So maybe they're all selling drugs? Pulled by the lure of easy loot, (more money than they could make at McDonalds!), fine women, and phat rides, maybe the brothers are simply being pulled (by the lure of money, rides, chicks) pushed (by the lack of other jobs) into the black market (pun intended)?
If you're black or Latino and grow up in the seventies and eighties in working class urban environments, you know drug dealers. At least I did. And if you know drug dealers...REALLY know drug dealers, you know this can't explain the gap.
I heard about Steven Levitt over the summer. A young economist (well, not so young anymore) at Chicago, Levitt has become known for asking unique questions. Like "What does the Weakest Link tell us about Discrimination?" Or "What can we learn by tracking the business patterns of a drug gang?" Or "Do black people with 'black names' lose on the market?" (The answer to this last question he gave at Washington University at a talk, but I was out of my mind and missed it.)
To be honest I think his willingness to pursue these questions really tells us more about the genius of everyday folk when applied to the academy, than about HIS genius. That is, if Economics as a discipline weren't filled with white (and some asian) men of middle to upper class backgrounds, someone would've asked these questions before. But yet and still everytime I try to think about what is possible in political science, I check out Levitt's page, and Christian Davenport's.
I remember some time during the late eighties early nineties the bottom of the crack market fell out. From what I understand the supply of crack grew so fast that the profit margins became very very small...and the product became very very cheap (and crack is already pretty cheap). It was when I heard about this dynamic (which I think led to a return to drugs such as marijuana and heroin), that I really began to think about the economics of the drug trade. How can everyone get paid selling crack, if the product is being sold at a price that is just a shade above the price it's being MADE at? Better yet, if everyone is making massive loot...why do "drug-infested" neighborhoods look the way they do?
Levitt was able to track the activities of a dealer over the course of a few years, starting off with the fundamental question "if everyone in drugs gets paid, why do so many of them stay with their mothers?" He finds that dealers in upper-management positions do make loot, the ones on the ground make something closer to the money they'd make at McDonalds or at the plant (probably a little less than they'd make at the plant).
Now for economists and perhaps black public intellectuals this finding may come as a surprise. For those in the game, or for those who know the game, it shouldn't. Which brings us back to the question...where are they? They can't all be selling drugs, not only because you don't make that much loot selling drugs, if everyone did it....if drug dealers had an infinite supply of labor, low level cats would be making even less than what they make now.
So this isn't it. Can't be.
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Excellant analogy where are they;first, how and where does the count begin?High School drop out stats or high school graduation rolls,employment or unemployment figures,prison or mental hosp.population or the college freshman class.In essence they are in the urban underground not counted or miss.
Posted by: tootsie at October 27, 2003 11:00 AM