criminalizing youth

Rakesh Bhandari bhandari at phoenix.Princeton.EDU
Mon Sep 20 13:38:49 PDT 1999


Interesting how 'demographic' theories can come back into vogue as fundamental explanations for various social phenomena. Just brainstorming, One thinks of declining population growth as an effective cause of secular stagnation as theorized by Alvin Hansen, America's then leading Keynesian; a greying population as the future cause of the bankruptcy of the social security system (all the more politically explosive according to David Hayes Bautista because the elderly will be disproportionately white while those paying into social security will be disprop. minorities, esp Latinos); differential reproduction and the declining quality and intelligence of the population (or attentuations in the former leading to reductions in crime rates, as claimed by Barro whose own positive contribution of 'Ricardian equivalence' btw seems patently absurd and at the very least empirically unsubstantiated). The last theory of course has never been able to make sense of the Flynn effect--the successive improvement in mean IQ over the last few generations despite the continuing relatively greater fecundity of the poor and the working class (at any rate, such substantial improvement of almost one standard deviation--I believe--per generation cannot be explained by the genetic 'improvement' of the species over the last 50 years). Theories of secular stagnation seem to have died in the post war boom, which was not commenced by a resumption of population growth. Of course the person who investigated the state science of demography as a technology of bio power was Foucault. For example, one could investigate today the connections between natalist projects and the tax system in contemporary Europe (especially France perhaps). Krugman has also speculated that the reluctance of the Japanese govt to adopt his cranky money creation schemes stems from the growing political power of an older population in fear of its pensions being inflated away--that is, the explanation for the political failure to even try the Keynesian panacea is fundamentally 'demographic'.

Yours, Rakesh



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list