Murray facts, Murray analysis

[Michael Ash]

I read the extended Murray article and here are some reactions.

Most importantly, suppose for a second that every "fact" about the status
of the u----c---- that Murray provides is accurate and not misleading.
Some of them are accurate, although almost all are presented to mislead.  
The boom economy is not creating opportunities for the most disadvantaged
people (let alone most of the working class). Incarceration rates are very
high.  Single-parenthood is one of several tickets to poverty. Murray even
understands that participation in families, communities, and meaningful
work is a social necessity. The horror of the essay is that Murray's tone,
causal analysis, and policy implications are, respectively, evil, absurd,
and evil.

As a thought experiment, substitute the following for his obscene final
paragraphs: "The U.S. capitalist system creates the problems described in
the analysis. Some liberal government intervention, e.g., social insurance
income support, social-service subsidies, can ameliorate them (and there
is lots of evidence for this). Radical restructuring of our society, e.g.,
some form of democratization of labor and capital markets, can solve
them."  These conclusions make a lot more sense, given the narrative, than
Murray's junk.

Murray is a notorious and effective fact-twister.  It takes a long time to
sort out where he's hidden the bodies, but because he is a dishonest
polemicist, they are always discovered in the end.  See the huge academic
literature dissecting The Bell Curve, e.g., Does the Bell Curve Ring True?

For example, my take was that recent declines in the crime rate is mostly
a demographic phenomenon: the population includes a smaller share of
people [men?] aged 16-30, the peak crime-committing years, now than during
the high-crime years.  I would like to know the crime rate adjusted for
age-structure. It's really hard to sort through Murray's "rates," e.g.,
imprisoned person per crime versus imprisoned person per capita, and to
decide if his argument holds any water.  On the other hand, the
proposition that the mass incarceration effort of the past 20 years has
contributed to the lower crime rate is not a priori crazy; it's just a
nasty indictment of our society.

Sincerely,

Michael Ash                              mash at econ.berkeley.edu
University of California                 tel 510/643-7094 [off]
Department of Economics  &                   510/644-0338 [res]
Institute of Industrial Relations            510/643-7064 [lab]
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Berkeley, CA 94720-5555     http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~maash