The EconomistSeptember 28th 2019 United States 43plead their cases to police, whose disbelief
can return them to jail.
em’s defenders argue, correctly, that re-
maining at home with an ankle monitor is
better than going to jail. But that is a low bar
to clear. Like jail, which charges inmates
exorbitant fees for essentials,emextracts
fees from people convicted of no crime.
States and cities could use the cost savings
from jailing fewer people to pay forem.In-
stead, many see poor people as yet another
source of revenue.
Monitoring also stigmatises people. As
David Gaspar, operations manager for the
Bail Project, notes, when people see some-
one with an ankle monitor, they do not
think “There’s an innocent person.” They
wonder what that person did. And the bur-
dens this stigma imposes can outlast the
reason why they are fitted. Ms Merchant’s
case was dismissed when the complainant
repeatedly failed to appear in court. She
still owes Marion County hundreds of dol-
lars in monitoring fees. 7T
une in toa college football match in
America, and you might think that you
were watching a professional rather than
an amateur sport. The biggest stadiums
routinely fill over 100,000 seats. Corporate
sponsorships are common. Television
broadcasts are supersaturated with ads for
expensive pick-up trucks and beers. All
told, America’s college athletic depart-
ments brought in a combined $18.1bn of
revenue in 2017, upfrom $9.8bn in 2007.
Despite the popularity of their output,
college athletes receive no remuneration.
The National College Athletic Association
(ncaa), which governs college sports, has
long forbidden its players to receive any
compensation. These ordinances have al-
ways been controversial. But after years of
legal challenges and intense public scruti-
ny, thencaa’s clampdown on paying jocks
is at last starting to crack.
On September 10th California passed a
bill which would allow athletes at colleges
in the state with lucrative sports pro-
grammes to hire agents and earn money on
the side through sponsorship deals or
autograph sales. The bill still needs to be
signed by the governor, and would not
come into effect until 2023. Similar legisla-
tion is being considered in other states and
at the federal level.
Some lawmakers would like to go onestep further. Senator Bernie Sanders, a
presidential candidate, put it plainly when
he tweeted: “College athletes are workers.
Pay them.” Yet treating athletes as employ-
ees could create complications. Titleix, a
federal law, prevents colleges from dis-
criminating between students by sex.
Would this mean that colleges would have
to pay their female basketball players as
much as males, for example, even if the
men bring in more revenue?
Richard Borghesi, an economist at the
University of South Florida-Sarasota, has
written a pair of papers looking at how
much top athletes would make if they were
paid according to their ability to generate
revenue for their colleges. In addition to
ticket and merchandise sales, college ath-
letes also play a role in soliciting donations
from rich alumni. Taking these factors into
account, Mr Borghesi estimates that the
top 10% of football and 16% of basketball
players would be paid around $400,000
and $250,000 a year respectively.
Thencaaopposes California’s efforts.
The association notes that college athletes
already receive compensation in the form
of scholarships, and argues that any fur-
ther remuneration would jeopardise the
integrity of what is meant to be an amateur
endeavour. Thencaahas also threatened
to ban Californian colleges from compet-
ing in national championships.
Although the ncaa’s objections may
have been valid at some point, they make
little sense today. The two most lucrative
college sports, American football and bas-
ketball, are highly competitive. Many uni-
versities are willing to bend over back-
wards to enroll talented players. And the
argument that university athletics remains
amateur would hardly earn passing marks
in even an introductory college course. 7Student athletes may at last be allowed
to profit from their talentCollege sportsPay for play
Half-time or overtime?A
merican mobile-phoneusers are in-
undated with spam callers. Hiya, a Se-
attle-based call-monitoring service, esti-
mates that consumers received 26.3bn
robocalls in 2018, up 46% from 18bn the
previous year. Phone manufacturers have
taken note of their customers’ woes. In its
latest software release, Apple has made it
possible for iPhone users to send all un-
known callers to voicemail automatically.
Although the feature will no doubt prove
useful to the millions of customers whose
peaceful suppers are ruined by fake calls, it
could be disastrous for the faltering public-
polling industry.
The challenges telephone pollsters face
have been growing. Polling by phone has
become very expensive, as the number of
Americans willing to respond to unexpect-
ed or unknown callers has dropped. Back in
the mid-to-late-20th century response
rates were as high as 70%, according to
ssrs, a market research and polling firm.
But the Pew Research Centre estimates that
it received completed interviews from a
mere 6% of the people it tried to survey in- Although polls with low response
rates can still be accurate, their costs in-
crease dramatically as pollsters must
spend more time and money calling more
people. According to the American Associ-
ation for Public Opinion Research, a tradi-
tional, high-quality survey of 1,000 Ameri-
cans costs roughly $48,000.
Apple’s new call-blocking feature could
push costs and response rates into more
perilous territory. Robert Griffin, research
director for the Democracy Fund Voter
Study Group, a group of public-opinion re-
searchers, says the software poses an “exis-
tential problem”. With call-blocking, the
barrier to carrying out good polls shifts
“from people not picking up their phones
to people not even getting the call at all”.
Analysts do not even know precisely how
the new technology will affect the indus-
try—but with response rates already falling
sharply, whatever is in store for pollsters
cannot be good.
Mr Griffin does his best to see a bright
side. The challenges of phone-based pub-
lic-opinion polling could spur researchers
to adopt newer, more innovative methods,
including online polls. They are cheaper
and quicker than telephone surveys, and
provide a better framework for studying
Americans’ attitudes and behaviour. Sur-
veys conducted over the internet allow re-
WASHINGTON, DC
A new iPhone feature poses a threat to
opinion surveysPublic pollingUnknown
numbers
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