Idiocracy & Today's Papers

Evidence of idiocracy is coming fast and furious this morning.

1. Number Three beat me to the punch on this one. But thought I'd share this statistic from from Stephen Prothero's new book, Religious Literacy: "Nearly two-thirds of Americans endorse the simultaneous teaching of creationism and evolution in public schools." But "fewer than half of us can identify Genesis as the first book of the Bible." I'd like to know more about the people who don't know Genesis but want creationism taught, but I'm afraid of them.

2. A second article: "Married couples with children now occupy fewer than one in every four households -- a share that has been slashed in half since 1960 and is the lowest ever recorded by the census. . . . The working class and the poor, meanwhile, increasingly steer away from marriage, while living together and bearing children out of wedlock." Not that I care about living in sin, but this is depressing. For some very confusing reason, sociologists have concluded that the poor and working class have come to see marriage as a "luxury good" that they can't afford. I just don't get this. Where's the economic logic in that? How can you afford kids but not marriage? Marriage is cheap, even if living together is cheaper! But kids are expensive! I can think of lots of cultural explanations for the pattern, but I don't see how economic thinking can make sense of it.