the power of wealth redistribution to produce net value is quite limited
Considering what some rhetoricians label as "wealth redistribution", this is flat-out wrong. Consider socialized education, medicine, or early childhood education - all have shown to have strong impacts on social mobility, and hence, wealth creation.
This might be too subtle for a slogan, but it isn't rocket science, either: systems of smart wealth redistribution are absolutely necessary, although not sufficient, for maximum wealth creation. Also necessary, off the top of my head: social pressure for parents to be responsible, and a "path to prosperity" with which individuals can identify.
Consider socialized education, medicine, or early childhood education - all have shown to have strong impacts on social mobility, and hence, wealth creation.
Early childhood education is found to produce persistent effects on achievement and academic success, but not on IQ . . . Cost-benefit analysis based on one randomized trial finds that the economic return from providing early education to children in poverty far exceeds the costs.
This article is behind a $31.50 paywall. Did you actually read this article? Or are you just assuming that just because some academic wrote it an abstract that its true? I used to browse my college's social science library for fun. The number of methodological flaws in the typical journal article is enough to make a person cry. If you have a copy of the article, maybe you could send it to me. If you haven't read it - well - citing a gated journal article that you haven't even read is not evidence and does not contribute to the discussion.
I wasn't assuming that it was true or wouldn't have methodologial flaws. It's basically impossible to find a study of any real-world sociological study whose methodology is beyond dispute.
Conclusion:
As the first cost-benefit analysis of a federally-financed, comprehensive early childhood intervention, findings indicate that participation in each component of the program was associated with economic benefits that exceeded costs. This was accomplished by increasing economic well being and reducing educational and social expenditures for remediation and treatment. Similar to Head Start, the CPC preschool program is the most intensive and comprehensive component and yielded the greatest benefits by age 21. Findings for school-age and extended intervention demonstrate the benefits of reduced class sizes and enriched school environments in the early grades. Thus, contemporary, large-scale child-development programs can provide substantial long-term benefits to society.
The effect of education on income is a subject that has been studied heavily. I'm sure that you can find studies that support many conclusions. But I think you will have trouble proposing that someone is making an unsupported claim when they say that education increases wealth and social mobility.
Edit: This doesn't mean you can't claim "I think that system X would achieve better results." It's not necessary to tear down the economic results that the American system has achieved in order to propose something that would work better in the future.
I wasn't assuming that it was true or wouldn't have methodologial flaws. It's basically impossible to find a study of any real-world sociological study whose methodology is beyond dispute..
Well yes. And in general, the flaws are pretty gaping flaws. If you have studies with gaping methodological flaws, then you must completely disregard them. They are not evidence.
The study you cite about the CPC program, is majorly flawed. In general, the most astute parents figure out how to find their way into these types of programs. When you look at a more broad based program - like Head Start - the evidence effectiveness does not seem to be exist or be enough to stand out from the noise ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head_Start#Reports_and_statemen... )
But I think you will have trouble proposing that someone is making an unsupported claim when they say that education increases wealth and social mobility.
Despite dramatically increasing the amount we spend on education, and the time spent in school, basic measures of vocabulary and math have been flat over the last century.
But I don't like playing the social science game.
The real reason I don't believe schooling increases national wealth is because I got a topflight education. But after a private high school and an ivy league college, neither I nor virtually any of my friends learned much in the way of wealth-creating skills. I earn a much higher than average income, but its all because of self-taught skills.
After spending some time in the workforce, I've noticed the vast majority of people learn their wealth producing skills on the job. This is the norm now, it was the norm fifty years ago, and it was the norm one hundred fifty years ago. It applies to machinists and it applies to software engineers. The only difference is that we are so rich now, we can afford to waste hundreds of billions of dollars on formal schooling.
If people who graduate college earn more, it must because of some other affect ( selection effects, zero-sum credentialing laws, or because of social networks). I know this must be the case, because I knows what happens in schools, and I know that outside of engineering (which is a tiny minority of all majors) college does not teach wealth producing skills.
Well look, its pretty obvious that people who are successful didn't learn most of the skills they use in college. Thats not the claim that is being made though.
The claim is that going to college somehow increases your chances of being successful. I.e. that it sets you on the right path to becoming successful. How could this be? Could be that it teaches you something useful (problem solving, the ability to power through difficult assignments, etc...) that is necessary in a lot of jobs.
I worked for a company before where they didn't necessarily hire people with CS degrees or backgrounds. They just hired smart people and taught them what was necessary. Some people would claim that these people were smart enough to do this because of their college education.
Note: I'm not necessarily sure that college does make you smarter in a relevant way. As has been pointed out, most of the studies have bad methodology and anecdotal evidence is not sufficient to prove a point. So all we can do here is lay out theories .
Looks like you started writing before I deleted - sorry about that. I had claimed that oil wealth aside, countries with high per-capita GDP all had those socialized services. Yet most examples I could find had populations smaller than NYC, and obviously didn't serve as adequate comparisons.
It seems there are way too many variables to look for clear examples. We certainly can't look at the industrial revolution for examples of what will make a prosperous society - wealth creation then relied mostly on optimizing physical manufacturing, not intellectual products, as it does now.
It seems there are way too many variables to look for clear examples.
Indeed. The social science method of finding truth through regressions is an intellectually bankrupt exercise.
My overall views are these:
a) I suspect that developed countries (the U.S. in particular) over invest in the money spent on education
b) developed countries over invest on the time spent in school
c) the quality of the time spent in school sucks, and could be much improved
I don't believe the above because of social science regressions. I believe it because I am a software engineer, and I can mentally add up the time it took me to learn the skills I have now. It does not require 16 years of full time schooling to become an engineer. For example, when I put my mind to it, I was able to learn enough calculus to pass the AP tests in about 50 hours total.
I know that many peers who were fully productive - either doing software, carpentry, or even C.A.D. design for an architectural firm by early high school. We may need in a knowledge economy, but perhaps 1% of jobs need more than a year or two of secondary schooling to do them effectively.
d) The primary problem of the urban poor youth in America is not lack of schooling, but lack of discipline. We could spend one quarter what we do on schooling in D.C., but make it many times more effective it we simply re-imported pre-1970's discipline. Note that old school discipline was not abandoned because it did not work, it was abandoned because of disastrous court decisions that basically made teachers unable to control their own schools. The lack of discipline means that kids do not learn, and that when they drop out they do not even have a good enough attitude to get a job in skilled labor.
I'll gladly agree that we could be spending our educational budgets better. Everything else seems ery uncertain - yes, I could have learned to do my job in a fraction of my schooling, but there are many things in my schooling that have nothing to do with my current job, yet which I value immensely (probably more so than my directly employable skills, even). As a matter of fact, I spent most of college avoiding (as much as I could while getting the degree) practical CS, precisely because I knees learning it on my own would be a lot better use of the time. Instead, I tried to focus on things to which I'd have limited exposure in my career - Shakespeare, writing, theoretical mathematics, etc.
Did you read any of the actual studies cited? The modus operandi in social science is to throw in enough variables into your regression (or leave out a few key ones) until you get the result you want. Just throwing a lot of "[Nunn et al 2007] say x " on a page is not evidence. If there is a particular one of those papers that you thought was the most convincing, I can take a look at it and evaluate the actual evidence/data presented.
Considering what some rhetoricians label as "wealth redistribution", this is flat-out wrong. Consider socialized education, medicine, or early childhood education - all have shown to have strong impacts on social mobility, and hence, wealth creation.
This might be too subtle for a slogan, but it isn't rocket science, either: systems of smart wealth redistribution are absolutely necessary, although not sufficient, for maximum wealth creation. Also necessary, off the top of my head: social pressure for parents to be responsible, and a "path to prosperity" with which individuals can identify.