Paul Krugman - America fails the marshmallow test

[Celerity]

The marshmallow test is a famous psychological experiment that tests children’s willingness to delay gratification. Children are offered a marshmallow, but told that they can have a second marshmallow if they’re willing to wait 15 minutes before eating the first one. Claims that children with the willpower to hold out do much better in life haven’t held up well, but the experiment is still a useful metaphor for many choices in life, both by individuals and by larger groups. One way to think about the Covid-19 pandemic is that it poses a kind of marshmallow test for society.

At this point, there have been enough international success stories in dealing with the coronavirus to leave us with a clear sense of what beating the pandemic takes. First, you have to impose strict social distancing long enough to reduce the number of infected people to a small fraction of the population. Then you have to implement a regime of testing, tracing and isolating: quickly identifying any new outbreak, finding everyone exposed, and quarantining them until the danger is past. This strategy is workable. South Korea has done it. New Zealand has done it. But you have to be strict and you have to be patient, staying the course until the pandemic is over, not giving in to the temptation to return to normal life while the virus is still widespread. So it is, as I said, a kind of marshmallow test.

And America is failing that test.

New U.S. cases and deaths have declined since early April, but that’s almost entirely because the greater New York area, after a horrific outbreak, has achieved huge progress. In many parts of the country — including our most populous states, California, Texas, and Florida — the disease is still spreading. Overall, new cases are plateauing and may be starting to rise. Yet state governments are moving to reopen anyway. This is a very different story from what’s happening in other advanced countries, even hard-hit nations like Italy and Spain, where new cases have fallen dramatically. It now looks likely that by late summer we’ll be the only major wealthy nation where large numbers of people are still dying from Covid-19.

Why are we failing the test? It’s easy to blame Donald Trump, a man-child who would surely gobble down that first marshmallow, then try to steal marshmallows from other kids. But America’s impatience, its unwillingness to do what it takes to deal with a threat that can’t be beaten with threats of violence, runs much deeper than one man. It doesn’t help that Republicans are ideologically opposed to government safety-net programs, which are what make the economic consequences of social distancing tolerable; as I explain in today’s column, they seem determined to let crucial emergency relief expire far too soon. Nor does it help that even low-cost measures to limit the spread of Covid-19, above all wearing face masks (which mainly protect other people), have been caught up in our culture wars. America in 2020, it seems, is too disunited, with too many people in the grip of ideology and partisanship, to deal effectively with a pandemic. We have the knowledge, we have the resources, but we don’t have the will.

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[C_U_L8R]

1. Perfect analogy

[tblue37]

10. Those kids and their efforts were adorable. nt

[Skittles]

2. good article but that marshmellow test was very flawed

kids who never did without were much better at waiting than poorer children, who didn't often get treats or always know when their next meal was coming

[Crunchy Frog]

4. He mentions that in the column, but thinks it's still a useful metaphor.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

3. The experiment is not a "useful metaphor" because the experiment was flawed.

[Crunchy Frog]

5. I think of it like the "boiling frog" metaphor.

A frog won't actually stay in water that's slowly heating up, but it still works as a metaphor IMO.

[Buckeye_Democrat]

6. Which reminds me, is there a place I could move...

... where I'm more likely to get RICH and satisfy my hedonistic desires?

Oh, that's right... that's why several immigrants moved here.

[Hugin]

7. K&R

Willfully, will-less. Undisciplined.

[Yavin4]

8. I would have easily passed that test.

I hate marshmallows.

[Celerity]

9. lol

Even S'Mores?

[Yavin4]

14. Ah, that's different

And not offered.

[Celerity]

16. THAT would have so changed the results!!!

[Hekate]

11. Thanks, Celerity. Krugman is always a worthwhile read -- and my favorite economist for 20+ years

PS: I love burnt marshmallows

[Celerity]

12. me too! (the marshmallows)

they go great in a stout or porter for an after dinner drink in the summer evenings

[Hekate]

13. I had no idea you could do that!

Amazing.

[Hortensis]

15. This is a divided nation. One half shoved them all down

straightaway in mindless defiance but sure they'd won something important thereby. The other half as usual wondered what the fucking hell went on in their minds.

[Initech]

17. Americans want the quick fix, the easy way out.

We don't have time to analyze or do some real problem solving. What's the fastest way to get what we want? Just do it already!

That's why Trump is so appealing to his base. He's lazy and doesn't take time to analyze or do any real problem solving, he just finds the quick fix and moves on to the next thing. And his and the MAGAs' line of thinking isn't just limited to Coronavirus.