(HT: Cafe Hayek)
I'm not sure what the caption should be though. I was thinking one of the following:
More people, more wealth
Exploding towards Malthusian disaster
The rich get richer and the poor get richer
The rich get richer and the poor get relatively poorer
Yet another chart whose meaning is in the eye of the beholder
Or something else. What do you think?
57 comments:
I think because the cost of basic goods and services is so dramatically different around the world, especially comparing the poorest countries with the U.S., the chart is meaningless except as a curiosity.
I'd bet a Tanzanian with an income of $35,000 would be very comfortable, while in the U.S. it's at the poverty level.
In San Francisco where I recently visited, a dinner for four could easily be more than the Tanzanian's annual income of $800.
The data is adjusted for variation across time and between countries, but not for local deviation from national averages. Allowing for that variation, the graph clearly represents a dramatically improved material condition for more and more people on the planet. Spiritually, who can say?
Collectivism works?
Colonialism doesn't work?
Poor men dug up a lot of gold after 1820?
It's always fun to watch the profoundly ignorant self identify.
But that's the point. The beauty of charts like that one is that everybody can find what they want in it.
Nothing wrong with the caption "Collectivism Works" if one looks only at this chart.
Nothing wrong with the caption "Collectivism Works" if one looks only at this chart or if one can point to a place on planet Earth where it is true.
Those were more of less jokes. Seriously, what changed after 1820?
Liberalism defeated conservatism and educated a larger and larger proportion of the population.
Who educated the most? Communists, actually.
erp,
There's little doubt in my mind that overall, the world is more "collectivist" than it was in 1820. Government spending per capita world wide is probably two orders of magnitude higher. If I were a government bureaucrat, I would use these charts to help justify my existence. There's nothing about causation in this chart and you can correlate an awful lot of stuff with it, including bigger governments and bigger government spending.
Harry:
The word you want is indoctrinated.
Educated means something else entirely and I agree that the Soviets did indoctrinate the most, including most of the world's "intelligentsia."
So much the worst for us of all.
Harry wrote: "Seriously, what changed after 1820?"
Starting a little before that, democracy/self-rule, economic freedom, Adam Smith and other pro-free market philosphers, dignity of the bourgeois, and lots more.
Harry wrote: "Poor men dug up a lot of gold after 1820?"
Gold isn't income or even wealth.
Bret, Don't you find it odd that Harry is using colonialism as the opposite of collectivism? It makes no sense to me that he thinks they are opposites since both are imposed on the people from the top down.
In any case, Harry is using collectivism as an absolute, not as the kind of Chinese water torture drip-by-drip process that it has become the U.S. of A.
erp wrote: "Don't you find it odd that Harry is using colonialism as the opposite of collectivism?"
The post-Judd alliance (which includes Harry) has been interacting for a long time now and I've seen hundreds of Harry's posts and comments. Given that, no, I don't find it odd in the least. In fact, I'd be flabbergasted if he didn't and I'd assume it was an imposter! :-)
To me they're more orthogonal than opposites. Collectivism is what a people does to itself. Colonialism is what a people does to someone else.
Bret, Do you really think we are imposing collectivism on ourselves? I don't. It's just as much being imposed from elites many of whom are outside agitators as colonialism was imposed with many natives welcoming the colonialists.
erp, you really should tread warily on subjects like education, because you are not well up there.
'Intelligentsia' is an interesting word. (I have written about this at RtO.) Cognates don't really exist in liberal societies, only in conservative ones, because the class does not exist in liberal societies.
In Russia in particular it was a tsarist concept and word, necessary because hardly anybody could read until the commies taught them.
In Russia and in other rightist and conservative societies, the conservatives fought ferociously to keep the people from knowing how to read. If you knew the dates when printing presses arrived in different places, you would not say such ignorant things.
Harry: As has been explained to you numerous times, Right, Conservative and Libertarian denote what can be called classic liberalism.
Despotic regimes whether they be communist, czarist, nazi, Islamist, etc. are all the same. The masses must be kept ignorant so as to be kept in line.
That's why the public schools, once our greatest achievement, have been destroyed by the lefty unions and are turning out the opposite of the informed citizenry Franklin correctly warned would be necessary for us to keep our Republic.
Erp,
Since you never tire of this line about unions destroying public schools, I do have a question for you.
Today most people can learn pretty much everything taught at school without it - the Internet has so much more information (and books) out there. In your country that's even more true, since homeschooling is allowed and practiced by many.
So in your opinion, what's holding those citizens from becoming as enlightened as Franklin wished for (himself being a self-taught man at many things)? And how unions are to blame then?
Clovis, if you stop to think a moment, I believe you will be able to answer your own question.
erp,
I think Clovis asked a good question. I don't think that unions ruined public education, or if they did so, they did it mostly very indirectly. My kids have been in both private and public schools, and while the private school teachers were a little better, overall, the teachers in the public schools do seem to be pretty dedicated.
Teachers ARE pretty left wing (compared to us), so there is a bit of indoctrination, but that has nothing to do with unions.
The dismaying part is that home-schooled kids do at least as well as publicly educated kids, so I do wonder what value teachers bring to the table other than babysitting, especially since they're pretty expensive babysitters.
Clovis asks: "...what's holding those citizens from becoming as enlightened as Franklin ... ?"
Oh, well, that's a pretty high bar, we can't all be geniuses. How about as enlightened as erp or Harry? :-) It's possible that home-schooled kids do achieve that level of enlightenment.
I guess I would need to know what you mean to be enlightened. Do you mean knowledgeable?
Bret, so it seems to you because the unions started taking over the schools in the late 60’s with Albert Shankar, a self admitted socialist, a leading advocate. Teachers’ unions run everything in the public schools, set the curriculum and keep their members in line. They use union dues to fund left wing organizations and back candidates for office from local boards of Ed to the White House.
You’ve never experienced a time when the schools didn’t slant what the kids were taught.
Home school parents were slimed as being religious fanatics, fundamental Christians, born againers, etc., but it’s becoming more and more clear that isn’t the case as more and more parents are refusing to allow their children to be brain washed.
My granddaughter is a senior at what is arguably the finest prep school in the country. She’s an amazing student with six 5’s out of six AP tests in the sciences, math, history and English. The World History textbook which I read was unbelievable even for one as cynical as I. Read it if you get a chance and I understand the AP U.S. History textbook, which I haven't read, is even more egregious.
Common Core takes it even further by introducing left wing indoctrination into math word problems and other areas not commonly seen as political.
erp,
Perhaps the unions did what you say, but it doesn't matter. Educators of all stripes are as left of center as the unions as far as wanting to propagate propaganda so it would've happened anyway.
So if you want to say that unions ruined the schools instead of educators ruined the schools, okay, but so what?
Bret, educators were and are the union leaders. If they weren't organized, they wouldn't have been able to take control from the local school boards and force the states and the feds to instigate state-wide and federal boards of Ed which with handouts took over the schools.
BTW - it isn't etched in stone that schools must be left wing. They hadn't taken total control in my day.
erp,
Did public schools exist back in your day?
Oops, sorry, couldn't resist. :-)
Yes, but they were paleoschools.
Bret,
Please notice I've said as enlightened as "Franklin wished for", not necessarily as him. It is a reference to that lore over his saying "A Republic, if you can keep it".
Of course, being Franklin a Mason, my use here of the word "enlightened" could be quite dubious - which was intentional.
Erp,
Your comment on your granddaughter gives me the impression that, to answer my previous question, you may think people do not get over schools (even if Unions destroyed them to the extent you believe) and learn by themselves because.... pretty much every book/source out there is similarly tainted. Is it what you think?
Clovis:
I don't know what you mean by, "get over schools"?
It’s not a question of what I think. There has been a movement leftward over the last hundred years, speeded up during our cultural revolution of the 60’s now greatly mitigated because the internet has made us all pundits and commentators.
The left doesn’t have as tight a control of information as they did 20 years ago, but the institutions, the schools, publishing, etc. are still controlled by lefties a lot of whom are very far left.
You youngsters think the world was always such, but it wasn’t. A lot, perhaps most things, are far better than they were when I was a kid, but some things are frighteningly worse. IMO loss of the rule of law is the most distressing.
Erp,
So let us make a mental experiment: close down all schools and everyone now learn at home. Right there you got rid of all unions altogether, and the lefties educators too.
Do you think the respect for the rule of law is now automatically ensured?
Clovis, you again didn't answer a simple question: What did you mean by, "getting over schools"?
To answer your question, no, because as I've said repeatedly, we are coming on three generations of We, the People, who don't know that we are a nation governed by laws, not despots, who know nothing about our history except the U.S. is the monster of the world's impoverished peoples, killer of the environment, including cute little baby seals, etc., know nothing about the separation of powers in our government, that the feds don't have power over every aspect of our lives ...
It's a much bigger problem than you can imagine.
Erp,
My proposed experiment was also an answer to your previous question.
Per your own account, your empahsis when blaming unions is pretty misguided - we took them out and obtained the same output.
Clovis, our public schools were excellent before the unions took over. I doubt that the situation in Brazil was or is similar.
erp,
Were they? How was that excellence measured?
Measured? How else but by the level of educated people in the land? You rely too much on statistics and charts and studies, the results of which can be arranged to prove whatever is wanted to be proven. Even science research is doctored.
SAT’s have been dumbed down several times over the years. Kids coming out of school now, among other things, can’t tell analog time, their written English is atrocious, they are innumerate. Pop culture is all they know about.
This is deliberate. Just as Obama’s antics aren’t incompetence or just leftwing wrong-headedness, the narrative is purposeful to make We, the People, uninformed followers.
Erp,
If you were open to study the subject, as opposed to reciting slogans, you would learn that public education systems have struggled worldwide throughout the time frame covering your life.
The countries which experienced high growth of population (yeah, like the US and Brazil) had difficulty in keeping up the same level of the 40's and 50's after the invasion of babyboomers. It creates a structural challenge, like when a company grows too much too fast.
Like with companies, Unions can indeed create a lot of trouble when new times ask for adjustments. But just like with companies, Unions hardly are the only thing needed to explain why some places succeed while others not.
Clovis:
The problems of the emerging world have little impact here and you either don't understand what I'm saying or are dismissing it out of hand. It’s immaterial to me. My kids and those close to me will be fine as will the kids of the people commenting here and others like us, but it’s those who are blinding throwing themselves off the cliff following the Pied-Piper of collectivism who are my concern.
You forget I’ve lived through the last 80 years in various parts of the country. Many good friends of mine were teachers in various other parts of the country because back in the day when women had few career choices, nursing and teaching were among the few options they had.
BTW - What slogans have you detected? I hope you answer this questions because it baffles me.
We had no trouble keeping up with the baby boomers. Schools proliferated -- all kinds of schools for special kids of all kinds. In fact, I lived through the "new math and reading programs” when arithmetic was taught beginning in kindergarten using sets and phonics was abolished in the classrooms (my youngest son was a victim of this short-lived phenomenon). Now Common Core has revised teaching simple arithmetic again to make it even more incomprehensible than the old “new math” was.
I also lived through the period when special classes and in many cases specially equipped new buildings for special needs kids became fashionable. Then that wasn’t deemed “fair” by our betters, so special needs kids were integrated into regular classrooms – that didn’t last long either because apparently even the most dewy-eyed “educators” were able to notice it wasn’t unworkable because special needs kids by definition had special needs that couldn’t be met in regular classrooms.
erp,
I'm having trouble understanding your perspective on this one. From what I've read, public education in the United States was NEVER about education and ALWAYS about "indoctrination."
Prior to public education, literacy rates among white males (yes, yes, there's that racist/sexist thing again) was extremely high. For example:
"Despite the caveats, we can generalize about patterns of literacy. In 1974, University of Montana scholar Kenneth Lockridge’s groundbreaking book, Literacy in Colonial New England, surveyed evidence from legal records and offered provisional conclusions—“The exercise is bound to be tentative, as it uses a biased sample and an ambiguous measure”—but he made the case that, among white New England men, about 60 percent of the population was literate between 1650 and 1670, a figure that rose to 85 percent between 1758 and 1762, and to 90 percent between 1787 and 1795. In cities such as Boston, the rate had come close to 100 percent by century’s end."
So for white males in New England, the literacy rate is about the same as it was over 200 years ago. And I suspect, the white male population was enlightened pretty much exactly as Clovis used the word, per Franklin.
No, public education was always about making good factory workers for the industrial age which, of course, makes sense for a country that wants to excel in the industrial age. A factory worker really doesn't need an enlightening education, he needs to be taught to be docile, to listen to authority, and to learn a bit of math and reading, and that was always the purpose of public education.
Again, home schooled kids do about as well (possibly even better) than their publicly schooled counterparts and that's because school is not about education, it's about docility and listening to authority.
Now, we're leaving the industrial age behind and entering the information age and we're saddled with a system that's now very, very counterproductive, but most of us have forgotten what's behind the system so we can't imagine how to change it.
Bret, a bit of math and reading is all one really needs to function at a basic level and for those who wish to continue learning, we have colleges and universities. My husband met a guy who was foreman on the line of a company he was auditing. He couldn’t read or write, even his own name. Yet he was the best at what he did and knew to the penny what his paycheck should be, a pretty good trick even if you don’t have to figure it out in your head, considering all the ins and outs of payroll deductions.
Did you know that at the beginning of the 20th c. high school students were required to learn Greek and Latin as well as advanced mathematics, history, science … Since then the curriculum has been continually dumbed down as we no longer require informed citizens, only compliant ones.
As for my position, it’s been stated over and over. Schools, especially in the cities, for over a hundred plus years, taught millions of non-English speaking kids at publically supported schools, myself included, who spoke over 200 different languages and dialects, not only how to speak English, but how to read and write it correctly, about our country, the three ‘R’s and then those who wished to do so were able to continue their education at city and state supported schools and universities, again myself included.
These institutions limited enrollment to those who passed tests proving certain level of achievement and ability (yes, Harry in some places Negroes weren’t included), but they were included where I was. Private institutions even the top Ivy League schools routinely gave scholarships to those showing the most potential.
Along came the rabble rousers/community organizers/socialists/commies of the 60’s, I call it our cultural revolution, howling it isn’t fair and open enrollment ruined the city colleges and state universities. The ante was upped finally to Affirmative Action and skin color was bottom line basis for admission.
Huge chunks of money had to go into remedial courses and still kids who didn’t either have the innate ability or who were so far behind in achievement, couldn’t possibly keep up, so community colleges repeating high school and even junior high school level courses were built and staffed and nonsense studies appeared, so people who couldn’t write, and in some cases even read, a short declarative sentence, suddenly had degrees from formerly prestigious Institutes of Higher Learning.
I could go on for days on this subject, but you get the idea.
And Clovis, I don’t have to study the question. I could give a doctoral level course on the subject and do it all without slogans – slogans are collectivist jargon.
erp wrote: "...a bit of math and reading is all one really needs to function at a basic level..."
To me it's clear that one doesn't need 12 years of schooling for a bit of math and reading. Most of the rest has always been for inculcating industrial age worker habits.
My grandparents' schools did not have latin and greek available.
Were your grandparents in high school before the WW1? That's the time period I’m talking about.
One doesn't need 12 years of school to inculcate work habits. Going to work at age 6 works just as well. :-{
I think for most people, working as apprentice for two years at some kind of work to their liking is best at age 15.
Then they are in a better position to decide if they'd like to get more schooling or continue working at that job.
In this way, managers can do their jobs better having been “on the line” if only figuratively.
'Were your grandparents in high school before the WW1? That's the time period I’m talking about.'
Only the children of the privileged went to high school then. I like to use the example of Warren Harding, who grew up in a prosperous town of 10,000. His high school graduating class (in 1890) had 10 students.
Clovis, erp knows nothing of education in the US and most of what she says is easy to show is delusional.
Warring B. Harding's high school class had ten students.
Harry: One of your best non-sequiturs to date.
Erp,
I am happy you could put your union slogan aside and give me reasoned discourse, thank you.
In fact, what you describe is a better version of what I tried to. It is not exactly populational growth that was a challenge for schools, but more to the point populational inclusiveness.
In past not all kids were supposed to go to school (like Harry reminds us). Once more and more were supposed to go to schools and beyong, like colleges, you end up with the bloated system you describe.
And please, do me the favor of not brushing aside my opinion because I can only know about my third world life. There are many countries within Brazil (or, to simplify, there are at least two), and public schools down here were once lauded as good learning places, by about the same time you were a school student too. Their downfall was more clear during the 70's. Coincidentally, during our (right-wing) military dictatorship - you see no end of lefties down here pointing out that was their making, so people could be dumbed down to accept military rule, like much of your discourse here. But if you look closer, you'll see that is not entirely true, massification was much more of a reason than anything else.
Bret's description of public schools as Factory 101 also touches a truth. You only need to briefly inspect the "classical" school setting (recreation timed by a siren? Rooms with no windows?) to get it. But I wouldn't say that indoctrination was the objective, or at least the main one. It goes back to my initial point: once people wanted to extend education to all the population (as opposed to only the white males of old New England), a Ford-like line of production was what we knew to do then.
Clovis,
1. How do you differentiate a right wing dictatorship from a left wing dictatorship? They all employ strong-arm tactics. Here the army hasn't been required yet, although the military has been purged and now lefties are in charge should there be a need to "convince" some of We, the People. Selective prosecution from agencies like the IRS, etc. do the job with less messy blood to clean up.
I throw all despots in the same pot. None are conservative/libertarian.
2. We achieved education for all (even negroes in the south) and all kids were by law required to attend school until age 16). From there it was up to individuals as to whether they wanted to continue their education.
3. Harry is as usual seeing everything through the prism of class/race warfare. Prior to the 60’s every part of the country had their own school district, their own curriculum, etc. Neither the feds, nor the states interfered. This sensible system was corrupted when states and feds started handing out our money to those districts which complied with their “guidelines.” This quickly resulted in State and Federal Boards of Education and guidelines became requirements established by educators and other social science geniuses -- all lefties-- and the unions previously non-existent or loose individual associations, stepped in to control all aspects of the public schools and use the required union dues to promote more of their ideas and elect people with the same world view.
4. During the 19th century and early times, all kids didn’t go to high school (or any school), so many kids weren’t as well informed as others. In the 21st c. all kids are required to attend high school, but now most kids are not only still uninformed, but deliberately misinformed as well.
Progressives take a bow!
Erp,
---
How do you differentiate a right wing dictatorship from a left wing dictatorship?
---
We had this discussion here before.
I will not turn to political theory, let us just take a pragmatic approach: if Republicans called the Armed Forces right now and convinced them to take over the Executive branch, closing the Legislative one and making a mockery of the Judiciary, I would call it a right-wing dictatorship. Simple as that, it is a very close analogy to what happened down here.
If the political party to apply that coup was a leftist one, I would call it a left-wing dictatorship. You may have your own definition for it all, Erp, but that's the one in place for most people out there. I completely agree none of them are what you think as "conservative/libertarian" , but guess what: neither it is the commonplace concept of "right-wing politics". After all, why do you think Libertarians are only a tiny minority within the GOP?
Clovis;
I pointed out before how you require perfection or equivalence in your arguments. You provide another example in this comment string.
--v
let us make a mental experiment: close down all schools and everyone now learn at home. Right there you got rid of all unions altogether, and the lefties educators too.
Do you think the respect for the rule of law is now automatically ensured?
--^
"Automatically ensured", i.e. 100% perfect. If I state that homeschooling wouldn't "automatically ensure", that is achieve 100% respect for the rule of law, then ... what? That makes it a failure, equivalent to the current system?
I would also like to point out that another correlated variable with school quality decrease is the increase in school district sizes. Not only in time but also in space - schools got worse as districts got bigger, and the places with the biggest districts are usually the worst.
'schools got worse as districts got bigger,'
I doubt that is correct for the very small districts that offered very little to anybody (and -- erp alert!) -- were never unionized.
NYC was a pretty big district back in the day when erp thought it did a wonderful job.
My grandson is attending what used to be PS 84 -- it's a big district that cannot afford names for its schools -- and is getting outstanding (and very, very expensive) special instruction.
You probably believe that larger districts are worse, but that would be hard to demonstrate.
Clovis:
... neither it is the commonplace concept of "right-wing politics". After all, why do you think Libertarians are only a tiny minority within the GOP? Making my case for me again, that what you know aka commonplace concept is WRONG. I am not a member of the GOP and I doubt any of the others commenting here are either, but that doesn't seem to matter to you or the media.
AOG,
I did not mean what you understood with "automatically ensured". I mean by that reasonable levels of respect for the law (at least a bit better than the ones obtained now with schools) achieved without anyone other than parents and their kids working for that.
Now that I clarified that, would you like to give me your take of that experiment?
Erp,
---
Making my case for me again, that what you know aka commonplace concept is WRONG.
---
So you dispute that's the commonplace concept, i.e. used by the majority of people?
---
I am not a member of the GOP and I doubt any of the others commenting here are either, but that doesn't seem to matter to you or the media.
---
It does matter to me, and it is part of my point: I believe your political ideology is, in general, much better represented by elements of the GOP than the Dem. party. Yet, those elements at the GOP that most agree with your views are still a minority within that party.
Do you disagree with my assessment? It doesn't ask for your affilitation to the party, we are only drawing reference points here, since you asked for a discussion about terms and definitions.
The CW labeling as right wing conservative/libertarian is wrong and that's what I said. You and the media want to put that label on all non-left wing politics and I don't accept that.
RINO's do not represent my views. They are only a little less overtly left wing and the same goes for Fox news.
We are registered Republicans in the vain hope that there will an opportunity to actually vote FOR somebody other than the usual vote for the least worst candidate which is what I've done every election but two. You can guess who those two were, one lost due to really over-the-top smearing and the other won two terms.
Erp,
OK, you are a registered Republican, yet you are not a Republican. I get it.
Oh, women...
Many registered Republicans of all sexes are not Republican. In fact, there are many ardent Democrats who are registered Republicans because only registered Republicans can vote in Republican primaries and both these factions register so they can sway primary selections.
Ah, to be young ...
I just spent Christmas in central Florida where people like erp are middle-of-thr-roader. There are plenty of crazier rightwingers than erp.
They sit around all day and tell each other lies (but they believe them) except at The Villages. I was using a credit card from a Hawaii bank, and when I presented it, people would say, 'Hawaii? They don't let Americans own land there, do they?'
And because I am a patient man who believes in reality, I would explain that, no, white Americans can own land in Hawaii. 'I"m from Tennessee and I own land in Hawaii,' I'd say, and they would nod politely but you could see from their eyes that they weren't buying it, just as -- remember? -- erp didn't buy it.
They're crazy but not as crazy as in Texas where the rightwingers believe they can bring people back from the dead. True story. You should check out Rick Perry's and Bobby Jindal's prayer breakfasts.
These people are psychotic.
Harry, I'm so disappointed. When your name popped into my inbox, I thought I was going to learn the location of the school district that is not in the clutches of the teachers' union.
But alas no.
Harry,
But they do bring people back from the dead in Texas, haven't you heard that Rick Perry will run again?
Clovis,
LOL, but he might only be as effective as a zombie. :-)
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