Must-Read: Gérard Roland and David Yang: Cultural change and intergenerational transmission: Some lessons from China’s Cultural Revolution: “The Cultural Revolution… the shutdown of the Chinese university system between 1966 and 1976… http://voxeu.org/article/cultural-change-and-intergenerational-transmission

…Among the first policies that were enacted immediately following the end of the Cultural Revolution was the reintroduction of the college entrance exam, Gaokao, in 1977 after a ten-year interruption…. We zoom in on this narrow window of cohorts who graduated from high school just before and just after the end of the Cultural Revolution, the exogenous loss of opportunity due to the suspension of higher education remains arguably the only difference between these neighbouring cohorts…. High school graduates born in 1957 and 1958 who missed out on college education are significantly less likely to believe that effort pays off relative to luck, even well into their sixties. In addition, they hold persistent grudges against the government for these lost opportunities, as they report significantly higher distrust of the government compared to later cohorts….

We also find that parents only transmitted part of their changed beliefs to their children. We find that while the ‘lost generation’ passed down the acquired larger mistrust towards the government to their children, their changed beliefs on the role of effort versus luck are transmitted to the next generation to a much lesser degree…. Whether given events and experiences lead to a persistent or a transitory change across generations has critical implications for the dynamic evolution of the corresponding beliefs and preferences. We still know very little…

Should-Read: Fatih Guvenen, Greg Kaplan, Jae Song, and Justin Weidner: Lifetime Incomes in the United States over Six Decades: “From the cohort that entered the labor market in 1967 to the cohort that entered in 1983… http://www.nber.org/papers/w23371

…median lifetime income of men declined by 10%–19%…. Accounting for rising employer-provided health and pension benefits partly mitigates these findings but does not alter the substantive conclusions. For women, median lifetime income increased by 22%–33% from the 1957 to the 1983 cohort, but these gains were relative to very low lifetime income for the earliest cohort. Much of the difference between newer and older cohorts is attributed to differences in income during the early years in the labor market…. Inequality in lifetime incomes has increased significantly within each gender group. However, the closing lifetime gender gap has kept overall lifetime inequality virtually flat…. Substantial changes in labor market outcomes for younger workers… [are] critical driver of trends in both the level and inequality of lifetime income over the past 50 years…

Must-Read: Fear of a Black President:

Paul Krugman: Obamacare Rage in Retrospect: “Why did Obamacare survive? The shocking answer: It’s still here because it does so much good… https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/04/opinion/obamacare-rage-in-retrospect.html

…Tens of millions have health coverage—imperfect, but far better than none at all—thanks to the Affordable Care Act. Millions more rest easier knowing that coverage will still be available if something goes wrong—if, for example, they lose their employer-sponsored plan or develop a chronic condition.

Which raises a big question: Why did the prospect of health reform produce so much popular rage in 2009 and 2010?… G.O.P. apparatchiks… hated and feared the A.C.A…. because they were afraid it would work…. Some wealthy people [were] furious that their taxes were going up to pay for lesser mortals’ care…. [But] I’m talking about the people who screamed at their congressional representatives…. For example, the man who pushed his wheelchair-bound son, who was suffering from cerebral palsy, in front of a congressman, yelling that President Obama’s health care plan would provide the boy with “no care whatsoever” and would be a “death sentence.” The reality, of course, is that people with pre-existing medical conditions are among the A.C.A.’s biggest beneficiaries, and would have had the most to lose if conservative Republicans had managed to repeal the law….

So once again: What was Obamacare rage about? Much… orchestrated by pressure groups like Freedom Works…. Some of the “ordinary citizens”… were actually right-wing activists…. Misinformation and outright lies from the usual suspects: Fox News, talk radio and so on… “death panels” depriving senior citizens of care…. [But] why [did] so many people believed these lies… identity politics and affinity fraud…. Conservatives have conditioned many Americans to believe that safety-net programs are all about taking things away from white people and giving stuff to minorities. And those who stoked Obamacare rage were believed because they seemed to some Americans like their kind of people—that is, white people defending them against you-know-who.

It’s certainly not encouraging to realize how easily many Americans were duped…. On the other hand, the truth did eventually prevail, and Republicans’ inability to handle that truth is turning into a real political liability. And in the meantime, Obamacare has made America a better place.

Should-Read: Duncan Black: Mama I Don’t Want To Die: “I was too pessimistic about Obamacare… http://www.eschatonblog.com/2017/07/mama-i-dont-want-to-die.html

…The Medicaid expansion-despite Roberts and the evil Republican governors-was very good. The insurance regulations that applied across the board (coverage, pre-existing conditions, etc.) were very good. The exchanges still suck-private insurance is very expensive and not so fun to have and the subsidies are not generous enough and the magic competition doesn’t exist and poor people really wish they were just a bit more poor so they could get that sweet sweet medicaid-but for many people barely affordable shitty insurance is preferable to no insurance at all.

I was also too pessimistic about the politics. I though it would not be enough of an improvement overall to cover for the fact that “Obama” (Democrats) would basically own our whole health care system which still sucks. I think it is, at least in the Medicaid expansion states. The new regulations are good for everyone with employer-based insurance, good enough that they are worth fighting for. Though the “exchanges” are still the weak link and the Trumpkins are now going to do everything they can to make that link weaker. Most of them are incompetent at evil, but Price is not…

Kevin Drum: The Obamacare Exchanges Don’t Suck: “Atrios channels a common liberal complaint about Obamacare… http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2017/07/the-obamacare-exchanges-dont-suck/

…I don’t want to pretend that the exchanges are wonderful. They started off with a crash (remember that?). The subsidies fade out at too low an income. In some areas there aren’t many providers. The website can be difficult to navigate. The low metal levels have deductibles and copays that are too high.

And yet, this still deserves some pushback…. At low incomes, the cost of insurance is extremely modest. For the poor, silver plans with CSR subsidies cover about 90 percent of medical expenses, which makes them more generous than most of the single-payer systems we admire so much in the rest of the world. The average subsidized cost of insurance on the exchanges is probably similar to what people in other countries pay in taxes for their universal systems, and the income limits on premiums prevent most people from suffering sticker shock when insurance carriers raise prices. Navigators help people choose the best coverage in their region.

Is it perfect? Nope. Does it suck? Nope. Overall, it’s pretty good. Sure, I’d prefer something simpler, but given the realities of the American health care system, private insurance is what we have to work with. If politics is the art of the possible, Obamacare does a pretty damn good job of delivering what’s possible.

Unfortunately, it turns out there is one fatal problem with the exchanges: they can be sabotaged pretty easily by Republicans…. I can hardly blame Democrats for not foreseeing this problem, but there you have it. Sabotaging Medicaid is hard, but sabotaging the exchanges is easy. And Republicans have given every indication that this is exactly what they plan to do. Their bitterness over a successful law that helps 20 million people is seemingly without bounds.

Must-Read: Not “hands” vs. “minds”, IMHO, but rather: “hands” vs. “minds and smiles”…

Caroline Freund and Christine McDaniel: The U.S. Needs to Invest in Minds, Not Miners: “Otherwise the job market will leave a lot of men behind… https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-07-06/the-u-s-needs-to-invest-in-minds-not-miners

…The U.S. economy has long been moving away from “hands” industries such as mining and manufacturing toward “minds” sectors such as finance, health and education. From 1970 to 2016, the share of workers in the former declined from 38 percent to 16 percent, while the share in the latter increased from 26 to 44 percent….”Hands” sectors include mining and logging, manufacturing, and construction. “Minds” sectors include information, financial activities, professional and business activities, and education and health services. Excluded sectors: trade, transport and utilities; leisure and hospitality; other services. Less-educated men, who occupy more than three-quarters of “hands” jobs, have felt the sharp swing away from physical labor most acutely. By contrast, women comprised half of the “minds” as far back as 1970, and their share grew in subsequent decades as they increasingly joined the work force. The steadiness of the shift from hands to minds suggests that technology is the main driving force…. Increasing trade with China might have contributed… [but] it clearly wasn’t the primary force….

New technologies… have been better at replacing men’s work. Employment in some predominantly male occupations that require a high-school diploma or less—such as metalworkers, printing press operators and carpenters—has declined by more than a quarter since 2005. By contrast, employment in some female occupations with similar requirements—bakers, manicurists, personal care aides—has grown by more than a quarter…”