Each year the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) calculates the fair market rents for apartments throughout the U.S. in order to set standards for housing assistance payments and vouchers for Section 8. Using data from the Census and the American Community Surveys, HUD figures out the average cost for various sizes of apartments. You can easily look up data for fiscal year 2012 here.
The generally-accepted standard for affordable, sustainable housing costs is that they should be about a third of a household’s income. The National Low Income Housing Coalition recently released a report on the mismatch between minimum wage — currently set at $7.25 nationally, with some states and municipalities having higher minimum wages within their boundaries — and the standard of living. The NLIHC report included this map showing the hourly wage that would be required for the HUD-calculated fair market rent to be about 30% of a full-time worker’s income:
In no state does the minimum wage pay enough to hit the 30%-of-income standard of affordable housing costs. How many hours would a minimum-wage worker need to work per week to make enough that the fair market rent would be about a third of their income? A lot, from a low of 63 hours a week in West Virginia to a high of 175 in Hawaii:
The prisoner’s dilemma is a concept used to help explain situations in which individual actors may pursue their own self-interest even in situations where they would all be better off if they cooperated and acted for the good of the group. In this short video posted at Scientific American, Michael Moyer explains the prisoner’s dilemma puzzle and how it helps explain situations such as the global nuclear arms race:
If your campus is like mine, the syllabi and/or student handbook contain a statement along the lines of “For every hour of course instruction, students should expect to spend 2 to 3 hours per week in study and preparation outside of class.” So for a 3-credit course, that would be 6 to 9 hours per week spent on the class — doing the reading, studying the material, and completing assignments. And if you’re like me, you periodically bemoan the fact that this message does not seem to have reached its target audience.
So how much are students studying? Well, not as much as we tell them they’re supposed to, it appears. Peter N. sent in an image from the Washington Post, summarizing the number of hours students from a range of majors report studying per week. At 23.7 hours per week, architecture students are studying enough to almost meet the study expectations for 4 classes a week, at the lower end of the standard 6-9 hours/week range. Speech students averaged 10.8 hours a week — less than the minimum for two courses:
The data is based on self-reports from the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE). Critics express concerns with self-reports of studying; students may not have an accurate sense of how much time they spend preparing for class each week, especially as requirements fluctuate throughout the semester. NSSE, of course, defends their data. And the effects of self-reports seem unclear; would they lead to overestimates or underestimates?
This is the second of two posts about cruel practices in horse industries. The first was about horse racing.
Yesterday we covered the abuse of horses in horse racing; in this post we discuss a recent video released by the Humane Society. The video highlights an instance of a larger issue, which is how arbitrary human tastes can create incentives for cruelty.
The concern revolves around the Tennessee Walking Horse (TWH), a breed developed in the U.S. in the late 1800s and bred to have smooth gaits, including their distinctive “running walk,” that are unusual in most breeds. Over time, a more exaggerated version became popular among show judges and spectators at TWH shows; called the “big lick,” it requires horses to shift their weight to their back legs and pick their front legs high off the ground. Fans enjoyed the flashy, unusual movements and horses that performed the gait began taking home more prizes. This created a powerful incentive to get horses to exhibit the unnaturally exaggerated gait.
How do you get this gait? It’s possible to get some horses to do so through careful training. But to speed up the process, or for horses that aren’t learning, trainers developed a range of techniques. These first two are still allowed, under varying circumstances, during training and in the show ring:
Using padding and weighted shoes to change how the horse stands and moves its feet (akin to how high heels shift a person’s weight and stance).
Placing chains around the tops of their hooves to encourage them to pick their feet up more highly than they would otherwise (presumably they’re irritating).
However, some trainers use prohibited versions of these two items, using pads and chains that were not within the allowable height and weight.
The next three techniques are illegal, but many insiders argue that they are still common. I warn you now: much of this post from this point on will be very upsetting for many readers.
Place screws or nails in different parts of their front hooves or soles to cause discomfort. While horses’ hooves are hard, the soles are quite sensitive. The screws or nails make it painful for the horse to put its front legs down, so it shifts its weight back, helping to attain the gait.
Intentionally cut the horse’s front hooves so short that the sensitive sole hits the ground directly, which is extremely painful (think of what happens if your fingernail gets cut or broken off too short).
Coating a horse’s hooves and lower legs with caustic substances, then wrapping them in plastic wrap, for as long as several days, until they’re very sore — a process called, aptly, “soring.” This causes the horse to shift weight to its back legs in an effort to reduce the pain from the front feet. This is often used in conjunction with chains, which irritate and rub up against the raw skin.
Many inspectors argue that these practices, once widely accepted in the industry, are still common today. Recently the Humane Society released undercover footage of training practices at Whitter Stables, a facility in Collierville, TN that has been the center of a federal investigation. It is a very distressing video that includes many of the practices listed above, as well as horses being whipped when they have difficulty standing:
In 1970, Congress passed the Horse Protection Act, which outlawed the exhibition of sored horses. So trainers have developed techniques to hide them; they paint horses’ hooves and legs to cover evidence of soring or use boots to cover tacks embedded in their hooves.
They also beat them so that they learn not to show any sign of pain when inspected before a show. They do this by simulating an inspection and then punishing the horse if it shows any signs of distress (e.g., punching or hitting them in the face or administering an electric shock). Eventually horses learn that if they flinch, they get hurt twice; hiding signs of pain prevents the infliction of more suffering.
Trainers may also use a fast-acting but short-term numbing agent to reduce the pain just long enough to pass inspections. Other trainers and owners simply leave a show if word gets out that USDA inspectors were present.
The Tennessee Walking Horse Breeders’ and Exhibitors’ Association argues that these practices are not widespread. However, in 2006 the last class in the World Grand Champion competition at the Tennessee Walking Horse Celebration (the TWH show equivalent of the Kentucky Derby, in terms of importance) was canceled because of the 10 entered horses, 5 did not pass the inspection and another was removed by the owner without being inspected. In 2009, the USDA issued over 400 violations at the Celebration.
A USDA report states the organization only had the resources to send their own veterinarians to 6% of official TWH shows in 2007; the other 94% were inspected by individuals hired, trained, and licensed by organizations sponsoring shows, a system the USDA found to be plagued by conflicts of interest. The report also noted that hostility toward USDA inspectors is so high that they routinely bring police or armed security with them to shows.
Jackie McConnell, the trainer in the video, has been indicted on federal charges. But without sustained attention and commitment to punishing violators, the problem will continue due to the pressure to produce horses that satisfy the tastes that have become entrenched in the industry. As one industry insider explained to Horse Illustrated magazine in 2004,
As long as the big lick wins at shows, the trainer must produce it to stay in business….The day a trainer stops producing big lick horses is the day all the horses in his or her barn are removed and taken to another trainer. The pressure is enormous.
Melissa Fletcher Pirkey, a grad student at Notre Dame, sent in an image she saw in a catalog for Spanx, a company that sells shapewear. This page from the catalog reminds women that our bodies are always on display and subject to scrutiny, requiring the help of a range of garments to help us keep them under control lest we fail inspection:
Yesterday the Pew Research Center posted a graph showing the proportion of the overall U.S. population on active military duty since 1940. From a high of almost 9% of the population during World War II, we’re down to roughly 0.5% of the population on active duty today (shaded areas are periods when the U.S. was actively engaged in a war):
According to the full report, of those in the military, about 2/3 are under age 30. Racial/ethnic minorities make up 36% of the armed forces today. As standards for recruits have increased, so has the educational level of troops: 92.5% have graduated high school, compared to 82.8% of civilians in the same age group.
The Pew Research Center points out that the reduced proportion of the population in the military at any give time means fewer connections between civilians and military personnel, which may influence the experiences of veterans as they re-integrate into civilian life, as well as the degree to which the population is aware of the impacts of military duty — physical, mental, financial, and otherwise — on those who serve.
In this talk, statistician Hans Rosling looks at whether, globally, religion impacts national fertility rates. His conclusion? Nah, not really. He also points out that while fertility rates are certainly correlated with national income levels, it’s no longer true that a nation must be wealthy before experiencing significant reductions in fertility rates. While all of the nations with fertility rates of 6 or more children per woman are, indeed, quite poor, many similarly poor countries have fertility levels similar to that in much wealthier nations — an average of about 2 children per woman.
Recently Talking Points Memo posted a 1960s coloring book sent in by a reader, who found it among her grandmother’s things. The coloring book, New Frontier, mocks John F. Kennedy and a number of his policies.
What’s fascinating is how closely some of the arguments in it match rhetoric in the presidential debate today. There’s concern that the President’s programs — in this case, Medicare — will negatively affect the quality of medical care, inserting the federal government between patients and doctors:
And an association with Harvard advisors was worthy of scorn then, too:
Another accuses Kennedy of attacking business at the expense of dealing competently with external national security threats:
It’s an interesting reminder that many of the attacks we see against President Obama today aren’t new; there’s the newest round in an ongoing struggle about social policies and political priorities.
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