Social Science Sucks

George Rebane

Harvard and Exeter social scientists just published a new study the implications of which go far beyond the answer to, “Did pandemic stimulus payments harm lower-income Americans?”  The correct answer was a clear YES, and for all the reasons that most RR readers would have predicted.

The study was done professionally, involving over 2,000 in the experimental group and over 3,100 in the control group, all properly controlled for the important societal parameters.  The bottom line was that those receiving the no-strings-attached handouts were not encouraged to practice “better financial decisions and healthier lifestyles. The theory is that low-income folks become more future-oriented if they’re less stressed about making ends meet. The Harvard study put this hypothesis to the test and found the opposite.” (more here)

In fact, the free money recipients did exactly what most sane observers of human nature know – “Handout recipients fared worse on most survey outcomes. They reported less earned income and liquidity, lower work performance and satisfaction, more financial stress, sleep quality and physical health, and higher levels of loneliness and anxiety than the control group.”  Whouda thunk?

This finding (corroboration?) casts a serious shadow on the impact of contemplated guaranteed minimal income policies.  As RR has argued for years, the penultimate motivator of human behavior is to be relevant within and to one’s society.  Reducing relevance or becoming irrelevant is akin to being shunned by your fellows.  And no one really believes that you deserve to have your hand in others’ pockets just because you can fog a mirror.  They know that you contribute nothing and consume the wealth others create – you are a parasite.

If we peel back the social onion one more layer, we come to the real answer – the culture of the recipient group.  It is culture that determines how social groups behave in various environments of material and financial wellbeing.  Nowhere in human history was this demonstrated more explicitly than in the post-war displaced persons camps of West Germany which were home to tens of millions of east European refugees fleeing communism.  Under UN administration almost all the camps were culturally homogeneous and received equal amounts of aid; refugees were not allowed to work on the German economy and were simply wards of the ‘state’ awaiting determination of their fate over a period of approximately five years.  Many studies were done and books written on how the people in the camps organized themselves and what kinds of activities they pursued.  The spectrum ranged all the way from virtual prisons ruled by indigenous criminal mafias to flourishing societies that replicated the refugees’ native lands and allowed them to develop and pursue education, arts, trades, crafts, etc, some of which they were allowed to sell to GIs stationed in numerous military bases.

But returning to the real point I want to make here is that social science is a broken profession practiced by so-called ‘social scientists’, most of whom have not the most basic understanding of what motivates and rewards human behavior.  This sad condition exacerbates the making of public policies, especially those we are subjected to by leftwing politicians and legislatures.  Citing the results of the Harvard/Exeter study found no difference between the free-cash and control groups. 

But remarkable was the collateral finding, one that will be swept under the rug by the lamestream, that “These findings contradicted the predictions of 477 social scientists and policy makers the researchers surveyed. That’s not surprising. Most liberal academics and politicians believe government handouts are the solution to all problems. If transfer payments were a ticket to the middle class, the War on Poverty would have succeeded long ago.” (emphasis mine)

In sum, we see again that today’s social science is a farcical pursuit populated by the blind leading the blind – these guys are firing blanks and bamboozling both their students and policy makers.  At least half the population of our fair land would have correctly predicted the outcome of this experiment.  But in this light what should concern all of us is the portent of future wealth transfers being able to keep the peace as more and more workers become systemically unemployed, wards of the state, and conspicuously irrelevant.  And nobody cares – yet.

Comments

[The Estonian Fox]

"These findings contradicted the predictions of 477 social scientists and policy makers the researchers surveyed."

And the liberal:conservative ratio for these social "scientists" is 9:1. That sure is diversity if ever I saw it.

Too bad they seem to be calling the shots for some of our bigger engineering projects as well - you know, electricity, EV cars, nat gas for heating, plastic production using nat gas/oil.

[Gregory]

Social Science isn't.

Social scientists aren't.

Economics is the dismal science.

[Bill Tozer]

The Stigmatization of the Ordinary

Every matter of contemporary concern—race, sex, poverty, orientation—tries to find a way to exploit the liberal arts to push its own agenda.

https://amgreatness.com/2022/07/22/the-stigmatization-of-the-ordinary/

[Bill Tozer]

THE DEMOGRAPHICS OF CRIME

“African Americans represent less than 10% of Minnesota’s population, but are 76% of the state’s murderers and 65% of its murder victims. These facts make nonsense of complaints by Black Lives Matter activists, and liberals generally, that law enforcement unfairly targets blacks, or that blacks are “over-represented” in arrests or any other metric.

On the contrary, these basic numbers explain why, when plaintiffs successfully sued the City of Minneapolis to force it to adequately staff its police department, in accordance with the requirements of the city’s charter, those plaintiffs were blacks who live in crime-infested North Minneapolis. Liberals should be ashamed of themselves for deliberately obfuscating reality and thereby imperiling the lives of many of our citizens.”

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2022/08/the-demographics-of-crime.php

[Bill Tozer]

https://justthenews.com/nation/states/center-square/study-remote-learning-meant-younger-disabled-minorities-fell-further