Nate Silver: U.S. Patriotism Falls Behind

Nate Silver posted some eye-opening polling data right before the July 4th holiday. The takeaway? American patriotism has declined sharply and now sits below the global average. As the fireworks fade and we move into the week after Independence Day, the numbers deserve a closer look — especially with the country’s 250th anniversary on the horizon.

The Global Picture

The United States used to stand out for its strong national pride. In the 1980s, about 95% of Americans described themselves as “very” or “quite” proud of their nationality — significantly higher than most other regions.

By 2022, that figure had dropped to 78%. Many parts of the world maintained higher levels: Asia, Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East generally stayed in the 85–90% range. In a ranking of large and OECD countries, the U.S. now ranks around 34th out of 45.

The first chart shared by Silver shows the U.S. line trending steadily downward while other regions held steady or improved.

Obviously, some of this is partisan, with the Democratic numbers having fallen far more. Though independents are actually closer to Democrats on this issue than the GOP. pic.twitter.com/lV9bjtidDc

— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) July 3, 2026

h/t Newsalert

Georgia's Demographic Shift: Is This Trend Reversible?

I came across the @EndWokeness tweet on Georgia flipping to majority-minority status ahead of projections, and the numbers are clear: non-Hispanic Whites dropped below 50% faster than expected, with the White population actually declining while growth came almost entirely from Hispanic, Black, and Asian residents.

But the real question isn't just "what happened." It's can this trend be reversed? Or are we locked into a permanent transformation?

Source: Guide of the World

The Numbers in Brief

• Georgia added over 500,000 people since 2020 — every net gain from non-White groups.
• Non-Hispanic White share now ~48-49%.
• Foreign-born population roughly doubled in 20 years to ~12%.
• White population fell by ~25k while Hispanic, Black, and Asian inflows drove the rest.

International migration played a heavy role — not just internal moves or natural births.

US population visualized

 

[VIDEO] This video was made in early 2020 and shows where the US population was distributed as far as each state. We go from when the US was created to 2020 which was the year of the last census.

Well one piece of news we've learned since then is how the population of Illinois was undercounted in the 2020 census. Of course when the video was published we didn't know that, yet.

Black workers in Cali hard hit hard due to pandemic

 From the Sacramento Bee:

A new report from the nonpartisan California Policy Lab, obtained by McClatchy Wednesday, illustrates dramatically how Black workers have been hit unusually hard by the coronavirus crisis.

“Black workers are less likely to work in the industries which have weathered the COVID-19 crisis well, and more likely to work in the sectors that COVID has wreaked havoc,” said Till von Wachter, the Lab’s faculty director.

...

The Economic Policy Institute, a progressive research firm, studied black unemployment during the pandemic. There are three main groups of workers in the COVID-19 economy, said a report from Elise Gould, a senior economist, and Valerie Wilson, director of the institute’s program on race, ethnicity and the economy.

One group of people has lost their jobs and faces economic insecurity. Another involve people classified as essential workers and face health insecurity as a result. The third can continue working from the safety of their homes.

“Unfortunately, black workers are less likely to be found in the last group,” the researchers found.

Nationwide, Black workers make up over 12% of the labor force, but make up less than 9% of workers in the computer and mathematical occupations, areas where they could likely move to remote work,, and just above 8% of management occupations - one of the sectors most insulated from the crisis.

Blacks have also suffered from the coronavirus at higher rates than whites, so “it’s not unexpected that the (unemployment) numbers are staggering,” said Michael Graetz, a former Treasury Department official and author of The Wolf at the Door: The Menace of Economic Insecurity and How to Fight It.

The Lab found another source of gloom: People are not as optimistic that they can return to their jobs.

h/t Newsalert 

Where Have All the Black Men Gone?

I'd say we need the Black men now more than ever. We need them to be productive and we need them as part of our families. Via Governing

The single biggest driver behind the absence of many black men is mass incarceration. A few academics have held up ratios of black men to women as a proxy for incarceration. Despite recent declines in prison populations, disparities remain massive. African-American males are imprisoned in state and federal facilities at six times the rate of white men, and about 25 times that of black women, according to figures from the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

Black men, underrepresented in the overwhelming majority of neighborhoods, are instead heavily concentrated in relatively few places, and those tend to be home to prisons. We identified 79 such Census tracts with more than twice as many black men as women.

Black men are further subject to high mortality. Homicides drive up rates, along with higher risks of dying from diabetes, kidney disease and sepsis than other men. In all, the latest average life expectancy at birth for black men, 71.5 years as measured by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, trails the expectancy for white men by nearly five years and for black women by more than six years.

But mortality and incarceration rates alone don’t explain why so many black men seem to be missing in communities. Alford Young, a sociology professor at the University of Michigan, notes that they frequently lack permanent addresses. Women, particularly those with children, are likely to obtain support services, and thus to get counted, while black men are not and may become homeless. Young also says a subset prefers to be mobile and undocumented, mostly stemming from fears of law enforcement. “It’s really a challenge with official counts to make sense of where black men are,” he says.

The ramifications of all this are far-reaching. Partners and families of the “missing men” face a host of negative social and economic consequences, such as a shortage of income and assets. Huge numbers of women have ties to incarcerated family members: One in every 2.5 black women has a family member in prison, more than three times the number for white women, according to a Scholars Strategy Network report. For children, research suggests growing up with an incarcerated parent increases the likelihood of learning disabilities, behavioral problems and other challenges.

But the consequences of all this extend beyond families. The absence of adult males means fewer constructive relationships for local children and fewer resources for communities in general. “It’s not simply large numbers of men not being present around their children or their partners,” Young says, “but what it means in a community context to be invisible.”

Another subject I'd like to tackle more are subjects that are important to Black men.

BTW, it brings to mind a piece in 2017 where Black men were considered the "white people of Black people". If Black men are missing in our communities is there really "Black male privilege"?

Black unemployment rate

What helped this blog get noticed during the last decade was mostly racial stuff. Nothing too controversial just political stuff, local political stuff mainly. And for the most part I have gotten away from that.

Just bear in mind at any point in time this blog will cover anything that interests me at that moment. This may include tech, vacations, or politics. Which also means some of the more racial subjects may be covered over at my neighborhood/local issues blog The Sixth Ward.

I write this to say I want to share this post from there on Monday and it's from the CapFax about whether or not Illinois does have the highest unemployment rate among Blacks in the nation. We are in election season here in Illinois and it's definitely coming up in the governor's race. I'm sure it will be an issue in the 2019 Chicago mayor's race.

What Rich Miller seems to note however is that the headlines about having a high Black unemployment rate appears to be valid.

CapitolFax: Does Illinois really have the highest black unemployment rate? https://t.co/Aq1bPgvVbZ pic.twitter.com/kIkhUf0aL7

— The Sixth Ward (@TheSixthWard) June 25, 2018

How much money have you saved?

Posted this earlier today and shared the wrong ig post from CNBC. My apologies, didn't catch onto this sooner.

I've been doing much better saving money over the last four years and hopefully I'll look much better over the next four years. At least you couldn't coun't me in the 35% with less than $1k in savings or the 34% who has ZERO.

It takes some discipline to put some money away at least every pay period. Then scrimp and scrape as you spend money. Though as far as spending I'm still learning. A never ending process.

Funny thing, I used to complain about how my mother didn't want to spend money on things. Now I've acquired some of those habits.

69% of Americans have less than $1,000 in their savings accounts. What's more, 34% have no savings at all. If your bank account balance is looking sad, you're not alone.

A post shared by CNBC (@cnbc) on Apr 11, 2017 at 6:18pm PDT

City Journal: Examining the Scorecard

I found this via Instapundit. Exit polling suggested that Trump did well among "minorities" or I should say better than Mitt Romney who ran for POTUS in 2012.

Early Wednesday morning, exit poll data began to circulate that showed Trump improving the GOP’s standing with both African-Americans and Latinos. Less clear was just how central a role this shift played. To see the dramatic effect, compare the 2012 and 2016 exit polls that split the result by race.

In 2012, the electorate was 72 percent white (which went 59 percent Romney / 39 percent Obama) and 28 percent nonwhite (which went 81 percent Obama / 18 percent Romney), yielding a total margin of plus 3.1 percent for Obama. In 2016, the electorate was 70 percent white (which went 58 percent Trump / 37 percent Clinton) and 30 percent nonwhite (which went 73 percent Clinton / 21 percent Trump), yielding a total margin of plus 0.9 percent for Clinton.

The overall result is a 2.3 percent shift toward the Republicans. (Totals won’t sum due to rounding, and they won’t match final vote counts, because these are the exit polls.) We can allocate that shift across three changes: the shift in the mix of white and nonwhite voters; the shift in preferences among white voters; and the shift in preferences among nonwhite voters.

Man I wish my skills include crunching numbers such as these. It would be easy to see these trends and see if they stay consistent or when they stall. Read the whole thing, there's more to it than what's excerpted here.

Although I said enough #Cubs posts...

Sloopin has a post about the championship rally for the Cubs last Friday. An estimated 5 million came to Chicago to see the parade and the rally in downtown Chicago. The 7th largest gathering of humans in the world. A lot of people have been waiting to see the unthinkable - a Cubs world series championship.

Consider this a mental break while we wait for more states to be called in this presidential election. There has been some interesting results, I was never sure what was going to happen but the results was never what was expected.

Is Illinois difficult to poll?

I try not to pay attention to polls at all, but as we head towards election day tomorrow they're hard to ignore. There are lots of predictions going around and we'll know for sure whether they'll hold true in Illinois or around the nation tomorrow.

One thing we can ask is how Illinois has been so difficult to poll. Now that we're in the 2nd decade of the 21st century things have changed. That means polling in general has to change with the times.

And that might explain why Illinois has been so difficult to poll this year.

BTW, early voting seems to be stressed more and more these days. I didn't early vote so I will be going to the polls tomorrow. If you haven't early voted already I also hope you cast a ballot tomorrow as well!

The New Middle Class Trap

This article from The Atlantic depresses me. I stole the title for this post from it, but here's the rest: "I'm Working Really Hard, but I'm Not Getting Ahead". As much as I want to believe you can work your way into another income bracket, it can be shown how difficult it can be to get there. The question we must ask is what must change and how?

Via Instapundit who apparently thinks of this article as indicative of "life in the era of hope & change".

College Grads May Be Stuck in Low-Skill Jobs

As a college graduate who isn't exactly in a high-skill job this article is depressing. This is a week economy and if college grads are in the running for these low-skill jobs then there's another side effect.

The recession left millions of college-educated Americans working in coffee shops and retail stores. Now, new research suggests their job prospects may not improve much when the economy rebounds.

Underemployment—skilled workers doing jobs that don't require their level of education—has been one of the hallmarks of the slow recovery. By some measures, nearly half of employed college graduates are in jobs that don't traditionally require a college degree.

Economists have generally assumed the problem was temporary: As the economy improved, companies would need more highly educated employees. But in a paper released Monday by the National Bureau of Economic Research, a team of Canadian economists argues that the U.S. faces a longer-term problem.

They found that unlike the 1990s, when companies needed hundreds of thousands of skilled workers to develop, build and install high-tech systems—everything from corporate intranets to manufacturing robots—demand for such skills has fallen in recent years, even as young people continued to flock to programs that taught them.

"Once the robots are in place you still need some people, but you need a lot less than when you were putting in the robots," said Paul Beaudry, an economist at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver and the paper's lead author. New technologies may eventually revive demand for advanced skills, he added, but an economic recovery alone won't be sufficient.

David Autor, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who has studied issues of skills and education, called Mr. Beaudry's thesis "provocative" but also "speculative." There is no question, Mr. Autor said, that the wage premium enjoyed by college graduates hasn't grown as quickly during the 2000s as in earlier decades. But whether that is the result of a glut of degree holders or some other explanation isn't yet clear.

And now the side effect:

Better-educated workers still face far better job prospects than their less-educated counterparts. The unemployment rate for Americans with at least a bachelor's degree was 3.8% in February, compared with 7.9% for those with just a high school diploma. College-educated employees also tend to earn more and advance more quickly even when they are in fields that don't require a degree.

But as college-educated workers have been forced to take lower-level jobs, they have displaced less-skilled workers, leaving those without degrees with few job options. "You eventually push the lowest skilled out of the market," Mr. Beaudry said.

WOW! Here's hoping you're not in this boat.

Via Instapundit!

NRO: The Death of the Family

Finding this article via Newsalert the title from there was "Single Mothers Mean Welfare State". Then I see that this piece written by Mark Steyn in fact starts off talking about gay marriage. What is Steyn saying?

Which of these alternative scenarios — the demolition of marriage or the taming of the gay — will come to pass? Most likely, both. In the upper echelons of society, our elites practice what they don’t preach. Scrupulously nonjudgmental about everything except traditional Christian morality, they nevertheless lead lives in which, as Charles Murray documents in his book Coming Apart, marriage is still expected to be a lifelong commitment. It is easy to see moneyed gay newlyweds moving into such enclaves, and making a go of it. As the Most Reverend Justin Welby, the new Archbishop of Canterbury and head of the worldwide Anglican Communion, said just before his enthronement the other day, “You see gay relationships that are just stunning in the quality of the relationship.” “Stunning”: What a fabulous endorsement! But, amongst the type of gay couple that gets to dine with the Archbishop of Canterbury, he’s probably right.

Lower down the socioeconomic scale, the quality gets more variable. One reason why conservative appeals to protect the sacred procreative essence of marriage have gone nowhere is because Americans are rapidly joining the Scandinavians in doing most of their procreating without benefit of clergy. Seventy percent of black babies are born out of wedlock, so are 53 percent of Hispanics (the “natural conservative constituency” du jour, according to every lavishly remunerated Republican consultant), and 70 percent of the offspring of poor white women. Over half the babies born to mothers under 30 are now “illegitimate” (to use a quaintly judgmental formulation). For the first three-and-a-half centuries of American settlement the bastardy rate (to be even quainter) was a flat line in the basement of the graph, stuck at 2 or 3 percent all the way to the eve of the Sixties. Today over 40 percent of American births are “non-marital,” which is significantly higher than Canada or Germany. “Stunning” upscale gays will join what’s left of the American family holed up in a chichi Green Zone, while beyond the perimeter the vast mounds of human rubble pile up remorselessly. The conservative defense of marriage rings hollow because for millions of families across this land the American marriage is hollow.

Also:

Underneath all this apparent “fairness” is a lot of unfairness. Entire new categories of crime have arisen in the wake of familial collapse, like the legions of adolescent daughters abused by Mom’s latest live-in boyfriend. Millions of children are now raised in transient households that make not just economic opportunity but even elementary character-formation all but impossible. In the absence of an agreed moral language to address this brave new world, Americans retreat to comforting euphemisms like “blended families,” notwithstanding that the familial Cuisinart seems to atomize at least as often as it blends.

Meanwhile, social mobility declines: Doctors who once married their nurses now marry their fellow doctors; lawyers who once married their secretaries now contract with fellow super-lawyers, like dynastic unions in medieval Europe. Underneath the self-insulating elite, millions of Americans are downwardly mobile: The family farmers and mill workers, the pioneers who hacked their way into the wilderness and built a township, could afford marriage and children; indeed, it was an economic benefit. For their descendants doing minimum-wage service jobs about to be rendered obsolete by technology, functioning families are a tougher act, and children an economic burden. The gays looked at contemporary marriage and called the traditionalists’ bluff.

Then finally Newalert lifts this conclusion from the final paragraph:

The most reliable constituency for Big Government is single women, for whom the state is a girl’s best friend, the sugar daddy whose checks never bounce. A society in which a majority of births are out of wedlock cannot be other than a Big Government welfare society. Ruining a nation’s finances is one thing; debauching its human capital is far harder to fix.

The article starts off with a conversation Steyn has who notes that gay marriage is an attack on marriage. Instead of this article being an attack of gay marriage it notes the many sociological issues that are occuring in this nation.

It seems to me the Christian right makes a big issue about marriage. From them we might hear that getting married has economic benefits and social stability. Although increasing Americans aren't going out of their way to get marriage they just simply shack up.

In this case, it's safe to say that this article is attempting to look at the big picture. The next question is, I can only wonder how the Supreme Court is going to rule on gay marriage.

A tale of two cities

IowaHawk compares Houston to Chicago. Demographic information and of course other important information such as conceal carry, murder rate, gun shops, or even average January temperature. And went off the rails with this comment: "Conclusion: cold causes murder."

They basically had me until that one. Otherwise hey, they was making a good point. 

Hat-tip Newsalert!

What about these payroll taxes?

When I started typing this, I had been watching the FOX Business network and they're talking about one aspect of the "fiscal cliff" compromise. Here's a piece from MSNBC:

Politicians in Washington made much hubbub last week about a bipartisan deal to soften or postpone some $600 billion in scheduled tax hikes and government spending cuts. President Barack Obama said the deal would shield 98 percent of Americans from a middle-class tax hike.

Nevertheless, for most workers, rich and poor alike, taxes went up on Dec. 31 as a temporary payroll tax cut expired. That cut – a 2 percentage point reduction in a levy that funds Social Security – was put in place two years ago to help the economy, which was still smarting from the 2007-09 recession.

About 160 million workers pay this tax, and the increase will cost the average worker about $700 a year, according to the Tax Policy Center, a Washington think tank.

“It stinks,” said Beverly Renfroe, an accountant for a realty firm in Jackson, Mississippi. “I definitely noticed a decrease.” The pain will trickle through the economy over the next few weeks. Already, the new rate of 6.2 percent has trimmed paychecks for about half of the 200,000 employees whose paychecks are processed by Advantage Payroll Services, a payroll firm based in Auburn, Maine.

Oh dear, it seems to get worse:

Some Americans will also pay higher income taxes this year. Congress and Obama let income tax rates rise for households making more than $450,000 a year, a partial repeal of tax cuts put in place under President George W. Bush. The wealthy will also pay a new tax to help fund a health insurance reform passed in 2010.

These will have a smaller impact on the wider economy because they affect fewer people. But taken together, this year’s tax hikes could subtract a full percentage point from growth, Feroli said.

Most economists see economic growth of roughly 2 percent this year, a lackluster pace held back by the government’s austerity measures that is likely to do little to reduce unemployment.

Failure to postpone government spending cuts due to begin around March would slow growth more, further frustrating the economic recovery.

And worst still!

The blow to the economy from the tax hikes will hurt the most during the first half of the year as people adapt to their smaller paychecks.

Consumer spending, which drives more than two thirds of the economy, will likely grow at a mere 1 percent annual rate in the first quarter, and 1.5 percent in the second, said Sven Jari Stehn, an economist at Goldman Sachs in New York.

 It's all about the economy and alas we're continuing to struggle out there. Hopefully when the current fiscal cliff compromise is reconsidered in the next couple of months or so Washington may consider to find ways to alleviate this new pressure. Hopefully someone out there will say wait a minute here, this isn't helping us?

Well one can only hope, yes?

BTW, Washington Post is even more stark: "The bad news: The expiration of the payroll tax cut this January will basically wipe away all of last year’s gains." 

Demographics of the Illinois General Assembly

Illinois State Capitol

Ed McClelland over at the Ward Room notes the racial and gender breakdown of the Illinois General Assembly:

In the House, only 24 of the 71 Democrats elected this year are white guys. There are 31 women, 18 African-Americans and six Latinos. (Some of these categories overlap, obviously.) Of the 47 Republicans, 36 are white guys, and 11 are white women.

In the Senate, white guys do a lot better. They make up half the 40 Democratic senators elected this year. The Democrats have 10 African-Americans, four Latinos and 11 women.

Of the 19 Republican senators, 15 are white men and four are white women.

So overall, white men make up 39.6 percent of the Democratic legislators in Springfield -- almost exactly their proportion in the state as a whole -- and 77.2 percent of the Republicans.

Hat-tip Capitol Fax and there are already 21 comments to the posting there already. One more quote from Ward Room I do wonder what this means:

David Wasserman, House editor for the Cook Political Report, told CNN that the racial and gender polarization in Washington means that “both parties are distilling to their core, and they are living in parallel universes.” 

That seems to be true in Springfield as well, except than in Illinois, the Democrats’ universe is a lot bigger.

Well I can see that politics right now are quite polarizing today!

OK one more final prediction wargaming the electoral college

Vodkapundit takes a look at different scenarios for an electoral victory between President Obama and Mitt Romney. Some of these scenarios shown there are impossible. Besides Minnesota isn't going for a Republican nor is Oregon. Still some of these scenarios make sense for both men. And again, we won't know for sure until tomorrow!

UPDATE: One final presidential race prediction

An update to last Thursday's post. Looking at this piece by political scientist Larry Sabato President Obama could likely be re-elected tomorrow. Obama could win the electoral college vote with a margin of 42.

Well that's how close the election could go and we'll know for sure tomorrow who will win. Not many would be happy about the probability of an Obama victory and I'm sure many won't be too happy about the probability of a Romney victory. It was a while ago that it was decided by me that this will be a close election.

Tomorrow is the big day, we shall see how close or even how wide open it will be!

Black college graduates may find more success in self-employment

Well I hope they have skill which could ensure  success. I imagine it's easier to be an entrepreneur if you had a law degree or a business degree. It's just one start among others.

Recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics reveals that black self-employment has been on the rise. The number of self-employed blacks grew by 5.7% from 2007 through 2009, in contrast to the 3.4% experienced by self-employed whites. Some minority entrepreneurs have found a substantial amount of success using social media. Twenty-four year old minority alum of the  University of California at Berkeley alum, Charlie Fyffe, started his dessert business, Charlie’s Brownies, on Facebook. “I started my business initially on Facebook, marketing through a fan page for four years before getting a real Web site,” he said in an interview. “As social media has become a societal norm, the popularity of my brand naturally grew with it.”

You know that just means I need to find a way to start my own business. Should've started in high school because if I had more interest, who knows where things would be today!

Ward Room: "Chicago Fixes Elections, Not Jobs Reports"

Well do Chicago politicians cook job report numbers? It's a slam against the President who cut his teeth in Chicago politics. This year as he seeks re-election we're hearing that more and more. Today we hear it from the former CEO of General Electric:

Former General Electric chairman Jack Welch says the new unemployment numbers issued by the Obama Administration are no more reliable than election totals issued by the Chicago Machine.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate dropped to 7.8 percent, the lowest figure since President Obama’s first month in office. That’s also an important threshold because we’ve been hearing all year that no president has ever been re-elected when the unemployment rate is above 8 percent.

“Unbelievable jobs numbers..these Chicago guys will do anything..can’t debate so change numbers,” Welch tweeted on @jack_welch, his personal account.

It was essentially debunked:

Seasoned political veteran and former Chicago Alderman Dick Simpson, who recently wrote a book on Chicago corruption, said that's probably not the case.

"What Chicago's known for is fixing elections, not for cooking reports," he said. " ... that seems an odd argument."

It’s as though Short Pencil Louie, the infamous precinct captain who used to erase Republican votes and write in Democratic votes, has been promoted to director of the BLS.

All this to say many people are critical of these job numbers. In fact you can watch this example over at Newsalert. A common slam against the President is the economy particularly jobs and from those who want to see Obama gone from the White House we're going to see doubt about the jobs numbers.