17. May 2012 by Mad Sociologist.

Don’t Be Fooled by Conservative Hocus Pocus Calling Itself Statistics

I have theory that I call the Reflective Attribution theory. This theory stipulates that people tend to impute their own motives and attributions onto others. For instance, according to this theory one might predict that those people who are inclined to lie are also people who are do not trust others, because they assume that “because I lie, others lie.” The opposite is also the case. Honest People tend to be trusting of others.

So, I can’t help but apply this theory in my everyday life. The other day I posted the following data on my Facebook (click the image for the source).

This is an answer to the claim that President Obama is overseeing an unprecedented growth in the federal government. The underlying claim is, of course, that if Obama is allowed to continue this massive federal government increase we will soon be under the thumb of a monolithic and oppressive institution. The data above, showing the growth of government as a percentage of GDP compared to the growth of the private sector, belies this claim. Yes, when you control for state and local governments there is some growth in at the federal level. But unprecedented? If you want precedent just look at the preceding president (yes, I did that on purpose).

Which brings me to my theory. A friend of mine responded with a gotcha. An article that shows, beyond a conservative doubt, that President Obama has, in fact, grown the government. Over the years I’ve noticed that conservatives are very leery of statistics. For someone like me, who lives on statistics, this strikes me as odd. One person, years ago, told me that she does not trust statistics because “statistics lie.” Actually, statistics don’t lie. People lie. Sometimes they use statistics to do it. This is something that I see from both sides of the political spectrum, but if I am to be honest, I notice that the right side is the overwhelming leader in the quantity of “damn lies and statistics.”

The data presented by the article can be summed up in the following graph.

Yep. That’s a bigger government all right. It’s simple. It’s succinct. A nice straight line. I think conservatives like straight lines. However, it is not descriptive of the Obama Administration. In short, it’s a deceptive use of statistics. It’s true, mind you. This stat is not, technically, a lie. But the intent behind the stat is certainly to deceive.

The article cited the Bureau of Labor Statistics as its source. So went to the BLS website, looked up the data, and put together the same chart. Only this time I filled in the gaps between January of 2009 and April of 2012. I got the following (program glitch. I used January of 2009 and then the succeeding Aprils of Obama’s administration. The computer added the intermediary months on its own.):

As you can see, the overall data is the same, but filling in a few missing dates paints a very different picture. Yes, the Obama Administration has overseen a net increase in the size of government as measured by the number of employees. The bulk of that increase, however, peaked two years ago. Since then, President Obama has overseen a reduction in government employment. Embarrassing.

This is a common technique in claims making—showing only the statistics that proves your point. A pundit can be technically honest about this and still lie. Another technique is to offer a stat by itself with no comparative data against which to measure it. Notice that the New York Times data above offers a comparison to other presidents. That’s called responsible reporting. Could the Times have been more comprehensive? Every work of research can be more comprehensive. Let’s assume that the New York Times was under practical constraints to do so.

To remedy this with regard to federal employment, I decided to offer a comparison between President Obama and President W. Bush. Now I recognize that my more extreme conservatives consider President Bush to be a Manchurian Progressive (in retrospect, of course. During his presidency he was practically the second coming). Regardless, I would wager that, given a choice between Presidents Bush and Obama, these same people would vote for Bush. Please correct me if I’m wrong. I have no data to support this claim. Regardless, the claim is that Obama’s expansion of government is “unprecedented” and employment is the variable offered to prove this.

Alas, it appears that comparative data also refutes the unprecedented growth claim.

Then, just for fun, I thought, ‘let’s compare Obama to the Conservative God’s right hand.’ Yep. That’s right. Ronald Freakin’ Reagan. How does President Obama’s expansion of Government compare to President Reagan’s during the same time period. This was a little trickier. The best stats I could find that was relatively easy to access was a measure of end of year civilian federal employment for President Reagan, so that is what I used for President Obama. I used December of the year preceding each administration as an estimate of where each president started. To wit, I compiled the following graph:

Well what do you know? Three years into his administration, the Gipper had the bigger government. True, he did oversee a decline in his first two years, but more than made up for it in his third. And this growth in government continued for Reagan right up to his farewell address.

Truth be told, this data can be looked at in a different way. One could suggest that if you look at the net rate of growth between President Reagan’s and President Obama in their first three years, Obama’s was larger. Well, yeah, but bigger is bigger in this issue and Reagan had the bigger government. Again, the growth of Obama’s government is far from unprecedented.

Of course, looking at employment and change as a percentage of GDP are only two of many ways to analyze the size of government. It so happens that this morning I was reading the Krugman blog and noticed this graph, which speaks to my topic. So I stole it.

So back to my original thesis about the Reflective Attribution. It’s no wonder that conservatives are so leery about statistics. Either they don’t understand statistics, and therefor assume that nobody understands them, or they assume that all claims makers are equally disingenuous with their use of data. This is an unfortunate state of affairs, for understanding data, regardless of the nature of that data, is crucial to developing an objective and rational understanding of the issues. As a sociologist, I know that very often what we believe to be true is, in fact, false. If we base our decisions on nothing more substantial than what we believe to be true…well…the road we are paving can only have one destination.

Posted in Politics, Sociological Imagination | Print | No Comments »

14. May 2012 by Mad Sociologist.

The Long Life and Career of Reagan’s Welfare Queen

A colleague of mine, responsible for selling items at my high school, explained to me that some students try to con her out of her wares. They will use such gimmicks as claiming that they already paid, but did not receive the item, or maintaining that their parents or another party purchased the item and they are there to pick it up for them.

She was not clear about just how many students attempted this, but she was adamant about the nature of the problem. “It’s all of those kids who have spent their lives getting handouts. They think they are entitled to getting everything for free.” She leaned in close to me and astutely pointed out that “they can afford two hundred dollar cell-phones, though.”

She must have been especially astute, as I’m not sure how she knew that the students who were trying to get free stuff, in fact, received welfare at all, let alone all of their lives. Did she really keep track of the cell phones of such students? If so, how did she know that the students, themselves, or the parents, purchased the two hundred dollar phones? Perhaps, the phones were gifts, or provided by other family members? In other words, where did she get the data from which she drew the conclusion that those students who tried to con her were the children of welfare abusers?

Of course, she had no such data. What she had was a meme, a basic explanatory idea that has spread through American culture and often is taken as unquestionably true. The meme is not true. It is nothing more than an incarnation of Ronald Reagan’s famous “welfare queen,” presumably based on the story of a real welfare recipient who ingeniously ripped off the taxpayers to the tune of $150,000 a year. The welfare queen, however, is more a model than an actual person. She is a woman of color, often black, but increasingly Hispanic. She has multiple kids. She drives to the welfare office in her Cadillac to pick up her entitlement check.¹ She has been living like this all her life and has little incentive to work.

Reagan gave his famous “welfare queen” speech in 1976. A study published in 1979 by the Department of Health and Human Services revealed the so-called Welfare Queen was largely a myth. Welfare was not the easy route to the high life, as state disbursements were still below poverty level. Hardly an incentive to remain idle. Most welfare recipients in the 1979 study (USDHHS Aid to Families with Dependent Children: A Chartbook) had been receiving benefits for less than two years and almost seventy percent had been on the rolls for less than three years. The lifetime welfare recipient was a rarity. Welfare recipients had only about two children. They were not pumping out the babies to increase their check, as the additional welfare income was insufficient for covering the costs of added children.

As for creating a cycle of dependence and a loss of incentive to work, research around that time was clear. There was no difference in the work ethic between poor people and middle class people. Even during the 70’s and 80’s, most poor families had a history of work, and were often cast into poverty as a result of job loss, disability or desertion of a spouse.

Were there people who abused the welfare system? Of course. An intrepid enough scammer can game or rig any system created by man. Perhaps there were some who may have deserved the title of Welfare Queen, though at the time most poor families were male headed, but they were a significant minority. Less than .5% of welfare cases were referred for fraud prosecution. The study was not clear as to how many of the defendants were found to be guilty.

In 1996 the Welfare Queen took a significant hit in her ability to milk the taxpayer and spend her life on the dole. Since 1996 states have been committed to reducing their caseloads, often without regard to economic contingency such as, oh, a collapse of the global economy. The poor were expected to find jobs even if there were no jobs to find. In Florida, the maximum allowable time receiving Temporary Assistance for Needy Families is forty-eight months, at which point the family is no longer eligible, regardless of work status. Currently, 92% of welfare recipients in Florida have been on the rolls for two years or less.

In four years the Welfare Queen can look forward to receiving a whopping $303 a month to satisfy her lavish lifestyle. How will she ever spend all of that money? Of course, she can always drive her Cadillac to the welfare office. If it’s a 1995 Cadillac. In the state of Florida vehicle assets can be worth no more than $8,500.

Yes, Mike, but you are forgetting that there is no limit for children. The Welfare Queen simply pops out the kids every time her eligibility is up and she gets to extend her time on the dole. Well, perhaps someone should tell her that, because the average welfare household in Florida, as well as in the has less than two children and less than three household members.

Memes, or what we sociologists like to call Social Constructs, often take on a life of their own. Ronald Reagan’s construction of the Welfare Queen has been shaping our understanding of the poor in America for the last thirty-seven years, and we thought she was unemployed. Unfortunately, the constructed meme was based on a faulty premise…a lie. When we accept, without question, a flawed or distorted meme, that construct shapes our perceptions of the world. In the case of my colleague, her acceptance of the Welfare Queen myth, whether she knew it or not, had a reflexive impact on her own understanding of reality. The construct influenced her into accepting as fact a distortion of reality that reinforced the original construct.

Too often, such constructions become the premise for policy that has negative implications for real people.

_________________

¹ Indeed, the “driving the Cadillac to the welfare office” meme has taken on a life of its own. Many people whom I’ve spoken to claimed to have seen this phenomenon themselves.

Posted in Sociological Imagination, Social Commentary | Print | 1 Comment »

6. May 2012 by Mad Sociologist.

Global Warming? What Global Warming?

(Click the image for the source)

Nothing to see here, folks. Go back to what you were doing.

This is all a socialist plot!

Who are you going to believe? A bunch of stupid climate scientists or well respected, right-wing think tanks?

You know how those environmental hippy whackos are!

No changes are necessary.

Posted in Environment | Print | 1 Comment »

18. April 2012 by Mad Sociologist.

On Learning from Tragedy

If we are to gain anything positive from the tragic shooting death of Trayvon Martin it must be not only in the re-evaluation of the infamous Stand Your Ground laws (SYGs) that are spreading throughout the country, but rather in an assessment of law in general. The Trayvon Martin case highlights the inherent flaw in this and many other popular laws.

The nexus of this flaw is the assumption that in all criminal interactions there is a clear good-guy (victim) and a clear bad-guy (victimizer). The victim is righteous in his actions, while the victimizer is intent on villainy. Those who wrote, sponsored and voted for the Stand Your Ground law in Florida were intent on leveling the obvious injustice in requiring the good-guy to run away from the bad-guy. Clint Eastwood never ran. John Wayne never ran. If I’m in my home, watching television, when suddenly the door bursts open and a thief/murderer/rapist enters, I should be within my rights to shoot him without question.

It’s easy, especially by virtue of American culture, to embrace such an idea. However, human interaction is rarely ever that clear and the roles taken on by people are, more often than not, not so dichotomous as the victim/victimizer roles seen on television. Human interaction is wrought with complexity, emotion, pre-conceived notions, personal history, biological imperatives, socialization, cultural lensing, faith and a myriad other variables. The sinner oft justifies his iniquity, and the villain is never evil in her own eyes.

Such was the case with Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman. It’s likely that the victim/victimizer roles in this interaction were hopelessly confused. It’s impossible to know exactly what transpired between these two actors, but let’s assume that neither Trayvon nor Zimmerman are evil.

Zimmerman is described as a self-appointed neighborhood watch. Apparently, his neighborhood was subject to break-ins and theft, so Zimmerman took it upon himself to help. In any other context we might define this behavior as community oriented, even altruistic. He wanted to be a police officer, revealing a protective “instinct” if you will. Perhaps there are more selfish motives, an overblow sense of authority and the pursuit of status. Indeed, it is likely that Zimmerman held culturally reinforced ideals of manhood.

He sees Trayvon, an unfamiliar face, walking through the neighborhood. And let’s not pander and mince our words. He saw an unfamiliar black face in the neighborhood. Trayvon was a young black man who did not belong. Perhaps Zimmerman is not a racist, but the society in which he was socialized is racist. We cannot separate paradigms of race from our understanding of events.

Regardless, Zimmerman assumes that Trayvon is up to no good and calls the police. He knows, however, that the police will not respond in time. Trayvon is getting away. Maybe there is history of slow response time among the police. So, Zimmerman takes it upon himself to follow Trayvon and ensure that he is caught, guarantee that justice is done. From his perspective he is being a responsible neighbor, citizen and man.

Trayvon had his own perspective, however. This is often neglected in reporting this story, mostly because Trayvon is incapable of offering his perspective. Trayvon is a young man imbued with societal paradigms of manhood, right and race. He notices that an unknown man is following him. Interestingly, by virtue of the Stand Your Ground law, Trayvon was in his rights to stand his ground in the face of threat. How might this story have been different if Trayvon had a gun and used the Stand Your Ground law to justify shooting Zimmerman? Can we say that Trayvon had less of a right to stand his ground than Zimmerman?

Here’s where the details are lost to public knowledge, at least for now. We do not know the transaction between the two principles. It is not, however, a stretch to assume that a confrontation ensued. Trayvon’s girlfriend stated that he asked Zimmerman, “why are you following me?” Not an unreasonable question. Both men were hyped up on adrenaline, perhaps unwilling to back down. Zimmerman believed he had every right to protect his neighborhood; Trayvon was convinced that he had a right to walk down the street unmolested. Matters escalate. Perhaps they push each other, grab at each other. It’s dark. Each man is alone against a possible assailant. One man has a gun. The gun comes out. Anger. A shot. Tragedy.

Who is the good-guy? Who is the bad-guy? What are the parameters of the law in this case? Who had the right to stand his ground? How does the presence of a gun change the calculus of rights? The law was not drafted with such a complex interaction in mind. Yet most violent interactions align closer to this more complex story than to the storied victim/victimizer interaction. This story is that of two people acting within a matrix of decisions, actions and reactions that ended tragically.

Effective laws must take the complexity of human interaction into account. If they do not then the application of such laws can only compound tragic episodes.

Posted in Crime, Sociological Imagination, Social Commentary | Print | 1 Comment »

3. April 2012 by Mad Sociologist.

Join 350.org and connect the dots yourself. Global warming is real. It’s happening. And it’s our fault. And it’s our responsibility to do something about it.