Photo by pj_vanf via flickr.com

The Twitterverse and blogosphere exploded after NFL replacement referees blew a call on Monday Night Football, costing the Green Bay Packers a victory. Even President Obama piped up on Tuesday, encouraging a swift end to the labor dispute between the NFL and its regular referees. Michael Hiltzik of the Los Angeles Times agrees that we should all be paying attention to the unfolding drama, but argues that we might be missing the point:

Most news coverage of this labor dispute focuses on the ineptitude of the fill-in referees; this week there will be a lot of hand-wringing over the flagrantly bad call that turned a Green Bay interception into a game-winning Seattle touchdown, as if by alchemy. Occasionally you’ll read that the disagreement has something to do with retirement pay. But it’s really about much more.

It’s about employers’ assault on the very concept of retirement security. It’s about employers’ willingness to resort to strong-arm tactics with workers, because they believe that in today’s environment unions can be pushed around (they’re not wrong). You ignore this labor dispute at your peril, because the same treatment is waiting for you.

One issue at the heart of the conflict is the NFL’s goal to end the referees’ pension plan and move to a 401(k)-style plan, which Hiltzik notes is not unique among U.S. employers.

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell has argued that defined-benefit plans are a thing of the past — even he doesn’t have one, he told an interviewer recently, as though financially he’s in the same boat as any other league employee.

This is as pure an expression as you’ll find of the race to the bottom in corporate treatment of employees. Industry’s shift from defined-benefit retirement plans to 401(k) plans has helped to destroy retirement security for millions of Americans by shifting pension risk from employer to employee, exposing the latter to financial market meltdowns like those that occurred in 2000 and 2008.

It’s true that employers coast-to-coast have tried to put a bullet in the heart of the defined-benefit plan. The union representing 45,000 Verizon workers gave up on such coverage for new employees to settle a 15-month contract dispute.

But why anyone should sympathize with the desire of the NFL, one of the most successful business enterprises in history, to do so, much less admire its efforts, isn’t so clear. If you have one of these disappearing retirement plans today, don’t be surprised to hear your employer lament, “even the NFL can’t afford them” tomorrow.

Another common trend is an increase in the use of lockouts as a means of resolving labor disputes.

Lockouts have become more widespread generally: A recent survey by Bloomberg BNA found that as a percentage of U.S. work stoppages, lockouts had increased to 8.07% last year, the highest ratio on record, from less than 3% in 1991. In other words, work stoppages of all kinds have declined by 75% in that period — but more of them are initiated by employers.

The reasons are obvious. “Lockouts put pressure on the employees because nobody can collect a paycheck,” said William B. Gould IV, a former attorney for the National Labor Relations Board and a professor emeritus at Stanford Law School. “In a lot of major disputes, particularly in sports, it’s the weapon du jour.” Think about that the next time someone tells you that unions have too much power.

While the spotlight is sure to remain on the ire of fans and players alike toward the botched calls by replacement refs, America’s Game may be showing us more about business as usual in the United States than we would like to see.

It’s been said that football simply replicates the rough and tumble of the real world, and in this case, sadly, the observation is too true.

Poster by Mitch Rosenberg via zazzle.com
Poster by Mitch Rosenberg via zazzle.com

Think 47% of all Americans are moochers? Try 96%. Political scientists Suzanne Mettler and John Sides argue in the New York Times that Mitt Romney has grossly underestimated how many U.S. citizens take advantage of government social programs.

The beneficiaries include the rich and the poor, Democrats and Republicans. Almost everyone is both a maker and a taker.

Mettler and Sides draw on nationally representative data from a 2008 survey of Americans about their use of 21 different government social programs, including everything from student loans to Medicare.

What the data reveal is striking: nearly all Americans — 96 percent — have relied on the federal government to assist them. Young adults, who are not yet eligible for many policies, account for most of the remaining 4 percent.

On average, people reported that they had used five social policies at some point in their lives. An individual typically had received two direct social benefits in the form of checks, goods or services paid for by government, like Social Security or unemployment insurance. Most had also benefited from three policies in which government’s role was “submerged,” meaning that it was channeled through the tax code or private organizations, like the home mortgage-interest deduction and the tax-free status of the employer contribution to employees’ health insurance. The design of these policies camouflages the fact that they are social benefits, too, just like the direct benefits that help Americans pay for housing, health care, retirement and college.

The use of such government social programs cuts across all divides, including political party affiliation and class. But ideology does seem to play a role in how people think about their relationship with government programs.

…conservatives were less likely than liberals to respond affirmatively when asked if they had ever used a “government social program,” even when both subsequently acknowledged using the same number of specific policies.

These ideological differences have significant consequences for how government social programs either divide or unite us.

Because ideology influences how we view our own and others’ use of government, Mr. Romney’s remarks may resonate with those who think of themselves as “producers” rather than “moochers” — to use Ayn Rand’s distinction. But this distinction fails to capture the way Americans really experience government. Instead of dividing us, our experiences as both makers and takers ought to bind us in a community of shared sacrifice and mutual support.

For more from Suzanne Mettler on government social programs and the “submerged state,” check out our Office Hours Podcast.

Protest photo by the AP via Voice of America

Last week, an anti-Muslim movie produced in the U.S. influenced protests and attacks in Libya, Egypt, and several other countries. In the aftermath of the protests in Egypt, VOA spoke briefly with Said Sadek, Professor of Political Sociology at American University in Cairo.

According to Sadek, it’s important to realize that majority of people (in any religion) are not extremists but are rather caught by extremists that “try to push the silent majority into extremism, and suspicion, and intolerance.”

These extremist groups often single out media products and use them for their own messages. “There are many sites and many films and books against all religions… Why do you all of a sudden [shed] light on a particular film and ignore the others? This has to be a politically motivated process.”

Unfortunately, many members of civil society do not understand how these media products are produced.  As Sadek explains,

There is a misunderstanding in Muslim countries [about] the relationship between government and media. They still believe it’s like in autocratic regimes, the government orders the media to do this or to do that. President Obama did not order that movie about Islam is made. In fact, he is being accused in America that he is pro-Muslim.

Photo by CollegeDegrees360 via flickr.com

Graphic Sociology’s Laura Norén recently posted an illustration of who is earning degrees in the U.S., highlighting the growing percentage of women earning bachelor’s, master’s, and professional/doctoral degrees since the 1970s. Her engaging graphic also pointed out the percentage of degree earners by race, relative to the proportion of each group in the overall population.

TSP was pleased to see that the graphic and Norén’s analysis, which drew on data from the Department of Education and the Census Bureau, caught the eye of Andrew Sullivan over at The Daily Beast, bringing a sociologist’s take on the collegiate gender gap to an enormous public audience. Click through to see Sullivan’s post.

Pledge Photo by Jeffery Turner via flickr.com
Photo by Jeffery Turner via flickr.com

“I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America….”  Many of us can remember standing and reciting this each morning at school.  But how many of you have thought about its origins?

NPR’s Shirish V. Dáte raised this question last week in reaction to Mitt Romney’s use of the Pledge of Allegiance in his campaign.

When Mitt Romney uses the Pledge of Allegiance as a metaphor for all that’s good and right with America, how many in his audience know that the two-sentence loyalty oath was penned not by the Founding Fathers in 1776, but a fascist preacher more than 100 years later?

Or that the original recommended posture was with a straightened arm raised upward and outward? Or that it was changed to the hand over the heart during World War II after the Nazis adopted the original as their salute?

Though Dáte makes several points about the use of the pledge in politics, the sociological point is that its use becomes so institutionalized that we (regardless of our political affiliation) don’t even question its origins.

And what are the precise origins of this custom?  Well, Francis Bellamy (the “fascist preacher” noted above) and his friends asked President Benjamin Harrison to incorporate the pledge, which he wrote, into the 400th anniversary celebration of Columbus’s arrival in America. It has been used ever since, with one change.  In 1954, President Eisenhower added “under God.”

For more on the use of the pledge in politics, see the rest of the blog post here.

The United States has a greater share of its population behind bars than any other nation. Yet this captive audience is almost never captured by large national surveys used to study the U.S. population. This might distort what we think we know about black progress in recent decades, the Wall Street Journal reports, because a large enough swath of the young African American male population is incarcerated and unaccounted for by these surveys.

Among the generally accepted ideas about African-American young-male progress over the last three decades that Becky Pettit, a University of Washington sociologist, questions in her book “Invisible Men“: that the high-school dropout rate has dropped precipitously; that employment rates for young high-school dropouts have stopped falling; and that the voter-turnout rate has gone up.

For example, without adjusting for prisoners, the high-school completion gap between white and black men has fallen by more than 50% since 1980, says Prof. Pettit. After adjusting, she says, the gap has barely closed and has been constant since the late 1980s. “Given the data available, I’m very confident that if we include inmates” in more surveys, “the trends are quite different than we would otherwise have known,” she says.

Voter turnout is another example, especially in light of this year’s presidential election.

…commonly accepted numbers show that the turnout rate among black male high-school dropouts age 20 to 34 surged between 1980 and 2008, to the point where about one in three were voting in presidential races. Prof. Pettit says her research indicates that instead the rate was flat, at around one in five, even after the surge in interest in voting among many young black Americans with Barack Obama in the 2008 race.

“I think that’s kind of stunning,” Prof. Pettit said.

Experts debate the feasibility of including prisoners in such surveys, as well as how to make the best use of available data. Even Pettit admits, “These are really, really tricky things.”

 

Photo by Melissa Gutierrez via flickr.com
Hope she’s seen this one before! Photo by Melissa Gutierrez via flickr.com.

If you love to curl up on the couch and watch a re-run of your favorite TV show (who doesn’t?!), you’re in luck.  Research by Jaye Derrick has shown that watching re-runs might actually provide a mental boost.

Derrick, a researcher at the University at Buffalo’s Research Institute on Addictions, conducted two related studies that were covered in Science Blog.  In the first, half of the participants were asked to perform a structured task, while the other half were asked to do a less structured task.  Then, half of the participants were asked to write about their favorite TV show, while the others listed items in their room.  Finally, participants were asked to complete a difficult puzzle.

Overall, those who wrote about their favorite TV show wrote for longer if they had completed the structured task (rather than the unstructured task).  According to Derrick, this indicates that they were seeking out their favorite TV shows and wanted to spend more time thinking about them.  In addition, those who wrote about their favorite TV shows performed better on the difficult puzzle.

Similarly, in the second study, participants were asked to complete a daily diary; and those that reported effortful tasks were more likely to seek out a rerun of their favorite show.  Derrick explained,

“When you watch a favorite re-run, you typically don’t have to use any effort to control what you are thinking, saying or doing. You are not exerting the mental energy required for self-control or willpower,” Derrick explains. “At the same time, you are enjoying your ‘interaction,’ with the TV show’s characters, and this activity restores your energy.”

But, this effect is specific to re-watching favorite TV shows; just watching television does not provide the same benefit. So, if you’re going to veg out, make sure you’re watching a re-run!

Stars by takingthemoney via flickr.com
Just gotta find the gold one… Photo by takingthemoney via flickr.com

TSP’s Media Awards may have taken the summer off, but journalists and social scientists assuredly did not! We are excited to announce the winner of the June 2012 TSP Media Award for Measured Social Science:

The Rise of Genocide Memorials,” Clare Spencer, BBC News

In her write-up of Spencer’s piece, TSP’s Hollie Nyseth Brehm showed how Spencer called on the expertise of psychologist Sheila Keegan along with her own research to help explain the phenomenon of genocide tourism—an act that is not without controversy, and Spencer does not shy away from discussing it.

As we’ve said before, the choice of each month’s TSP Media Award is neither scientific nor exhaustive, but we work hard to winnow our favorite nominees. And, while we don’t have the deep pocketbooks to offer enormous trophies or cash prizes, we hope our informal award offers cheer and encouragement for journalists and social scientists to keep up the important (if not always rewarding) work of bringing academic knowledge to the broader public.

Thompson writes even “The Principia could have been subtitled Why Everything You Know About Gravity Is Wrong.”

Okay, so that’s a little misleading. But, as Clive Thompson writes in the September issue of Wired magazine, that’s precisely the point. “Wander into the pop science section of any bookstore and you’ll be told—over and over again—a disturbing fact: Everything you know is wrong. About everything. Seriously, everything!” From Talent is Overrated to The Social Animal, Thompson has noticed that telling people they’re wrong about some seemingly familiar truth is increasingly popular: “it’ll take a renegade outsider—like, say, a ‘rogue economist’—to pierce these veils of ignorance,” “revealing a ‘secret’ long ‘hidden’ from you.”

Thompson offers three ideas for why it is we might be drawn to the “Everything You Know Is Wrong!” trope (since it’s fairly obvious why writers and media outlets—The Society Pages’ authors are no exception—adopt it). First, and most fundamentally, he says that the world is confusing and we may be drawn to those who promise to illuminate it. Fair enough. Second, perhaps “it’s a side effect of what David Shenk… called ‘data smog.’ When you live with an ever-expanding surplus of research… it may paradoxically make you increasingly unmoored from what you actually believe—so you’ll swallow anything.”

Or, third, “Perhaps our willingness to have our basic beliefs overturned is a sign of intellectual health. This mindset is, after all, key to the scientific method.” Maybe we truly, deeply learned the lesson of all those science classes, becoming true lovers of skepticism willing to embrace uncertainty, theory, testing, and a “delight in a genuinely counterintuitive argument.”

Thompson ends on a cautionary note:

Now, I’m not suggesting that all of these “secret side” articles hold water… some are awfully lazy… But the readers—they’re out there searching and questing, and that’s good.

Or to put it another way, Everything You Know About Everything You Know Being Wrong Is Wrong.

Unless, of course, I’m wrong.

Photo by mtsofan on flickr.com
Photo by mtsofan on flickr.com

Welfare reform turned 16 years old this week and continues to grab headlines and garner controversy. Lately, assertions by Mitt Romney that President Obama is “gutting” welfare reform by removing the work requirement have fueled political debates and media fact-checking. As NPR reports, several fact-checking organizations have found Romney’s statements to be patently false, including a “four Pinocchios” rating from The Washington Post.

FactCheck.org explains:

“A Mitt Romney TV ad claims the Obama administration has adopted ‘a plan to gut welfare reform by dropping work requirements.’ The plan does neither of those things.”

“Work requirements are not simply being ‘dropped.’ States may now change the requirements — revising, adding or eliminating them — as part of a federally approved state-specific plan to increase job placement.”

“And it won’t ‘gut’ the 1996 law to ease the requirement. Benefits still won’t be paid beyond an allotted time, whether the recipient is working or not.”

Even Ron Haskins, a Republican architect and staunch supporter of welfare reform, contradicts Romney’s claims. He told NPR:

“There’s no plausible scenario under which it really constitutes a serious attack on welfare reform.”

Yet, these rumors persist and many people believe them. What could be driving this? Political scientist Martin Gillens, who wrote Why Americans Hate Welfare: Race, Media and the Politics of Antipoverty Policy, contends that race has something to do with it.

Gillens said his research shows that Americans think about welfare in a way that aligns pretty neatly with their perceptions about race. For example, whites tend to believe that most poor people are black. But actually, poor people are more likely to be white than black or Hispanic.

Gillens said it’s impossible to know whether the Romney campaign decided to play into a racial strategy or whether it’s an accident. But in a way, it doesn’t matter.

“Regardless of what their conscious motivations are, the impact of these kinds of attacks on welfare and, in particular, on the perceived lack of work ethic among welfare recipients, plays out racially and taps into Americans’ views of blacks and other racial stereotypes,” he said.

This, plus concern that Obama hopes to turn the United States into a “government-dependent society,” makes welfare reform the talk of the town during this year’s presidential race.

For more on welfare reform and race, see our Office Hours podcast with Joe Soss on “Poverty Governance” and our feature called “American Poverty Governance As It Is and As It Might Be.”