Month: May 2025

Chasing the Why

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May 25, 2025

By Stephen Stofka

This is part of a series on persistent problems. The conversations are voiced by Abel, a Wilsonian with a faith that government can ameliorate social and economic injustices to improve society’s welfare, and Cain, who believes that individual autonomy, the free market and the price system promote the greatest good.

Cain said, “We left off last week talking about the strong correlation between personal income and life expectancy in the U.S.”

Abel looked up to the acoustic ceiling tile as he searched his memory, then looked at Cain. “I think it was .85 across the states.”

Cain glanced down at his phone. “I wondered how strong the correlation was among developed countries. It’s not pretty. Mexico and the U.S. are the only two countries below 80 years life expectancy. Oh wait, and the Slovak Republic, what people call Slovakia.”

Abel asked, “Is that where Melania Trump comes from?”

Cain shook his head. “No. Her family is from Slovenia, another central European country. Slovakia is the eastern half of what used to be Czechoslovakia. A fun fact. They are not a top producer of automobiles, but for the size of their population, they have the world’s largest auto manufacturing per capita (Source).

Abel asked, “How small is their population?”

Cain replied, “About 5.4 million. So, a little less than Denmark. Well, I started digging into auto production figures for the other two countries with relatively low life expectancy.”

Abel spread some honey on his toast. “What, like there’s a link between auto production and life expectancy?”

Cain shrugged. “I don’t know. Environmental hazards? Just wandering around in the data maze. Never know what I’ll find. I was surprised to find that the U.S. and Mexico have about the same auto production per capita. Not the same overall. Just per capita. Volume wise, the U.S is the number two producer in the world (Source).”

Abel asked, “Who is #1? China?”

Cain nodded. “Yeah, they produce three times what the U.S. does. Of course, they have four times the population. Anyway, I looked at what has happened to auto production in the U.S. We are producing the same amount of vehicles as we did thirty years ago (Source). Meanwhile, the population in this country has grown 30%.”

Abel raised his eyebrows. “And Trump is going to restore that imbalance with tariffs somehow?”

Cain smirked. “All presidential candidates overpromise. Trump’s not the only one. In a deep housing and financial crisis, Obama promised to do what was best for working class families like the grandparents who raised him. What a bunch of B.S. that was. He did what was best for the banks and broker bonuses as millions lost their homes and most of their net worth.”

Abel sighed. “I don’t think most presidential candidates understand the forces that control the energy in this country. Trump says it’s the deep state. It’s the deep everything. The deep oil and gas industry, the deep defense industry, finance, healthcare, education and the tech ‘bros.’”

Cain laughed. “Good point. And they all have their lobbyists in Washington. It’s the swamp and its deep.”

Abel smiled. “And each president promises to clean up some part of that swamp. Then the gators in the swamp get a hold of their ankle.”

Cain shook his head. “I think it’s us the gators get a hold of. The politicians always seem to get away somehow.”

Abel grunted. “Too true. Anyway, so get back to life expectancy across developed countries.”

Cain replied, “Oh, yeah. So, the correlation between income and life expectancy across developed countries was not as strong the correlation between states, but it was still a moderately strong .6 (Source). I thought GDP growth would help produce better health outcomes and life expectancy, but no.”

Abel asked, “What if a lot of Americans are not benefitting from that economic growth? Too much inequality? We were comparing the U.S. and Great Britain last week on obesity in school kids. Great Britain has a much lower GINI coefficient than the U.S. so incomes over there are more evenly distributed (Source).”

Cain asked. “That measure includes transfer payments in income, right? Pretax or after tax?”

Abel nodded. “Yeah. It includes Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and supplemental income. Any income that doesn’t involve an exchange of goods or services (Source). The OECD tracks both before and after tax. England has the same GINI index as the U.S. in pre-tax income, but their tax system reduces inequality more than the U.S.”

Cain shrugged. “What’s the GINI for Mexico?”

Abel flicked a finger across his phone. “Wow. The same as the U.S. after taxes. Boy, I thought we would be better than Mexico. Let’s see, what about Slovakia? No, that breaks the trend. They have an even lower GINI index than Great Britain, so more equality, and a low life expectancy as well.”

Cain smiled. “Every time I think, ‘that’s the key indicator,’ the data throws me a curve.”

Abel said, “So far what we are seeing is that average income has a strong influence on life expectancy but not the distribution of income. Is that the secret sauce to longer life expectancy? Raise average incomes?”

Cain replied, “It’s not that simple. We have a high income but relatively low life expectancy. But comparing the U.S. and Great Britain over time was interesting. Forty years ago the two countries had the same life expectancy. Since then the U.S. has averaged 3.6% real GDP growth (Source). That means that real GDP doubles in 20 years. Great Britain, on the other hand, has had only 2.5% annual growth, so it takes like 28 years for their GDP to double. Yet improvements in U.S. life expectancy have been far lower than Great Britain over that time.”

Abel asked, “What about healthcare spending? Inefficient overspending on healthcare and the military increases GDP. Any insights there?”

Cain sighed. “Well, you have a point there. The U.S. spends the highest amount of developed countries on healthcare, almost double the average (Source).”

Abel replied, “So other countries are spending less and getting better health outcomes. The public-private partnership in U.S. healthcare is not working and is not efficient. Are you ready to endorse universal health care?”

Cain smiled. “Them’s fighting words. Mexico has universal health care and it’s life expectancy is worse than the U.S. The same story for Slovakia.”

Abel argued, “Yeah, but Mexico and Slovakia are both rated poor in healthcare quality and innovation. The U.S. has good quality health care and the highest innovation ranking, but poor access and a fiscally unsustainable system (Source). Quality healthcare has to be accompanied by easy access to care. Will you agree with that?”

Cain frowned. “On the face of it, yes, but there are all these other factors we’ve looked at. This is a big country.”

Abel asked, “Ok, what about population density? There was a .5 correlation between life expectancy and density among the states.”

Cain nodded. “That was weird. It was the same between countries, so density has some effect on life expectancy, but the stronger factor was income.”

Abel frowned. “That’s surprising. In many European countries, the government provides healthcare so income should be a weaker factor.”

Cain replied, “The contradictions in these indicators drives me nuts. That’s why I say it’s too complicated to point to one or even two factors and say, ‘fix these and you’ll fix the problem.’”

Abel argued, “Well, we can’t sacrifice the good for the perfect.”

Cain studied the pancake on his fork for a moment. “I want simplicity. I dream of a society where we make clear rules, a society where people play by the rules.”

Abel laughed. “I was reading a book by David Graeber this week called The Utopia of Rules. He says it’s a wish that many of us have. You know, everybody knows and plays by the rules and those who play by the rules can win.”

Cain lifted his eyebrows. “Yeah, it seems like it’s the cheaters who win. That was the bitter truth that many of us learned during the financial crisis. No accountability for the cheaters.”

Abel argued, “Even before that. No accountability for actions in the Iraq war. Abu Ghraib. Hollywood had constructed a noble portrayal of American soldiers in combat. John Wayne. Gregory Peck and the like. Torturing prisoners was something the North Koreans and Chinese did. Not American soldiers.”

Cain sighed. “A reminder of Vietnam? Something’s happened in the past few decades. I’m still trying to get my head around it.”

Abel replied. “Graeber talks about sovereignty, something we normally associate with countries. In the post-Watergate consensus, Congress put constraints on the president. That’s changed in recent decades after 9-11, when Congress began to defer to the president. As Graeber notes, presidents can now order people assassinated, extradite prisoners of war to places where they can be tortured. They can conduct surveillance on ordinary citizens with flimsy pretext and sporadic oversight.”

Cain leaned back in his seat. “In Trump v. United States (Source) last year, the court conferred legal sovereignty on a president. A former president has absolute immunity for ‘official acts,’ although the court declined to define those. They used a previous 5-4 decision in Nixon v Fitzgerald holding that a former president had absolute immunity against civil litigation for damages.”

Abel argued, “But Trump v. United States was a criminal matter, not civil. The court just expanded the scope of the previous decision. I mean, this court has overruled previous court precedents about abortion and gun rights made during the 1970s. Then they base their ruling on a closely decided case in 1982?”

Cain nodded. “They created a radical expansion of presidential immunity, then didn’t have the backbone to establish any limits on official acts. I mean, Fitzgerald was a civil case about back pay and wrongful employment termination, not trying to overturn an election. To use that as a basis for their decision indicates just how arbitrary the conservative justices have become.”

Abel argued, “They might say that it is incremental jurisprudence.”

Cain smirked. “Incremental policymaking is a hallmark of our political system. That’s what these conservative justices have become. Activist politicians.”

Abel raised his eyebrows. “Why did you vote for him?”

Cain took a deep breath. “You keep asking me that. The better of two bad alternatives. Why did you vote for Harris?”

Abel laughed. “The better of two bad alternatives.”

Cain replied, “I thought that there was still a Republican Party that would restrain Trump’s impulses. The party is gone. Only the nationalist radicals and hesitant members remain. The name is an empty shell.”

Abel said, “Last week, you mentioned activist courts and an activist executive branch. I don’t attach much meaning to the word. If people don’t like certain policies they attach the word “activist” to whoever made the policy.”

Cain shook his head. “You’re right. A lot of people do that. I mean it in the sense that some political actor makes a rule that makes it likely there will be more rules to refine that first rule.”

Abel argued, “We’ve got a complex society managed by a big bureaucracy. The proliferation of rules is inevitable.”

Cain took a sip of coffee. “Those are procedural rules. What I’m talking about is something different. ‘Principle’ would be better rule. Like sailors back in the old days using the north star as a guiding rule. Then they had a bunch of procedural rules to help them keep to that guiding rule.”

Abel interrupted, “You said political actors made the rule. So you’re not talking about some rule made at an office meeting.”

Cain nodded. “Right. The Supreme Court’s Heller decision in 2008 established an individual right to have a gun (Source). Since then there have two more decisions. McDonald in 2010 extended that right to include the states. The Bruen decision in 2022 ruled that gun laws could no longer use state interests as a balancing test. They had to be consistent with historic tradition. Three cases in fourteen years made it to the Supreme Court? That indicates that the Heller decision was not a well constructed principle. Of course, that applies to a lot of laws.”

Abel replied, “So compare that to Roe, the abortion decision in 1973. The Casey decision in 1992, then Gonzalez in 2007. That’s 34 years for two refinements.”

Cain nodded. “Someone could argue with the reasoning in Roe, but the length of time between refinements of the rule indicates that it was a well constructed rule, as rules go.”

Abel continued, “Maybe I’m not clear on the distinction. If the precedent or outcome of a rule is flawed, how can it be a good rule?”

Cain smiled. “A rule should be clear. It should have as few exceptions as possible.”

Abel looked doubtful. “That’s unreasonable. Take, for example, the rule against killing. There are lots of exceptions. War, self-defense. Is abortion an act of killing? Depends on your definition. Hunting animals? Isn’t that killing? This is the real world. It’s complicated.”

Cain smirked. “Of course it is. I said, ‘as few exceptions as possible.’ I didn’t say ‘no exceptions.’ When lawmakers make rules, they should ask themselves, ‘Does this rule invite a lot of exceptions? How can I change the wording of the rule to reduce exceptions?’ It’s just a principle to keep in mind.”

Abel asked, “So give me an example of a rule that you like as a rule, even though you might disagree with the reasoning.”

Cain barely paused. “The DOGE cuts. The rule was simple. Cut anyone who had less than a year’s employment, I believe. While the rule was clear, it produced undesirable outcomes. They had to hire some critical people back. We won’t know the full impact of the DOGE cuts for a while.”

Abel nodded. “They will cover up the mistakes. That decision was more a programming rule. Code in a criteria and get a list of employee names, then give them notice. Can you think of a law, like something that a legislature deliberated over?”

Cain stared into his coffee cup as though it held the answer. “How about a so-called bathroom bill? They are clear. Only people of a particular sex as listed on their birth certificate can use a single sex bathroom (Source). I might sympathize with people who are struggling with their gender identity. But the language of the bill is clear.”

Abel shook his head. “That, to you, is a good rule? How many of us carry our birth certificates with us when we use the bathroom? It has an impractical condition.”

Cain nodded. “But that’s not what I’m talking about. That’s the distinction. The language of the bill itself is clear. Take for instance the 1972 Clean Water Act. It gave the EPA regulatory power over the ‘waters of the United States.’ Courts and agencies have been fighting over that term and its, let’s see, boundaries for decades. What does that term include and exclude? A clear rule has terms in it with good boundaries.”

Abel frowned. “The Supreme Court often asks what is the limiting principle.”

Cain replied, “Yeah, a good defining characteristic.”

Abel asked, “So you don’t like the term ‘general welfare’ in the Constitution.”

Cain smiled. “You’re right. I don’t. The anti-Federalists at the Constitutional Convention didn’t like it either.”

Abel nodded. “Right. Yeah, Michael Klarman discussed that in his book ‘The Framers’ Coup.’ Did you ever think that politicians might purposely choose a term that has no clear boundaries? It’s the only way that lawmakers can agree on something. The astronomer Carl Sagan once said that people find agreement when they use a broad term like ‘God,’ which encompasses a lot of different concepts (Source).”

Cain nodded. “Good point. It’s a way of kicking the can down the road. It signals that lawmakers wanted to complete some law, to claim an accomplishment when there were still parts not done. So they take the undone stuff, the stuff they can not agree on, and slap a label on it, like ‘general welfare’ or ‘waters of the united states.’”

Abel set his glass of water down. “Those conservative justices who use a textualist approach to analyze a case may be looking at text that was written using ill-defined terms, terms without clear boundaries, to use your term. The textualists claim that their approach is grounded in empirical evidence, but the evidence itself, the text of the law, lacks definition.”

Cain smiled. “I like that connection. It shows the limits of any judicial interpretation.”

Abel replied, “So let’s get back to activist policies. You sounded fed up last week.”

Cain nodded. “Yeah, Democrats are activist. That’s their brand. A hallmark of the Republican Party used to be a certain policy restraint, a prudent caution. No more. It’s so disappointing and it leaves a lot of voters like me in a political limbo. Neither party represents our approach to governing. You know, quit meddling. This tariff business is meddling in the extreme.”

Abel raised his eyebrows. “It was a Republican president and strongly Republican House and Senate that initiated the Smoot-Hawley tariffs in 1930. They imposed tariffs on more than 20,000 goods.”

Cain interrupted, “And imposed no tariff or low rates on a lot of goods. As I said, the hallmark of a badly constructed rule is a lot of exceptions.”

Abel continued, “Ok, the tariffs were activist policymaking by Republicans who held the Presidency and strong majorities in the House and Senate. The Republicans are all about restraint. They restrain free trade, individual choice, government support of child care, to name a few.”

Cain smirked, “Like the Democrats don’t do the same. Restrict guns, oil and gas drilling, dictate to automakers the kinds of cars they can produce. I mean, it’s the Democrats who created the bureaucratic state. All that rule-making limits choices.”

Abel laughed as he slid out of the booth. “Ironic. In his book, David Graeber writes about a paradox. He calls it the Iron Law of Liberalism. When a government tries to promote the free market, it often creates even more regulations. In their own way, both parties are guilty of making too many rules, of creating bureaucratic tangles.”

Cain looked up at Abel. “I wish we could change that somehow. See you next week.”

Abel gave a short wave. “I’ll pick up the check. Till next week.”

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Image by ChatGPT

A Triangle of Income, Health and Education

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May 18, 2025

By Stephen Stofka

This is part of a series on persistent problems. The conversations are voiced by Abel, a Wilsonian with a faith that government can ameliorate social and economic injustices to improve society’s welfare, and Cain, who believes that individual autonomy, the free market and the price system promote the greatest good.

Abel scooped some egg on his waffle. “We’ve talked about the many responsibilities that schools carry and then I was reading a BBC article about clinics in Britain that treat severely obese kids. Since they started these clinics in 2021, they’ve treated almost 5000 kids (Source).”

Cain interrupted. “How many kids are in school over there?”

Abel replied, “Almost 8 million (Source). So this is a small percentage of the school population, but these are the kids referred by their family or school physician. The problem is probably a lot bigger.”

Cain glanced up from his coffee cup. “I always think of obesity as an American problem. I wonder how Britain compares to the U.S.?”

Abel nodded. “A few years back, New York City estimated that over 6% of K-8 kids were severely obese, but they use a slightly different methodology than Britain to classify kids (Source).”

Cain interrupted. “You mean if I walk into a New York City classroom of 16 students, one of them will be severely or morbidly obese?”

Abel shrugged. “They might not even be there. A lot more absences among those kids. They struggle academically.”

Cain frowned. “I expect more obese kids in towns that are car dependent. I always figured New York kids would walk a lot. Anyhow, how do they determine severely obese?”

Abel replied, “Britain uses a BMI over 40. They’ve been referred by a doctor. Some kids have BMIs over 50, like morbidly obese. Thirty percent of the kids who come to the clinics already showed signs of liver disease.”

Cain raised his eyebrows. “Liver disease at that age? Oh, wow. Did they say what the problem was? Does Britain have a program where poor kids get free lunches? Are the schools feeding these kids too much junk food?”

Abel glanced at his phone. “Hold on. I took notes. So, 40% of them came from poor neighborhoods and the schools in Britain do provide free meals for disadvantaged children. FSM they call it. Free school meals.”

Cain asked, “So how many school kids, fat or not, come from disadvantaged homes?”

Abel glanced at his phone again. “Yeah, what’s the baseline? Twenty-seven percent of all kids qualify for the free meal program (Source), but 40% of the severely obese come from disadvantaged neighborhoods. So, that’s a disproportionate amount of severe obesity among poor kids in Britain. New York City found that the percent of children with severe obesity has stayed about the same among all school kids during the past decade, but it has grown among minority students.”

Cain frowned. “My first instinct is to put some blame on the schools for the crap they serve in the cafeteria.”

Abel laughed. “Well, kids are not terribly fond of fruit and veggies. You can’t blame the cafeteria for that.”

Cain was equivocal. “Yeah, but all the white bread, the corn oil, the hot dogs and other prepared foods.”

Abel shook his head. “The kids who come from higher income homes are eating in the cafeteria as well. The only difference is their parents have to pay for it. If the school cafeteria were the chief culprit, there would a growing effect among the whole school population, not just minorities. Overall, though, that report showed a general decline among the entire student population during that decade. Obesity among disadvantaged students ran counter to the trend. So, what’s your next theory, Mr. Einstein?”

Cain smiled. “Hey, I’m improvising. How do they fatten up cattle? Feed them corn. Since the 1960s, we’ve been eating more processed food, more take-out food. What do those foods use? A lot of corn oil. It’s got a neutral flavor and a high smoke point. Great for deep fat fries. Too many Americans eat like it’s the state fair in July. Pass the grease, please.”

Abel argued, “That explains a growing obesity in the general population, but it doesn’t explain why obesity is growing even faster in disadvantaged communities, particularly among minority populations. A lot of those communities are food deserts. The big grocery store chains have moved out. The independent grocery chains struggle because they cannot get competitive pricing from their distributors. What’s left? Convenience stores. Packaged foods. Fried foods, ready to eat.”

Cain smiled. “Like the school cafeteria. Can families use food stamps for hot dogs at the convenience store?”

Abel shook his head. “Nope. Food stamps, or SNAP benefits, can’t be used for ready-to-eat meals.”

Cain argued, “But families can pay for a ready-to-eat hot dog and get a bottled soda with food stamps. Sugar, salt, and mystery meat with a bunch of chemicals, all in one convenient package, aided by taxpayer dollars.”

Abel frowned. “The amount a person gets on the SNAP program is relatively small, a bit over $6 a day (Source). RFK Jr. and his buddies want to ban the purchases of soda or candy with food stamps (Source).”

Cain scoffed. “Money is fungible. Like I said, they’ll just pay for the candy and use food stamps for something else. As we discussed last week, we’ve got an activist court. Now we’ve got an activist executive branch and an impotent Congress.”

Abel smirked. “This is who you voted for.”

Cain laid his hands in his lap. “What I voted for was what I thought was the better of two bad choices. Gallup reported that Biden and Trump have the two lowest average poll ratings in the modern era (Source).”

Abel asked, “Can I guess who has the lowest? Trump?”

Cain smiled. “Yeah. I was surprised. I thought it would be Bush and Trump. Bush had the worst Presidency, in my opinion. He kicked away a budget surplus, lied to the American people…”

Abel interrupted. “Lied to themselves as well. Johnson lied about Vietnam, but he knew he was lying. He’d only been in office a few months after Kennedy was shot and he thought Vietnam was going to be a boondoggle. He was worried that people would say he was weak, that he was an accidental president (Source).”

Cain nodded. “He lied to Congress about the incident in the Gulf of Tonkin to get authorization for an undeclared war (Source). Did the Democratic House impeach him? No. Nixon lies about Watergate and the Democrats impeach him. Noble principles? That’s the lie they tell themselves and the public to cover up the viciousness, deceit and self-dealing that is at the heart of everyday politics.”  

Abel replied, “I hate when you get so cynical.”

Cain shook his head. “It’s realism, not cynicism. Look, politics brings out the worst in people. We see it at City Council meetings, in state legislatures, in the White House and Congress. Lions and hyenas fight over a kill. It’s visible. People fight over invisible things like power and principles, but the carnage is just as ugly as a carcass on the African plain.”

Abel sighed. “So what’s your solution?”

Cain replied, “Make as few rules as possible. The smaller the carcass, the less incentive for politicians to fight over.”

Abel nodded. “Incentives. I was reading a book this week called “Hell To Pay” by Michael Lind. He writes about all the ways that companies suppress workers’ bargaining power. Non-compete clauses, legal and illegal immigration, salary bands.”

Cain asked, “What are salary bands?”

Abel replied, “It’s a way that companies in a sector can collude on wage levels.”

Cain interjected, “Price fixing, in other words.”

Abel nodded. “Yeah. It’s illegal so companies hire a third party HR consultant that tells them what other companies in that sector and area are paying.”

Cain smiled. “Regulatory compliance is a game of cat and mouse.”

Abel continued, “Lind recommends allowing collective bargaining by sector for some industries. Railroads and airlines do it. For small businesses, he suggests a regional or local wage board that would set wages and working conditions.”

Cain looked doubtful. “Let me make this more concrete. Instead of Amazon workers at one facility bargaining for wage increases, all warehouse workers in the entire country would bargain collectively with all employers in warehousing. So all the pay structures are the same throughout an industry?”

Abel nodded. “I suppose so.”

Cain asked, “But there are both large and small employers in the warehouse sector. Are small businesses and their workers subject to a wage board or are they included in the collective bargaining with Amazon and its employees?”

Abel lifted his shoulders. “I have no idea. Lind didn’t get into those kind of details.”

Cain winced. “And if they can’t agree on wages or benefits? Do all warehouse workers go on strike? This scheme complicates contractual relationships.”

Abel replied, “I don’t know. He suggested an independent commission like the FCC that would oversee the whole process. I suppose it could step in and act as a final arbiter and prevent strikes.”

Cain asked, “Almost like a guild system, don’t you think? The merchant guilds protected the interests of shopkeepers and artisan guilds protected some workers in skilled trades, I think.”

Abel smiled. “I hadn’t made that connection. I thought you would like the idea because it allows private parties to resolve things. Lind suggested eliminating non-compete agreements as well. They disembowel workers as a prerequisite for employment. They should be illegal anyway.”

Cain replied, “You’re basically for any regulation that will give workers more pricing power. Companies markup any increase in wages, so workers might make more money, but everyone will be paying higher prices. In response to rising prices, the Fed will raise interest rates. That will make homes and cars less affordable because of the higher loan payments.”

Abel interrupted, “People will be less dependent on government charity. They will eat better. They will live longer. There is a strong correlation between life expectancy and per capita personal income in each state.”

Cain asked, “Will they? Higher rates means less investment growth, fewer jobs added, maybe some job losses. Some workers are making more money, some people are out of jobs, and everyone is paying higher prices. It’s not so simple.”

Abel argued, “The existing system is demeaning for some people. Wal-Mart employees often don’t make enough to provide for their families. They rely on various government programs to supplement their income (Source). That is an indirect subsidy from the government to Wal-Mart. That subsidy goes into the pockets of the Walton family that owns almost half of the stock (Source). If Wal-Mart employees belonged to a retail union, their representatives would be bargaining with Wal-Mart and Kroger and Target and Home Depot.”

Cain shook his head. “It’s too big, too broad. A person with plumbing knowledge working in Home Depot is going to paid the same amount as someone scanning groceries in a checkout lane?”

Abel argued, “Obviously, there would be different classifications of retail employees. However, a plumbing guy working in Home Depot for a certain number of years would get paid the same as a plumbing guy in Ace Hardware or Lowe’s.”

Cain asked, “Who is going to mandate these classifications?”

Abel replied, “No mandates. The stores and employee union will probably agree on some distinctions. They can resolve that in negotiations, I suppose.”

Cain asked, “What about small businesses? Would employees get the same pay and benefits as large businesses? If so, a company like Home Depot would be able to offer employees health care at a lower cost than small businesses. Would there be a law mandating that a small business get the same insurance rates as a big company? What about different living standards in different states? There would have to be an adjustment for that.”

Abel rolled his eyes. “Questions I can’t answer. I don’t know. The private sector would have to work that out. I thought you liked that.”

Cain nodded. “Benefits complicate any solutions. They introduce factors that are outside of the industrial sector that a company operates in. Health insurance, for one. Retirement plans involve the financial industry, also a different sector. Mandated taxes like Social Security and Unemployment insurance involve other government programs. The politicians will be eager to meddle.”

Abel replied, “Ok, so what if there were no benefit package for employees? Start there.”

Cain said, “In 1960, Ronald Coase wrote The Problem of Social Cost (Source). He pointed out that when government imposes a regulation on a firm, the government acts as a super-firm in the sense that it controls a factor of production for each firm subject to the regulation.”

Abel interrupted, “What? That’s like saying that the umpire is a super-team. The government is just there to make sure everyone plays by the rules.”

Cain smirked. “Umpires don’t write the rules. Coase’s point was that private firms must make production decisions within the constraints of the market. They have to adjust to changing market conditions. A government agency has no such constraints. Laws and regulations do not respond to changing conditions. That’s why I favor as few government rules as possible.”

Abel sighed. “Well, we can’t live in an ideal world. I thought this was a realistic solution. I liked the empowerment of workers. Lind gave a lot of examples of how businesses weaken the power of workers to command a living wage. Temporary work visas, for one.”

Cain nodded. “What a racket that is. People with highly specialized skills and there are no American workers to fill the positions? The software company pays visa holders relatively low wages for all these specialized skills. Why is that? Oh, and that knowledgeable visa holder needs to be trained by the same person they will replace. It’s a scam.”

Abel laughed. “You’re familiar with some of the things that Lind talks about in the book. He also mentions the fact that most of those H-1b visas are given to workers from India. It’s almost three-quarters (Source). No other software engineers or computer scientists in the rest of the world? Only in India?”

Cain smirked. “A scam to cut costs by paying workers less. Another persistent problem in Washington is illegal immigration. It increases the labor supply and lowers wages, which benefits employers.”

Abel interrupted, “More demand for housing which increases housing costs and hurts workers. Lind writes about that too. So, if companies can combine to lobby for policies that enhance their power with workers, why can’t workers do the same?”

Cain shook his head. “I have so little faith in politicians to promote self-reliance. They need the public to depend on them. It gives them a sense of purpose and bargaining power.”

Abel argued, “Well, we need an alternative to the current system. Too many workers cannot earn a living wage and have to rely on government programs to get by. Growing obesity in kids from poor families is an indicator of a diseased system.”

Cain sighed. “Now comes the rant against capitalism?”

Abel smirked. “No, no rant. Lind mentions Adam Smith’s comment that a worker should have enough to maintain himself, and extra to raise his family and deal with emergencies. That’s not a recommendation from some socialist economist, but someone who advocated a minimum of regulations. Implementing sectoral bargaining for workers has the promise of lightening government’s role in the marketplace while correcting some of the abuses that our political system has enabled.”

Cain said, “The promise of a lighter role for government? This commission. Is it composed of political appointees?”

Abel shook his head. “Lind, the author, suggested an independent commission.”

Cain asked, “Like the Fed?”

Abel nodded. “Lind gave the FCC as an example, I think, but the idea is the same. I prefer a model along the lines of the Fed, I think. Staggered terms that are longer than four years, so the members of the commission are less subject to the political whims of one party.”

Cain argued, “That’s too much power concentrated in one commission.”

Abel replied, “Look how much power the Fed has. For more than a hundred years, it has given our economy more stability than in the hundred years before the Fed. That stableness attracts capital from the rest of the world.”

Cain looked doubtful. “Talking about the Fed. As I said before, higher incomes will lead to higher prices, higher interest rates. It’s something we could talk about at another time. You said life expectancy had a strong correlation with income. What’s strong?”

Abel replied, “.85. That was based on 2021 figures.”

Cain looked thoughtful. “I wonder what the correlation is in Canada or Britain. I want to check on that. Maybe read that book. Hey, I need to get going. An interesting discussion this week. ”

Abel nodded. “Yeah. See you next week.”

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Image by ChatGPT.

Conflicting Principles

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May 11, 2025

By Stephen Stofka

This is part of a series on persistent problems. The conversations are voiced by Abel, a Wilsonian with a faith that government can ameliorate social and economic injustices to improve society’s welfare, and Cain, who believes that individual autonomy, the free market and the price system promote the greatest good.

Abel looked across the restaurant at a family seated around several tables. “I wonder why the kid is dressed in white.”

Cain turned to look. “Oh, yeah. First Communion, maybe? I think it’s that time of year.”

Abel spread some honey on his toast. “Last week, we were talking about charter schools. A few days later, I was listening to a Supreme Court case about a charter school in Oklahoma” (Source).

Cain asked, “What do you mean listen to?”

Abel replied, “Lawyers for both sides argue their case in front of the Supreme Court and the justices ask them questions. ‘Oral arguments,’ it’s called (Source).”

Cain nodded. “I know about oral arguments. I didn’t know they were broadcast.”

Abel finished chewing. “They started that in the pandemic, I think. If you subscribe to the Oyez podcast, you can listen to it a day or two after the argument. Their web site has a lot on past court cases (Source). There’s also a link on the Supreme Court’s web site where we can listen to them live (Source).”

Cain asked, “So what was the case about?”

Abel said, “Oklahoma has a state charter board that approves or denies applications to become charter schools. A few years ago, the state board approved an application for a Catholic charter school named St. Isidore, allowing them to freely follow their religious beliefs.”

Cain interrupted, “Wait. I thought charter schools were publicly funded by taxpayer dollars. What about separation of church and state?’

Abel nodded. “That’s what the state attorney general wondered.”

Cain asked, “A Democrat? I thought Oklahoma was fairly red.”

Abel shook his head. “No, a Republican. The AG’s office brought the case to the state’s Supreme Court, arguing that the charter should be nullified. The court agreed. Both the school and the state’s chartering board brought the case before the federal Supreme Court, where the two cases got joined together.”

Cain raised his eyebrows in mock drama. “So one state agency, the AG, is pitted against another state agency, the charter board.”

Abel laughed. “And there’s some political machinations on the court.”

Cain twirled an imaginary moustache. “Politics on the Supreme Court? Surely, you jest, my man!”

Abel smiled. “Justice Barrett, one of the conservative justices, recused herself from the case so there are just eight justices, a five to three split between conservatives and liberals. If the three liberal justices can bring Chief Justice Roberts to their side, the decision would result in a 4-4 tie, which would let the Oklahoma Supreme Court decision stand.”

Cain asked, “So what are the issues both sides are fighting over?”

Abel put his coffee cup down. “Before I get to that, let me get back to the politics. So the justices direct their questions to the lawyers for either side, but the questions are designed to bring up points that the conservatives and liberals think are important to their argument.”

Cain replied, “Indirectly steering the debate as the justices hope to sway Roberts.”

Abel smiled. “Yeah. So the liberals focus on the establishment clause in the First Amendment that prevents the government from favoring one religion over another.”

Cain looked puzzled. “I thought charter schools were private.”

Abel replied, “They are, but they are publicly funded, and they have to follow the same rules as other public schools. They can’t choose which students they admit.”

Cain interrupted, “We talked about that last week. The schools are not supposed to do that. Some states are rather lax in how they enforce that rule.”

Abel nodded. “Good reminder. The school has to get approval for their curriculum, and the state closely monitors the school to make sure that it meets the state’s requirements. The state may even have a representative on the charter school’s board. Plus, the state can close the school down. Even though the school is private, the state has a lot of control.”

Cain said, “Reminds me of the debate over independent contractor status. If XYZ company hires someone to do a job, and XYZ has substantial direction and control of how that person performs the work, then that person is an employee, not an independent contractor. XYZ company has to pay employer taxes for whatever money they pay that person.”

Abel nodded. “That’s a good point. It’s the familiar ‘if it quacks like a duck’ argument. So the plaintiffs for the state chartering board and St. Isidore, the charter school, stressed the private ownership of the school, religious freedom and free expression. The respondents, the AG’s office, focused on the control that the state has over St. Isidore and that control makes them an extension of state legitimacy and power.”

Cain looked surprised. “I agree with the AG’s office.”

Abel replied, “I think it’s a case of which precedent do you think should carry the most weight. The conservative justices focused on the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment (Source). A charter school must meet minimum curriculum requirements. One of the lawyers said the state even specifies that dangling participles must be taught in English class. But the school can have a focus like science, the arts, or on Chinese language skills, offering some language immersion classes.

Cain interrupted, “That shows how much control the state has. So what was the counter argument from the conservative justices?

Abel replied, “I think it was Kavanaugh who expressed concern about equal treatment. Each charter school can have a different focus, but if a school has a religious focus, that’s unconstitutional?”

Cain tilted his head slightly. “Ok, good point. An American history teacher at St. Isidore could stress Christian principles as fundamental ideas to the founders who wrote the Constitution. If that teacher cited some Bible verses to illustrate those principles, is that legal? The teacher is paid with public taxpayer dollars. Is the government promoting one religion over another?”

Abel argued, “Michael Klarman wrote a book on the founding called Framer’s Coup. At the beginning of the introduction, he cites Madison and Benjamin Rush referring to an ‘Almighty hand’ or the ‘hand of God’ (Source).”

Cain looked skeptical. “Yeah, but they weren’t referring to a specific religion, or even a broad category like Christianity.”

Abel said, “Should a school teacher in a publicly funded institution cite any religion? If the Supreme Court decides that the state can charter religious schools, where does it stop? What if a teacher cited the Koran as embodying the founding principles of the American Constitution?”

Cain smirked. “Not a lot of Muslims in Oklahoma. I could see where Catholics and Protestants would get into a war over this issue. Catholic teaching would stress the Federalist view of government at the founding. More centralized and authoritarian, the one championed by Hamilton. Protestant teaching would stress the anti-Federalist view associated with Jefferson. Decentralized power, more autonomy at the local level.”

Abel argued, “But both of those views could be taught without referencing back to the Bible or the Koran. Religious traditions provoke too much dissent and violence. The founders wanted to stress constitutional principles that bound the thirteen colonies together, not tore them apart. The European powers were already trying to do that. In Federalist #10, Madison noted the conflict of political factions with differing regional interests (Source). He hoped that the Constitution would balance the tension between national and local interests.”

Cain nodded. “Getting back to the issues involved, you’re saying it’s the First against the Fourteenth? The conservative justices and the Catholic charter school use the 14th Amendment to justify their opinion. Liberal justices and the state’s AG office base their arguments on the 1st Amendment.”

Abel smiled. “It’s more complicated. The conservative justices also focused on the free exercise clause in the First Amendment. The Supreme Court has long struggled with the balance between the establishment clause and the free exercise clause (Source). An individual’s free exercise cannot conflict with state interests like public safety and health. As long as a school meets the curriculum requirements, it has satisfied other state interests. Is it not entitled to express its views? If other charter schools can focus on climate change and environmental science, why can’t a school express its religious views?”

Cain sighed. “So the First and the Fourteenth Amendments are bound together in a way.”

Abel nodded. “Remember that in 2015’s Obergefell case, a conservative court decided that same sex couples had a right to marry (Source). Equal protection. That decision angered some conservative religious groups. The conservative justices seem to favor that combination of equal protection and free exercise over a state’s interest in remaining religiously neutral. I think Alito mentioned the Masterpiece Cake Shop case.”

Cain replied, “Yeah, the owner of the shop didn’t want to make a custom cake for a gay couple’s wedding. Against his religious beliefs, he said. The state said he had to serve the public and couldn’t discriminate against a customer because of his religious beliefs. The Colorado Supreme Court agreed. The federal Supreme Court overruled and said that a custom made cake was a form of expression protected under the First Amendment (Source).”

Abel argued, “Yeah, but the state did not fund the cake shop with taxpayer dollars. Alito sees only the context that will support his judicial instincts. He wrote the Dobbs decision overturning Roe, reasoning that the Constitution did not give a woman a right to an abortion because it was not deeply rooted in American tradition (Source). His ‘reasoning’ conveniently left out the fact that the Constitution as written in the 18th and 19th centuries gave women few rights. They were subservient to men. That’s the bubble of reason that Alito lives in.”

Cain sighed. “Well, remember that he’s writing the majority opinion, so its not just his reasoning.”

Abel shook his head. “Basing decisions on ‘history and tradition’ is flawed. It invites the justices to pick and choose only the history and tradition that supports their biases.”

Cain laughed. “Boy, we could spend a few days on that topic. I do think that the conservative justices are opening a can of worms on this one. If they are going to allow states to charter publicly funded religious schools, some state charter board is going to discriminate against a particular religion. The board will cover their tracks for sure, claiming that the applicant did not meet the state’s curriculum requirements. The applicant will file a lawsuit, claiming religious discrimination. This is an activist court issuing decisions based on unclear reasoning.”

Abel interrupted, “Unclear reasoning. You are being generous.”

Cain shrugged. “The lower courts don’t know how to apply that reasoning. Inevitably, more cases will come to the court, and it will clarify its reasoning.”

Abel smirked. “This court will be dominated by this kind of thinking for decades to come. Anyway, let’s move on from court stuff. Last week, we were talking about problems in education. One of the problems we didn’t discuss is the expectations of parents. Mom and dad might expect school instruction for their child to have the same elements as when they went to school. Like multiplication tables in grammar school or some in high school who had to memorize a poem by Shakespeare.”

Cain nodded. “Well, I thought it was reassuring that they are still teaching dangling participles. There was much more focus on rote learning when we were going to school.”

Abel continued, “That rote learning helped kids learn some basic job skills, like how to make change. Today, some might argue that kids rely on the cash register or the computer to do the math for them so why should kids learn basic math skills? I’d argue that, without those basic skills like percentages and such, kids will become easy prey when they grow up. People can dazzle them with fancy figures that they can’t follow and sell them financial products that hurt rather than help them.”

Cain laughed. “They will ask ChatGPT for financial advice, I suppose. They’ll become like the society in the movie ‘Wall-E’ where they are totally reliant on machines for everything. But what kid thinks about investments? That’s far in the future.”

Abel argued, “Maybe at a very young age, you’re right. A month from now is a long time in a young kid’s mind. But there have been good experiments with high schoolers managing stock portfolios.”

Cain replied, “Goes to show that incentives matter. In the search for YouTube subscribers, a kid will rip a favorite album and upload it to YouTube, complete with notes and navigation to each track in the album. The kid will see little money for all that effort because the recording artist will monetize any ad revenue, but just the prospect of getting more subscribers gets the kid to spend that time and effort. We need to apply those lessons to school learning.”

Abel looked doubtful. “Look, there’s stages in brain development. At the risk of herding kids to learn the same thing at the same time, we can’t be teaching calculus to sixth graders.”

Cain argued, “We had our daughter in Montessori school for a few years. She was in a classroom with kids of different ages. She was about seven and heard about fractions, told the teacher she wanted to learn about them and the teacher had one of the older girls show her fractions. We need more innovative teaching methods, not rigid curriculum.”

Abel shook his head. “Some kids really struggle with fractions and decimals and need to be taught by someone with more experience. You know, someone who knows different approaches to help them understand. The fault of ‘new math’ when it was taught in the 1970s and 80s was trying to teach kids about rules and how they affect relationships between numbers. It was too abstract for a lot of kids.”

Cain was equivocal. “Well, there were also kids who were good at memorizing. They had memorized that three-eighths was less than a half without really understanding the concept. I remember one kid in fourth grade, I think. To add two fractions, he cross multiplied them even when they had the same base.”

Abel cocked his head. “What do you mean?”

Cain replied, “Like two-fourths plus one-fourth. He didn’t need to find a common denominator and cross multiply because the two fractions already have the same base, which is four. The kid had found that the cross-multiplication procedure got the right answer, so he used that all the time.”

Abel looked puzzled. “What if the problem involved adding a whole number and a fraction, like four plus a half.”

Cain smiled. “He would convert the whole number to a fraction, like make four into a fraction of four over 1, then go through his procedure. He was so resistant when I tried to show him any method that was quicker. ‘I might get the wrong answer,’ he told me.”

Abel lifted an eyebrow. “You know, I’ll bet a lot of people carry that approach into their adulthood. They resist change, new methods of doing things, or new arguments. If we looked closely, we’d probably see that same rigid approach at parent-teacher conferences and city council meetings.”

Cain laughed. “Or on the Supreme Court. Using the same kind of reasoning in two cases that have critical differences. Some justices ignore the different principles involved, brushing the differences aside as unimportant.”

Abel smiled. “Different species of animal tend to follow a well-worn path in the forest, even if there has been some change to the landscape and there is an easier path down to the river, for instance. Do they take the easier path? No. They use the same rule.”

Cain asked, “How do we teach kids that different rules apply in different circumstances? That’s what English and math are all about. That’s the importance of learning a foreign language. We become aware that other languages have different rules than our native language. It makes us more aware of the rules that structure our native language.”

Abel asked, “So what about a public school teaching comparative religions? The kids would learn that each religion has different beliefs, customs and rules for interpreting our relationship with the infinite, our own mortality, and the society around us. Could a public school teach both Islam and Catholicism?”

Cain looked puzzled. “What about the Jewish faith? Or Evangelical beliefs? A good background in comparative religions is a lot to ask of a 4th grade teacher. I still think that the state needs to steer clear of funding religious instruction.”

Abel sighed. “I think this decision will be important. Last week, you mentioned that a third of Rochester’s public schools are charter. One of the lawyers arguing at the Supreme Court mentioned that all of New Orleans public schools are charter (Source). The state, as a whole, has only 11% charter schools, but it’s a growing constituency (Source).”

Cain laid his napkin on the table next to his plate. “Sometimes I think that these problems persist because we hold onto conflicting principles. We want schools to be like a Swiss army knife, a multi-tool that addresses several problems and we can’t agree on priorities. We want people to be housed but we want to preserve the character of our neighborhoods and that makes it difficult to build affordable housing. We want the state to stay out of religion, but we want to preserve free speech and religious freedom.”

Abel nodded. “Maybe that’s the most persistent problem of all. It’s like we’re sitting on a wagon being pulled by two horses and we have no reins to guide the horses. Hey, I see you’re ready to go. Maybe we could talk about that next week.”

Cain laughed as he stood. “I like that horse analogy. My treat this week. See you next week.”

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Image by ChatGPT in response to the prompt: “draw an image of two ghosts styled like Casper the Ghost getting ready to have a boxing match.”

It’s Complicated

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May 4, 2025

By Stephen Stofka

This is part of a series on persistent problems. The conversations are voiced by Abel, a Wilsonian with a faith that government can ameliorate social and economic injustices to improve society’s welfare, and Cain, who believes that individual autonomy, the free market and the price system promote the greatest good.

Cain said, “A little thing I appreciate about this place is they serve melted butter, not frozen butter packets.”

Abel nodded. “A little extra time and care.”

Cain asked, “You need to wash up before you eat?”

Abel turned his right hand over. “Oh, that’s just dirt under my fingernails. Getting the flower beds ready and weeding. What about you? Anything interesting this week?”

Cain spread a small amount of butter on his waffle. “We were talking about common problems like homelessness, and I thought we could talk about education this week. K-12, primarily.”

Abel put his coffee cup down. “Oops. That reminds me. Last week I mentioned that the Feds had helped fund the capital portion of Denver’s homeless program. This past week the city council learned that FEMA has canceled a $32 million grant because Denver is a sanctuary city (Source). The agency had already received $8 million of that grant.”

Cain frowned. “Can the Feds take the money back?”

Abel shook his head. “I don’t know. I don’t think the City Council knows. There’s no rules. The Trump administration is just doing stuff. Anyway, education is even more complicated than homelessness. What got you interested in education this week?”

Cain sighed. “An argument with my daughter.”

Abel frowned. “She teaches sixth grade, right?”

Cain replied, “Fifth. She says that kids are still kids at that age. Then they turn into discipline problems.”

Abel smiled. “The stages of child development. The terrible twos, the argumentative fours and then middle school.”

Cain laughed. “Then teenager. I used to think, ‘Was I like this when I was growing up?’ It gave me a new appreciation for my parents.”

Abel said, “So, go on. What was the argument about?”

Cain pursed his lips. “Oh, we got into one of those equity, equality discussions. I should know better. I said that a kid who can barely read is not going to do as well in life. Society should accept that and devote more of their resources to the more gifted kids. They are the ones who will do the most for society.”

Abel nodded. “A Pareto improvement in the long run. It would benefit the more gifted without materially harming outcomes for those with learning disabilities (Source).”

Cain replied, “I actually called it that. She said that such a shift in resources would harm struggling students. I said that the current condition already harms the more gifted and her perspective was too myopic. I might have characterized her position as Marxist.”

Abel gave a skeptical look as he lifted his coffee cup. “Rawlsian, maybe. The Difference Principle. The whole idea that we should reduce inequality so that the least of us benefit the most (Source). But, Marxist?”

Cain sighed. “Not my best moment. Anyway, she accused me of being uncharitable and I took offense. After helping her out so many times, she calls me uncharitable?”

Abel frowned. “Sorry that happened. I hate when arguments turn from an exploration of different claims to throwing word darts at each other.”

Cain raised his eyebrows. “Then she said I didn’t know what I was talking about. All opinion and little evidence.”

Abel winced. “Ouch. This is a topic you two should not discuss.”

Cain smiled. “Usually we don’t and this is why. Anyway, she started describing some education metrics that, I’ll admit, I was unfamiliar with. We didn’t have all this stuff when she was a kid in school. She mentioned all the pressure that teachers are under, and I didn’t appreciate her contribution or her sacrifice.”

Abel interrupted, “She took it personal. You were a stand-in for society as a whole.”

Cain bit his lip. “Looking back, yeah, I guess you’re right. I reassured her that I respected her choice of career and apologized for hurting her feelings.”

Abel clapped softly. “Smart dad.”

Cain smirked. “I’m either getting soft or wiser in my old age. Anyway, I went to look up some data.”

Abel leaned forward. “So her evidence comment had some effect on you. What are some of these new metrics?”

Cain said, “My daughter mentioned an iReady score so I watched a video on iReady tests (Source). Their scores indicate whether a child is performing at or below grade level. I think that would be easier for parents to understand than a percentile rank. When they summarize an entire school district, educators, politicians and parents can get a simple but clear picture of academic progress across several grades (Example). In the spring of 2024, only a quarter of students in the Rochester School District were performing at or above grade level. A third were three or more grades behind (Source).”

Abel frowned. “Oomph. I’ll bet that stirs up a lot of political disagreements and accusations.”

Cain nodded. “You bet. They are spending like $30,000 per student (Source), but that’s below the state average of $36,000 (Source). New York has some of the highest spending in the nation.”

Abel shrugged. “Childcare alone can run $20,000. We expect a lot more from schools. What’s the poverty level in Rochester? Do you know?”

Cain stared at his coffee cup as though it held the answer. “It was about 25% (Source). Yeah, a huge problem. That city is a cautionary tale in the benefits of economic diversification.”

Abel asked, “What got you interested in Rochester?”

Cain smiled. “I was looking up information on test scores and somehow wound up reading some article about Rochester. I’ve been through there a few times. It’s just north of the Finger Lakes in New York State. Beautiful in the spring. Brutal in the winter because it’s on Lake Ontario.”

Abel said, “I thought it was a booming city in the 1950s. Wasn’t Eastman Kodak headquartered there?”

Cain raised his eyebrows. “Yeah, that whole corridor along I-90 was booming in the post-war period. Kodak was a big employer. So was Xerox, the copier company. Bausch and Lomb, the eyeglass manufacturer. Less than two hours away to the east was Syracuse, another prosperous town at that time. General Electric had a plant there. So did Carrier, the air conditioner company. To the west was Buffalo. Bethlehem Steel was near there and some other manufacturers as well.”

Abel replied, “So this was the industrial Promised Land that Trump talks about. Like Moses, he will lead the MAGA tribe to that Golden Age.”

Cain smiled. “Yeah. There were similar industrial corridors like that in other states. Relatively high unionization rates. During that time, more than a third of workers in New York State were unionized. Workers earned middle-class incomes.”

Abel interrupted, “Mostly white?”

Cain’s eyes widened. “Yeah, almost 100% until the late 1950s (Source). As the workforce expanded, blacks moved to the area to take lower skilled jobs (Source).”

Abel interrupted again, “Companies were importing workers to cut costs. Eventually, those companies would export those jobs to other countries. So, what’s the unionization rate now?”

Cain put his coffee cup down. “New York still has a relatively high unionization rate, but it’s now just under 25%. In Rochester, it’s half that rate (Source).”

Abel asked, “A lot of homeless, I imagine.”

Cain nodded. “After the pandemic moratoriums on evictions ended, the number of unsheltered homeless almost doubled in Rochester (Source). I was surprised to find that Oregon and New York State have the highest rates of homelessness in the country, but New York finds shelter for most of their homeless. Oregon doesn’t (Source).”

Abel frowned. “That surprises me. I think of Oregon as a rather progressive state. They have voted for the Democratic candidate in past presidential elections.”

Cain raised his eyebrows. “California and Oregon have higher rates of unsheltered homeless than some warm southern states like Florida, Alabama and Georgia (Source).”

 Abel looked puzzled. “We started talking about problems in education, which took us to issues with poverty and now we are at the homeless problem that we discussed the past few weeks. In 2002, Stephen Wolfram published a book called ‘A New Kind of Science.’ In it he showed how a simple rule could produce complex visual patterns or a bland uniformity of color.”

Cain interrupted, “And this is leading to…?”

Abel gave a short laugh. “I’m thinking out loud. So, we recognize a problem in education, for instance. It’s related to poverty. That’s related to an industrial downturn over several decades. That’s related to too much reliance on related industries, you said. Maybe that’s related to Rochester’s role in industrial production during World War 2.  I think we long to discover that one simple rule that produced such a complex set of problems. Someone like Trump comes along and claims to know the rule and how to fix it. ‘Vote for me,’ they say. People do.”

Cain smiled. “You know I like simple rules.”

Abel grinned. “I know you do. Republican voters in general like simple answers. Tax cuts, for instance. Republican politicians promise, ‘Tax cuts will increase investment and boost jobs, and the benefits will trickle down to the larger population.’ In theory, it sounds plausible. We’ve had tax cuts in 2001, 2003, 2009, 2010, 2012 and 2017. There’s no evidence that they increased investment and boosted job growth.”

Cain argued, “Democrats are guilty of the same simplistic thinking. They say, ‘give government more money by taxing the rich. Government experts will fix it.’ Do those experts fix it? No. Experts are good at research and crafting a lot of rules. Not so good at implementing solutions.”

Abel nodded. “Proves my point. We like to believe in simple rules. Although, when given a simple rule, we don’t like to follow it. Jesus had just two rules. ‘Love thy neighbor as thyself’ was the second.”

Cain smirked. “That’s a simple rule to state, and a deceptively hard rule to follow. We could spend hours on the contradictions that such a rule generates.”

Abel snapped his fingers. “Eureka! Let’s call it ‘Cain’s Theorem.’ Simple rules can generate complex contradictions.”

Cain laughed. “When simple rules involve public policy. Maybe that’s what Wolfram’s complex visual patterns described. An intricate set of contradictions.”

Abel replied, “That’s good. Getting back to education, I think one of the problems is that the task of public education has gradually expanded. Their stated role is to educate our kids, but they are also babysitters. They provide at least some structured time and a place for kids to develop companionship.”

Cain interrupted, “For some kids, school is a food pantry and a security blanket. Special needs kids might need medical assistance.”

Abel nodded. “Good point. Then we fault the schools when the kids get low test scores. We give the schools all these tasks but measure only the test scores.”

Cain smirked. “What, like a babysitter score?”

Abel replied, “Well they could measure the diameter of each kid’s arm to test for malnutrition (Source). What about gains in productivity? While the school is babysitting children, the parents are more productive. That benefits society but who counts that?”

Cain frowned. “Hard to measure, but ok, I’ll give you that. So, your point is that school scores should reflect all the roles that society imposes on them? What, a composite score?”

Abel nodded. “Yeah, call it an iSchool score like that iReady score for students that you talked about.”

Cain shook his head. “Schools in middle-class and higher income neighborhoods would score well on those other measures with little effort. Schools in low-income districts would struggle.”

Abel argued, “But at least their efforts would be recognized.”

Cain shrugged. “What benefit is a good nutrition score if that doesn’t lead to higher test scores? The schools may have multiple responsibilities, but their main purpose is education.”

Abel frowned. “I don’t like the way the system treats kids like machines. Inputs and outputs.”

Cain replied, “Incentives are the key.”

Abel sighed. “Your answer to everything.”

Cain laughed. “Gimme a break. Look, test scores are important to some kids. Others, not so much. Social media apps like TikTok have been very successful at getting kids to spend a lot of time on their phones.”

Abel scoffed. “That’s not learning like school.”

Cain argued, “It’s engagement. Learning is an outcome of engagement. Look at those computer games where kids work their butts off to acquire some magical power token in the game.”

Abel agreed, “Kids are magical thinkers. What are you suggesting? There are no magical tokens in real life.”

Cain shook his head. “Sure, there are. Kids don’t recognize them. Language and math skills. Develop their memory, visualization and analytical skills. Hand-eye coordination. Manual skills. We give these kids numerical scores for their accomplishments, maybe a trophy or two. That’s not enough incentive for many students. They cry out for recognition and status.”

Abel said, “I worked with a guy who grew up in Detroit. A lot of kids planned on working the assembly line in an auto plant. School accomplishments weren’t all that important.”

Cain nodded. “Same thing in a mining town or any town where a single industry dominates the local economy. Like in West Virginia, dad works in a mine. The sons follow in his footsteps. Not much else to do in an economy like that. No policy solution can fit every circumstance.”

Abel replied, “Minority kids can get discouraged if they think that being a minority is a handicap in the job market. Resentment will interfere with any motivation they have to develop job skills. How many black students in Rochester public schools? Do you know?”

Cain replied, “Almost half. Less than 10% of students are white (Source).”

Abel whistled softly. “White flight. Another complication. Remember all the controversy in the 1970s over busing students to integrate schools after the Supreme Court decision? (Source)”

Cain nodded. “Yeah, and that reduces property values and property tax collections. That makes Rochester dependent on the state for a lot of it’s school funding (Source).”

Abel replied, “Reinforces my point. A simple solution like ‘incentives’ won’t work. Elements of the problem are interwoven throughout the society and the economy. As far as incentives go, what matters to kids changes as they grow up. That’s a relatively short time. We try to teach them what’s important when they become adults.”

Cain sighed. “In twenty years, what’s important in the job market can change. Kids need to be adaptable.”

Abel interrupted, “That supports my argument that school is about more than job skills. Developing values, a sense of history and past conflicts and learning about the society that kids were born into. I’ll grant you, these are not all marketable skills, but they help children become more complete human beings.”

Cain asked, “Is that the role of schools? Too many kids graduate high school and are little more than functional readers. How is a kid going to fully develop if they can barely read?”

Abel argued, “The answer is not to force all the marginal students on public schools, and allow charter schools to discourage children with learning disabilities. Anyway, how do these new metrics help students?”

Cain replied, “They indicate where the student is weak, particularly in math and reading skills. That helps the parents and student focus on those key areas. Teachers can form groups within a classroom, matching students who have similar areas that they need to focus on.”

Abel nodded. “A lot more work for the teachers. That’s what your daughter was talking about.”

Cain sighed. “Yeah. More work for the same pay.”

Abel asked, “How does a card carrying libertarian have a daughter teaching public school?”

Cain smirked. “Classical liberal, not libertarian. Don’t ask me. She has wanted to be a teacher since she was eight, I think. She would make tests for her mother and me.”

Abel gave a silent whistle. “She made you take tests?”

Cain laughed. “Yep. We had to keep our eyes on our own test paper. Very serious. I’ve come to believe that teaching is a passion. It’s like people who have to play music. It’s who they are.”

Abel nodded. “For a lot of musicians and teachers, it’s certainly not about the money. Have you suggested she teach at a charter school?”

Cain replied, “I did. She said she couldn’t afford to. A few years ago, teachers at charter schools in Denver were making about 60% of what public school teachers make (Source). I was shocked to learn that the average salary of about $44,000 is a little bit more than what a retail clerk earns (Source).”

Abel frowned. “That’s for nine or ten months of work, though.”

Cain’s jaw tightened. “My daughter informed me in a firm tone of voice that a lot of teachers squeeze a full year’s time working during that period.”

Abel raised his eyebrows. “School boards respond to shifts in cultural values, then impose those burdens on teachers. Why would a teacher work for that kind of money? It doesn’t exactly fit your favorite theory about how prices allocate resources.”

Cain replied, “Like I said, it’s a passion. But I still think that prices allocate resources. Just because there are black holes in space, we don’t say that the theory of gravity is wrong. There are limits to any theory.”

Abel set his fork down. “Is there a big move to charter schools in Rochester? An effort to cut costs?”

Cain replied, “More than a third of students in Rochester are in charter schools already (Source). For New York State as a whole, less than 10% of students are in charter school (Source). In Colorado, it’s 15% (Source).”

Abel frowned. “I thought the charter school movement was primarily about autonomy. It’s as much about costs.”

Cain looked up at the clock above Abel’s head. “I’m a firm believer in adaptability, a variety of solutions. That’s what the private marketplace is all about. Government institutions ignore varying circumstances when they impose a rigid standard on all communities.”

Abel interrupted, “There have to be some basic rules, civil rights and liberties that apply to all individuals. That spirit is at the heart of the Constitution.”

Cain nodded and stood, laying his napkin on the table. “You’re right, but I think the Feds should leave it to the states to craft solutions that protect those liberties. I grant you it’s not easy.”

Abel looked up. “I’ll talk to you next week.”

Cain turned to go. “Yeah. The time got away from me. I’ll see you next week.”

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Image by ChatGPT in response to the prompt “draw an image of a cat’s cradle.”

Delmont, M., & Theoharis, J. (2017). Introduction: Rethinking the Boston “Busing Crisis”. Journal of Urban History, 43(2), 191-203. https://doi.org/10.1177/0096144216688276