Value Competition

Reflections on an Unread Book

Off to board for PDX in a half hour...the comment the other week on Charles Murray is still on my mind...Murray has an exceptional gift for provocation, and the theme of his new one--the moral collapse of the white American working class over the last fifty years--indeed provokes me, even or perhaps especially since I haven't read it...

One reaction/thought embodied in a pompous title I just drafted for this post and then scratched: A Dream of a Better Future for a Distressed Working Class: Politics as the New Opium of the People and Why That's a Good Thing.

The thought: Instead of banging on about decline and decay, we need to think about what can give a renewed purpose to the lives of people in the American working class. 

I completely respect the claim--I take it this is M's own normative position--that if the American elite starts affirming the socially conservative values by which it lives that that affirmation might help the working class.  The elite believes, and the people follow.

Fair enough--but I just don't think that claim corresponds to a big part of social reality in which non-elites need to define themselves against elite ideology rather than simply adopting it.

Thus my line: Just as the recession of certain elites from religious belief centuries ago opened up space for a popular embrace of religion that helped people down the socioeconomic ladder at one stage in history, a recession of certain elites from political belief now could open up space for a working class embrace of politics.

Currently American elites dominate the ranks of true believers of both red and blue stripes.  I am highly hopeful that if that became much less true, the prospects for working class people in our country would become much better.  If blue faith and red faith became the heartland properties of people in the lower ranks of our society instead of those at the top, the worrisome features of contemporary working class life would have a much better chance of turning around than under our current regime.  Or so it seems this morning at Newark airport :)

 

 

Reflections on 21st Century Integration

I was born in 1955, and will be forever shaped by the struggle for integration in schools, businesses, housing, and society that I read about as a child—police hoses turned on children in Birmingham, the passage of the Fair Housing Act in the aftermath of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., and many other moments that were simultaneously inspiring and tragic.  As an adult, I see myself as trying to carry on a version of that struggle for integration in the much less dramatic and tragic setting of two affluent suburban communities near the poor, majority black city of Newark.  

Over time, I have become much more optimistic about the prospects for integration both in my community and more broadly.   When my wife and I and our young children moved to our community from Newark twenty years ago this year, I saw the community as an imperiled island of integration in a sea of segregation to our east and west.  When I was running real estate tests and helping to set up a pro-integrative loan program for a local pro-integration organization ten plus years ago, I worried about whether the community would be able to maintain long-term integration in the schools, and was very pessimistic about the prospects for two integrated suburbs near us that were less affluent and highly-educated than our community.   Nowadays, a huge influx of people from around the world, especially Asia, Latin America, and Africa, has transformed the university in which I work, has transformed the two nearby suburbs I just mentioned, is beginning to transform my community (in which 27% of the residents with family origins in Africa were born overseas per the 2010 census), and I believe will continue to transform the place where I live and am active.  

I am extremely positive about the ongoing changes in America, New Jersey, my university, nearby communities, and my own community that have made these places a magnet for people from around the world.   Last year, I helped found a non-profit civic organization devoted to celebrating and promoting my community as an international one, and I remain strongly committed to that vision and to that organization, in which I serve as president.

Much as I am impressed and grateful at the rise of an open-to-the-world country and community, there are some thorny issues both at the political level—it is very important, I believe, to keep sight of the traditional integration issues involving blacks and whites in America that I grew up with—and the personal level. 

It is fine, I believe, if my faith in an international present and future for my community inspires me to work harder and more effectively as a school board member and candidate for reelection this year.   It is not fine at all if my official position is misused in an effort to gain benefits for my civic organization.  Nor is it fine—and here the lines can be subjective and trickier to draw—if my civic activism leads me as a board member to support positions that I think are good for the cause of a global present and future in my community but that are not good for the children in the schools and the taxpayers.   Governmental bodies like school boards can benefit from the energy of people like myself who have strong value-based commitments that are expressed in activism in religious groups, civic groups, and other kinds of non-government organizations.  But there are rightful expectations that people in government are obliged to represent the broad public interest, not a sectarian or organizational interest, no matter how worthy the interest may be.

Applying Kahan to Kahan

I believe Dan Kahan is doing excellent work in blending social psychology and law.  In particular, I find myself deeply in sympathy with his proposal that judicial resolutions of culturally contested matters be done if posssible in a way that affirms the worth of different cultural stances rather than judicially taking sides with one position over another.

In that spirit, a proposal: Kahan over the years has called the stance that more or less corresponds to modern conservatism "hierarchical individualism."  I believe that's a term that's likely to provoke in many conservatives exactly the sense of science being used in a biased, culturally partisan fashion that Kahan is concerned about.  How about "meritocratic individualism" or "desert-oriented" individualism?  Either term works better than "hierarchical" as one that conservatives are likely to accept as a self-description.   If Kahan wants to emphasize a traditionalist component in conservatism as opposed to liberalism, then "traditionalist individualism" would work fine, I believe.

I suspect part of the problem here is that Kahan has kept the same terms for cultural stances for years, even as his view of conservatism has become less negative over time (and/or his concern about both sides respecting the other has increased).

Compare "hierarchical individualism" with its more than faintly pejorative associations to "egalitarian communitariansm,"  the term Kahan usually uses for the stance similar to modern liberalism.   If you wanted to emphasize the culturally modernizing side of liberalism, you might pick another name, like "modernizing communitarianism (or egalitarianism)."  But the label Kahan uses (like the alternative labels) is not likely to be seen as pejorative, and corresponds pretty well, I believe, to the self-understanding of liberals in a way that "hierarchical individualism" does not, or so I believe, for conservatives. 

 

 

Was Obama Helped or Hurt by Race-Based Voting in 2008?: What Science Can and Cannot Say, Part 2

Three suggestions on how one might try to actually answer the above question, as opposed to providing red (or blue) meat for ideological warriors:

1.  In the spirit of Nate Silver, look at 2008 polling comparing Obama vs. a generic Republican to Hillary vs. a generic Republican.  As opposed to the high-tech "science porn" of the paper cited in the previous post, the low-tech approach of doing head-to-head polling comparisons has considerable merit as a way to try to answer the underlying question.  (One issue: In my view, both Obama and Clinton were better than average Dem. candidates relative to the Kerry/Gore/Dukakis/Mondale average or below average Dem. candidate.  There is thus a problem with priors on candidate quality driving one's results to some degree; the problem of priors is not nearly as bad, though, with polling compared to the paper's technique, where the reader's priors drive everything.)   

2.  Use demographics and other factors to claim in advance (no peeking at the results first!) that certain states, counties, or regions are logical baselines for an average swing from 2004 to 2008, and then look at whether the overall swing was bigger or smaller than in these "neutral" areas.   For example: my state of NJ is prima facie not a bad choice for that purpose, given its fairly nationally representative proportions of blacks and Latinos and lack of strong home state effects in 2004 and 2008; of course it also has some issues (a pretty strong 2000-2004 shift to the Republicans presumably related to 9/11 would be expected to lead to some Dem. bounceback in 2008 regardless of the candidate; the fairly deep blue quality of NJ makes Dem. gains harder all else equal; the ultra-dense quality of the state might go along with a pro-diversity, anti-racism vote being especially strong; the relatively high level of racist Google searches in the state might lead one to guess the other way).   The NJ Kerry and Obama percentages in 2004 and 2008 (just looked them up):  53.6 and 57.3--up 3.7.  The national Democratic percentages: 48.3 and 52.9--up 4.6.  So if NJ is a good "neutral" baseline, race-based voting helped Obama slightly, by the about 1 point difference between the larger national Dem. bump and the smaller NJ bump.  Intuitively, that feels about right to me.  (It would be interesting for someone (not me!) to try to develop a "neutral baseline" analysis in this setting or another one...perhaps our friends in poli sci are already on this particular case.)

3.  Try to tease out a high-tech answer by exploring the shape of the race-based voting function.  One might be able to interpret the data to support a conclusion that the function is not linear but parabolic, with high racism areas much more anti-Obama and high anti-racism areas somewhat more pro-Obama, or the reverse, with the function being hyperbolic rather than parabolic.  One might  then maneuver to make an argument that the shape of the function plus the number of areas in the different categories warrants a conclusion that Obama was helped or hurt by race-based voting.  I defer to those with better tech skills than my own, but I'm dubious this will work without making some assumptions about a baseline, as in #2 above.

Was Obama Helped or Hurt by Race-Based Voting in 2008?: What Science Can and Cannot Say

        A recent paper by a Harvard Ph.D. student illustrates how science can fail to answer the question (hat tip: Tyler Cowen).   The paper's method: Use Google searches using the N-word as a proxy for racism; areas with the highest level of such searches (e.g., West Virginia) are about 5 points less for Obama than areas with the lowest level of such searches (e.g., Laredo, TX) when other factors are controlled for; conclude, "The estimates imply that racial animus in the United States cost Obama three to five percentage points in the national popular vote in the 2008 election."

     Hardly.  100% of the work of the conclusion is based on one's priors; the method has no value whatsover in determining whether Obama was helped or hurt in 2008 by race-based voting.  The author may be correct; so may a reader who thinks that Obama was helped overall by race-based voting from voters in places like the Virginia and North Carolina suburbs, places considerably more important than West Virginia where he was likely hurt.

        Since this is an academic blog rather than a rant-blog, I will not rant here.  I will instead say that the paper just noted is a good example of how science can be applied in a way that amounts to porn for red advocates, blue advocates, and those like myself who are emotional about the misuse of science as a tool for ideological advocacy.

Make-Buy, Formal-Informal, and Dictated-Negotiated

Above are three dimensions that apply to purchaser-supplier relations and that can be applied to public policy arguments.

Some applications to public schools and specifically to labor reform possibilities for a school district:

a) Example of Buy-Formal-Negotiated: Contract with an outside provider—say a retooled version of Chris Whittle’s Edison Project--for all or a part of a district’s teaching staff (formal because of need for contract specs; negotiated because a local district will not be able to impose terms on a serious outside provider like Whittle);

b) Example of Buy-Formal-Dictated: Contract with an outside provider in which either the district or the provider can impose terms on the other;

c) Example of Buy-Informal-Dictated: After state law changes to allow doing this, enter into one-year informal contracts with individual teachers with pay dictated by district;

d) Example of Buy-Informal-Negotiated: After  state law changes to allow doing this, enter into one-year informal contracts with individual teachers; at least with good teachers, district accepts teachers negotiating for better pay on their own, or through individual as opposed to union reps;

e) Example of Make-Formal-Dictated: State and/or district power to impose detailed specs on productivity standards that teachers must meet to be retained;

f) Example of Make-Formal-Negotiated: Give union sweeteners to induce them to accept a new contract with detailed specs on productivity standards that teachers must meet;

g) Example of Make-Informal-Negotiated: Keep lockstep pay, tenure, etc., but pitch the many rules of the existing union contract in favor of a much shorter new contract;

h) Example of Make-Informal-Dictated: Eliminate lockstep pay, tenure, etc. along with the many rules of the existing labor contract in favor of a much shorter informal contract with terms imposed by the district.

The ed reform mainstream as reflected in the Department of Education’s Race to the Top and in current state legislative proposals or enactments in Trenton, Denver, and elsewhere is tilted pretty heavily toward Make-Formal-Dictated (with an admixture of Make-Formal-Negotiated to the extent the unions have a seat at the table).  I believe mandating  box e) is a substantial error for reformers.  I suspect that a), b), c), d), and h) are all worth experimenting with as well as e) in order to see what kind of new labor system for public school teachers works best. 

Make or Buy or Fuhgeddaboutit

The trichotomy above is a way to present SC based public policy arguments...

Application to health care...mainstream too heavily tilted toward BUY?  Possible value of FUHGEDDABOUTIT in the form of removing subsidies for private insurance for ordinary health care costs and of MAKE in the form of VA-style health care w/ civil servant doctors providing reasonable if not top-notch coverage available to all who have catastrophic health care costs...

Possible value of SC framework in getting people to think about policy on health care and other issues in a less emotionally invested, ideological way...success of that long-term depends on the framework not being tilted toward the regulatory or the deregulatory side...

 

SC Concepts Applied to Labor and Health Care Policy

Some notes for a brief presentation I'll be doing at our SCMMS department meeting on Friday on applying supply chain concepts to public policy issues:

1) Prominence of finance/econ concepts (e.g., proper incentives)  in public policy discussions--management concepts (e.g., working effectively in teams) also fairly prominent--SC concepts not now prominent--can we advance them?

 2) Example--current controversy in different states--NJ, Ohio, Wisconsin, etc. over government employee unions, collective bargaining, etc.--

                i)  prominence of arguments about bad incentives of high job security, lockstep compensation--finance/econ influence;

                ii) prominence of arguments about the role of internal motivation and teamwork, not just economic incentives--management influence;

                iii) SC concepts are not currently prominent in the back-and-forth on unions;

                iv) One way to apply SC concepts to the debate on employee representation--

                        a) The firm is the purchaser, employees are suppliers;

                        b)  Collective bargaining by employees is like a firm facing suppliers who all combine to fix prices--highly undesirable from the purchasing point of view;

                        c)  Expecting or requiring one's employees to be completely unrepresented is like expecting or requiring one's suppliers to be completely unrepresented--firm may be able to get a lower price, but problems with establishing long-term cooperation, trust with a one-sided relationship in which procurement imposes nonrepresentation on the supplier;

                        d) Putting the two SC points together--neither collective bargaining for suppliers nor      imposing lack of representation for suppliers makes sense.  Better would be a setup in which firms and  government agencies would deal on price with individual representatives--agents, like the agents for     baseball players--for employees who choose to retain them.   That would parallel the way most purchasers deal with suppliers.

                        e) Different SC arguments can be made to support different positions on unions, just as different finance/econ and management arguments can be made.  The point is not that there is one right SC answer but that SC offers a valuable new lens for thinking about the employee representation issue.

2) Second example--current controversy nationally over health care--six options from left to right--Medicare for all/Canada vs. public option vs. government subsidies for private insurance plus mandates (Obama, Romney) vs. current system vs. voucherization (Ryan) vs. marketizing health care by withdrawing government subsidies.

            i) economic concepts central to the debate--also strong presence of moral arguments about health care as a non-market good--some role of management concepts, such as culture--e.g., discussions of how health care providers in Minnesota do not bill as heavily as health care providers in Miami--again, SC concepts are not prominent currently;

            ii) One way to relate SC to the health care debate:

                        a)  Think of the government as a firm, of individuals as multiple purchasing agents within the firm, and of health care providers as suppliers of different kinds of widgets.  The policy issue--what role if any should the firm take in subsidizing or centrally controlling purchasing?

                        b)  One SC point--It would be foolish for the firm to subsdize "purchasing insurance" offered by suppliers or by insurance company middlemen under which employees would prepay for widget purchases--such insurance will jack up costs to the firm because purchasers will face no budget constraint or a minimal one when they buy;

                        c) Extending the earlier point--far from subsidizing "purchasing insurance" for ordinary purchases of widgets, the firm might want to ban its employees from buying it from suppliers;

                        d)  Now assume there are possible disruptions in widget supplies that are disastrous to the part of the firm a purchaser is acting for--these possible disastrous disruptions are comparable to catastrophic medical expenses for an individual;

                        e) What should the firm do about possible disruptions in widget supplies that will be disastrous to parts of the firm?    One SC reply--there is a case for centralizing disruption insurance firm-wide rather than having the individual purchasers all get their own.  The individual purchasers will insure to protect their own function against disaster, which may not be in accord with the firm's interest.

                        f) One SC bottom-line on health care policy, based on the preceding points:  Remove any government support for ordinary health care expenses and create a government catastrophic insurance program.

                        g) SC concepts could be used to generate different policy conclusions on health care.   Again, the idea is to advance SC as a good new lens for people discussing public policy to employ, not to claim that there is one correct SC answer.  Just as policy advocates now use economic concepts to argue for both liberal and conservative health care policies, SC concepts can be the basis for both liberal and conservative arguments.

My OWS Sign

I'm planning on checking out the Occupy Wall Street scene at Zuccotti Park this weekend...I have a big tri-fold poster left over from a poster-making project for a GlobalSOMA party last weekend, and I plan on making a sign to bring to the party.  The content may be a bit to the left of my true positions, but needs to be close enough; the thought is to be sympathetic to OWS while being true to myself, which is what I tried to do in an easier context with my signs last fall when I went to the Stewart-Colbert Rally to Restore Sanity.   (And what I should do some day by going to a Tea Party rally--though I would have to go some ways to the right of my true positions to avoid my TP sign being an exercise in trolldom, I think I could do a decent "The Left of the Right" sign for a TP get-together...ah well, a project for another day.)

My first draft of text for the central part of the sign--still working on ideas for the left and right sides:

OWS

WE ARE The Daoist Individualists Groupuscule

What We Believe In:

Freedom and the Truth of Opposites

What Do We Want???

1.  Freedom to Take Risks!

We should have a law that, unlike Obamacare, provides all Americans with clear security against being ruined by catastrophic medical expenses.   That will give us the security to quit boring jobs with insurance and start new businesses and NGOs.

Also, we should experiment--and work to change the law as necessary--so faith communities and activist groups like OWS can offer health insurance, not just employers.

We should also have government support for private sector "life venture equity" in which young people get money for a new business or other project in return for the venture capitalist receiving a percentage of the recipient's lifetime earnings.   Carefully crafted government backing for venture capitalists who invest in individuals can help bring a life venture equity market alive.

Where the other side has a point: We're moving beyond the old days of all-powerful doctors and ignorant patients.  With a more informed citizenry and more and more elective health care, we should increasingly be paying for our own non-catastrophic health care.  Also, we need to recognize that the government would do a poor job in getting any kind of return if it directly gave money to young people to support their ideas; we need the expertise and the economic motivation of finance people in the private sector.

2.  Freedom from the Domination of Big Finance!

There ought to be a law against giant interstate retail banks.  Let's make retail banking local again, and let's separate it from investment banking.

Also, finance should be taxed to reflect its social costs.  It's phony for the big banks to say they've paid back their TARP loans when there are still huge losses from AIG, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac, all of which the big banks used as dumping grounds for risk in the housing bubble.

Where the other side has a point: Finance is a necessary and very useful business.  We here in NYC and the NYC area should definitely criticize Wall Street--but we also should be proud of a sector that is a central support for our city's greatness in the arts, the sciences, culture, style, and innovation.

3.  Freedom to move!

The United States should let a lot more people come from other countries to study. work, and live.  So should other nations.

This is about our freedom to move as Americans to another place, as well as freedom for people in other countries to come here.  It's much harder to work and settle in Germany and China and most all nations than it should be, not just America.

Where the other side has a point: Completely open borders here and in other wealthy countries are unrealistic.  Even though we should double or triple the number of people we allow to immigrate to the United States each year, we will still need border and internal immigration controls of various kinds.

4.  Freedom for workers!

There ought to be a law that says you have the freedom to hire an agent to bargain for you without your employer discriminating against you. 

Also, there ought to be "we'll work for less" management firms that are available to shareholders who want to replace overpaid and underperforming bosses with cheaper and better ones.   Business schools and public administration schools should be encouraging some of their MBAs and other students to be starting such "we'll work for less" firms and working for them.

Where the other side has a point: Collective bargaining under American private sector labor law and state public sector labor laws, as opposed to the bargaining on behalf of individuals that we favor, tends to be good for senior and less productive workers, but not so good for workers as a whole or for the enterprises, non-profits, or government agencies they work in.   Also, government-mandated restrictions on executive pay, as opposed to checks arising from market competition, are very blunt instruments to be used with caution if at all. 

5.  Freedom to serve our country!

As much as the U.S. military should be appreciated, it is too big, and should not be the only large-scale way for young people to volunteer to serve their country for a number of years.  We should cut military spending--and with the money saved we should create an "Americans for America and the World" corps in which as many young people as are now in the military could sign up to work on infrastructure projects in America and on infrastructure and other projects in other countries. 

Where the other side has a point: The US military is an important force for good in the world.  In proposing an alternative large-scale form of national service, we should not fall into the trap of denouncing the military.  Our country and our foreign policy are imperfect, as are all other countries and their policies; the point is to make America better, not to demonize it.

6.  Freedom to experiment!

The federal government should get out of the way of states and localities that want to try "harm reduction" approaches to drugs instead of punitive incarceration.

Where the other side has a point: We do need some laws restricting heroin, cocaine, and other highly dangerous drugs.  What we need is a better balance and state and local freedom to innovate, not across-the-board legalization of all drugs.

The Coalitional Nature of the Republicans Compared to the Democrats

As one who is bothered by Paul Krugman's pugilistic lack of charity for the right, my first inclination is to look at his reflections on how immigration policy creates an internal conflict within the hearts of Democrats--with cultural liberalism and support for diversity and inclusiveness clashing with economic liberalism and the problem of combining an open door with a strong welfare state--and an external conflict between groups of Republicans--with pro-business, pro-immigration economic conservatism clashing with nativist social conservatism--in that light.

On reflection, I think Krugman is on to something about the differing natures of the parties' bases, with the Republicans more divided into different camps of economic and cultural conservatives.  To put his proposition in operational terms: The highly-educated Democratic elite is inclined to economic liberalism that roughly parallels the party as a whole as well as to cultural liberalism, while the high-income Republican elite is not prone to social conservatism in a way that parallels the party as a whole.

Let's check it out with the ANES Michigan data, using a social issue to check on how the high-income Republicans stack up compared to their less well-off peers and then an economic issue to do the same thing for the highly-educated Democrats.

First, the Republicans, whose response are shown below by income for a question on whether the Bible is true without error:

Frequency Distribution
Cells contain: -Column percent -Weighted N		VCF0114
		1 0 to 16 percentile	2 17 to 33 percentile	3 34 to 67 percentile	4 68 to 95 percentile	5 96 to 100 percentile	ROW TOTAL
VCF0845	1: The Bible is God's word and all it says is true	63.5 278.0	57.8 295.0	51.0 645.0	35.7 431.0	22.4 66.0	46.2 1,715.0
	2: The Bible was written by men inspired by God but it	25.1 110.0	34.1 174.0	40.9 517.0	53.7 648.0	64.4 190.0	44.1 1,639.0
	3: The Bible is a really good book because it was written	5.7 25.0	4.7 24.0	4.6 58.0	5.9 71.0	8.1 24.0	5.4 202.0
	4: The Bible was written by men who lived so long ago that	1.8 8.0	1.0 5.0	1.3 17.0	1.7 20.0	2.7 8.0	1.6 58.0
	9: DK;other	3.9 17.0	2.4 12.0	2.1 27.0	3.1 37.0	2.4 7.0	2.7 100.0
	COL TOTAL	100.0 438.0	100.0 510.0	100.0 1,264.0	100.0 1,207.0	100.0 295.0	100.0 3,714.0

Note the considerable difference between the responses of well-off Republicans and those of lower-income one.

Now the Democrats, on the perennial issue of government-provided health care:

Cells contain: -Column percent -Weighted N		VCF0140A
		1 8 grades or less ('grade school')	2 9-12 grades ('high school'), no diploma/equivalency	3 12 grades, diploma or equivalency	4 12 grades, diploma or equivalency, plus non-academic	5 Some college, no degree;junior/community college level	6 BA level degree	7 Advanced degrees incl. LLB	ROW TOTAL
VCF0806	1: Government insurance plan	34.0 429.6	30.9 442.9	22.9 620.0	24.3 180.7	23.2 432.3	18.4 192.3	21.3 101.4	25.2 2,399.2
	2	6.8 85.9	8.4 120.0	10.0 270.3	6.2 45.8	14.0 260.0	15.5 162.2	16.9 80.1	10.8 1,024.4
	3	5.4 67.6	7.4 106.0	10.9 293.4	7.4 54.7	12.5 232.3	17.1 178.7	17.3 82.2	10.7 1,015.0
	4	10.3 129.6	12.0 171.9	15.6 421.3	13.3 99.1	15.0 278.9	18.0 188.6	18.5 88.1	14.5 1,377.5
	5	4.9 61.2	5.3 76.4	7.5 203.4	8.6 63.7	9.5 177.7	10.6 110.6	9.1 43.3	7.7 736.3
	6	3.8 47.8	4.5 64.1	6.5 176.1	6.9 51.2	6.4 118.6	6.6 68.7	6.0 28.7	5.8 555.1
	7: Private insurance plan	11.8 148.6	12.2 174.8	10.3 277.9	17.5 130.4	8.5 158.3	6.0 63.0	5.1 24.1	10.3 977.1
	9: DK;haven't thought much about it	23.1 291.6	19.4 278.4	16.3 441.1	15.9 118.2	11.0 205.4	7.9 82.5	5.7 27.3	15.2 1,444.6
	COL TOTAL	100.0 1,261.9	100.0 1,434.5	100.0 2,703.6	100.0 744.0	100.0 1,863.5	100.0 1,046.5	100.0 475.0	10

Here the highly educated Democrats aren't so different from the less educated overall, though elite Democrats are less likely to support the government insurance or private insurance ends of the scale.

So on these two issues, the hypothesis is corroborated: Highly educated Democrats are close to their peers in embracing economic liberalism, while well-off Republicans do not match their peers in support of cultural conservatism.

How about on the immigration issue itself?  Let's see...

First, the Dems:

Frequency Distribution
Cells contain: -Column percent -Weighted N		VCF0140A
		1 8 grades or less ('grade school')	2 9-12 grades ('high school'), no diploma/equivalency	3 12 grades, diploma or equivalency	4 12 grades, diploma or equivalency, plus non-academic	5 Some college, no degree;junior/community college level	6 BA level degree	7 Advanced degrees incl. LLB	ROW TOTAL
VCF0879A	1: Increased	7.0 22.9	8.0 48.7	5.8 94.8	7.9 13.7	7.4 76.3	16.3 109.3	16.7 49.2	8.8 414.8
	3: Same as now	38.0 124.7	38.1 231.2	35.1 571.1	38.9 66.8	37.4 387.0	44.3 297.6	45.6 134.0	38.3 1,812.5
	5: Decreased	50.1 164.5	52.1 315.7	57.9 942.9	50.3 86.5	52.6 543.3	36.5 245.5	35.0 102.8	50.7 2,401.1
	8: DK	4.9 16.2	1.8 10.8	1.3 20.5	2.9 5.0	2.6 27.0	3.0 19.9	2.7 7.8	2.3 107.2
	COL TOTAL	100.0 328.3	100.0 606.4	100.0 1,629.3	100.0 172.0	100.0 1,033.5	100.0 672.3	100.0 293.9	100.0 4,735.6

There is a modest but real difference between the highly educated Dems and their peers, with the highly educated more in favor of immigration.

Now the GOP:

Frequency Distribution
Cells contain: -Column percent -Weighted N		VCF0114
		1 0 to 16 percentile	2 17 to 33 percentile	3 34 to 67 percentile	4 68 to 95 percentile	5 96 to 100 percentile	ROW TOTAL
VCF0879A	1: Increased	9.8 33.6	7.5 37.6	5.3 57.9	6.4 72.3	7.6 22.1	6.6 223.5
	3: Same as now	34.6 118.6	33.9 170.7	39.2 431.4	39.7 450.2	39.5 114.4	38.1 1,285.3
	5: Decreased	52.3 179.1	56.7 285.8	54.5 600.0	52.0 589.5	48.3 140.1	53.2 1,794.5
	8: DK	3.2 11.0	1.9 9.7	1.1 12.4	2.0 22.6	4.5 13.1	2.0 68.9
	COL TOTAL	100.0 342.4	100.0 503.8	100.0 1,101.6	100.0 1,134.7	100.0 289.7	100.0 3,372.

The difference between the well-off Republicans and the rest is minimal. 

A summary of the limited test of Krugman's conjecture: The conjecture that Republican high-income elites are more divided from their base on cultural issues than Democratic highly-educated elites are divided from their base on economic issues works well for health care and Biblical inerrancy.  On immigration itself, well-off Republicans differ very little from their peers, while highly-educated Democrats are a fair amount more pro-immigration.