If you’re one of the three people who reads this here premier “web log,” you may once in a blue moon have checked out the New York Times op-ed page. You might even recognize the names of the columnists, who every day spout the most conventionally wise of the conventional wisdom. This is a feature that is dedicated to these folks, highlighting one line that is either funny, ridiculous, strange, or actually intelligent or well-written.
Today\’s is from David Brooks, who in his column today, \”The New Right,\” writes:
Today, millions of Americans are behaving in ways that make no economic sense: dropping out of school, having children out of wedlock. They do so because the social guardrails that used to guide behavior have dissolved.
Forget about the idiotic causality, because the premise is incorrect. High school drop-out rates have been declining for decades. And I don\’t know about children born out of wedlock in general, or if that\’s even a problem (hypothesis: it\’s not), but children born to teenage mothers is way down from 1991.
But, I guess that would require Mr. Brooks to do actual research, instead of just rehashing whatever stupid book he read this week.
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