I like my eggs poached and slightly runny. If you feel like I just wasted a moment of your time, you might want to stop reading. What follows is mostly opinion, and I’m not sure my opinions about politics are worth any more of your time than my opinions about eggs.
That said:
1) Liberalism — by which I mean the societal presumption that it’s okay for people to disagree about fundamental things and not have to kill each other over it — and even better that they can live in harmony and respect their differences — is only a few hundred years old. It is also, I suspect, a lot more fragile than it appears to those of us who have had the good fortune to live in a time and place where we could take it for granted.
2) Not coincidentally, prosperity — by which I mean that a great many people are not starving — is approximately the same age, and likely to be just as fragile. A few hundred years is, in historical time, the blink of an eye.
3) Prosperity — along with almost everything else that makes human lives worth living — rests on the three mutually reinforcing pillars of liberalism, capitalism and science. Until recently, all three of these forces were generally thought to be well worth preserving. Now they are all under attack in ways that I once dared to think were impossible. For the first time in my life, I fear that the brief age of liberalism might be over.
4) I blame Donald Trump of course, but Trump did not create the people who voted for him, or those across the aisle who voted for his doppelganger Bernie Sanders. In 2016, about 40% of each party voted for candidates with little to offer other than the message that everything wrong in your life is someone else’s fault, that it’s important to hate those people, and that it’s perfectly okay to invent whatever facts are necessary to justify that narrative. If the horror were confined to a single party, it would be easier to envision it burning itself out. The fact that it’s so evenly distributed is a big part of why it’s so scary.
5) It seems to me that until 2016, the Republicans were, by and large (and with frequent and significant exceptions), more faithful stewards of liberalism than the Democrats were. That’s why I viewed Trump as a greater threat than Sanders, even before he went and got himself elected. They might be equally loathsome in their own rights, but Trump, unlike Sanders, displaced the best (in my opinion) realistic hopes for a relatively bright future, i.e the Republicanism of Jeb Bush and Ted Cruz (not that JB/TC style Republicanism is without its own gigantic flaws and occasional horrors of course).
6) My fantasy outcome for next week’s election is for Trump to lose every state by a wide margin while mainstream Republicans take over both houses of Congress and revert to their better selves. But the experience of the past four years suggests that some of those better selves might be extinguished forever. On the other hand, I’d be perfectly okay with a government of devils who act at least occasionally like angels.
7) This paragraph is based strictly on my personal experience, and yours may differ, but about half my friends consider themselves left of center and the other half consider themselves right of center. And — again in my personal experience — I am frequently struck, in conversations about politics and policy, with the way my left-of-center friends consistently focus on “what’s good for people like us” (with an occasional dollop of “what’s deliciously bad for people we dislike”), while the right-of-center friends consistently focus on “what’s good for people who are much worse off than us”. (Okay, “consistently” is an overstatement, but I stand by the broad sentiment.) This tends to reinforce my view that there is a lot more political goodness to the right of the center than there is to the left (though God knows, with huge exceptions in both directions) and that the real tragedy of Trump is that he’s left those people with no political home.
8) There’s a lot wrong with Biden. His policies are generally awful, and likely to make life harder for the poorest Americans. More distressingly, he defends those policies (in extensive text on his website) with language and logic designed to appeal only to Useful Idiots. Where Trump has failed to denounce the Proud Boys, Biden has failed to denounce Sanders and Warren (and I am a lot more worried about Sanders/Warren’s ability to cause lasting damage than I am about the Proud Boys). He shamelessly creates alternative facts when he finds them convenient. He consistently elevates bombast over intellectual inquiry, and mocks thoughtful adversaries when it suits his purposes. But I do not believe that any of this puts him in the same category as Trump, whose swath of cultural and political destruction is too well documented to need reviewing here. (Perhaps I’ll nevertheless review it a little later this week.)
9) But I’ve gone off on a tangent I’d intended to avoid. Current events — who wins the election, what will become of tax policy, etc etc — is small potatos compared to the big stuff, which is, I repeat, the decline in respect and understanding for the values of liberalism, capitalism and science. Without those, we’re toast.
10) The country was torn apart in 1968 and was remarkably brought back together by Reagan just 12 years later. That gives me hope. But what I see today seems so much worse than 1968, again because the disease seems to have so deeply infested both parties. Also, I think that Reagan was a politician of such extraordinary skill that we’re unlikely to see his like again in the next 12 years.
11) I am sure, dear reader, whoever you may be, that you’ll strongly disagree with some of the above. Thank God for a world where we can disagree and still listen to each other, and defend each others’ rights, and love each other. I hope my grandchildren will know that such things are possible.
>>> I blame Donald Trump of course, but Trump did not create the people who voted for him, or those across the aisle who voted for his doppelganger Bernie Sanders.
That is FUNDAMENTALLY wrong.
What does Bernie Sanders want? What his vision for America?
Basically, Sanders wants to turn America into Denmark. Or Canada. Or Germany.
A European-style social democracy – just like ALL the other post-WWII Western Democracies.
Would you say that Canada is an illiberal country? Do you think Germany is?
No? Then why do you consider Sanders illiberal? Because he wants to raise taxes?
You’re confusing what you consider to be “economically undesirable” with “illiberalism”.
Trump’s vision for America, on the other hand, is very different.
He wants an autocracy, with himself at the top.
He wants to arrest his political enemies; to disenfranchise and silence those who do not offer him slavish adulation; to pack the courts and every government agency with people who do his bidding without question or concern for either the law or for public interest; to funnel public money into his pockets and those of his allies.
Trump wants to turn the US into a kleptocracy, like Russia.
And Republicans are supporting him in much of this, or at least preventing any accountability.
Here’s what Republicans increasingly think about liberal democracy:
>>>“We’re not a democracy,” Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) tweeted during the vice presidential debate. As the backlash mounted, Lee poured cement around his position. “Democracy isn’t the objective; liberty, peace, and prospefity [sic] are. We want the human condition to flourish. Rank democracy can thwart that.”
Rank democracy. There is no subtext in this election, only text; no dog whistles, only foghorns. Lee, a former Supreme Court clerk and one of the GOP’s brighter intellectual lights, is stating his party’s position simply: Democracy is the enemy, the specter stalking Republican power.<<<
https://www.vox.com/21524807/donald-trump-joe-biden-2020-election-voting-suppression-democracy
Advo: I not only agree with Mike Lee; it’s hard for me to see how it’s possible to disagree. Democracy is not an end; it’s a means to an end. Sometimes it’s not a very effective means, and sometimes it’s downright counterproductive — for example when Donald Trump gets elected. You might or might not agree with that example, but surely you can imagine some realistic scenario in which you’d be willing to say that democracy had worked at cross purposes to liberty, peace and prosperity.
As for this: “Basically, Sanders wants to turn America into Denmark. Or Canada. Or Germany.” This strikes me as exactly as disingenuous as dismissing fears of Trumpism with “Basically, Trump wants to make America great again”.
[Deleted at the poster’s request]
>>> “As for this: “Basically, Sanders wants to turn America into Denmark. Or Canada. Or Germany.” This strikes me as exactly as disingenuous…”
Why? What do you think Bernie Sanders wants to do to the US, or alternatively what will he accidentally do to the US?
What exactly is the horrible outcome you fear? You haven’t really formulated that so far.
>>>”You might or might not agree with that example, but surely you can imagine some realistic scenario in which you’d be willing to say that democracy had worked at cross purposes to liberty, peace and prosperity.”
Most certainly. But the cases I have in mind where this is a fundamental problem is where democratic elections lead to the abolition of democracy itself.
I would say that it is perfectly OK for the population to vote someone into office who pursues very foolish policies.
If those are objectively bad, they can generally be changed or repealed (unless its agricultural subsidies, I suppose).
I don’t subscribe to the view that it is a fundamental problem of democracy if, say, an elected government passes a universal healthcare law that cannot be repealed anymore because people quickly decide that they really like universal healthcare.
And I certainly wouldn’t disenfranchise voters to prevent something like that from happening, which is what the Republicans are doing.
>>>”Democracy is not an end; it’s a means to an end.”
I disagree VERY STRONGLY. It is not merely an end. Democracy is an end itself.
I would not replace it with an autocracy, even if I thought that the outcome would be greater economic growth, social justice or whatever other positive outcome you want to pick.
Would you? What if you were wrong? What if you changed the US into a pseudo-democracy (this is what the GOP is increasingly trying to do) and then suddenly someone like Trump is on top?
Could please delete my post #3? I screwed that up.
@Advo, #1:
> Sanders wants to turn America into Denmark
Yes, but he wants to turn America into the stagnant Denmark of the 70s and 80s, with unemployment topping 10%, not the liberalizing Denmark of the 90s and aughts.
Sanders strikes me as a union stooge, and I have no reason to believe they are any better than corporate stooges.
I will be voting for Donald Trump precisely because I am liberal (not a leftist). Trump is the most “liberal” president in my lifetime. Liberalism to me is a strong belief in free speech, freedom of association, anti-war, and color blindness. The modern left is antagonistic to all these ideas. Political correctness and identity politics are horrible cancers on society. I will fight these wrongheaded ideas with everything I’ve got.
> Yes, but he wants to turn America into the stagnant Denmark of the 70s and 80s, with unemployment topping 10%, not the liberalizing Denmark of the 90s and aughts.
Perhaps. On the other hand, you already mentioned what happened; first there were bad policies, then those were reversed.
That’s the key here. We must maintain democracy in order to be able to reverse bad policies.
The way the GOP is going, it wants to end that. The GOP seeks to permanently block the Democrats from enacting new policies, by any means necessary.
Jack: I think it is very difficult to call a man a liberal when he calls for “locking up” his political opponents (sometimes without even specifying the crimes he believes they’ve committed, other than opposing him), when he uses the power of the presidency to try to organize boycotts of American firms that don’t conform to his dictates, when he makes it much more difficult for me to hire the people I want to hire, just because they happen to have been born on the wrong side of some imaginary line, and when he renegotiates flawed trade agreements (such as NAFTA) to exaggerate their flaws (with additional environmental and workplace safety “protections”), and when he runs up federal spending to levels that absolutely assure much higher taxes in the not too distant future.
> when he runs up federal spending to levels that absolutely assure much higher taxes in the not too distant future.
Do they? Why? Look at Japan. Sure they raised taxes recently, but I’m not sure there’s any reason to believe that was necessary.
In a world dominated by the savings glut and where the real yield on 30 year treasuries is negative, there may not be a limit to the amount of debt the US can carry. At least as long as people don’t believe it’s turning into a banana republic.
Let’s do a thought experiment – let’s assume that in order to soak up excess savings in order to get to full employment, the US government has to run a deficit of 6% of GDP on average per year.
This assumes that the US is also soaking up excess savings from “fiscally prudent” nations with huge current account surpluses like Germany.
Assuming that the interest rate on the debt is 1.5% and the nominal GDP growth rate is 4% (1.5% inflation, 2.5% real growth), what would be the equilibrium debt-to-GDP ratio in the long term? A bit over 300% (just guesstimating, the math is beyond me)?
Japan is at 214%, and despite the fact that their rapidly shrinking working-age population makes the national debt look a lot less sustainable than the US national debt, they don’t appear to be having any debt sustainability problems.
Advo (# 11): Your calculations make no sense to me (and I haven’t the foggiest idea what “soak up excess savings” means) but I think I understand enough to know that you’ve changed the subject. Higher spending means higher taxes, either implicitly or explicitly — that is, whether or not those taxes show up as explicit items in the federal budget. I called attention to the spending; you seem to be addressing something about the way that spending is financed. That’s a different topic.
>>> (and I haven’t the foggiest idea what “soak up excess savings” means)
It means that the government runs a deficit in order to finance spending with the aim of raising aggregate demand to achieve full employment.
It is based on the observation (I think it was by Larry Summers) that no developed country is able to reach full employment anymore unless the government is running a huge deficit, the country has a large current account surplus, or there’s a massive bubble going on (real estate, mostly).
The general thesis is that the modern post-industrial service economy with its stagnating or declining working age populations is unable to provide sufficient investment opportunities to absorb private savings.
Henning: Are you positing a liquidity trap? Why shouldn’t the interest rate adjust so that savings = investment?
> Why shouldn’t the interest rate adjust so that savings = investment?
Because the interest rate stops at the zero bound (more or less).
You should be thankful Mr Landsburg that you will probably die of natural causes before you see the catastrophic effects of from the lockdown, the coronavirus restrictions, the return of censorship, authoritarianism, fanaticism and dogma, the violence, the partisan segregation along political lines, the intolerance of dissent, the poverty and despair, the loss of liberty and dignity and the collapse of our civilisation and the return to the dark ages in the West.
Here’s the Summers paper I was thinking of:
https://www.brookings.edu//home6/landsbur/public_html/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/RachelSummers_web.pdf
Every economist needs to read this. It has massive implications in particular for tax policies, but also for everything else.
>> Where full employment has been achieved in recent years, it has
either been through large budget deficits, as in the United States or Japan, or through large trade surpluses, as in Germany. It is worth considering that in the United States during the period before the financial crisis, negative real short-term interest rates, a huge housing bubble, erosion of credit standards, and expansionary fiscal policy were only sufficient to achieve moderate growth. Adequate growth in Europe was only maintained through what in retrospect appears to have been clearly unsustainable lending to the countries on the so-called periphery
To bring this back to Trump;
yes, Trump ran up the deficit, but I (and probably Larry Summers) would argue that he had to, in order to achieve full employment.
Trump’s malfeasance then does not lie in increasing the debt, it lies in what he did with the proceeds derived from the issuance of the debt.
Notably, he cut taxes mostly for people who were liable to use much of the proceeds to buy the very treasuries issued to finance such tax cuts.
The latter part of the post was more interesting than the beginning. This might be because I am more interested in politics than eggs…if you catered mostly to a foodie audience, the foodies might have been disappointed that the beginning was so short!
I read this book by Fallada, “Wolf Among Wolves”, which dealt with life in the hyperinflation of the Weimar Republic. It kind of surprises me that we aren’t actually THERE yet, but I suppose it is one of those “keep adding grains to a hill, the collapse is sudden” things. The “Babylon Berlin” series seems to be leading up to that timeframe.
I wish my favorite economists would write more about what we should be doing to prepare, the only clues I seem to get are bits about which investments would be “countercyclical”…
> It kind of surprises me that we aren’t actually THERE yet, but I suppose it is one of those “keep adding grains to a hill, the collapse is sudden” things
If you are familiar with the Weimar hyperinflation, you should know that it required a massive, ongoing effort at increasing the monetary base to keep going.
Hyperinflation doesn’t happen unless you want it to.
Steve, your criticisms of Trump don’t have anything to do with liberalism, capitalism, and science. I guess you are against immigration restrictions and trade deals, but Trump’s policies are simply pro-America policies.
Also, I don’t see why you are against Trump joking about locking up Hillary Clinton, but you wanted him to more forcefully denounce the Proud Boys. If we should be able to listen and disagree, then shouldn’t the Proud Boys be able to make whatever statement they want to make? Why would you want a President to go around condemning political groups? How do you square this with your advocacy of liberalism?
Steve,
You Americans worry too much about yourselves – missing the point of life itself.
Roger (#21):
Point 1 (minor): It seems to me that it’s very hard to call a policy pro-American and/or consistent with liberalism when it restricts the freedom of Americans to associate and trade with the partners of their choice.
Point 2 (considerably more major): You are absolutely right that in my comment #9 I’ve lumped things together that might better have been kept separate. I believe that Trump’s immigration and trade policies are fundamentally illiberal, you believe the opposite, and we ought to be able either to discuss or accept our differences. I should not have lumped those differences together with fundamental threats to liberty like threatening to lock up your political opponents (all the more so when you haven’t even alleged a specific crime). You call this “joking”. I think that’s absurd.
Re the Proud Boys, my understanding from what I’ve read is that they are in the business of attempting to suppress political dissent through implicit threats of violence. I think it is the opposite of illiberal for a president to condemn such behavior (I do think presidents should be extremely cautious about condemning private citizens, but the president, who has called for boycotts of Harley-Davidson and Amazon, clearly does not agree.) If it turns out that I am misinformed about the nature of the Proud Boys, I will retract the specific example, but on this I’m unlikely to accept the word of someone credulous enough to believe that the “lock him/her up” talk is a joke.
If saying “lock her up” was not joking, what was it? Trump has been President for almost 4 years, and he has kept most of his promises, but he made no attempt to lock up Hillary Clinton.
On the other hand, his political enemies wiretapped his campaign in 2016, conducted a big lengthy investigation of a Russian conspiracy theory, and tried to impeach him over hearsay about a phone call to Ukraine. The Democrats openly talk about locking up Trump once Biden is elected. If this sort of talk bugs you, then you should be more annoyed at the Democrats.
I don’t know how the Proud Boys offended Biden, but they can be prosecuted if they have done something illegal. If they are just expressing opinions, they should be free to do that. Either way, I do not see how there is any value in the President condemning them. If you believe in liberalism, then surely the Proud Boys should have as many rights as BLM and Antifa.
>>> Trump has been President for almost 4 years, and he has kept most of his promises, but he made no attempt to lock up Hillary Clinton.
Of course he did.
>>— President Trump told the White House counsel in the spring that he wanted to order the Justice Department to prosecute two of his political adversaries: his 2016 challenger, Hillary Clinton, and the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey, according to two people familiar with the conversation.>>
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/20/us/politics/president-trump-justice-department.html
>>Now, Mr. Trump had another demand: He wanted Mr. Sessions to reverse his recusal and order the prosecution of Hillary Clinton.>>
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/24/us/politics/jeff-sessions-hillary-clinton-donald-trump.html
Roger: One way to tell whether something is a joke is to ask whether there’s anything funny about it.
One hates to disappoint our gracious host, but I actually agree with all he wrote.
@Advo. Sanders does say that he wants to turn the US into Denmark. That wouldn’t be so bad as modern Denmark is a perfectly nice country. But the reason for that is that Denmark, apart from the large middle-class tax and middle-class welfare, has more liberal policies in many areas than the US. As witnessed by frequent “capitalism” ramkings which place Denmark near or even above the US.
As Sanders would cut off his hand than liberalize the ecnomy, his policies are far more likely to turn the US into Venezuela.
> As Sanders would cut off his hand than liberalize the ecnomy, his policies are far more likely to turn the US into Venezuela.
Could you be more specific? The right always proclaims that Sanders would be the end of US prosperity, but it’s always very short on the details.
Also, the problem with Venezuela isn’t the socialist policies of the regime; it’s its autocratic nature.
The socialist policies would be long gone if the country hadn’t been turned into a Trump-style kleptocracy.
I have no reason to believe that Sanders would end democracy in the US.
When you look at Sanders’ proposed policies, what exactly would turn the US into Venezuela?
The much higher minimum wage? I’m sure it would increase unemployment, but most likely not nearly as much as the right thinks it would.
The expansion of government utilities to compete with private utilities in providing green energy?
That’s the most “nationalization” it gets within the Sanders program.
Many western governments ran an entirely nationalized utility sector for a long time, while still having capitalist economies. These utilities were mostly privatized in the last twenty-odd years.
Medicare for all? Every developed country has some form of universal healthcare, to my knowledge. You might not think this is desirable, but again, this might turn the US into Canada, but not into Venezuela.
I think Krugman put it best:
“Bernie Sanders Isn’t a Socialist
But he plays one on TV. That’s a problem.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/13/opinion/bernie-sanders-socialism.html
Bernie Sanders brands himself as a socialist, and he certainly was one in the 1970s. But today, he is a social democrat and advocates policies that would be entirely mainstream in any developed country other than the US.
On this occasion I must agree with Steve wholeheartedly. I also like my eggs poached and slightly runny. My problem is that I can only poach one egg at a time in a pan of water. Sometimes, if I want more than one egg at a time I will have scrambled eggs. I have tried egg poachers with little dishes above boiling water, but I do not find these work very well. I do enjoy fried eggs also, but I find it more difficult to obtain the correct yolk runniness without either leathery or uncooked white.
I will read the rest now.
“”Democracy is not an end; it’s a means to an end.”
Perhaps I can weigh in here with an idea to reconcile opposing views here. Democracy is indeed a means rather than an end. But is the only means we currently have. This results it in being a “pseudo end”, which is unavoidable. It is therefore reasonable to think of it as essential, even if it not actually an end of itself.
If we talk of it as a means, it is allowing the option of using other means of obtaining the desired ends. These are very likely to fail.
But why all the talk of Sanders? He is not the candidate.
Just out of interest, what policies does Biden propose that are very much worse than Obama policies? I don’t think that USA under Obama was a disaster, so either he must be considered far less respecting of the values of liberalism, capitalism and science than Obama, or Obama was a disaster after all.
Roger – how wrong can you be?
His campaign was not wiretapped, Trump was impeached, it was not hearsay about the phone call as we have the transcript, the inquiry found criminal interference in the election by Russia which was welcomed by the Trump campaign. There was collusion, but as pointed out at the time collusion is not a crime. There were multiple instances of obstruction of justice. Mueller decided he could not conclude if the obstruction was criminal, not because of the lack of evidence, but because he interpreted the DOJ ruling on not indicting a sitting president as not permitting a fair hearing in which to respond to a conclusion of criminality.
Biden does have quite a track record of consensus building, which is surly something needed right now. Unfortunately, he also has a track record of building consensus for awful policies.
>> “Steve: Are you positing a liquidity trap?”
Not exactly. A liquidity trap has been generally considered something transient, where the real natural interest rate is negative due to a temporarily heightened liquidity preference caused by a crisis.
Whereas in Secular Stagnation, the real natural interest rate is negative PERMANENTLY, or at least for the foreseeable future, because of secular developments such as a decline in capital-intensive innovations, stagnating or declining working-age populations, and increasing inequality.
The flat Earth is a good litmus test for what we currently see. Until a few years ago, there were a few believers in the flat Earth. They were ignored almost universally, except by a few comedians making jokes about support around the globe. In the last few years there has been a rise in the number of supporters, who seem to have made being obviously wrong a part of their identity. Why should they wish to do this? Why should such a position be increasing in a world where information is easier than ever to come by?
True information is easier to come by, but so is false information. We are collectively entering a time where any position can be backed up by “information” if you “do your own research.”
I had a look at a few flat Earth “debates”. It is clear that no amount of evidence will persuade believers. They are not interested in understanding, but only of supporting their current belief. We see that same in politics. If you only seek out one source of information you will get your view backed up.
If we cannot agree on the basics, there is no room for arguing over preferences.
Should we suffer a greater immediate economic drop in order to save a certain number of lives? That is a debate worth having and there is no right or wrong answer. It comes down to preferences and values. But we don’t even get to have the debate because people are convinced by flat Earth type arguments that there is no such thing as viruses and masks will kill you.
Should we do something about global warming? We don’t get to have the debate because of flat Earth type denialism.
Flat Earth is the canary in the coalmine. Something is seriously wrong when people feel the need to take up stupidity as an active choice.
>>> Flat Earth is the canary in the coalmine. Something is seriously wrong when people feel the need to take up stupidity as an active choice.
Have you noticed that these are generally trumpers?
“Have you noticed that these are generally trumpers?”
Since Trump promotes exactly the sort of disregard for sources that flat Earth belief requires I would not be surprised, but I have not seen any numbers. Once you accept the doctrine of alternative facts it is hard to find your way back.
The anti-Trump arguments here are amazingly lame. The NY Times says Trump wanted to prosecute H. Clinton, citing unnamed sources. Maybe true, maybe not. I am not a mindreader. The FBI director did say that she committed crimes, although he recommended not prosecuting her. Trump said “I condemn the Proud Boys”, but some other mindreaders say that he didn’t really mean it, and may not have even known who the Proud Boys are. Then there is Flat Earth Harold, who denies that anyone looks at the evidence anyway.
And nobody likes Biden, except to say that he is not Trump.
Trump and Biden have track records. I suggest voting based on what they have done.
That anybody could consider voting for a president they seriously believe is so ill informed that he may not know who the proud boys are beggars belief.
>>> The NY Times says Trump wanted to prosecute H. Clinton, citing unnamed sources.
It’s the Mueller report:
“The ‘gist’ of the conversation,” according to the report by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, quoting Mr. Sessions, “was that the president wanted Sessions to unrecuse from ‘all of it.’
“The anti-Trump arguments here are amazingly lame.”
The post says “Trump, whose swath of cultural and political destruction is too well documented to need reviewing here.”
Re my comment #39. I was a little hasty, you were not saying Trump supporters believe he does not know who proud Boys are, but Trump denigrators, who determined this through mind reading. But does it need mind reading to come to that conclusion? How about Trump’s own words ““I don’t know who the Proud Boys are.”
It is irresponsible in the extreme for the President to keep himself ignorant of stuff like this. For him not to know who they are is willful ignorance. This fits exactly with the flat Earth mindset. I do not deny that anyone looks at evidence, I claim that it is an increasing problem, exemplified by the Commander in Chief. It is not so much that he does not know who they are, but uses that as an excuse. It is a bit like the child asked for a book report to claim that he could not do it because he did not read the book.
Steve, I like the way you think!
Adco, yes, Trump publicly criticized Sessions many times for recusing himself. No need for anonymous sources or Democrat reports for that.
There are 1000 things more important to the President than the Proud Boys. Maybe 10,000.
The effort to denounce the Proud Boys is just an example of cancel culture. If Biden is elected, then I suspect that this blog will be in danger of being censored. Steve is willing to discuss issues that are now considered forbidden by those who are taking over the Democrat Party.
From a longer term perspective – I just hope America is able to put itself back together for the better….its sad looking at the dysfunctional regression that seems to be occurring now. Great science, knowledge and art has come from this country which has benefited the world. Hopefully the current dysfunction is temporary and overall progress inclines back up…hope it’s not already past the point of no return.
…my left-of-center friends consistently focus on “what’s good for people like us” (with an occasional dollop of “what’s deliciously bad for people we dislike”), while the right-of-center friends consistently focus on “what’s good for people who are much worse off than us”
Steve, do you mean to say that your right-ish friends are significantly *more* focused on e.g. food insecurity or discrimination against minorities or the challenges faced by disabled people than are your left-ish ones, and that you suspect that this is broadly true in the U.S.?
arch1: yes.
>> “arch1: yes.”
When I look at the policy debate within the Republican party, be it on healthcare or anything else, I find that “outcomes for the less fortunate” matter only insofar as this can be used to justify giving something to big donors.
Where the left raises concerns about the welfare of the less fortunate, this is generally dismissed with handwaving.
A typical example would be the problem of wage stagnation over the last several decades, which has seen remarkable little interest on the right, considering what a huge problem it is.
Steve #46/Advo #47: Advo, I think you’re closer to the mark than Steve. But he has surprised me in the past, so I set my personal Steve-simulator the task of figuring out his rationale. The best I could come up with is that Steve is going to say that folks on the right focus on policies which, if implemented, would help the least-well-off more than those favored by the left. Kinda weak sauce IMO, but hey it’s not ez simulating a Cray on a Mac*.
*For most of us, anyway. On being told that Apple had purchased a Cray to simulate their next computer design, Cray himself famously replied “funny, I am using an Apple to simulate the CRAY-3”
Funny, I was thinking about this point just before reading this. It strikes me that the “right” advocates for policies that they believe will help everybody, including themselves.
From the view of the left, it is convenient for them to believe this as you can promote policies for yourself whilst claiming it is for the less well off.
The left advocates for policies they believe will help the less well off more directly, which will help everybody, not necessarily immediately but by “improving” society in some not quite defined way.
Lets take equality as an example. The right is generally fine with inequality. If there are lots of very poor people by today’s standards that is fine as long as the very poor have a bit more than the very poor in the past. That is progress. The left believes that inequality can be too extreme for a healthy society and measures should be taken to ameliorate the plight of the poor, even at a cost to the better off.
“my left-of-center friends consistently focus on “what’s good for people like us”
If we assume the discussion is about equality, say a tax cut for reasonably well off people like us. This will directly benefit the reasonably well off. To defend their position, the left friends argue that it is good for people like us to live in a society that is more equal, even if it costs us a little more in the short term. It is a point that needs to be made because in the first instance it seems these policies may be bad for people like us.
On the other hand, the policies of the right are obviously directly good for people like us. That point does not need to be raised. The point that does need to be made is that these policies will also be good for the less well off.
Thus the left need to focus on “good for us” and the right needs to focus on “good for them.”
>>> “If there are lots of very poor people by today’s standards that is fine as long as the very poor have a bit more than the very poor in the past.”
And if they don’t, then you can always blame the way inflation is calculated.
I slightly mangled my argument in #49. To avoid confusion:
“It is a point that needs to be made because in the first instance it seems these policies may be bad for people like us.” I meant that the policies the left propose, i.e. not to have the tax cut, appear to be bad to people like us.
#50 ” you can always blame the way inflation is calculated.”
I think your point is that not in money terms, the amount of stuff poor people have has been generally rising. The poor could have less inflation adjusted money than previously, but they can be argued to be better off because that smaller amount of money buys more and better stuff. Hence inflation isn’t measuring how well off we are. Is that it?
>> The poor could have less inflation adjusted money than previously, but they can be argued to be better off because that smaller amount of money buys more and better stuff. Hence inflation isn’t measuring how well off we are. Is that it?
That is the unsupported claim, yes. It relies on the assumption that the economists who calculate inflation at the BLS are either idiots, or not appropriately incentivized.
Of course the official inflation number is never going to be a perfect reflection of reality; but if someone wants to argue that the measurement error necessarily goes into a certain direction, then he better make a good case for it.
Handwaving is not going to do it.
From a meta-perspective, the employer of the economists who calculate inflation (the government) generally has an interest in a low inflation number. The default assumption should therefore be that the inflation number is too low, and not too high.
I am not sure we are addressing the same thing. Inflation does not try to measure progress. Often a “basket of goods” or something similar is used, but by necessity the contents of the basket change. Inflation does not measure, or attempt to measure how much better today’s basket is than last years. There is no way to avoid this.
Inflation does have different meanings, but I am assuming it is the increase in prices leading to a fall in the purchasing power of money. It is simple enough if the goods remain the same, but how do we calculate the purchasing power needed for an iPhone going back 50 years? If colour TV’s became as cheap as B&W TV’s last year, Colour TVs would not be valued more than black and white TVs but you could argue that things had got better in a way not measured by inflation.
A family that has just enough to eat and just adequate housing is said to be far better off than a similar family in the 1960’s because they have phones and TVs, although theoretically inflation adjusted income could be the same.
Using this measure, inflation adjusted incomes could fall and still people would getting better off, even if inflation were measured in the most favorable way.
I am sure you have a point about the calculation of inflation, but I don’t think I was addressing quite the same point.
>> A family that has just enough to eat and just adequate housing is said to be far better off than a similar family in the 1960’s because they have phones and TVs,
No, they don’t. Obviously, phones and TV cost extra.
Until some time in the nineties, for example, appliances in apartments were tracked. That is, if the apartment had a TV, then that was taken into account as an upgrade.
Same with airconditioning, central heating etc.
In other words, the inflation-adjusted rent for a nice 1960s apartment won’t get you a nice 2020 apartment; it’ll get you a shitty 2020 apartment without all the amenities that were added in the last 60 years. If you can find one.
Here’s an example of how technological improvements are taken into account:
https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2020/01/24/1579873000000/Why-statisticians-don-t-think-your-iPhone-is-as-expensive-as-you-do/
And when you look at “primary residence rent”, which adjusts for size, structure, airconditioning, central heating and the like, you’ll see that the rent for a 1960s style primary residence in a US city has gone up by a factor of about 8.9 in the last 60 years.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CUUR0000SEHA
In the meantime, the minimum wage (which is a good proxy for low-end wage development overall) has gone up by a factor of 7.5.
So the family you mentioned would today be unable to afford even a 1960s style home without central heating and airconditioning (or a TV, for that matter).
It would have to live in a 2020-style rathole, or at least something significantly smaller than its 1960 home.
And as for food and beverages;
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CPIFABSL
The data starts in 1967.
Food and beverages in US cities: up by x 7.7.
Minimum wage: up by x 5.8
The family from your example is going to have to be on a permanent diet if they want to afford those phones.
Harold #49: I see. So a possible alternative explanation for the apparent difference in focus which Steve noted between lefties and righties (at least among his friends)is that it’s just a difference in messaging strategy: What Steve’s seeing is each side working extra hard to convey (sincerely or not, correctly or not; YMMV) the less-obvious parts of the message “my side’s platform helps everyone.”
arch1: I don’t think it has anything to do with messaging. I think I know these people well enough, and talk with them often enough, and deeply enough, to believe they mean what they say. And by and large (and again, with of course striking exceptions in both directions), my lefty friends seem to have the view that one should vote in ways that will advance one’s own interests while my righty friends seem to have the view that one should vote in ways that advance the common good, usually interpreted to put special emphasis on the good of the least fortunate.
A quick example or two that I’m choosing not because they’re the best but because they’re the first that come to mind: A few years ago we had a tax reform bill that changed the deductibility of local taxes and mortgage interest. My lefty friends (by and large) calculated the effect on their own taxes and either liked or disliked the bill accordingly. My righty friends (by and large) lived in states where they were clearly going to be big losers from this reform — but supported it enthusiastically because they thought it was good policy.
Or: My sexually alternative lefty friends tend to think that people who dont want to bake birthday cakes for them should be forced to do so anyway, because they believe they’ll be better off in such a world. My sexually alternative righty friends are generally annoyed and offended by the fact that some people dont want to bake birthday cakes for them, but tend to support their right to make that decision, because they believe that freedom of choice doesnt mean very much unless you extend it to people you don’t like.
Or take things like “free college” and other huge transfers to the middle class My middle class lefty friends tend to like those policies, unabashedly because they stand to gain from them. My middle class righty friends who stand to benefit equally tend to oppose those programs, partly because they are squeamish about taking from the rich and partly because they think that if you must take from the rich, you should give not to the middle class but to the poor.
Et cetera.
#61. Thanks for the clarification. I have no doubt that there is self interest on display on both sides, but are you sure you are not selecting examples due to confirmation bias?
I assume your righty friends also think that Woolworth’s lunch counter should be allowed to refuse service to whomever they want?
That is not a “gotcha”. The position is logically defensible, but it is interesting to see how far your friends go on this principle.
Also, do your sexually non-alternative friends fall into the same categories of self interest, or do your straight lefty friends think that gays should not be discriminated against even thought this will not benefit them at all?
On a point of detail, I am not aware of Birthday cakes being an issue. Wedding cakes seem to be more prominent. However, your use of birthday cakes does suggest that your righty friends are fine with people refusing to serve gay people simply because they are gay. The law is actually clear that where sexual orientation is a protected characteristic this is not permitted. So “No Gays” signs would not be permitted, but your righty friends apparently think they should be allowed.
The Masterpiece Baker case was probably the most high profile. The baker asserted that he did not provide the service due to his religious beliefs based on the same sex wedding ceremony, not based on the sexual orientation of the customers. The Colorado courts decided that effectively this was the same thing, citing Scalia: (paraphrase] “discrimination based on yarmulkes is discrimination against Jews.”
The Supreme Court dodged the issue and said the State Commission had displayed animus towards the baker on religious grounds, so vacated the ruling, wiped their brow and said “Phew, we got out of that one for now.” Thus the intersectionality of the rights issue remains unresolved.
I do not approve of targeting Masterpiece repeatedly specifically to provoke conflict. They were involved in another case where they refused to bake a gender transition cake, apparently specifically to provoke a refusal. the State eventually dropped that one, saying that although it was important to resolve the issue left not resolved by the SC, this was not the appropriate vehicle to do so. It must be made clear that in none of these cases was the cake itself outside the normal cake that would be made for anybody. There were no slogans or decorations that would not be normally included.
Harold:
1) I assume your righty friends also think that Woolworth’s lunch counter should be allowed to refuse service to whomever they want?
I haven’t surveyed them all, but I believe if you did, you’d find a considerable diversity of opinion. But I also believe, based on a lot of similar discussions over the years, that for the most part, those opinions are based on beliefs about what’s good for people other than themselves.
2) Also, do your sexually non-alternative friends fall into the same categories of self interest, or do your straight lefty friends think that gays should not be discriminated against even thought this will not benefit them at all?
The latter — but I still think this comes under the heading of “benefiting people who are similar to me”, which is something I think I see a lot of when my lefty friends are evaluating policies, and much less of from my righty friends.
Steve #61, #63: Well, this has me very curious about several things, but especially about the extent to which your observations may apply to U.S. adults in general. Where is experiment designer Amos Tversky (or someone with the internet search capabilities of Scott Alexander, in case the work has already been done) when you need him?
Like most sensible people, I dislike both Trump and Biden. But I will vote for Trump this time, because Trump has no real agenda, just sort of random whims (some of which. like avoiding wars, are OK, others pretty bad). Biden (and the people who are propping him up) want to enlarge government a lot. Trump will be gone either this year or four years from now,leaving no movement behind him, but larger governments are forever. And there are reasons to fear that if the democrats control the legislature and the presidency they will try to make it permanent by adding a couple of states, maybe packing the Supreme Court, and allowing almost unlimited immigration.
#64 Alan, you have missed Trumps real agenda. It has nothing to do with specific policies, so it is easy to say he has no agenda. He does have an agenda, which is keeping himself in control. Hence he will subvert the independence of the DOJ, the inspectors general and everything else that limits his control. He will pander to pro choice or pro life as suits. You will find almost no consistent ideology because there is none. The only factor is staying in cotrol. Unless you see this you have missed the essential Trump. He will happily go along with any policy if it helps him.
#63. This is an interesting problem, beause it essentially inverts the prevailing left/right paradigm. So this is worthy of serious consideration.
I think the left/right paradigm is that the left wants generally to divert resources to the less well off, whereas the right wants to keep recources to whomever has them. So lefties will support taxation to fund welfare, whereas the right will not. Essentially, the left will support policies that do not benifit them directly but will poroduce a more equal society where everyone can prosper.
Steve is saying that among his friends, the opposite is the case. The right will support policies that hurt themselves and the left will primarily support policies that help themselves at the cost of the less well off.
A specific example of discrimination was presented, regarding cakes.
Arrow demonstrated that discrimination can persist at equilibrium if the majority is prepared to value discrimination over cash. A system where black workers are paid less is sustainable if white employers, workers and customers have that preference. Economically, this is efficient, so from a pure economic perspective nothing needs to be done. Utility is maximised.
I am going out on a limb here, so am open to correction. To shift from the Pareto equilibrium one we are at to a better one may require intervention. Such as the above one where black workers are paid less for the same work at equilibrium. If we could shift the preference of the individuals to no longer value discrimination then everybody would be better off. however, economics does not discusswhere preferences come from, it just takes them as a given.
We can be a at sub-optimal Pareto equilibrium. Intervention to force people into contact with “the other” will possibly change their preferences. For example,they will see that a black or woman supervisor is not in fact that bad. This can be achieved by challenging the preferences, or forcing people to go against their preferences according to some external scale.
With non-intervention, we may hope that preference for money will displace preference for discrimination, but there is no way to establish that this must happen. It is merely a hope.
So in the discrimination case Steve cites, the asssumption is that leaving everything to choice will result in the optimal outcme. allowing bakers to refuse servive to anyone they don’t like is guaranteed to result in the best outcome.
But I think we can see that a Pareto equilibrium is not necessarilty the best outcome. Thus the idea that we will get the best outcome if we simply allow people to express their prejudice is funadanmentally flawed.
The ultimateview of the economist is that preferences are value free, and just exist as an a sort of absolute. The economist does not discuss where preferences come from , but deals only with the preferences that people have.
“Arrow demonstrated that discrimination can persist at equilibrium if the majority is prepared to value discrimination over cash. A system where black workers are paid less is sustainable if white employers, workers and customers have that preference. Economically, this is efficient, so from a pure economic perspective nothing needs to be done. Utility is maximised.”
How is it sustainable if Blacks finally rise up and demand equal opportunity?
At Dorf on Law, Buchanan (an economist) and Dorf (a law professor) have argued against efficiency as “Economic efficiency, the lynchpin of L&E, is incoherent because it relies on typically hidden but ultimately normative assumptions about preferences that would exist in an impossible world without law.” (from their abstract of: “A Tale of Two Formalisms: How Law and Economics Mirrors Originalism and Textualism 106 Cornell Law Review, Forthcoming Cornell Legal Studies Research Paper No. 20-20.) SSRN abstract 3553508.
For link, also see Dorf on Law blogpost: “We Can Have a Fairer, More Prosperous World: The Deep Emptiness of Efficiency as a Concept Is Even Deeper Than It Seems”
by Neil H. Buchanan
“How is it sustainable if Blacks finally rise up and demand equal opportunity?”
Whilst this is not beyond the scope of economics in principle, I think is beyond most economic analyses. The trigger for revolution or uprising is often a relatively minor incident, which results in the previous metastable resentment tipping to a new level. I am sure there must be some economic analysis of this effect. In fact, here is one.
https://dergipark.org.tr/tr/download/article-file/300790
The authors conclude that analysis based on rational choice of individuals seems to be lacking in explanatory power.
I agree with the central point, preferences do not spring fully formed from some idealised world. As Hume might say, just because economics maximises utility based on preferences does not mean that is what we ought to do. The fundamental is/ought question remains.
The Buchanan and dorf article and linked paper is interesting. The paper is much fuller, as the article seems to misunderstand efficiency, but that is explained in the paper in more detail. He is discussing the Law and Economics approach or movement by judges, rather than economics per se. He describes how conservative judges use either originalism/textualism or L&E to arrive at conservative rulings. L&E and O&T are not the objective things thy pretend, but are in fact subjective and provide a pretext of objectivism.
He describes a general definition of efficiency as “Isn’t that roughly all that economists mean when they say that some legal rule is more efficient than some other rule—that it results in less waste?”
That does not fit with economic definitions of efficiency. They do go on to discuss Pareto and Kaldor-Hicks efficiency, but to my mind they miss the essential thing that neo-classical economics at heart is not about money, but efficiency. They discuss an efficiency – equality trade off, but to a fundamental economist there is no trade off if utility is maximised with a smaller but more equal economy. So whilst I agree that discussion about economics is generally about money, and the L&E law approach is generally about money, there is still a useful definition of efficiency and the concept is not incoherent. It is impossible to measure, and so may
not be useful.
The approach described can be summed up, I think, by the analysis of minimum wage laws as inefficient, but Pigovian tax laws on pollution also to be inefficient due to tax interaction effect. Where convenient, the standard models are used to show that minimum wage laws must result in inefficiency. Where convenient, complex modelling can be used to show that interactions between taxes result in tax on pollution being inefficient. They are selecting a different baseline based on the desired outcome.
They say that there is no possible baseline for determining efficiency, but I think possibly a pure AnCap world would be. Given that we are not getting an AnCap world, all baselines are essentially arbitrary, so L&E approach is necessarily arbitrary also. It is a pretense (possibly unconscious) that this provides an objective way to resolve legal disputes.
Steve,
in so far as right-wingers will support policies that do not benefit them, I find that this is because they generally don’t understand them.
That is one of the most infuriating things in American politics; GOP voters generally have absolutely no clue of what policies the GOP is actually pursuing.
If I try to explain to them GOP policy, they accuse me of lying.
Advo: GOP voters generally have absolutely no clue of what policies the GOP is actually pursuing.
I’m extremely skeptical that this is more true of one party than the other.
I suspect SL is correct. Neither parties supporters has much of a clue.
The difference in this case is that GOP supporters do not understand the dismantling of the norms that underpin the rule of law. This is more important than policies.
> I’m extremely skeptical that this is more true of one party than the other.
Democractic voters may not have an *exact* understanding of what the Democrats are doing.
But Republican voters have no understanding of even the broad direction of the Republican Party wants.
For example:
>>>“There is not a single guy or woman who would run for president that would make it so that pre-existing conditions wouldn’t be covered,” said Phil Bowman, a 59-year-old retiree in Linville, N.C. “Nobody would vote for him.”
https://www.vox.com/21502189/preexisting-conditions-trump-republicans
Well, they would vote for him, if they get their information from Fox News.
With Biden leading in Wisconsin and likely to take Michigan: I’m calling it for Biden.
It looks like the forces of darkness have been defeated.
Harold, I don’t think that either the Republicans or the Democrats understand your concept of what you call the rule of law.
#74 it is not just what I call the rule of law, but what pretty much everybody calls it. The extent to which it worries you will vary depending on how you interpret it, but Trump is pushing for reductions in rule of law by any definition.
A few examples.
Declaring he is immune from prosecution whilst sitting president
Firing officials for whistle blowing or testifying to the truth
Firing inspectors general that are not loyal
Interfering in ongoing investigations
Declaring that he is entitled to interfere in DOJ matters
Political pardons
Obstruction of justice
Extending executive privilege
Use of Acting heads of departments
Appointments based on loyalty rather than competence
Use of state of emergency laws to bypass Congress
No attempt to enforce the Hatch act
Not filling vacancies in independent regulatory commissions and similar
These are just a few of the almost innumerable instances.
What is surprising is that people who are generally opposed to strengthening the executive are going along with all this.