Things I Wish I Said
One Reason Why States Lose Power
The lessons of the Great Depression (and other smaller recessions) is that government spending is the flywheel that keeps the economy moving when downturns threaten to turn ugly. There's a catch, though: structural deficit spending is constitutionally prohibited to most states. In that context, states find it all but impossible to make the kinds of policies required to shepherd their economies through hard times. What does the average person take away from this? A perfectly understandable view that when the chips are down, the state government cuts back, but the Feds pour in resources. The state government cuts back because it is unlawful for it to do otherwise---shrinking revenues during a downturn compel it to spend less. But that's precisely the time when the Federal government is able to borrow and spend. So for many people, when they need it most, it is the Federal government that can step in. ¶ 9:36 PM 0 Comments
Monday, November 24, 2008
There are a few reasons why the trend over the years has been for more centralization of power with the Federal government and a diminishing of the role of the states. One main reason is that voters hold the Federal government responsible in hard times. Why? The current economic crisis provides an opportunity to see why.
The lessons of the Great Depression (and other smaller recessions) is that government spending is the flywheel that keeps the economy moving when downturns threaten to turn ugly. There's a catch, though: structural deficit spending is constitutionally prohibited to most states. In that context, states find it all but impossible to make the kinds of policies required to shepherd their economies through hard times. What does the average person take away from this? A perfectly understandable view that when the chips are down, the state government cuts back, but the Feds pour in resources. The state government cuts back because it is unlawful for it to do otherwise---shrinking revenues during a downturn compel it to spend less. But that's precisely the time when the Federal government is able to borrow and spend. So for many people, when they need it most, it is the Federal government that can step in. ¶ 9:36 PM 0 Comments
Congressional Power
Congressional complicity with Bush policies seemed to barely skip a beat when power changed party control in 2006.
It is pretty clear to everyone that the Congress can't seem to act in an economic freefall without being led by the nose by a currently severely lame-ducked White House.
Issues of Congressional leadership seem to rely on Obama's mandate.
In short, the legislative branch has been consigned, in large part with it's full consent, to near powerlessness. Why is this?
Some is party politics. When legislative and executive power is controlled by the same party, the Congress tends to go along with the president. There's some coattails effects -- often a large segment of the House was swept in along with the president, and political favors are owed.
But this doesn't account for the toothlessness of the "opposition" Congress over the last couple of years. There seems to be a consensus politically that the president should be left to make decisions, even if they are illegal!, and Congress' job is to consent, and clean up any unfortunate legal loose ends afterwards. Now if the decisions are ones that are unpopular, the president will be unpopular. But even after the electoral losses in 2006, the Republican congress couldn't distance themselves from Bush. I think in this context, it is just part of the general inability of Congress to be independent. We seem to be at a pretty extreme point with that. What else is contributing?
Congressional power was at a historical high after Watergate and the impeachment of Nixon, and has gradually waned since then. But even as recently as Clinton, Congress was quite independent, and refused to authorize fast-track trade deals, which would be unheard of under Bush. I think the current situation owes a lot to the explicit plans of the Bush administration officials to greatly enlarge executive power. Many of them are Nixon-era veterans, and it seems often that some of their lawless acts are intended to go over the line not because they necessarily want to cross it for policy reasons, but because it fits in with an ideological insistence that the executive is not under any sort of congressional legal jurisdiction.
Thus torture, surveillance, suspension of habeas corpus, signing statements, disdain of oversight, refusal to comply with congressional summons, and on and on. A lapdog press, utterly unprepared for (and by and large disinterested in) actual political reality has made it seem like these moves have been the boy howdy! of normal give and take, rather than a serious realignment of power in the government, with serious implications for the balance of power envisioned by the constitution.
The constitution does envision a vigorous and powerful executive, but it explicitly places that executive power wholly within the oversight and legal jurisdiction of Congressional power. How can this situation be restored? One important thing is to elect the kind of vigorous leadership Congress needs to have. Pliable leadership is unable to maintain independence. This step is up to voters, who too often are content to regard the president as sort of an elected king, who must be suffered under or followed unconditionally, depending on their political leanings.
Second, we need to revise the Senate's filibuster rules. Filibusters on appointees are a limit to presidential power, but filibusters on bills make it impossible for congress to act expeditiously. Get rid of them.
Third, congressional oversight, summons, and subpoenas need to be backed by a bigger, more self-interested bureacracy. Perhaps something like a prime minister's office, which would have an attendant bureacracy and police arm with a jurisdiction over all federal executive-branch employees. This office would consist of a political leader chosen from the House, and that person's appointees, but staffed by a career bureaucracy including police and legal arms with authority to arrest, charge, and prosecute administration officials who are in contempt of Congress. A self-interested bureaucracy's motivations are to maintain the source of its power: the independence of congress and executive compliance with its rights and privileges. This office would essentially be the source for special investigators of government actions, which apparently the Justice department has become unable to perform on its own, given its misunderstanding of its own responsibilities.
Is this an overreaction to the incredible complicity of the Justice department under Bush? Would a Congress who confirmed Gonzales and Mukasey really be able to politically stomach sending their own legal and police troops after executive offenders? Unclear. Would a Congress which let its power wane so substantially do what it took to maintain such an institution? The hope would be that such an institution would try to maintain itself. The career bureaucrats whose everyday jobs were to come to work and investigate the administration, demand documents, break down doors and haul people away in handcuffs if they didn't produce them, and so on, would develop the influence with congresspeople to maintain themselves.
It might be worth a try. ¶ 9:58 PM 0 Comments
Friday, November 21, 2008
I was listening to Glenn Greenwald and Scott Horton talk about war crimes prosecutions.
Congressional complicity with Bush policies seemed to barely skip a beat when power changed party control in 2006.
It is pretty clear to everyone that the Congress can't seem to act in an economic freefall without being led by the nose by a currently severely lame-ducked White House.
Issues of Congressional leadership seem to rely on Obama's mandate.
In short, the legislative branch has been consigned, in large part with it's full consent, to near powerlessness. Why is this?
Some is party politics. When legislative and executive power is controlled by the same party, the Congress tends to go along with the president. There's some coattails effects -- often a large segment of the House was swept in along with the president, and political favors are owed.
But this doesn't account for the toothlessness of the "opposition" Congress over the last couple of years. There seems to be a consensus politically that the president should be left to make decisions, even if they are illegal!, and Congress' job is to consent, and clean up any unfortunate legal loose ends afterwards. Now if the decisions are ones that are unpopular, the president will be unpopular. But even after the electoral losses in 2006, the Republican congress couldn't distance themselves from Bush. I think in this context, it is just part of the general inability of Congress to be independent. We seem to be at a pretty extreme point with that. What else is contributing?
Congressional power was at a historical high after Watergate and the impeachment of Nixon, and has gradually waned since then. But even as recently as Clinton, Congress was quite independent, and refused to authorize fast-track trade deals, which would be unheard of under Bush. I think the current situation owes a lot to the explicit plans of the Bush administration officials to greatly enlarge executive power. Many of them are Nixon-era veterans, and it seems often that some of their lawless acts are intended to go over the line not because they necessarily want to cross it for policy reasons, but because it fits in with an ideological insistence that the executive is not under any sort of congressional legal jurisdiction.
Thus torture, surveillance, suspension of habeas corpus, signing statements, disdain of oversight, refusal to comply with congressional summons, and on and on. A lapdog press, utterly unprepared for (and by and large disinterested in) actual political reality has made it seem like these moves have been the boy howdy! of normal give and take, rather than a serious realignment of power in the government, with serious implications for the balance of power envisioned by the constitution.
The constitution does envision a vigorous and powerful executive, but it explicitly places that executive power wholly within the oversight and legal jurisdiction of Congressional power. How can this situation be restored? One important thing is to elect the kind of vigorous leadership Congress needs to have. Pliable leadership is unable to maintain independence. This step is up to voters, who too often are content to regard the president as sort of an elected king, who must be suffered under or followed unconditionally, depending on their political leanings.
Second, we need to revise the Senate's filibuster rules. Filibusters on appointees are a limit to presidential power, but filibusters on bills make it impossible for congress to act expeditiously. Get rid of them.
Third, congressional oversight, summons, and subpoenas need to be backed by a bigger, more self-interested bureacracy. Perhaps something like a prime minister's office, which would have an attendant bureacracy and police arm with a jurisdiction over all federal executive-branch employees. This office would consist of a political leader chosen from the House, and that person's appointees, but staffed by a career bureaucracy including police and legal arms with authority to arrest, charge, and prosecute administration officials who are in contempt of Congress. A self-interested bureaucracy's motivations are to maintain the source of its power: the independence of congress and executive compliance with its rights and privileges. This office would essentially be the source for special investigators of government actions, which apparently the Justice department has become unable to perform on its own, given its misunderstanding of its own responsibilities.
Is this an overreaction to the incredible complicity of the Justice department under Bush? Would a Congress who confirmed Gonzales and Mukasey really be able to politically stomach sending their own legal and police troops after executive offenders? Unclear. Would a Congress which let its power wane so substantially do what it took to maintain such an institution? The hope would be that such an institution would try to maintain itself. The career bureaucrats whose everyday jobs were to come to work and investigate the administration, demand documents, break down doors and haul people away in handcuffs if they didn't produce them, and so on, would develop the influence with congresspeople to maintain themselves.
It might be worth a try. ¶ 9:58 PM 0 Comments
What to Buy for $1T
deprecession we're going to have a mammoth stimulus package. People I listen to on economics (Paul Krugman, Brad DeLong) think so, so let's go shopping! What could we get for one trillion dollars?
The goal here isn't just to dump in cash, but to buy things that will ensure that the innovation we count on returning to the forefront can get an easy toehold and help us out of our economic problems.
1. Nationwide Broadband (aka the Rural Internetification Act)
We've dropped from like number three to like number 26 in broadband speed X penetration. Everyone needs it, everyone wishes they had more options, and providing the kinds of innovative information services that will provide huge value to people will be greatly enhanced by a vast new market of consumers eager to try out their shiny new 25Mbps data pipes.
Obama's advisors are all over this. He's wired. This one is a gimme. The big problem is probably that it's too cheap. The Australians just bought a system like this for like $5 billion. The US has 15 times as many people, but about the same area. But Australia doesn't have to wire gobs of desert. So say it costs us $25 billion. Employment is pretty significant, and ranges across the economic spectrum: people to put up poles. People to develop routing hardware and software. People to install head-end equipment. People to run companies administering the network. I'm not sure how many jobs we're talking about. On the order of 200k seems about right. The Australians have lined up companies employing 250k that say they critically need it.
More money can be spent on international connectivity. The pace of trans-oceanic bandwidth has not kept pace at all with demand. Laying massive new fiber lines across the oceans will fuel global demand for American information services. Assisting similar internetification stimuli in other parts of the world will do the same. Right now the US is the global leader in information and telecom services. Helping to build networks in places that don't have them extends that reach. These efforts might cost another $25 billion.
Other related projects: free up more wireless bandwidth. Make sure it is accessible in open ways that enable innovation to create a wide array of products and services that people will want to buy. This is a very inexpensive way to stimulate innovation and growth.
2. Intelligent renewables-compatible power grid
Implementing the expert's recommendations on this front after the Great Blackout of 2003 will be costly and largely hasn't been done. Investing a bunch of money here is another broad-spectrum stimulus across lots of different types of jobs. The investment is in an infrastructure which will carry the results of energy innovations to consumers. So as ideas for effective power generation with wind, ethanol, solar, tidal, geothermal, and other clean sources come on-line, they'll be able to easily find markets. (Al Gore likes a smart grid idea, and he has Obama's ear, too.) Price tag: $100 billion or so, over the course of many years. On the other hand, the cost of blackouts (which the project should significantly reduce) is comparable, so there will be money to recoup there.
3. Renewable energy investments
There's some high bang-for-the-buck stimulus investment that can be done here. Government assurances on construction bonds and price minimums for big renewable energy projects can pull out billions in investment capital for mature technology like wind and some kinds of solar. This money doesn't even have to be paid up front: the stimulus is in the form of risk assumption. Fast-tracking approvals for projects like this can get construction jobs created in months instead of years. There's a very broad range of opportunities here, from bond guarantees on mature technology to co-investment on pilot plants with technologies that need to be developed further (cellulosic ethanol, for instance). Total cost would be in the billions somewhere, but the capacity to develop these projects is somewhat limited due to manufacturing infrastructure. Perhaps stimulus in siting green manufacturing plants in the US would be an appropriate component. Or perhaps a relaxation on import rules, if needed. The Obama people are talking about an "Apollo project for energy" so this kind of thing is already on their radar. Costs bandied about range up to $500 billion over many years, but a lot of that includes separate items on this list.
4. More efficient, open cars
We're going to bail out US auto makers. The price tag will be in the tens of billions, and should be accompanied by a lot of pain for the people in charge. The payback in operational terms should be an acceptance of an aggressive increase in CAFE standards and a commitment to a plan for hybrid, electric, and flex-fuel vehicles on a greatly accelerated time frame. There should also be an insistence on open vehicle standards to fuel innovation on after-market goods and services that can live on the car-as-platform. If the government is going to save the lives of car companies, they need to accept the idea that the car's entertainment and information systems will be open, in order to spur innovation in accompanying products. At the same time, the plug-in hybrid and electric and flex-fuel cars the companies build need to be capable of providing a market for the green energy sources we're investing in.
5. Repairing infrastructure (aka the Works Repair Administration)
Really. Some of this stuff hasn't been worked on since the original WPA. Can you spell "levees in New Orleans" ($20B)? How about the nation's dams, which need fixing. There's bridges that need fixing, interstates that could use completing. I'm sure every state has a wish list a mile long. How much of this kind of work to buy is a good question. $150B would be easy to spend. It isn't just make-work. Repairing levees and dams costs, but high-unemployment times are a good time to get things like this done. Infrastructure investments pay off. They guard against the possibility of a disaster just as a recovery is underway, and pay off in stability and positive expectations during the recovery.
6. High-speed rail and transit programs
Rail is severely under-invested. Many countries enjoy high-speed rail services that create opportunities for business travel, commuting, and pleasure. For instance, in Japan, a city like Osaka (population 3M or so) has some 20-30 high-speed trains an hour stop by, bound for all over Japan. Each one holds a couple jumbo-jets worth of passengers. That's the equivalent in passenger-opportunities, although obviously not in destination diversity, of a major metropolitan-area airport serving 10 times as many people in the US. The point is, this kind of transit opportunity opens up travel immensely, and is a huge infrastructure investment in opportunities that might be created which rely on safe, convenient, predictable, inexpensive travel opportunities. The total cost for such a system in the US would be immense. But building some key routes and subsidizing local efforts can coax out lots of investment dollars. The recently-passed California high-speed rail measure will ask the federal government for $10B, to put alongside a state $10B bond and some local money. A dozen other similar projects would bring the federal tab to around $150B, and result in say $500B in total investment. 3:1 ain't bad.
So we've spent some $750 billion so far. I have no doubt there are viable candidates for the other $250B. I didn't even mention healthcare. So this is in the same range as the size of the bank bailout. Spread over several years. The expected return on the bank bailout is uncertain, but probably positive. Structured correctly, this $750B might yield a bit of return, too. Certainly the investment in the internet and transportation and electrical systems would yield significant paybacks. Arguably of comparable size to the outlays, especially if a lot of new innovation comes to depend on these valuable pieces of infrastructure.
Given that the economy runs on trust, and most of the usual vehicles of trust are broken right now, it shouldn't be surprising that the place the government occupies as the "trustee of last resort" may end up being worth a lot of money. When everyone else is selling, the smart money is looking to buy, and the government is able to draw on a reservoir of trust unavailable to any other party right now. It is an opportunity to invest a staggering amount of money wisely, with the concomitant possibility of huge returns. As with any government action, though, the risk of wasting a ton of money in bad, politically-motivated and worthless gambles or downright frauds is a serious hazard. Even good ideas can have their implementation fouled by the same forces. It's not a good time to rush headlong into any investment, but it also wouln't be smart to wait a year and look at them all. A lot of these ideas have been developed pretty thoroughly, over the course of years, by domain experts. Let's take those as starting points and get them right. ¶ 10:29 PM 0 Comments
Monday, November 17, 2008
It looks like to stave off another
The goal here isn't just to dump in cash, but to buy things that will ensure that the innovation we count on returning to the forefront can get an easy toehold and help us out of our economic problems.
1. Nationwide Broadband (aka the Rural Internetification Act)
We've dropped from like number three to like number 26 in broadband speed X penetration. Everyone needs it, everyone wishes they had more options, and providing the kinds of innovative information services that will provide huge value to people will be greatly enhanced by a vast new market of consumers eager to try out their shiny new 25Mbps data pipes.
Obama's advisors are all over this. He's wired. This one is a gimme. The big problem is probably that it's too cheap. The Australians just bought a system like this for like $5 billion. The US has 15 times as many people, but about the same area. But Australia doesn't have to wire gobs of desert. So say it costs us $25 billion. Employment is pretty significant, and ranges across the economic spectrum: people to put up poles. People to develop routing hardware and software. People to install head-end equipment. People to run companies administering the network. I'm not sure how many jobs we're talking about. On the order of 200k seems about right. The Australians have lined up companies employing 250k that say they critically need it.
More money can be spent on international connectivity. The pace of trans-oceanic bandwidth has not kept pace at all with demand. Laying massive new fiber lines across the oceans will fuel global demand for American information services. Assisting similar internetification stimuli in other parts of the world will do the same. Right now the US is the global leader in information and telecom services. Helping to build networks in places that don't have them extends that reach. These efforts might cost another $25 billion.
Other related projects: free up more wireless bandwidth. Make sure it is accessible in open ways that enable innovation to create a wide array of products and services that people will want to buy. This is a very inexpensive way to stimulate innovation and growth.
2. Intelligent renewables-compatible power grid
Implementing the expert's recommendations on this front after the Great Blackout of 2003 will be costly and largely hasn't been done. Investing a bunch of money here is another broad-spectrum stimulus across lots of different types of jobs. The investment is in an infrastructure which will carry the results of energy innovations to consumers. So as ideas for effective power generation with wind, ethanol, solar, tidal, geothermal, and other clean sources come on-line, they'll be able to easily find markets. (Al Gore likes a smart grid idea, and he has Obama's ear, too.) Price tag: $100 billion or so, over the course of many years. On the other hand, the cost of blackouts (which the project should significantly reduce) is comparable, so there will be money to recoup there.
3. Renewable energy investments
There's some high bang-for-the-buck stimulus investment that can be done here. Government assurances on construction bonds and price minimums for big renewable energy projects can pull out billions in investment capital for mature technology like wind and some kinds of solar. This money doesn't even have to be paid up front: the stimulus is in the form of risk assumption. Fast-tracking approvals for projects like this can get construction jobs created in months instead of years. There's a very broad range of opportunities here, from bond guarantees on mature technology to co-investment on pilot plants with technologies that need to be developed further (cellulosic ethanol, for instance). Total cost would be in the billions somewhere, but the capacity to develop these projects is somewhat limited due to manufacturing infrastructure. Perhaps stimulus in siting green manufacturing plants in the US would be an appropriate component. Or perhaps a relaxation on import rules, if needed. The Obama people are talking about an "Apollo project for energy" so this kind of thing is already on their radar. Costs bandied about range up to $500 billion over many years, but a lot of that includes separate items on this list.
4. More efficient, open cars
We're going to bail out US auto makers. The price tag will be in the tens of billions, and should be accompanied by a lot of pain for the people in charge. The payback in operational terms should be an acceptance of an aggressive increase in CAFE standards and a commitment to a plan for hybrid, electric, and flex-fuel vehicles on a greatly accelerated time frame. There should also be an insistence on open vehicle standards to fuel innovation on after-market goods and services that can live on the car-as-platform. If the government is going to save the lives of car companies, they need to accept the idea that the car's entertainment and information systems will be open, in order to spur innovation in accompanying products. At the same time, the plug-in hybrid and electric and flex-fuel cars the companies build need to be capable of providing a market for the green energy sources we're investing in.
5. Repairing infrastructure (aka the Works Repair Administration)
Really. Some of this stuff hasn't been worked on since the original WPA. Can you spell "levees in New Orleans" ($20B)? How about the nation's dams, which need fixing. There's bridges that need fixing, interstates that could use completing. I'm sure every state has a wish list a mile long. How much of this kind of work to buy is a good question. $150B would be easy to spend. It isn't just make-work. Repairing levees and dams costs, but high-unemployment times are a good time to get things like this done. Infrastructure investments pay off. They guard against the possibility of a disaster just as a recovery is underway, and pay off in stability and positive expectations during the recovery.
6. High-speed rail and transit programs
Rail is severely under-invested. Many countries enjoy high-speed rail services that create opportunities for business travel, commuting, and pleasure. For instance, in Japan, a city like Osaka (population 3M or so) has some 20-30 high-speed trains an hour stop by, bound for all over Japan. Each one holds a couple jumbo-jets worth of passengers. That's the equivalent in passenger-opportunities, although obviously not in destination diversity, of a major metropolitan-area airport serving 10 times as many people in the US. The point is, this kind of transit opportunity opens up travel immensely, and is a huge infrastructure investment in opportunities that might be created which rely on safe, convenient, predictable, inexpensive travel opportunities. The total cost for such a system in the US would be immense. But building some key routes and subsidizing local efforts can coax out lots of investment dollars. The recently-passed California high-speed rail measure will ask the federal government for $10B, to put alongside a state $10B bond and some local money. A dozen other similar projects would bring the federal tab to around $150B, and result in say $500B in total investment. 3:1 ain't bad.
So we've spent some $750 billion so far. I have no doubt there are viable candidates for the other $250B. I didn't even mention healthcare. So this is in the same range as the size of the bank bailout. Spread over several years. The expected return on the bank bailout is uncertain, but probably positive. Structured correctly, this $750B might yield a bit of return, too. Certainly the investment in the internet and transportation and electrical systems would yield significant paybacks. Arguably of comparable size to the outlays, especially if a lot of new innovation comes to depend on these valuable pieces of infrastructure.
Given that the economy runs on trust, and most of the usual vehicles of trust are broken right now, it shouldn't be surprising that the place the government occupies as the "trustee of last resort" may end up being worth a lot of money. When everyone else is selling, the smart money is looking to buy, and the government is able to draw on a reservoir of trust unavailable to any other party right now. It is an opportunity to invest a staggering amount of money wisely, with the concomitant possibility of huge returns. As with any government action, though, the risk of wasting a ton of money in bad, politically-motivated and worthless gambles or downright frauds is a serious hazard. Even good ideas can have their implementation fouled by the same forces. It's not a good time to rush headlong into any investment, but it also wouln't be smart to wait a year and look at them all. A lot of these ideas have been developed pretty thoroughly, over the course of years, by domain experts. Let's take those as starting points and get them right. ¶ 10:29 PM 0 Comments
The Two-Party System
Through the years, the two main parties in American politics have oscillated around various positions and constituencies. The Federalists were replaced by the Whigs were replaced by the Republicans (were almost replaced by the Teddy Roosevelt and the Progressives shortly after 1900). But there's never been a serious third-party presence other than during those brief intervals of transition when a party got replaced. Why?
The main issue is the Constitution. By mandating geographical representational districts, it all but gaurantees a two-party system. Senators come from states (chosen first by the legislature, and after 1913 by direct election), which are geographical entities, and a Senator represents an entire state. Representatives are chosen from geographical districts, and always have been (although aside from the minimum-of-one rule, it isn't clear that this scheme is as firmly mandated).
Given that these posts can't be shared, this is often referred to as "winner-take-all." Meaning that whoever gets the plurality of the vote gets to represent 100% of the constituency.
So now imagine a voting populace with no parties. They're electing a representative. Assuming they are allowed to communicate, if there is subset of the voters which can agree amongst themselves to vote for the same person, then the largest such group will win the election. There's then the problem of trying to make sure the representative does what the group expects them to, so it would be more stable if the group's reason for existence was built on some kind of ideology such that the person they chose could be trusted to follow through on the intent of the group. But with elections every two years, the US House of Representatives offers ample opportunity to punish misbehaving group members by picking someone else.
So if the voting population is allowed to talk, they'll form groups. How many will they form? Well, they'll form two. Why? Think about it this way. Let's call the biggest group A, then B, then C, D, E, and so on. As above, the A group wins every election. Why? Because it's the biggest. But the B group, if it could just make common cause with some other smaller group (say D and G), would be bigger! Then it would win. The more groups there are, the more opportunity for making common cause. It is better to find someone ideologically compatible with group B who is not totally unacceptable to group D and G. Even if this isn't the "ideal" group B candidate, it is better than nothing! Winner-takes-all ensures that. But once this happens, the B-D-G coalition wins every time. So A recruits C and F. Then B-D-G recruits E.
This ends up looking for all the world like the factions within the two main political parties. Every now and then, a particular constituency will desert one party and go to the other. There's some jockeying, and it sometimes takes years, but the equilibrium position is for two roughly-equal-strength coalitions to form.
It isn't clear this is so bad. After all, if there were dozens of tiny parties, the winner of an election might have only 5% of the vote. As it is, a plurality, often a fairly large majority, is satisfied with their representative. (Or, to be more precise, not sufficiently unhappy to vote for someone else.) In the multiple-party scenario, potentially a large majority would have voted for someone else.
So in a single geographically-represented district, you end up with two parties of roughly equal strength. But why do they hook up across the country into two national parties? One way to look at it would be by shared cultural effects. There are explicitly very few barriers to movement, communication, or anything else between states. Consequently, it would be amazing to find geographical districts right next to each other in which the parties (if they were really independent) had no kind of relationship.
But even just looking at the mechanics of the presidential election means that national parties would have to emerge. Suppose that each state had its own parties. Then potentially each one would nominate its own presidential candidates. Its electors would vote for them, and the biggest state would win every time. But just like in the case of the single geographic district, a couple of fairly big states might join together and start winning. So then the mechanics end up the same: the states should end up allied in two competing camps. But given the free cultural exchange between them and the geographical mechanism they've by-and-large used to choose their electors, the emergence of exactly two main national parties is virtually inevitable.
Another way to think about this is more historical in nature. Things didn't start out party-less and have two parties eventually emerge. They basically started off with two parties instantly. I suppose it could be argued that those involved were so smart they saw that the mechanics of the Constitution would lead almost inevitably to a two-party system, and so they just cut to the end. But this is almost certainly not the case, and it isn't clear that the framers of the Constitution really thought that parties would play a big role in politics. (Perhaps they feared they might and hoped they wouldn't.)
But whatever their attitudes, the tensions inherent in the Constitutional vs. Federation of States systems meant that there were naturally two main schools of thought: those favoring more centralized government and those opposing it. Or large-state, small-state conflicts. Or slave/free states. There are a few axes of division, and the principal components there account for the factions in each group, but by and large, once two parties emerge, the system will be stable. The reason it is stable is because of the geographical representation. As constituencies defect to the other party, or change in relative size, the parties adapt to form new constituencies. They have to, or else their opponents will win every election. It is far better to swallow your pride and make common cause with the most unhappy group in the other coalition than to be out of power forever, so that's what's happened.
Throughout history, the parties have shuffled constituencies many times. For instance, the Republicans enjoyed near complete control over the Northeast in the late 1800s after the Civil War. Now, a hundred years later, that has reversed, and the Democrats have near complete control over the Northeast, and the Republicans are strong in the South.
There's something else to wrap up here. If in each district there are pressures to have the parties be equally strong, then why do we see such wide disparities in vote totals? There are lots of "safe" seats where there's virtually no chance that one party's candidate will be defeated. Why is that?
The first reason is the ever-increasing role of the executive. At this point, a district's participation in the presidential election may be on par in relevance to the district as its selection of its own direct representative. This tends to make it much less important for parties to compete in each district. And indeed, in many cases they have sought to manipulate the districts themselves so they don't have to (gerrymandering).
Another is that the existence of national parties, able to coordinate action across districts, means that although a group in the opposition party in some gerrymandered district may not technically have any hope of direct representation, they are still relatively well represented by their party's national apparatus, so there is not as much clamor as there might be for fair direct representation.
Also, the regional variation in party ideology should not be overlooked. An opposition representative in a "safe" district will very often adopt positions at odds with the national party in an attempt to capture more of the vote in that district. Often the national-party identity is strong enough that this is a difficult position to take, especially with the advantages of incumbency and the centralized funding priorities of the national party.
Yet another way to think about the stability of the two-party system comes from thinking about making a third party. If you want to build a new party from scratch, you need to convince half the people to join. Why half and not a third? Because if you are at a third, the two main parties will simply coalesce. They'd rather make common cause and win with a two-thirds majority than to have your party win.
If you want to take over an existing party, though, you only need to convince a quarter of the people to join. With that following, your faction will be in control of one of the major parties, and can pick your candidate. Of course the price for this is you have to compromise with the other constituencies in that national party or else they'll bolt for the other one. If your group is unwilling to compromise with the half of the electorate most predisposed to your position, then almost by definition you won't be able to attract the support of half the electorate, so you have no hope of success. In other words, given the two-party system, it is very difficult to create a new movement externally, especially as compared to the relatively smaller job of creating a movement within one of the parties. Which is why on those few occasions when parties have emerged, they have done so by replacing an existing major party.
What about other countries? Most other constitutional democracies have proportional representation, which is much more amenable to multi-party systems. Although even there, there will typically be a couple of major parties, and then a tail of less important ones. The executive politics is done in the (proportional) legislature, which means that popular presidential politics don't result into a coalescing into two main parties. In that system, it isn't exactly that you have a proportional executive, but it can be kind of like that if one coalition party demands such-and-such a position in the government. Since the government is formed by the legislature, it can put a coalition into power, and is not bound by a single executive election as is the United States. ¶ 10:36 PM 0 Comments
Friday, November 14, 2008
The United States has two main parties. It has ever since George Washington took office, although in those days of political hope, they were better characterized as the Federalist faction and the anti-Federalist (Democratic) faction. The Federalists favored more centralized forms of government. More stable "elite" bodies doing the decision-making, and more power over more parts of society being given over to those bodies. The anti-Federalists thought the reverse: that it was better to entrust more decision-making to the body politic at large (although for them "large" doesn't mean what it does today), and that power should be more decentralized.
Through the years, the two main parties in American politics have oscillated around various positions and constituencies. The Federalists were replaced by the Whigs were replaced by the Republicans (were almost replaced by the Teddy Roosevelt and the Progressives shortly after 1900). But there's never been a serious third-party presence other than during those brief intervals of transition when a party got replaced. Why?
The main issue is the Constitution. By mandating geographical representational districts, it all but gaurantees a two-party system. Senators come from states (chosen first by the legislature, and after 1913 by direct election), which are geographical entities, and a Senator represents an entire state. Representatives are chosen from geographical districts, and always have been (although aside from the minimum-of-one rule, it isn't clear that this scheme is as firmly mandated).
Given that these posts can't be shared, this is often referred to as "winner-take-all." Meaning that whoever gets the plurality of the vote gets to represent 100% of the constituency.
So now imagine a voting populace with no parties. They're electing a representative. Assuming they are allowed to communicate, if there is subset of the voters which can agree amongst themselves to vote for the same person, then the largest such group will win the election. There's then the problem of trying to make sure the representative does what the group expects them to, so it would be more stable if the group's reason for existence was built on some kind of ideology such that the person they chose could be trusted to follow through on the intent of the group. But with elections every two years, the US House of Representatives offers ample opportunity to punish misbehaving group members by picking someone else.
So if the voting population is allowed to talk, they'll form groups. How many will they form? Well, they'll form two. Why? Think about it this way. Let's call the biggest group A, then B, then C, D, E, and so on. As above, the A group wins every election. Why? Because it's the biggest. But the B group, if it could just make common cause with some other smaller group (say D and G), would be bigger! Then it would win. The more groups there are, the more opportunity for making common cause. It is better to find someone ideologically compatible with group B who is not totally unacceptable to group D and G. Even if this isn't the "ideal" group B candidate, it is better than nothing! Winner-takes-all ensures that. But once this happens, the B-D-G coalition wins every time. So A recruits C and F. Then B-D-G recruits E.
This ends up looking for all the world like the factions within the two main political parties. Every now and then, a particular constituency will desert one party and go to the other. There's some jockeying, and it sometimes takes years, but the equilibrium position is for two roughly-equal-strength coalitions to form.
It isn't clear this is so bad. After all, if there were dozens of tiny parties, the winner of an election might have only 5% of the vote. As it is, a plurality, often a fairly large majority, is satisfied with their representative. (Or, to be more precise, not sufficiently unhappy to vote for someone else.) In the multiple-party scenario, potentially a large majority would have voted for someone else.
So in a single geographically-represented district, you end up with two parties of roughly equal strength. But why do they hook up across the country into two national parties? One way to look at it would be by shared cultural effects. There are explicitly very few barriers to movement, communication, or anything else between states. Consequently, it would be amazing to find geographical districts right next to each other in which the parties (if they were really independent) had no kind of relationship.
But even just looking at the mechanics of the presidential election means that national parties would have to emerge. Suppose that each state had its own parties. Then potentially each one would nominate its own presidential candidates. Its electors would vote for them, and the biggest state would win every time. But just like in the case of the single geographic district, a couple of fairly big states might join together and start winning. So then the mechanics end up the same: the states should end up allied in two competing camps. But given the free cultural exchange between them and the geographical mechanism they've by-and-large used to choose their electors, the emergence of exactly two main national parties is virtually inevitable.
Another way to think about this is more historical in nature. Things didn't start out party-less and have two parties eventually emerge. They basically started off with two parties instantly. I suppose it could be argued that those involved were so smart they saw that the mechanics of the Constitution would lead almost inevitably to a two-party system, and so they just cut to the end. But this is almost certainly not the case, and it isn't clear that the framers of the Constitution really thought that parties would play a big role in politics. (Perhaps they feared they might and hoped they wouldn't.)
But whatever their attitudes, the tensions inherent in the Constitutional vs. Federation of States systems meant that there were naturally two main schools of thought: those favoring more centralized government and those opposing it. Or large-state, small-state conflicts. Or slave/free states. There are a few axes of division, and the principal components there account for the factions in each group, but by and large, once two parties emerge, the system will be stable. The reason it is stable is because of the geographical representation. As constituencies defect to the other party, or change in relative size, the parties adapt to form new constituencies. They have to, or else their opponents will win every election. It is far better to swallow your pride and make common cause with the most unhappy group in the other coalition than to be out of power forever, so that's what's happened.
Throughout history, the parties have shuffled constituencies many times. For instance, the Republicans enjoyed near complete control over the Northeast in the late 1800s after the Civil War. Now, a hundred years later, that has reversed, and the Democrats have near complete control over the Northeast, and the Republicans are strong in the South.
There's something else to wrap up here. If in each district there are pressures to have the parties be equally strong, then why do we see such wide disparities in vote totals? There are lots of "safe" seats where there's virtually no chance that one party's candidate will be defeated. Why is that?
The first reason is the ever-increasing role of the executive. At this point, a district's participation in the presidential election may be on par in relevance to the district as its selection of its own direct representative. This tends to make it much less important for parties to compete in each district. And indeed, in many cases they have sought to manipulate the districts themselves so they don't have to (gerrymandering).
Another is that the existence of national parties, able to coordinate action across districts, means that although a group in the opposition party in some gerrymandered district may not technically have any hope of direct representation, they are still relatively well represented by their party's national apparatus, so there is not as much clamor as there might be for fair direct representation.
Also, the regional variation in party ideology should not be overlooked. An opposition representative in a "safe" district will very often adopt positions at odds with the national party in an attempt to capture more of the vote in that district. Often the national-party identity is strong enough that this is a difficult position to take, especially with the advantages of incumbency and the centralized funding priorities of the national party.
Yet another way to think about the stability of the two-party system comes from thinking about making a third party. If you want to build a new party from scratch, you need to convince half the people to join. Why half and not a third? Because if you are at a third, the two main parties will simply coalesce. They'd rather make common cause and win with a two-thirds majority than to have your party win.
If you want to take over an existing party, though, you only need to convince a quarter of the people to join. With that following, your faction will be in control of one of the major parties, and can pick your candidate. Of course the price for this is you have to compromise with the other constituencies in that national party or else they'll bolt for the other one. If your group is unwilling to compromise with the half of the electorate most predisposed to your position, then almost by definition you won't be able to attract the support of half the electorate, so you have no hope of success. In other words, given the two-party system, it is very difficult to create a new movement externally, especially as compared to the relatively smaller job of creating a movement within one of the parties. Which is why on those few occasions when parties have emerged, they have done so by replacing an existing major party.
What about other countries? Most other constitutional democracies have proportional representation, which is much more amenable to multi-party systems. Although even there, there will typically be a couple of major parties, and then a tail of less important ones. The executive politics is done in the (proportional) legislature, which means that popular presidential politics don't result into a coalescing into two main parties. In that system, it isn't exactly that you have a proportional executive, but it can be kind of like that if one coalition party demands such-and-such a position in the government. Since the government is formed by the legislature, it can put a coalition into power, and is not bound by a single executive election as is the United States. ¶ 10:36 PM 0 Comments
Taxing gas and taxing waste
But the point of a gas tax wouldn't be to directly cause less fossil fuel consumption. It would be to pay for programs which would potentially change the consumption landscape such that less gas would be consumed. For instance, a gas tax could pay for solar and wind subsidies. Given lots of solar and wind capacity, we'd need less coal and natural gas to make electricity. We could subsidize the development of hybrid or pure-electric power trains, or fuel cells, or telecommuting technology, or transit systems, or smart highways. Programs like this would decrease gasoline usage.
The article makes the point that "The solution [for greenhouse gas reduction] is not more virtuous behavior or slightly more fuel economy, but new infrastructure." True, and that's what a gas tax would (hopefully) go to fund.
More generically, what would a tax policy look like which penalized waste? That is, what if we charged taxes per can of garbage, per ton of carbon or sulfur emitted. This would end up looking like a use tax. As such, it would tend to be regressive. Our main regressive tax right now is the FICA tax. I think it would be interesting to see what it would take to replace part of FICA with this sort of waste tax.
On the other hand, the tax can be lessened by being careful -- composting garbage, turning out lights, getting a more fuel efficient car, that sort of thing. Some of that will be behave regressively (people who lack means to buy double-paned windows or an electric car), but some will behave more progressively (smaller houses and fewer cars have smaller energy needs; taking the time to make sure recyclables and compost are separated and that the lawn is small and only gets watered when it needs it). So it could be that part of the income tax could be replaced with this sort of tax. ¶ 8:04 PM 0 Comments
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Grist has a good article (via Ezra Klein) on making a gas tax. Specifically that it won't work. One of the main points in the article is that the elasticity of demand for gas is so low that it would take a politically impossible level of taxation to make any difference in consumption. That is true if you consider direct effects only. During the huge gas peak of 2007-2008, demand for gas did drop a bit (during a doubling of price), but obviously it would take a multi-dollar-per-gallon tax to really affect consumption dramatically.
But the point of a gas tax wouldn't be to directly cause less fossil fuel consumption. It would be to pay for programs which would potentially change the consumption landscape such that less gas would be consumed. For instance, a gas tax could pay for solar and wind subsidies. Given lots of solar and wind capacity, we'd need less coal and natural gas to make electricity. We could subsidize the development of hybrid or pure-electric power trains, or fuel cells, or telecommuting technology, or transit systems, or smart highways. Programs like this would decrease gasoline usage.
The article makes the point that "The solution [for greenhouse gas reduction] is not more virtuous behavior or slightly more fuel economy, but new infrastructure." True, and that's what a gas tax would (hopefully) go to fund.
More generically, what would a tax policy look like which penalized waste? That is, what if we charged taxes per can of garbage, per ton of carbon or sulfur emitted. This would end up looking like a use tax. As such, it would tend to be regressive. Our main regressive tax right now is the FICA tax. I think it would be interesting to see what it would take to replace part of FICA with this sort of waste tax.
On the other hand, the tax can be lessened by being careful -- composting garbage, turning out lights, getting a more fuel efficient car, that sort of thing. Some of that will be behave regressively (people who lack means to buy double-paned windows or an electric car), but some will behave more progressively (smaller houses and fewer cars have smaller energy needs; taking the time to make sure recyclables and compost are separated and that the lawn is small and only gets watered when it needs it). So it could be that part of the income tax could be replaced with this sort of tax. ¶ 8:04 PM 0 Comments
Wasting votes
Now this isn't super high. Definitely low enough that the symbolic value of voting may predominate. But what about voting for a third party candidate or a write-in?
The decisiveness here is awkward to analyze. If you have a preference between the two main candidates, you're probably going to be really sad if it turns out the other one won by one vote. That is, the chances you'll actively regret your vote (that is, wish that your vote for your more preferred main candidate was there to be counted) are again something like 10-5. Not that high. But the chances that your vote will be decisive for your candidate are really so near zero as to make numerical calculation difficult.
Think about what such a result would mean. Let's say the polls show the race at say 51-44-5, meaning someone is leading with 51% of the poll, the second place is at 44%, and 5% are undecided or going for another candidate. Margin of error might be 4% or so. So the most naive calculation says that the two leading candidates poll numbers must be off by 8-10 standard deviations, and the 'other' number also must be off by that much, AND everyone must really be thinking that your candidate is the best in the 'other' category.
The probability that the real population dislikes someone at 6 standard deviations from the measured value is about 10-9. With sampling bias and so on, let's take that as the value. So then the probability of the polls being off by so much in all these cases are somewhere in the 10-30 range. At any rate, we're so far out that the shape of what we're computing is in real doubt. Perhaps it is 10 orders of magnitude better. Perhaps it is a hundred orders of magnitude worse. At this point, does it really matter?
The point is, you are accepting a dramatically higher (but measurable) chance that you will regret your vote for a probability of your vote meaning something that is too small to measure. Not a good trade, unless the value of the vote is purely symbolic. Now given the fairly low probability of a vote being decisive, perhaps that's mostly what this is about: the vote is mostly a conversational tool for later: "Well, I voted for XYZ!"
Another interpretation is that on any ballot there are probably races with much higher probabilities of any vote being decisive (or, more loosely, regretted if not cast). The highest of these may be a couple or three orders of magnitude higher -- they may be for local races with much lower total vote counts, or for tighter races. There's good reason to think that on any ballot, the estimate of the value of filling out some part of it may be as high as 10-2 or even 10-1. In that case, given the small marginal cost of filling in the rest, it may be rational to do so.
But whatever the case, it seems to me that voters who vote for third-party candidates or write-in candidates haven't understood that their neighbors are allowed to vote strategically and that they are too. That is, at some level, they think it would be better if everyone just wrote down the name of the person who they really, truly thought was the most qualified, and that the best person would then win by some sort of acclamation, or something. Real-life democracy can't work that way without a mind-reading machine, though. And given the necessary possibility of voting strategically (that is, voting not for the person you think is best, but for a weighted estimate of the person you think is most likely to win who is the most preferable to you), voting non-strategically will always be a waste of your ballot.
Unless you happen to be one of the super-partisans who really does believe that one of the main candidates really truly is the best possible candidate for office. ¶ 11:13 PM 0 Comments
Saturday, November 8, 2008
Why do people vote? Interesting question. There's an analysis [via Yglesias] that estimates that the probability your vote is decisive as about 10-8. Some states are an order of magnitude better (in 2008, topped it off at about 2*10-7).
But presumably the actual value is somewhat blurrier, and you might be really glad you voted if the win happened by only a few votes, up to a more "symbolic value only" value if there's no recount. Assuming recounts are at about half a percent, which translates to several thousand, this gives us perhaps three orders of magnitude, or somewhere around 10-5 chance that you'll be really glad (based on the outcome) that your vote for your candidate was there to be counted.
Now this isn't super high. Definitely low enough that the symbolic value of voting may predominate. But what about voting for a third party candidate or a write-in?
The decisiveness here is awkward to analyze. If you have a preference between the two main candidates, you're probably going to be really sad if it turns out the other one won by one vote. That is, the chances you'll actively regret your vote (that is, wish that your vote for your more preferred main candidate was there to be counted) are again something like 10-5. Not that high. But the chances that your vote will be decisive for your candidate are really so near zero as to make numerical calculation difficult.
Think about what such a result would mean. Let's say the polls show the race at say 51-44-5, meaning someone is leading with 51% of the poll, the second place is at 44%, and 5% are undecided or going for another candidate. Margin of error might be 4% or so. So the most naive calculation says that the two leading candidates poll numbers must be off by 8-10 standard deviations, and the 'other' number also must be off by that much, AND everyone must really be thinking that your candidate is the best in the 'other' category.
The probability that the real population dislikes someone at 6 standard deviations from the measured value is about 10-9. With sampling bias and so on, let's take that as the value. So then the probability of the polls being off by so much in all these cases are somewhere in the 10-30 range. At any rate, we're so far out that the shape of what we're computing is in real doubt. Perhaps it is 10 orders of magnitude better. Perhaps it is a hundred orders of magnitude worse. At this point, does it really matter?
The point is, you are accepting a dramatically higher (but measurable) chance that you will regret your vote for a probability of your vote meaning something that is too small to measure. Not a good trade, unless the value of the vote is purely symbolic. Now given the fairly low probability of a vote being decisive, perhaps that's mostly what this is about: the vote is mostly a conversational tool for later: "Well, I voted for XYZ!"
Another interpretation is that on any ballot there are probably races with much higher probabilities of any vote being decisive (or, more loosely, regretted if not cast). The highest of these may be a couple or three orders of magnitude higher -- they may be for local races with much lower total vote counts, or for tighter races. There's good reason to think that on any ballot, the estimate of the value of filling out some part of it may be as high as 10-2 or even 10-1. In that case, given the small marginal cost of filling in the rest, it may be rational to do so.
But whatever the case, it seems to me that voters who vote for third-party candidates or write-in candidates haven't understood that their neighbors are allowed to vote strategically and that they are too. That is, at some level, they think it would be better if everyone just wrote down the name of the person who they really, truly thought was the most qualified, and that the best person would then win by some sort of acclamation, or something. Real-life democracy can't work that way without a mind-reading machine, though. And given the necessary possibility of voting strategically (that is, voting not for the person you think is best, but for a weighted estimate of the person you think is most likely to win who is the most preferable to you), voting non-strategically will always be a waste of your ballot.
Unless you happen to be one of the super-partisans who really does believe that one of the main candidates really truly is the best possible candidate for office. ¶ 11:13 PM 0 Comments
