Beyond Labels

President Trump has made headlines by deploying the National Guard in several U.S. cities, ostensibly because of rampant crime…

• Trump: “Portland is burning to the ground. It’s insurrectionists all over the place.”
• Homeland Security Secretary Noem: Chicago is “a war zone”
• House Speaker Johnson: DC is a “literal war zone”

On Monday, November 3, we’ll talk crime statistics. Here’s what appears to be a good source for the discussion: Criminal Victimization, 2024, published by the U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics.

Here’s an opinion piece from the former directory of the bureau producing these statistics.

To get things going:

• This bulletin was published by the Trump Justice Department. Do we believe the statistics and commentary?
  • What elements of the bulletin support the notion that the methodology and the authors’ views are the same (or have the same basis) as they would have been under the Biden administration?
  • And what elements raise questions about the bulletin’s fairness and comparability?
  • (For what it’s worth, here are links to the 2023 and 2022 versions of the bulletin.)
• What is most surprising about the bulletin’s data? (There’s a lot to digest in the text, tables, and figures.)
• What conclusions do you draw about how serious a crime problem the U.S. has?
  • What should be done to reduce the incidence of crime?

Beyond Labels has often discussed elements of economics and political theory (or reality). This week, we’ll discuss the work of this year’s Nobel prize awards, which was split between an economic historian and two more traditional economists who have modeled creative destruction, the mechanism whereby new technologies replace old ones, and firms (or individuals) whose fortunes are tied to the outgoing technology must change (often rapidly) or suffer the consequences.

Here’s the Wikipedia page on creative destruction (sorry, it’s a long one), and here is the Nobel prize announcement.

And here are a few questions to get the discussion started:

• What should government’s role be (if any) in softening the impact of creative destruction on the “losers”–the corporations and/or the affected workers?
• Why do the dominant players in a given technology often fail to make a successful transition to the more modern replacements?
• What lessons should companies (and employees) take from the history of creative destruction (or continuous innovation) which, as one economist wrote, “devalue[s], if not destroy[s], past investments and labour skills?”
• Should politicians try to impose impediments to the forces of creative destruction to maintain the status quo for consituents and important corporate neighbors?