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About The daily Astorian. (Astoria, Or.) 1961-current | View Entire Issue (July 11, 2016)
OPINION 4A THE DAILY ASTORIAN • MONDAY, JULY 11, 2016 Discovering Seaside by the numbers Founded in 1873 SOUTHERN EXPOSURE STEPHEN A. FORRESTER, Editor & Publisher LAURA SELLERS, Managing Editor BETTY SMITH, Advertising Manager B y R.J. M aRx CARL EARL, Systems Manager JOHN D. BRUIJN, Production Manager DEBRA BLOOM, Business Manager HEATHER RAMSDELL, Circulation Manager Another massacre, another set of clichés ‘E scalating cycle of violence” has become a cliché — something we skip over on our way to more novel news. Last week’s attack on police in Dallas, close on the heels of video-recorded killings of civilians by police, deserves to wrench our attention back to this complex issue. It has always been true gunman who murdered ive that the misdeeds of one evil innocent oficers in Dallas, or reckless man can unravel wounding seven more, said the carefully woven norms his actions were vengeance crafted by civilization. It was, for police shootings of for example, one assassina- African-Americans tion that set off the terrible There undoubtedly are rac- chain reaction that precipi- ist and trigger-happy police, tated World War I, killing 17 just as there are lawed indi- million. viduals in every other pro- In the 21st century U.S., the fession. On the other hand, growing cyclone of deadly few citizens blame police shootings is in no sense on the for being on edge. Last scale of warfare. But it is nev- Thursday’s events in Dallas ertheless deeply shocking and bring the number of American oficers killed in the line of worthy of action. Last week’s episode was duty in 2016 to 58. In 2015, all the more troubling because 130 died; in 2014, the death it again involved slayings by toll was 145. It would be the worst possi- and of society’s defenders, the police. Homicides by police ble outcome if hateful actions in Minnesota and Louisiana by a few lead to more lives added to the nearly 500 fatal being lost — either civilian shootings of U.S. civilians by or police. We expect calm and police in the irst half of 2016, mature policing. At the same time, this is compared to 465 in the irst six months of 2015. A dispro- yet another in a seemingly portionate number of those endless sequence of mass killed are African-American. murders, too often com- Even so, many of these kill- mitted with weapons origi- ings by police occurred in cir- nally designed for warfare. cumstances that were not con- It verges on political insan- ity that we permit such easy sidered controversial. The highly publicized inci- access to killing machines by dents last week initially appear virtually any murderous crank unreasonable, but investiga- who desires one. When will enough ratio- tions are still far from arriving at any formal allegations of nal citizens stand up and say wrongdoing by oficers. The we’ve had enough? Marine commandant should imitate Comey F BI Director James Comey broke ground last week in publicly making judgments on Hillary Clinton’s behavior with classiied emails. The Register-Guard of Eugene wrote Friday that Comey had crossed a line and should not have. It is true that Comey broke precedent. The direc- tor’s comments on Clinton were extraordinary. But this was an extraordinary situa- tion in which the director’s candor added credibility to the FBI’s decision not to seek an indictment of the former secretary of state. All bureaucrats easily can hide behind process. That is especially true for law enforcement, because it is based on a set of processes that are governed by stat- utes and rules. A bureaucratic answer is fundamentally unsatisfying. In another part of Washington, D.C., another agency head is wrestling with a highly visible, potentially criminal matter. The com- mandant of the Marine Corps, Gen. Robert Neller, oversees an investigation of a Marine recruit’s suicide at the Parris Island Marine Corps Recruit Depot. The dead Marine was a Muslim. The Wall Street Journal reports that the deceased’s chief drill instruc- tor was under investigation for hazing recruits, includ- ing mistreatment of another Muslim recruit. More than a dozen Parris Island drill instructors are under investi- gation by the Naval Criminal Investigative Services. Eventually this will reach Gen. Neller’s desk. In making the Navy prosecutors’ judg- ments public, we hope Neller will follow FBI Director Comey’s example. The pub- lic, as well as Marines every- where, deserve candor, not a bureaucratic answer. his industry employs the most people in the city of Seaside: A) Education and health services B) Retail trade C) Manufacturing D) Accommodation and food services If you saidD, you’re right. About 41.8 percent of workers in Seaside are in the hotel and food businesses. Retail trade was a distant second, with 14.1 percent. One of the irst things I noticed when I became the editor of both the Seaside Signal and the Cannon Beach Gazette was how iercely competitive the cities in the South County are — with each other. Living in Gearhart complicates matters. I’ve often thought if Gearhart, Sea- side and Cannon Beach all got together we could sure give Astoria a run for its money. There seem to be more divisions in Clatsop County than the European Union and I’ve met plenty of Sea- siders who are quite happy to never stray south of Avenue U or north of the Necanicum Bridge. But what does being a Seasider really mean? Fourth of July ireworks, suring at the Cove and griping about Hood to Coast come to mind. But Shawna Sykes, workforce analyst of the Oregon Employment Department Research Division has a more scientiic approach. Working for the employment department, her mis- sion is to support businesses and pro- mote employment. Sykes reinforces what we already know, and shatters what we think we know. Sykes unleashed a PowerPoint demonstration at a Seaside Down- town Development Association’s June breakfast. She put it all out there in numbers and graphs, city by city, county by county and throughout the state. Using a “Jeopardy!” format, she ingeniously force-fed a half hour of dry labor and population data to an audience pleasantly distracted by Pig ’N Pancake French toast and blintzes. Categories were Employment and Unemployment, Industry Facts and Trends and Demographics. Responses revealed data about who’s working, who’s not, in what ields, education, income, age and housing. The Clatsop County labor force T has actually decreased More females are What since 2006, by 450 jobs employed in Seaside than — an 8.8 percent drop. males, 58.6 percent to does Yet the unemployment 41.4 percent. rate is the same as the The city’s housing being a state’s 4.5 percent, below crunch and employment the national average of 4.7 Seasider needs are easily seen by percent. the numbers: an aging, really The county’s unem- afluent population of ployment rate is 11th low- mean? mostly second homeown- est in the state, tied with ers who occupy the hous- Tillamook County. Corvallis, home ing stock yet and drive the demand to Oregon State University, at 3.3 per- for labor. cent, is the lowest; Grant County, at Sixty percent of the city’s hous- 8.8 percent, is the highest. ing units are vacant — yet the city There were 3,551 total jobs in Sea- is unable to build for those who are side in 2014. here. Top median household income The state percentage of total goes to Gearhart at $50,179; sta- housing units is that are vacant is tus seekers may be surprised to hear 10 percent. Yet Clatsop County has Astoria’s median income is higher a 27 percent vacancy rate. Cannon than that of Cannon Beach, $45,104 Beach stands at 60 percent vacant, to $4,423. Seaside falls behind at Gearhart, 58 percent and Seaside $41,037, but still beats Warrenton’s 37 percent. About two-thirds of the $38,693. county’s housing is used for sea- Highest percent of residents 25 sonal, recreational or occasional years and older by educational attain- use. ment is led by Cannon Beach. More Only 10.8 percent of homes are than 13 percent of its residents hold available for rental. graduate or professional degrees. I’m trying to igure out what this Another 26 percent are college grads. all means. Seaside’s 11.2 percent with graduate In a June Wall Street Journal or professional degrees is the same piece, a headline reads: “In era of big rate as the state overall. Of Seaside data, storytelling matters more than residents, 22.4 percent have some ever.” It was addressed to the adver- high school, 30.9 percent possess a tising industry, but it could impact all high school degree or equivalent and of us as we translate the mountains of 24.9 percent hold bachelor degrees. data before us. Gearhart’s residents are 51.7 mar- What are our own stories, and how ried couples, slightly above the Clat- do the dots connect? How do our hab- sop County average of 51.1 percent. its, our occupations and our education About 47.6 percent of Seaside resi- shape not only ourselves, but those dents are wed. around us? Which Clatsop County city has Would the proile of an aver- the youngest median age? Warrenton age Seaside resident be a 44-year- wins by more than a decade, with a old female with a high school degree median age of 32.1. The average Sea- working in the hospitality industry side resident is 44.2 years old, Gear- looking for an affordable rental? hart, 45.2 and Cannon Beach, 52.4 Online years not-so-young. worksourceoregon.org or https:// Manufacturing, public administra- www.qualityinfo.org tion and inance and insurance have R.J. Marx is The Daily Astori- the lowest housing turnover rates; an’s South County reporter and edi- accommodation and food service are tor of the Seaside Signal and Cannon among the highest. Beach Gazette. The power of altruism to heal society By DAVID BROOKS New York Times News Service estern society is built on the assumption that people are fundamentally selish. W Machiavelli and Hobbes gave us inluential philosophies built on human selishness. Sigmund Freud gave us a psychol- ogy of selishness. Children, he wrote, “are completely egoistic; they feel their needs intensely and strive ruthlessly to satisfy them.” Classical economics adopts a model that says people are primarily driven by material self-interest. Political science assumes that people are driven to maxi- mize their power. But this worldview is clearly wrong. In real life, the push of selishness is matched by the pull of empathy and altruism. This is not Hallmark card sentimentalism but scientiic fact: As babies our neural connections are built by love and care. We have evolved to be really good at cooperation and empa- thy. We are strongly motivated to teach and help others. As Matthieu Ricard notes in his rig- orous book “Altruism,” if an 18-month- old sees a man drop a clothespin she will move to pick it up and hand it back to him within 5 seconds, about the same amount of time it takes an adult to offer assistance. If you reward a baby with a gift for being kind, the propensity to help will decrease, in some studies by up to 40 percent. When we build academic disci- plines and social institutions upon sup- positions of selishness we’re missing the motivations that drive people much of the time. Worse, if you expect people to be selish, you can actually crush their ten- dency to be good. Samuel Bowles provides a slew of examples in his book The Moral Econ- omy. For example, six day care cen- ters in Haifa, Israel, imposed a ine on parents who were late in picking up their kids at the end of the when your job of citizen- day. The share of parents ship is hard and frustrating. who arrived late doubled. Whether you are a teacher Before the ine, picking up serving students or a soldier their kids on time was an act serving your country or a of being considerate to the clerk who likes your ofice teachers. But after the ine, mates, the moral motiva- showing up to pick up their tion is much more power- kids became an economic ful than the inancial moti- transaction. They felt less vations. Arrangements compunction to be kind. that arouse the inancial David In 2001, the Boston ire lens alone are just messing Brooks commissioner ended everything up. his department’s pol- In 1776, Adam In real life, Smith icy of unlimited sick deined capi- days and imposed a talism as the push of that takes a machine limit of 15 per year. private Those who exceeded selfishness self-interest and orga- the limit had their nizes it to produce is matched general prosperity. A pay docked. Suddenly what had been an ethic years later Amer- by the pull few to serve the city was ica’s founders created replaced by a utilitar- struc- of empathy a tured democracy ian paid arrangement. to take private The number of ire- and altruism. factional competition ighters who called and, through checks in sick on Christmas and New Year’s and balances, turn it into deliberative increased by tenfold over the previous democracy. Both rely on a low but year. steady view of human nature and try To simplify, there are two lenses to turn private vice into public virtue. people can use to see any situation: the But back then, there were plenty economic lens or the moral lens. of institutions that promoted the When you introduce a inancial moral lens to balance the economic incentive you prompt people to see lens: churches, guilds, community their situation through an economic organizations, military service and lens. Instead of following their natu- honor codes. ral bias toward reciprocity, service and Since then, the institutions that cooperation, you encourage people to arouse the moral lens have withered do a selish cost-beneit calculation. while the institutions that manipulate They begin to ask, “What’s in this for incentives — the market and the state me?” — have expanded. Now economic, By evoking an economic motiva- utilitarian thinking has become the tion, you often get worse outcomes. normal way we do social analysis and Imagine what would happen to a mar- see the world. We’ve wound up with riage if both people went in saying, “I a society that is less cooperative, less want to get more out of this than I put trusting, less effective and less lovely. in.” The prospects of such a marriage By assuming that people are self- ish, by prioritizing arrangements would not be good. Many of our commitments, pro- based on selishness, we have encour- fessional or civic, are like that. To be aged selish frames of mind. Maybe a good citizen, to be a good worker, it’s time to upend classical economics you often have to make an altruistic and political science. Maybe it’s time commitment to some group or ideal, to build institutions that harness peo- which will see you through those times ple’s natural longing to do good.
