ArticleIP_3832.txt

   
   
      
         
            

            
               Abuse
Redux
            

            I agree with the overarching
point of Douglas J. Besharov and Jacob W. Dembosky's article, "Child Abuse: Threat or
Menace?" I am sorry that they were not given more space to flesh out the
details and evidence that support their position. I do believe that the
administration has used the National Incidence Study of Child Abuse and Neglect
(NIS-3) for purely political purposes--to demonize welfare reform and draw
attention away from the fact that it (the administration) has no plan to
rectify the crisis that afflicts the child-welfare system.

            Community professionals now
see more abuse and neglect because they are trained to see more. Clearly,
child-welfare professionals want--and need--to point to bigger numbers in order
to bid for what they perceive to be diminished resources. However, there are
survey data (that Deborah Daro and I collect) and data on homicide that
indicate strongly that it is very unlikely that there is any kind of major
increase in the rate of child maltreatment in the country.

            As to whether an effort
should be mounted to get a better analysis of the report--well, the social
scientist in me always wants more honest data analysis. On the other hand, many
social scientists, myself included, find the NIS studies of such limited value
that we rarely use the data or even reference the studies beyond a cursory
mention that they have been conducted.

            On
balance, though, I think that as the administration is going to fall back on
NIS-3 to support anything they plan to do--and to block programs they don't
want--it is wise to push for a more honest accounting of the study.

            
               --Richard
J. Gellesdirector, University of Rhode Island Family Violence Research
ProgramKingston, R.I.
            

            
               The
Seattle Commune
            

            I was stunned to read
"Kiss
My Tan Line," Robert Ferrigno's insulting article about the migration of
Californians to Seattle.

            I hate to break it to
Ferrigno, but Seattle's renaissance is not attributable to an influx of
aggressive capitalists. Seattle has had--and continues to have--a high quality
of life; its popularity has very little to do with economics, and a lot to do
with people and the surrounding environment--the beauty of the Pacific
Northwest. Here, you can watch the sun's orange light reflect off snowcapped
Mount Rainier, or walk past trees that have been around for thousands of years.
It is the threat that all this will be destroyed by commercialism one day that
worries the citizenry. Californians (and others) emigrated to move away from
image and toward substance. In the end, when you walk through Pike Place
Market, there are no McDonald's, just local businesses.

            Since my
time is much too valuable to waste (I've got a little kayaking to do), I have a
request for the editors of Slate. I read Slate because the articles are
stimulating. Ferrigno's article was crap. It lacked intelligence,
introspection, and humor--it was crass, worthy of Cosmopolitan or
Star . I do have a sense of humor, but can only appreciate a joke when it
starts with a grain of truth.

            
               --Angel
Cruz
            

            
               Eat My
Flannel
            

            Well, it appears that Robert
Ferrigno (see "Kiss My Tan Line") has done well at touting the Californian
presence here in Seattle. But, if he had bothered to read any history books,
he'd have discovered that a new set of entrepreneurs was born out of the
massive Boeing layoffs of 1970, when tens of thousands of unemployed Boeing
workers were trying their hands at anything to make a buck.

            If he'd like to assert that
Californians are responsible for the growth of Seattle, then Ferrigno had also
better take responsibility for the lack of growth-planning, the Eastside sprawl
(the Los Angelesifcation of the Puget Sound), and the lack of transportation
vision--all of which envelop the region. Maybe that's why this lifelong Seattle
resident has decided to move to Alaska.

            Ferrigno
has written the most pompous bunch of BS that I've read in a long time.

            
               --Paul
Brownlow
            

            
               Grade
Deflation
            

            I was surprised and saddened
to see David M. Mastio's article, "Give This Subsidy a D-," appear in Slate. While I
understand and support the publishing of "controversial" opinions, his take on
student loans was naive, at best.

            First, although having a
child makes one eligible for a student loan, no prospective college student is
dumb enough to think that the money from a loan would even approach the costs
of raising a child. This eligibility requirement does not encourage
student-parents, but provides those who already have children an opportunity to
escape the life of poverty that most teen-age mothers experience.

            Second, the author takes
issue with the regulation that stipulates automatic eligibility for a student
loan after age 23 regardless of parental financial status. I agree that this
eligibility factor is a bad one, but for entirely different reasons. Where the
author suggests that parental financial status be offered as grounds to deny
loans to those over 23, I feel that the exact opposite should be done. When
children reach the age of 18, their parents should no longer be obliged to
support them financially. At 18, a person becomes an independent individual in
the eyes of the law, and parents should have the right to decide whether or not
they will continue to support their child.

            The author's fears of abuse
seem pretty far-fetched--these are loans, not gifts, and will be paid back.
While default rates for student loans are high, these defaulters are not the
children of rich parents trying to milk the system Would you choose to pay
interest on money you already have?

            Additionally, to suggest
that a student who is in need of a loan should not be allowed to attend Harvard
because state schools are cheaper is disgustingly elitist. After all, we are
talking about loans that will be paid back. While Harvard may cost a fair deal
more than a local community college, the Harvard grad leaves with an education
that almost guarantees him or her a job that will equip him or her to both pay
off the loan and pay more in taxes.

            The
author, while making a somewhat convincing argument to those unfamiliar with
the realities of today's colleges, clearly has had little real-world experience
with student loans. His fears make sense in the world of words, but they are
not justified by the reality young adults face today.

            
               --Greg
Kahn
            

            
               The
Dismal Ideologue
            

            On Paul Krugman's "Economic Culture Wars":
I'm sorry, Paul (if I may be so bold with an old college roommate of mine who's
now famous), but this article is a bunch of nonsense.

            To Krugman, the difference
between the two sets of "liberals" (people like Krugman himself, vs. Kuttner,
Reich, etc.) is that the latter are literary, and the former, mathematical. In
the interests of simplicity, I will call Krugman's school
"mainstream-neoclassical," and Kuttner, etc., the "liberal reformers."

            I'm not on either of the two
competing teams. But on this issue, I would side with the group that Krugman
trashes: I've never seem them use fancy lit-crit-shit words and literary "Big
Names," except casually. There are economists who get into that kind of
postmodernism (such as Deidre and Donald McCloskey--and some Marxists), but
they do not include James Galbraith, Robert Kuttner, Robert Reich, Laura Tyson,
etc., the targets of Krugman's imperious ire.

            Krugman seems to cast himself
as a white blood corpuscle defending the body of economics against the invading
pathogens of the liberal reformers.

            This kind of
establishmentarian guarding of the gates actually goes against the scientific
pretensions of economics--and its progress as a field. To see this, we have to
first note that Galbraith made a mistake to choose lit crit as a model for
economics.

            Instead of lit crit, I would
point to very difficult fields in academia: sociology, political science,
psychology, and anthropology. They are difficult, since they deal with
difficult subjects: the complex interactions amongst those ornery creatures
called "people." That they cannot simply "assume away" the complications (as
economists usually do) makes these subjects inherently more difficult than
physics.

            Krugman's dogmatism shuts out
critical thinking, preventing adaptation to new eras and events. Of course,
economics can easily fail as a science while surviving or prospering as an
ideology. Enforced homogeneity of thought--including allegiance to mathematics
über alles --fits perfectly with the vision of economics as an
ideology.

            As a final
word on the liberal reformers vs. the mainstream-neoclassicals: The former
always cite an important historical precedent, still relevant today. Back in
the 1930s, the main school in economics was one (very similar to today's
toadies for the I.M.F. and World Bank) that used impeccable deductive logic to
show that mass unemployment was impossible, or temporary, or unimportant. But
along came an economist who used a somewhat vague, literary, empiricist style
to propose an alternative vision. This was John Maynard Keynes. If Krugman has
his way, the Keyneses of the future will be rejected as being outside the pale
of legitimate economics, beneath contempt.

            
               --James
Devine professor of economicsLoyola Marymount University