What have we learned since the Cold War? Not much, apparently.

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Above: Dolph Lundgren and Sylvester Stallone as eternal enemies in Creed II. Below: real-life competitors-turned-friends Joe Louis and Max Schmeling.

I finally watched the movie Creed II, which I had looked forward to for a while, since it’s essentially a sequel to the iconic Rocky IV of my childhood. If you haven’t seen either of these movies, let me summarize: in Rocky IV, the American boxer Rocky Balboa fights the Russian Ivan Drago during the Cold War. In Creed II, Rocky and Drago as old men serve as mentors to younger versions of themselves — in Rocky’s case, the son of his deceased friend and former competitor; in Drago’s case, his own son.

I saw Rocky IV as a kid but didn’t fully appreciate it until I got older. Why? Because the film, made in 1985, became a testament to American hysteria over the supposed Soviet menace that was prevalent before the USSR collapsed. The Russians are depicted in the film as technologically advanced and frighteningly efficient; the Americans, on the other hand, are poorly equipped and developmentally behind, but in the end triumph with sheer will and grit. A montage from the film is now famous for its ridiculousness: a svelte, clean-cut Drago trains in a gleaming facility complete with electronic gadgets and scores of lab coat-clad observers, while a bearded, woolen-looking Rocky pulls logs through the snow in what appears to be the Siberian wilderness. This seven-minute segment alone deserves to have a place in the syllabuses of college students seeking to understand the perverse psychology of the Cold War.

Of course, after the Cold War ended and Westerners got to look under the hood of the Soviet Empire, they realized they had it backwards. Yes, the Soviets had indeed managed to put a satellite in space and a man in earth’s orbit before the Americans. And just like the Americans, they had built enough nuclear weapons to kill all human life on earth many times over (impressive!). Of course, as the Iron Curtain was pushed aside, the world realized it was the Soviets who were struggling to keep up, not the other way around.

How does one follow up a film like Rocky IV, which so perfectly captured the erroneous thinking of the age? How do you make a sequel to a film that missed the truth so badly, its enduring legacy is as a farcical monument to national self-delusion? Apparently, by pretending that nothing happened.

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When a friend becomes a political prisoner

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A friend of mine from graduate school, Peter Biar (whom I know as Peter Ajak), was detained several months ago in his native South Sudan. A few weeks ago he was finally charged with “sabotage, insurgency and possession of weapons for allegedly staging an uprising”. The charges carry the potential penalty of death, if convicted.

I do not want to venture into the details of Peter’s case, other than to express how farcical the charges are. Based on what I have gathered in the news, Peter’s true offense was to criticize the national government via Twitter, and call for a new generation of South Sudanese to lead that country’s ongoing peace process. Otherwise I do not understand the rationale for his imprisonment.

Perhaps if you’re from a country that lacks a strong rule of law and independent courts, this sort of thing isn’t so shocking. In much of the world criminal charges are fully disconnected from truth; they exist only as levers of political power and influence, with no consideration for actual matters of innocence or guilt. Even I, born and raised in the US, am not so naive. After all, I’m used to reading the constant reports of Bahá’is in Iran being summarily harassed, detained, and imprisoned under phony pretenses such as “spying for Israel” or “spreading of corruption”.

As I have learned, however, when it’s your friend this sort of thing takes on new significance. I must admit, the prevailing feeling is one of powerlessness. Peter has a legal defense fund, and the governments of the US and UK, as well as various international organizations such as Amnesty International, are lobbying for his release. I do not pretend to know much about his case, but I suspect that a lack of funding or awareness is not the reason he is still being denied his freedom. Larger political dynamics are at play.

If that’s the case, what can we do? The worst thing, I would say, is to let the feeling of alarm and concern simply pass. We should not waste those feelings. There are many prisoners of conscience in the world, and our time, money, and effort may make a difference to somebody, even if that somebody isn’t the one we care about most. Meanwhile, no matter where we live, we can do something in our local communities — or even our own families — that can make an impact. The point is to express one’s sense of goodwill, justice, and concern for the wellbeing for others, whoever they are. Perhaps, then, that feeling of powerless can — at least in some small measure — be dissolved.

I’d encourage any and all who are reading this to familiarize themselves with Peter’s case and get involved. And if you don’t think you’re likely to make a difference here, make sure to go out and find another place where you can.

Free Peter Biar

Amnesty international — get involved

Do all those mixed-race couples on TV count for anything?

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Like I’ve discussed a few times on this blog (like here and here), the past couple years have not been America’s proudest in terms of race relations. Regardless of whether you feel the nation’s actual situation has worsened, or rather that greater transparency and awareness are revealing more clearly how bad that situation has always been, one thing is for sure; Americans are feeling a greater level of anxiety around race than they did just a few years ago. A Gallup poll recently found that 35% of respondents worry “a great deal” about race relations in the country, the most since the organization started asking the question 15 years ago.

The great irony here is that even as Americans’ collective anxiety over race has risen, our society’s most vital institution — the nuclear family — is more racially integrated than ever before. A generation ago, about one-in-a hundred babies born in America could be considered multiracial; that number is now about one-in-ten. Not surprisingly, our attitudes about interracial marriage have dramatically changed as well. Back in 1958 just 4% of Americans said they approved of black-white marriage. Today that number is 87%.

But never mind all that for a moment. Let’s talk about something that really matters: TV commercials. Because the way I see it, the number of interracial romances, families and friendships you see on TV says a lot about American attitudes towards race.

I’m not aware of any quantifiable data on this (I’m either too lazy or too unskilled to find it, if it exists), but it seems to me there’s been an explosion of racial diversity in the past few years in commercials as well as print and electronic advertising. A couple years back General Mills sparked conversation with a TV spot for Cheerios that featured a white mom, a black dad, and their adorable biracial kid, a decision which somehow stirred controversy and nearly made racist internet trolls’ heads explode. But since then, there’s been an unusual number of mixed race couples and families in mainstream advertising which have seamlessly blended in to the landscape. Both American Airlines and Amazon, I noticed, recently had promotional images on their websites of black-and-white couples (in the case of the latter, with their biracial kids). Ford ran a commercial for its Escape SUV featuring a pretty black girl with a beaming smile camping with her white boyfriend, accompanied by Rachel Patten’s “This is My Fight Song” in the background. Another ad by JBL features young, attractive joggers, one white and the other black, exchanging subtly flirtatious glances over the subject of tangled headphone wires. For a while USA Today has run a TV commercial of a handsome Indian-looking guy and nerdy-but-cute blonde chatting casually on a park bench. Keep in mind these are just the ads I’ve actually seen and can remember off hand. Needless to say there are many more. None of them alone is earthshaking, but together they say something significant, I would say.

mixed_race_ads_collage

Screenshots from the websites of American Airlines (above) and Amazon (below).

There are subtle changes happening in movies as well that mirror these trends, even at a time when the Oscars has been notoriously criticized for a lack of ethnic diversity in its nominees. Take for example the career arc of Will Smith, who for years has been one of Hollywood’s biggest stars. Even though he is universally recognized as one of the industry’s hottest sex symbols, it’s telling that for the bulk of Will Smith’s career his films barely acknowledged his sexuality, and even when they did, he was only allowed on-camera romances with non-white actresses. It took until 2015’s otherwise forgettable Focus for him to kiss a white woman in a movie. Don’t get too wrapped up in the travesty of an actor as handsome and charming as Will Smith being needlessly bottled up for all those years. Instead, let us acknowledge the fact that last year, Warner Brothers finally saw it as financially lucrative to expose American moviegoers to two hours of him in love with a smoking hot Margo Robbie.

To be clear, movies or advertising companies or whoever else who put interracial couples front-and-center are not doing so out of some sense of civic duty or expression of high-minded ideals. This is about money. But making money in this case is about recognizing and responding to consumer tastes, and the fact that advertisers are so much more likely to feature mixed-race couples and families than they used to be is undoubtedly the result of painstaking research and careful insight suggesting this strategy now works with the broad American public. Do not for a second think this is an accident; multiple companies are clearly concluding that consumers will react positively to different races of people meshed together in the same ad, movie, or whatever.

There are plenty of legitimate reasons to be skeptical of this trend’s importance and its actual impact on people’s lives. Even I find it curious that pop culture now seems to have a fascination with black women coupled with white men. (Indeed, that’s the set up for many of the TV spots mentioned above.) In that sense, one could be tempted to brush the trend off as just a shallow fad. And even when companies seek to make a statement of multiculturalism in their ads, sometimes they miss the mark badly and their efforts have exactly the opposite effect, as was the case just a few weeks ago when The Gap released an ad showing a white child model awkwardly resting her elbow on her black counterpart.

The heavier and more serious criticism, of course, is that even as our pop culture changes, real life racism, from criminal justice to bank lending, has its roots planted deep in this country’s social soil. We do not, in fact, live in a so-called “post-racial” America. Nonetheless, even as it’s important to be real about our nation’s shortcomings when it comes to race, I think it’s far too easy to be negative and dismissive about how the country is changing, both in terms of demographics and attitudes.

Abdu’l-Baha said of America’s race problem nearly a century ago that “marriage between these two races will wholly destroy and eradicate the root of enmity” between blacks and whites. That surely isn’t an overnight solution, nor is it a solution all on its own. But reflect on the tenfold increase in the proportion of multiracial kids being born in America, and imagine the effect it’s sure to exert on how we recognize and value eachother over the next one, two, or three generations. The increasing regularity and social acceptance of mixed-race couples and families isn’t just an ancillary story in America’s broader racial narrative. This is about drowning racism in the purest form of human love: that shared between man, woman, and child.

Even as we recognize where we continue to fail as a country, let’s acknowledge the positive. Who we date, marry, and have children with is changing rapidly and for the better. And increasingly, our pop culture suggests our attitudes are changing as well.

Making it in America means never having to meet any poor people

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janitor

A brilliant story by David Scharfenberg in the Boston Globe recently addressed a subtle but growing issue for Boston and other cities around the country: the increasing segregation of poor and rich. Scharfenberg writes:

The surge in affluence in some areas and poverty in others has wiped out scores of mixed-income neighborhoods. In 1970, 7 in 10 families lived in these places. Now it’s just 4 in 10…

Blue- and white-collar families who once lived close enough to bump into each other in the aisles of the local hardware store or chat in the pews of the neighborhood church live in much more homogenous places now.

Low-income people can go an entire day without talking to someone who has a college degree or a job in a downtown office. And for the affluent, handing a credit card to the gas station attendant or grocery clerk may be their only weekend brush with blue-collar America.

This is an issue pretty much everywhere, as the article argues. That’s not surprising given that income inequality in this country by some measures is at its worst in nearly a century. It’s not just a matter of white and black; poor and rich just don’t live next to each other and interact the way they used to.

You don’t have to think very hard to imagine what type of impact this might have over time. In a recent post on this blog, I discussed how some economists see marriage trends significantly worsening inequality. Given that we tend to meet and marry only people of similar means and education, they argue, wealth and capital tends to get concentrated in families over time. That we are so spatially and geographically separated from one another ties this narrative together.

As you might guess, this issue is deeply personal for me. My wife and I are both from the Boston area, and recently moved back there after spending the first few years of married life in Connecticut. In the short time we were gone, property values in and around Boston seemed to have exploded. The city was becoming a hot destination, our real estate agent told us, with the biotech industry here booming, new construction changing the landscape of downtown, and Boston increasingly seen as hip and fashionable among young professionals.

We eventually got a house we liked: something with enough space and a yard, in a town with good schools, easily commutable to downtown. What came as a surprise after moving in was that our neighborhood was a lot more diverse than we expected, both ethnically and economically. On our block we’ve got both whites and blacks, both native born Americans and immigrants. Our next door neighbors include a dermatologist, an accountant, and a career social worker. To me, where we live seems like a rare vestige of class and race diversity in Boston, literally on the border between a town that is mostly white and rich, and another that is mostly poor and black.

But the funny thing about our neighborhood is that even people who have lived there for decades hadn’t actually met eachother, a fact we discovered once we went out and knocked on people’s doors to introduce ourselves. Even when we live near each other, it seems, we still don’t tend to mingle across racial, social, or economic lines.

The basic problem here isn’t just that different people aren’t meeting each other, I’d say. It’s that no one is meeting each other, at least not the way they used to. That may be because many of our social institutions have weakened or vanished altogether. From churches to bowling leagues, many of the activities and groups that so commonly tied neighbors together have lost prevalence in American society over the past generation. Meanwhile, the way we socialize has changed, with fewer people slowing down and taking a moment to actually meet in person. To use a stereotypically Boston example: donut shops used to be places where friends would meet to chat over a freshly baked donut and a coffee. But since I was a kid the institution of donut-shop-as-meeting-place has all but vanished, with most converting into pure takeout joints with little or no seating. It’s telling that one of Dunkin Donuts’ most prominent marketing images is now an illustration of people walking briskly with coffee in hand.

dunkin_donuts_people_walking2

The famed political scientist Robert Putnam — quoted in this particular Globe article, incidentally — calls this phenomenon “bowling alone”. I would call it the “Netflixification of America”, but the idea is the same. As a Baha’i friend of mine once explained during a discussion on why it was so hard to attract people to events, religious or otherwise: “People just don’t go to each other’s homes like they used to. They mostly just stay home.” Somewhere along the way we seem to have lost our tendency towards basic social interaction with those around us, and I sense that the dissolution of that cultural quality is playing an underappreciated role in many of the country’s burgeoning social problems.

As I wrote in the case of marriage and its effects on inequality, we too easily dismiss the way our social lives and individual choices impact society at large. Few people would disagree that the increasing segregation of rich and poor could have disastrous social consequences. But perhaps even fewer are ready to materially change their lives in an effort to push back against the trend. The first step is to recognize that it’s not supposed to be this way. In the words of Abdu’l-Baha: “The surface of the earth is one home; humanity is one family and household. Distinctions and boundaries are artificial, human.” We should not and can not let ourselves think that this is normal.

Regardless of who lives around us, we can all make an effort to make friends with people who are different. If you’re rich and well educated, this could be as simple as striking up a conversation with your dry cleaner, bus driver, or cleaning lady. From there, maybe even invite some of these people over to your house, go out for a movie, meet for a coffee, etc. In other words, start small. Who knows? You may end up with a friend that you never would have known otherwise, while making a small contribution towards repairing America’s frayed social fabric.

Abdu’l-Baha speaking of Jesus Christ in 1912

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I’m too late to share this for the Easter holiday, but I figured it was still worth it. I came across this beautiful passage recently reading the book The Promulgation of Universal Peace, a collection of talks given by Abdu’l-Baha a little more than a century ago.

During Abdu’l-Baha’s journey through Europe and North America in the early 20th century, the life and teachings of Jesus Christ were a common topic. That may seem strange given that the whole point of Abdu’l-Baha’s trip was to introduce Westerners to a new faith and a new spiritual message. But seen in the context of the Baha’i Faith’s core teaching — that all religions are in fact reflections of a single spiritual truth, and all human beings are members of a single family — the fact that Abdu’l-Baha tended to talk in terms familiar to a Western audience makes a great deal of sense.

In any case, here is Abdu’l-Baha speaking to a small group of listeners in Brooklyn in 1912. (With some abridging by me*.)

The divine Prophets came to establish the unity of the Kingdom in human hearts. All of them proclaimed the glad tidings of the divine bestowals to the world of mankind. All brought the same message of divine love to the world. Jesus Christ gave His life upon the cross for the unity of mankind. Those who believed in Him likewise sacrificed life, honor, possessions, family, everything, that this human world might be released from the hell of discord, enmity and strife. His foundation was the oneness of humanity. Only a few were attracted to Him. They were not the kings and rulers of His time. They were not rich and important people… But their hearts were pure and attracted by the fires of the Divine Spirit manifested in Christ. With this small army Christ conquered the world of the East and the West. Kings and nations rose against Him. Philosophers and the greatest men of learning assailed and blasphemed His Cause. All were defeated and overcome, their tongues silenced, their lamps extinguished, their hatred quenched; no trace of them now remains. They have become as nonexistent, while His Kingdom is triumphant and eternal.

The brilliant star of His Cause has ascended to the zenith, while night has enveloped and eclipsed His enemies. His name, beloved and adored by a few disciples, now commands the reverence of kings and nations of the world. His power is eternal; His sovereignty will continue forever, while those who opposed Him are sleeping in the dust, their very names unknown, forgotten. The little army of disciples has become a mighty cohort of millions. The Heavenly Host, the Supreme Concourse are His legions; the Word of God is His sword; the power of God is His victory.

Jesus Christ knew this would come to pass and was content to suffer. His abasement was His glorification; His crown of thorns, a heavenly diadem. When they pressed it upon His blessed head and spat in His beautiful face, they laid the foundation of His everlasting Kingdom. He still reigns, while they and their names have become lost and unknown. He is eternal and glorious; they are nonexistent. They sought to destroy Him, but they destroyed themselves and increased the intensity of His flame by the winds of their opposition.

Through His death and teachings we have entered into His Kingdom. His essential teaching was the unity of mankind and the attainment of supreme human virtues through love. He came to establish the Kingdom of peace and everlasting life. Can you find in His words any justification for discord and enmity? The purpose of His life and the glory of His death were to set mankind free from the sins of strife, war and bloodshed…

…To be a real Christian is to be a servant in His Cause and Kingdom, to go forth under His banner of peace and love toward all mankind, to be self-sacrificing and obedient, to become quickened by the breaths of the Holy Spirit, to be mirrors reflecting the radiance of the divinity of Christ, to be fruitful trees in the garden of His planting, to refresh the world by the water of life of His teachings—in all things to be like Him and filled with the spirit of His love.

————

*For the full passage, see here.

Note: In the process of writing this I learned that this particular speech was given the day after Abdu’l-Baha arrived by boat to America from Europe. A historical chronicle of this particular day in his journey is here.

This is what depression era politics looks like

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As I’ve mentioned before, for the past several years I’ve been working as a sell-side macro strategist in the banking world. All this means is that I help clients of the bank I work for to better understand the financial markets and make good investment decisions.

Oftentimes the most stimulating aspect of the job entails having broad conversations with clients about the global economy, given that what happens on that level weighs so heavily on the price of pretty much every financial asset. Right now there is a clear sense of pessimistic resignation among most of the clients I speak to, as more and more of the investment community comes to grips with the frustrating reality of the post-crisis economy. Europe and Japan appear to be dealing with a perennial threat of deflation. China is, at best, gradually slowing from its previously unsustainable pace of growth. Even the US, a relative shining light among developed country economies in recent years, is struggling with stagnating wages, especially for the poor and the middle class. Though few think to use the term, I personally think the period we’re in now may be classified by future economic historians as a global depression, one milder than what we experienced in the 1930s, but with the same features of sluggish demand and weak growth and inflation for years on end.

Lately these conversations have steered towards the question: How do we get ourselves out of this mess? There are no easy answers. That’s mostly because, like many things in life, the technical solutions are relatively straight forward, but the social and political backdrop makes those solutions essentially impossible.

To take an example, since the crisis in 2008, central banks have pulled out all the stops in an effort to boost growth and prevent inflation from turning negative. The first step was to cut their key interest rates in an effort to encourage investment and spending. But eventually many central banks hit zero or close to it, and the conventional wisdom was that banks’ target interest rates couldn’t go negative. So a number of central banks tried pulling other levers, given that cutting rates alone wasn’t doing the job, only to find that even this mix of policies wasn’t enough. Now policy makers are debating whether or not to cut interest rates deep into negative territory, an uncharted policy territory which may finally ward off deflation and kickstart the economy, but may also risk destabilizing banks and making the whole problem worse.

You get the point. There is a sense of desperation on the part of many of the officials around the globe in charge of monetary policy. Their bullets have essentially been fired, their caches emptied. And now they are scrambling for whatever other flotsam and jetsam they can throw at the problem.

So what is the solution when the usefulness of monetary policy is all but exhausted? For most of the clients I speak to (and I would agree), it’s fiscal expansion. As the argument goes, if loose money policies aren’t enough to get demand going, then maybe some combination of cutting taxes and increasing government spending should be next. Most economists see this as reasonable; these policies would increase debt levels, but then again, so would lackluster growth in a scenario in which we tried nothing. And besides, rather than expressing concern about too much debt, markets these days are practically begging governments to borrow and spend more; at the time of writing, Japan — a country with a debt level double its GDP — can borrow at negative interest rates going out ten years.

Here is the point: Politics makes a badly-needed policy intervention such as this one essentially impossible. As economic outcomes stagnate — unemployment remains high, real wages fall, etc. — democracies don’t tend to sway towards loosening the fiscal reins. Canada under its new prime minister, Justin Trudeau, is a notable exception to this. But it is very much an exception. In Europe, the UK, and the US, major political movements have emerged urging governments to tighten their belts, rather than let loose. You can blame part of this phenomenon on the preferences of very wealthy individuals with disproportionate political power, who might push policy away from anything that risks expanding the size of the state or making the tax code more progressive. But I’m convinced this isn’t the whole story. The concepts of belt-tightening and “making due in tough times” are easily understood by the typical democratic voter; the concept of a fiscal multiplier for economic output is not. So when economies face those tough times, politicians can signal their credibility, trustworthiness, and discipline by extolling the virtues of fiscal modesty and “pulling ourselves up by the bootstraps”. That such austerity actually drives an ailing economy further into the abyss is seen only as a minor nuisance along the road to political victory.

As if this reality — that politics seems intrinsically biased towards pulling back on the fiscal  reins at exactly the wrong moment — wasn’t depressing enough, the case of migration gives us another example. As I discussed in a recent post, all developed economies need some influx of workers, including the unskilled. The cases of Europe and Japan are especially dire; as the working age population shrinks in these places, generating demand and fighting deflation become considerably more difficult. Yet, the common response within democratic societies during bad times is to restrict the inflow of workers rather than expanding it, as we commonly rush to point the finger at immigrants and other foreign governments for our economic problems. Europe is nearly fracturing over this issue as swaths of Syrian and other refugees flood into the continent. Despite the continent’s desperate need for more young workers, it is abundantly clear how the European electorate feels about immigration. From the UK’s flirtation with exiting the European Union, to Germany’s recent regional election results, to the multitude of countries within the EU openly challenging its principle of free movement, the writing is on the wall. Here in the US the situation is somewhat similar, even as our population issues are less dire. It’s not a coincidence that both major American parties now feel more emboldened to rail against globalization and free trade, and that one particular party’s front runner has made building walls between us and them — in quite literal terms — the flagship idea of his campaign.*

Things are getting particularly scary, I think, because people are slowly coming around to the reality that democracy lacks built-in mechanisms to deal with these phenomena. A lot of investors had this feeling, as did I, in mid-2011 when a handful of US politicians nearly crashed the world economy by refusing to allow a rise in the nation’s technical debt ceiling. This near-catastrophe was brought together by a match made in hell: voters who didn’t understand the debt ceiling concept, wrongfully assuming it to be associated with government profligacy using the simple logic of “more debt equals bad”; and politicians eager to capitalize on this misunderstanding, willing to vote for economic calamity in an effort to ingratiate them to their constituents. The crisis was averted at the last minute, but the episode sent a chilling message: There truly are no adults in charge.

Our current economic challenges are creating a similar dynamic, but one that is much more permanent in nature. After a generation of stagnant wages and nearly a decade of post-crisis economic malaise, voters are understandably mad as hell, with that anger now able to be sharpened into a devastating weapon in an era of instant communication and ubiquitous social media. In previous eras, perhaps, business elites and captains of industry might have been able to rein in this type of destructive populism. That effort is very much in full force this time around, in both the US and Europe, but this time voters don’t seem so easily pacified. How could they, after so many years of failed economic promises that seemed only to line the pockets and strengthen the influence of the wealthy and powerful? To suggest that elites must now wrest democratic control from the angry mobs now seems laughably naïve at best, and suspiciously nefarious at worst.

Now more than ever, the combination of dishonest, opportunistic politicians; poorly-educated, apathetic, and easily distracted voters; and a feckless, click-baiting press threatens to render democracies powerless to solve their most urgent problems, and the issue of the economy is now serving as a perfect illustration. There is no Superman swooping in to deliver us to safety, no handsome and charismatic politician who promises to make it better, if only we might give him our vote. The solution will take something deeper, a personal and moral accounting on the part of every citizen, as we decide what kind of voters we want to be, what kind of elected officials we deserve, and what kind of journalists we entrust with the truth. That is, it requires an honest look in the mirror on the part of all of us about the ruptures in the democratic fabric and the personal efforts we must all make to repair them. Otherwise, years from now we may look back at this moment as the good times, when the cynical spiral of economics and politics was just getting underway.

——–

*Turning more protectionist towards trade or restricting immigration isn’t necessarily a cyclical economic issue the way fiscal policy is. The point is that to avoid long-term stagnation related to an aging population and a shrinking workforce, Europe and Japan need more young people coming from foreign countries, not fewer.

Marriage, inequality, and the social partitioning of America

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couple_pouring_champagne

At my first job out of college, one of my coworkers told an unforgettable anecdote about a research project he once worked on as a student. At the time he was helping an economist study marriage patterns across the US, and they needed to understand how marriage laws differed by state. So my coworker went to the library, approached the librarian, and had the following exchange:

Research assistant: “Hi. I need to find out the minimum legal age of marriage in each US state. Can you help me?”

Librarian: [Long pause, stares back suspiciously.] “She’s too young for you.”

I bring this up because a) I find this story hilarious, and b) it illustrates that economists have long been curious about how marriage patterns impact economic outcomes. A NY Times blog post from a while back summarized some of the recent research on this, specifically with a focus on income inequality. The way we commonly choose a marriage partner, it turns out, could be playing a significant role in America’s growing income divide.

From the article:

These days, an investment banker may marry another investment banker rather than a high school sweetheart, or a lawyer will marry another lawyer, or a prestigious client, rather than a secretary. Whether measured in terms of income or education, there are more so-called power couples today than in the past, one manifestation of a phenomenon known as assortative mating, or more generally the pairing of like with like…

Money and talent become clustered in high-powered, two-earner families determined to do everything possible to advance the interests of their children…

The numbers show that assortative mating really matters. One study indicated that combined family decisions on assortative mating, divorce and female labor supply accounted for about one-third of the increase in income inequality from 1960 to 2005.

This was a shock to me when I read it. Income inequality in the United States is at its worst in nearly a century. Most people seem aware of this, but how we get married is rarely one of the reasons cited for the trend. Instead, it’s the usual mix of globalization, technology, and union decline that most use to explain the growing chasm between the haves and have-nots. On occasion, smart economists highlight deliberate government actions over the past few decades, like cutting taxes on investment income or relaxing bank regulations, for the explosion of incomes at the top. But social dynamics aren’t usually part of the discussion.

Nonetheless, the finding that marriage can have such significant implications for inequality makes a great deal of sense to me personally. Back when my wife and I were new parents living in a mostly middle class Connecticut city, we had many late night, anxious conversations about the mediocre schools in our town on the one hand and the area’s stratospheric cost of private education on the other. Southern Connecticut, it turns out, is like a souped-up microcosm of America in that regard; public institutions are under fiscal pressure just like everywhere else, relegating the kids of blue collar native-born Americans and first generation immigrants to middling schools, while the area’s bankers, executives and hedge fund managers drive up the cost of living, from houses to school tuition to haircuts. As kids clump together in socially and economically-segregated schools, they’re more likely to interact with and marry those just as privileged as they are, deepening the inequality gap over generations.

What’s the solution to this vicious cycle? First, public policy can make a huge difference by improving the quality of public schools, such that rich, talented parents actually want to send their kids there, and that those kids might mix socially with their less privileged peers. As I understand it, this was a key ingredient in the post-WWII economy, one characterized by stable growth and low inequality; good public education during that time not only produced talent and raised the economy’s productivity, but it also helped maintain a flat society.

But as in many cases, public policy can’t do the job on its own. Solving a social problem as weighty and challenging as this one requires individuals and families to change how they live and interact with others. As I wrote recently on the subject of race, it’s not good enough to have character and integrity in a vacuum. If you want the issue of racism in America to improve, we will have to seek out friends, coworkers, and family members of different races, and consciously include them in our personal lives.

So it is when it comes to class and social status. Given that these days we so commonly live in sequestered little communities where our neighbors have similar incomes and similar education levels, if we actually care about the societal implications of runaway social and economic segregation in America, we can’t just sit there and wait for a solution to descend from heaven. To get out of our comfort zones and to “forcibly agitate” our lives, in the language of that aforementioned blog post, might be the only way to break the cycle.

This takes a radical change in how we live, but on an even more basic level, a major shift in how we view other human beings. Abdul-Baha, for one, asks no less of us than this:

See ye no strangers; rather see all men as friends, for love and unity come hard when ye fix your gaze on otherness. And in this new and wondrous age, the Holy Writings say that we must be at one with every people… they are not strangers, but in the family; not aliens, but friends, and to be treated as such.

That’s not easy, of course. But what’s the alternative? The problem of growing inequality and the deepening stratification of society won’t fix itself. Politicians and bureaucrats can’t be absolved of responsibility. Then again, neither can we.

In search of the new mythology

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I recently started reading a book of transcribed interviews with Joseph Campbell, the famous philosopher and mythologist. I found some of his ideas so fascinating — and in some cases so in tune with how Baha’is think about religious truth — that I felt the need to write a blog post just to share them here. I hope those reading this find Campbell’s words as interesting as I do.  Continue reading →

Personal reflections on getting fat as a dad

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After my wife and I had our first kid a few years ago, I joked that becoming a father was a great way to get out of shape. There are two main reasons for this: 1) most of your free time is gone, so it’s much harder to get to the gym or wherever else you normally get exercise; and 2) you’re getting a lot less sleep at night, which means that you’re more likely to eat like a pig during the day.

I’m not exactly tipping the scales these days, but as I get deeper and deeper into my 30s, staying in shape is becoming noticeably harder. In terms of diet, I probably eat better now than I ever have. I’m far from perfect, but I’m down to about one sugary drink per week, I hardly ever have anything with white flour, and I try not to snack after dinner. And yet, the dress pants that I had the dry cleaner take out for me just a few months ago are once again feeling snug around the waist.

Of course, there’s another reason besides less exercise and less sleep that explains why men struggle to stay in shape as they get older: declining testosterone. Continue reading →