An Actually Progressive Budget

Who knew that progressives actually have a voice? I didn't. The Congressional Progressive Caucus released a budget that I think does everything progressives ever wanted. It raises taxes on the rich, on capital gains, on corporations, and on estates. It cuts military spending and provides infrastructure spending and a public option. And somehow it reduces the deficit more than the Ryan plan. While I am sure most of the policies will never be adopted, its nice to know that somewhere progressives are gathering to voice their opinions in Congress.

Also rather late, for critiques of the Ryan plan: the nerdy technical one by Macroeconomic Advisors and a more English version by Bruce Bartlett.

A Foreclosure Fee For Banks

This may be old news, but California Assembly member Bob Blumenfield introduced legislation that imposes a $20,000 fee on banks when they foreclose on a home. The logic is pretty simple. First, many of the costs of foreclosures are “paid for” by community members and local governments. For local governments, empty foreclosed homes require additional police. Neighbors eventually must pay for this additional service, but they also pay in the form of reduced home prices. Banks are not taking account of these costs when they are foreclosing homes. The $20,000 fee forces banks to account for the true cost of their actions, both to themselves and to the community. This reduces the incentive to foreclose, which increases the incentive for banks to negotiate with homeowners. I don't know if the measure will pass, but I like the logic. 

Here, Mike Konzcal of the Roosevelt Institute outlines the reasons why this additional fee would likely not be passed on to homeowners.  

Krugman Profile

Krugman has always been an interesting figure for me. In economics classes, he is a Nobel Laureate who revolutionized international trade economics. He wrote my international monetary economics textbook. At the same time, he is a contentious political columnist who most conservatives no longer take seriously. So I was interested to read about his dual personality in New York Magazine’s recent profile of him. Some great quotes in there, including: 

"On the right, there’s something of a cultural underlay to the worldview: We are the real Americans, and they are not. Liberals want to say, We are correct on the evidence, and they are not.”

and  

"Part of the basic loneliness of economic study is that you are always looking back, at data sets that are already completed. And so you realize your vision of a perfect society just as it disappears from view."

Religion, Economics, and Education

If there is anything that could get me writing again, it’s the combination of two of my favorite topics: economics and religion. Now, I am not quite sure about the validity or usefulness of applying economic methods to the study of religion, but I am interested in the possibility.

The meat: Professor Hungerman at Notre Dame looked at the correlation between years of education and religious participation. In the study, he finds that “an additional year of education leads to a 4-percentage point decline in the likelihood that an individual identifies with any religious tradition.” For example, a person with a Ph.D. would be around 36 percent less likely to have a religious affiliation than someone who stops after high school. That is a significant gap.

For some this may not be surprising. Maybe not so secretly, I have held this belief for a while (based on no evidence whatsoever). More than the finding though, what makes me curious is why this correlation exists (As an aside, I think this is the weakness of applying economic methods to religion: a regression model can’t tell you much about how or why the negative relationship between education and religion exists). I think there are a couple possibilities. The first possibility is that education, and the critical thinking skills it engenders, lead people to question and eventually reject religion. This is similar to the “religion is the opiate of the masses” argument in that through education people overcome the childish thinking upon which religion relies. As the study points out, this is the argument of Karl Marx and Max Weber. I have no evidence for this. None.

The second possibility that I can think of is that this may be a recent generational phenomenon. While learning may not be inherently anti-religious, I think a progressive education is. For instance, any progressive historical account of America would highlight the Church’s participatory role in slavery, withholding women’s right to vote, and segregation. Another example is the religious right’s anti-abortion stance. In general, organized religion has fought most progressive achievements for the past 150 years. Thus, as education has become more progressive, encouraging creativity and the possibility of a better future, religion has become the scapegoat. It is portrayed as the brick wall confronting future reforms. More than that, religion is often a poorly presented straw man. Consequently, when students subsequently reject religion, it is not out of newly learned critical thinking skills, but rather because it's what their teacher told them. Thus, it may be that students are just being taught something different, not that education is inherently anti-religious.