Month: July 2014

Working Overtime? Blame The Team

Margaret Talbot has an interesting sidebar to the study on gender and overwork we highlighted a few weeks ago:

[Researcher Kim] Weeden told me, “A lot of times, in the new team-based work environments, it can be hard for bosses to tell who is responsible for what on a project, and so the easiest way for employees to show loyalty and signal productivity is to work long hours.” Employers may be drawing a correct conclusion that time equals worth, or they may be using time as a proxy because it’s hard to evaluate worth otherwise, and because long hours, and constant access through technology, have become values in and of themselves. At the same time, some of those men may be reading mystery novels – or whatever – online.

Drumming Up Support

Drum circles aren’t just for hippies and Burners:

Above all though, the benefits of drumming seem to mostly be psychological and emotional. The Wahlbangers Drum Circle Organization, a group based in Northern California, has been using drumming as an effective treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder in veterans. In 2008, Science Direct Journal published a study titled Drumming Through Trauma: Music Therapy With Post-Traumatic Soldiers. It showed that “a reduction in PTSD symptoms was observed following drumming, especially increased sense of openness, togetherness, belonging, sharing, closeness, connectedness and intimacy, as well as achieving a non-intimidating access to traumatic memories, facilitating an outlet for rage and regaining a sense of self-control.”

(Video: YouTube user MrFasthands65 plays the drums to combat chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy, or CIDP, an autoimmune disorder)

The New (And Improved?) Paul Ryan, Ctd

Jordan Weissmann responds to McArdle’s criticisms of his criticisms of Paul Ryan’s anti-poverty plan:

If your overriding policy goal is to shrink federal spending over time, then yes, drastically redesigning an enormous chunk of the safety net in order to (maybe) move a relatively small group of people who seem to be stuck in intractable poverty toward work might make sense. But if your policy goal is, instead, simply to design a safety net that works for most Americans who come into contact with it, and cost isn’t your No. 1 worry, then burning down and replacing the one we have is just rash. …

To completely redesign programs that already work well (such as food stamps), while forcing every single person who needs a hand through a rough patch to submit to a new and intrusive bureaucratic regime, is simply overkill. Doing so might not even move many people out of poverty and could have any number of unintended consequences. (Would anybody be shocked if having to sign a life contract scared off some poor parents from trying to get benefits that they really needed?) Looking for specific places where the safety net is weak, and then fixing it in a targeted way, is the more responsible choice.

Ross, on the other hand, defends the plan from critics who call it paternalistic:

For conservatives who support the “conditional reciprocity” embodied in tying welfare benefits to work or job seeking or life planning or anything else, there are two responses to this critique. The first is that certain prominent middle-class entitlements do, in fact, impose stringent conditions on their beneficiaries. Specifically, what you get from them depends on whether you’ve worked and paid taxes across your adult life: Seniors aren’t required to attend “water aerobics” to get Medicare or Social Security, but by the time they receive benefits from those programs they have usually paid out a lifetime’s worth of payroll and Medicare taxes. …

Meanwhile, there are, yes, lots of other programs and credits and subsidies in our system that aren’t built on conditional reciprocity, except in a sense so loose as to be meaningless. But here’s the thing: Conservatives often and increasingly favor capping, cutting or doing away with those giveaways entirely! Lowrey and Bruenig write as if it’s a hypothetical or a reductio ad absurdum to imagine the government demanding “action plans” from corporate welfare beneficiaries or trying to wean rich households off the mortgage-interest deduction. But the assumption behind every recent draft of tax reform on the right, from Mitt Romney’s 2012 plan to Mike Lee’s family-friendly proposal to Dave Camp’s blueprint (in ascending order of fiscal precision), is that a range of “welfare state for the rich” provisions in the tax code should be straightforwardly eliminated.

Nonetheless, in Frum’s view, Ryan’s plan reflects “a way of thinking about poverty that made excellent sense a decade ago – but that is not equal to the more difficult circumstances of today”:

In the late 1990s, a booming U.S. economy created jobs at a rate not seen since the 1960s. Wages even for less-skilled workers rose handsomely. Pretty much anybody who wanted to work could do so, and full-time work offered a path out of poverty. An enhanced Earned-Income Tax Credit topped up wages; a new federal health benefit for children extended health care to families who earned just slightly too much to qualify for Medicaid.

It made sense in those days to think of poverty not as a social or economic problem but as an expression of some more personal affliction or burden: mental illness, adult illiteracy, addiction, family breakdown. That was very much the assumption behind the “compassionate conservatism” advocated by George W. Bush when he sought the presidency at the end of the 1990s. Poor people needed more than a check! … But does it remain true in the context of 2014 that poverty is grounded in behaviors, as seemed to be the case in 1999-2000? The 45 million Americans who rely on food stamps: Do they really need caseworkers to set goals for them? Or have those goals been moved out of reach by economic circumstances?

Meanwhile, Elizabeth Nolan Brown is disheartened that the plan’s proposals for criminal justice reform are getting so little attention, particularly from liberals who ought to be cheering them:

To me, these are by far the most exciting parts of Ryan’s agenda. When is the last time an American politician brought up criminal justice reform in the context of poverty policy proposals? And yet a huge part of what keeps people poor is our draconian criminal justice system. As of 2008, one in every 100 people in America was in prison. We throw people in jail for the most insane reasons—possessing pot, having sex, street vending without proper paperwork—thereby already putting them (and their families) in economic jeopardy. And then we release them into a system where over-eager cops, parole officers, and bureaucrats are on the ready to issue fines or haul them back into prison should they fail to meet any number of labyrinthian requirements.

The Dish’s complete coverage of Ryan’s plan here.

Faces Of The Day

Hindu Women Celebrate Teez

Girls with mehandi design their hands during Teej festival celebrations at Dilli Haat in Janakpuri in New Delhi, India on July 30, 2014. Teej is the Hindu festival marked by fasting of women who pray to Lord Shiva and Goddess Parvati seeking their blessings for marital bliss. It is a three-day festival that occurs on the third day of “Shukla Paksha”, or bright fortnight of the moon, in the Hindu month of Shravana or Sawan, which falls during the Indian monsoon season. By Subrata Biswas/Hindustan Times via Getty Images.

Boehner’s Border Bill

The House has introduced a bill to deal with the migrant children crisis, offering far less money than the $3.7 billion Obama had requested and focusing mainly on tightening border controls:

The House bill attempts to relieve backlogged immigration courts by allowing those Central American children to be treated as if they were Mexicans, who are screened more quickly by the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid oppose changing that provision, arguing it would grant the unaccompanied minors fewer legal protections and that there are other ways of speeding up immigration cases. The Obama Administration supports the policy change.

House Appropriations Chairman Hal Rogers broke down the House bill into three pots of funding: border control, temporary housing and foreign aid to Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. The majority of the money, $405 million, is set aside to boost the Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Another $197 million would be allocated for the Department of Health and Human Services, which is charged with taking care of the migrant children until their family members or guardians can be found while the minors’ immigration cases are handled. There’s also $22 million in funding to hire judges and speed up judicial proceedings, $35 million to send the National Guard to the border and $40 million to support uniting the families in the aforementioned Central American countries. The bill would cover the costs through the end of September.

But with anti-immigration hardliners like Ted Cruz and Jeff Sessions pushing for the bill to include language blocking deferred action for childhood arrivals (DACA), Sargent questions whether even this bill can pass the House:

GOP leaders are resisting the inclusion of such language. But it needs to be stated once again that Cruz, King, and Sessions are not outliers in this debate. Broadly speaking, their position on this crisis — and on immigration in general – is the GOP position writ large.

Republican leaders don’t want to include any measure against Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals in the current border plan because the politics are terrible. That would entail responding to a crisis involving migrating minors not just by expediting deportations (which the current GOP bill would do), but also by calling for still more deportations from the interior. But the GOP leadership’s position is only that they don’t want any anti-DACA language in their current response to the crisis. The GOP position writ large is still that we should deport all the DREAMers, block Obama from any further executive action to ease deportations, and not act in any way to legalize the 11 million.

Cruz et al. aren’t the only ones trying to advance their agendas through the bill, though. Senate Democrats are looking to tack on the “Gang of Eight” comprehensive immigration reform package, though Boehner says “no way”. Allahpundit quips:

He can’t turn around in the middle of a border crisis, three months out from the midterms and with Dave Brat having nuked Eric Cantor on immigration, and agree to amnesty. Try him again next year, though!

Public opinion, meanwhile, may be breaking in favor of a generous response to the underage migrants. Emma Green flags a new poll that seems to suggest as much:

How does America see the children who arrive at its border? According to a new poll from the Public Religion Research Institute, the answer is “sympathetically.” The survey found that 69 percent of respondents thought these kids “should be treated as refugees and should be allowed to stay in the U.S. if authorities determine it is not safe for them to return to their home country,” and roughly the same percentage said the government should provide them with shelter and support. Only 27 percent said they “should be treated as illegal immigrants and should be deported back to their home countries.”

But the respondents were more ambivalent about immigrants in general. While 56 percent agreed that Central American families are trying to keep their kids safe in “very difficult circumstances,” another 38 percent said they are “taking advantage of American good will and really seeking a back door to immigrate to our country.” And 42 percent said that immigrants are a “burden on the country” because “they take our jobs housing and healthcare”—a seven-point increase compared to another poll that asked the same question in early July.

Where’s Your Favorite Place To Read?

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Juan Vidal shares his:

My favorite place to read is in a dark bar mid-day. Although I can read almost anywhere, we’re each allowed our preferences and mine is so. Coffee shops feel pretentious, the gym is freaking weird. Libraries are fine but there’s so much candy and I can’t handle it all calling my name. The last thing I read was The Conversations by Cesar Aira, and I devoured it in this quaint little dive up the road from my house. Aira’s stuff is super meandering and detailed and it requires all of my senses working in unison; the bar is always close to empty when I go, so it’s everything I need.

Bars, especially the ones I read in, are gifts. They’re warm and brooding, and if you go early enough, it can be just you, a bartender, and enough open space to react to plot twists without judgment. All that’s happening is the cleaning and the setting up shop for the lunch crowd. And so I’ll sit with a book. Sometimes I’ll even stand a while, which I did through part of the closing section of Wise Blood.

(Photo by John Stephen Dwyer)

Diversity Hires Punished For Valuing Diversity

Rachel Feintzeig flags a recent study that “found that women and non-whites executives who push for women and non-whites to be hired and promoted suffer when it comes to their own performance reviews”:

A woman who shepherds women up the ranks, for example, is perceived as less warm, while a non-white who promotes diversity is perceived as less competent. Both end up being rated less highly by their bosses, according to the paper, which is set to be presented at an Academy of Management conference next month. … Often, having women or minorities atop a company is perceived as a marker of progress for diversity efforts, but [David] Hekman’s research suggests their presence might not have a large impact on the rest of the organization. If they believe it’s too risky to advocate for their own groups, it makes sense that successful women and non-white leaders would end up surrounded by white males in the executive suite, he said.

The study also discovered that “White men, on the other hand, actually got a bump in their performance review scores from valuing diversity.” Amanda Hess considers why “white male managers who promote women and people of color aren’t penalized”:

Perhaps that’s because, when a white man recruits a diverse group of people to work beneath him, he’s improving the company’s optics without disrupting the composition of its upper rungs. But when a woman or person of color does it, she’s threatening the system. As the authors put it: “Minority and women leaders’ engagement in diversity-valuing behavior may be viewed as selfishly advancing the social standing of their own low-status demographic groups.”

This is why “token” female and minority managers are particularly valuable to their companies—they allow executives to point to their commitment to promoting women and people of color (or rather, a woman and a person of color) without actually fostering widespread diversity in the ranks. Women and people of color who succeed in being seen as warm or competent (by disavowing a commitment to diversity) are then coded by their companies as what the researchers call “social outsiders” from their gender and race. Most of the bosses included in the study were white men (no duh), but female and minority bosses surveyed rated their diversity-minded colleagues similarly—perhaps because reinforcing the status quo is a requirement for cracking the glass ceiling.

Bryce Covert connects the study to related research:

The research could also help explain why some countries that have rules in place to increase gender diversity haven’t seen it trickle outward. Norway passed a quota requiring company boards to be 40 percent female, and women now make up 41 percent of public company boards. But 32 of the largest companies don’t have a female CEO and just 5.8 percent of general managers at public companies are women, suggesting the board quota hasn’t led to the hiring of more female executives. Other Nordic countries with board quotas also have small shares of big companies with female CEOs. Another study of Norway’s system found that the increase of women on boards hasn’t meant anything for women working below the C-suite level.

If white men could be counted on to be champions of diversity, the numbers might change faster. But unfortunately while today’s discrimination doesn’t look like outright exclusion or hostility, it takes the form of favoring people who are similar to you.

Trophy Children, Ctd

Lots of reader pushback on Molly Knefel’s case for participatory awards:

Instead, that kid [who doesn’t get a trophy] is supposed to get the message: If you didn’t score a lot of points, no one gives a shit about you. And if that makes you sad, or if you feel that it’s not fair, get used to it. The world is a sad and unfair place. Score more goals next time. This message has always felt at odds, to me, with the equally ubiquitous platitude that children are the future. If children are the future, then why are we so gung ho about preparing them to be treated unfairly?

I don’t know, maybe because the world IS unfair and we’re realists and not delusional purveyors of utopian fantasy?

So kids who ARE good at something have to live with the satisfaction that scoring a goal is enough, but the kid who sucks (like me) NEEDS a trophy to keep him from feeling bad about himself more than the kid scoring the goal? NO. Why can’t we celebrate the exceptional? When a kid does something well we’re supposed reinforce it by telling him it’s just what’s expected so don’t get too excited because there’s no awards in life for being exceptional? But, um … there are. From the Oscars to the Olympics to the Nobel Peace Prize.

Another adds, “Knowing that life is not fair, and that your achievements are not handed to you, makes earning them sweeter.” Another key point:

Giving trophies to everyone is practically like giving away none, because with the ubiquity comes devaluation.

I’m a lifelong mediocre jock. Somehow my spirit has never been broken when I come in 14th out of 25 in a bicycle race, or my soccer team fails to make the playoffs. I do it because it is fun, and that is its own reward. I keep one 35-year-old trophy on display. It’s for being “most improved” on a wrestling team. It was one of two trophies given out that year, along with “most valuable” which went to a Columbia-bound stud. I earned that sucker because I worked my ass off that year – and was lucky. If the rest of the team got trophies as well, I guarantee you that they would all have ended up in landfills long ago.

Another asks Knefel:

Do you really think kids are unaware they’re being patronized? Do you think they’ll value a participation trophy, or feel a sense of accomplishment?

I was a mediocre baseball player as a kid. I got many participation trophies, which I promptly forgot. They’re probably in a box somewhere in my parents’ basement. I knew I wasn’t a great athlete and the trophies were just a pro forma thing, so I didn’t value them. On the other hand, I was always one of the top students in my class. I felt a genuine sense of accomplishment at high grades because I felt I had earned them, not simply been given them.

Participation trophies may be fine for three year olds, but as kids get older we should stop trying to GIVE them self esteem, or teach them that they’re entitled to their desired result, and not getting it means they’ve been treated “unfairly.”

And another:

Expecting a child who has made no notable contribution to a soccer team to be moved by the receipt of a trophy is to assume that in addition to being a poor soccer player, that he is also daft. I was a non-athlete as a child who was nonetheless forced onto the occasional youth sports team. Getting a trophy would have been an absurdity. What I do remember fondly was 15 minutes that a substitute coach once spent with me trying to improve my skills at connecting bat and ball. And with some success. But then, trophies are easier than actually spending time with kids improving skills, aren’t they?

Another shares an excellent idea:

Having coached youth baseball and basketball for several years now while being staunchly opposed to participation trophies, I’ve adopted a solution my coaching mentor came up with. I create personalized mementoes for every player by taking a baseball (or miniature basketball) and writing the year, team name, player name and number and a personalized message about the season. I often get assistant coaches to write something as well. It doesn’t take long, but it is an appropriate way of acknowledging participation and more importantly, team membership. Giving a trophy for participation is like using a crescent wrench as a hammer. It does a sub-par job and devalues the tool for its intended purpose.

A lone dissenter so far:

I was glad to see Molly Knefel defend giving trophies to an entire team.  Major pet peeve for me when people trot this out as one more thing that is wrong with kids (parents) today, mostly from people who don’t have kids.  These days children are fast tracked into a sport as early as age 5.  Little Tommy is on travel baseball, and little Sally is spending 8 hours practicing gymnastics.  And then there are the kids who are still “just rec”, as in they are on the recreational team, as in they are not good enough for a competitive team, or their parents can’t get them to all the the practices (often held while working parents are, well, working).  These kids KNOW they aren’t as good, or as lucky, and they don’t need a trophy withheld to beat it further into their heads that they are less than.

So give the kids a break. A participant trophy for an 8 year old does not destroy the fabric of society.  It just makes a kid feel special for a moment, for finishing what he or she started, for being a member of a team, or for doing their best despite challenges.  Let’s spend more time criticizing the parents who must boastfully remind others that their kid IS on a competitive team while they look down their nose at other children or are simply participating in a recreational team.

One such parent cries:

Bullllllllshhhiiiittttttt.

Look, I’m probably the most Liberal of all your readers, but as the father of an insanely talented 12-year-old daughter, I cannot abide this Everyone Wins mentality. And not because I’m against the theory of “Hey, you showed up and kicked that ball and your leg didn’t fall off, have a trophy!”, but because I hate to see the dilution of true talent in the face of egalitarian praise.

Case in point: My daughter is a genuinely talented singer (said no other proud parent, ever) who was excited to compete in her school’s talent show. Having just come off a local theater run of “Annie” in the lead role, she was sort of feeling badass and wanted another chance to shine before an audience. But this was less a talent show in the traditional sense and more a Display of Talent For Its Own Sake, where EVERYONE WAS A WINNER and even the truly crap acts (sometimes especially the crap acts!) got raucous cheers of support from their peers. So when my TRULY talented and extra-special daughter (said no other proud parent, ever) sang her song and killed it, the applause level was exactly what it had been for the kid whose mother had dressed him in a homemade snowman suit and sent him out to sing “In Summer” from Frozen, an act that would, in my day, have gotten me beaten half to death by bullies outraged by my daring to offend their ears with such a tragic display.

So I asked my daughter, afterwards, if her peers had been coached ahead of time to whistle and hoot and clap and shout and rave for every act, and she confirmed my suspicion: The music teacher had indeed required that everyone be treated as American Idols and wildly applauded, regardless of how badly they stank the place up. “How do you feel about that?” I asked my TRULY talented daughter. She shrugged, trying to be diplomatic about it, but said, “What was the point?”

Indeed. There is excellence (like my Truly Talented Daughter), and there is mediocrity, and if we as parents continue blending the two in a blinding array of ecstatic applause, the gifted among us may just all wonder what the point of shining is.

But seriously, my daughter kicks ass.

Chart Of The Day

Capital Flight

Tim Fernholz wonders whether sanctions are increasing capital flight from Russia:

Russia’s had a real problem with capital flight in recent years, as its wealthiest citizens and corporations have moved assets to tax havens and wealthy economies to avoid instability and political interference in Russia. (The erstwhile shareholders of Yukos, the oil company that the Kremlin seized and broke up in the mid-2000s, just won a $50 billion compensation claim in the Hague.) That left Putin plaintively asking oligarchs to bring back their cash, please. No dice: Capital flight has increased this year, already exceeding each of the last two years in preliminary data for the first two quarters of 2014. Is that the fault of the sanctions? In part—few investors want their money to be trapped if a new iron economic curtain is raised.