Abstract: Cleanliness is next to godliness or minimum wage? Effects of changes in real minimum wage on food establishment health violation scores in Seattle (6th Biennial Conference of the American Society of Health Economists)

Abstract: Cleanliness is next to godliness or minimum wage? Effects of changes in real minimum wage on food establishment health violation scores in Seattle (6th Biennial Conference of the American Society of Health Economists)

Cleanliness is next to godliness or minimum wage? Effects of changes in real minimum wage on food establishment health violation scores in Seattle

Tuesday, June 14, 2016: 1:35 PM

G50 (Huntsman Hall)

Author(s): Srikant Devaraj

Discussant: Erik Nesson

The economic impact of increase in minimum wage is widely studied, yet, the public health impact of increasing minimum wage remains an unexplored area of study. Facing increasing real minimum wage, restaurants could lay off staff and/or cut their hours; resulting in higher job demands on the continuing staff. These increased job demands could lower hygiene levels in the food establishments may not exacerbate to levels where health authorities close down the restaurant; increase in less severe hygiene violations has implications for public health. A significant labor force earning minimum wage is employed in the restaurant industry, and increase in real minimum wages may directly affect hygiene at food service establishments. There are 935,000 restaurants in the US generating $537 billion in sales annually, and according to a 2012 report by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1.54 million workers (or, 40% of the minimum wage workers in the US) are employed in restaurant and food services industry and earn income at or below the federal minimum wage of $7.25. According to the Center for Science in the Public Interest, between 2002 and 2011, 1,600 food poisoning outbreaks in restaurants affected 28,000 people.

To inform the empirical model, we develop a theoretical model on profit-maximizing food establishments that optimize hygiene violations when faced with increase in minimum wage. Higher critical violation scores have significantly negative effects (e.g., risk of closure and decreased demand/reputation), and cutting back on some services like those with non-critical hygiene violation scores could save on costs without affecting sales or the risk of closure). The theoretical model indicates that food establishments would realize decreasing hygiene quality with rising minimum wages. As an identification strategy we use exogenous raises in real minimum wage in Seattle and use year-to-year difference as predictor. During 2010, 2011, 2012, and 2013 the State of Washington raised minimum wage to $8.55, $8.67, $9.04, and $9.19, respectively. We use the panel data of hygiene violation scores of 4,749 food establishments in Seattle because Washington state is one among four states that require all employers to pay their workers the state’s full minimum wage before tips.

Consistent with our theoretical model, and with first-difference and other fixed effects alternate specifications, we find that for $0.10 increase in real minimum wage, total hygiene violation score increases between 3.35 and 8.99 percent. We also find suggestive evidence of increase in red violation score (more severe violations) between 0.71 and 4.24 percent and a statistically significant increase in blue violations score (less severe violations) between 2.97 and 6.49 percent. Using a difference-in-difference model, with restaurants in Seattle as treated group and food establishments in New York City as the control group, we find that an increase in real minimum wage significantly increases the total violations. Increase in real minimum wage could have consequences for public health, and is an important criterion to consider for food establishment owners, its employees, and policy makers.

Childcare costs skyrocket after minimum wage hike passes | Spokane - KXLY.com

Childcare costs skyrocket after minimum wage hike passes | Spokane - KXLY.com

Childcare costs skyrocket after minimum wage hike passes

Author: Alyssa Donovan, Reporter and Weekend Weather Anchor, alyssad@kxly.com
Nov 11 2016 07:25:09 PM PST

SPOKANE VALLEY, Wash. -
Thanks to Washington voters, folks making minimum wage will soon be getting more money, but will some see that money evaporate as child care costs skyrocket?

At least one local daycare says it will pass those pay increases on to the families with kids.

We heard from one mother today who will be paying $300 more a month for childcare.

Before her phone call, it's something we hadn't thought of - and, apparently, some voters hadn't either.

Parents that bring their children to Advent Lutheran Child Center here in Spokane Valley recieved quite the shock this week when they were told that the pay increase to the workers will be coming out of their pockets.

Heidi Perry, director of Advent Child Care, explained that many parents were not happy with the idea of the cost increase. "I think there was a little bit of sticker shock. I had a lot of parents who walked into the office last night or this morning and say 'am I reading this right?' And I said yes you are."

Perry spoke with one parent who voted in favor of the initiative not realizing that it would affect child care.

Starting in January, Advent Child Center is increasing tuition about $140 a month per child, taking tuition from $705 to $845 a month, an increase some are not ready to pay.

“It just adds to the tightness of general month to month expenditures," said mother Dawn Ellis, who has two children enrolled at Advent Lutheran.

The increase is a direct result of the passing of Initiative 1433, increasing statewide minimum wage to $13.50 by 2020.

Ellis continued, "I understand that they need to capture their difference and make that money back, but then so does everybody else.”

Because Ellis takes both of her children to the childcare center, she will see nearly 300 more dollars come out of her wallet each month.

"I mean when you have your two children and the total is more than a mortgage payment, and then on top of it if you do have a mortgage payment and everything else, it adds up."

Not all of the employees are paid minimum wage, but some are. Even some of the ones with college degrees.

Kristin Larson, program supervisor at Advent, said that "women and men who work here and go to school and get a degree in early childhood education should be paid a living wage."

But the staff does wish that money could come from somewhere else.

"I feel the state needs to be helping a little more,” said Larson, “it would be nice if parents didn't have to spend a majority of their paychecks for childcare.”

Advent Child Center knows many parents like Ellis will try to make it work.

"Even if you find somewhere right now that's slightly lower, once January hits it sounds like a lot of places will be issuing increases. And we like the school, we're happy there, they do a great job,” said Ellis.

We reached out to several other daycares in the area, one says they haven't even addressed this yet and another said the tuition increase is inevitable.

Background Checks Help Black Workers, and the Left Shouldn’t Curb Them | National Review

Background Checks Help Black Workers, and the Left Shouldn’t Curb Them | National Review

Data show that liberal policies have harmed African-American employment prospects.

The greatest moral claim of the political Left is that they are for the masses in general and the poor in particular. That is also their greatest fraud. It even fools many leftists themselves.

One of the most recent efforts of the Left is the spread of laws and policies that forbid employers from asking job applicants whether they have been arrested or imprisoned. This is said to be to help ex-cons get a job after they have served their time, and ex-cons are often either poor or black, or both.

First of all, many of the Left’s policies to help blacks are disproportionately aimed at helping those blacks who have done the wrong thing — and whose victims are disproportionately those blacks who have been trying to do the right thing. In the case of this ban on asking job applicants whether they have criminal backgrounds, the only criterion seems to be whether it sounds good or makes the Left feel good about themselves.

Hard evidence as to what actual consequences to expect beforehand, or hard evidence as to its actual consequences afterwards, seems to have had very little role in this political crusade.

An empirical study some years ago examined the hiring practices of companies that did background checks on all the employees they hired. It found that such companies hired more blacks than companies which did not follow that unusual practice.

Why? This goes back to decision-making by human beings in general, with many kinds of decisions in general. Since we seldom have all the facts, we are often forced to rely on generalizing when making our decisions.

Many employers, aware of higher rates of imprisonment among blacks, are less likely to hire blacks whose individual backgrounds are unknown to them. But those particular employers who investigate everyone’s background before hiring them do not have to rely on such generalizations.

The fact that these latter kinds of employers hired more blacks suggests that racial animosity is not the key factor, since blacks are still blacks, whether they have a criminal past or not. But the political Left is so heavily invested in blaming racism that mere facts are unlikely to change their minds.

Just as those on the left were not moved by hard evidence before they promoted laws and policies that forbad employers to ask about job applicants’ criminal records, so they have remained unmoved by more recent studies showing that the hiring of blacks has been reduced in the wake of such laws and policies.

Moreover, the Left is so invested in the idea that they are helping the disadvantaged that they seldom bother to check the actual consequences of what they are doing, whether that is something as specific as banning questions about criminal behavior or something as general as promoting the welfare state.

In the vision of the Left, the welfare state is supposed to be a step forward, in the direction of “social justice.” Tons of painful evidence, from both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, that the welfare state has in fact been a step backward toward barbarism — among low-income whites in England and ghetto blacks in the United States — does not make a dent in the beliefs of the Left.

The Left’s infatuation with minimum-wage laws has likewise been impervious to factual evidence that the spread and escalation of minimum wages have been followed by far higher rates of unemployment among young blacks, to levels some multiple of what they were before — and to a racial gap in unemployment among the young that is likewise some multiple of what it was before.

Those who doubt this need only turn to the data on page 42 of Race and Economics by Walter Williams, or to the diagram on page 98 of The Unheavenly City, written by Edward Banfield back in 1968. The facts have been available for a long time.

Surely the intelligentsia of the Left have access to empirical evidence and the wit to understand such evidence. But the real question is whether they have the stomach to face the prospect that their crusades have hurt the very people they claim to be helping.

Examining hard evidence would mean gambling a whole vision of the world — and of their own role in that world — on a single throw of the dice, which is what looking at hard evidence amounts to. The path of least resistance is to continue going through life feeling good about themselves, while leaving havoc in their wake.

Staff face sack after Picturehouse Cinemas agree to pay Ritzy workers London Living Wage - London - News - London Evening Standard

Staff face sack after Picturehouse Cinemas agree to pay Ritzy workers London Living Wage - London - News - London Evening Standard

Staff face sack after Picturehouse Cinemas agree to pay Ritzy workers London Living Wage BEN MORGAN

Published: 27 October 2014
Updated: 08:39, 27 October 2014

Cinema workers celebrating victory in a campaign to adopt the London Living Wage were today hit by news that around a quarter of the workforce is now facing the sack.

Picturehouse Cinemas said that the cost of increasing basic wages at the Ritzy Cinema in Brixton to £8.80 an hour would be absorbed by reducing the number of staff by at least 20, with a redundancy programme starting next month.

Two management posts will be axed along with eight supervisors, three technical staff and other front-of-house workers from its workforce of 93.

BECTU, the union that represents cinema staff, today described the move which follows a year of strikes and negotiations as a “kick in the teeth”.

The union is now preparing to ballot its workers on a further round of strikes at the popular arthouse cinema.

The campaign garnered high-profile support from film-maker Ken Loach and prompted boycotts.

An agreement was reached with BECTU last month to rise to near that amount, but there was further concern over backdating pay.

Bectu official Willy Donaghy today said further strikes were “possible” and was set to meet members later today.

He said: “The duplicity of these people knows no bounds. What they have done as soon as the deal was implemented is to employ an individual with a reputation for being a ‘union blaster’.

“This is payback, without a doubt. I expect our members to be totally outraged by this.”

Campaigners claim the Ritzy is the most successful art-house cinema in the UK and is owned by Picturehouse Cinemas, part of Cineworld, which is the largest cinema chain in Europe and has revenues of more than £400m.

Workers posted on Facebook: “This is nothing short of pure vindictive retaliation because we the workers showed that with determination and collectively, we could effect change to make our lives that tiny bit more comfortable.”

A Picturehouse spokesman said the chain was looking at staff changes to save money after the pay deal was agreed last month.

A spokesman said: “The staff at The Ritzy recently agreed a pay package with Picturehouse Cinemas, which includes substantial pay increases across four years.

“During the negotiation process it was discussed that the amount of income available to distribute to staff would not be increasing, and that the consequence of such levels of increase to pay rates would be fewer people with more highly paid jobs.”

The workers dismiss this as "pure vindictive retaliation", but given the limits of the budget, and the increased cost per worker, it's "retaliation" in the same sense a hot stove "retaliates" against the person who touches it.

When Government Spreads Disease: The 1906 Meat Inspection Act : The Freeman : Foundation for Economic Education

When Government Spreads Disease: The 1906 Meat Inspection Act : The Freeman : Foundation for Economic Education

You know the old myth about the meat-packing industry. In 1906, Upton Sinclair came out with his bookThe Jungle, and it shocked the nation by documenting the horror of the meat-packing industry. People were being boiled in vats and sent to larders. Rat waste was mixed with meat. And so on.
As a result, the Federal Meat Inspection Act passed Congress, and consumers were saved from ghastly diseases. The lesson is that government is essential to stop private enterprise from poisoning us with its food.
To some extent, this mythology accounts for the wide support for government’s involvement in stopping Ebola today. Not only that, but the story is also the basis for the US Department of Agriculture’s food inspection efforts, the Food and Drug Administration’s regulation of medical drugs, the central plan that governs food production, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the legions of bureaucrats who inspect and badger enterprise every step of the way. It is the founding template for why government is involved in our food and health at all.
It’s all premised on the implausible idea that people who make and sell us food have no concern as to whether it makes us sick. It only takes a quick second, though, to realize that this idea just isn’t true. So long as there is a functioning, consumer-driven marketplace, customer focus, which presumably includes not killing you, is the best regulator. Producer reputation has been a huge feature of profitability, too. And hygiene was a huge feature of reputation — long before Yelp.
Lawrence Reed deals ably with other myths of the meat-packing industry. Sinclair’s book was not intended as a factual account. It was a fantasy rendered as a socialist screed. It did drum up support for regulation, but the real reason for the act’s passage was that the large Chicago meat packers realized that regulation would hurt their smaller competitors more than themselves. Meat inspections imposed costs that cartelized the industry. That’s why the largest players were the law’s biggest promoters. Such laws almost have more to do with benefiting elites than protecting the public.
Still, there is more to this little-known history that speaks to the entire basis for government management of health. The legislation required federal inspectors to be on site at all hours in every meat-packing plant. At the time, regulators came up with a shabby method for detecting bad meat, namely poking a rod into the meat and smelling the rod. If it came out smelling clean, they would poke the same rod into the next piece of meat and smell it again. They would do this throughout the entire plant.
But as Baylen J. Linnekin points out in “The Food-Safety Fallacy: More Regulation Doesn’t Necessarily Make Food Safer” (Northeastern University Law Journal, vol. 4, no. 1), this method was fundamentally flawed. You can’t necessarily detect pathogens in meat by smell. It takes a long time for bacteria to begin to stink. In the meantime, bacteria can spread disease through touch. The rod could pick up bacteria and transmit it from one piece of meat to another, and there was no way for inspectors to know about it. This method of testing meat most certainly spread any pathogens from bad meat to good meat, assuring that an entire plant became a house of pathogens rather than having them restricted to just one carcass.

Instapundit » Blog Archive » ASHE SCHOW: ‘Yes means yes’ laws also hurt women. “Studies have shown that men are far less likely…

Instapundit » ASHE SCHOW: ‘Yes means yes’ laws also hurt women. “Studies have shown that men are far less likely…

ASHE SCHOW: ‘Yes means yes’ laws also hurt women. “Studies have shown that men are far less likely to report sexual assault than women, but with a law like this, where the choice could be between seeing their futures ruined by an accusation or coming forward with an accusation — young men would likely choose the latter option. If the law remains as it is written, then women would become just as disadvantaged. If, as opponents predict, the law leads to an increase of accusations, anyone accused — man or woman — would be hurt by the lack of basic due process rights.” Since in our culture, women generally feel privileged to touch men without prior consent, one would actually expect more women to be guilty.

It may be time to herd college-age (and soon, high-school and grade-school age?) men into "consciousness raising" sessions where they will learn to file accusations against women who touch them without their consent.

Bees and pesticides - Matt Ridley

Bees and pesticides - Matt Ridley

The European Union’s addiction to the precautionary principle — which says in effect that the risks of new technologies must be measured against perfection, not against the risks of existing technologies — has caused many perverse policy decisions. It may now have produced a result that has proved so utterly foot-shooting, so swiftly, that even Eurocrats might notice the environmental disaster they have created.
All across southeast Britain this autumn, crops of oilseed rape are dying because of infestation by flea beetles. The direct cause of the problem is the two-year ban on pesticides called neonicotinoids brought in by the EU over British objections at the tail end of last year. The ban was justified on the precautionary ground that neonics might be causing the mass decline of bees. There is, by the way, no mass decline of bees, as I shall explain.
Neonics are primarily used as a seed dressing: seeds are soaked in the chemical so that the plant grows up protected from pests and — crucially — often does not need to be sprayed. The beauty of this is that it targets pests, such as flea beetles, that eat the plant, but not the bystanders such as other insects. In the laboratory, bees exposed to high doses of neonics do indeed die or become confused. So they should — that’s what the word “insecticide” means.
Yet large-scale field studies and real world evidence consistently demonstrate that rape pollen does not contain a high enough dose to have an impact on bee colonies. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs report on the subject concluded that lab studies used to justify the EU ban severely overdosed their bees and that bees are not affected by neonics under normal conditions. Australian regulators claim that neonics have actually improved the environment for bees by replacing older pesticides. And in the US, the Department of Agriculture and the Environmental Protection Agency have so far resisted calls to ban neonics for much the same reason.
Even though there was literally no good science linking neonics to bee deaths in fields, they were banned anyway for use on flowering crops in Europe. Friends of the Earth, which lobbied for the ban, opined that this would make no difference to farmers. Dave Goulson, a bee activist and author of a fine book on bumblebees called A Sting in the Tale, was widely quoted as saying that farmers were wasting their money on neonics anyway; though how he knew this was not clear. Presumably he thinks farmers are stupid.
Well, the environmentalists were wrong. The loss of  the rape cropthis autumn is approaching 50 per cent in  Hampshire and not much less in other parts of the country. Farmers in Germany, the EU’s largest producer of rape, are also reporting widespread damage. Since rape is one of the main flower crops, providing huge amounts of pollen and nectar for bees, this will hurt wild bee numbers as well as farmers’ livelihoods.
Farmers are instead reluctantly using pyrethroids. These older insecticides are less effective against pests (flea beetles are becoming resistant to them), more dangerous to other insects, especially threatening to aquatic invertebrates when they seep into streams and less safe to handle. So the result will be more insect deaths. In a panic, Defra has just announced that it will allow the use of two neonics, but — and here you have to laugh or you would cry — both are sprayed on the flowering crop, rather than used to dress seed! So they definitely can harm bees.
The ban was brought in entirely to placate green lobby groups, which have privileged and direct access to unelected European officials in policymaking. They hotted up their followers, using the misleading lab studies, to bombard politicians on the topic. The former health commissioner, Tonio Borg, felt so inundated by emails that he had to do something. Owen Paterson, as environment secretary, received 85,000 emails to his parliamentary address alone. Yet he warned colleagues that a ban was unjustified and would be counterproductive. He was  right.
Back to bees. What decline? The number of honeybee hives in the world is at a record high. The number in Europe is higher than it was in the early 1990s when neonics were introduced. Hive mortality in Britain was unusually low in the year before the neonic ban. It’s a myth that honeybees are in dire straits.
That’s not to say beekeepers don’t have  problems. There was a severe problem eight years ago caused by the mysterious colony collapse disorder — a phenomenon that has happened throughout history and seems once again to have disappeared. Greens tried to blame it on genetically modified crops, but it happened in countries with no GM crops. The battle against the varroa mite continues to be hard. A newly virulent strain of tobacco ringspot virus has made the rare leap from infecting plants to infecting bees.
What about wild bees, and bumblebees in particular? Having read again and again of the terrible decline of bumblebees, I set out to find some graphs or tables. I came away empty-handed. In Britain some species contracted their ranges and some expanded during the 20th century. The specialist species seem to have suffered while the generalists have thrived. But claims of a continuing fall in the abundance of bumblebees over the past 20 years seem to be entirely anecdotal.
As Dr Goulson recounts in his book, it’s hard to study bumblebee nests because so many get destroyed by badgers. The huge expansion of the badger population in recent years cannot have helped the populations of their favourite prey.
Full disclosure: I have a farm. My oilseed rape is looking all right this year, but the farmer is not happy at having to use pyrethroids and nor am I. The local beekeeper is hopping mad about the neonic ban, which he thinks has done more harm than good. And he’s genuinely worried about a new threat to honeybees from the small hive beetle, which is spreading in Italy, a major source of honeybees and queens for Britain. Currently there is free movement of potentially contaminated bees from Italy into the UK. In short, nobody’s taking any precautions about the real threats.

Maxford Nelsen: 'Living Wage' Laws Are Union Lifesavers - WSJ - WSJ

Maxford Nelsen: 'Living Wage' Laws Are Union Lifesavers - WSJ - WSJ

Los Angeles became the latest to join the movement when the city council approved a law on Sept. 24 requiring large hotels to pay employees at least $15.37 per hour and provide generous paid sick-leave benefits. But the ordinance includes a provision, increasingly common in similar ordinances, that permits unions to waive the requirements in collective bargaining.
This waiver enables labor organizers to approach a nonunion employer struggling to pay the new minimum with the following offer: assist them in unionizing employees by signing a "neutrality agreement," in return for which the union will use the collective-bargaining waiver to allow the employer to pay less than the new statutory minimum.
....
With minimum wage and mandatory paid sick-leave regulations spreading across the country, reports of unions using collective-bargaining waivers to their advantage are starting to accumulate.
In 2013 the Long Beach Business Journal cited the collective-bargaining waiver built into the city's $13 minimum wage law as an important factor in the unionization of two large hotels, the Hyatt Regency Long Beach and the Hyatt Pike Long Beach.
In February, following the passage of a countywide living-wage law, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that the Service Employees International Union approached a local home-care business owner and offered to give her an exemption from the wage law "if she agreed to deduct union dues from all of her employees' paychecks."
A survey conducted in May by the Seattle, Wash., city auditor found that 37 of the 56 surveyed Seattle unions had waived the citywide paid sick-leave mandates in some or all of their contracts with employers.
....
After unions succeeded in narrowly passing a $15 minimum wage ordinance in SeaTac, Wash., the local United Food and Commercial Workers union boasted in a newsletter that the initiative "provides an incentive for employers to collectively bargain with their employees." Similarly, when asked why unionized firms are exempted from L.A.'s new minimum-wage law, Unite Here union representative Leigh Shelton complained to the Huffington Post that "because it is so hard to organize a union, we have to do it any way we can."

Seattle Minimum Wage Hike Already Hurting Businesses

Seattle Minimum Wage Hike Already Hurting Businesses

SeaTac, a suburb of Seattle, recently decided to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour and United Liberty tells us that employers in SeaTac have had to cut employee benefits to stay in business after the dramatic raise. In an interview with a publisher from Northwestern Asian Weekly, one employee describes how her company had to cut her benefits to counter the skyrocketing cost of wages: “I lost my 401k, health insurance, paid holiday, and vacation,” she responded. “No more free food,” she added. The wage hike is already hurting Seattle businesses, even though it has not been implemented yet.

The Washington Policy Center chimes in as well, showing how the minimum wage hike has discouraged small business expansion and kept small business owners from opening new businesses or hiring new workers.The Seattle Times also notes, “At the Clarion Hotel off International Boulevard, a sit-down restaurant has been shuttered, though it might soon be replaced by a less-labor-intensive cafe.”
Interestingly enough, Amy Martinez starts the article off by declaring that, “For all the political uproar it caused, SeaTac’s closely watched experiment with a $15 minimum wage has not created a large chain reaction of lost jobs and higher prices…”

She justifies this dubious claim by noting that, while a small sit-down restaurant has closed, “…the nearby Cedarbrook Lodge…is undergoing a $16 million expansion.”

And therein lies the rub.

The Cedarbrook Lodge is 4.5 star luxury hotel and a minimum wage hike affects a 4.5 star luxury hotel very differently than a little mom and pop restaurant. This fact represents one of the strongest cases against raising the minimum wage: big businesses can shrug off minimum wage hikes. Mom and pop shops? Not so much. The argument can even be made that a minimum wage hike is an indirect form of corporate welfare, since it cuts into the competitive ability of big businesses’ smaller competitors.

'What's the Worst That Can Happen?' - WSJ.com

'What's the Worst That Can Happen?' - WSJ.com

It's been a Facebook meme.  What if we create planet-friendly green energy, end pollution, create millions of jobs, and it turns out we didn't need to?

If you count only the possible benefits of a policy, you can make a great case for that policy.

The "worst that can happen" is that we spend trillions of dollars trying to solve a problem that we can't do anything to stop; that we misallocate scarce resources in a way that slows economic growth; that slower growth leads to less economic opportunity for Boston College grads and especially the world's poor, and that America and the world become much less wealthy and technologically advanced than we would otherwise. All of which would make the world less able to cope with the costs of climate change if Mr. Kerry is right.

Reynolds’ Law

I haven't been blogging much lately, because I haven't had many thoughts that haven't been better expressed elsewhere. But I have to draw attention to a remark of Glenn Reynolds, which seems to me to express an important and little-noticed point:

The government decides to try to increase the middle class by subsidizing things that middle class people have: If middle-class people go to college and own homes, then surely if more people go to college and own homes, we'll have more middle-class people. But homeownership and college aren't causes of middle-class status, they're markers for possessing the kinds of traits — self-discipline, the ability to defer gratification, etc. — that let you enter, and stay, in the middle class. Subsidizing the markers doesn't produce the traits; if anything, it undermines them.

I dub this Reynolds' Law: "Subsidizing the markers of status doesn't produce the character traits that result in that status; it undermines them." It's easy to see why. If people don't need to defer gratification, work hard, etc., in order to achieve the status they desire, they'll be less inclined to do those things. The greater the government subsidy, the greater the effect, and the more net harm produced.

Link: http://philoofalexandria.wordpress.com/2010/09/25/reynolds-law/ (via shareaholic.com)

This applies to housing, college, and other material things.

It also applies to social institutions. 

I have to wonder what will happen to marriage when the law effectively subsidizes the status of married couple for people who previously couldn't qualify for it.

Health - Brian Wansink & David Just - How Bloomberg's Soft Drink Ban Will Backfire on NYC Public Health - The Atlantic

Link: http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/06/how-bloombergs-soft-drink-ban-will-backfire-on-nyc-public-health/258501/ (via shareaholic.com)

My Starfish Story

My Starfish Story

via The American Spectator and AmSpecBlog by Christopher Orlet on 4/7/11


My son being one of the smart kids, I am obliged to attend a lot of high school functions. All these events tend to feature the obligatory inspirational-type speaker (a politician, lawyer, or clergyman) who unfailingly parrots the same message. And it's not the virtues of capitalism, trust me. Rather, it's some version of the old saw that "to whom much is given much is expected."
But don't expect much in the way of variety. Nearly all the speakers begin by telling the same tale. I'm guessing you have heard "The Starfish Story." It's the one that begins with the speaker strolling down a beach when he comes across a fellow chucking starfish back into the ocean. The speaker approaches and says something to the effect that there are tens of thousands of starfish washed up on the beach. He can't possibly make a difference. The man patiently smiles and skips another fish into the salty brine. "Made a difference for that one," he says.
At this point my son will glance at me from the stage and roll his eyes. We are both having the same thought: "I'll tell you what kind of difference you made. You just deprived some starving baby seagull of its dinner! And I didn't see you helping those poor jellyfish that washed ashore. Is it because they are not as pretty as sea stars and hurt like hell when they sting you?" My son is only 17; he can look forward to rolling his eyes through "The Starfish Story" for many years to come.
I have never been asked to give one of these inspirational speeches, for obvious reasons, but that doesn't keep me from imagining what I might say. Being a natural-born contrarian, I am inclined to view with a jaundiced eye the notion we can improve the world. I might quote Voltaire: "We shall leave the world as foolish and wicked as we found it." Or Samuel Beckett: "The tears of the world are a constant quantity. For each one who begins to weep somewhere else another stops."
Or I might really mix things up by reading from Loren Eiseley's original essay, "The Star Thrower," which I happened to come across the other day:

In a pool of sand and silt a starfish had thrust its arms up stiffly and was holding its body away from the stifling mud.
"It's still alive," I ventured.
"Yes," he said, and with a quick yet gentle movement he picked up the star and spun it over my head and far out into the sea. It sunk in a burst of spume, and the waters roared once more.
..."There are not many who come this far," I said, groping in a sudden embarrassment for words. "Do you collect?"
"Only like this," he said softly, gesturing amidst the wreckage of the shore. "And only for the living." He stooped again, oblivious of my curiosity, and skipped another star neatly across the water. "The stars," he said, "throw well. One can help them."
..."I do not collect," I said uncomfortably, the wind beating at my garments. "Neither the living nor the dead. I gave it up a long time ago. Death is the only successful collector."

Eiseley's parable is Darwinian in its stark "Nature, red in tooth and claw" conviction. Quite another thing from its sentimental successor.
Fortunately for thousands of after dinner speakers, Eiseley later undergoes a philosophical shift. He dumps Nietzsche for Oprah. As a scientist Eiseley knows nature's inclination is to thin the herd. At the same time, he recognizes man often contradicts his Darwinian dictates (contraception, anyone?). He knows man can be altruistic and compassionate even to strangers, that we can, in that horrible clichéd phrase, make a difference:

"But I do love the world," I whispered…. "I love its small ones, the things beaten in the strangling surf, the bird, singing, which flies and falls and is not seen again…I love the lost ones, the failures of the world." It was like the renunciation of my scientific heritage.

Eiseley then joins the star thrower on the beach, and concludes: "It was men as well as starfish that we sought to save."
Yeah, we got that.
Liberals love this story. But the irony is that to a great extent big government liberals, in their zeal "to save" men through social engineering schemes, oftentimes take on the role of "Nature, red in tooth and claw." Their utopian ideas devastate the least fit, and all too often destroy their chances for a better life.
Maybe that's what I would tell the smart kids. This doesn't mean we shouldn't make a difference. Just realize you're hardly giving back when you throw some starving kid's breakfast into the sea.

How ObamaCare-Style Preexisting Condition Regulations Failed In the States

How ObamaCare-Style Preexisting Condition Regulations Failed In the States

via Hit & Run by Peter Suderman on 3/14/12


Republicans like Sen. John Cornyn have occasionally suggested that although ObamaCare's individual mandate—the requirement to purchase health coverage or pay a fine—should be struck down, the law's preexisting condition exclusions should be left in place. But at this point, even the Obama administration agrees that if the mandate goes, the major preexisting condition regulations should be thrown out too. Why? In part because, as I've noted before, we've watched what happens in states that have enacted the two key insurance market regulations: community rating, which limits how insurers can charge based on health history, and guaranteed issue, which requires insurers to sell to all comers. Those insurance markets have essentially melted down, with prices going through the roof and enrollment declining.
Ian Millhiser at the Center for American Progress has more detail on what happened in the seven states that tried such regulations:

• Kentucky: Forty insurers left Kentucky's market by some estimates, and only two remained before the law was repealed.
• Maine: Thirteen of Maine's 18 major insurance carriers stopped issuing new individual policies. Many also doubled their premiums.
• New Hampshire: New Hampshire's insurance law left it with nearly no carriers in its individual insurance market. The state enacted an emergency tax to compensate insurers for the costs of the law, which was repealed in 2002.
• New Jersey: Premiums rose as much as 350 percent in New Jersey after its pre-existing conditions law took effect. Even HMO plans, which tend to resist premium increases, nearly doubled in price.
• New York: The percentage of nonelderly New Yorkers without insurance grew 21 percent, with premiums increasing as much as 40 percent per year.
• Vermont: Vermont fared better than other states with similar laws, but its premiums spiked an average of 16 percent in two years.
• Washington: Nonmanaged care options disappeared entirely from Washington's individual market. Eventually, entire counties had no private individual insurance options at all.

With these regulations in place, it becomes too easy to game the system: Wait until you're sick, then buy insurance. Insurers have no choice but to sell, and can't charge special rates because you're buying in late. In theory, the mandate mitigates these effects by forcing everyone to buy in, which is why Millhiser and CAP argue in favor of a mandate. Millhiser points to Massachusetts as an example of a successful mandate. (The Bay State, however, has seen individuals game its rules as well.)
And as John Goodman of the National Center Policy Analysis points out, "a weakly enforced mandate with minor penalties would produce the same results" as a no-mandate evironment. Which may be the case. In January, Princeton professor Paul Starr, author of a Pulitzer Prize winning book on American health policy, argued in The New Republic that the mandate as written is "soft" and will be difficult to enforce:

The word "mandate" suggests to most people that a failure to comply will bring serious consequences. But the law explicitly bars the government from the means available to the IRS to collect taxes: the government cannot threaten to seize property, garnish wages, or levy any other source of income, much less impose criminal penalties for failing to insure. What can it do? Withhold a tax refund. In other words, the mandate is enforced only by a forfeiture—the forfeiture of a tax refund, if someone who fails to insure is due a refund.

This does not make the mandate any less offensive. But it may well make it less effective.
So although it is not a foregone conclusion, it is at least possible that if the Supreme Court does not strike down the mandate, we may be left with the worst of all world: an unbound Commerce Clause and a newly dysfunctional health insurance market. 

More Evidence NY’s Cigarette Tax Hike Was a Bust

More Evidence NY’s Cigarette Tax Hike Was a Bust

via Big Government by Capitol Confidential on 1/15/12

The Empire State is struggling to bring in additional tax revenue it projected it would gain from efforts to stop smokers from buying untaxed  cigarettes on Indian Reservations, reports the New York Post:

The state's tax collectors were recently calling around to convenience-store owners, wondering what was up. The $130 million in extra tax that Albany was expecting from a change in the law about cigarette sales on Indian reservations wasn't happening.
A memo sent to members of the New York Association of Convenience Stores from the group's president, Jim Calvin — a copy of which I have on my desk — said, "I got a call from Gov. Cuomo's budget office yesterday. In examining cigarette tax receipts so far this fiscal year (April 1 to March 31) it looks like they will fall considerably short of their projection in new revenues. . . ."
The state had hoped to get the extra dough by enforcing a new law that made it illegal for licensed cigarette wholesalers in the state to sell untaxed name-brand cigarettes like Newport and Marlboro to Indian reservations.

Why the need for the extra measures focused on Indian Reservation sales in the first place?

In short, going "On The Reservation" and buying untaxed, name-brand cigarettes became an appealing prospect to many smokers following New York's institution of a $1.60 per pack cigarette tax hike in 2010:

The reservation store would sell the cigarettes to non-Indian customers who were trying to avoid the hefty taxes imposed by the state. The state and legitimate sellers of cigarettes were both hurt.
The sale of nontaxed smokes by stores on Indian reservations became an issue two years ago when the state cigarette tax was raised significantly and many smokers took more of their business to reservations — or to Internet sellers — whose packs aren't taxed. Some folks even bought lower-taxed cigs smuggled in from out of state.

The news that New York could be $130 million short of projected revenue as a result of its particular approach to sin tax policy may serve as a timely reminder to legislatures kicking off their sessions in states around the country where cigarette tax increases are being proposed, either by lawmakers or influential interest groups.
Among those states are Alabama, Georgia, Idaho, and Maryland, the latter of which in particular is no stranger to the issue of black-market sale of smuggled cigarettes.

Cavemen and Middlemen | The Freeman | Ideas On Liberty

Link: http://www.thefreemanonline.org/headline/cavemen-and-middlemen/

If a caveman could specialize in a single craft such as making stone knives, he would likely become very skilled through sheer repetition. He would soon learn to create better products more quickly and with less effort than if he had to spend potential knife-building time hunting, fishing, gathering food, constructing shelters, building fires, and crafting baskets, pottery, and clothing. Specialization, however, would only be possible if there were sufficient demand for his tools. If the caveman’s clan is small, demand will be limited, making it unlikely that he would be able to trade his knives for enough food, clothing, and other goods to ensure his survival.

Why Pilot Projects Fail

Why Pilot Projects Fail

via Megan McArdle : The Atlantic by Megan McArdle on 12/21/11

It seems that the LA Unified School District recently revamped its lunch menus to eliminate fattening standbys like chicken nuggets, nachos, and flavored milk.  The resulting meals are much healthier, but apparently also much less appetizing.  As a result, participation in the program is down, and the LA Times found students replacing the Beef Jambalaya and lentil cutlets with things like Cheetos.

This happened despite the fact that the menu was tested extensively before they put it into operation:

Andre Jahchan, a 16-year-old sophomore at Esteban Torres High School, said the food was "super good" at the summer tasting at L.A. Unified's central kitchen. But on campus, he said, the chicken pozole was watery, the vegetable tamale was burned and hard, and noodles were soggy.

"It's nasty, nasty," said Andre, a member of InnerCity Struggle, an East L.A. nonprofit working to improve school lunch access and quality. "No matter how healthy it is, if it's not appetizing, people won't eat it."

At Van Nuys High School, complaints about the food were so widespread that Principal Judith Vanderbok wrote to Barrett with the plea: "Please help! Bring back better food!"

Among other complaints, Vanderbok said salads dated Oct. 7 were served Oct. 17. (Binkle said the dates indicate when the food is at its highest quality, not when it goes bad. They have been removed to avoid misinterpretation.) On campus, even adults -- including a Junior ROTC officer and an art teacher -- have been found selling black market candy, chips and instant noodles to hungry students, she said.

"I compare it to Prohibition," Vanderbok said.

This is one more installment in a continuing series, brought to you by the universe, entitled "promising pilot projects often don't scale".  They don't scale for corporations, and they don't scale for government agencies.  They don't scale even when you put super smart people with expert credentials in charge of them.  They don't scale even when you make sure to provide ample budget resources.  Rolling something out across an existing system is substantially different from even a well run test, and often, it simply doesn't translate.

Sometims the "success" of the earlier project was simply a result of random chance, or what researchers call the Hawthorne Effect.  The effect is named after a factory outside of Chicago which ran tests to see whether workers were more productive at higher or lower levels of light.  When researchers raised the lights, productivity went up.  When researchers lowered the lights, productivity also went up.  Obviously, it wasn't the light that boosted productivity, but something else--the change from the ordinary, or the mere act of being studied.

Sometimes the success was due to what you might call a "hidden parameter", something that researchers don't realize is affecting their test.   Remember the New Coke debacle?  That was not a hasty, ill-thought out decision by managers who didn't care about their brand.  They did the largest market research study in history, and repeated it several times, before they made the switch.  People invariably told researchers they loved the stuff.  And they did, in the taste test.  But they didn't love the stuff when it cost them the option of drinking old Coke.  More importantly, they were being offered a three-ounce cup of the stuff in a shopping mall lobby or supermarket parking lot, often after they'd spent an hour or so shopping.  New Coke was sweeter, so (like Pepsi before it) it won the taste test.  But that didn't mean that people wanted to drink a whole can of the stuff with a meal.

Sometimes the success was due to the high quality, fully committed staff.  Early childhood interventions show very solid success rates at doing things like reducing high school dropout and incarceration rates, and boosting employment in later life.  Head Start does not show those same results--not unless you squint hard and kind of cock your head to the side so you can't see the whole study.  Those pilot programs were staffed with highly trained specialists in early childhood education who had been recruited specially to do research.  But when they went to roll out Head Start, it turned out the nation didn't have all these highly trained experts in early childhood education that you could recruit specially--and definitely not at the wages they were paying.  Head Start ended up requiring a two-year associates degree, and recruiting from a pool that included folks who were just looking for a job, not a life's mission to rescue poor children while adding to the sum of human knowledge.

Sometimes the program becomes unmanageable as it gets larger. You can think about all sorts of technical issues, where architectures that work for a few nodes completely break down when too many connections or users are added.  Or you can think about a pilot mortgage modification program.  In the pilot, you're dealing with a concrete group of people who are already in default, and in every case, both the bank and the individual are better off if you modify the mortgage.  But if you roll the program out nationwide, people will find out that they can get their mortgages modified if they default . . . and then suddenly the bank isn't better off any more.

Sometimes the results are survivor bias.  This is an especially big problem with studying health care, and the poor. Health care, because compliance rates are quite low (by one estimate I heard, something like 3/4 of the blood pressure medication prescribed is not being taken 9 months in) and the poor, because their lives are chaotic and they tend to move around a lot, so they may have to drop out, or may not be easy to find and re-enroll if they stop coming.  In the end, you've got a study of unusually compliant and stable people (who may be different in all sorts of ways) and oops! that's not what the general population looks like.

So consider the LAUSD test.  In the testing phase, when the program was small, they were probably  working with a small group of schools which had been specially chosen to participate.  They did not have a sprawling supply chain to manage.  The kids and the workers knew they were being studied.  And they were asking the kids which food they liked--a question which, social science researchers will tell you, is highly likely to elicit the answer that they liked something.

That is very different from choosing to eat it in a cafeteria when no one's looking.  And producing the food is also very different.  Cooking palatable food in large amounts is hard, particularly when you don't have an enormous budget--and the things that make us fat are, by and large, also the things that are palatable when mass-produced.  Bleached grains and processed fats have a much longer shelf life than fresh produce, and can take a hell of a lot more handling.  Salt and sugar are delicious, but they are also preservatives that, among other things, disguise the flavor of stale food.

I think one anecdote in the article is particularly telling.  People complained that salads dated October 7th were served on the 17th--and the district responded by first, pointing out that that was the "best served by" date, not the date when the food actually went bad; and second, removing the labels because they were "confusing".  Now, as anyone who has forgotten to eat a bag of lettuce knows, while it may not actually be rotten after 10 days, it probably doesn't look much like something you'd eat voluntarily.  This is not something that you can change by stamping a different "sell by" date on the container.  If that were my choice, I too would come to school with a backup bag of Cheetos.

So why would he say something so obviously weird?  There are two reasons I can think of:  1) in a large and complicated distribution system, and with their limited funds, he knows that there is no way to actually solve this problem, so they mounted the only defense they could.  Or 2) the school district still has the mentality of the old system, which is mostly focused on not poisoning anyone.  In fact, there isn't much difference between Chicken nuggets that won't poison you, and Chicken nuggets at their absolute peak of freshness.  And the employees just sort of assumed that the same set of rules would work for lettuce.

That's what real world applications are up against.  They're not an awesome pilot project with everyone pulling together and a lot of political push behind them; they're being rolled out into a system that already has a very well established mindset, and a comprehensive body of rules.  The new program implemented by the old rules often turns out to be worse than the old program.  You don't move kids from pizza to salad; you move them from pizza to cheetos.

This is not, obviously, an argument against ever changing anything.  It is, however, an argument against assuming that your changes will work.  No, not even if you had a great pilot.

Upon what basis can an Occupy protest ask someone to leave?

Upon what basis can an Occupy protest ask someone to leave?

via Samizdata.net by (Natalie Solent (Essex)) on 11/23/11

... because "This is private property" or any other version of "You have no right to be here" are open to some fairly obvious ripostes.
"We were here first" - "Er, not quite first. The actual owners of the space were there before you."
"We are the 99%" - "We're poorer than you, you middle class ****-ers"
"We represent the 99%" - "Who voted for you, then?"
"We are the official accredited Occupiers" - "We refuse to be defined by your oppressive structures, and hereby declare ourselves to be Occupying this Occupation!"
I have been reading the minutes of the General Assembly of the Occupy protesters who have taken over the empty UBS bank building in Sun Street, Hackney. One area of concern does seem to be people "abusing the space".

If people want to stay over night (sleep-overs) they need (1) to be part of a working group (2) They need to have an on-going task that warrants their stay. There will be 'monitors' to make sure sleep-overs are not abusing the space. Individuals that stay over and are found to not be working will be given one warning before being asked to leave.

And if they say no, what then? When a warning is given, it must be a warning of something. Presumably it is a warning that the bigger group of Occupiers will eject the smaller group of Occupiers - because they can.
Unless, of course, they can't. If a fight develops, what then? Call the cops? Problem with that.

Plastic Bag Bans Are Bad for the Environment

I suspected as much.

Plastic Bag Bans Are Bad for the Environment

via Daily Policy Digest on 11/14/11

The past several years have seen a groundswell of regulations on plastics, particularly plastic bags and cups and food containers made from polystyrene or Styrofoam.  Supporters of these bans mostly claim that such policies promote environmental protection, when in reality they carry considerable environmental tradeoffs and impose needless burdens on consumers and economic growth, says Angela Logomasini, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

• Plastic bags generate 39 percent less greenhouse gas emissions than regular paper bags and require only 6 percent of the water necessary to make paper bags.
• Simultaneously, they consume 71 percent less energy during production than paper bags and produce one-fifth the amount of solid waste.
• Similarly, reusable bags are only more environmentally friendly than plastic bags if they are used 103 times, yet on average they are used only 51 times before they are thrown away.
• A comparison of the environmental impacts of plastic cups with paper alternatives yielded similar results, with plastic causing 50 percent less solid waste by volume.

Much of the craze that has inspired frivolous and counterproductive environmental bans stems from news stories that emphasize the negative impacts of excessive pollution and littering.  Specifically, numerous references are made by environmental blogs and activists to the infamous garbage "island" in the Pacific -- a giant trash heap that is "twice the size of Texas."  However, researchers have debunked much of the hype regarding this "island" by showing that no such island exists.  Regardless, concerns about littering should not provoke environmental bans -- they should provoke greater public support of antilittering movements, says Logomasini.
Source: Angela Logomasini, "Plastic Bag Bans Are Bad for the Environment," Competitive Enterprise Institute, November 8, 2011.
For text:
http://cei.org/sites/default/files/Angela%20Logomasini%20-%20Plastic%20Bag%20Bans%20are%20Bad%20for%20the%20Environment%20-%20WebMemo.pdf
For more on Environment Issues:
http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/?Article_Category=31

If I were the mayor, I wouldn’t move the Occupy protesters one inch

If I were the mayor, I wouldn’t move the Occupy protesters one inch

via Bookworm Room by Bookworm

The City of Oakland suffered a black eye when its attempt to rout the Occupy Oakland not only failed to move the protest, it managed to create the first martyr, an antisemitic ex-Marine who hates the Marines with an abiding passion.  I'm sorry that Oakland made the effort.  If I were in charge, I would let the Occupy people stay as long as possible.  The benefits of their continued presence in any given City are twofold.
First, in one of those great ironies, the occupiers are learning that their principles work well in theory, but fail completely in fact.  My personal favorite story in this genre involves the food situation at OWS:

The Occupy Wall Street volunteer kitchen staff launched a "counter" revolution yesterday — because they're angry about working 18-hour days to provide food for "professional homeless" people and ex-cons masquerading as protesters.

Two of my favorite writers commented on the lessons that those youngsters enthralled with the Leftist world of unicorns and fairies are learning from this little run-in with reality.  First, James Taranto:

In truth, the Obamavillians are learning why Obama is wrong–why socialism doesn't work. A society that makes a virtue of dependency ultimately encourages freeloading and grifting. The instinct to prevent it is a healthy one. A lot has been written about the similarities and differences between Obamaville and the Tea Party, and here is one: Whereas the latter arose out of the instinct to reward self-reliance and discourage dependency, the former is having it awakened by an encounter with the real world.

Ace has his own take on the lessons the OWS crowd is learning.

Lessons of social evolution, part 8: Sharing of resources only works within a small group with some natural connection (such as familial bond) or other emotional/personal fondness for each other. Sharing of resources generally only works for a brief period of time — the natural resentment towards Takers can only be briefly suppressed — and usually during special occasions (such as communal feasts).
Being expected to share with individuals outside of one's kin group quickly produces resentment, and soon after, a codification of the principle of private property, which is, of course, the right to exclude others from the use of one's property as one deems fit.

Or, to put both more simply the conclusions that Taranto and Ace draw:  a conservative is a liberal who is mugged by reality or, in this case, has to share food with grifters.  The longer the encampments exist, the more the denizens will see that their Socialist dream is just that — a dream.
The encampment's continued existence might also help make non-resident sympathizers realize that these protesters aren't romantic heroes.  If you want to protest in America, you use the ballot box.  The protests are for show, not for real political effect.  As it is, having people defecate on doorsteps seems to be making OWS's neighbors — all of whom claim to support OWS — a bit hostile to the movement.
The growing and instinctive revulsion against the movement probably holds true for the San Franciscans, most of whom are ordinary working stiffs, who have to walk by overflowing PortaPotties near the Embarcadero.  It turns out that the protesters were able to rouse themselves sufficiently to order PortaPotties, but hadn't figured out that they needed to be emptied. I'm sure that the random piles of vomit, feces, and used tampons surrounding the protest area aren't so exciting either.
As for the public health issues,, it's important to remember that the people at these protest sites are there voluntarily.  If the filth, vermin and discomfort become too much, they can leave.  This is true even if infectious diseases start spreading within the confines of these Obamavilles.  Unlike concentration camp inmates, or the people trapped by war in refugee camps, nothing stops these residents from moving on.
Filth and potential disease risks notwithstanding, I have too admit that I don't feel that bad (at least not yet) for the nearby residents, because they've embraced social and financial policies that provided the perfect breeding ground for these anarchist protests.  Chicago?  San Francisco?  New York?  All relentlessly blue politically.  As I noted above, even the Zuccotti Park homeowners have, so far, been paying lip service to the protesters' virtues.  Now, these seem voters/taxpayers/tuition payers are getting to see the real world effect of their ideology.  Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap, right?
If you think I'm overstating the effects of revulsion and disenchantment on any but the truest of true believers, think about the effect a visit to Haight Ashbury during the summer of love had on George Harrison.  Remember that the Beatles, with the best will in the world, supported and advanced the whole hippie movement, which they thought was a step in the ultimate fulfillment of human kind.  The Beatles were therefore very excited about visiting Haight, which they thought would be the apex of the hippie movement, filled with peace, love and harmony.  What Harrison saw, instead, were "bums."  There wasn't any flower power.  There were just pathetic addicts wallowing in filth:

I went there expecting it to be a brilliant place, with groovy gypsy people making works of art and paintings and carvings in little workshops. But it was full of horrible spotty drop-out kids on drugs, and it turned me right off the whole scene. I could only describe it as being like the Bowery: a lot of bums and drop-outs; many of them very young kids who'd dropped acid and come from all over America to this mecca of LSD.
[snip]
It certainly showed me what was really happening in the drug culture. It wasn't what I'd thought – spiritual awakenings and being artistic – it was like alcoholism, like any addiction. The kids at Haight-Ashbury had left school and dossed out there, and instead of drinking alcohol they were on all kinds of drugs.

Harrison gave up LSD after seeing the Haight:

That was the turning-point for me – that's when I went right off the whole drug cult and stopped taking the dreaded lysergic acid. I had some in a little bottle (it was liquid). I put it under a microscope, and it looked like bits of old rope. I thought that I couldn't put that into my brain any more.

I, who grew up fairly near the Haight, never took drugs for precisely the same reason.  These people weren't romantic, they were disgusting.
Perhaps many of today's play-acting radicals will give up Socialism after spending some time in their Occupy [pick a city] socialist paradise. After all, if news reports are true, these People's Parks aren't just figuratively mugging liberals with reality, they're really mugging them, and raping them too* (not to mention the masturbation that keeps people warm on a cold morning).  So let's keep these Occupies going as long as we can.  They're the liberal petri dish we've been waiting for.
__________________________________
*Don't give up on that link, which may well return a denial of service or some other dead page.  Because it is a pithy, easy-to-read summation of the ugly side of OWS, it's been under constant attack from liberal hackers.  If you find yourself completely unable to get through, go to Gateway Pundit, which has been consistently document the complete societal breakdown in the Obamavilles.