A Farewell to Alms and other things

Finished reading it last night. Was going to summarize it but fortunately Robert Samuelson did that for me in his column today:

It's nature versus nurture. One of the big debates of our times involves the causes of economic growth. Why is North America richer than South America? Why is Africa poor and Europe wealthy? Is it possible to eliminate global poverty? The World Bank estimates that 2.5 billion people still live on $2 a day or less. On one side are economists who argue that societies can nurture economic growth by adopting sound policies. Not so, say other scholars such as Lawrence Harrison of Tufts University. Culture (aka "nature") predisposes some societies to rapid growth and others to poverty or meager growth.

Comes now Gregory Clark, an economist who interestingly takes the side of culture. In an important new book, "A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World," Clark suggests that much of the world's remaining poverty is semi-permanent. Modern technology and management are widely available, but many societies can't take advantage because their values and social organization are antagonistic. Prescribing economically sensible policies (open markets, secure property rights, sound money) can't overcome this bedrock resistance.

...Traditional theories have emphasized the importance of the Scientific Revolution and England's favorable climate: political stability, low taxes, open markets. Clark retorts that both China and Japan around 1800 were about as technically advanced as Europe, had stable societies, open markets and low taxes. But their industrial revolutions came only later.

What distinguished England, he says, was the widespread emergence of middle-class values of "patience, hard work, ingenuity, innovativeness, education" that favored economic growth. After examining birth and death records, he concludes that in England -- unlike many other societies -- the most successful men had more surviving children than the less fortunate. Slowly, the attributes of success that children learned from parents became part of the common culture. Biology drove economics. He rejects the well-known theory of German sociologist Max Weber (1864-1920) that Protestantism fostered these values.

Clark's theory is controversial and, at best, needs to be qualified. Scholars do not universally accept his explanation of the Industrial Revolution. More important, China's recent astonishing expansion (a fact that he barely mentions) demonstrates that economic policies and institutions matter. Bad policies and institutions can suppress growth in a willing population; better policies can release it. All poverty is not preordained. Still, Clark's broader point seems incontestable: Culture counts.

You should really read the whole thing to fully capture Samuelson's point but I think this is the gist. (you can also check out these links to get a better feel for the book) As Samuelson says, Clark's primary argument in the book about what separates prosperity from poverty often comes down to culture. As an example he compares the performance of textile mills in England and India. On the surface India should have crushed England and taken the lion's share of the textile industry: both had access to the same technology, the same costs of capital (i.e. interest rates) but India had the advantage of much cheaper labor. The problem for India, however, is that its labor was nowhere near as productive as England's. And this, mind you, was for employment that didn't require a great deal of sophistication. The tasks involved in running a loom were fairly simple, and citing educational differences doesn't really hold. Neither does superior management -- mills in both countries relied heavily on English management (and there are no signs the managers in India were rejects from the home country).

So what explains the differences then? Quite simply, Indian labor wasn't as reliable. Absenteeism was high. People would leave the factory for lunch. Mothers would bring their children with them to work -- all practices unheard of back in England.

Anecdotally I remember a teacher in high school telling me about the problems that Volkswagen encountered when operating in one particular third world country -- workers wouldn't report back to work after pay day. The workers logic was that they had enough money to live on for a while and they would report back to work when the money was close to running out. The mentality was just completely different.

The implications of this cultural argument are enormous. Plainly, as Samuelson notes with his China example, culture does not explain all. But it certainly explains a lot. Look no further than the U.S. Poverty in the U.S. isn't evenly distributed. It afflicts some subcultures far more than others. Everyone operates under the same rules but experience different outcomes. We see immigrants for example that come here with nothing, not even speaking the language, and rise to great prosperity. Why is that? I imagine culture and work ethic play a huge part.

If you accept that argument then it calls into question the wisdom in some respects of anti-poverty programs. These people don't need government aid, they need to adopt a new mentality and culture. How can that be done? Are government bureaucrats going to teach them?

Looking at the current political environment, how many politicians are willing to recognize this reality? When it comes to fighting poverty you hear a lot about the need for more programs but where is the presidential candidate who says that those in poverty bear at least some responsibility for their lot? After all, as George Will and other observers have pointed out, all you need to do to stay out of poverty is graduate from high school, hold steady employment of almost any kind and wait until you are married to have kids. Among people who follow such a formula poverty is negligible.

Their reluctance to say such things is perhaps understandable as the criticism they would receive would be blistering. We have a mentality that those in poverty languish there because of a lack of opportunity and because the system is biased against them. We even refer to poor families as "working families" -- I guess because all the rest of the people that aren't poor don't work and got to where they are via a lottery.

I think we criticize people who would utter such things because what they say is uncomfortable. We like to think that by changing the rules, or instituting new programs we can help the poor. And yes, there are things that can be done (like school vouchers to increase educational opportunities). But culture isn't something government can change, and I think that people are scared by their own helplessness. To admit a cultural root problem is to admit both that our options to assist are limited and that government isn't the answer, something I'm not sure many people can do.

Imperial Grunts

I finished Imperial Grunts. In the book, author Robert Kaplan gives a superb overview of the current state of U.S. Special Forces and Marines. Travelling from the plains of Mongolia to the jungles of Colombia he gives the reader a great feel for the life of these soldiers. Something that kept popping into my head as I read the book was George Orwell's quote that "People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf." Indeed, I think the quote is mentioned in the book, maybe more than once.

These truly are rough men who are fiercely proud, patriotic and seem to relish their jobs. This seems pretty typical of the attitude encountered by Kaplan in the book:

While I was lying in my sleeping bag, one of the Renegades, Cpl. Michael Pinckney of South Kingstown, Rhode Island, came up to me and began to talk: "I'm twenty-three. My generation sucks. They're all soft. They don't care about their identity as Americans. We live in some bad-ass country, and they're not even proud of it. My family flies the flag, but other families don't. Nobody knows what it means to be American anymore, to be tough. I like being home and yet I don't. People at home are not proud of us being in Iraq, because they've lost the meaning of sacrifice. They expect things to be perfect and easy. They don't know when things go wrong you persevere; you don't second-guess. During OIF (Operation Iraqi Freedom)-I, we all slept in the rain and got dysentary in Ad-Diwaniyah. But back home, everyone is going to shrinks and suing each other. That's why I like the Marine Corps. If you f*** up, your sergeant makes you suck it up. I don't want to be anywhere but Iraq. OIF-I and OIF-II, this is what manhood is all about. And I don't mean macho s*** either. I mean moral character."

Indeed, Kaplan goes on to add that "Despite news reports of low morale in the armed services because of overdeployment, with Army Special Forces and the Marines I had met only two kind of troops: those who were serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, and those who were jealous of those who were."

I interpret all of this as just futher validation of the all volunteer military. Agree or disagree with the sentiment expressed by the soldiers, but you have to be glad they're the ones on the front line instead of some conscript.

Beyond providing insight into the life of some of the U.S.'s most elite troops, Kaplan also raises a few issues in the book worth pondering. The first is the impact of bureaucracy on the special forces. When Operation Enduring Freedom kicked off, special forces were inserted into Afghanistan and basically given a license to do what they had to to overthrow the Taliban. Within months it was accomplished, with these forces hooking up with Afghan warlords to direct precision airstrikes, growing beards to blend in and even participating in a cavalry charge. Now if they get a tip on an arms cache they have to submit paperwork to approve any raid that can take three days for approval. Of the roughly 18,000 soldiers in Afghanistan, 5,000 are at Bagram Air Base in support functions. Of course, this tooth vs. tail issue has been noted elsewhere.

Another interesting observation is the divide between the U.S. military and the media. Members of the media tend to be graduates of elite schools in the Northeast. Members of the military from the Northeast are disporportionately few. Each one has a culture that the other doesn't understand, or maybe even cares to. Those from New England often view members of the military as a refuge for losers who couldn't hack it in regular life, while the military see the media as immoral and clueless.

Indeed, Kaplan says that many times when he was embedded with troops they would be initially cool towards him, figuring that he was just another "f***ing left-wing journalist." You can see the results of this for yourself. As blogger James Taranto recently noted, perhaps the media should start asking themselves "Why do they hate us?"

Something else I noticed in the book was the number of soldiers who said things to the effect of "Thank goodness for the military. If I hadn't joined the Marines, etc. and gotten some discipline I'd probably be back at home running around with a bad crowd and would be jail right now." I've long believed that the military is the federal government's best program for turning around the lives of troubled kids -- especially those from low-income and minority backgrounds -- and providing them with discipline and an economic ladder. Kaplan's book seems further validation of that. Curious then that the military is perhaps the most despised government institution by many on the left.

I'll conclude with this excerpt, which got me thinking for a number of different reasons:

Most of Staff Sgt. Dick's men were still in their teens, yet they told their Iraq stories to me in the manner of old men talking to their grandchildren. "Iraq made me want to go home and apologize to all the people I had ever been an asshole to; it made me see myself from the outside for the first time," said Richard Cabrera, a twenty-one-year-old corporal from Riverside, California.

Nineteen-year-old Ty Ogden of Sarasota Springs, New York, told me of how an Iraqi girl had come up and given him a flower, which he stuck in his helmet. "The Iraqis were always so nice to us," said another nineteen-year-old tattooed lance corporal, Jeremy Kepner of Utica, New York. "In the morning they brought us fresh tea and pital bread, which we traded for MREs. When we finally got home on leave it was weird. Our old friends suddenly seemed so immature, so naive."

En route home from Iraq, the ship docked in Lisbon, Portugal, for four days. For Lance Cpl. Kepner and most of the others, it was the first time that they had been to Europe. "After months at Camp Lejeune, Kuwait, and Iraq, Portugal blew our minds," he reflected. "The women were so beautiful, the people so polite and well-dressed -- not like Americans. The buildings were old, like a castle. It made me think. I want to go to college after my enlistment is up."

Maybe joining the military -- or going to war -- has a way of making some people see what matters.

The Greatest Generation

Finished read Tom Brokaw's The Greatest Generation last night -- highly recommended. To me the book was far more interesting for its insight into the mindset of the Depression/WWII generation than anything else. A few thoughts:

• Of course we all know how bad Blacks and other minorities were treated during this time, but reading accounts of it never ceases to amaze you. One Black soldier described being at a camp where Blacks were prohibited from entering the post's officer's club -- and then later seeing a group of German officer POWs allowed in!

• And of course it wasn't just Blacks. Sen. Daniel Inouye describes returning home from the war and going to a barbershop for a haircut. When asked if he was Japanese he responded that his father was born in Japan, prompting the barber to remark that "We don't cut Jap hair." And Inouye was in his uniform complete with medals and missing his right arm!

• It's mind-blowing just how opportunities were limited for women in the workplace. Basically you could be a nurse, a secretary or a teacher. And even teachers were only supposed to be single women -- married ones need not apply.

• It's also amazing how despite these very real obstacles that it only made people determined to work even harder rather than declare themselves victims.

• Some of the observations about modern life by some of those interviewed in the book is interesting. For example one of the Black soldiers remarked coming back to Chicago after the war and becoming a landlord. He said that after welfare came about that you could see the impact, with many of his tenants being in their late-twenties and having never worked a day in their life. Another guy who went back and became a schoolteacher talked about how over time the support from parents has steadily eroded.

• Perhaps the most stunning aspect, however, was just the overall description of life. We have things so much better now, and I don't know if we really appreciate it. People worked long and hard doing back-breaking labor for not a whole lot of money. Running water was far from universal. Housing was much more cramped. Like racial discrimination, this wasn't totally new info for me. I knew for example that when my grandmother was growing up that feed bags were cut up after they were emptied to be used as clothing. That was typical.

And the thing is, World War II and the Depression weren't forever ago. Depression was 70 years ago. World War II was 60. And yet the changes that have taken place have been dramatic. We're so fortunate and I think we usually don't even realize it.