Rosy retrospection: Is the GOP Too Grand - and Too Old?

Nativism has risen and fallen throughout American history. We have experienced periods of great xenophobia including the World Wars, the Red Scare, the McCarthyism movement, and the most recent upheavals today as the immigration debate continues. But no matter how many times we may try to deny it, immigration is ingrained in the American soil. It is the life-blood of the American Dream.

True as that may be, many Americans are concerned that immigrants will take jobs away from U.S. citizens, eat up health care benefits, and violate the laws that maintain order in our society. As Donald Trump put it, "When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best...They're bringing drugs, they're bringing crime, they're rapists." And Trump is not alone; all of the 15 Republican Presidential primary candidates advocate some kind of border strengthening to prevent illegal immigrants from entering the country.

While many Americans agree that something needs to be done about immigration (84% of Republicans and 44% of Democrats are unsatisfied with the current level of immigration), the reality for the Republican party is that even as they gripe about the number of illegal immigrants, that number is increasing, and so is the percentage of non-white voters. If the GOP does not change its stance, it could alienate a huge portion of the voting population.

This past week, David Brooks addressed this issue in his article "The American Idea and Today's GOP." In it, he argued that America has always been striving to improve itself and provide its people with a better future. Today, he maintains, the Grand Old Party has lost that direction. Instead of looking towards the future, many Republicans are hoping for a return to the past.

If you don't believe him, just look at some of the 2016 Republican Presidential candidates' campaign slogans:

• "Make America great again" (Donald Trump) 
• "Heal, Inspire, Revive" (Ben Carson)
• "Reigniting the Promise of America" (Ted Cruz)
• "Restore American Prosperity Today" (Jim Gilmore)
• "Restore the American Dream" (Rick Santorum)

Brooks argues that in this mindset, the GOP is losing the very principles it once stood for. He explains, "American free market and religious conservatives have traditionally embraced a style of nationalism that is hopeful and future minded. From Lincoln to Reagan to Bush, the market has been embraced for being dynamic and progressive." But, in the last few years, the Republican party has spent more time and effort trying to undo the past than influence the future. For example, they have continued efforts to kill the Affordable Care Act and have been working to try to overturn Roe v. Wade (the 1973 Supreme Court decision that ruled that women can abort babies up until the third trimester).

Furthermore, Brooks contends, the data surrounding the immigration issue does not support the Republicans' fear. "Today’s immigrants are assimilating as fast as previous ones. They are learning English. They are healthier than native-born Americans. Immigrant men age 18 to 39 are incarcerated at roughly one-fourth the rate of American men." So all of this hullabaloo about rapists and criminals has no base in reality. The people who are coming from other countries are the people who always have: those looking for better lives. Our ancestors came here with the same ambitions. Is it not fair to give these people the same benefit of the doubt?

Either way, if Republicans don't open their minds to the future, they may very well be a party that goes extinct.

Photos compliments of:
Nevele Osteog
Boss Tweed
takombibelot

A seemingly simple question: should we raise the minimum wage?

Whenever election time comes around, we hear a lot of debate from the candidates about minimum wage. Typically, the candidates' positions split down party lines. Democrats usually want to increase minimum wage, thinking that this will help lower poverty levels; Republicans normally oppose this because they argue that the change will not help - and may actually hurt - poorer Americans. Setting party lines aside, who is right? How can we actually help poor Americans?

In David Brook's article, "The Minimum-Wage Muddle," he tries to ascertain the answer to this very question by examining past trends and basic laws of economics. As a student in Microeconomics this fall (shoutout to Econ 102 Section 1), I thought that this was an awesome application and way to showcase my knowledge.

The way markets work is that they are always seeking an equilibrium where consumers are willing and able to buy a certain number of goods, and firms are willing and able to sell them. If firms try to sell a product for a higher price, fewer people will buy it. This will cause a surplus. In response, the firms will lower their price to sell their stock. If the situation is reversed and the price is too low, there will be a shortage of the good and the suppliers will start selling the good at a higher price. So, eventually the market will gravitate toward the equilibrium price and quantity.


Minimum wage disrupts this relationship because it puts what is known as a price floor on the good, which in this case is labor. When a price floor is put on a good, that means the price is higher than the equilibrium price. As I mentioned above, that will cause a surplus. In other words, more people will be looking for jobs than firms are looking for employees. People who are able to get jobs will be better off, but there will be more people who don't get jobs.

Another effect is that the people applying for minimum wage jobs will become more qualified because they are unable to find employment elsewhere. These more qualified people will get the jobs while unskilled workers may be cut out of the market. So, middle class families may benefit from minimum wage while in the meantime, lower class families are suffering.

Additionally, a study done at Stanford revealed that many times owners will increase prices in response to having to pay higher wages. Since many of the places that hire minimum wage workers sell their products to poorer Americans, the poor are in essence paying a tax to help employ the middle class.

Now, while all of the assertions I have made up until this point are true, they are all based on a simplified model of the world. These models cannot be accurate in every situation. There have actually been instances where minimum wage has helped increase pay without decreasing employment (see here).

So, what does this mean? Have we gotten any closer to finding the answer? The short answer is that it really depends. There are always trade-offs involved. It cannot be denied, however, that the poorest people are hurt by minimum wage. So, when looking at candidates in this year's election, think long and hard about what you value. While both parties have good intentions, their methods of economic policy have two very different effects.

Photos compliments of:
The All-Nite Images
Wikipedia

The Power of a Single Story

In her TED talk "The Dangers of a Single Story," Chimamanda Adichie explains that when we take stereotypes at face value and use them to describe a group of people by a "single story," we are often missing a large part of who they are. She illustrates this with many comical examples including the observations one might make of Americans if their only experience with them was the novel American Psycho (see the picture below for her observation). While this is clearly an exaggeration, it still illustrates the point: we should look beyond the single story.

But, there are instances where the single story is more convenient; where we only want a small snip of someone's personality. For example, a college application. An icebreaker activity. A Facebook or LinkedIn profile. A resume. In these moments, many of us struggle to define ourselves, to boil down all of our experiences into one single statement.

This week in his column, David Brooks wrote a piece entitled The Biden Formation Story, which referred to Stephen Colbert's interview with Vice President Joe Biden on The Late Show. During the interview, Biden told his single story to the audience, what Brooks refers to as his "formation story." In that story, Biden described his reluctance to run for President after having undergone the emotional trauma of losing his son this past year. But, while his story was meant to explain why he decided not to run, the story he told was one of a true candidate.

Brooks argues that "every presidential candidate needs a narrative to explain how his or her character was formed...some experience or life-defining crucible moment that then defines the nature of their public service." In essence, they need the single story that Adichie refers to. They need a way to express who they are and why they are here.

In this context, I agree with Brooks. Without the single story, "a candidate is just a hodgepodge of positions and logos." As a people, we want to elect someone who we can relate to, who can lead our country to greatness, and who can make the world a place we want our children to live in. A single story is powerful; it shapes how we think of someone - for better or worse. Right now Hilary Clinton's story is more about scandal and defensiveness than about making a difference. Biden, on the other hand, has the potential to make his story one of redemption, to rise up and accept responsibility for the American people.

As we get closer to the 2016 election, it will be interesting to see how these stories change. Will Biden enter the race? Will Hilary share her story with the world? But, no matter what the result, the single story will live on. Adichie advocates that we push to learn more beyond the single story, to get to know someone beyond their accomplishments. I would like to think that because we want people to be informed, we give them the opportunity to learn more than the single story. That is why we have so many televised debates and discussions with the candidates. The reality, however, is that most people will only ever want to know the single story. The key to determining this race will be how the candidates tell their stories. A story told at the right place and the right time might just win the election.

Images compliments of:
AZ Quotes
West Point - The US Military Academy 

The Romantic Era Part 2: 2015-?

Is the Romantic Era that produced incredible literary and artistic works including Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, The Bronte Sisters' Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights, and Samuel Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" about to be revived in the common era?

Not exactly, says David Brooks, but he argues in his article "The New Romantics in the Computer Age" that we might see something like it. Brooks explains that at the current technology growth rate, computers will quickly surpass humans' abilities to make financial predictions and risk calculations. They will be able to sort and compile data to accrue evidence for a civil case or make an informed prediction about the housing market, and do it with more accuracy and speed than a human worker. He believes that because of this growth, computers will begin replacing lawyers, doctors, and financial experts. The only jobs left for humans will require skills that computers cannot exhibit: creativity, empathy, authority, leadership, and communication.

While I agree with Brooks that these skills will be more valued in a technology-driven workforce, I don't see our society rushing to turn back the clock to a nature-oriented existence. The Romantic Era emerged at the end of the Industrial Revolution because people developed a newfound appreciation for nature and its interaction with the human experience. This time period was characterized by people's nostalgia to return to the simpler past. In contrast, today we are always looking forward to (and becoming more dependent on) new technologies. Take, for example, all the hullabaloo that occurs before a new Apple smartphone release. You can't pick up a newspaper without seeing some kind of review or prediction about its success. And it doesn't stop there. Cell phones, laptops, and tablets have made us lazy, self-absorbed, and ignorant to the world around us. We created technologies to make our lives easier, so that now we can spend less time thinking and more time posting and reacting to a virtual world.

That being said, technology has also allowed us to do great things; to connect different parts of the world, to increase the standard of living in poorer nations, to discover ways to combat disease and save lives. But unlike after Europe's Industrial Revolution, I don't think we have the option to look back at a time without technology.

In tenth grade my teacher introduced a challenge called "The Experiment." The goal was to abstain from technology usage for a month and a half for anything other than homework. About 75 students started the project. Of them, only 10% made it to the end, but that wasn't the important part. What I found most shocking was that people would leave the project because they thought that "they couldn't live without technology." Herein lies the heart of the problem.

As we have gained new technologies, we have lost our creativity, communication, and empathy (ironically, what David Brooks thinks we need in the future). We are less likely to spend time interacting with our peers in person and more likely to spend time liking their posts and statuses on social media. Like Sherry Turkle said in The Flight From Conversation, "Human relationships are rich; they're messy and demanding. We have learned the habit of cleaning them up with technology...it's a process in which we shortchange ourselves."

Brooks says that helicopter parents, standardized tests, and college application processes are to blame for the current lack of the arts. I would say, these are only symptoms. The real way to return to the romantic era he speaks of is to pare down on electronics and find our humanity again. While David Brooks sees an increase in technology as a way to return to our roots, I see it as a threat to our very existence.

Welcome

Hello readers,

My name is Lisa Gardner and I am a student at Penn State University. In this blog, I plan to write about my reactions to editorial pieces in The New York Times written by columnist David Brooks. I will post once weekly about something he has written or my observations about his writing style and his argument composition.

Happy reading!

Lisa