Eldritch Crank's List: social_data

Racial differences in psychopathic behavior persist even when IQ is held constant, and the same racial differences are found in essentially every kind of measurable behavior that reflects psychopathic personality. The most plausible explanation for these differences is that just as there are racial differences in average IQ, there are racial differences in what could be called “average personality,” with blacks showing greater psychopathic tendencies. The argument that white “racism” is responsible for black social pathology is increasingly unconvincing.

40 Maps That Will Help You Make Sense of the World

Romney's most supportive group is Mormons. Then come married white Protestants, white Protestants, married white men, married whites, married white women, white Catholics, whites, married men, and so forth: Americans who have a life.

The plan fact is that core of Romney's support is the core of the nation: the kind of people who built America into the world's leading country and who still keep it running.

The new birth report also noted a fourth straight decline in a calculation of how many children women have over their lifetimes, based on the birth rates of a given year.

A rate of a little more than 2 children per woman means each couple is helping keep the population stable. The U.S. rate last year was slightly below 1.9.

Murray concludes, “a significant and growing proportion of the American population is losing the virtues required to be functioning members of a free society.” This slow erosion is seldom discussed, however, because on the other side of the class chasm, the upper reaches “have become so isolated that they are often oblivious to the nature of the problems that exist elsewhere.” Murray has ranked every zip code in the country by class, and one of his more informative findings is that vast swathes of the greater Washington D.C. area, which increasingly monopolizes public discourse, rank at the 95th percentile or higher.

Mapping the Anthropocene

A new Gallup Poll finds 48% of Americans saying the amount of federal income taxes they pay is "about right," with 46% saying "too high" -- one of the most positive assessments Gallup has measured since 1956. Typically, a majority of Americans say their taxes are too high, and relatively few say their taxes are too low.

For the second straight year, slightly less than half of Americans say the amount of federal income tax they have to pay is too high, while almost as many say the amount they pay in taxes is about right.

Over the last half century, America has developed a new lower class and a new upper class that are different in kind from anything it has ever known. These developments are not linked to America's evolving ethnic composition, but to the erosion of deeper sources of American exceptionalism. Charles Murray, the W. H. Brady Scholar at AEI, will describe the evidence for these claims in terms of America's non-Latino white population from 1960 to 2010.

World of Averages: Europe

The amazing truth about PISA scores: USA beats Western Europe, ties with Asia.

PISA Scores Show Demography Is Destiny In Education Too—But Washington Doesn’t Want You To Know

Government Spending Details

Same with benzos (Xanax, Klonopin, Valium, etc) and narcotics (percocet, MS Contin etc.) Once in a while some doc gets publicly arrested for handing out Vicodins in Valu-Packs, but the amount of benzos being routinely prescribed in an inner city is unbelievable. Go to your suburban doc and try and beg for a few Xanax. Come to the inner city and you can get #90 Xannies on first visit. Why? Because the government isn't going to mess with the eleven or so sandbags they have placed in each neighborhood to hold back a flood of proletariat rage.

The gap between the wealthiest Americans and the poorest is bigger than at any time since the 1920s — just before the Depression. According to an analysis this year by Edward Wolff of New York University, the top 20% of wealthy individuals own about 85% of the wealth, while the bottom 40% own very near 0%. Many in that bottom 40% not only have no assets, they have negative net wealth.

Weissberg’s conclusion: the quality of students—intelligence and motivation—is by far the most important factor in whether a school is “bad” or “good”.

"A record-low 41.9% of the nation's personal income came from private wages and salaries in the first quarter, down from 44.6% when the recession began in December 2007. "

The General Social Survey (GSS) conducts basic scientific research on the structure and development of American society with a data-collection program designed to both monitor social change within the United States and to compare the United States to other nations.

U.S. Primary Energy Consumption by Source and Sector, 2008
(Quadrillion Btu)