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The Nation's Pulse
Where the Brains Are
That’s where you’ll find people too smart for their own — and the common — good.
“If you’re so smart,” goes a retort dating back, probably, to the Pharaohs, “why aint’cha rich?
Because you live in ‘Frisco? Gotham? Let’s take a look.
Arlington, Va., blogger Rob Pitingolo frowns at the idea of brain mass, as measured by the number of college degree holders living mashed together in big cities. Pitingolo wants to cast a wider net — out to the suburbs and outlying counties — and thus measure the number of degrees per square mile to determine better where the brains are. Good idea: brings in places like Indianapolis, Louisville, Cleveland, and, yeah, all you East Coast high domes, Oklahoma City (next door to the mighty University of Oklahoma). It still leaves San Francisco (7,031 degrees per square miles) and New York City (6,357) way out in front of everybody else.
How about a competing measure of “smart”? Forget the B.A.’s, M.A.’s, Ph.D.’s, and so on and so on. What about a dimly remembered concept called prosperity? In other words, what about smart is as smart does? A city, a community, that creates for itself conditions under which freedom and prosperity flourish has something going for it that may outweigh, in intrinsic worth, tables laden with sheepskins.
Yes, yes, all right, we know how “smart” the people of San Francisco consider themselves to be, what with their UCLA, San Jose State, and Stanford degrees. We need to remember, as well, the achievements of the state as a whole, whose mid-coast tier San Francisco ornaments — a state that lurches from budget crisis to budget crisis; where, as Steven Malanga writes in City Journal, “State workers routinely retire at 55 with pensions higher than their pay base for most of their working lives.” Where state and local government spending is exceeded only by Alaska’s and New York’s. Where 5 percent of industrial jobs disappeared between February 2009 and February 2010. From which more than 1 million residents slipped off to other states between 2000 and 2008. Is there something they knew that the rest of us ignoramuses didn’t?
“Our main problems,” says a small business spokesman, “are costs that are just out of control.” Property taxes. Minimum wages. Paid sick leave. Ah, and in San Francisco, a local requirement that businesses offer health insurance to employees. The cost of regulation in California is estimated (says Guy Sorman in City) at $134,122 per small business.
Very brainy, California. There’s nothing like a state too costly to do business in, to make people not want to do business in it.
Is New York any better? From 2000 to 2008, says the Empire Center for New York State Policy, “New York experienced the nation’s largest loss of residents to other states” — 8 percent. Nearly 60 percent headed southward, 30 percent to close-at-hand-but-perceived-anyway-as-more-business-friendly New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut. The fugitives’ income is estimated at 13 percent higher than that of their replacements in New York.
The conservative American Legislative Exchange Council puts the Empire State at 35th place in terms of competitiveness. But lest one lean too hard on such a “biased” source, consider that the Beacon Hill Institute of Boston likewise takes a dim view of New York’s competitiveness. Ditto the Milken Trust of California, which notes that New York imposes on its residents the second heaviest cost in the country of doing business in a particular state.
Torts? — the civil “wrongs” suits that lawyers bring against business in hope of exacting multi-million-dollar judgments? New York is adjudged to have the second most legal violent climate when it comes to torts (after New Jersey). Then there’s California, lurking back there in 10th place.
Must be some brilliant thinking going on in New York and California alike. “Now today, class, our problem is how to destroy 1,000 jobs in xxx industry. Ms. Smith, any ideas?”
Common sense — not the species of intelligence retailed at the university, and certainly not the graduate school, level but still with much to commend it — normally underwrites the ancient wisdom that if you want more of something, you subsidize it (tax cuts, minimal regulations). If, by contrast, you want less of something you penalize it. Tax increases help in this direction; so also thick, heavy regulatory overlays, with smart, college-degreed people looking over shoulders, examining and re-examining business plans to assure their public acceptability.
If you’re so smart, one reason you ain’t rich might be invertebracy in the face of demands from public employee unions, trial lawyers, and other guardians of the public weal. How much easier just to put brains on hold — all that stuff about invisible hands and the efficiency of markets — and pay court to organized interest groups that seemingly never receive a large enough bounty from government. The brains trusts of California and New York (not to mention, due to space requirements) an army of other interests) must have heard of common sense; they just seem to have mislaid the recollection. Too bad —- mostly for themselves.
About the Author
William Murchison, a Dallas-based columnist for Creators Syndicate and author of Mortal Follies: Episcopalians and the Crisis of Mainline Christianity (Encounter Books), is completing a biography of John Dickinson..
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Richard Baker| 6.9.10 @ 7:37AM
Ah yes. The mind of the union man. So what if the State or business goes bankrupt from my labor costs. I want mine and to hell with the rest of you. Unionism, a movement whose time has long since passed.
L. Ross| 6.9.10 @ 5:00PM
I actually heard a union pilot at a major airline express those exact sentiments. I believe the quote was, "It doesn't matter if the company makes money or loses money, it only matters how much money I make." What an idiot.
Petronius| 6.10.10 @ 9:44PM
He flew for Eastern, right? Ask him how he's going to pay bills with the emotional vindication he basks in while ruining the company that used to pay his salary.
Jim O'Brien| 6.9.10 @ 9:11AM
The Constitution and this country would not exist if their creation depended on graduates of today's universities. Thank God for the incredibly exceptional Founding Fathers, who were mostly self-educated. They actually learned from history, had tremendous critical thinking skills and saw far into the future. In contrast, today's academia thrives on and takes great pleasure in repeating liberal dogma as if it were a religion. Truly creative, independent minds need not apply.
Patrick Elwell| 6.10.10 @ 9:46AM
I completely agree...that's where all the problems in our country come from - we shouldn't elect people with degrees anymore! In fact, no more university educated politicians will ever get my vote. I can't believe I voted for George W. Bush..not only did he go to college but he went ot Yale! Ha! What complete crap - he must be an even bigger idiot for going to an ivy. In fact, lets start electing those who don't even have a high school diploma! That is sure to generate much better leadership.
Sure, some people with college degrees don't have common sense. But don't pretend like you yourself didn't go to college and won't send your kids to college. Even "great conservative minds" go to college.
DEW| 6.10.10 @ 10:21AM
The Founding Fathers had strong educational backgrounds. Some, like Washington and Franklin, were largely self-taught or learned through apprenticeship, in publishing or surveying. However, over half of the men who attended the Constitutional Convention graduated from universities in the colonies, Britain or the Netherlands. Some held medical degrees or advanced training in theology. The Republican party's fetishism of anti-intellectualism is not a serious strategy for running a complex country of 300 million people. The GOP needs to return to its place as the thinking man's party and not the party of the uneducated, the reactionary and those who are afraid of the future.
Joe Blow| 6.14.10 @ 5:37PM
That is so true. By all means, take on the left wing ascendancy in the academy and celebrate the common man. But there does seem to be an anti-intellectual trend in some parts of the Republican party. One should also remember that the economy does need technical and scientific expertise.
professer| 6.9.10 @ 11:53AM
Don't equate eddication (lol) wif intelligenc. The parrots that have the highest vocabulary ( ) are in the pet shop. Thank God I didn't waste any money at Harverd or Yallel and be runnin round quoting words that don't pertein to ennything, jus becauze they waz in the tex books.
Jim| 6.9.10 @ 1:31PM
Heaven help us if the libs / socialists (is there a difference?) get their way. John Gault, here I come!
Steve| 6.9.10 @ 1:43PM
Where's the data showing that states with less regulation and taxes are better off and more competitive?
MichaelAdams| 6.9.10 @ 3:15PM
The unemployment rate in Texas is two full percentage points lower than the national average. Indeed, without the TX statistics in the mix, the US is not in a recession, but a depression. No income tax here. We don't even have a "business license."
How can you not know this?
Occam's Tool| 6.9.10 @ 2:05PM
Dear Steve:
Check out data on millionaires in North Dakota. Then check out SAT scores, etc. No state income tax.
Chairman Nobomba| 6.9.10 @ 4:10PM
This comes to mind that I think Edmond (Jerry) Brown Jr. of California is truly an evail man. He was the one who, when he was the Gov of Cal, allowed the state employee to union organize and strike. Fourty years later, these public employee unions just such the blood (money) dry off California.
WRJonas| 6.9.10 @ 4:32PM
Smart is the least of accomplishments . It is the source of pride which feeds our evil spirits.
The real jewel of accomplishment is faithfulness.
It is rare and elusive.
Nate| 6.9.10 @ 5:44PM
My experience is that people with advanced degrees -- particularly in the humanities -- are capable of great humility when it comes to their own "smarts."
Of course this humility is not universal. Of course college professors can be pompous.
But there is a hubris in proud ignorance too, and there's something boastful and obnoxious about the way some people sneer at the educated.
Envy and pride are insidious. I submit that most people who are not saints are vulnerable to both failings -- whether they've read Plato or not.
My college professors -- very book learned folk -- were for the most part wise, intellectually brilliant, curious, energetic, understanding, and very respectful people. They did not conform to the stereotypes of intellectuals one sees on television (which is where, I suspect, many anti-intellectual types learn to condescend to the erudite), nor did any of them -- from what I could tell -- seem to look down upon people who were not highly educated.
The truth is that reading great books and spending one's life studying them teaches people a certain respect for different opinions and differing ways of looking at the world. This is something sorely lacking on the tea-party right, where you're either a follower of Sarah Palin or you're a communist fascist.
And I don't think that kind of respect is especially on display in the frothing crowds who proudly proclaim their ignorance and their home-spun superiority over the experts they so vociferously denounce. Again, it's not universal, and sometimes the educated can be as moronic or as self-serving as anyone. But I don't think the piece above very accurately depicts them either.
DEW| 6.10.10 @ 10:24AM
Please define a communist fascist?