“Gomorrah” by Roberto Saviano

Saviano has been accused of fictionalizing history. His prose does read more like a story than a history and his books are not footnoted or sourced, with “Gomorrah” not even including a basic index for reference. However, in the underworld societies that he details sometimes fact and fiction do blend into one overarching narrative. Where does the truth end and myth begin? The fact that after publishing “Gomorrah” he was forced into hiding by the Camorra testifies to the fact that he must have gotten some things right. The fact that Italian mobsters deal in drugs, prostitution, gambling, and protection rackets is no revelation. Where Saviano excels is both in revealing the depth of this corruption, but also in the details that can only be exposed by going undercover, working within the Camorra’s world to see how individual lives are shaped and destroyed by an empire that seemingly feeds itself and outlasts any one individual. The Italian mafia clans, in fact, refer to themselves as part of the “System”. As one Chinese business partner involved in the illegal smuggling of textiles destined to be falsely labeled “Made in Italy” puts it, “Euro, dollar, yuan. Here’s my triad.” Indeed, Saviano exposes just how international the Naples mob’s reach actually has become: a modern day illicit multinational corporation that preys on the world famous fashion houses of Armani and Valentino as much as the corner drug pusher or pimp. Perhaps the most chilling account of the Camorra’s exploits are how deeply woven they have become in the legal rackets of clothing, cement, and waste disposal.

“The Pity of It All: A Portrait of the German-Jewish Epoch 1743-1933” by Amos Elon

In 1743 a Jew entering Berlin had to pay the same tax as a head of cattle or pig. Jews could not own real estate, practice most professions, or even live inside the city walls without a permit from the government. Many Jews were itinerant salesmen, scavengers, beggars, or thieves. There was a small elite of court Jews: bankers, minters, and industrialists who were given dispensations to live outside the ghettos of the major German cities. Even then, their wives and children were often forced to leave their homes (and their cities) when the family patriarch passed away. In most towns, Jews were forbidden to build a communal synagogue. Yet almost all Jews were literate, even if mainly only in a bastardized Hebrew.

Moses Mendelsohn was not the first Jew to break through this glass ceiling, but he was the most impressive of the 18th century. Although Frederick II never warmed to him, he was well received by Goethe and other German intellectuals. He tried to be a German and a Jew, to bridge two worlds that had been kept apart by both sides. His goal was to inculcate the younger Jewish aristocracy with German literature and culture. He set off two trends that he had never intended. The first was the fight for Jewish emancipation (or equal rights) within Germany. The second was that the younger Jewish generation, especially the wealthiest, became so enmeshed in German culture that many converted to the Christian faith, chief among them most of Mendelson’s own children. In the age of rationalism and the enlightenment, faith was secondary to reason anyhow. This would have tragic consequences in the age of Romanticism, which spawned vehement nationalism. A Jew, even one who renounced his faith, was still an outsider to the Aryan masses. He could not escape his birth (even up to three generations after conversion). Where the anti-Judaism of the previous generation was a fear of the unknown of the other, the Romantic hatred of German Jews came from an increased intimacy and socializing. It was a reaction to Jews trying to become too German.

Some German Jews did become zionists, refusing to integrate into the Volk (or perhaps understanding better than most that they would always be excluded), while most others pressed on for greater emancipation. There were sporadic anti-Jewish riots over the decades, but nothing comparable to the pogroms in Russia. German Jews from Alsace, annexed after the Franco-Prussian War, thanked their lucky stars when the Dreyfus Affair highlighted the brutal Jewish discrimination still within France. Yet, the term anti-semite was coined in Germany near the turn of the century and Jews were still almost completely barred from serving as officers in the Kaiser’s Army and were strictly limited as professors in German universities.

World War I was to prove a turning point, as Jews across the political and economic spectrum dropped their cosmopolitanism in support of the Kaiser. Previous pacifists, democratic socialists, communists, republicans, and zionists were all swayed to the nationalist hysteria. Jews even returned from Palestine to fight in the Kaiser’s army. As the war dragged to its bitter end, however, most Jews became disillusioned as they were made into the scapegoats of the German defeat, culminating with an Army census that implied that most Jews were war profiteers, serving behind the front lines, when, in fact, 80% of Jews had served at the front. The final chapter of the book is, appropriately, the rise of Hitler and the Nazi Party as the Weimar Republic collapses. Astoundingly, this also was a period of great integration of Jews into the highest echelons of society in politics, industry, and the arts. This, indeed, was the pity of it all.

“The Case Against Education” by Bryan Caplan

Caplan makes the case that education, and particularly higher education, does not teach students relevant facts and skills, but, instead, is merely a signal to employers about a latent set of characteristics that prospective employees already possess. The mystery is why it takes years of education and the capstone of a degree to reveal these skills to employers who are hiring. After all, the earnings premium for college grads is over seventy percent and even for high school graduates it is thirty percent higher than for dropouts. Caplan is adamant this does not primarily reflect added skills and knowledge acquired during these years of extra education. His answer is signaling. “Even if what a student learned in school is utterly useless, employers will happily pay extra if their scholastic achievement provides information about their productivity.” By successfully completing the rigors of high school and college a potential employee reveals preexisting traits that are not easy to tease out by any other means. 

Prospective employers are using “statistical discrimination”: “true-on-average stereotypes to save time and money.” Education reveals more than an IQ test or SAT score alone. Furthermore, requiring IQ tests for employment has been deemed discriminatory and, therefore, illegal by American courts. In any case, “education signals not just intelligence, but conscientiousness- the student’s discipline, work ethic, commitment to quality, and so forth…. Education also signals conformity- the worker’s grasp of and submission to social expectations.” That is because “in our society, educational achievement is social expectation.” It is a bit of a Catch-22, but as long as the prevailing culture stresses the importance of a college degree those who want to appear most employable will strive to get that societal marker. Agreeing with societal norms and not rocking the boat are as important to today’s employer as any other skill. In fact, it is the package of intelligence, conscientiousness, and conformity whose components are equally important. A weakness is any one aspect of this trifecta suggests some sort of deviance from the socially acceptable norms even if more than compensated in the other two fields. 

Why does education have to take so long if it is just trying to tease out preexisting traits? Tyler Cowen suggests, “the signal must be costly and grueling, otherwise it fails to sort out the best job candidates.” Caplan adds, “since easy-to-fake traits like conscientiousness and conformity are valuable, education has to take years. Signaling is a war of attrition.” Caplan does not dispute that there is some additional learning and human capital growth that takes place in college. He just posits that the mix skews predominantly towards signaling. He asks why so few students take advantage of sitting in on classes for free at elite universities. Anyone could get a free Ivy league education by simply sitting in the back of the lecture hall or asking the professor to audit their classes, except in the end they would not receive a diploma for their efforts, of course. Caplan also solves the mystery of why college students tend to be ecstatic when a professor cancels class. It is not just their high time preference. “When you skip class, your relative performance suffers. When your teacher cancels class, everyone learns less, leaving your relative performance unimpaired.” This does not make sense if the goal of college was to build human capital, but makes perfect sense from a signaling model.

Caplan goes on to dispel some of the human capital model myths about education. He measures and gives statistics for “fade out”, the fact that humans poorly retain facts and skills that they do not use regularly. He dispels the myth of transfer learning- most students cannot easily transfer skills between similar problem scenarios, especially if there is a time delay, any sort of distraction in between tasks, different teachers asking similar questions, and, especially, if a classroom problem is applied to the real world. He also refutes the idea of “learning to learn.” In fact, students learn specific facts better than general concepts and strategies (albeit still poorly). He posits, “when someone insists their product has big, hard-to-see benefits, you should be dubious by default- especially when the easy-to-see benefits are small.” Finally, Caplan discusses the sheepskin effect- that graduation pays so much more than any other normal year of education. “High school graduation has a big spike: twelfth grade pays more than grades 9, 10, and 11 combined. In percentage terms, the average study finds graduation year is worth 3.4 regular years. College graduation has a huge spike: senior year of college pays over twice as much as freshman, sophomore, and junior years combined. In percentage terms, the average study finds graduation year is worth 6.7 regular years.”

Caplan’s book is so persuasive because of the plethora of charts, tables, and graphs he employs to back up his assertions. He also discusses in detail such issues as college choice, major/career selection, completion probability, ability bias, government’s role, malemployment, licensing, employer learning, vocational learning, assortive mating, and education spending.

His book is a strong rebuke to those who think that higher education serves to build human capital. He does not dispute that it does build some, but questions how cost effective the current educational system is and whether a college education is even an appropriate goal for most students in society, as opposed to a select few. The mix between human capital and signaling is critically important for policy discussions. “If human capital is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, education is a path to individual and national prosperity: education makes the pie bigger, so every worker can enjoy a bigger slice…. According to the pure signaling model, education raises income by making you look more productive. A worker gets more education; their productivity stays the same, but their income goes up. A nation gets more education; its productivity and income stay the same.” Of course the truth is somewhere in between these two poles. “At the global level, a typical year of personal education seems to raise personal income by 8-12%. A typical year of national education, in contrast, seems to raise national income by only 1-3%.” Caplan roughly estimates the mix at 20% human capital and 80% signaling, but is willing to quibble on the details as long as we admit that education is predominantly signaling. He suggests moving towards a world of credential deflation that, he posits, will not have the effect of actually deskilling the American worker.

“Pachinko” by Min Jin Lee

This is an epic about four generations of a Korean family who were forced to immigrate from Busan to Japan during the Japanese occupation of Korea. The story starts in 1910 and ends in 1989. Eventually, the family moves to the Korean ghetto in Osaka, where they struggle to find work and food to survive World War II. As Koreans and as Christians, they were doubly discriminated against by the Japanese. Throughout the novel, there are hardships and deaths as well as births and love affairs, as each generation grows up and makes their own way through a foreign society. Much of the book is about what it is like to be an immigrant in a place that does not want you and where you are constantly treated as sub-human. There is the struggle to survive and even thrive in a place where you know you are not wanted. Lee manages to make this tragic tale hopeful at the same time. As one reads on one cannot help but root for this family and feel for every gut wrenching blow that they must endure and overcome. The characters are complicated, never clearly good nor bad, and they often struggle to make the right decisions in life. Chance often intervenes, for better or for worse, just when the winds of fate look to be blowing a certain way. Through the lens of one Korean family struggling to survive in Japan, Lee depicts the dilemma many immigrants feel about no longer having any place to call home.