Why Most Things Fail: Evolution, Extinction and Economics (2007)

Paul Ormerod writes:

* Despite enormous increases in the number of air travellers in the second half of the twentieth century, the combined profit made by airlines over the period 1955 – 2000 was less than the losses they incurred in just the two years 2001 and 2002.

* Being out of work is the single most important determinant of poverty. This may seem so obviously true as to be hardly worth stating, but the popular press sometimes works itself into a frenzy about people living a life of unemployed luxury at the expense of the taxpayer.

* In short, the geographical segregation along class lines within the city of Manchester is very similar in 2004 to that described by Engels in 1844. There are marginal changes here and there, with some districts going up in the world relative to others and some going down. But his social map of the centre of Manchester and its immediate environs is at once recognizable today. A tourist armed with Engels’s guide would succeed in avoiding many of the worst and potentially most dangerous areas.

* It appears that, far from celebrating diversity, the masses have taken every opportunity to separate themselves along racial lines.

* The geographical separation of races is, of course, a major feature of American life. A dramatic illustration is given in Tom Wolfe’s novel A Man in Full , a complex and interwoven tale set in contemporary Atlanta, Georgia. The black mayor of the city has arranged to be driven around in order to illustrate exactly these divisions to his old fraternity classmate. ‘The drive went under the Highway 75 overpass and then past the old Atlanta Convention Centre, which meant they were already on Piedmont. Then the Mayor said, “You know what street we just crossed? Ponce de Leon.” This required no amplification, since practically everybody in Atlanta old enough to care about these things knew that Ponce de Leon was the avenue that divided black from white on the east side of the town. . . . They might as well have painted a double line in the middle of Ponce de Leon and made it official, a white line on the north side and a black line on the south.’
Immense efforts have been made in the US over many years to promote integration, yet the divisions along racial lines remain sharp. The Economist magazine reported in February 2003 that American schools were more segmented on racial lines than they were in the 1960s.

* Individual states in America have considerable discretion in the generosity of payments in the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) scheme. In every single state, blacks are both in a minority of the population as a whole and at the same time are disproportionately represented amongst the poor. The maximum AFDC payment to a family of three tends to be lower the higher the percentage of blacks in a state’s population. In quantitative terms, a 1 per cent increase in the proportion of blacks is associated on average with a reduction of $7 in the monthly amount. In other words, the higher the percentage of blacks in the population, the less willing the non – black majority appears to be to pay for welfare.