>On Mar 5, 2007, at 9:41 PM, Paul wrote:
> > I believe the Heritage Foundation study, with their exquisite sense of
> > class, tracks the recruits by zip code and use *just* that to
> > classify them
> > economically. Hard to believe...but remember the source.
>
>It's the data that's available. And it's not a bad proxy, as proxies
>go. I'm guessing that recruits coming from zip codes like 10027 or
>10032 (both Harlem) are not the poorest people in their zip code,
>either.
Some of us spent most of our lives in such zips :-) A case in point? Seriously, as I am sure Doug is aware, the zips can work for urban marketing surveys etc if there is a relatively homogenous population in the urban zip. But for this sort of statistical comparison? With lots of rural zips in the study? Think of the wealth variance in small towns and rural areas within the same zip.
> > A smaller point: one imagines that the military study uses the Census
> > Bureau's CPS as a base comparator for the population at large. At
> > one time
> > this was a legitimate standard, but in the economy of today we know it
> > significantly understates inequality (leaves out realized capital
> > gains,
> > etc)
>
>Cap gains are insignificant for most households, except at the high
>end, and neither Kane/Heritage, the military, or I would argue that
>there are a lot of high enders in the military.
But that's the point. The military study claims to compare recruits' income (presumably median) to the national median and finding they are 'close' (no definition given). But the more accurate estimates of the national median that I cited show much more inequality along with a higher median, hence the recruits are further away from some imagined norm (if the imaginary numbers they wrote down were to be taken seriously). But I mention this NOT to drag the list through details on this issue - the military survey is obviously bogus anyway, for reasons I explained. Yet on far wider debates, the CPS numbers are frequently used to to defend the state of equality in the US and this is more and more inappropriate. Fair minded researchers are increasingly turning to alternatives, and I want the list to be aware of this.
>I've spent some time talking about this with Christian Parenti, who's
>spent a lot of time around the army in Iraq & Afghanistan, and he too
>says the military is pretty much a cross-section of US society, and
>that the poverty draft is BS. So when intelligent journalists confirm
>that hard numbers that exist, I'd say the case is pretty much closed.
Some of us have spent even more time than that in war zones and around military types :-) But I was really trying to take the discussion in a different direction. I wonder if what drives many enlisted recruits is more the (quite justified) fear that they will wind up worse off than their parents. Relative poverty, rather than absolute poverty. Am I right that spending your life worse off is something that your people in the US still find scary and humiliating? Are the enlisted recruits grasping for a scrap of dignity and social respect? Just a thought.
Paul