The number one single in Great Britain today in 1961 included a Shakespearean reference:
The number one single today in 1965 included Jimmy Page, later of Led Zeppelin, on guitar:
Today in 1970, John Lennon wrote, recorded and mixed a song all in one day, which may have made it an instant song:
Throughout grade school and high school, I was fortunate to participate in quality music programs. Our high school had a top Illinois state jazz band; I also participated in symphonic band, which gave me a greater appreciation for classical music. It wasn’t enough to just read music. You would need to sight read, meaning you are given a difficult composition to play cold, without any prior practice. Sight reading would quickly reveal how fine-tuned playing “chops” really were. In college I continued in a jazz band and also took a music theory class. The experience gave me the ability to visualize music (If you play by ear only, you will never have that same depth of understanding music construct.)
Both jazz and classical art forms require not only music literacy, but for the musician to be at the top of their game in technical proficiency, tonal quality and creativity in the case of the jazz idiom. Jazz masters like John Coltrane would practice six to nine hours a day, often cutting his practice only because his inner lower lip would be bleeding from the friction caused by his mouth piece against his gums and teeth. His ability to compose and create new styles and directions for jazz was legendary. With few exceptions such as Wes Montgomery or Chet Baker, if you couldn’t read music, you couldn’t play jazz. In the case of classical music, if you can’t read music you can’t play in an orchestra or symphonic band. Over the last 20 years, musical foundations like reading and composing music are disappearing with the percentage of people that can read music notation proficiently down to 11 percent, according to some surveys.
Two primary sources for learning to read music are school programs and at home piano lessons. Public school music programs have been in decline since the 1980’s, often with school administrations blaming budget cuts or needing to spend money on competing extracurricular programs. Prior to the 1980’s, it was common for homes to have a piano with children taking piano lessons. Even home architecture incorporated what was referred to as a “piano window” in the living room which was positioned above an upright piano to help illuminate the music. Stores dedicated to selling pianos are dwindling across the country as fewer people take up the instrument. In 1909, piano sales were at their peak when more than 364,500 were sold, but sales have plunged to between 30,000 and 40,000 annually in the US. Demand for youth sports competes with music studies, but also, fewer parents are requiring youngsters to take lessons as part of their upbringing.
Besides the decline of music literacy and participation, there has also been a decline in the quality of music which has been proven scientifically by Joan Serra, a postdoctoral scholar at the Artificial Intelligence Research Institute of the Spanish National Research Council in Barcelona. Joan and his colleagues looked at 500,000 pieces of music between 1955-2010, running songs through a complex set of algorithms examining three aspects of those songs:
1. Timbre- sound color, texture and tone quality
2. Pitch- harmonic content of the piece, including its chords, melody, and tonal arrangements
3. Loudness- volume variance adding richness and depth
The results of the study revealed that timbral variety went down over time, meaning songs are becoming more homogeneous. Translation: most pop music now sounds the same. Timbral quality peaked in the 60’s and has since dropped steadily with less diversity of instruments and recording techniques. Today’s pop music is largely the same with a combination of keyboard, drum machine and computer software greatly diminishing the creativity and originality. Pitch has also decreased, with the number of chords and different melodies declining. Pitch content has also decreased, with the number of chords and different melodies declining as musicians today are less adventurous in moving from one chord or note to another, opting for well-trod paths by their predecessors. Loudness was found to have increased by about one decibel every eight years. Music loudness has been manipulated by the use of compression. Compression boosts the volume of the quietest parts of the song so they match the loudest parts, reducing dynamic range. With everything now loud, it gives music a muddled sound, as everything has less punch and vibrancy due to compression.
In an interview, Billy Joel was asked what has made him a standout. He responded his ability to read and compose music made him unique in the music industry, which as he explained, was troubling for the industry when being musically literate makes you stand out. An astonishing amount of today’s popular music is written by two people: Lukasz Gottwald of the United States and Max Martin from Sweden, who are both responsible for dozens of songs in the top 100 charts. You can credit Max and Dr. Luke for most the hits of these stars:
Katy Perry, Britney Spears, Kelly Clarkson, Taylor Swift, Jessie J., KE$HA, Miley Cyrus, Avril Lavigne, Maroon 5, Taio Cruz, Ellie Goulding, NSYNC, Backstreet Boys, Ariana Grande, Justin Timberlake, Nick Minaj, Celine Dion, Bon Jovi, Usher, Adam Lambert, Justin Bieber, Domino, Pink, Pitbull, One Direction, Flo Rida, Paris Hilton, The Veronicas, R. Kelly, Zebrahead
With only two people writing much of what we hear, is it any wonder music sounds the same, using the same hooks, riffs and electric drum effects?
Lyric Intelligence was also studied by Joan Serra over the last 10 years using several metrics such as “Flesch Kincaid Readability Index,” which reflects how difficult a piece of text is to understand and the quality of the writing. Results showed lyric intelligence has dropped by a full grade with lyrics getting shorter, tending to repeat the same words more often. Artists that write the entirety of their own songs are very rare today. When artists like Taylor Swift claim they write their own music, it is partially true, insofar as she writes her own lyrics about her latest boyfriend breakup, but she cannot read music and lacks the ability to compose what she plays. (Don’t attack me Tay-Tay Fans!)
Music electronics are another aspect of musical decline as the many untalented people we hear on the radio can’t live without autotune. Autotune artificially stretches or slurs sounds in order to get it closer to center pitch. Many of today’s pop musicians and rappers could not survive without autotune, which has become a sort of musical training wheels. But unlike a five-year-old riding a bike, they never take the training wheels off to mature into a better musician. Dare I even bring up the subject of U2s guitarist “The Edge” who has popularized rhythmic digital delays synchronized to the tempo of the music? You could easily argue he’s more an accomplished sound engineer than a talented guitarist.
Today’s music is designed to sell, not inspire. Today’s artist is often more concerned with producing something familiar to mass audience, increasing the likelihood of commercial success (this is encouraged by music industry execs, who are notoriously risk-averse).
In the mid-1970’s, most American high schools had a choir, orchestra, symphonic band, jazz band, and music appreciation classes. Many of today’s schools limit you to a music appreciation class because it is the cheapest option. D.A. Russell wrote in the Huffington Post in an article titled, “Cancelling High School Elective, Arts and Music—So Many Reasons—So Many Lies” that music, arts and electives teachers have to face the constant threat of eliminating their courses entirely. The worst part is knowing that cancellation is almost always based on two deliberate falsehoods peddled by school administrators: 1) Cancellation is a funding issue (the big lie); 2) music and the arts are too expensive (the little lie).
The truth: Elective class periods have been usurped by standardized test prep. Administrators focus primarily on protecting their positions and the school’s status by concentrating curricula on passing the tests, rather than by helping teachers be freed up from micromanaging mandates so those same teachers can teach again in their classrooms, making test prep classes unnecessary.
What can be done? First, musical literacy should be taught in our nation’s school systems. In addition, parents should encourage their children to play an instrument because it has been proven to help in brain synapse connections, learning discipline, work ethic, and working within a team. While contact sports like football are proven brain damagers, music participation is a brain enhancer.
There was this reaction …
… and counterreaction:
On Friday, January 18, a group of white teenage boys wearing maga hats mobbed an elderly Native American man on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, chanting “Make America great again,” menacing him, and taunting him in racially motivated ways. It is the kind of thing that happens every day—possibly every hour—in Donald Trump’s America. But this time there was proof: a video. Was it problematic that it offered no evidence that these things had happened? No. What mattered was that it had happened, and that there was video to prove it. The fact of there being a video became stronger than the video itself.
The video shows a man playing a tribal drum standing directly in front of a boy with clear skin and lips reddened from the cold; the boy is wearing a maga hat, and he is smiling at the man in a way that is implacable and inscrutable. The boys around him are cutting up—dancing to the drumbeat, making faces at one another and at various iPhones, and eventually beginning to tire of whatever it is that’s going on. Soon enough, the whole of the video’s meaning seems to come down to the smiling boy and the drumming man. They are locked into something, but what is it?Twenty seconds pass, then 30—and still the boy is smiling in that peculiar way. What has brought them to this strange, charged moment? From the short clip alone, it is impossible to tell. Because the point of the viral video was that it was proof of racist bullying yet showed no evidence of it, the boy quickly became the subject of rage and disgust. “I’d be ashamed and appalled if he was my son,” the actress Debra Messing tweeted.
The number one album today in 1960, “The Sound of Music” Broadway soundtrack, spent 16 weeks at number one:
M.D. Kittle reports on what Tony Evers said Tuesday night:
In his first state of the state address Tuesday, Gov. Tony Evers painted a bleak picture of a Wisconsin floundering in failure, a state gripped by poverty, and hopelessness plaguing the average home.
In other words, the Democrat created an alternative universe.
He had to. The reality — record-low unemployment for the better part of a year, surgingpersonal income, more good-paying jobs than there are people to fill them — wouldn’t do for a liberal governor pushing a grow-government agenda.
Evers certainly wasn’t going to give his predecessor, Republican Gov. Scott Walker, or the Republican-controlled Legislature any credit for the state’s prosperity and manifold successes.
And while he preached cooperation and bipartisanship, he did so with a noticeable it’s-my-way-or-the-highway tone that turned off a lot of the people across the aisle he’ll have to work with if he wants to accomplish anything but saying no.
“…(T)he state of our state is that we’ve got work to do, and we’re ready for bipartisan solutions,” Evers told the joint session of the Assembly and Senate.
Missing from his progress report was the fact that the new governor has inherited an economy that has created eight straight surpluses, including the latest coming in at $588 million.
“Governor Evers takes over at one of the most prosperous times in state history. Thanks to Governor Walker and Republicans, Wisconsin is in a better place than it was the last time a Democrat controlled the Governor’s Mansion. No matter how he spins it, our economy is in great shape,” said state Sen. Alberta Darling (R-River Hills) in a press release following Evers’ speech.
“Our economy doesn’t need fixing, it needs fanning,” Darling added.
Glossing over those positive facts, Evers plunged headlong into the despair narrative, lamenting a state that is among the “worst to raise a black family,” a state that spends more on corrections than “the entire UW system” (he forgets to note, however,that the higher education budget in Wisconsin from all funding sources is four times more than corrections).
He poo-pooed the surplus, and the fact that said surpluses have been created even as Republicans have cut state taxes by a combined $8.5 billion over the past eight years.
“The strength of our success is not found solely in fiscal surplus; it’s defined, too, by the number of our kids who will go to school hungry tomorrow,” Evers said, adding to his too-many-left-behind narrative.
And then he went beyond spin into fuzzy math.
“We are a state that was the birthplace of BadgerCare, and we’ve been a laboratory for democracy. But today, we are also a state where it’s become cheaper to get health care by driving across the Mississippi River,” Evers said.
It appears the governor is hanging on to the left’s blind love for all things Minnesota, and a key talking point from his campaign. It’s all part of Evers’ lambasting of Republicans for refusing to take the many-strings-attached federal money to expand Medicaid in the Badger State. Talk is cheap, but Minnesota’s Affordable Care Act bills aren’t.
The Minnesota myth, promoted by left-wing groups, fails to take into account how much taxpayer cash the Gopher State had to pump into the system to prop up Minnesota liberals’ full embrace of Obamacare and the Medicaid expansion.
Minnesota faced the fourth-highest premium spikes in 2017,expected to increase by a staggering 59 percent, as opposed to Wisconsin’s 16 percent hike. As a result, Minnesota was forced to come up with $300 million to bail out 123,000 struggling Minnesotans who did not qualify for federal Obamacare subsidies.
But Evers used the old Minnesota chestnut to make the case for a signature piece of his agenda and upcoming biennial budget proposal: Medicaid expansion.
“This would also save Wisconsin taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars, allowing us to reallocate those cost savings to other critical programs,” Evers said, skipping past the mandated 10 percent the Badger State will have to kick in for all that “free money” and the connected red tape that has driven up health care costs in so many states.
Declaring that it’s time to “stop playing politics with our health care,” Evers announced he would play politics with health care, instructing liberal Attorney General Josh Kaul to withdraw Wisconsin from a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Obamacare. Former Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel helped lead the 20-state suit. Last month a federal judge declared Obamacare unconstitutional, a ruling that was immediately challenged.
While he hammered home the need for the political players in Madison to find common ground, Evers laid out an agenda long on liberal policy and payoffs to political pals.
The new governor pitched another task force to deal with Wisconsin’s “transportation funding crisis,” a “crisis” bought and paid for by the road-building lobby. Evers pointed to his Department of Transportation secretary nominee, top road lobbyist Craig Thompson,who has suggested increased gas taxes are on the table, allowing his old friends to grab a bigger share of taxpayer cash.
“I appointed Secretary-designee Craig Thompson because I know that he will work on both sides of the aisle for a solution that works for Wisconsin,” Evers said. “I fully expect that he will be approved with consent of the Senate.” A number of fiscal hawks in the Senate have concerns about the lobbyist at the helm of the state transportation budget.
There appears to be lots of spending ahead in the first Evers budget, which the governor says he’d like to roll out in early March (Republicans are giving him a deadline extension to the end of February). There’s a proposed five-fold increase in mental health programs for K-12 students; an “unprecedented $600 million” increase in special education funding; the return of two-thirds state funding committed to K-12 schools.
It’s all about connecting the dots, the Democrat said.
Darling said there’s a disconnect in the governor’s message.
“The governor talked a lot about connecting the dots, but didn’t connect his ideas to how he will pay for them. He talked a lot about bipartisanship, but so far, his only answer to the legislature has been ‘no,’” the senator said.
Evers eschewed bipartisanship again when he outright rejected an Assembly Republican middle-class tax cut plan. Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) dubbed it the “Tony Evers Middle-Class Tax Cut” plan because it closely resembles a proposal the governor campaigned on. But while the Republican plan would deliver targeted tax relief to the middle class using $340 million of the state’s surplus, Evers’ proposal calls for paying for his tax cut by getting rid of the popular manufacturing and agriculture tax credit.
“So instead, we’re going to fund tax relief for hard-working families by capping a corporate tax credit, 80 percent of which goes to filers making more than $1 million a year,” Evers said, spinning the facts once again.
The tax credit led to the creation of 42,000 jobs between 2013 and 2016, according to a University of Wisconsin study. More than 88 percent of tax credit recipients in 2017 were small businesses with incomes of less than $1 million — not the kind of big corporate interests the left would lead taxpayers to believe.
“More than 10,000 employees of all different sizes took advantage of the MAC (in 2017), and that has allowed them to invest more in their businesses, their workers and their communities,” Scott Manley, senior vice president of government relations for Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, said in a statement last year.
Neither Evers’ plan nor the Assembly Republican tax relief package talks about trimming government expenses to help fund the tax cut.
After all that, the new governor said he expects legislation arriving on his desk passed with “broad support and in the spirit of bipartisanship.”
State Sen. Chris Kapenga (R-Delafield) said Wisconsin is in great shape thanks to Republican reforms over the past eight years. It’s now the Legislature’s job, he said, to continue to make good fiscal decisions and remain a “watchdog.”
In other words, the battle lines are being drawn in divided government in the Badger State.
“I was hopeful Governor Evers would come to his senses and work with the legislature to return this surplus to the hardworking taxpayers,” Kapenga said in a press release. “However, after his address tonight, it’s pretty clear that he is more interested in returning to the failed tax and spend policies of the past.”
Now the reality, from Dan O’Donnell:
My fellow Wisconsinites, the state of our state is strong. Not because of anything the man delivering this year’s State of the State address did, mind you.
It’s quite the opposite, actually.
The state of our state is strong because of the man he defeated and the men and women he is now pledging to oppose. The state of our state is strong because of the policies that he is promising to undo.
In fact, my fellow Wisconsinites, the best thing Governor Tony Evers can do to keep the state of our state strong is absolutely nothing. If he wants to keep Wisconsin moving forward, he can take a backseat to a Republican State Legislature that has presided over unprecedented growth.
Naturally, he won’t, but it will behoove him to at least consider how strong Wisconsin has grown over the past eight years.
The state ended the 2017-2018 Fiscal Year with a $588.5 million budget surplus and a whopping $1.53 billion in its General Fund. By way of contrast, Wisconsin ended the final year of Democratic Governor Jim Doyle’s tenure in 2010 facing a $3.6 billion budget shortfall and ended the 2009-2010 Fiscal Year with only $71.0 million in the General Fund.
Doyle’s policies were so disastrous for Wisconsin that what had been $835.7 million in the General Fund at the end of the long tenure of Republican Governor Tommy Thompson dropped a staggering 82 percent in just ten years.
When Governor Walker and the Republican Legislature took over in 2011, though, the state’s financial picture immediately brightened. Wisconsin had a budget surplus in each of the past eight years, and after eight years of Republican rule the state now has $320.1 million in its “rainy day” fund—190 times higher than the $1.68 million with which Governor Doyle and the Democratic Legislature left it.
Negligent mismanagement of Wisconsin’s finances forced the Democrats to hike taxes by $3 billion in Governor Doyle’s final biennial budget, but after eight years of Walker and a Republican Legislature, the tax burden on Wisconsinites has declined by a staggering $8 billion.
Not coincidentally, Wisconsin’s unemployment rate rose from 5.5 percent in December of 2002 (the month before Doyle took office) to 8.2 percent in December of 2010 (his last full month in office) and then dropped to 3.0 percent in Governor Walker’s last full month in office this past December.
That was the fifth straight month of 3.0 percent unemployment after state-record lows of 2.8 percent in April and May.
At no point during Doyle’s governorship did unemployment drop below 4.3 percent.
Because so many more people are working than when Doyle left office, Wisconsin’s total general purpose revenueshit $8.48 billion in 2018, compared with $6.09 billion in 2010 (even though the tax burden on individual Wisconsinites was much higher).
In 2010, Wisconsin’s poverty rate was 13.0 percent and approximately 733,000 people lived below the state’s poverty line while an additional 983,000 lived close to it. By 2018, though, the poverty rate was down to 11.3 percent and the total number of people living in poverty dropped to 639,564.
And not only are more people out of poverty after eight years of Republican reforms, people are making more money.
New MacIver Institute research finds that “Wisconsin’s private-sector wages grew on average by 5.7 percent in the first five months of 2018, according to Census Bureau data. That compares to 2.7 percent for the entire U.S. Last year alone Wisconsin median household income rose more than $1,000 to about $59,300, according to the Census Bureau. The state averaged a 3.6 percent increase in earnings, compared to the national average of 2.8 percent.”
By literally every indicator, the state of our state is infinitely stronger today than the last time a Democratic Governor was in office. And our state can remain strong if its new Democratic Governor recognizes what has worked for the past eight years and what failed for the eight years before that.
Governor Evers is now calling for what amounts to a return to the Doyle economy as he proposes the same bloated spending that will lead to the same confiscatory tax hikes that already led Wisconsin to the brink of ruin.
Yet today, the state of our state is strong, and if Evers wants to keep it that way, the best thing he can do is simply step back and let Republican policies strengthen it even further.
A legal analysis prepared Wednesday by a legislative attorney says Gov. Tony Evers does not have the authority to order the state’s attorney general to withdraw from a lawsuit challenging the Affordable Care Act, despite Evers’ declaration on Tuesday that he would do so.
Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, R-Juneau, requested the memo from the nonpartisan Legislative Reference Bureau after Evers announced in his State of the State address that he had sent Attorney General Josh Kaul a letter directing him to pull Wisconsin out of the multi-state lawsuit.
According to the memo, Kaul can only withdraw the state from the lawsuit with the approval of the Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee.
Last year, then-Gov. Scott Walker authorized then-Attorney General Brad Schimel to join a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the Obama-era health care law.
Evers and Kaul both campaigned on a promise to remove the state from the lawsuit, but Evers’ power to do so without legislative approval was removed in a set of laws passed by the Republican-led Legislature after he was elected. A federal judge in Texas ruled the ACA unconstitutional in December, but it is still being enforced as the lawsuit is appealed.
Addressing the Legislature Tuesday evening, Evers said he had sent Kaul a letter instructing him to pull out of the lawsuit.
“I cannot continue to allow the use of taxpayer resources toward a lawsuit that could undermine the health security of the people of the state,” Evers wrote in a letter that was hand-delivered to Kaul on Tuesday.
In the letter, Evers said he is “immediately withdrawing the authority provided” by a section of state law that previously allowed Wisconsin to enter the case.
According to the LRB analysis provided to Fitzgerald, the statute Evers cited addresses the governor’s ability to request the attorney general join a lawsuit, but not the authority to withdraw. A separate statute — changed in the recent lame-duck session — previously allowed a governor to authorize such a withdrawal, but under the changes approved in December, the attorney general can only exit a lawsuit with the approval of the Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee.
Asked about the memo Wednesday afternoon, an Evers spokeswoman said she had not seen it yet.
Democratic Gov. Tony Evers Wednesday walked back a vow he made to withdraw the state from the Affordable Care Act lawsuit less than 24 hours after making the commitment in his first State of the State address.
“The governor has not directed the attorney general to take any specific course of action, he has simply withdrawn his authority for this lawsuit,” Evers spokeswoman Melissa Baldauff said in a statement.
Evers’ reversal comes after the release Wednesday of a memo from the nonpartisan Legislative Reference Bureau that splashed cold water on Evers’ plans to withdraw Wisconsin from an ongoing multi-state lawsuit seeking to invalidate the ACA.
The memo, sent to Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, R-Juneau, states there is no legal way for the new governor to fulfill his campaign promise to withdraw the state from the suit.
“There is thus no provision … allowing the governor to request, require or approve the attorney general to compromise or discontinue an action,” LRB attorney Sarah Walkenhorst wrote. “It is only the Joint Committee on Finance that has the authority to approve any compromise or discontinuance of an action in which the attorney general’s participation was requested.” …
Under previous law, Evers would have had the authority to withdraw the state from the suit. But that all changed after Republicans in December passed their controversial lame-duck law, which eliminated the governor’s ability to remove the state from lawsuits without legislative approval. …
Kaul after the State of the State address declined to provide detail on if and how he would withdraw the state from the lawsuit, except to say that the Department of Justice would remain consistent with the law.
On many Independence Days I repeat the words of former Facebook Friend (former because he’s not on Facebook anymore) Tim Nerenz:
Americans are the perfected DNA strand of rebelliousness. Each of us is the descendant of the brother who left the farm in the old country when his mom and dad and wimpy brother told him not to; the sister who ran away rather than marry the guy her parents had arranged for her; the freethinker who decided his fate would be his own, not decided by a distant power he could not name. How did you think we would turn out?
Those other brothers and sisters, the tame and the fearful, the obedient and the docile; they all stayed home. Their timid DNA was passed down to the generations who have endured warfare and poverty and hopelessness and the dull, boring sameness that is the price of subjugation.
They watch from the old countries with envy as their rebellious American cousins run with scissors. They covet our prosperity and our might and our unbridled celebration of our liberty; but try as they might they have not been able to replicate our success in their own countries.
Dan Mitchell somewhat brings this up in comparing here with the “old country” for those of us of Scandinavian heritage:
The most persuasive data, when comparing the United States and Scandinavia, are the numbers showing that Americans of Swedish, Danish, Finnish, and Norwegian descent produce much more prosperity than those who remained in Sweden, Denmark, Finland, and Norway.
This certainly suggests that America’s medium-sized welfare state does less damage than the large-sized welfare state in Scandinavian nations.
But maybe the United States also was fortunate in that it attracted the right kind of migrant from Scandinavia.
Let’s look at some fascinating research from Professor Anne Sofie Beck Knudsen of Lund University in Sweden.
If you’re in a rush and simply want the headline results, here are some excerpts from the abstract.
This paper examines the joint evolution of emigration and individualism in Scandinavia during the Age of Mass Migration (1850-1920). A long-standing hypothesis holds that people of a stronger individualistic mindset are more likely to migrate as they suffer lower costs of abandoning existing social networks. …I propose a theory of cultural change where migrant self-selection generates a relative push away from individualism, and towards collectivism, in migrant-sending locations through a combination of initial distributional effects and channels of intergenerational cultural transmission. …the empirical results suggest that individualists were more likely to migrate than collectivists, and that the Scandinavian countries would have been considerably more individualistic and culturally diverse, had emigration not taken place.
If you’re interested in more detail, here are passages from the study.
We’ll start with the author’s description of why she studied the topic and what she wanted to determine.
People of Western societies are unique in their strong view of themselves… This culture of individualism has roots in the distant past and is believed to have played an important role in the economic and political development of the region… differences in individualism and its counterpart, collectivism, impact processes of innovation, entrepreneurship, cooperation, and public goods provision. Yet, little is known about what has influenced the evolution of individualism over time and across space within the Western world. …I explore the relationship between individualism and a common example of human behavior: migration. I propose a theory, where migration flows generate cultural change towards collectivism and convergence across migrant-sending locations.
Keep in mind, by the way, that societies with a greater preference for individualism generate much more prosperity.
Anyhow, Professor Knudsen had a huge dataset for her research since there was an immense amount of out-migration from Scandinavia.
During the period, millions of people left Europe to settle in New World countries such as the United States. Sweden, Norway, and Denmark experienced some of the highest emigration rates in Europe during this period, involving the departure of approximately 25% of their populations. …Total emigration amounted to around 38% and 26% in Norway and Sweden respectively.
Here are some of her findings.
I find that Scandinavians who grew up in individualistic households were more likely to emigrate… people of individualistic mindsets suffer lower costs of leaving existing social networks behind… the cultural change that took place during the Age of Mass Migration was sufficiently profound to leave a long-run impact on contemporary Scandinavian culture. …If people migrate based, in part, on individualistic cultural values, migration will have implications on the overall evolution of cultures. Emigration must be associated with an immediate reduction in the prevalence of individualists in the migrant-sending population.
Here is her data on the individualism of emigrants compared to those who stayed in Scandinavia.
As an aside, I find it very interesting that Scandinavian emigrants were attracted by the “American dream.”
…historians agree that migrants were motivated by more than hopes of escaping poverty. Stories on the ‘American Dream‘ and the view of the United States as the ‘Land of Opportunities‘ were core to the migration discourse. Private letters, diaries, and newspaper articles of the time reveal that ideas of personal freedom and social equality embodied in the American society were of great value to the migrants. In the United States, people were free to pursue own goals.
And this is why I am quite sympathetic to continued migration to America, with the big caveat that I want severe restrictions on access to government handouts.
Simply stated, I want more people who want that “American dream.”
But I’m digressing. Let’s now look at the key result from Professor Knudsen’s paper.
When the more individualistic Scandinavians with “get up and go” left their home countries, that meant the average level of collectivism increased among those remained behind.
Several observations are worth mentioning in light of the revealed actual and counterfactual patterns of individualism. First, one observes a general trend of rising individualism over the period, which is consistent with accounts for other countries… Second, the level of individualism would have been considerably higher by the end of the Age of Mass Migration in 1920, had emigration not taken place. Taking the numbers at face value, individualism would have been between 19.0% and 20.3% higher on average in Sweden, 17.8% and 27.9% in Norway, and 7.6% and 12.5% in Denmark, depending on the measure considered.
… To wrap this up, here’s a restatement of the key findings from the study’s conclusion.
I find that people of an individualistic mindset were more prone to migrate than their collectivistic neighbors. …Due to self-selection on individualistic traits, mass emigration caused a direct compositional change in the home population. Over the period this amounted to a loss of individualists of approximate 3.7%-points in Denmark, 9.4%-points in Sweden, and 13.6%-points in Norway. …The cultural change that took place during the Age of Mass Migration was sufficiently profound to impact cross-district cultural differences in present day Scandinavia. Contemporary levels of individualism would thus have been significantly higher had emigration not occurred. …The potential societal implications of the emigration-driven cultural change are of great importance. The period of the Age of Mass Migration was characterized by industrialization, urbanization, and democratization in Scandinavia. Individualism was generally on the rise, in part due to these developments, but it seems conceivable that the collectivistic turn caused by emigration played a role in subsequent institutional developments. While economic freedom is high in contemporary Scandinavia, the region is known for its priority of social cohesion and collective insurance. This is particularly clear when contrasting the Scandinavian welfare model with American liberal capitalism.
This is first-rate research.
Professor Knudsen even understands that Scandinavian nations still have lots of economic freedom by world standards.
Imagine, though, how much economic freedom those countries might enjoy if the more individualism-minded people hadn’t left for America? Maybe those nations wouldn’t have dramatically expanded their welfare states starting in the 1960s, thus dampening economic growth.
The obvious takeaway is that migration from Denmark, Sweden, and Norway to the United States was a net plus for America and a net minus for Scandinavia.
P.S. When she referred in her conclusion to “American liberal capitalism,” she was obviously referring to classical liberalism.
All
The number one British single today in 1958 was the first in British chart history to start at the top:
Today in 1969, New Jersey authorities told record stores they would be charged with pornography if they sold the John Lennon and Yoko Ono album “Two Virgins,” whose cover showed all you could possibly see of John and Yoko.
The number one album today in 1976 was Bob Dylan’s “Desire”:
The number one single today in 1976:
Two years ago, the Washington Times reported on New York and New York:
State secessionist movements are long shots at best, but New Yorkers pushing for a breakup between the Big Apple and upstate are counting on the very real possibility of a constitutional convention to boost their odds.
Voters will decide in November whether to hold a statewide constitutional convention in 2019, thanks to the New York State Constitution, which allows for such an event every 20 years.
It’s a rare opportunity that the Divide NYS Caucus hopes to seize.
“It’s time to cease fantasizing that NYS legislators have the best interests of the people in mind,” the caucus said in a statement. “If we vote YES on the NYS convention, the first step in our plan to form autonomous regions is complete.”
The caucus wants to lift upstate New York’s struggling economy by reorganizing the state into two or even three independent regions. Such a division could be accomplished at the convention without the approval of the governor or the state Legislature.
“It’s the only thing they can’t control,” said Divide NYS Caucus chairman …
A Siena College poll released May 24 found 62 percent of those polled favor the convention, while 22 percent oppose it, although two-thirds have heard “nothing at all” about it.
Even so, convention supporter Gerald Benjamin, a political science professor at State University of New York at New Paltz, described “con con” advocates as “underdogs.”
“The issue right now is whether the advocates can finance a serious campaign,” Mr. Benjamin said. “They’re getting their resources together. Right now I think we’re the underdogs on this. I think we have a chance, but we’re underdogs.”
That’s because the opposition is formidable. Organized labor and the New York State Alliance for Retired Americans already have launched campaigns urging voters to nix the convention, warning that delegates would have the power to gut public pension benefits and collective bargaining rights.
“Delegates to a possible convention can essentially blow up the way of life New Yorkers enjoy and the expectations and priorities each of us have,” said Paul Pecorale, vice president of New York State United Teachers. “Whether it’s public education, collective bargaining, our retirement security, environmental protections, spending caps in the budget or any other issue one cares about, it’s all at risk.”
Gov. Andrew Cuomo has said he supports a constitutional convention while also expressing reservations about how it might look in practice.
“I think the governor has calculated the political consequences of his ability to influence the Legislature, his ability to stay in a positive relationship with the organized labor movement and also his presidential ambitions, and he’s decided to back away,” said Mr. Benjamin. “He hasn’t denounced the idea, but he hasn’t given it the emphasis that, in the past, he has done.”
If voters approve the convention in November, a year later they would select three delegates from each of the state’s 63 senatorial districts and 15 at-large delegates. Any amendments passed at the convention would go before the voters for final approval in November 2019.
Even though the constitution allows for a regular convention, New York has not held one since 1967, when the state Legislature called it. The last one called by voters was in 1938.
For upstate advocates of a split state, the convention may come as their best chance to pull off a Brexit-style departure from New York City.
The Divide NYS Caucus several years ago hit on the idea of forming autonomous regions within the state that would be led by their own governors and legislators instead of seeking approval from the Legislature and Congress to form a new state.
“It could be a model for other states, too, to go to the regional-districts method,” said Mr. Bergener, the Divide NYS Caucus chairman. “This way you only need an amendment to your state constitution.”
The goal is to improve the economic prospects of upstaters, who complain that the state’s high taxes and onerous regulations have scared away jobs as companies flee to states with more business-friendly climates.
In December 2014, Mr. Cuomo declared a statewide ban on hydraulic fracturing, effectively halting any natural gas development stemming from the rich Marcellus Shale in the state’s southern tier and fueling secession talk, including calls for the region to split off and join Pennsylvania.
“What it amounts to now is more taxes are gained in New York City and that money is sent upstate, but they put so many strings attached to it that it hasn’t been helping,” said Mr. Bergener. “So it’s a ‘Catch-22.’ If we were run more like Pennsylvania or Vermont, we’d be a lot better off.”
Wisconsin has a constitutional convention provision that requires approval of the Legislature and then a statewide referendum. So it seems possible for Wisconsin to do what New York may do and, say, eject Milwaukee and Madison from this state.
As with New York, neither Madison or Milwaukee represents this state. Milwaukee and Madison are the reason the unqualified Tony Evers is governor and not Scott Walker. Without the Axis of Evil, Walker would have been reelected with 56 percent of the vote, which is a larger margin than Walker ever got in getting elected once and reelected twice.
Does this mean that everyone who lives in Milwaukee or the People’s Republic of Madison is an idiot liberal? No. But those people who aren’t have zero say in government in Dane County or the city of Milwaukee. They are victims of taxation without representation because their representatives don’t agree with them. And I must say that those from Madison and Milwaukee who will oppose being seceded are perfectly happy being represented by Democrats and liberals, and have zero interests in the contrary views of their few non-liberal neighbors.
The priorities of those elected by voters in Madison and Milwaukee have rarely matched the views of voters in the rest of the state, but with time those differences have done nothing but expand. Evers and his attorney general are about to embark on an unconstitutional crusade to take guns away from people without due process or the least consideration of their constitutional rights, and that’s just the start. The rest of the state may be fine with Democrats’ ruining Madison and Milwaukee as they have in Milwaukee’s case and they are doing in Madison’s case. They should not be allowed to ruin the part of the state where real Wisconsinites live.
Amelia Irvine about the Democratic Party’s latest hype hope:
Vox dubbed her “the most buzzed-about first-term member of the House of Representatives,” and The Atlantic credited her with an “unusually transparent approach to public relations.” She’s a former Bernie Sanders campaign volunteer and a self-styled democratic socialist. Despite all the fanfare, her recent “60 Minutes” interview with Anderson Cooper shined a bright spotlight on a painful fact: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will make it harder for young women in politics to be taken seriously in the future.
In mere minutes, Ocasio-Cortez managed to affirm nearly every negative stereotype about the female sex, from the trope that we’re no good at math to the notion that you shouldn’t trust us with a credit card. If all you saw was her example, you’d think we’re all just emotional dreamers who need to be reined in by reality.
Today’s first item comes from the Stupid Laws File: Today in 1956, Ohio youths younger than 18 were banned from dancing in public unless accompanied by an adult, the result of enforcing a law that dated back to 1931.
The number one single today in 1965:
The number one British single today in 1971 was the first number one by a singer from his previous group:
Today in 1977, Patti Smith broke a vertebra after falling off the stage at her concert in Tampa, Fla.
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 