Lost Jumps the Death Shark

February 28, 2009

(This is  actually Jeremy Bentham.  He’s preserved and kept at Oxford, where they bring him out for certain occasions.  True story.  But he doesn’t come back to life, unlike another Jeremy Bentham we know.)

Our Friday Lost commentary was again exposed to negatively charged exotic material and shifted through time to today.  And that makes about as much sense as Lost lately.  You could say that I am starting to lose it with Lost.

The problem is that Lost has clearly committed itself to having dead people come back to life.  We’re not just seeing ghosts of dead people.  And we aren’t just seeing time-loops to when people were still alive.  People seem to die and then not be dead.

We know with certainty that this happened to John Locke.  We saw him get killed and then later come to life.  And he wasn’t just a ghost or time-looped.  He remembered dying.  He ate a mango.  He was alive after being dead.

Keep in mind that the producers of the show swore that dead people were dead in the Lostverse.  They told Entertainment Weekly: “These people have hearts, and when those hearts stop beating, they die.” This was part of their explicitly debunking the theory that the Island was Purgatory.  No, they swore, the people on the Island are alive and when they are dead they are dead.  They added to E! Online: “”If we did such a thing after repeatedly stating otherwise, we’d be tarred and feathered!”

Well, get out the tar and feathers.  I guess they did not technically break their pledge that the Island was not purgatory, but it is clear that they misled us about whether being dead means that you stay dead. 

Why does this matter?  I’ve been concerned for a while that Lost has turned from a science-fiction story into a faith-based fantasy.  In science-fiction there are “natural” rules and the plot is constrained by those rules.  Those rules aren’t science as we know it, but they resemble science and must be consistent and logical within the universe of the plot.  In a faith-based fantasy there is a power outside of and exempt from the “natural” rules.  Those stories largely revolve around the desirability of faith in this power.

Now, I have no problem with stories that affirm the desirability of faith, per se.  It’s just that they tend to be less compelling as stories.  Dramatic tension in most stories occurs by bumping against the constraints of the rules.  But if the rules within the story can be broken or suspended at any time or if there is a mystery that is never resolved because it lies outside of the rules, then the drama is undermined.  The book of Job may be a great read and provoke a lot of interesting discussion, but it is hardly great drama.  The explanation is that you are not entitled to an explanation.

If Lost has an Island with a conscious purpose (not the unconscious purpose of Fate, as we discussed last week) and if death does not mean you are dead, then we are breaking outside of a natural system with rules.  It’s true that zombie movies involve the un-dead, but they are always explicit about their rules upfront so that they clearly stay within a natural order.  But in Lost we are trying to figure out what the rules are and it is becoming clear that the rules are mystical and not natural.  Sure, they may explain the rules before the end, but it will seem post hoc and unsatisfying.  We can’t even infer the rules from what we are seeing since clearly anything can happen.

Don’t get me wrong.  I’m still going to watch because I’m addicted and need to get the answers.  But I am preparing myself for the fact that the answers will be unsatisfying because they will come from outside of any natural order that we can observe in the Lostverse.

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Posted by Jay P. Greene

Caught in a Trap…

February 27, 2009

briscocountyjrunderpressure

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

Fox’s tragically under appreciated early 1990s western comedy The Adventures of Briscoe County Jr. had an episode where the heroes teamed up with a sheriff to pursue a group of bad guys into a local mine. The bad guys gave the good guys the slip, and then closed entrance to the mine with dynamite. The sheriff, who just happened to look and dress like a circa 1972 version of Elvis Presley declared in a Tupelo drawl:

“We’re caught in a trap! Can’t walk out!”

Arizona’s legislators today find themselves caught in a trap that they won’t easily be able to extricate themselves from as well. Former Governor Napolitano drove the legislature to make a series of truly reckless budgets, driving state spending up at a rate far faster than state income growth. As real estate bubble revenue came pouring in, Arizona lawmakers made long term spending commitments with short term revenue sources.

The trap? Republicans now have the governor’s office and legislative majorities. Napolitano joined the Obama administration. Republicans are now in a position of either rolling this spending back to match revenues, or increasing taxes to preserve Janet Napolitano’s reckless legacy of expanding government. The beauty of the trap for Napolitano: she can watch the Republicans step on these bear traps from the safe distance of Washington DC.

These use of the plural in describing traps is deliberate. The Republicans have already enraged the state spending lobbies by fixing the badly imbalanced budget Governor Napolitano passed last year. The question is, having stepped on that trap, will they panic and stumble onto the next trap, which would be to raise taxes. This would incur the wrath of those of us who prefer low taxes and a smaller government.

In short, there are no easy options here, but some options are even worse than others. In fiscal year 2004, the Arizona general fund spent $6.5 billion. In 2007, that went up to $10.2 billion. The party was fun while it lasted, but our revenues are on a collision course with 2004, our spending needs to be as well. Napolitano’s mastery of Arizona’s Republicans will be complete if she forces the them to raise taxes in order preserve her vision of progress through bigger government from thousands of miles away. The whipped up hordes of the spending lobbies will not give them any credit, and principled small government conservatives and libertarians will be outraged as well.

1 Comment | politics | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by matthewladner

Save the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program

February 26, 2009

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

The Wall Street Journal weighs in here.

Coulson in the New York Post.

2 Comments | vouchers | Tagged: , | Permalink
Posted by matthewladner

Where do you even start?

February 26, 2009

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

Hat tip to Mike Antonucci for this gem in his never ending collection of dumb quotes. “The nice thing about reducing class size is that it makes teachers happy in their own right and it’s the one thing that we know how to do.” – Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach, education policy professor at the University of Chicago. (February 22 New York Times)

This quote is revealing on many levels about what is wrong with Colleges of Education, and with public education more broadly. But maybe that’s just me and my silly idea that we ought to be focused on the learning of students rather than the preferences of adults working in the system.

5 Comments | class size myth | Permalink
Posted by matthewladner

Assassination for D.C. Vouchers?

February 25, 2009

the-assassin

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

In case you haven’t heard, it’s been discovered that the Democrats snuck a provision into the “stimulus” “omnibus”* bill that assassinates the D.C. voucher program.

Dan Lips and Robert Enlow have the story on NRO today; the link on the front page is broken as of this writing, but you can get the story here.

I’m not sure what’s most disgusting – that the Dems are putting union politics ahead of children’s lives, that they’re doing it in this cowardly way, or that the president broke his promise to make the text of the bill available to legislators and the public with plenty of time to review the contents and justified his decision by saying that we had to pass the bill immediately to avert a catastrophe.

What did the president know, and when did he know it? Seems like there’s no answer to that question that makes him look good.

*UPDATE: Thanks to the commenters for correcting my mistake. How could I possibly mix up the “stimulus” bill with the “omnibus” bill? I mean, other than the fact that they’re both nothing but special interest porkapaloozas, they’re so completely different! Even so, I’m leaving in my comment about the president having broken his word on making the text of the stimulus bill available, because he did break his word and it was wrong. And the question of what the president knew about the voucher assassination attempt and when he knew it still seems 1) relevant and 2) not to admit of answers that make him look good.

4 Comments | politics, vouchers | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Greg Forster

A is for Average, B is for Being There

February 25, 2009

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

Good stuff from George Leef of the Pope Center and the New York Times on spoiled brat students and declining standards in higher education.

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Posted by matthewladner

The Chart That Launched a Conference

February 24, 2009

 

The Quick and the Ed has additional comment on the teacher pension conference I discussed yesterday.  Rather than focusing on the financial sustainability of teacher pensions, Chad Aldeman at QATE focuses on how the odd accrual of pension wealth distorts teacher labor market decisions.  This is also an incredibly important issue.

In particular, he focuses on the work done by my colleagues Bob Costrell and Mike Podgusrky that finds that the convoluted design teacher pensions encourages some teachers to continue working to receive a large increase in the value of their pensions at a particular age, while it pushes other teachers out the door because they would lose an enormous amount of pension wealth if they continued working.

These “peaks and valleys” in pension wealth can have profound effects on teacher quality, by possibly keeping some teachers in the profession too long and by cutting the careers of others too short.  The chart above should give you a feeling for how convoluted teacher pension designs are.  Aldeman calls it “the chart that launched a conference” because the publication of these findings in Education Next sparked a flurry of new research on teacher pensions, much of which was presented last week.

Leave a Comment » | teacher pay, teacher quality | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

Discounting Teacher Pensions

February 23, 2009

 end-wall-st-bull-collapsed-slide

 I just returned from a great conference co-sponsored by Vanderbilt, U. of Missouri, and my department at the University of Arkansas on teacher pensions.  One of the major issues discussed at the conference was the financial sustainability of those pension systems.  And at the heart of that discussion was a debate over the appropriate discount rate to apply to pension liabilities.  Essentially, the debate was over what we should assume to be the return on pension investments in the future.

This may seem like an arcane and dry issue, but let me tell you that it is incredibly important.  If you don’t care about it now, you will care if those pensions fall short of their assumed rate of return on investments over a long period of time.  If teacher pension plans run out of money, taxpayers are on the hook to make up the difference to the tune of tens of billions of dollars.  I know that in the era of trillion dollar bailouts tens of billions don’t seem like a big deal, but after a few of these trillion dollar bailouts there may not be much left for the teacher pensions if they go kablooey (that’s the technical term).

Public pensions are generally considered well-funded when they have assets that are roughly 80% of liabilities.  Don’t ask me why it is considered OK to know that you are short 20% of what you owe, but most folks who work on these issues just don’t think it’s realistic to have 100%.  Besides, when plans get close to 100% funding of their liabilities they tend to increase the generosity of their benefits to bring that ratio down. 

About 40% of the major teacher pension plans failed to meet the 80% standard for being adequately funded as of 2007 — before the current market meltdown.  But the 60% that did meet this standard did so assuming that they would return 8% on their investments going forward.  Is 8% the right rate to assume?

Remember that teacher pensions are promising to pay teachers a certain amount of money 20, 30, or 40 years from now.  They also expect to receive a certain amount in contributions from the teachers, from their employers (the state or school districts), and from investment returns on those funds.  Whether you have enough money to make the promised payments to teachers is extremely sensitive to the assumed rate of return on investments.

Some folks, often public finance economists, argue that assuming an 8% return is irresponsible.  They say that the market tells us what rate we should use and it is the risk-free rate of long-term US treasury bonds, currently earning a little less than 4%.  To get a significantly higher return one has to take-on significantly more risk, with the distinct possibility that one will earn far less than 8% and even less than 4%. 

If one assumes a 4% return rather than an 8% return, a teacher pension that would have been 70% funded assuming 8% would drop to 44% funded assuming a 4% return.  Just how under-funded teacher pensions are hinges heavily on whether we assume a 4% or 8% return.

Other folks, often pension plan actuaries, argue that the 8% assumption is reasonable.  They point to the historic rate of return on pension assets to support 8% as a reasonable figure.  They also say that risk is different for the government since it is a perpetual entity.  They can endure losses for a long time and eventually make up for them in a way that a private organization cannot.

I find it hard to support the 8% assumption.  Historic rates of return are hardly reassuring.  We may have received an average return of 8% over the last century, but who knows whether the next century will resemble the last one?  And who knows if we might be like Japan, where stock indices are still less than half of the peak they obtained three decades ago.  There is a good reason why investments ads say past returns are no guarantee of future returns.

And being a perpetual entity provides no protection if future rates turn out to be less than 8%.  Being perpetual only means that one can endure a very long period of under-performance.  That assumes that eventually the mean return will revert to being 8%.  But why should that be?  What if the mean return over the next infinite period is only 4%?  No matter how long we wait, we would never get 8%.

If it were really true that the government could be assured an 8% return while private entities can only be assured a 4% return, then it would make no sense to have a private financial industry.  The government could borrow at 4% to buy up the entire private sector and guarantee everyone an 8% perpetual return.  People should give all of their money to the government to invest so that they could be assured the 8% return with no risk.  If they invest it privately they can only be assured a 4% return with no risk. 

But defenders of using an 8% discount rate respond saying that if you assume a 4% rate and end up making 8%, the plans will be grossly over-funded.  That would essentially involve the transfer of wealth from this generation to a future generation, which would be grossly unfair.

Of course, the only way that the pensions could get more than 4% would be if they took on additional risk by investing in equities, real estate, hedge funds, etc…  If you lent me money at 4% and I took it to Vegas and put it all on black, I might also come back with a lot more than the 4% I would owe you.  I just can’t be guaranteed to come back with extra money.  Similarly, the teacher pension plans cannot be guaranteed the 8% return and should not assume extra risk in the attempt to get it.  If pensions switch to a 4% discount rate they should probably be restricted in their investments to mostly risk-free investments, like government bonds.

Switching to a 4% discount rate is going to be painful, especially with already under-funded teacher pension plans and with the recent market meltdown.  But if we don’t do it, eventually we may well face a future financial crisis brought on by pensions rather than by housing.  Let’s spot the bubbles before they burst.

In addition to reading the papers listed at the conference web site, you may also want to check out this new piece by my colleagues Bob Costrell and Mike Podgursky in the current issue of Education Next.

9 Comments | teacher pay | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

Evidence Shows Vouchers Are a Win-Win Solution

February 23, 2009

win-win-study-large

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

On Friday, the Friedman Foundation released my new report, “A Win-Win Solution: The Empirical Evidence on How Vouchers Affect Public Schools.” It goes over all the available empirical evidence on . . . well, on how vouchers affect public schools.

Here’s the supercool graphic:

win-win-study-chart1

Worth a thousand words, isn’t it? I mean, at what point are we allowed to say that people are either lying, or have been hoodwinked by other people’s lies, when they say that the research doesn’t support a positive impact from vouchers on public schools?

There’s always room for more research. What would we all do with our time if there weren’t? But on the question of what the research we now have says, the verdict is not in dispute.

Here’s the executive summary of the report:

This report collects the results of all available empirical studies on how vouchers affect academic achievement in public schools. Contrary to the widespread claim that vouchers hurt public schools, it finds that the empirical evidence consistently supports the conclusion that vouchers improve public schools. No empirical study has ever found that vouchers had a negative impact on public schools.

There are a variety of explanations for why vouchers might improve public schools, the most important being that competition from vouchers introduces healthy incentives for public schools to improve.

The report also considers several alternative explanations, besides the vouchers themselves, that might explain why public schools improve where vouchers are offered to their students. It concludes that none of these alternatives is consistent with the available evidence. Where these claims have been directly tested, the evidence has not borne them out. The only consistent explanation that accounts for all the data is that vouchers improve public schools.

Key findings include:

  • A total of 17 empirical studies have examined how vouchers affect academic achievement in public schools. Of these studies, 16 find that vouchers improved public schools and one finds no visible impact. No empirical studies find that vouchers harm public schools.
  • Vouchers can have a significant positive impact on public schools without necessarily producing visible changes in the overall performance of a large city’s schools. The overall performance of a large school system is subject to countless different influences, and only careful study using sound scientific methods can isolate the impact of vouchers from all other factors so it can be accurately measured. Thus, the absence of dramatic “miracle” results in cities with voucher programs has no bearing on the question of whether vouchers have improved public schools; only scientific analysis can answer that question.
  • Every empirical study ever conducted in Milwaukee, Florida, Ohio, Texas, Maine and Vermont finds that voucher programs in those places improved public schools.
  • The single study conducted in Washington D.C. is the only study that found no visible impact from vouchers. This is not surprising, since the D.C. voucher program is the only one designed to shield public schools from the impact of competition. Thus, the D.C. study does not detract from the research consensus in favor of a positive effect from voucher competition.
  • Alternative explanations such as “stigma effect” and “regression to the mean” do not account for the positive effects identified in these studies. When these alternative explanations have been evaluated empirically, the evidence has not supported them.

13 Comments | competitive effects, research reports, vouchers | Tagged: , | Permalink
Posted by Greg Forster

Get Lost 316

February 21, 2009

Last week Greg suggested that the Island has a will of its own that trumps the will of humans to direct its powers.  According to Greg’s analysis, the Island is essentially a super-natural being, like God, although he admits the possibility that it is a malevolent super-natural force.  And like God, Greg suggests that faith in the Island involves obeying even when the Island’s reasons are mysterious: “If we understood why the Island demands what it demands, there would be no question of faith (remember, John is the “man of faith”). In theology, “faith” doesn’t mean simply believing in certain facts about God, it means trusting and obeying God. And the supreme test of faith is to trust and obey when you don’t understand.”

Upon first seeing this week’s episode, 316, I thought Control-G (the hot-key for agreeing with Greg).  Greg is right so often that we had to develop a hot-key to make our agreement more efficient (in your heart you know he’s right).  It certainly would be novel to have a TV series entirely built around faith in a super-natural power.  Ben’s suggestion that Jack was similar to the Apostle Thomas, Locke’s note wishing that Jack had believed, Lapidus’ presence as the pilot of Ajira 316, and the allusion of the flight number to John 3:16 made me think — at first — that Greg was entirely right — Control G!  In the most recent episode Lost not only seemed like a story of vindicated faith but almost an explicit Christian allegory. 

That’s when I started doubting this interpretation.  Major TV producers would never make a series of a Christian allegory.  The religious references, whether Christian or Island as super-natural power,  have to be a false lead.  The argument between faith and science will be revived.  Faith has only temporarily prevailed.

The original faith/science debate revolved around pushing the button.  The alleged purpose of pushing the button was to save the world from destruction.  Locke had faith that the button must be pushed.  But what seemed like faith may have just been the prescience of time-loops.  The odd coincidences may just be the necessity of time course-correcting.  Is the purpose and direction of events determined simply by Fate, a power without an independent will or consciousness, or is there a super-natural entity choosing the course of events?  Greg’s theory seems to be the later, but I suspect it is the former.

I suspect that Fate has the world being destroyed.  Humans have detected this Fate through the Numbers and time-travel and are struggling to alter that Fate.  What seems like the will of the Island may just be the actions of humans in time loops attempting to steer Fate away from global destruction.  Whether they succeed or not will revolve around whether humans can change Fate, not the will of a super-natural entity.  I just can’t imagine a TV series emphasizing the will of a super-natural being over the primacy of human “agency.”  It would be gutsy and interesting if they did, but I just can’t see it in mainstream TV. 

The video embedded at the top of this post, suggests that human action to prevent destruction of the world is going to be central.  The video comes from Comicon and I found it on Lostpedia, where it is known as the Dharma Booth Video.  In it, Pierre Chang sends a message through time urging whoever sees it to continue the Dharma research to change time.  The different factions will struggle over who will control the potential power to change Fate, but we will discover that who controls it will be less important than using it to avoid total destruction.

7 Comments | Lost | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

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