U.S. Marriage Trends

In the African-American community in the U.S., these kinds of factors have led to fewer marriages, lots of female headed households, and lots of half-siblings. Working class whites and Hispanics in the U.S. have started to follow the same patterns.

Over the past half-century, U.S. four-year colleges have shifted from enrolling mostly men to enrolling mostly women, while the economic position of non-college men has weakened markedly. We examine how these changes correspond with the evolving structure of marriage markets across cohorts and places. 

As college men have become increasingly scarce, college women have maintained stable marriage rates by marrying high-earning non-college men. This shift—combined with the broader economic decline of non-college men—has sharply reduced the pool of economically stable partners available to non-college women: the share of non-college men who earn above the national median and are not married to college women has fallen by more than 50%. Cross-area evidence shows that education gaps in marriage are smaller where non-college men face lower rates of joblessness and incarceration. Taken together, the evidence suggests that deteriorating outcomes for men have primarily undermined the marriage prospects of non-college women.

from a new NBER working paper by Clara Chambers, Benjamin Goldman & Joseph Winkelmann.

When Will Cherry Creek Flood?

Until the Cherry Creek and Chatfield Reservoirs were built, Cherry Creek and the South Platte Rivers, respectively seriously flooded about once every thirty years and often at the same time.

From my days as a journalist, I learned that the Cherry Creek dam was not built to the engineer ordered specifications. It has nonetheless held for decades, so it isn't too bad, but it would probably fail under conditions less extreme than those it was designed to withstand.

We get more extreme weather events now than anyone expected when it was built. We will probably have what until recently was considered at 500 year weather event at least every 50 years now.

The Cherry Creek basin is mostly designed to address this risk, with green spaces and parking garages along most of its extent.

But, there is one place along its edges, where the basin has steep constraining walls, and critical infrastructure is just a few feet above the narrow walled Cherry Creek bike path. That is the Denver Health Emergency Room, Denver proper's only Level One Trauma Center.

I worry about this risk now and then, and we really should build a flood wall to protect it now, before the Cherry Creek dam fails is a "freak not freak" weather event.

To Do

Some topics I'd like to write about in the indefinite, maybe next future:

* Law examined as a magical/religious ritual system.

* A law review article on the prospects for expanding the U.S. Constitution's takings clause as a foundation for a better approach to civil rights.

* A military technology post going beyond the first order issues, like surface combatants and tanks being obsolescence waiting to be made manifest, to a way of thinking that fits drones and robots and guided missiles and AI and other sensor technology into a synthesized vision for the future.

* Musings on how to insulate our political system of incompetents, narcissists, criminals, corruption, psychopaths, and hate without unduly compromising democracy and other positive political values.

* Musings on institutions and technologies that would facilitate political and economic development in a leapfrog manner in undeveloped countries, particularly in Africa.

* An end game for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the larger problems of Ottoman Empire succession that have been playing out since its collapse after World War I.

* A well-researched piece shedding light on prospects for political, social, and religious progress in the Islamic world.

* Musings on whether the population decline in the developed world flowing from the near universal phenomena of demographic transition could be a good thing, and how Mormonism that seems to have defied demographic transition fits into this worldview.

* Thoughts about what a post-religious, post-ethnic cosmopolitan society's life scripts which we are unwittingly or consciously rewriting will look like.

* Analysis of how we will live in a post-climate change world, as it seems that this is not an existential threat to the human race's survival, and will eventually cease to continue after it is too late to massively change life on Earth.

* Brainstorming on what people will do for a living and the economics more generally of a world that is more automated than our existing post-industrial world, and how this will impact social and economic structure of our society.

* Musings on the prospects for de-Nazification of our society from MAGA, racists, Christian Nationalist foundations. The younger generation seems far less afflicted with this so it could happen.

* Consideration of what kind of international institutions could come to replace troubled ones like NATO and the UN in an increasingly small world.

* Strategies for movement politics that would change hearts and minds in a way that would make progressive political ambitions achievable politically, something that a lack of majorities in existing political systems prevents now.

* Examining the most problematic threads of the progressive movement, the non-progressive left, and the far-right can be most channeled, and how circumstances fueling the far-right can be channeled and addressed in less destructive ways.

* What a dystopia in which the modern agents of barbarism gain the upper hand might look like and whether that dystopia can be prevented.

* How to save academia from administrative bloat, or in the alternative, why this administrative component of higher education is necessary.

* Prospects of massive, good quality, automated educational classes.

* Considering the pros and cons of the balkanization of popular culture.

* Agricultural technologies and developments as interfaced with climate change and dealing with inevitable rural community impacts that is would drive.

* Thinking through second order consequences of advancing medical technologies.