http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/Fwd-TED-talk-tp7588295p7588299.html
Owen writes:
"Not bad TED on the Divided America."
Let us pretend it is easier to
build social capital in groups where there is low variance of various individual attributes amongst members of the group, e.g. they are white, or share some particular history.
What is the quantitative economic benefit of the social capital?
Ok, let's look at 2015 GDPs by state, and the also estimated GDPs for 2017.
Data is from U.S. Census Bureau State and Local Government Finance.
(I added an election result flag from CNN, treating Michigan as a NA where "1" means the state was called for Hillary Clinton.)
States called for Clinton had higher mean and median growth rates
Clinton meanGrowth
0 2.346667
1 2.495000
Clinton medianGrowth
0 2.40
1 2.45
Further, the total GDP by State was higher in total for Clinton states (2015 and est. 2017, respectively).
2015 Gross State Product:
Clinton Billions$
0 8571.3
1 8792.1
Estimated 2017 Gross State Product:
Clinton Billions$
0 9143.2
1 9554.6
If the hypothesis is that social capital (of the sort that Trump states value), leads to economic benefits, then this does not support that hypothesis. Parochialism loses.
I posit parochialism is preferred by individuals that fail to imagine anything bigger -- the
ideas that we all can share, even if we don't know one another.
Marcus
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
by Dr. Strangelove