The only way to really fix racial disparity is through the provision of starter homes.
Both sides of the argument neglect perhaps the most salient root cause of the disintegration of the Black family- neoliberalism and deindustrialisation. It is simply impossible to ignore the fact that high unemployment rates in a community destroy the mechanism for stable family formation- hypergamy. Put simply, male unemployment in a community destroys any hope of stable family formation at anywhere near the rate needed for the community to remain healthy. Sure, people do get married and form relationships outside their cultural ingroup, but it's always going to be a small minority, not really significant from a sociological perspective, and, when it does happen, it is almost always going to result in the couple shifting upwards, away from the community which needs another stable family so desperately.
Because fathers do matter, at a community level. They are the key to upward social mobility (Dr Raj Chetty, Social Mobility research) and the key to mitigating violent behaviour when a dearth of economic opportunity and unregulated markets lead to gangs. Rates of gang membership are roughly equal per population for African American and Latino communities, not surprising given the PEW research on income distribution for Blacks and Latinos is virtually identical, but the absence of fathers in one community compared to the other, where they are still present, leads to a large difference in the ratios of murder rates, for one simple reason- even matriarchal cultures give their boys over to the supervision of men when they hit puberty. Male supervision at the community level is the thing which really mitigates young males natural biological aggression.
The mistake most liberals make is imagining that higher education alone, and the redistribution of jobs to reflect a more diverse workforce for the 10% can make any difference at all for the bottom 90%. It can't. The only thing it will succeed at is in making wealthy people slightly more comfortable with themselves and slightly less guilty. Although capital works differently, most community wealth is built from the ground up, through labour and chiefly through better paid blue collar jobs, mainly in the trades.
If we really want to see a reduction in racial disparities several things have to happen. First, libertarian land reforms to free up building land and make it cheap, also greatly decreasing the legal element of regulatory costs. Second, build starter homes- there is societal cost in lost entrepreneurship, when young people are unable to repay the principal of their mortgage within 10 years and own the collateral to part-stake a business start-up. If government is involved, it should be through the provision of short-range rail, particular new spur lines, and in so doing greatly expanding the availability of potential real estate, whilst providing a cheap, very low carbon method for most people to get to work.
It is possible to innovate in the housing sector. Last time I checked it was $60K to 3D print a home, and the Swedes have had great successes in finding cost-savings for their home production, with 45% of all labour completed off-site, through prefabrication in factories- it also helps that this is a form of long-term carbon sequestration. Western construction sectors have been structurally undersupplying the provision of single family homes for some time now (30 years in the UK, where the problem is at it's worst). It’s one of the principal reasons why so many people have felt as though their living standards have been falling for some time, because if rents and mortgages make up an ever greater share of your income, then it’s true.
America has neglected starter homes for decades. Why? Certainly not because of market forces- there is huge pent up demand, as witnessed by America's birth figures falling off a cliff. Contrary to what you may have read, most millennials want kids or want more kids- they simply cannot afford them because of housing costs. No, instead it's the American government monopoly on building land, artificially inflating scarcity costs, which has priced starter homes out of the market.
Most politicians don't understand the fundamental economics, or if they do, they keep quiet about it- not wanting to play into the fears of boomers, who believe, quite erroneously, that more houses would adversely affect their property values- in point of fact, greater supply further down the housing ladder inflates demand on subsequent tiers, as it means more people have the equity to qualify for mortgages for a bigger and better house, which it turns out is quite a popular aspiration.
Most politicians and policy makers believe, again quite erroneously, that more demand will necessarily mean more supply. Generally it might be true, but it is certainly not true of housing, where the increase in scarcity costs from inflated land values rises faster than the rate of house prices. In period of excess demand this means that housing construction itself becomes less profitable, with all the profits going to those who have the market specialism to be able to capture as much available building land as possible, and who can then sit and wait as the value of their asset quickly inflates in value.
There is an old rule in classical economics- it's called Say's Law. It's the idea that demand doesn't create supply, but rather that supply creates demand. Of all the sectors of the economy, it's most true in housing. Currently, the West is headed towards a scenario where the only thing it produces is mortgage debt as an asset class. It's tragic, because the provision of ample housing is about the only industry which is capable of reversing the decline of the West into economic ruin and the only thing which can virtually eliminate seemingly intractable racial disparities. Along one route we can see a New Gilded Age, with stagnant Western economies and a gradual return to the Victorian squalor of London. Along the other, it is possible that the West might be able to reinvigorate itself into a patchwork of dynamic and booming cities and communities, where a combination of money available to be spent on consumer spending and renewed entrepreneurship makes us innovative again- with America the chief beneficiary of this resurgent enterprise.
Every cultural group which has ever risen to the Round Table of Equals in America's Camelot has done so through industrial demand for more labour and the higher wages it brings, and the only industry left in the West which can deliver these transformative tight labour markets replete with economic opportunity is the housing market. If America truly wants to see African Americans take a seat at the table as real equals the only way to do is is to build more singe family starter homes- masses of them, and to provide the vocational training and ample economic opportunities which will see young African American women spoiled for choice, with responsible, fit, young Black men, earning really good money, ready to settle down and have a family.
And it’s a solution which really would raise all boats, regardless of race- providing opportunities to any kids born to blue collar roots or in the underclass. It just so happens it would help African American kids most of all.
Interesting proposal and a topic I believe in strongly. Home ownership is foundational in a thriving society. You make excellent points about the detrimental effects of government interference and NIMBY. Building codes disallow new and more efficient methods, zoning disallows smaller, closer homes and our betters don’t want the help living next door.
The cause of disfunction in any group can be debated but given the evident rot, how does one go about creating Bedford Parks and not Pottervilles? Culture matters and successful home ownership requires certain things of people which are not entirely evident in much of society. We saw this in the transition of new public housing to ghettos.
There has to be a better way and it has to include the realtor industry taking 5-6% of every transaction. And it has to exclude government “help.”
Let's not neglect the role of regulation here, as well. At least where I live, the City Council and associated bureaucrats have a huge stack of regulations that must be obeyed to build any sort of housing, down to the roof pitch and number of parking units. (And the regulators *hate* cars; one developer I talked to said that the City planners would let him build 6 units with parking, or 32 without - on the same plot of land.
Nice article, i agree with most of it. I would just mention some points
It is not just related to African Americans, see the communities of "white trash", most probably they have the same issue, but being white, they do not fit the victim narrative.
The prices of things are not related to cost of producing them, that only happens on a "perfect competition market", the prices of things are as much as we can make the customers pay for them. Please read "the two income trap", then compare that some 50 years ago a family with just one average income could buy a house, have a car, a life and pay for education of the children. We have improved our processes, so price of goods should have fallen, and the purchasing power of the workers should have increased. However today we need more than two average incomes to do the same. How come the prices of housing and the prices of education have ballooned, because these markets are not competitive (but regulated) and the designated people or groups benefit from these. The same situation could have happened to other items, but housing and education show this very well. Therefore here you should break down and for each chapter ask yourself "qui prodest".
Then there is also the subside policy to create sectors that are dependent on it, you can read the chapter about African American on "the end of work".
The sentence that offer generates demand, well, you can expect anything from these people called themselves economists. Think about prostitution and the current narrative, there will be a demand, hence eventually there will be an offer, and it will always be there, believing that because we just write a paper it will go away just show how stupid (yes, stupid, not just naive) certain people are.
About the hypergamy we can talk other time as discussing it goes completely against the current narrative, but it is real, it is there and it will always be there.
It is getting summer time in the center of the Mediterranean, when you want you can pass by and we will have a beer, if i remember our discussions about the Ukrainian war then i think you will be the one paying ;)
Firstly I should say that I enjoy your work immensely, I’m always pleased to see another post of your because they are always worth reading.
Secondly I must say that almost all of your ideas presented here are basically solid. Social housing, unemployment, de-industrialization, hypergamy and the important of fatherhood are real concerns that must be addressed.
Thirdly, however I think you are making a major mistake in the way you are framing this question that could cause major problems. You frame this as a solution to racial disparities. Racial disparities are not a problem and never have been. Racial disparities are statistical artifacts not a physical realities. Moving the needle on some gauge is moving the needle on some gauge but not necessarily real change in the lives of real people.
You are running a serious risk of being smacked in the face by Goodhart’s law;
"When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure"
I am interested in helping the Black community, but I am not interested in helping the Black community BECAUSE it’s doing worse that the White community and even more poorly than the Asian community. I’m interested in helping the Black community BECAUSE they are suffering needlessly.
Consider this, a social program that (deliberately or not) moves resources into the Black community but away from other sections of society could move the racial disparity needle but make the over all society worse. Even a flattening, let alone a decline in the outcomes of the non-black community could cause the racial disparity statistics to “improve” but at the cost of an increase in human suffering. A White or Asian individual doing well at school, getting a good job working hard and staying out of trouble could in fact make the racial disparity figures WORSE if there was not an equal proportion of the same virtuous deeds in the Black community. Clearly a focus on racial disparity figures could lead to perverse incentives and bad outcomes.
Clean and comfortable homes, happy families, healthy babies and plenty of them, education that prepares the young to lead fulfilling lives should be the focus of our work. Not making one number on a spread sheet closer to another number.
“Don’t compare yourself to some else today but to yourself yesterday” I think I got that from Jordan Peterson, he was talking about self improvement but I think it works for racial groups as well.
Before I finish I would like to make a few more specific points on social housing. One of my particular interests is Chinese society, modern and traditional. I wonder if you are familiar with the Tǔlóu (土楼) buildings of Southern China ?
What they are basically is a 3-5 level multi apartment condominium structure, built of earth bamboo and wood, some of which have been in use for 800 years (with constant maintenance of course).
I mention them because one of the criticism of the social housing projects such as the infamous Cabrini-Green homes of the Chicago Housing Authority was that there was something wrong with the architecture.
Crime, poverty, poor management and lack of funding certainly played a part in it’s failure but to me these look like weak excuses for an underlying social pathology. Blaming the symptoms rather than the disease. The Tulou villages of China show that multilevel apartment blocks are perfectly feasible, even operating at a medieval economic level with the technology of a village craftsman and the management of a clan council. And it can be maintained for centuries, Cabrini-Green, in the most powerful and technologically advanced nation in the world only lasted about 60 years.
So what if some Asian migrants, maybe the direct descendants of the original Tulou builders, recreated them on a much larger scale in Europe or the USA ? Would that increase or decrease racial disparities ?
"Currently, the West is headed towards a scenario where the only thing it produces is mortgage debt as an asset class."
This is the cornerstone of all argument on the housing issue, Geary.
Land is the source and repository of all use value, and conversion to a fungible asset class via securitization is the praxis by which sequestration of the resulting exchange value concentrates ownership.
> but the absence of fathers in one community compared to the other
It would be most interesting to have an in depth comparison of Blacks vs. Latinos. Both Victims of course so that gives the comparison at least something like an even starting point. (I can testify that I Oppress both groups equally.)
Being as I am, a Racist, I'd expect part of the difference in outcomes to be genetic, but I'd also expect most of it to be cultural, and as you say, one of the more salient differences is that Latino fathers tend to hang around -- Victimhood notwithstanding. I'd also expect that a major difference is that whereas American Blacks grow up in a culture where the objective is to avoid work, Latinos sneak across the border precisely to work -- illegally and thus with no legal protections whatsoever, and furthermore they are likely to send much of their earnings back home. On that point the two cultures could hardly be more different.
Joke isn't the right word. By the doctrines of PC right thru to wokeness, I am a Racist. I believe in genetics and that the human brain is not an exception to the universal rules that apply to everything else. Variation, adaptation and selection happen to humans too and the brain is not excepted.
> so no more than 1.5 IQ points
That would be good news if true, but I suspect motivated results, rather like the modern 'science' that biological sex isn't real either. As for me, I'm with Murray until persuaded otherwise -- which I'm very open to! Racial differences are perhaps humanity's greatest challenge, how to admit to the differences and still avoid Nazism? It's a huge problem.
> strong selection pressures in the last 2000 years.
Exactly. Since the Jews still have Victim status, it's permitted to admit to their superiority since Victims are always permitted to be better than whitey, but *never* worse by any metric. Thus I can point out that Jews are over represented by 100X among Nobel Laureates and by 200X among chess grandmasters.
> as though educational outcomes aren't heavily influenced by the huge difference a narrative of agency can make compared to a narrative of oppression and grievance
That's the thing. I myself feel that group differences should almost never be mentioned however given the woke logic that, since all human brains are identical, it follows that if any group is doing poorly, the answer can *only* be Oppression. This essentially forces us to confront the fact that some groups do poorly for cultural and genetic reasons and that Oppression has long since been replaced by affirmative action.
> the successes there led to Black kids scoring roughly the same as White British kids in our national exams at 16
I follow your reports on that with interest. I'd love to be wrong. In any case, there can be no doubt that the improvements you mention can only be welcomed.
I'm a Reluctant Racist. There can be no question that all must be equal before the law and 'We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal ...' *must* be 'believed' even if it isn't true. It is a 'necessary lie' -- an aspiration. Thus, my saying that the races are not equal is quite understandably seen by most as a monstrous blasphemy. However, I think the current approach simply isn't working and it's time to try something else, like telling the truth.
Interesting proposal and a topic I believe in strongly. Home ownership is foundational in a thriving society. You make excellent points about the detrimental effects of government interference and NIMBY. Building codes disallow new and more efficient methods, zoning disallows smaller, closer homes and our betters don’t want the help living next door.
The cause of disfunction in any group can be debated but given the evident rot, how does one go about creating Bedford Parks and not Pottervilles? Culture matters and successful home ownership requires certain things of people which are not entirely evident in much of society. We saw this in the transition of new public housing to ghettos.
There has to be a better way and it has to include the realtor industry taking 5-6% of every transaction. And it has to exclude government “help.”
Rough water ahead, keep paddling.
Let's not neglect the role of regulation here, as well. At least where I live, the City Council and associated bureaucrats have a huge stack of regulations that must be obeyed to build any sort of housing, down to the roof pitch and number of parking units. (And the regulators *hate* cars; one developer I talked to said that the City planners would let him build 6 units with parking, or 32 without - on the same plot of land.
Hello Geary,
Nice article, i agree with most of it. I would just mention some points
It is not just related to African Americans, see the communities of "white trash", most probably they have the same issue, but being white, they do not fit the victim narrative.
The prices of things are not related to cost of producing them, that only happens on a "perfect competition market", the prices of things are as much as we can make the customers pay for them. Please read "the two income trap", then compare that some 50 years ago a family with just one average income could buy a house, have a car, a life and pay for education of the children. We have improved our processes, so price of goods should have fallen, and the purchasing power of the workers should have increased. However today we need more than two average incomes to do the same. How come the prices of housing and the prices of education have ballooned, because these markets are not competitive (but regulated) and the designated people or groups benefit from these. The same situation could have happened to other items, but housing and education show this very well. Therefore here you should break down and for each chapter ask yourself "qui prodest".
Then there is also the subside policy to create sectors that are dependent on it, you can read the chapter about African American on "the end of work".
The sentence that offer generates demand, well, you can expect anything from these people called themselves economists. Think about prostitution and the current narrative, there will be a demand, hence eventually there will be an offer, and it will always be there, believing that because we just write a paper it will go away just show how stupid (yes, stupid, not just naive) certain people are.
About the hypergamy we can talk other time as discussing it goes completely against the current narrative, but it is real, it is there and it will always be there.
It is getting summer time in the center of the Mediterranean, when you want you can pass by and we will have a beer, if i remember our discussions about the Ukrainian war then i think you will be the one paying ;)
Hello Geary.
Firstly I should say that I enjoy your work immensely, I’m always pleased to see another post of your because they are always worth reading.
Secondly I must say that almost all of your ideas presented here are basically solid. Social housing, unemployment, de-industrialization, hypergamy and the important of fatherhood are real concerns that must be addressed.
Thirdly, however I think you are making a major mistake in the way you are framing this question that could cause major problems. You frame this as a solution to racial disparities. Racial disparities are not a problem and never have been. Racial disparities are statistical artifacts not a physical realities. Moving the needle on some gauge is moving the needle on some gauge but not necessarily real change in the lives of real people.
You are running a serious risk of being smacked in the face by Goodhart’s law;
"When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart's_law
I am interested in helping the Black community, but I am not interested in helping the Black community BECAUSE it’s doing worse that the White community and even more poorly than the Asian community. I’m interested in helping the Black community BECAUSE they are suffering needlessly.
Consider this, a social program that (deliberately or not) moves resources into the Black community but away from other sections of society could move the racial disparity needle but make the over all society worse. Even a flattening, let alone a decline in the outcomes of the non-black community could cause the racial disparity statistics to “improve” but at the cost of an increase in human suffering. A White or Asian individual doing well at school, getting a good job working hard and staying out of trouble could in fact make the racial disparity figures WORSE if there was not an equal proportion of the same virtuous deeds in the Black community. Clearly a focus on racial disparity figures could lead to perverse incentives and bad outcomes.
Clean and comfortable homes, happy families, healthy babies and plenty of them, education that prepares the young to lead fulfilling lives should be the focus of our work. Not making one number on a spread sheet closer to another number.
“Don’t compare yourself to some else today but to yourself yesterday” I think I got that from Jordan Peterson, he was talking about self improvement but I think it works for racial groups as well.
Before I finish I would like to make a few more specific points on social housing. One of my particular interests is Chinese society, modern and traditional. I wonder if you are familiar with the Tǔlóu (土楼) buildings of Southern China ?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fujian_tulou
What they are basically is a 3-5 level multi apartment condominium structure, built of earth bamboo and wood, some of which have been in use for 800 years (with constant maintenance of course).
I mention them because one of the criticism of the social housing projects such as the infamous Cabrini-Green homes of the Chicago Housing Authority was that there was something wrong with the architecture.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabrini-Green_Homes
Crime, poverty, poor management and lack of funding certainly played a part in it’s failure but to me these look like weak excuses for an underlying social pathology. Blaming the symptoms rather than the disease. The Tulou villages of China show that multilevel apartment blocks are perfectly feasible, even operating at a medieval economic level with the technology of a village craftsman and the management of a clan council. And it can be maintained for centuries, Cabrini-Green, in the most powerful and technologically advanced nation in the world only lasted about 60 years.
So what if some Asian migrants, maybe the direct descendants of the original Tulou builders, recreated them on a much larger scale in Europe or the USA ? Would that increase or decrease racial disparities ?
That’s all for now.
Peace be with you.
"Currently, the West is headed towards a scenario where the only thing it produces is mortgage debt as an asset class."
This is the cornerstone of all argument on the housing issue, Geary.
Land is the source and repository of all use value, and conversion to a fungible asset class via securitization is the praxis by which sequestration of the resulting exchange value concentrates ownership.
Thanks very much for another insightful essay.
Bravo Geary.
> but the absence of fathers in one community compared to the other
It would be most interesting to have an in depth comparison of Blacks vs. Latinos. Both Victims of course so that gives the comparison at least something like an even starting point. (I can testify that I Oppress both groups equally.)
Being as I am, a Racist, I'd expect part of the difference in outcomes to be genetic, but I'd also expect most of it to be cultural, and as you say, one of the more salient differences is that Latino fathers tend to hang around -- Victimhood notwithstanding. I'd also expect that a major difference is that whereas American Blacks grow up in a culture where the objective is to avoid work, Latinos sneak across the border precisely to work -- illegally and thus with no legal protections whatsoever, and furthermore they are likely to send much of their earnings back home. On that point the two cultures could hardly be more different.
Joke isn't the right word. By the doctrines of PC right thru to wokeness, I am a Racist. I believe in genetics and that the human brain is not an exception to the universal rules that apply to everything else. Variation, adaptation and selection happen to humans too and the brain is not excepted.
> so no more than 1.5 IQ points
That would be good news if true, but I suspect motivated results, rather like the modern 'science' that biological sex isn't real either. As for me, I'm with Murray until persuaded otherwise -- which I'm very open to! Racial differences are perhaps humanity's greatest challenge, how to admit to the differences and still avoid Nazism? It's a huge problem.
> strong selection pressures in the last 2000 years.
Exactly. Since the Jews still have Victim status, it's permitted to admit to their superiority since Victims are always permitted to be better than whitey, but *never* worse by any metric. Thus I can point out that Jews are over represented by 100X among Nobel Laureates and by 200X among chess grandmasters.
> as though educational outcomes aren't heavily influenced by the huge difference a narrative of agency can make compared to a narrative of oppression and grievance
That's the thing. I myself feel that group differences should almost never be mentioned however given the woke logic that, since all human brains are identical, it follows that if any group is doing poorly, the answer can *only* be Oppression. This essentially forces us to confront the fact that some groups do poorly for cultural and genetic reasons and that Oppression has long since been replaced by affirmative action.
> the successes there led to Black kids scoring roughly the same as White British kids in our national exams at 16
I follow your reports on that with interest. I'd love to be wrong. In any case, there can be no doubt that the improvements you mention can only be welcomed.
I'm a Reluctant Racist. There can be no question that all must be equal before the law and 'We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal ...' *must* be 'believed' even if it isn't true. It is a 'necessary lie' -- an aspiration. Thus, my saying that the races are not equal is quite understandably seen by most as a monstrous blasphemy. However, I think the current approach simply isn't working and it's time to try something else, like telling the truth.