The Vernaculist — April 9, 2016

We’re trying something new at Vernacular: compiling some of the best reads from around the web on a weekly basis and posting them here. We’re also sending them out in an email digest, so if you want to get on that distro, sign up here.

Note: Inclusion of items in the Vernaculist does not imply or constitute endorsement of the contents therein.

1. We Don’t Why it Came to this (The Washington Post)

This heartbreaking read is the latest in a series of WaPo articles covering a startling increase in death rates for whites in midlife, especially women. Some of the issues that surface: opioid addiction, alcoholism, vanishing economic opportunities, and the disintegration of rural America.

“Fifty-four years old. Raised on three rural acres. High school-educated. A mother of three. Loyal employee of Kmart, Walls Bargain Center and Dollar Store. These were the facts of her life as printed in the funeral program, and now they had also become clues in an American crisis with implications far beyond the burnt grass and red dirt of central Oklahoma.”

2. Is porn immoral? That doesn’t matter. It’s a public health crisis. (Washington Post Op-Ed)

In another examination of a deeply disturbing trend, here’s Gail Dines, a Washington Post op-ed contributor and Professor at Wheelock College:

Extensive scientific research reveals that exposure to and consumption of porn threaten the social, emotional and physical health of individuals, families and communities, and highlights the degree to which porn is a public health crisis rather than a private matter. But just as the tobacco industry argued for decades that there was no proof of a connection between smoking and lung cancer, so, too, has the porn industry, with the help of a well-oiled public relations machine, denied the existence of empirical research on the impact of its products.

3. Taxation without Exasperation (WSJ)

Here’s something interesting. Did you know that the Federal Government couldn’t collect income tax until the passage of the 16th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution? Did you know that even after its passage, only 0.35 percent of Americans filed income tax? Here’s Reihan Salam, proposing consumption (or “value added”) tax instead of income tax:

Still, a new tax system that can increase economic freedom, raise just as much revenue as we do today, and foster higher wage and productivity growth is in our grasp. All we need to do is get over our irrational fear of the value-added tax, or VAT, a consumption tax on goods and services that is used by almost all of the world’s rich market democracies.

4. The Real Reason College Tuition Costs So Much (NYT)

Yikes. Post-secondary education has seen spiraling costs over the last thirty years, making college less affordable at a time when the economy is demanding more and more college degrees. Here’s a staggering statistic: “If over the past three decades car prices had gone up as fast as tuition, the average new car would cost more than $80,000.” Why is that? Hint: according to the author, it’s not because public funding has been cut.

5. Teaching Neuroscience in Prison (The Atlantic)

We’d really like to explore the topics of incarceration and prison reform in future episodes of Vernacular, so here’s an article to pique your interest.

Teaching in prison has allowed us to see those [less tangible] benefits firsthand, as we witness the personal growth of the people directly in front of us and the positive impact on the culture of the prison more broadly. For example, when the prisoners are together in the yard, our students spend so much of their time talking about neuroscience that they are referred to by other inmates as the “Neuroscience Guys.” In a place where identity often takes the form of loyalty to a gang, it is exciting to hear that our class embraces a different type of identity. Education fosters a noble view of oneself and of one’s relationship to the world. This is true anywhere, even inside the walls of a maximum-security prison. Maybe especially in prison — a place where education can totally redirect a life, a positive diversion from a negative path.

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