Does diversity only make whites more opposed to welfare?

August 29, 2009

Does diversity only make whites more opposed to welfare?

Posted by teageegeepea under Uncategorized
[41] Comments

Micha Ghertner asked the question when I said that the shrinking proportion of whites makes their reduced support less relevant. I didn’t honestly know, but I suspected something like that. Some googling turned up Gary P. Freeman’s Immigration, Ethnic Differences and Support for the Welfare State (.doc file), which though I haven’t read completely contained the quote “the racial group loyalty effect means that individuals increase their support for welfare spending as the share of local recipients from their own racial group rises.” It also says “If the minority is rich, as were the Walloons in Belgium, then the differences don’t block welfare state development”. That’s what I was thinking of, along the lines of Thomas Sowell’s writings on affirmative action around the world, which is primarily used by poorer majorities to get back politically at an economically dominant minority.

The GSS has a question about welfare spending, and I’m going to examine how attitudes among whites, blacks, hispanics and asians have changed over time.
First whites:

Frequency Distribution
Cells contain: -Row percent -Weighted N		NATFARE
Cells contain: -Row percent -Weighted N		1 TOO LITTLE	2 ABOUT RIGHT	3 TOO MUCH	ROW TOTAL
YEAR	1973	15.8 197	25.0 312	59.2 738	100.0 1,247
	1974	20.1 253	33.6 422	46.3 583	100.0 1,258
	1975	20.5 257	30.3 379	49.1 614	100.0 1,250
	1976	12.1 158	22.4 291	65.5 852	100.0 1,301
	1977	10.0 128	23.5 302	66.4 853	100.0 1,284
	1978	10.4 137	22.9 301	66.7 878	100.0 1,316
	1980	11.2 139	26.8 334	61.9 770	100.0 1,243
	1982	17.2 270	28.7 452	54.1 849	100.0 1,571
	1983	21.5 301	28.6 399	49.9 696	100.0 1,395
	1984	19.7 79	39.9 160	40.4 162	100.0 401
	1985	16.2 102	35.6 224	48.2 303	100.0 628
	1986	20.7 122	35.0 207	44.3 262	100.0 591
	1987	20.0 98	30.9 151	49.2 241	100.0 490
	1988	21.9 121	32.1 177	46.0 253	100.0 551
	1989	20.4 128	34.7 219	44.9 283	100.0 630
	1990	21.2 115	38.6 210	40.2 219	100.0 545
	1991	19.9 115	39.5 228	40.5 234	100.0 578
	1993	15.2 97	25.5 162	59.3 377	100.0 636
	1994	10.1 122	23.3 280	66.6 803	100.0 1,205
	1996	10.3 116	25.5 286	64.1 718	100.0 1,119
	1998	14.8 156	36.4 384	48.8 515	100.0 1,055
	2000	18.2 194	40.8 435	41.0 437	100.0 1,067
	2002	17.6 189	37.8 407	44.6 479	100.0 1,075
	2004	19.3 206	35.8 382	44.9 479	100.0 1,067
	2006	21.8 226	36.4 378	41.8 433	100.0 1,037
	2008	21.6 157	35.8 260	42.7 310	100.0 726
	COL TOTAL	16.6 4,183	30.6 7,742	52.8 13,340	100.0 25,265

Then blacks:

Statistics for RACE = 2(BLACK)
Cells contain: -Row percent -Weighted N		NATFARE
Cells contain: -Row percent -Weighted N		1 TOO LITTLE	2 ABOUT RIGHT	3 TOO MUCH	ROW TOTAL
YEAR	1973	56.5 97	25.1 43	18.4 32	100.0 171
	1974	53.8 85	26.8 42	19.4 31	100.0 159
	1975	56.5 89	28.4 45	15.1 24	100.0 158
	1976	36.0 42	24.7 29	39.3 46	100.0 116
	1977	40.2 62	28.6 44	31.2 48	100.0 154
	1978	42.0 62	35.2 52	22.9 34	100.0 149
	1980	43.5 66	26.9 41	29.6 45	100.0 151
	1982	58.3 104	23.0 41	18.7 33	100.0 178
	1983	45.6 69	28.2 43	26.1 40	100.0 151
	1984	56.5 36	22.5 14	21.0 13	100.0 64
	1985	46.2 30	30.3 19	23.6 15	100.0 64
	1986	42.4 39	29.3 27	28.3 26	100.0 93
	1987	45.7 34	31.6 23	22.7 17	100.0 73
	1988	38.8 34	33.9 30	27.3 24	100.0 88
	1989	54.3 36	14.0 9	31.8 21	100.0 66
	1990	47.5 36	27.0 20	25.5 19	100.0 75
	1991	48.3 46	23.9 23	27.8 27	100.0 96
	1993	28.4 24	24.7 21	46.9 40	100.0 86
	1994	31.4 57	32.0 58	36.7 67	100.0 183
	1996	42.4 82	27.0 52	30.6 59	100.0 193
	1998	22.4 37	42.1 69	35.5 58	100.0 164
	2000	37.3 68	30.6 56	32.1 59	100.0 183
	2002	39.7 67	35.1 59	25.2 42	100.0 168
	2004	44.1 71	28.4 46	27.5 44	100.0 161
	2006	40.3 72	31.0 55	28.7 51	100.0 179
	2008	42.1 53	36.2 46	21.7 27	100.0 126
	COL TOTAL	43.4 1,498	29.2 1,009	27.3 942	100.0 3,449

The “RACE” variable only has white, black and “other”, so I’ll have to use the ETHNIC variable for hispanics and asians. Unfortunately, that means multiple tables for each.

Here are hispanics:

Mexicans

Statistics for ETHNIC = 17(MEXICO)
Cells contain: -Row percent -Weighted N		NATFARE
Cells contain: -Row percent -Weighted N		1 TOO LITTLE	2 ABOUT RIGHT	3 TOO MUCH	ROW TOTAL
YEAR	1973	48.4 14	20.3 6	31.2 9	100.0 29
	1974	21.6 9	64.8 27	13.6 6	100.0 41
	1975	29.1 7	32.7 8	38.2 10	100.0 26
	1976	26.9 7	34.6 9	38.5 10	100.0 25
	1977	5.0 1	27.5 5	67.5 13	100.0 20
	1978	20.6 4	14.2 3	65.2 12	100.0 18
	1980	21.2 4	39.8 8	38.9 7	100.0 19
	1982	28.6 11	40.3 16	31.1 12	100.0 40
	1983	26.1 9	42.6 15	31.3 11	100.0 35
	1984	73.2 7	.0 0	26.8 3	100.0 10
	1985	35.1 5	45.8 7	19.1 3	100.0 15
	1986	31.4 6	25.7 5	42.9 8	100.0 18
	1987	29.2 4	20.8 3	50.0 8	100.0 15
	1988	16.1 5	39.3 12	44.6 13	100.0 30
	1989	36.4 6	45.5 8	18.2 3	100.0 17
	1990	18.2 3	42.4 7	39.4 7	100.0 18
	1991	20.0 5	50.0 13	30.0 8	100.0 27
	1993	29.2 4	12.5 2	58.3 7	100.0 13
	1994	11.4 6	18.1 10	70.5 40	100.0 57
	1996	10.5 4	27.6 11	61.8 26	100.0 41
	1998	28.4 13	42.0 19	29.6 13	100.0 45
	2000	17.8 9	41.1 20	41.1 20	100.0 49
	2002	22.7 12	26.8 15	50.5 27	100.0 54
	2004	30.8 24	29.1 23	40.0 31	100.0 78
	2006	32.3 35	37.4 41	30.3 33	100.0 109
	2008	7.4 4	49.7 29	42.9 25	100.0 59
	COL TOTAL	24.3 220	35.4 321	40.3 365	100.0 906

Puerto Ricans

Statistics for ETHNIC = 22(PUERTO RICO)
Cells contain: -Row percent -Weighted N		NATFARE
Cells contain: -Row percent -Weighted N		1 TOO LITTLE	2 ABOUT RIGHT	3 TOO MUCH	ROW TOTAL
YEAR	1973	28.6 2	28.6 2	42.9 3	100.0 6
	1974	48.3 7	20.7 3	31.0 4	100.0 14
	1975	14.3 2	53.6 7	32.1 4	100.0 13
	1976	37.5 3	25.0 2	37.5 3	100.0 8
	1977	54.5 3	18.2 1	27.3 1	100.0 5
	1978	14.8 1	10.5 1	74.8 6	100.0 8
	1980	55.0 6	20.0 2	25.0 3	100.0 10
	1982	48.6 3	6.0 0	45.4 3	100.0 6
	1983	27.1 4	58.3 9	14.7 2	100.0 16
	1984	50.0 1	50.0 1	.0 0	100.0 2
	1985	17.4 1	41.3 2	41.3 2	100.0 4
	1986	41.7 3	.0 0	58.3 4	100.0 6
	1987	.0 0	.0 0	100.0 1	100.0 1
	1988	10.0 1	30.0 2	60.0 3	100.0 5
	1989	71.4 3	14.3 1	14.3 1	100.0 4
	1990	33.3 1	66.7 2	.0 0	100.0 3
	1991	38.5 3	15.4 1	46.2 3	100.0 7
	1993	50.0 2	.0 0	50.0 2	100.0 3
	1994	30.0 3	40.0 4	30.0 3	100.0 11
	1996	61.5 4	38.5 3	.0 0	100.0 7
	1998	40.0 8	28.6 6	31.4 6	100.0 19
	2000	25.0 3	55.0 6	20.0 2	100.0 11
	2002	10.5 1	52.6 6	36.8 4	100.0 11
	2004	52.6 9	34.2 6	13.2 2	100.0 17
	2006	41.4 5	28.4 3	30.2 4	100.0 12
	2008	31.6 3	68.4 7	.0 0	100.0 10
	COL TOTAL	36.2 79	34.3 75	29.5 64	100.0 218

Then asians:

Chinese

Statistics for ETHNIC = 5(CHINA)
Cells contain: -Row percent -Weighted N		NATFARE
Cells contain: -Row percent -Weighted N		1 TOO LITTLE	2 ABOUT RIGHT	3 TOO MUCH	ROW TOTAL
YEAR	1973	.0 0	.0 0	100.0 1	100.0 1
	1976	50.0 1	.0 0	50.0 1	100.0 2
	1977	.0 0	50.0 1	50.0 1	100.0 2
	1978	.0 0	77.5 2	22.5 1	100.0 3
	1980	.0 0	.0 0	100.0 1	100.0 1
	1982	6.9 0	71.3 3	21.9 1	100.0 4
	1983	21.7 2	.0 0	78.3 6	100.0 8
	1984	.0 0	.0 0	100.0 1	100.0 1
	1986	100.0 1	.0 0	.0 0	100.0 1
	1987	.0 0	50.0 1	50.0 1	100.0 3
	1988	.0 0	75.0 3	25.0 1	100.0 4
	1989	.0 0	55.6 3	44.4 2	100.0 5
	1990	.0 0	100.0 2	.0 0	100.0 2
	1991	.0 0	.0 0	100.0 1	100.0 1
	1993	.0 0	100.0 1	.0 0	100.0 1
	1994	20.0 1	40.0 1	40.0 1	100.0 3
	1996	.0 0	25.0 1	75.0 3	100.0 4
	1998	4.5 1	81.8 10	13.6 2	100.0 12
	2000	20.0 1	60.0 3	20.0 1	100.0 5
	2002	16.7 1	58.3 4	25.0 2	100.0 7
	2004	18.2 4	65.9 13	15.9 3	100.0 20
	2006	13.6 2	61.0 8	25.4 3	100.0 13
	2008	27.3 3	63.6 6	9.1 1	100.0 10
	COL TOTAL	13.4 15	56.3 62	30.4 33	100.0 110

Japanese

Statistics for ETHNIC = 16(JAPAN)
Cells contain: -Row percent -Weighted N		NATFARE
Cells contain: -Row percent -Weighted N		1 TOO LITTLE	2 ABOUT RIGHT	3 TOO MUCH	ROW TOTAL
YEAR	1973	33.3 0	66.7 1	.0 0	100.0 1
	1974	28.6 1	42.9 1	28.6 1	100.0 3
	1975	33.3 1	.0 0	66.7 2	100.0 3
	1976	50.0 1	.0 0	50.0 1	100.0 3
	1977	.0 0	28.6 1	71.4 2	100.0 3
	1978	.0 0	.0 0	100.0 3	100.0 3
	1980	.0 0	100.0 4	.0 0	100.0 4
	1982	.0 0	50.2 3	49.8 3	100.0 5
	1983	19.5 1	.0 0	80.5 2	100.0 3
	1984	.0 0	66.7 1	33.3 1	100.0 2
	1985	100.0 2	.0 0	.0 0	100.0 2
	1986	100.0 1	.0 0	.0 0	100.0 1
	1988	50.0 1	50.0 1	.0 0	100.0 2
	1991	.0 0	100.0 1	.0 0	100.0 1
	1993	.0 0	.0 0	100.0 2	100.0 2
	1994	33.3 1	33.3 1	33.3 1	100.0 3
	1996	.0 0	.0 0	100.0 2	100.0 2
	1998	42.9 2	28.6 1	28.6 1	100.0 4
	2000	16.7 1	16.7 1	66.7 2	100.0 3
	2002	.0 0	66.7 2	33.3 1	100.0 3
	2004	28.6 1	57.1 2	14.3 0	100.0 3
	2006	8.4 1	52.1 5	39.5 4	100.0 10
	2008	42.9 1	57.1 2	.0 0	100.0 3
	COL TOTAL	20.3 14	38.4 27	41.3 29	100.0 70

If diversity reduces support among non-whites, we would expect them to have become less supportive over time as America got more diverse. There is some support for this in the tables, but as I am breaking it up by year my sample sizes are much smaller than I’d like. Oddly enough, this effect is not seen on whites. Since the question is relative to current welfare spending, we could also be seeing the effect of policy changes (or at least perceived changes) over time. Further investigation is needed.

41 Responses to “Does diversity only make whites more opposed to welfare?”

Grim Says:

August 30, 2009 at 12:48 am
Support for or against welfare spending is more likely based on the amount of publicity that cheaters and abusers of the system rather than the actual level being doled out. Very few people actually know how much is given to people on a year to year basis.

For example I was more likely to be pissed off at welfare when I knew a woman who was on it and had a live in boyfriend. This couple had better and had nicer things for their kids than I received in a 2 parent family where my mother stayed at home. Stuff like that and news cycles is likely why you see the waterfall effect in the data.

Of coarse once I learned how welfare destroyed once proud people like American Indians (great warriors), Aborigines in Australia, and the poor black and white family units I ended up firmly opposed to it. Giving people money they don’t work for screws up our basic systems of dealing with the world. Everyone should work for what they get, even if the rewards are not proportional to the work they do.

Reply
teageegeepea Says:

August 30, 2009 at 11:56 am
The paper I linked to also said that it was perceptions of blacks on welfare that affected support, perhaps because blacks are viewed as non-cooperators. That could mean that having more diverse recipients of welfare (although I believe the majority of them are white, or at least were recently) could increase support.

There are probably other ways of setting up welfare systems that would encourage things society desires, like working, marriage and taking care of your (reasonable number of) kids. Behavioral welfare nudging?

I remember John Stossel once having a show on the Department of Indian Affairs, where he said reservations are the only place where tuberculosis is still a major problem. He helpfully had a contrast of some indian communities that weren’t so dysfunctional, though its possible he was just cherry-picking.

Reply
1. Dain Says:
  
  August 31, 2009 at 1:39 pm
  Mike Murakami at Yale (recently minted Phd, met through the Critical Review network) mentioned to me some research he did on percepitons of welfare in the 70s. Journalists, in an attempt to highlight the plight of the black and poor, relayed the false impression to white middle america that welfare was something unique to blacks – and support for welfare decreased, the opposite of their intention. I have no link, just hearsay.
  
  Though from the the looks of your data this is barely perceptible, maybe just in the late 70s.
  
  Reply
  1. teageegeepea Says:
    
    August 31, 2009 at 8:40 pm
    Interesting story. That reminds me of some jokes about people trying to get extra P.C “points” by combining racial, gender, class, handicapped, religious and so on statuses. “Deaf black Jewish lesbian” is a common archetype, though its also popular to throw “Eskimo” in there. In an odd way, it also reminds me of the finding that paranormal beliefs generally involve just one violation of folk-science to make them salient.
silly girl Says:

August 30, 2009 at 8:35 pm
Welfare rewards sloth.

Wages reward work.

It’s your call.

You get what you pay for.

Reply
1. teageegeepea Says:
  
  August 30, 2009 at 10:04 pm
  I recall the saying “If you subsidize something, you get more of it. If you tax something, you get less of it”.
  
  I believe they replaced the old welfare with welfare-to-work, in order to encourage working, and it actually did work. Of course, the EITC does much the same thing.
  
  Reply
Danke Says:

August 30, 2009 at 10:46 pm
Wouldn’t ethnic genetic interests (EGI) and group selection predict this?

Reply
1. teageegeepea Says:
  
  August 30, 2009 at 10:50 pm
  I don’t really buy into group selection. I don’t know much about Ethnic Genetic Interests. Ethnies are sort of based on language rather than genes. Family-based favoritism/nepotism and clannishness would be predicted by genetics.
  
  Reply
  1. Danke Says:
    
    August 31, 2009 at 3:24 am
    “Family-based favoritism/nepotism and clannishness would be predicted by genetics.”
    
    Insofar as races and sub-races are partly inbred extended families, why couldn’t this apply to them as well?
    
    Also, Edward Wilson apparently favors group selection now.
    
    What are the main arguments against group selection that you found convincing? It seems pretty intuitive to me.
  2. teageegeepea Says:
    
    August 31, 2009 at 8:13 pm
    E. O. Wilson has never been a Dawkins-esque “neo-Darwinist”. His speciality is eusocial insects, which do function more like group-organisms.
    
    As you extend beyond your more immediate relatives, the inclusive fitness whittles away to about nothing. We don’t bother showing solidarity as human beings against other primates, as primates against other mammals, or as mammals against insects. In some sense you could say our species is more related to some species than others, but the difference is trivial and agitating against them doesn’t demonstrate your loyalty.
    
    Selection happens on the level of genes. Group selection which is not just old-fashioned individual selection (our group can all run fast, so we beat other groups!) or kin-selection would mean the benefits to the group outweigh the cost to the individual enough for such genes to endure. There’s just too much intragroup variation relative to intergroup variation, and a defector mutation can always arise and screw things up.
    
    Here’s a good way to understand gene-level selection: balanced sex ratios. One fertile male is really enough to inseminate all the females in a group. Its a waste to have so many other males. The group would be more successful if it had many more females born for each male. However, as the total fertility of males and females must be equal, a decrease in the number of breeding males raises the average fertility of males relative to females. So a mutation causing selection for male-biased births would then have an advantage.
Eric Johnson Says:

August 31, 2009 at 5:05 am
What trait in what species do you see as a product of group selection? I ask that, because it’s a quantitative question really. It seems highly likely that group selection occurs; what’s in question is whether it can ever compare in magnitude with individual and kin selection, in any given situation.

Also, I’ve seen people adduce things like viruses possibly limiting their growth rate – in order not to kill the host to fast and cut off hopes for transmission to a new host. This is definitely not group selection, it’s kin selection (the individual virions are practically identical clones). How anyone could disagree is baffling.

The situation with eusocial organisms is a little more complicated and I don’t totally understand it.

Reply
1. teageegeepea Says:
  
  August 31, 2009 at 8:17 pm
  Yeah, they aren’t diploids sexually reproducing species. Our bodies are made up of many different living cells, but because they all have the same DNA (barring the odd mutation) they cooperate like one entity.
  
  A good TED talk on bacteria using chemical signals to work together here:
  http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/bonnie_bassler_on_how_bacteria_communicate.html
  
  I’m actually not sure why its to the advantage of pathogens to overpower the hosts immune system rather than continuing to grow imperceptibly and spread stealthily.
  
  Many eusocial animals are haplodiploid. Males have half the number of chromosomes that females do (males are haploid). Males give an entire copy of their DNA, so siblings don’t receive different genes from the same father. This makes siblings more related than they would be in a diploid species.
  
  Reply
melendwyr Says:

August 31, 2009 at 9:58 am
Working in the retail food industry really opens your eyes as to how things like welfare are actually spent.

In my time as a cashier, I saw people use food stamp benefits to buy all sorts of expensive garbage. Families with multiple young children would buy cakes, candies, large amounts of frosted cereals… and fail to buy vegetables and staples. Mothers registered with the WIC pre-natal nutrition program would get the free nutritious goods listed… and then buy junk with their actual cash.

Reply
1. teageegeepea Says:
  
  August 31, 2009 at 8:23 pm
  I also worked in retail where mothers used welfare to buy food, but it was generally restricted to certain items and I don’t remember them buying much other stuff (particularly expensive stuff).
  
  Reply
  1. melendwyr Says:
    
    September 1, 2009 at 8:07 am
    Really? I regularly saw people buying expensive cuts of meat and $8 football-sized carrot cakes covered in frosting… and then pay with food stamps.
    
    Soda, prepared foods, and snacks. Hardly ever raw ingredients or staples.
  2. teageegeepea Says:
    
    September 1, 2009 at 8:08 pm
    Maybe you were in a worse neighborhood. Or it could be due to my admittedly poor powers of observation and recollection.
Eric Johnson Says:

August 31, 2009 at 11:59 am
I still don’t quite get the critical difference between welfare and the basic income, even after reading wikipedia and this Charles Murray interview on his comprehensive proposal for a basic income to replace the welfare state (ie, all the classic redistributive and retiree spending programs):

http://www.nationalreview.com/interrogatory/qa200603270732.asp

As well as Murray, Milton Friedman supported the basic income.

While I can think of a few differences, their salience seems modest. I do sort of like the idea though.

Obviously, it would require a little old-school toughness for the following reason. While most people would be enabled to save for old age as Murray outlines, obviously some junkies and such would fail to, and would still be living on the $10,000 a year grant alone even unto the onset of some serious and expensive disease. They wouldn’t be able to pay for treatment and some would suffer or die for that reason unless they could get private charity, since Murray wants the basic income to permanently and firmly (by constitutional amendment) replace all welfare state programs, including Medicaid and Medicare.

On the other hand, there would be no homelessness. So, 100% of unemployable homeless dudes get a small apartment. Junkies or other spendthrift losers with no savings who at some point start needing dialysis (cost in France 50,000 euros a years) – die absent private charity. Indeed, if such a spendthrift requires $5,000 in health care annually rather than $50,000, he won’t be able to cough it up.

Reply
1. teageegeepea Says:
  
  August 31, 2009 at 8:25 pm
  Guaranteed income is guaranteed for everyone, so it does not have the same bad incentives.
  
  Reply
  1. melendwyr Says:
    
    September 1, 2009 at 8:09 am
    Oh?
    
    If I could get $10,000 a year for doing nothing, I would.
    
    I have more interesting things to do with my time than putting in hours so that I can buy food and shelter.
    
    But I expect that many would consider my ‘not contributing to society’ to be a bad outcome, in the sense that they couldn’t hold me up for tax revenues.
  2. teageegeepea Says:
    
    September 1, 2009 at 8:11 pm
    I decided to graduate from university a year early because I wanted to get a real job and affirm that what I was doing accomplished something. So maybe I’d still want a job if my needs were covered. On the other hand, I haven’t given much thought to what I might do if I was guaranteed money without work.
2. Grim Says:
  
  September 2, 2009 at 9:46 pm
  10g a year tax free? Whoa. I would quit my job tomorrow and live as a beach bum.
  
  Reply
Dain Says:

August 31, 2009 at 1:43 pm
This might be of interest: http://www.themonkeycage.org/2009/06/redistribution_and_national_id.html

Reply
Eric Johnson Says:

September 1, 2009 at 9:42 am
> I have more interesting things to do with my time than putting in hours so that I can buy food and shelter.

Same here. If I could get Murray’s deal, I’d probably move to a small town $300 apartment, and do my own thing just about 24-7.

I wonder if many would. My guess is yes, “many” – but not quite enough to deeply revolutionize society.

Reply
Eric Johnson Says:

September 1, 2009 at 10:16 am
> I’m actually not sure why its to the advantage of pathogens to overpower the hosts immune system rather than continuing to grow imperceptibly and spread stealthily.

It is in fact better for them to be benign, if they can, maybe, sometimes. In the mid XXth, it was very widely believed that all parasites should evolve monotonically toward benignity. This was believed, eg, by someone as accomplished as Rene Dubos, who figured prominently in bringing out some of the first antibacterials.

Some of them just suck at spreading compared to others. Syphilis (I’m not sure why it’s so virulent) has a median infectious dose by injection of around five cells. Most parasites are magnitudes worse. Those that transmit poorly get a huge gain in transmission odds by growing floridly. No parasite is able to grow floridly without collateral damage.

So there’s a trade-off between benignity and volume of transmission. Or in other words, between long-term transmission and short-term transmission.

Worse yet, strains may compete if the host has significant cross-immunity between strains (which it usually does). This makes a particular strain less able to take its sweet time transmitting. Time is running out – the other strain may get there first. This favors florid growth and robust transmission now. A good theory though I don’t know if it has ever been proved to be a factor.

Then, as Ewald points out, it’s not that helpful to be benign if you happen to be vectored by a hematophagous parasite. Then there’s anthrax, for which host-host contact probably is not that important because it forms such hardy spores. It’s probably more like a predator than a parasite.

Reply
1. teageegeepea Says:
  
  September 1, 2009 at 7:35 pm
  Yeah, I remember Ewald & Cochran saying there was a tradeoff for virulence that depended on ease of transmission. I just don’t understand why they behave differently when they hit a critical mass. It isn’t just a matter of growth, since they had to grow in the first place to hit critical mass. And it isn’t just a matter of transmission, since there are “carrier” species which spread pathogens without bearing many of the ill effects.
  
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Eric Johnson Says:

September 1, 2009 at 11:12 am
On gender ratio EO Wilson and DS Wilson off this:

“The closest that Williams came to a rigorous empirical test was for sex ratio, leading him to predict that female-biased sex ratios would provide evidence for group selection. The subsequent discovery of many examples of female-biased sex ratios, as well as evidence of group selection in the evolution of disease organisms, brought him back toward multilevel selection in the 1990s (Williams and Nesse 1991; Williams 1992).”

They also go this route:

“The “wrinkly spreader (WS)” strain of Pseudomonas fluorescens evolves in response to anoxic conditions in unmixed liquid medium, by producing a cellulosic polymer that forms a mat on the surface [helping them score more delicious O2 -EJ]. The polymer is expensive to produce, which means that nonproducing “cheaters” have the highest relative fitness within the group. As they spread, the mat deteriorates and eventually sinks to the bottom. WS is maintained in the total population by between-group selection, despite its selective disadvantage within groups, exactly as envisioned by multilevel selection theory (Rainey and Rainey 2003).”

Again, I’m very unsure that a single cell hanging out with 100,000 near-clones is an “individual” in good standing, thus making the whole set a group. I too consist of a few trillion almost perfectly cooperative, almost perfectly clonal cells – though mine are a lot more specialized. I too am somewhat likely to eventually suffer a cancer of mutant defector cells, and go under. Is it, then, group selection that keeps the incidence of cancer so low in young humans?

Imagine if humans had evolved for millions of years, reproducing by asexual binary fission. Would I then call my twins my brothers? No, I would call them my self, and we would cooperate with absolute harmony in our little hobby of eating the world and turning it into copies of ourself.

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1. teageegeepea Says:
  
  September 1, 2009 at 7:46 pm
  Razib has a post on wrinkly spreaders here. Since the “mats” are only found in labs, are closely related colonies initially, and all eventually die out, it seems to me that group selection has too tough a road to hoe against defectors.
  
  Razib calls himself the “resident critic” of group selection there, but he’s much more favorable toward the idea than Eliezer Yudkowsky. He gets ticked as soon as anyone mentions the term and asks if they have not already read his debunking (I presume he wrote this wiki page).
  
  Would I then call my twins my brothers? No, I would call them my self
  Steve Pinker made the same point when discussing genetic conflict between parents. He said if genetic interests were identical, a dyad would come to view itself as one organism, just our collection of cells already do. They would not feel the emotions currently involved in interpersonal relationships.
  
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Chip Smith Says:

September 2, 2009 at 8:04 am
“…if genetic interests were identical, a dyad would come to view itself as one organism, just our collection of cells already do. They would not feel the emotions currently involved in interpersonal relationships.”

Like in the Houellebecq book, “The Elementary Particles.” You should consider breaking your no fiction rule for that one, TGGP. It’s relevant to a good deal of the discussion that goes on here.

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Savrola Says:

September 2, 2009 at 9:43 am
A few random thoughts.

Firstly, am not sure why welfare reform could be considered not to coincide with the deflation of (a vastly-inflated) medical care system.

In the most rural communities, one would be lucky to a find an apartment that cost less than $500 dollars a month.

For those interested in life, sans the 9 to 5, one might recommend Sebastian de Grazia’s study, Of Time, Work, and Leisure.

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Michael Says:

September 2, 2009 at 11:58 am
Has anyone any information from outside the United States about the effect of ethnic/racial diversity on support for the welfare state?

I remember many years ago reading the claim that the reason why ‘social democracy’ prevailed in western Europe but not in the United States was that European countries were substantially homogeneous ethnically. The reasoning was of course that people are naturally ethnocentric and racist, and are more inclined to be charitable to others like them than they are to those who are different. I don’t recall whether this assertion was supported by data collected through polling, etc., or was just a speculation.

Certainly it is true that at the time social democracy was adopted in the countries in question – typically during the period between World War I and World War II, or just after WWII – they were more ethnically homogeneous than they are today. This is particularly true of the Scandinavian nations. However, that situation has now changed markedly, with large recent immigration from north Africa and the middle east. One might, therefore, expect that there is less support for the welfare state now in those countries among their ethnically native populations than there was fifty years ago.

On the point of the “vastly inflated” medical care system, it is worth considering that those countries that today have some sort of socialized medicine instituted it at a time when medical care was much less sophisticated. Consider Britain’s NHS, a product of the Attlee years. Antibiotics were still a novelty; mortality from simple pneumonia was still high even among the relatively young and fit, and the modern drug regimen for treatment of tuberculosis had not been introduced. There was no open-heart surgery, no use of stents, no such thing as a cardiac pacemaker. Organ transplants were years in the future. No one dreamt of surgically implanted prostheses for broken hips, bad knees, and other orthopaedic injuries or diseases. In short, if you suffered from many conditions that are now easily cured or ameliorated, there was nothing that could be done. You just died.

I agree that costs in the American medical care system are inflated, typically because of perverse incentives that arise from third-party reimbursement (whether by government or private insurance) On the other hand, there have been real advances in medical technology since Attlee’s day, and these have measurably reduced mortality and extended life expectancies. Of course this comes at a cost, and this portion of increased medical costs since the late 1940s is justified by the added value received.

The political problem with ‘entitlements’ such as Social Security in the U.S., or socialized medicine in those countries that have it, is that it is almost impossible to undo them once they are done. This is of course why ‘health care reform’ is so important to the Obama crowd, little as it really has to do with economic recovery. A crisis like the present one, as Rahm Emanuel said, is too good to waste. If government can be enlarged, and more people made dependent upon it, a constituency will emerge to support it that will render it permanent.

Where socialized medicine has prevailed for a long time, and has become politically entrenched in this fashion, costs have been controlled by rationing. Anyone who has been to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota cannot fail to be aware of the large number of patients who have come there from outside the U.S. to get treatments they either cannot get at all or cannot get in timely fashion in their own countries. All the details of the ongoing debate can’t obscure the point that anyone who believes Americans can have government-administered medical care without rationing (more severe than that already imposed by Medicare and private insurance) is dreaming.

I wonder, though, whether the costs and other consequences of universal government-administered health care have not by now become so exorbitant as to doom the concept. The longer it is delayed, it can only become less attractive.

It’s a well-recognized political tactic to stall a project until its costs become prohibitive. In the community where I live there has long been dicussion of replacing an old bridge that is now inadequate for the traffic that it must bear. The proposed replacement has been an ambitious one and has had opposition from a variety of sources ranging from people whose properties would be taken to build the landings and approaches, to retailers whose business district would be bypassed, to environmentalists who fear its impact on the surrounding countryside. At this point the costs of its construction have risen to a level that taxpayers are joining the chorus of objection, and I expect this will kill it.

“Fabian” tactics – named after the Roman general Fabius Maximus, called Cunctator, who “by masterful delay saved the state” – have for a long time been associated with socialists who seek to prevail by an incremental rather than a revolutionary approach. However, as the bridge project I described illustrates, they can also be employed by those who oppose new government spending and taxes. The time may have passed when the United States can afford universal government-provided medical care.

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Eric Johnson Says:

September 2, 2009 at 12:48 pm
Michael, interesting stuff.

Do you believe, as I have recently seen it claimed somewhere, that both sides are naturally motivated to produce budget deficits? Ie, the left has to raise spending first, and the right cut taxes first, because both represent the “fun” side of the equation and are able to excite political momentum. Dessert first, as it were. Deficit enlargement naturally results, and only then is there a “crisis” that can justify the not so fun corresponding change (either spending cuts or tax increases).

If that has any truth to it, perhaps one shouldn’t believe for a millisecond the cost estimates of the Obama health plan.

I’ve heard vaguely, in the technical literature, about “rationing” of antibody treatments such as anti-TNF-alpha antibodies. I don’t know just how the rationing happens. If I’m not mistaken, anti-TNF is unambiguously superior to everything else for arthritis and a number of other inflammatory diseases, but costs something like $15,000-25,000 a year.

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teageegeepea Says:

September 2, 2009 at 8:42 pm
Michael, see Ed Glaeser’s Why Doesn’t the U.S. Have a European-Style Welfare State?

Eric, Bush increased spending faster than any president since LBJ. Reagan increased spending a good deal as well. Canada has actually been shrinking its governments share of GDP while we’ve been expanding ours, and now we’re equal. Bryan Caplan once theorized that both parties are trying to expand the State as much as possible, calling it the Leviathan hypothesis. There are some missing diagrams in that paper, but you can find them at his academic papers page below the link to the main document.

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Eric Johnson Says:

September 3, 2009 at 6:31 am
> I just don’t understand why they behave differently when they hit a critical mass. It isn’t just a matter of growth, since they had to grow in the first place to hit critical mass.

You are referring to exotoxin-secreting bacteria like pertussis, diphtheria, gangrene? For one thing, if they started puffing out the toxin before they had the population mass to produce an effective dose thereof, they might do nothing more than grant the host an earlier start on fashioning antibodies against the toxin (it takes something like 10-14 days to generate totally novel antibodies). I’ve seen this idea cited in lower-quality sources, but I don’t know for sure that it’s true.

> And it isn’t just a matter of transmission, since there are “carrier” species which spread pathogens without bearing many of the ill effects.

You mean guys like Escherichia coli O157:H7, which lives peacefully in cows? Gut commensals like that, and to a lesser extent other parasites that are mostly commensal in most host species, might be sort of a special case. Because they are so tolerable, they should be much denser in the environment than a pathogenic parasite that every organism is motivated to fight against very stringently. Vertebrates use fluid flow, mucus shedding, cell shedding, etc to prevent commensal colon bacteria from becoming a major presence in the small intestine and thus seizing its nutrient rich fluid. (I think much or most of the usable biomass that reaches the large intestine is made of molecules that cannot be reduced by any human enzymes to the very small molecules that are absorbable.) But cows have no motivation to kill O157:H7, instead they just keep it mostly out of their small intestine, and release it in vast amounts daily.

It may be possible (I’m speculating) that O157:H7 picked up its nasty relationship with humans as a sideline. Any organism that becomes ultra-successful, like man, should become all the more inviting a target for exploitation by other organisms (the “kill the winners” hypothesis).

Vibrio cholerae also seems to have an environmental life as a non-pathogen. But this represents an odd sort of generalism that is probably kind of unusual.

A lot of toxic bacteria actually have their toxins encoded by the genomes of temperate phages, that is phages that sometimes grow and lyse the bacteria, but mostly just quiesce. This is a little odd. Evolution in bacteria is not much mutation-limited, because bacterial populations are so immense. Mutations that would inactivate the phage and leave the cured bacterium’s genome in direct “possession” of the toxin must be extremely common. If the bacteria don’t come into “proper” possession of such toxins, it must be that they don’t want them.

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Eric Johnson Says:

September 3, 2009 at 6:49 am
Haplodiploidy seems not to be necessary or sufficient for eusociality, though it seems to be a factor considering the numerous independent evolutions of eusociality in the hymenoptera.

The thing that confuses me, sort of, about eusociality is that it’s not “metaphysically” necessary that hyper-altruism be involved. Let’s say there’s a not-yet-eusocial hymenopteran which shows facultative cooperative breeding, with cooperating daughters eventually going off to make their own nests once they gain high maturity – this pattern exists in some wasps today. OK, then one day there’s a mutant queen, 95% of whose progeny simply lack this facultative behavior and just behave as sterile obligate workers. Viola, eusociality. But in this case you wouldn’t say the workers evolved to be hyper-altruist; you’d say the queen evolved to produce robot slaves that are in a darwinian analysis essentially organs of her body. Where’s the altruism?

The thing is, I don’t know that much about hymenoptera and I don’t know that there’s any support for this scenario. I suppose some might consider it a saltation and just argue that it’s not nearly as likely as gradually increasing degrees of altrusim and cooperation by the workers. I think I also heard somewhere that some worker ants occasionally break ranks and breed.

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Attack the System » Blog Archive » Updated News Digest September 6, 2009 Says:

September 3, 2009 at 8:12 am
[…] Does Diversity Make Whites More Opposed to Welfare? by TGGP […]

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Michael Says:

September 3, 2009 at 1:51 pm
It isn’t really correct to say that Reagan, Bush, or any president since Johnson inreased spending purely motu proprio. From the administration of Thomas Jefferson until that of Richard Nixon, presidents had the authority of “impoundment,” i.e., of refusing to spend the entire amount appropriated by Congress for any particular activity under the aegis of the executive branch. Although not a line item veto in form, it amounted to one in function.

Nixon’s attempt to impound funds Congress appropriated for the Office of Economic Opportunity was one of the bones of contention between him and Congress, both houses of which were controlled by Democrats throughout his administration. During the Watergate crisis – which in many respects has to be understood as a Congressional coup d’etat – Congress took away the presidential power of impoundment, and it has never been restored.

Throughout Reagan’s two terms the House of Representatives was controlled by Democrats. Since all appropriations bills originate in the House, no budget ever passed that reflected Reagan’s wishes for lower domestic spending, and because he had no power of impoundment, his administration was forced to spend what the Democrats appropriated for their programs. It is true he sought increases in military spending, and should be held responsible for them, but the blame for increased domestic spending during his administration can’t be laid at his feet.

Bush II is much more culpable for the increase in spending under his administration, since he did not veto any spending bull for the first six years he was in office for fear of offending the Republican congressional leadership which was then in control.

Absent a restoration of impoundment powers, the best combination for control of spending may be a Republican congress that refuses to give a Democrat in the White House the spending he wants. This was the effect of the Clinton/Gingrich years. Even so it has to be observed that Clinton got increases in domestic spending, and his reductions came largely out of military spending. The latter were facilitated by the winding down of the Cold War. Remember the “peace dividend” we were supposed to get? That’s what happened to it. Even if Republicans should take control of one or both houses of Congress in the 2010 election, it isn’t so likely that Obama saddled with a Republican Congress will bring about the kind of deficit reduction Clinton with a Republican Congress did after 1994.

I agree that the general tendency is for both parties to grow government, because that is personally less painful for the politicians involved. It’s why changing parties resembles changing the crew on a locomotive. One crew may choke back on the throttle more, or shovel coal into the firebox with less vigor than another, but the train is still headed down the same track.

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teageegeepea Says:

September 3, 2009 at 7:21 pm
Toxins are more what I was thinking of. I had heard that dead meat goes rotten because bacteria produce toxins in order to monopolize a carcass (I believe wolverines similarly put their stink on kills). Bacteria go to work on things pretty quickly after they die. So would the only reason for releasing toxins before death be that they “think” they can kill the organism and place dibs at the same time?

I believe the temporary cooperative breeding is also displayed by female wolves. Greg Cochran mentioned that in his rant.

it’s not “metaphysically” necessary
What isn’t necessary is metaphysics! But seriously, I didn’t think most cooperative breeders exhibited drone-like behavior. If they plan on breeding later, they won’t be completely selfless early on.

I think I also heard somewhere that some worker ants occasionally break ranks and breed.
I thought chemicals determined whether or not they were fertile pretty early on.

Michael, I guess you’re right that I’ve been using the President to stand in for the whole federal government and ignoring Congress. Caplan’s paper is on state governments and I believe focuses on the size of the majority in the legislature.

Did Reagan veto many spending bills?

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Eric Johnson Says:

September 4, 2009 at 11:41 am
Well, “toxin” is like “parasite” in that it usually has a narrower meaning in medbio or microbiology – namely a hostile large molecule (protein) secreted by a pathogenic bacterium.

A protein has to be exquisitely crafted in order to be orally active, by evading degradation and then worming into the cytosol of the intestinal cells by some trick (the rest of what you eat is not absorbed unless first successfully ripped down to monomers of roughly a dozen or two atoms excluding hydrogens; it then passes through specific transporter proteins in the cell membranes). Botulinum toxin is orally active, but I’m not sure any others are, from among the human pathogens.

I’m not sure what if anything bacteria do to repel vertebrates. Polyamines are one cause of the foulness as perceived by humans. From what I’ve read, it seems that at least some organisms repel “vores” simply by smelling and tasting awful, without actually being toxic.

Some small-molecule poisons made by microbes that might harm vertebrates, might be selected primarily to attack eucaryote microbes (fungi etc) in the endless soil wars. Hard to know. Actually, a lot of people don’t believe that the small-molecule antibiotics used by microbes are actually hostile; they judge that the concentrations produced in the soil/litter are too low to kill or significantly inhibit the growth of any cell, and they postulate that these alleged antibiotics are actually used for communication. I find this very hard to believe; it’s much more credible that these investigators are messing something up.

> But seriously, I didn’t think most cooperative breeders exhibited drone-like behavior. If they plan on breeding later, they won’t be completely selfless early on.

If there were a saltation that made the workers of a certain queen’s line no longer reach high maturity and depart to breed on their own, it’s true that they may not at first be optimized to serve their queen selflessly. But they will begin evolving in that direction at once.

Whether the saltation itself would immediately be able to invade the population (have higher fitness than the ancestral phenotype), I’m not sure. Obviously it will die out if it doesn’t. But this finding seems to show that it can sometimes be fitness-enhancing to coerce your own offspring to help you raise more offspring:

“We report here that older male white-fronted bee-eaters (typically fathers) actively disrupt the breeding attempts of their sons, and that such harassment frequently leads to the sons joining as helpers at the nest of the harassing father”

This paper suggests gradualistic scenarios for evolution of eusociality by coercion. Probably more reasonable than saltation:

But at any rate, gradual or not, the point is that it isn’t necessarily altruism. According to that paper, workers of some or all hymenoptera taxa are able to lay male eggs.

I think there should or could be significant colony level selection in ants, and I guess(?) that is appropriately termed group selection. Colonies are different than, say, Yanomamo villages. DNA comes in and out of Yanomamo villages – I don’t think(?) that happens in ant colonies; I think those groups are permanent. Yanomamo groups can also dissolve and send their members to other groups, though admittedly this tends to put those individuals in a poor social position. Also, every Yanomamo is more or less equally able to breed.

I’m not sure, though, that I would describe all aspects of a worker ant’s behavior as group selected. If she can’t produce female eggs, she is partly forced to help the queen. The fact that a queen produces such workers could be described as simply a result of selection on the lineage of the queen. But if the worker refrains to a large extent from laying as many male eggs as she could – thus avoiding wasteful conflict with nestmates over this issue – perhaps that would properly be described as a result of group selection.

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1. teageegeepea Says:
  
  September 6, 2009 at 8:07 pm
  I thought the reason certain smells/tastes are experiences as “awful” is because they were associated with dangerous food in the evolutionary adaptive period. It is the case though that indicators can be faked (the appearance of poisonous animals, for instance).
  
  Precisely because of the more unitary DNA of ant colonies, it falls more under “kin selection” than a Yanomamo village. “Kin selection” fits well with good old fashioned neo-darwinism: a parent only bothers to produce children in the first place and then care for them because of the inclusive fitness benefits.
  
  Male eggs are apparently what is produced in the absence of fertilization among haplodiploids. So I guess it makes sense that they can be more easily produced.
  
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Eric Johnson Says:

September 4, 2009 at 11:47 am
All those things about Yanomamos, I was going to add, show why defection against group fitness by individuals is probably highly favored in human groups, much more so than in ant groups.

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Eric Johnson Says:

September 4, 2009 at 11:58 am
You can see why I said my thinking on hymenoptera was a little fuzzy. I sure wasn’t lying about that.

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