UnHerd: Crony capitalism is empowering the Left

And yet it might explain a seemingly paradoxical feature of our contemporary politics. This is an era of widening inequality – of real anger towards the rich and powerful. And yet as The Economist notes, there’s been no groundswell in support for redistribution through the tax and benefit system.

It’s telling that the radical parties of the Left talk about more spending through borrowing or by resort to exotic measures such as Modern Monetary Theory. If higher taxation is mentioned at all, it is very clearly targeted at the super-wealthy and corporations. As for spending priorities, the emphasis is on free stuff for everyone – e.g. the abolition of student fees, socialised healthcare, universal basic income etc – as opposed to support targeted at the poor.

As I’ve argued before, you don’t get Scandinavian-style welfare states without Scandinavian levels of taxation on middle-class incomes – but that appears to be an unsaleable proposition in politics these days. [...]

I wonder if trends like the expansion of higher education, competition for affordable housing in expensive cities and the erosion of some mid-level occupations is having the effect of pushing the classes closer together – both physically and in terms of socio-economic status. One might have thought this would encourage solidarity, but it could be having the opposite effect – undermining popular support for focusing government assistance on the poorest people.

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Inverse: Same-Sex Marriage Legalization Actually Changed Americans' Level of Bias

A team of researchers reported Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that the legalization of same-sex marriage on a state-by-state basis decreased anti-gay bias at a rapid rate. This result held true across the 35 states and Washington, D.C., which legalized same-sex marriage in some form before the US Supreme Court ruled that marriage was a fundamental right for all in 2015.

However, a sharp contrast emerged across the 15 states that did not pass same-sex marriage locally before the Supreme Court ruling. In these states, there was a reactive “backlash” effect, in which the federal legalization was associated with increased anti-gay bias — despite the fact that there was decreasing levels of bias in these states before the ruling. [...]

This study incorporated two large surveys designed to measure implicit and explicit anti-gay bias. The first set of data included the responses of 949,664 people who completed Project Implicit surveys between 2005 and 2016. Hehman and his team also examined the American National Election Studies (ANES) dataset, which included 10,870 respondents from 2008, 2012, and 2016. Both of these surveys asked participants the extent to which they felt “warmth” toward gay and lesbian people. [...]

The researchers write that these results indicate that “government legislation can inform attitudes even on religiously and politically entrenched positions.” Previous studies show that people modify their views and actions to align with the perceived norms of their environment. This study shows, in some cases, the government has the power to establish a sense of what’s normal, which in turn becomes what’s accepted.

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SciShow: Can Gargling Salt Water Cure a Sore Throat?

Gargling with warm saltwater for a sore throat is a remedy commonly known and loved by doctors, and there is some evidence to back it up, but it’s not a cure.

The Guardian view on the Mueller report: now we see it. What next?

It details the “sweeping and systematic” Russian interference. It lays out the multiple links between the campaign and those with ties to the Russian state, reminds us that it “expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts”, and was at times receptive to Russian offers of help, even if conspiracy or coordination could not be established. It lists 11 possible instances of obstruction. It states that there was evidence which precluded the investigators from conclusively determining that the president did not commit a crime. Attempts to influence the investigation were mostly unsuccessful “largely because persons surrounding the president declined to carry out orders or accede to his requests”. [...]

The document released on Thursday, however, is not the complete story. It is copiously redacted, often in striking places. There are valid legal reasons to excise material from such a text. But no confidence can be placed in the man overseeing the process, Mr Trump’s hand-picked attorney-general, particularly after his almost comical attempts to misrepresent the document. In William Barr’s world, the president’s refusal to be interviewed amounted to the White House’s “full cooperation”. The entire tenor of his remarks implied that the matter was now done and dusted: “GAME OVER”, as his boss posted on Twitter.

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Associated Press: Church membership in US plummets over past 20 years

The percentage of U.S. adults who belong to a church or other religious institution has plunged by 20 percentage points over the past two decades, hitting a low of 50% last year, according to a new Gallup poll. Among major demographic groups, the biggest drops were recorded among Democrats and Hispanics.

Gallup said church membership was 70% in 1999 — and close to or higher than that figure for most of the 20th century. Since 1999, the figure has fallen steadily, while the percentage of U.S. adults with no religious affiliation has jumped from 8% to 19%. [...]

David Campbell, a University of Notre Dame political science professor who studies religion’s role in U.S. civic life, attributed the partisan divide to “the allergic reaction many Americans have to the mixture of religion and conservative politics.” [...]

Mark Chaves, a professor of sociology, religion and divinity at Duke University, said that as recently as the 1970s, it was difficult to predict someone’s political party by the regularity with which they went to church.

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Vox: The Mueller report’s collusion section is much worse than you think

We learned that, after Trump publicly called on Russia to find Hillary Clinton’s emails, he privately ordered future National Security Adviser Michael Flynn to find them. Flynn reached out to a man named Peter Smith who (apparently falsely) told a number of people that he was in contact with Russian agents. [...]

As the report takes pains to point out, “collusion” has no legal definition and is not a federal crime. So while the report did not establish conspiracy or coordination, it does not make a determination on “collusion” — and in fact, it strongly suggests that there was at least an attempt to collude by Trump’s campaign and agents of the Russian government. [...]

Although Attorney General William Barr said that there was “no collusion” in his press conference before the report’s release, Mueller is actually quite explicit that he did not address the question of “collusion.” This is because, to his mind, the term is not precise enough, nor does it fall within the ambit of what was essentially a criminal investigation. [...]

I want to be clear: I am not disputing Mueller’s conclusions on whether a crime was committed. Criminal conspiracy has a very particular legal definition, and Mueller is persuasive on why none of the activities detailed in the report constituted illegal “coordination” in a way that would run afoul of the statute. [...]

What the report finds is not clear-cut evidence of a quid-pro-quo. Instead, what we see is a series of bungled and abortive attempts to create ties between the two sides, a situation in which the Trump team and Russia worked to reach out to each other (and vice versa) without ever developing a formal arrangement to coordinate.

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