Thomas Piketty's Capital is #1 Best Selling Book on Amazon

According to Emily Cohn on Twitter.

As noted, the book's stirring quite a hubbub.

I stopped by Barnes and Noble yesterday, at the Tustin store, but didn't see the book available.

Don't know if I'll need it. At this point I've pretty much got most of the argument down. Leftists are literally creaming over it. And there's going to be lots more jizz going forward. But who knows? Maybe I'll order a copy.

In any case, if you're so inclined, check Amazon: Capital in the Twenty-First Century.

Sally Kohn LOL! — RWNJs Trying to 'Emasculate' Obama

Yes, because we all know Baracky's a Real Manly Man!

From the whacked Ms. Kohn, at the Daily Beast, "The GOP’s Limp ‘Emasculate Obama’ Ploy":

If Cold War-era fear mongering, our-stockpile-has-to-be-bigger-than-their-stockpile machismo and plain “might is right” male insistence as a path to unquestioned power is no longer the accepted in the living rooms and bedrooms and boardrooms and classrooms across America, let alone in the war room, what do Republicans have left? Put another way, through eras of women’s liberation and racial equality movements and calls for peace and justice over war and tyranny, the patriarchy has remained intact increasingly not because of its popularity nor long list of great achievements for society but out of sheer will—its tight grip not yet fully dislodged by the simple passage of time that plainly advantages these forces of change.

But when masculinity itself starts to transform, to acknowledge the problems and even shackles of such strict gender norms and embrace a more open and experimental version of itself, traditional masculinity is defeated from within. When masculinity transforms to become a tall, athletic, African-American liberal who achieves peace and prosperity through words rather than weapons, when the new generation of billionaires are not muscle-y factory men but geeky and somewhat effeminate tech entrepreneurs, and when there are strong and powerful women increasingly comfortably and populously mingled within and sometimes hard to distinguish from the back because both have buns on the tops of their heads … well, who the hell is going to vote for a political party not just predicated on but deeply invested in exactly the opposite, let alone embrace any of their machismo-fueled militaristic ideas?

Heh, that Sally Kohn's a regular laugh riot!

IMAGE CREDIT: The People's Cube.

Far-Left BAMN Coalition Attacks Supreme Court's Schuette Decision as 'Racist'

Via Jennifer Gratz:

BAMN says #Schuette is a "racist decision." They also argued that the 14th Amendment only protects some racial groups http://t.co/ZKGtQdCFMp

— XIV Foundation (@XIVFoundation) April 22, 2014

How hum:

Today’s Supreme Court decision upholding the ban on affirmative action in Michigan is a racist decision. It is this Court’s Plessy v Ferguson. The decision of the Court today makes clear that this Court intends to do nothing to defend the right to equality in politics, opportunity, rights, hopes and aspirations of its Latina/o, black, Native American and other minority citizens. At the very moment that America is becoming a majority minority nation this Court is declaring its intention to uphold white privilege and to create a new Jim Crow legal system.

Remember, these people aren't too smart, lol.

Freakin' communists too, heh.

.@JenGratz Wow, that "BAMN" group's a bunch of whacked open borders communists, lol! https://t.co/P6Tj9e0JDJ

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) April 22, 2014

Single Mother Shanesha Taylor Arrested After Leaving Kids in Hot SUV During Job Interview

And in Scottsdale, Arizona!

The kids were prolly boiling! But hey, milking out those tears on cue for the mugshot? That's gold Jerry! Gold!

At LAT, "Plight of child abuse suspect Shanesha Taylor tugs at public's heart."

PHOENIX — Depending on the point of view, Shanesha Taylor is either a negligent mom who deserves being charged with child abuse or an overwhelmed single mother who made a mistake while trying to provide for her children.

Taylor, 35, was charged last month with felony child abuse after leaving her two young boys in a hot car while she interviewed for a job.

Taylor's situation, and her tearful mug shot, moved 45,000 people to sign an online petition that calls for charges to be dropped. Her case even prompted a stranger to raise more than $100,000 on her behalf.

Her attorney, Benjamin Taylor, said Monday that he hoped a deal could be reached to reduce or drop the charges.

"You have a single mother with children who is trying to do her best to provide for her family," said the attorney, no relation to Taylor. "We all make mistakes and nobody is perfect and … she was doing her best. But now does she deserve two felonies on her record because she made a mistake? If she's convicted, it will ruin her life."

Actually, no.

Being charged and convicted of manslaughter would have ruined her life. She's lucky her children aren't dead. This is a wakeup call for her to get her act together.

But needless to say, this grossly irresponsible woman has become a cause célèbre on the left. See Melissa McEwan, for example, "This Is Not a Solution; This Is the Problem," and "Fundraiser and Support for Shanesha Taylor." And from the idiotic attack monsters at Think Progress, "Homeless Mother Gets Job Interview But Doesn’t Have Childcare, Ends Up In Jail."

Yes, an irresponsible black woman who nearly killed her children provides the justification for yet more nanny state leftist entitlement. Perfect. More crime equals more progressivism!

Supreme Court Upholds Michigan Ban on Affirmative Action

The case is Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action.

And the full case at the Supreme Court's page, "SCHUETTE, ATTORNEY GENERAL OF MICHIGAN v. COALITION TO DEFEND AFFIRMATIVE ACTION, INTEGRATION AND IMMIGRATION RIGHTS AND FIGHT FOR EQUALITY BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY (BAMN) ET AL."

#SCOTUS upholds the right of citizens to ban preferential treatment based on race! http://t.co/5YWEJOZPyt #Schuette #equaltreatment
— Jennifer Gratz (@jengratz) April 22, 2014

And from the news reports, at the New York Times, "Justices Uphold Michigan’s Ban on Use of Race in Admissions" (at Memeorandum), and the Washington Post, "Supreme Court upholds Michigan’s ban on racial preferences in university admissions."

Also at Legal Insurrection, "U.S. Supreme Court upholds Michigan ban on affirmative action in Higher Ed."

The progs are gonna be bawling about "racism" and "white privilege." And on Twitter, the resurrection of Lochner? I'm still processing this, man!

Like the Fuller Court in the Lochner era, the Roberts Court in the #CitizensUnited era continues to plunder #Schuette pic.twitter.com/g5kVNLrg3M
— Calvin Sloan (@CalvinSloan) April 22, 2014

Responses at Althouse, "The way to get a concurring opinion out of Chief Justice Roberts is to rewrite his famous aphorism, 'The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race')," and Volokh, "What was the Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action thinking?"

Mary Willingham, Fake-Classes Whistle-Blower at University of North Carolina, Resigns Under Pressure

Here's an update on my report from January, "University of North Carolina Apologizes for Fake Classes, Promises Real Change."

So, I guess that "real change" is pushing out the whistle-blower.

At Business Week, "UNC Fake-Classes Whistleblower Resigns After Meeting With Chancellor." (Via Instapundit.)

And following the links, a scathing report from UNC history professor Jay Smith, "On Mary Willingham’s Enemies." (On cue, the very first comment at the post attacks Smith as a racist who should be fired: "I hope the UNC administration takes appropriate action." Perfect leftist response!)

RELATED: ICYMI, the Business Week cover story from February, "In Fake Classes Scandal, UNC Fails Its Athletes—and Whistle-Blower." And the university's response, "UNC Responds to Our Cover Article on College Sports and Fake Classes."

Thomas Piketty Revives Marx for the 21st Century - UPDATED!

From Daniel Shuchman, at WSJ:

Thomas Piketty likes capitalism because it efficiently allocates resources. But he does not like how it allocates income. There is, he thinks, a moral illegitimacy to virtually any accumulation of wealth, and it is a matter of justice that such inequality be eradicated in our economy. The way to do this is to eliminate high incomes and to reduce existing wealth through taxation.

"Capital in the Twenty-First Century" is Mr. Piketty's dense exploration of the history of wages and wealth over the past three centuries. He presents a blizzard of data about income distribution in many countries, claiming to show that inequality has widened dramatically in recent decades and will soon get dangerously worse. Whether or not one is convinced by Mr. Piketty's data—and there are reasons for skepticism, given the author's own caveats and the fact that many early statistics are based on extremely limited samples of estate tax records and dubious extrapolation—is ultimately of little consequence. For this book is less a work of economic analysis than a bizarre ideological screed.

Heh.

Well, it's only "bizarre" if you're a regular American who understands how markets work (and who doesn't covet what they haven't themselves earned).

But keep reading.

See also Clive Crook's takedown, "The Most Important Book Ever Is All Wrong."

UPDATE: Don't miss this, "Bill Moyers and Paul Krugman Use Thomas Piketty's Capital to Attack America's 'Ugliness' and 'Racism'."

Marxist Failure Proves Nothing

Via Moira Fitzgerald, "YESTERDAY'S HEADLINES TODAY - VOL. 285."

(Linking, "The Misguided Resurgence of Marxist Collectivism.")

Cliven Bundy and the Rural Way — #BundyRanch

From VDH, at Pajamas Media:

I’m sure that Cliven Bundy probably could have cut a deal with the Bureau of Land Management and should have. Of course, it’s never wise to let a federal court order hang over your head. And certainly we cannot have a world of Cliven Bundys if a legal system is to function.

In a practical sense, I also know that if I were to burn brush on a no-burn day, or toss an empty pesticide container in the garbage bin, or shoot a coyote too near the road, I would incur the wrath of the government in a way someone does not who dumps a stripped stolen auto (two weeks ago) in my vineyard, or solvents, oil, and glass (a few months ago), or rips out copper wire from the pump for the third time (last year). Living in a Winnebago with a porta-potty and exposed Romex in violation of zoning statutes for many is not quite breaking the law where I live; having a mailbox five inches too high for some others certainly is.

So Mr. Bundy must realize that in about 1990 we decided to focus on the misdemeanor of the law-abiding citizen and to ignore the felony of the lawbreaker. The former gave law enforcement respect; the latter ignored their authority. The first made or at least did not cost enforcers money; arresting the second began a money-losing odyssey of incarceration, trials, lawyers, appeals, and all the rest.

Mr. Bundy knows that the bullies of the BLM would much rather send a SWAT team after him than after 50 illegal aliens being smuggled by a gun-toting cartel across the southwestern desert. How strange, then, at this late postmodern date, for someone like Bundy on his horse still to be playing the law-breaking maverick Jack Burns (Kirk Douglas) in (the David Miller, Dalton Trumbo, Edward Abbey effort) Lonely Are the Brave.

But the interest in Mr. Bundy’s case is not about legal strategies in revolving fiscal disagreements with the federal government.

Instead, we all have followed Mr. Bundy for three reasons.

One, he called attention to the frightening fact that the federal government owns 83% of the land in Nevada. Note that “federal” and “government” are the key words and yet are abstractions. Rather, a few thousands unelected employees — in the BLM, EPA, Defense Department, and other alphabet soup agencies — can pretty much do what they want on the land they control. And note, this is not quite the case in Silicon Valley or Manhattan or Laguna Beach. The danger can be summed up by a scene I see about once a month on a Fresno freeway: a decrepit truck stopped by the California Highway Patrol for having inadequate tarps on a trailer of green clippings, just as a new city garbage truck speeds by, with wet garbage flying over the median. Who will police the police?

Two, this administration has a long record of not following the law — picking and choosing when and how to enforce immigration statutes, depending on the particular dynamics of the next election; picking and choosing which elements of Obamacare  to enforce, again depending on perceived political advantage; and picking and choosing when to go after coal companies, or when not to enforce the Defense of Marriage Act, or when to reverse the order of the Chrysler creditors, or when to allow Lois Lerner to destroy the credibility of the IRS for partisan advantage.

In other words, the Obama administration regularly breaks the law as it sees fit. So we wonder why a federal agency sends out swarms of armed security agents to the empty desert on behalf of a tortoise, when it could just as easily storm Jay Carney’s press conference and demand that the president promise to enforce the Affordable Care Act. Or start apprehending those who are not just violating immigration law, but also serially signing false federal affidavits or providing employers with fraudulent identities.

Finally, Bundy, for all his contradictions, is a throwback to a different age...

Keep reading.

'Our Youngest Hostage'

This is so evil I can't believe it.

At Gateway Pundit, "Jihadists Post SHOCKING PHOTO of Their “Youngest Hostage” in Syria."

But the source Raymond Ibrahim has the links to Arabic-languages websites. So, there's that. Horrifying.



And in related news, "Advanced U.S. Weapons Flow to Syrian Rebels: Supplies of Anti-tank Missiles Will Test Whether Fighters Can Keep Arms Out of Extremist Hands."

Yeah, better be careful not to arm the "extremists." (Eyeroll.)

#Democrat Senator Richard Blumenthal Nearly Hit by Train During Presser on Commuter Safety

Democrat f-king morons.

Via SDA, "Riding Mass Transit Is Like Inviting 20 Random Politicians Into Your Car."

'Inside Edition' Host Megan Alexander Speaks Out on Marriage

At Young Conservatives, "“Marriage Still Matters”: Reporter talks about why she waited until marriage to have sex."

Boy, that's pretty romantic. She'd be quite the catch.

The Last Jew in Vinnitsa, Ukraine, 1941

Via Blazing Cat Fur, "Rare historical photos."

Never forget that history has a way of repeating itself: "Anti-Semitism and Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions." Today's leftists seek nothing short of total annihilation of the Jewish state.

Anti-Semitism and Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions

I just had a flashback: My depraved stalker Walter James Casper is a vile anti-Semitic hate-monger, but you knew that.

Click through at the Twitter link.

The Radical Left Is Never Right About Israel http://t.co/Cf9uWjbZTz

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) April 22, 2014

And from Robert Fulford, at Toronto's National Post, "The BDS Smokescreen":

The people who defame Israel and wish to undermine its status in the world are not anti-Semites — or so they will tell you, every chance they get. Their denial of anti-Semitism is essential to their moral position. In their own view they are good progressives, therefore absolutely innocent of racial or religious discrimination. Their propaganda campaign, which they hope eventually will escalate into economic warfare, is intended merely to reshape Israel’s policies.

What they oppose, they want to assure us, is Israel’s position in the West Bank. Their increasingly loud and self-confident BDS movement (Boycott, Divest, Sanction) is not, as they tell it, a struggle against the Jews. They simply want to bring Israel into line with enlightened leftist opinion in Europe, the U.S. and Canada.

Scarlett Johansson, the film star, found herself the enemy of BDS in January, when she appeared in advertisements for SodaStream, an Israeli home carbonation device that eliminates cans and bottles. SodaStream’s offence is to have one of its factories in the West Bank, where it employs Palestinians who might otherwise have no work at all.

BDS adherents began denouncing Johansson as “the new face of apartheid.” They love applying that South African term to Israel, no matter how unjustified it is. Oxfam, for which Johansson had served as an ambassador in past years, decided to accept her resignation. Oxfam opposes all trade with Israeli settlements and has no place for dissenters among its associates. Johansson said she and Oxfam “have a fundamental difference of opinion in regards to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement.” Oxfam likes BDS. She doesn’t. She says she researched SodaStream and found it an ethical operation.

Like the great majority of Americans in the film industry, Johansson is a liberal Democrat. She took part in the last three presidential elections and raised money for Barack Obama. Unlike many who fall into that category, she also thinks for herself.

The May issue of Vanity Fair carries a cover story about Johansson. The author of the piece, Lili Anolik, asked her how she explains why she has been viciously criticized for the SodaStream ads. Johansson answered, “There’s a lot of anti-Semitism out there.” ...

My own belief is that the BDS people and their fellow travellers, whatever their background, are anti-Semites. They do all they can to stigmatize the Jewish state and reduce its ability to defend itself. They know that Israel is surrounded by neighbours who will never recognize its existence, much less sign a treaty developed in a “peace process” quarterbacked by Washington. The Palestinians and the Arab states who claim to support them are not hoping for a more generous Israel or a BDS-approved Israel or an Israel willing to hand over the West Bank. They are working for a day when Israel will be gone forever.

In order to satisfy this generation’s anti-Semites, Israel must meet standards that no other country in the world has ever met or ever will. At the United Nations Israel is condemned more often than all other countries combined.

It is, of course, an imperfect democracy, like Canada and all other free countries, and its human rights record could certainly be improved. But its treatment of Palestinians has never been even remotely comparable to China’s oppression of Tibetans or Saudi Arabia’s treatment of women, two among many outrageous practices that apparently never trouble the students who direct their anger at Israel.

In devising their purposes the BDS campaigners have never shown even the beginning of a sense of proportion. It’s remarkable that the world needs a 29-year-old movie star to point this out.

Israel is held to standards no other country is required to meet. It's disparate treatment, specifically against against the Jews. And it's derived from nothing but hatred of the Jews. It's racism straight up. It's also what my deranged hateful stalker Walter James Casper III is all about.

William Jacobson on the Mark Levin Show

Awesome!

At Legal Insurrection, "On The Mark Levin Show talking Israel and the boycotters."

California's Meb Keflezighi Wins Boston Marathon

The guy's from San Diego, it turns out.

At the Union-Tribune, "San Diegan wins Boston Marathon."

Wow: Marathon winner @RunMeb ran with names of those killed in the bombing on his bib pic.twitter.com/wkB8DXFFpz ht @SteveSaleeba
— Wesley Lowery (@WesleyLowery) April 21, 2014

Also at the Boston Globe, "With 2014 Boston Marathon, Boston moves forward."

And at NBC Sports, "Meb Keflezighi stuns to win Boston Marathon (video)."

Ukraine Photos Link Russia to 'Green Men' in the East

Pretty interesting, at the New York Times, "Photos Link Masked Men in East Ukraine to Russia":

KIEV, Ukraine — For two weeks, the mysteriously well-armed, professional gunmen known as “green men” have seized Ukrainian government sites in town after town, igniting a brush fire of separatist unrest across eastern Ukraine. Strenuous denials from the Kremlin have closely followed each accusation by Ukrainian officials that the world was witnessing a stealthy invasion by Russian forces.

Now, photographs and descriptions from eastern Ukraine endorsed by the Obama administration on Sunday suggest that many of the green men are indeed Russian military and intelligence forces — equipped in the same fashion as Russian special operations troops involved in annexing the Crimea region in February. Some of the men photographed in Ukraine have been identified in other photos clearly taken among Russian troops in other settings...

More, "Ukraine Provides Evidence of Russian Military in Civil Unrest."

And see the latest at the Wall Street Journal, "Russia, U.S. Trade Charges of Violating Ukraine Deal: Vice President Biden Arrives in Kiev Amid Threats of New Sanctions on Moscow."

Plus, at the Independent UK, "Ukraine crisis: Interview with Irma Krat - the journalist and activist being held in Slovyansk: 'I came over here to give voice to people who have not been heard'."

And at the New Republic, "Which Former Soviet State Could Be the Next Ukraine?"

PREVIOUSLY: "Putin's Westward March."

NBC News Conducted Psychological Assessment of 'Meet the Press' Host David Gregory

Now this is something else, at WaPo, "As ‘Meet the Press’ struggles in the ratings, plenty of questions for host David Gregory." (At Memeorandum.)

I'm sure William Jacobson will get a load out of this, heh.

Amid slide in MTP ratings, NBC has commissioned a psychological profile of host @davidgregory, @farhip reports. http://t.co/G1PE3XScEx
— Karen Tumulty (@ktumulty) April 21, 2014

More at Althouse, "What is NBC going to do about the post-Russert crashing ratings of 'Meet the Press'?"

Sharyl Attkisson: 'I didn't sense any resistance to doing stories that were perceived to be negative to the Bush administration...'

Of course not.

But hey, any criticism of the Democrat administration of President Barack Obama is completely out of line!

This is perhaps the most devastating indictment of the mainstream media I've heard throughout the Obama interregnum. Attkisson's says after 2009 there was a dramatic shift in press censorship at CBS News. This is precisely the news programming that's only going to air the accepted narrative, the administration's line. Attkisson was personally attacked by Democrats and left-wing bloggers, some of whom she argues, like Media Matters, were paid to take her down and banish her reporting from the public forum. Fast and Furious and green energy, for example, triggered enormous recriminations. That is, anything that could endanger the Emperor With No Clothes.

More from Ed Morrissey, "Attkisson: CBS News too “ideologically entrenched” to air stories critical of the Obama administration."

Also from Ed Driscoll, "Sharyl Attkisson: CBS Too ‘Ideologically Entrenched’," and "Attkisson: Media Matters ‘Used to Work With Me,’ Turned Once I Reported on Fast and Furious, Green Energy Cronyism":

Former CBS investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson revealed that the far-left watchdog “Media Matters for America” turned against her once she reported on stories unflattering to the Obama administration like the Fast and Furious gun-running scandal and green energy cronyism for CBS.

Attkisson made the remarks during a Sunday interview on the CNN media show Reliable Sources.

Media Matters has made a special case of attacking Attkisson, who ruffled many left-wing feathers when she resigned and said that her work for CBS had been stifled by liberals within the network. That is not an old charge, as former CBS correspondent Bernard Goldberg wrote in the best-selling book Bias, explaining how the truth was often distorted at the network because of political bias.

“Media Matters, by my understanding, is a far-left blog group that I think holds itself out to be sort of an independent media watchdog group,” Attkisson said. “And, yes, they clearly targeted me at some point. They used to work with me on stories, try to help me, you know, produce my stories and at some point–”

“That’s interesting,” said host Brian Stelter.

“Well, don’t they call you? They call journalists and they try to provide material and information,” she replied.

“Right, they are always emailing things, making us try to act outraged about something,” Stelter said.

“And I was certainly friendly with them as anybody,” Attkisson said. “Good information can come from any source. But when I persisted with Fast & Furious and some of the green energy stories that I was doing, I clearly at some point became a target. I don’t know if someone paid them to do it or they just took it on their own.”

More.

And Part II of Attkisson's interview, "Sharyl Attkisson takes on her critics."

Intellectuals Attacking Inequality Silent on the Decline of the Two-Parent Family

In my essay last night on the Marxist renaissance, I argued, "Real reform [of policies on inequality], indeed, must begin not at the level of the nation state but at the level of communities."

And moving down to an even more basic level of organization, consider the family. Leftists don't want to focus on those family and individual level factors, instead arguing that inequality is consequence of "structures" of racism, classism and disadvantage (or whatever else is in vogue these days).

But real success in eliminating inequality must focus on these lower levels of analysis.

From Robert Maranto and Michael Crouch, at the Wall Street Journal, "Ignoring an Inequality Culprit: Single-Parent Families":

Suppose a scientific conference on cancer prevention never addressed smoking, on the grounds that in a free society you can't change private behavior, and anyway, maybe the statistical relationships between smoking and cancer are really caused by some other third variable. Wouldn't some suspect that the scientists who raised these claims were driven by something—ideology, tobacco money—other than science?

Yet in the current discussions about increased inequality, few researchers, fewer reporters, and no one in the executive branch of government directly addresses what seems to be the strongest statistical correlate of inequality in the United States: the rise of single-parent families during the past half century.

The two-parent family has declined rapidly in recent decades. In 1960, more than 76% of African-Americans and nearly 97% of whites were born to married couples. Today the percentage is 30% for blacks and 70% for whites. The out-of-wedlock birthrate for Hispanics surpassed 50% in 2006. This trend, coupled with high divorce rates, means that roughly 25% of American children now live in single-parent homes, twice the percentage in Europe (12%). Roughly a third of American children live apart from their fathers.

Does it matter? Yes, it does. From economist Susan Mayer's 1997 book "What Money Can't Buy" to Charles Murray's "Coming Apart" in 2012, clear-eyed studies of the modern family affirm the conventional wisdom that two parents work better than one.

"Americans have always thought that growing up with only one parent is bad for children," Ms. Mayer wrote. "The rapid spread of single-parent families over the past generation does not seem to have altered this consensus much."

In an essay for the Institute for Family Studies last December, called "Even for Rich Kids, Marriage Matters," University of Virginia sociologist W. Bradford Wilcox reported that children in high-income households who experienced family breakups don't fare as well emotionally, psychologically, educationally or, in the end, economically as their two-parent-family peers.

Abuse, behavioral problems and psychological issues of all kinds, such as developmental behavior problems or concentration issues, are less common for children of married couples than for cohabiting or single parents, according to a 2003 Centers for Disease Control study of children's health. The causal pathways are about as clear as those from smoking to cancer.

More than 20% of children in single-parent families live in poverty long-term, compared with 2% of those raised in two-parent families, according to education-policy analyst Mitch Pearlstein's 2011 book "From Family Collapse to America's Decline." The poverty rate would be 25% lower if today's family structure resembled that of 1970, according to the 2009 report "Creating an Opportunity Society" from Brookings Institution analysts Ron Haskins and Isabel Sawhill. A 2006 article in the journal Demography by Penn State sociologist Molly Martin estimates that 41% of the economic inequality created between 1976-2000 was the result of changed family structure.

Earlier this year, a team of researchers led by Harvard economist Raj Chetty reported that communities with a high percentage of single-parent families are less likely to experience upward mobility. The researchers' report—"Where Is the Land of Opportunity?"—received considerable media attention. Yet mainstream news outlets tended to ignore the study's message about family structure, focusing instead on variables with far less statistical impact, such as residential segregation.

In the past four years, our two academic professional organizations—the American Political Science Association and the American Educational Research Association—have each dedicated annual meetings to inequality, with numerous papers and speeches denouncing free markets, the decline of unions, and "neoliberalism" generally as exacerbating economic inequality. Yet our searches of the groups' conference websites fail to turn up a single paper or panel addressing the effects of family change on inequality.

Why isn't this matter at the center of policy discussions? There are at least three reasons...

Well, those reasons aren't too hard to guess, but do read the rest.