Who Votes in a Low-Turnout Election?

People who pick up litter.

People who let others merge onto the highway.

People who wear seatbelts, all the time.

Who votes in low-turnout elections, like the one Kentucky will have tomorrow?

People who feel that being a dutiful member of the community is part of who they are.

Voting is not really about what's in it for you. 

Voting is not really about whether your vote will make a difference.

Voting is part of being a member of a democratic community.

I can't prove any of the above.  This is my opinion.  But it is my opinion that voting is more a matter of identity and loyalty and character than it is about any instrumental goal.

As for me and Mrs. G., we will be at the polls early.  As usual. I hope you will be too.

Centre Fights Above Its Weight - for the Liberal Arts

Dave Serchuk had a wonderful blog for Forbes on why liberal arts education is so necessary to national creativity. He took Steve Jobs' studies at Reed - taking classes in calligraphy even after he officially dropped out - as evidence of the unknowable future value of a broad arts education.

I totally agree.

Serchuk also electrified the Centre College world with this sentence:

There’s a reason schools like Reed, Evergreen, Wesleyan, Centre College, and Brown will continue to punch way above their weight when it comes to minting future generations of leaders and innovators.

Amen and amen. 

How to Keep Welfare from Undermining Poor Marriages

David Schramm, a University of Missouri researcher, compared two kinds of poor families (making less that $20,000 per year): those who took welfare, and those who did not.

Those who did not take welfare had happier marriages.

Schramm is not sure why.  He thinks it is because work is valuable in itself, and unemployment is undermining, especially for men.  He acknowledges, though, that the welfare recipients might be different - drug addicts or mentally ill, perhaps.

I can see how taking welfare would be undermining, especially for men.  It may be necessary in emergencies to keep your family afloat, but that doesn't mean it is without cost.

There is a wonderful scene in the movie "Cinderella Man," in which a boxer during the Depression is obliged to take relief to feed his family.  He is deeply ashamed of taking charity, but does what his family needs.  Later, when he is successful and famous as a boxer, he turns up in the relief line again. The people in the line know who he is, and are surprised to see him there.  Their faces show that they think he may be cheating the system, taking when he is not really in need.  However, when he gets to the head of the line, he delights the crowd: he pays back all the welfare he took.

That might be a good model for how to keep your self respect on welfare:  make a real plan to pay it back when you are on your feet again.

Fertility Drops With the Economic Recession

Fertility peaked in the U.S. in 2007, just before the recession, at 69.7 babies per 1000 women. Last year it dropped to 64.7.

The CNN report I cite for these figures cheerfully opines that "we aren't going to run out of people soon." However, we could start to run out of people, especially young workers, in we do not have enough babies now. The U.S. is probably OK, but all other industrialized nations are showing similar fertility drops with the recession, and they were in a deep population-trend hole to begin with.

If we want 20 year olds twenty years from now, we have to have them now. By then it will be too late.

The Governor Serves All the People, Including Hindus

Governor Steve Beshear took part in a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a packaging film business that promised to bring 250 jobs and $180 million investment to a Kentucky town. This is what governors do.

Since the firm is run by Hindus, they had a Hindu blessing ceremony. The governor joined in, as governors usually do at all kinds of local ceremonies. The governor graciously said "While I can't say for sure that this is the first time that a boomy pooshim ceremony has been performed for a business on Kentucky soil, I can certainly say that I don't want it to be the last one."

David Williams, Senate President and Republican candidate for governor against Beshear, attacked Governor Beshear for "idolatry." "To get down and get involved and participate in prayers to these polytheistic situations, where you have these Hindu gods that they are praying to, doesn't appear to me to be in line with what a governor of the Commonwealth of Kentucky ought to be doing."

Note that Senator Williams did not object to the governor participating in a religious ceremony or promoting a business run by religious people.

This may be why Senator Williams did not criticize Governor Beshear for promoting the Ark Park, a Christian theme park planned by the same ministry behind the Creation Museum. The governor promoted that project, too, for the jobs and investment it would bring. He was criticized from the left, but in that case they were objecting to the state promoting any religion.

The governor of Kentucky is governor of all the people of Kentucky, not just the Christians. His jobs requires him to promote just about any economic development of the commonwealth, especially now. And I applaud Governor Beshear for being cosmopolitan enough to embrace the rituals of Hindu citizens as he embraces the rituals of his own Christian practice.

India Will Pass China in the Next Generation

These two demographic projections come from The Sustainable Demographic Dividend, by Brad Wilcox and Carlos Cavallé.

What they mean is that, in the next generation, China will not have the people to sustain its economic boom.  India will.