Christina Fong from CMU did a fascinating study of why people support economic and social systems in which they don’t seem to be in their immediate self interest.

“In several studies in recent years, Dr. Fong has found that for many people, achieving fairness in an economic system is almost as important as how much money they make.

The experiments she and others have done show that “income doesn’t matter as much as we think it should.”
“If only income mattered and beliefs about fairness didn’t matter at all, then you should expect to see the world that traditional economists expect you to see, which is that poor people demand redistribution [of tax revenue] and rich people oppose it.”

I personally feel that a lot of the class consciousness in the Pittsburgh region comes from the crazy belief that far too many of the areas powerful people and institutions do not play fair.

The idea is being kicked around in some circles to create incentives to attract high skill immigrants to lower growth areas like the “rust belt”. One of the most common proposals is one to ease the H1B visa quotas to help attract highly educated tech workers into areas in which they are in short supply–such as the rust belt.

Central to the myth of the early industrial age is the idea that it was built on the mass “exploitation” of the poor and unskilled by a small elite of rich people. It’s pretty hard to make that case today, most especially in the old rust belt, which is a region with a both a surplus of low skilled workers and acute shortages of high skill tech workers. It’s pretty common to hear stories of large employers making decisions on where to base huge plants based on the availability of a small number of highly specialized people, many of whom are first generation immigrants. None of the statistical evidence shows that Pittsburgh has a problem retaining its current residents; it does however have a huge problem attracting or retaining new immigrants.

In the aftermath of the drinks tax passage, a new issue has risen to the front page: the City of Pittsburgh police claim that their fleet is in such disrepair that they are not able to efficiently respond to incidents. Therefore, I propose that the police department buy a bunch of prepaid bus tickets and have their officers respond to low-urgency calls by taking the bus. PAT’s funding woes get solved, the cops get the transportation they need, and you can bet that people will start moving to the back of the bus when a uniformed officer tells them to. Everyone wins!

In seriousness: while several of my blogging colleagues (Mark and James, I’m looking at you) are correct that we can’t tax our way to prosperity, it’s also true that basic civic infrastructure costs money. Mass transit in particular creates positive externalities (better air quality, decreased congestion on streets, increased sense of community, and fewer drunks on the roads) that can’t be captured by transit fares alone. Is a drink tax the right way to pay for it? Maybe not, but at least they’re taxing something that nobody *has* to consume. If I don’t like the tax, I can invite my friends over instead of going out to a bar. If I go out and my drinks are a bit pricier (though *still* way cheaper than Philly, New York, or DC), I can enjoy the warm fuzzy feeling of knowing that my beer is helping clean up the air.

It ain’t perfect, but money has to come from somewhere, and until we get the political will to stop wasting money on giant tunnels and questionable highways, the drinks tax seems like a relatively good alternative to me.

My post one week ago about Lawrenceville economic development is a pretty serious contender for “most comments ever on the Pittsburgh MetroBlog”, and the argument’s still smoldering along at about one comment a day. So, let’s throw a bit of gas on it. My fellow CMU eggheads have determined that Lville house prices are rising about 8% per year, putting it in second place in terms of appreciation rates. One can easily argue that this means the Corporation’s strategy is working: there’s increased demand for those homes, which means more money coming in, more homes being renovated, and a general improvement in the state of affairs. It’s certainly better growth than I expected just based on the Design Zone shops we were shown, which lends credence to the claims that there’s a lot more going on that I didn’t see on my brief tour.

So, is this study proof that the nay-sayers are just engaging in Pittsburgh negativism, or is there something more here we’re not seeing?

The Mayor’s “Propel Pittsburgh Commission” had our second meeting this week, this time smack in the middle of Lawrenceville’s Design Zone. Most of the meeting time was taken up with election of officers (not including your humble correspondent, I’m sorry to report, but we did get a good slate of people). The memorable thing, though, was when some representatives from the Lawrenceville Corporation took us on a brief tour of some of the Design Zone businesses. We saw three boutiques that have opened next to each other: one sells expensive clothes, one sells shoes to go with those clothes, and one sells furniture to sit on while wearing your expensive shoes and clothes. As we heard about these boutiques and the LC’s role in helping them, a young punk-looking person bicycled by and shouted at us to “Stop the gentrification of Lawrenceville!” (with a smattering of applause from a few other youths gathered nearby).

Whoever our bicyclist was, he had a point. The clientele of these shops, according to our tour guide, comes primarily from Sewickley and Fox Chapel, with the runner-up being the East End. Those are NOT people who are going to up and decide to buy a house in Lawrenceville. In the meantime, the folks who *do* live in Lawrenceville, both young and old, get to see neighborhood businesses fancy shops selling merchandise they have little use for and can’t afford. It’s not the bland sprawl of strip malls and Wal-Marts, but it’s still a process that has the potential to harm a neighborhood. Just as importantly, from the perspective of what the Mayor’s Commission is supposed to do, this kind of upscale business development may not help keep young people in Pittsburgh. First off, young people are usually not wealthy — it doesn’t help to create services that we can’t afford. Second, the prime issue (both per informal conversations with friends and the city’s own data) is jobs. High-end boutiques and artist lofts don’t create substantial numbers of jobs, and the jobs they *do* create are low-paying retail with minimal opportunities for career advancement.

Pittsburgh needs to grow our economy to survive. Maybe there’s more to this development that was shown in our brief visit, but the businesses we saw on that tour are unlikely to give us the kind of growth we need.

We, the citizens of Pittsburgh, are expected to be all-a-tizzy that the police union endorsed Mark DeSantis over Mayor Ravenstahl. Now, many unions have done great things for America and American workers, but as far as the Pittsburgh municipal unions go… who exactly do these guys think they’re fooling? We’re talking about practically the same people who convinced Tom Murphy to bankrupt the city for a few hundred votes.

I have not always agreed with the Mayor’s decisions, and I think he’s made some PR mistakes in the recent past, but as far as I’m concerned, the lack of endorsement is a reason to vote *for* him. We need a Mayor who’s able to stand up to the special interests of Grant Street, even if it’s over something as small as a residency requirement. (I’m not sure I agree with him about the residency requirement, but it’s an interesting concept.) Congratulations to Mr. Ravenstahl for giving us some evidence that he’s got a spine.

Tonight, the Pittsburgh ACLU had our annual “Voices of Freedom” event, where four of our clients take the stage to tell their stories of how they fought The Man and won. One of those clients was a teenage mom whose school tried to put her into a juvenile detention center and put her two-year-old son into foster care because she kept missing school for his doctor’s appointments. We will leave aside, for a moment, the utter ludicrousness of these proceedings, and focus on something our teen mom mentioned. According to her, in the Johnstown High School alone, there are somewhere between 50 and 100 teens who are also mothers of one or more children. (We have no information on how many are fathers.)

Now, here in Pittsburgh, some good friends of mine are attempting to get the Pittsburgh Public Schools to implement comprehensive sex education (i.e., including information about birth control). If anyone reading this still believes that the abstinence-only approach is effective to prevent teen pregnancies, I offer you the Johnstown high school as Exhibit A to the contrary.

There are a couple of really bizarre letters supporting Mayor Speedy in the Post-Gazette today. One asks that we support Ravenstahl because it isn’t his fault we are in Iraq:

I guess Luke Ravenstahl doesn’t have enough experience to be corrupt and cover his tracks like experienced leaders. Was President Bush supposedly an experienced leader whom you voted for in 2004? With the lifestyle of Mr. Bush at Mr. Ravenstahl’s age, you would have not given Mr. Bush a passing glance.

I find all this outrage over a golf outing and an SUV amusing. Where is the outrage over paying for the war in Iraq and the human cost of our youth?

I wish to assure Carol Badgley of Hempfield that I, for one, am able to contain outrage over the Iraq war while at the same time being upset by Luke’s misbehavior. Perhaps in Hempfield it is common to only be able to hold one opinion at any given time. If so, I blame the THC.

I never really thought that the brazenness of Speedy’s corruption would be considered a point in his favor.

Another writer who, I am happy to report, lives in a place where he is not able to vote for Luke says that the problem is that old people are mean:

The reason for this treatment is an obvious case of age discrimination. Pittsburgh has been a dying city for years, with the worn-out politicians and older stubborn people preventing any changes from occurring. College graduates leave the city in waves for more vibrant, youthful towns. Finally a leader comes along who has the city on the brink of a renaissance, and all those same rigid people who have held Pittsburgh down for years try to discredit Mr. Ravenstahl.

Yes, it is no doubt my advanced age that is at the root of all my problems with the mayor. He wasn’t even alive for the Steelers triumph in Super Bowl XIV, which I am sure I found very exciting but cannot remember due to having watched it at the age of five months. Nonetheless, I can smugly say that it happened a good seventeen days before the birth of our mayor.

Letter writer Armand Buzzelli Jr., being no doubt a modest fellow, doesn’t mention that he is a buddy of Luke’s from college and that his dad was one of Luke’s gym teachers.

In both of these cases we see the Ravenstahl and supporters method of argument, which is built on red herrings and lies about anyone who dislikes Speedy’s laziness and bizarre sense of entitlement. First, pretend that the thing you are being criticized for is something other than what it really is: flip-flops on the plane (which no one but me seems to recognize is absolutely disgusting), the war in Iraq, going to a concert, or hot dog receipts. Then pretend the critics are something they are not: Republicans, out-of-touch fogies, or crouching masturbators. Then claim that Speedy is doing a great job. Do not give any specific examples of what he is doing that is great, because masturbating Republican fogies might actually check and find that the Mayor didn’t actually do whatever it is you are claiming he did. Just say he is great.

I have not yet listened to the debate from last night, but the buzz is that Ravenstahl didn’t embarrass himself, which is a triumph, I suppose; DeSantis came off as lame, which is no surprise, as he is a lameass; and Ryan Scott is totally insane, which is not really a big surprise either.

Luke Ravenstahl has been working hard giving everyone reasons not to vote for him, so I thought I would take a minute to review reasons not to vote for his most prominent opponent, seen here discussing the fish he almost caught.

1. He looks like a doofus in pictures. Luke tends to look like a doofus too, but at least he has the sense to pick and choose the least doofusy photos for his campaign website. The DeSantis site is chockablock with photos like the one you see here.

2. He is a Republican, and doesn’t see anything wrong with that.

3. He is a dilettante who didn’t take this race seriously enough to start running in May when he became the nominee.

4. When he got into this race I sat down for coffee with him and he wore short pants. Perhaps he was trying to youth himself up in comparison to the mayor, but dressing up as a child is not the way to go about it. In his defense, though, his sartorial sins are far from as bad as wearing flip-flops on an airplane.

5. He will lose, but he could win some combination of the seventh, fourteenth and eleventh wards. Next year will be an extremely divisive national election, which will leave dedicated Democrats even more dedicated. The year after that, Speedy Ravenstahl will face what will, if he keeps screwing up, be a tough race for the Democratic nomination. Old school Democrats will remember that the base of any likely progressive leaning candidate (Peduto, Lamb, Shields, Dowd) went over to the side that gave us George W. Bush, Sam Brownback, Rudy Giuliani, and who knows what other creeps and liars who arise between now and then. You can be sure that Ravenstahl will remind them. Kleptocratic, nepotistic, anti-choice councilman Len Bodack tried to use the “my opponent is a Republican in disguise” argument without any basis at all in the last primary, and he came close to winning.

6. He spends too much time talking about his opponent, which gives little sense of what he will do once he is the guy in the big chair.

7. If you are going to vote for someone who can’t win, why not go with the guy with the balls to run as a Socialist Worker?

Tomorrow night at the Regional History Center: Post-Gazette Mayoral Debate. The theme for most participants will no doubt be “Don’t trust anyone over thirty,” which may be a tough sell in Geriatricburgh. The ages of the participants, in the order they appear above: 48, 27, 27, 24. As someone of approximately the age of these three young jugheads, I am shocked that these young fellows are all willing to miss out on the Smashing Pumpkins show tomorrow night. In fact, given the Mayor’s track record, I wouldn’t be surprised if he forgets to show at the debate in favor of the A. J. Palumbo Center.

The extremely brief descriptions of the candidates, which were pretty clearly written by the candidates themselves or their campaigns, include this note about Luke Ravenstahl:

Pushing fresh leadership and a better city.

I know that Speedy has given up his Blackberry, but here is a note from me to him, in case he looks at the internet as, I believe, normal 27-year-olds do. Please avert your eyes for the next paragraph, if you are not the mayor.

Hey idiot: you are the incumbent. Follow that link if you are not familiar with the word. You don’t get to be they guy who has squandered his time in office on silly perks and initiatives you don’t ever intend to pay for and also run as the face of “fresh leadership.”

Those who have questions for any of the jugheads or the old geezer, e-mail Susan Manella of the Post-Gazette. I would hurry. I imagine she will not want to add anything at the very last minute.