I don’t spend much time writing about politics any more — my mental health just can’t take it. But, data!
Via 3QuarksDaily: the Office of Management and Budget has a blog, to which director Peter Orszag posted an entry on “The Case for Reform in Education and Health Care“. He describes a talk he gave to the Association of American Universities, and makes his slides available as a pdf. From those slides:
Whether you even start college depends as much on your family’s income as on your ability (insofar as math scores are a decent proxy for such ability). For instance, if you’re an average student (middle third math scores) you are about twice as likely to go to college if your family earned in the highest bracket, relative to your chances if your family earned in the lowest bracket. Similarly, if you’re in one of the two lowest income brackets, you can roughly double your chances of going to college by getting your math score up from middle to highest third.

If you do start college, whether or not you graduate also has a lot to do with family income: almost half of the students from the lowest income background do not finish college, whereas the noncompletion rate drops to less than 25% in the highest family income bracket.




There is a vicious circle in operation: relative to a high school education, a college education returns a premium of over 400%, making you that much more likely to contribute to your children’s success, as shown above. (The ordinate shows the log of the ratio between the return to a college education versus the return to a high school education: 10^0.6 is about 4.)




The vicious circle encompasses more than just school. If you have money, you’re more likely to be insured and to have more formal education; both factors make you much more likely to take part in routine health screens, which in turn makes you more likely to stay healthy, which in turn keeps your earning potential up, and so on.




In a similar vein, Ryan Avent adds this figure from the Pew Charitable Trusts’ Economic Mobility Project, which shows that you’re more likely to wind up in the top earning quintile if your parents were in that demographic but you didn’t go to college, than if you did go to college but your parents were in the bottom quintile (click the image at right for a popup or go here):

The rich get richer, the poor get the picture, but Garrett was wrong about one thing: when you’re down so low, that’s right where the bombs are most likely to land. Here’s a little Vonnegut to take us to the news at the top of the hour:

America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves. To quote the American humorist Kin Hubbard, “It ain’t no disgrace to be poor, but it might as well be.” It is in fact a crime for an American to be poor, even though America is a nation of poor. Every other nation has folk traditions of men who were poor but extremely wise and virtuous, and therefore more estimable than anyone with power and gold. No such tales are told by the American poor. They mock themselves and glorify their betters. The meanest eating or drinking establishment, owned by a man who is himself poor, is very likely to have a sign on its wall asking this cruel question: “If you’re so smart, why ain’t you rich?” […]
Americans, like human beings everywhere, believe many things that are obviously untrue… Their most destructive untruth is that it is very easy for any American to make money. They will not acknowledge how in fact hard money is to come by, and, therefore, those who have no money blame and blame and blame themselves. This inward blame has been a treasure for the rich and powerful, who have had to do less for their poor, publicly and privately, than any other ruling class since, say, Napoleonic times.

I would have liked to have cast my first vote as an American citizen for Obama, but I look forward to casting it instead to ensure his second term in office.
Congratulations, Mr President.

This is it, folks. Time to find out whether the US is going to be a fascist shithole for the next 50 years, or start to claw its way out of the pit of horrors that BushCo has dug for us. Election time.
You don’t need me to tell you how to vote, or why. If you vote for a Republican, any Republican, even one of the few remaining decent ones, in this election, then you are a moral midget and an idiot and I hope you get chiggers. Genital chiggers.
That said, there is something I would like to suggest. Lindsay Beyerstein is blogging the Jim Webb/George Allen race live from Virginia, and could use a few clams to defray expenses (like, you know, food). Trust me, she’s earning it:

This rally was the most exhausting photo assignment I’ve ever done. The cab got lost, so I ended up being on time instead of early. So there was literally no room on the riser. The place was so packed that if I didn’t make it onto that riser, I wasn’t even going to see the stage, much less photograph it. So, I took up a place on the stairs, but the media people just started yelling, “Hey, you, get off the stairs!” (I had credentials, they just had a rule about people being on the stairs of the rise.) There was nowhere else to go, so I had to force my way onto the platform with all the big TV cameras. This was a small platform about fifteen feet off the ground and nobody was giving an inch.
I had to put my gear down, but there was only about three inches between my bag and the back edge of the platform.
Then my camera battery cut out for no reason. I had a backup charged and ready to go, but when I say there was no room, there was literally none. I couldn’t reach over to grab the battery out of my bag. Local TV news cameramen were screaming at me–Not at the white guys in suits who were pushing me, or ordering me to move over so they could stand in the non-existent empty space on my right, though. (“Let me just squeeze past you, hon…”)
Luckily, I had a backup camera. Unfortunately, there was no room to change the lens, either.
I shot the whole thing standing on one foot because I couldn’t figure out where to put the other one without knocking my bag off the podium or incurring the very vocal wrath of Mr. Local News.

I’ve previously suggested supporting Glenn Greenwald, and now I suggest sending your spare change (or more!) Lindsay’s way for the same reasons. The web, by way of truly professional-class writers and reporters like Glenn and Lindsay, is very likely our Last Best Hope for an effective media, transparency in government, community involvement in a real representative democracy, and all those good things. Schlubs like me won’t do it — I have a day job. What we need, and I mean need, is people like Lindsay who can deliver professional independent journalism. The web makes this possible, but it won’t work in practice unless we who value it are willing to pay for it.
Holding your nose and voting Democrat in this election is essential, but it’s emergency care — a stopgap, treating the symptoms but not the underlying causes. Lindsay is right there with the bandages and the cardio paddles, but she and other independent reporters like her are — if we pony up! — also going to be around in the long term, treating the disease, actually curing what ails the Republic.
So if you don’t have extra, spend what you can to get rid of BushCo. If you do have extra, now or at any later time, consider supporting online independent journalism so that We-The-People, by way of people like Lindsay, can hold the bastards’ feet to the fire.
(Update: The picture is, of course, one of Lindsay’s.)

I’d vote for him. Highlights from his platform:

End the current superstitious rituals at airport security that any fifteen year old could figure out how to get around. Instead, require every passenger to rub a lucky rabbit foot.
Put the “pro-life” back into “nuclear non-proliferation” by unilaterally scrapping all of our nuclear weapons.
New high priority task for the Army Corps of Engineers: Build drive-in movies. Everyone loves drive-ins.
New policy about gays in the military: “Don’t Ask, Don’t Care. Be Fabulous.”
Tough new copyright law provides works with a full fifteen years of protection…one more than our Founding Parental Units intended.
Government offices will use open source software unless they’re being punished.
I’m tired of tough justice. Let’s get some tender-hearted judges on the bench.
Since we’re not trying to turn out standard kids, why do we educate them to pass standardized tests? New option: To get a high school diploma, either pass a standardized test or be a wiseass in public.
I’d be wrong in public. A lot. I’m good at that!
Any senior government official who does not blog has “[bureaucrat]” appended to her title.
Secretary of the Internet becomes the first wiki-based cabinet post.
I will never ever clear brush on vacation.

David is, of course, kidding around — but many a true word, etc.
Update: oh, nooooo!

I don’t want to, but I have to, at least a little; the US political situation is intolerable. Here are some photos from today’s World Can’t Wait rally in Portland. The organization was poor and the pre-event publicity worse, but they still got around 1000 people (my estimate; the local idiots claim 400 and the WaPo estimate is 800).
Wherever you live, I hope there was a rally and I hope you were in it.