Bryan Caplan on face tattoos:
According to this amusing diagram in Cracked, facial tattoos mean “I will never have a job that pays taxes.” Many economists would presumably insist, “It’s not causal. The kind of people who tattoo their faces just have low productivity.” I admit that selection is part of reason why people with face tattoos rarely make the big bucks. But I bet that a lot of the effect is causal: A tattoo signals low productivity – and the market penalizes you accordingly, even if you’re the high-productivity exception than proves the low-productivity rule.
I would hope that most economists do recognize the causality here. Most of the impact of this causality comes from the changing preferences of the presumably young person who gets the face tat. Insofar as people’s life outlook changes as they get older – they move from rebellion to conformity – a face tattoo limits long-term earning potential to somewhere around their current income. The exceptions to this rule are in the realms of cage fighting, bar bouncing, drug dealing, rapping, and drumming. In these occupations, face tattoos may actually improve future earning potential.
Corporate Lawyer
But what makes the tattoo-wearer, at this moment in time, think that a face/neck tattoo is a good decision? Only someone who values the present much more than the future would think this. This group is filled with people who generally have a low expectation of living past the age of 25 or 30. You’ll often hear people of this mindset state in very explicit terms that they don’t expect to live past that age, and, in the event that they do, they’ll act surprised by their fortune. A better way to say it is that their personal “discount rate” – the rate at which they discount the value of their future life – is very, very high. So they are more oriented towards the present since the future is utterly worthless to them. That is their reality – though I don’t mean to excuse it. But the question remains, why the tattoo? A person can have a low future expectation without inking it on their face.
Another component of this is that the facial tattoo-wearer is basically setting himself up for failure. At the moment that he decides to get the tattoo, he does not want to be the type of person that will ever sell out by getting a decent, middle class, respectable 8-to-5. Tattoos have historically been an act of rebellion, and this truth still holds. In order to ensure that he isn’t lured on to a conformist path, the tattoo-wearer limits himself through the non-obscure tattoo.
I believe that this is self-trickery. People who get face tats have a scapegoat – something that reaffirms their initial suspicion. They disdain middle class values – selling out – and want to believe that middle class values are out of tune with them rather than the opposite. If they can tell themselves that nobody will hire them then that reaffirms their suspicion about the middle class and employers in the first place. All of this rationalization takes place near the beginning of adulthood, or, a point at which the agent has poor knowledge about what their future desires, wants, and wishes may be. The face tattoo ties them to rebellion for life.
Caplan asks us to ponder a thought experiment:
On your 18th birthday, your worst enemy slips something in your drink, then tattoos your face. You’re too chicken to get the tattoo removed. Question: How much would this tattoo affect the present value of your lifetime earnings?
Remember to account for the effects on your occupational options, compensation, promotions, and unemployment. Plus any additional channels that come to mind. Can you really keep a straight face and say that a prominent, scary facial tattoo would reduce the present value of your lifetime earnings by less than 25%?
I like that Caplan brings these issues into the realm of economics. Usually they’re ignored or only handled by manicured sociologists. But the argument here, which is correct in noting the causality, is just a little short-sighted because it disallows the choice of the agent who makes the signalling decision. It’s incorrect to ask how much the income of a randomly chosen person would decrease if he were to have a tattoo etched on his face. If we randomly chose a guy destined to become a corporate lawyer, his future income would decrease by upwards of 90%. If we randomly tattooed a guy who was destined to work at McDonald’s, his future income would decrease by much less. In some of the realms mentioned at the top of the post, his income might actually increase.
But that’s just picking nits. The face tattoo alone limits career options. A wearer can’t even get his foot in the door regardless of his resume. On a side note, how long until liberals begin judging polite society for judging the facially tattooed? How long until anti-discrimination measures become enacted?
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A face or neck tattoo is less expensive than fine jewelry.
A face or neck tattoo can’t be stolen, unlike fine jewelry.
A face or neck tattoo denotes “membership”, or “who owns your ass”.
First, exceptions don’t prove rules; exceptions invalidate rules.
Second, every place I’ve ever worked at or with has an informal policy that they will not hire anyone with visible tats, for reasons described above. Visible is the key word. Lots of the guys have tats; they just don’t show in a jacket and tie. And there is at least one secretary – er, administrative assistant – that always wears high-neckline shirts and blouses due to a youthful indiscretion that might have once been cute but now is just a source of embarrassment.
Third (and this is for the ladies) if your tats are visible in business casual or evening formal, I won’t date you. But I might bang you, because visible tats are an indicator of poor judgement and poor self-control. I like that in a girl.
They disdain middle class values – selling out – and want to believe that middle class values are out of tune with them rather than the opposite.
This idea deserves a post of its own. It somewhat sums up much of what you’ve been writing about of late. Choices matter, mores matter, we can’t just smash our way through life, do anything we want, and expect the world to conform to us.
Dude tattooed an ICE CREAM CONE on his face! With lightning bolts no less. What a fool. Now tell me he’s some Rapsta worth $100 mil
“This idea deserves a post of its own. It somewhat sums up much of what you’ve been writing about of late. Choices matter, mores matter, we can’t just smash our way through life, do anything we want, and expect the world to conform to us.”
You can if you have an all-powerful government on your side.
SlartiBartfast: That’s rapper Gucci Mane. I doubt strongly he’s worth 100mil, but I am sure he’s doing a damn sight better than all of us on glpiggy.net
That’s rapper Gucci Mane. I doubt strongly he’s worth 100mil, but I am sure he’s doing a damn sight better than all of us on glpiggy.net
I doubt that he’s even worth $5 million and he’ll surely be flat broke after he falls off the charts and no one’s buying his albums any more. See Ja Rule or MC Hammer. Gucci Mane has already done several short prison stints and he’s currently under review to have his probation revoked, which would automatically lead to a long sentence for his next signficant infraction. His lawyer is desperate and pulling the “insanity” plea when last I heard.
It’s very rare for any hip-hoppers to have any financial sense. P Diddy and Jay-Z are the very rare exception. But the hip-hoppers (especially Southern rappers) who have frequent legal problems are generally the ones that descend into poverty after their fickle rap fandom moves on without them.
And I think we assume that all rappers have real money just because we’ve heard their name and saw them on TV, but they rent pretty much all of those mansions, jets and cars you see in their videos. The rapper Mystikal won 2 grammies but had to borrow money from his record company just to defend himself from sexual battery charges. He did 6 years and is now sitting destitute in some Louisiana backwater with no record deal.
BTW, the rapper Big Boi (from Outkast) is in my Wednesday night bowling league here in Atlanta and he looks far from rich. I’m going to snap a picture of him with my iPhone.
You stumble upon something very important: risk aversion increases with life expectancy. Maybe one reason why societies like ours decline is the wealthy, who are concerned about the next 2 or 3 generations after them (trust funds, endowments) don’t value the present enough.
Off topic–
Why isn’t the alt-right sphere blogging about the following:
It actually looks like the Supreme Court might ban affirmative action in university and college admissions, even when it’s labeled seeking diversity. They’ve taken up a case which they’ll probably hear this fall, where a white woman alleges she was discriminated against on the basis of her race by the U. of Texas. She lost twice below.
Roberts, Alito, Scalia and Thomas are all sure to vote against affirmative action. The swing voter on left – right cases, Kennedy, vote against affirmative action in the 2003 5-4 decision allowing racial “diversity” to be a “plus factor” written by Sandra Day O’Conner. Kagen who’s on the left of course has recused herself because she argued the case for the Feds in a lower court.
The left is mighty worried. Heh.
Logically if race based AA gets banned from college admissions, it should be banned from corporate hiring as well. Also if discrimination including so called positive discrimination on the basis of race is banned it should be banned on the basis of sex as well, under the civil rights acts.
The Ricci case also looks like it’s coming back to the Supreme Court as well. They haven’t agreed to take it yet, but the plantiffs’ attorney in the Ricci case has petitioned them too. We’ll know in about 90 days. This could mean the end of the absurd disparate impact test for racial discrimination.
Actually after doing a little looking, though Ricci is coming back under a different name, it probably won’t produce a ruling on disparate impact tests in general. That’ll come though.
does this count as a face tat?
http://www.theonion.com/video/high-unemployment-linked-to-increasing-number-of-f,26741/
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Their are plenty of affordable ways to remove tattoos if you don’t have enough money for a lazer. Sand paper, cheese grater, clothing iron. The list goes one.