Freakologic Making Life Logical - Road to the Middle Class

AFTER A stunning success with The Undercover Economist, British economist Tim Harford is out with a new book, The Logic of Life. It’s all about the logical choices that people make in their lives. For instance, how would you think that women react when a lot of men are in prison?

The more men are in prison, the more likely women are to get themselves a job, and the more likely they are to go to college.

In New Mexico, according to Harford, 30 percent of young black men are in jail. So that means that young black women are very unlikely to marry.

Of course, it works both ways. The men that don’t go to jail find that there are lots of women available, so they are less inclined to get married. Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?

And so it goes, according to Harford. What about the rise in divorce? Can you explain that logically?

Well, a century ago, looking after a family was so time consuming that a radical division of labor in the home was essential. But once modern labor-saving devices came along, the importance of the domestic division of labor declined. The cost of divorce went down. So more people got divorced. And when the supply of divorced people increased the cost of finding a suitable new mate went down too.

When the cost of divorce went down, more women could afford to pay the cost of getting out of an abusive relationship. That had an effect on men.

The result? Domestic violence fell by almost a third, and the number of women murdered by their partners fell by ten percent. Female suicide also fell.

Obviously, that’s not the whole story. And maybe the decline of divorce in recent years is a sign that people are learning to be more careful about getting married and better behaved once they commit.

But it’s interesting to think that the left-wing agenda of destroying the family was actually helped by the conservative reaction to high crime rates. With lots of men in jail, lower-class women responded by avoiding marriage completely.

And the ready availability of government assistance made the choice less expensive.

It’s something to think about in the years ahead as conservatives journey in the wilderness of the Clinton-Obama administration.

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

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Action

The incentive that impels a man to act is always some uneasiness... But to make a man act [he must have] the expectation that purposeful behavior has the power to remove or at least to alleviate the felt uneasiness.
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

China and Christianity

At first, we thought [the power of the West] was because you had more powerful guns than we had. Then we thought it was because you had the best political system. Next we focused on your economic system. But in the past twenty years, we have realized that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity.
David Aikman, Jesus in Beijing

Churches

[In the] higher Christian churches� they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a string of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect it every minute.
Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

Civil Society

“Civil Society”—a complex welter of intermediate institutions, including businesses, voluntary associations, educational institutions, clubs, unions, media, charities, and churches—builds, in turn, on the family, the primary instrument by which people are socialized into their culture and given the skills that allow them to live in broader society and through which the values and knowledge of that society are transmitted across the generations.
Francis Fukuyama, Trust

Class War

In England there were always two sharply opposed middle classes, the academic middle class and the commercial middle class. In the nineteenth century, the academic middle class won the battle for power and status... Then came the triumph of Margaret Thatcher... The academics lost their power and prestige and... have been gloomy ever since.
Freeman Dyson, “The Scientist as Rebel”

Conservatism

Conservatism is the philosophy of society. Its ethic is fraternity and its characteristic is authority — the non-coercive social persuasion which operates in a family or a community. It says ‘we should...’.
Danny Kruger, On Fraternity

Conservatism's Holy Grail

What distinguishes true Conservatism from the rest, and from the Blair project, is the belief in more personal freedom and more market freedom, along with less state intervention... The true Third Way is the Holy Grail of Tory politics today - compassion and community without compulsion.
Minette Marrin, The Daily Telegraph

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Democratic Capitalism

I mean three systems in one: a predominantly market economy; a polity respectful of the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and a system of cultural institutions moved by ideals of liberty and justice for all. In short, three dynamic and converging systems functioning as one: a democratic polity, an economy based on markets and incentives, and a moral-cultural system which is plural and, in the largest sense, liberal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

Drang nach Osten

There was nothing new about the Frankish drive to the east... [let] us recall that the continuance of their rule depended upon regular, successful, predatory warfare.
Richard Fletcher, The Barbarian Conversion

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

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