. 16, 2008) — In an effort to reconcile the science stating that power leads to action and lack of power leads to inhibition -- despite constant historical reminders of the powerless rising up and taking action -- new research in the June issue of Psychological Science, suggests that the legitimacy of the power relationship is an important determinant of whether power leads to action.
...
According to the researchers, when power is acquired or wielded legitimately (e.g., following a fair election or when actions are within authority), the likelihood for a successful cooperative environment is high, with the powerful leading and the powerless following. However, if power is borne of illegitimate means (in fixed elections or self-interested actions that exceed authority) this can motivate force and resistance from the powerless.

don't give up

from the on-line book "The Authoritarians"
http://members.shaw.ca/jeanaltemeyer/drbob/chapter7.pdf

If the people who are not social dominators and right-wing authoritarians want
to have those same rights in the future, they, you, had better do those same things too, now. You do have the right to remain silent, but you’ll do so at everyone’s peril. You can’t sit these elections out and say “Politics is dirty; I’ll not be part of it,” or
“Nothing can change the way things are done now.”The social dominators want you
to be disgusted with politics, they want you to feel hopeless, they want you out of their way. They want democracy to fail, they want your freedoms stricken, they want equality destroyed as a value, they want to control everything and everybody, they want it all. And they have an army of authoritarian followers marching with the
militancy of “that old-time religion” on a crusade that will make it happen, if you let
them.

Bob Altemeyer's - The Authoritarians

http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/%7Ealtemey/

This is an on-line book about Bob Altemeyer's research on authoritarians. Over the years, I have seen references to this research, and it is exciting to have the book available.

OK, what’s this book about? It’s about what’s happened to the American government lately. It’s about the disastrous decisions that government has made. It’s about the corruption that rotted the Congress. It’s about how traditional conservatism has nearly been destroyed by authoritarianism. It’s about how the “Religious Right” teamed up with amoral authoritarian leaders to push its un-democratic agenda onto the country. It’s about the United States standing at the crossroads as the next federal election approaches.

The Truth About Denial

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20122975/site/newsweek/

A conservative think tank long funded by ExxonMobil, she told Boxer, had offered scientists $10,000 to write articles undercutting the new report and the computer-based climate models it is based on.

...In January, nine leading corporations—including Alcoa, Caterpillar, Duke Energy, Du Pont and General Electric—called on Congress to "enact strong national legislation" to reduce greenhouse gases.

...every time the scientific case got stronger, "the American public yawned and bought bigger cars," Rep. Rush Holt, a New Jersey congressman and physicist, recently wrote in the journal Science;

...Groups that opposed greenhouse curbs ramped up. They "settled on the 'science isn't there' argument because they didn't believe they'd be able to convince the public to do nothing if climate change were real," says David Goldston, who served as Republican chief of staff for the House of Representatives science committee until 2006.

...They "settled on the 'science isn't there' argument because they didn't believe they'd be able to convince the public to do nothing if climate change were real," says David Goldston, who served as Republican chief of staff for the House of Representatives science committee until 2006.

...Look for the next round of debate to center on what Americans are willing to pay and do to stave off the worst of global warming. So far the answer seems to be, not much. The NEWSWEEK Poll finds less than half in favor of requiring high-mileage cars or energy-efficient appliances and buildings. No amount of white papers, reports and studies is likely to change that. If anything can, it will be the climate itself. This summer, Texas was hit by exactly the kind of downpours and flooding expected in a greenhouse world, and Las Vegas and other cities broiled in record triple-digit temperatures. Just last week the most accurate study to date concluded that the length of heat waves in Europe has doubled, and their frequency nearly tripled, in the past century. The frequency of Atlantic hurricanes has already doubled in the last century. Snowpack whose water is crucial to both cities and farms is diminishing. It's enough to make you wish that climate change were a hoax, rather than the reality it is.

Good article on the efforts of the oil industry to prevent action to combat global warming. People might call for other people to do something. But I fear that our spoiled citizens won't expend even modest efforts to do their part. People won't even spend a tiny bit of energy and time to turn off their cubicle lights when they go home.

THE SMALL PRINT ISN'T ALWAYS BINDING

http://redtape.msnbc.com/2007/07/the-small-print.html

What is the penalty for a train or airline passenger who's late? Often $50 or more. What is the penalty for a company when a train or airplane is late? Nothing. How can that be fair? It's not. But this imbalance, and many others you can probably recite by heart, can be blamed in part on the proliferation of one-sided contractual relationships called "contracts of adhesion."

Every one of us finds ourselves in contracts of adhesion every day, with virtually every consumer product we buy. Contracts of adhesion are pacts between two entities that are not equal, a David and Goliath agreement, where Goliath offers the deal on take-it-or-leave-it terms. Nothing can be negotiated, so everything can be unfair. Buying a car? You have to sign a piece of paper that says you'll never sue the dealer. Won't sign the paper? You can't buy a car. And since all auto dealers require these one-sided terms, consumers don't really have a choice -- either abdicate your right to sue, or don’t drive.

In general, contracts in the United States are only valid when they are negotiated between two equal parties. That makes sense: Only people on equal footing can engage in fair, arm's-length negotiations.

Take-it-or-leave-it Consumer contracts don't fit this bill, however. They are almost always take-it-or-leave-it, non-negotiated contracts. When you purchase a cell phone, you agree to never join a class-action lawsuit against the cell phone provider. When you get a credit card, you agree that the terms and conditions for that card can change at any time. If you don't agree to these things, you can't get a cell phone or a credit card. That's just how it is. Take it or leave it. It's all on those pieces of paper you sign, or somewhere on the firm's Web site, in very, very small print.

To prevent abuses, courts have held repeatedly that contracts of adhesion fall into a special category. Despite what you might have heard, unfair provisions inserted into such contracts are not legally enforceable -– even if you signed the piece of paper. Such provisions are given the drastic legal term "unconscionable." A judge who finds a provision of a contract of adhesion to be unconscionable will void that provision.

There is a problem, however: Absent activist government intervention, everything is legal until someone sues. Long ago, companies noticed this and began pushing the boundaries on contracts of adhesion. As long as no one drags them to court, anything goes.

power blinds

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/01/070110124121.htm

"Adam Galinsky of Northwestern University, Joe Magee of the Wagner Graduate
School of Public Service at NYU, and colleagues at Stanford University found
that possessing power itself serves as an impediment to understanding the
perspectives of others."

Experience, on both a personal and political level, show this is true.
However, another possibility for the results of this particular experiment
is that the powerful just don't care about other people's perceptions.

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Dave vs. Carl: The Insignificant Championship Series. Who will win?

http://clk.atdmt.com/MSN/go/msnnkwsp0070000001msn/direct/01/?href=http://davevscarl.spaces.live.com/?icid=T001MSN38C07001

striking a balance

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15936990/

In a civilized society based on the rule of law, we live in a delicate balance between obeying those whose job it is to enforce the laws, and policing the police to make certain they do not abuse their special positions of authority.

This is an excellent discussion on this topic.