Mitt Romney, Champion of the Working Class

Once you wade past the right-wing talking points and demagoguery, which means roughly the first 2/3 of his column, Michael Gerson has some interesting (and terrible) advice for Mitt Romney: To admit that our nation has rigid social classes and terrible class mobility, and to paint himself as the person to bring about change. Gerson draws our attention "across the pond" to Nick Clegg, leader of the Liberal Democrat Party and Deputy Prime Minister under a coalition deal with the ruling Conservative Party.

Gerson appears to know little about the U.K., its class structure or its politics. British culture is full of class markers, from accents and dialects that give away your region of birth, and quite possibly also your social class, to a literal House of Lords, as distinguished from the House of Commons, a bloated entity filled with life-tenured appointees, resistant to reform. Yes, "The topic of class comes more naturally to British than to American politicians" because, when you talk about class in the U.K., nobody pretends that everybody in the nation is part of a vast "middle class" or reflexively accuses you of engaging in "class warfare".

Before teaming with the Conservative Party, Clegg was better positioned to claim to be the child of great fortune who wanted to help his fellow man by leading a party that claims to speak up for the common man. Since that time, to put it mildly, Clegg has struggled with issues of credibility. Gerson clearly believes that adopting Clegg's rhetoric would serve Romney better than it has served Clegg, but let's that Clegg presently has an 16% approval rating and a 75% disapproval rating. Clegg's speech isn't working for him because he burned up his credibility on these issues. Romney has none to begin with.

Gerson found Clegg's speech to be substantive; I did not. The most substantive proposal I saw was for spending additional money on educational initiatives, principally for preschool education. Having cheap or free, high quality preschool is a valid policy position, which Clegg endorses, but "We'll spend more and get better results" is not.

Gerson explains his theory of how discussion of class mobility could help Romney,

As a governing matter, encouraging social mobility could eventually be a unifying, bipartisan goal. As a political matter, it would provide Romney a particular advantage. Obama’s message is now in full Labor Party mode: Soak the rich. But the smartest Republican response is not to defend the rich. It is to defend a fluid society in which everyone has the possibility of becoming richer.

Sure, Romney can talk about "promoting early-childhood education, high school completion, college attendance and graduation, parenting skills and wealth-building among the disadvantaged", but while Clegg was willing to put a $19 billion price tag on his initiatives, is Romney going to make a similarly sized proposal to back up his own? Adjusted for population, roughly $114 billion? I didn't think so.

Gerson complains that Labor's response to Clegg amounts to the position that "that leveling equality is more important than opportunity", sneering, "Along the way, Miliband delivered this trans-Atlantic taunt: 'If you want the American Dream — go to Finland.'" Except that statement is explicitly about income mobility - he was pointing out that nations such as Finland, which have less wealth inequality, also have more class mobility.

YouTube is already dripping with Romney quotes that would undermine the argument that he either understands or cares about social mobility. You want an alternative to college? Borrow $20 grand from your parents and start a business. You're unemployed? "I'm also unemployed." Also, as Gerson knows, Romney's tax plan slashes taxes for the rich, cuts benefits for the poor and middle class, and increases the deficit. Gerson wants Romney to become the new John Edwards, spokesmodel for those on the losing side of the "Two Americas"? And he thinks that would work?

NFIB v Sebelius - A Tempest in a Tea Party?

Jonathan Adler appears to have come to recognize that despite the two years of hand-wringing, bell-ringing, and "The End is Nigh" announcements about "Obamacare", and the vitriol directed at Justice Roberts, the upholding of the ACA isn't actually a big deal.

Responsible Demagoguery

Paul Paul Krugman argues,

The truth is that predictions of am imminent fiscal crisis made no sense, and would have been considered irresponsible demagoguery if the people making the predictions weren’t so Serious.

I have to disagree. By the definition of "demagoguery" applied in modern political and economic debate, decrying budget deficits and predicting imminent crises are definitionally excluded. In fairness, yes, there are still a few hold-outs who would define such statements as responsible demagoguery, but they really need to get with the times.

I'm not sure what dictionary Krugman's using, but it's probably reality based. [Scoff]

The Divine Right of Boys in the Information Age

It occurs to me that in talking about a David Brooks column I had not originally intended to talk about, I failed to mention the passage that most caught my attention:

Some of the decline in male performance may be genetic.¹ The information age rewards people who mature early, who are verbally and socially sophisticated, who can control their impulses. Girls may, on average, do better at these things. After all, boys are falling behind not just in the U.S., but in all 35 member-nations of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

That is to say, by being pretty much the same as they ever were, schools around the world are suddenly failing to sufficiently engage boys and, while girls (being sugar, spice and everything nice, and predisposed to resist the temptation of a marshmallow) are "verbally and socially sophisticated" in a manner that is allowing them to succeed in college and to reap the rewards of the information age.

My first response is, where were the concern trolls when women, frail, wilting flowers that they are, were excluded from higher education? Brooks' allusion to genetics evokes the notion of past eras that women were biologically unsuited to higher education or to a competitive workplace. And let's not pretend that those biology/genetics arguments have vanished. Also, if the problem is genetic, why does Brooks believe school teachers will be able to "fix" it?

At least when it comes to math, Brooks appears intent on proving himself correct and folks like Larry Summers wrong:

Even so, men make up just over 40 percent of college students. Two million fewer men graduated from college over the past decade than women. The performance gap in graduate school is even higher.

I'm not seeing good numbers on college graduation rates (lots on enrollment, not so much on graduation), and I don't want to spend more time at the moment looking. So I'll use a ballpark figure I saw tossed out, that 1.5 million students graduate from undergraduate programs each year. 15 million over ten years. Using the 60:40 Brooks shared, based on enrollment you should see 9 million women graduate and only 6 million men. Brooks is telling us that the number is 2 million and that this means colleges aren't engaging male students? He didn't share a source for his data, but I'm having a difficult time seeing that as a problem for men. I would like him to elaborate on his data and conclusions.

Also, no offense David, but guys like you are well-suited for college. Even if K-12 schools reinvent themselves so that the most rambunctious young men are engaged in ways that don't involve reading books, what do you believe is going to happen when they reach college and are handed a two-inch-thick text book or parked at a Bunsen burner in a chemistry lab?

Meanwhile, we have more than a few years of the information age to look at. Let's compare how women are faring to how men are faring. If I were to look at a list of the founders of the most successful companies of the information age, or a broader list of their executives, what ratio of men to women should I expect to find? That is, once we move past the world of K-12 education, where can I find Brooks' hand-wringing translated into a real-world environment in which women have the advantage?

I suspect that Brooks isn't actually talking about "boys" here - he's talking about boys being raised in low-SES households. Were his own son to struggle in school, I am skeptical that Brooks would be criticizing his son's teacher for requiring him to write book reports about "exquisitely sensitive Newbery award-winning novellas" (perhaps The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman). Brooks seems like the sort who would read the book with his son, try to engage his son in the literature and instill a love of reading and, if all else failed, hire a tutor to make sure that his son didn't fall behind the rest of the class. (He might even consider private school, assuming that wasn't his child's starting point.)

If Brooks were really talking about Henry V, he would be taking note that the new Henry IV benefits from the modern equivalent of the "divine right of kings" - a system that is set up to favor, privilege, preserve and expand his family's wealth, to the disadvantage of everybody else. Brooks can't argue that it's a zero sum game given his acknowledgment of the associated loss of middle class jobs and diminished opportunity for the non-wealthy Henry IV's. A modern Henry V doesn't need no education - he can and will fall back on daddy's name, money and connections, and a well-rigged tax code.

So let's not pretend that boy-centered K-12 education, whatever that would involve, would be a panacea. Let's not pretend that the modern Henry V's would be stifled in a traditional school while he would flourish in a rigid military academy. And most of all, let's not act as if the fact that the opening of doors, historically closed to women, is a bad thing, even if some men find that women outperform them in the ways that matter to the modern job market.²
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1. There is a sense in which men are genetically "inferior" to women - women get a full set of DNA building blocks, whereas men have lost a chunk of chromosomal material - hence XY instead of XX. That does translate into a set of Y-linked genetic traits, vulnerabilities, abnormalities and eccentricities, some of which can be beneficial and others of which can be catastrophic, with most falling somewhere in the middle. By way of example, see David Brooks' hairline - "male pattern baldness".

2. Brooks likes to talk about "human capital", and the optimization of its value. Brooks may well be able to fashion a K-12 program for kids who aren't college-oriented, and whose parents lack the wealth and resources to prevent that from mattering, such that their "human capital" is maximized. But who says that should be, could be, or is best accomplished through pushing them through college, whether or not they have academic focus, interest or aptitude? If Brooks accepts that his impoverished Henry and Henrietta V's aren't college material, why the lament about men struggling in college?

Does Romney Lack a Coherent Economic Policy

At least, that's what people say. And it's a reasonable reaction, given that he hasn't disclosed an actual policy for boosting the economy. I agree with those who reject his prior offerings as representing an actual plan, as opposed to stringing together a list of promises and right-wing talking points:

The Romney campaign, of course, claims that it has presented an economic plan—and strictly speaking it is right. Last September, Romney unveiled “Believe in America: Mitt Romney’s Plan for Jobs and Economic Growth,” an economic manifesto that ran to more than a hundred and fifty pages. Even back then, though, Romney’s ragtag collection of proposals—fifty-nine of them, ranging from eliminating the inheritance tax, to capping federal spending at twenty per cent of G.D.P., to opening up America’s energy reserves for development—was widely dismissed as inadequate by his fellow Republicans.

In response to criticisms from his rivals in the G.O.P. primary, Romney subsequently unveiled a revised version of his plan, this one containing a twenty per cent cut in income-tax rates from top to bottom. More recently, in a series of ads, his campaign has said that in his first hundred days he will move to repeal Obamacare, cut taxes, and balance the budget. “By day one hundred,” the ads say, “President Romney’s leadership brings new certainty to our economy, and the promise of new banking and high-tech jobs.”

By no stretch of the imagination could the hastily revised tax proposals or the promises contained in the new ads be described as a credible, fully-costed economic plan.

Romney has apparently reduced his "plan" to five talking points, which he presented to the NAACP:

I know what it will take to put people back to work, to bring more jobs and better wages. My jobs plan is based on 25 years of success in business. It has five key steps.

First, I will take full advantage of our energy resources, and I will approve the Keystone pipeline from Canada. Low cost, plentiful coal, natural gas, oil, and renewables will bring over a million manufacturing jobs back to the United States.

Second, I will open up new markets for American products. We are the most productive major economy in the world, so trade means good jobs for Americans. But trade must be free and fair, so I’ll clamp down on cheaters like China and make sure that they finally play by the rules.

Third, I will reduce government spending. Our high level of debt slows GDP growth and that means fewer jobs. If our goal is jobs, we must, must stop spending over a trillion dollars more than we earn. To do this, I will eliminate expensive non-essential programs like Obamacare, and I will work to reform and save Medicare and Social Security, in part by means-testing their benefits.

Fourth, I will focus on nurturing and developing the skilled workers our economy so desperately needs and the future demands. This is the human capital with which tomorrow’s bright future will be built. Too many homes and too many schools are failing to provide our children with the skills and education that are essential for anything other than a minimum-wage job.

And finally and perhaps most importantly, I will restore economic freedom. This nation’s economy runs on freedom, on opportunity, on entrepreneurs, on dreamers who innovate and build businesses. These entrepreneurs are being crushed by high taxation, burdensome regulation, hostile regulators, excessive healthcare costs, and destructive labor policies. I will work to make America the best place in the world for innovators and entrepreneurs and businesses small and large.

Do these five things – open up energy, expand trade, cut the growth of government, focus on better educating tomorrow’s workers today, and restore economic freedom – and jobs will come back to America, and wages will rise again. The President will say he will do those things, but he will not, he cannot, and his record of the last four years proves it.

Let's call that "The Five Platitudes of Mitt":

1. "Take Full Advantage of Our Energy Resources", apparently a signal to the fossil fuel industry that he'll back away from policies to reduce carbon emissions, and perhaps go back to the heady days of G.W. Bush and his massive subsidies, but there's no connection between "I'll make the energy industry richer than ever" and "bring[ing] over a million manufacturing jobs back to the United States". Mitt needs to connect the policy with the supposed outcome. What jobs does he imagine will come back to the United States if we burn more fossil fuel, and on what basis? What will those jobs pay?

2. "Open Up New Markets": How exactly will Romney identify and "open up" the "new markets"? What American products does he believe will be received by the "new markets" he opens up, and in what quantity? Exactly what does he believe that China is doing that makes it a "cheater" - is he talking about financial gamesmanship resulting in a devalued Renminbi, akin to the games he, himself, plays to avoid taxes - and once he defines the problem exactly what will he do to rectify it?

3. "Reduce Government Spending" - Romney personifies the modern Republican demagogue when it comes to government spending. He identifies no targets for his cuts other than the first serious federal effort to limit the healthcare inflation that seriously threatens our nation's financial stability - a program so "wasteful" that while attempting to reduce that serious economic threat it reduces the deficit.
   
   Romney endorses the Ryan Plan - a nebulous proposal that cuts government spending by hammering the middle class, but then increases the deficit by slashing taxes for people like Romney. Worse, while Ryan is happy to be specific about the tax cuts he's giving to the wealthiest Americans, he refuses to specify the cuts he's proposing to partially offset the economic catastrophe he proposes.

4. "Nurturing and Developing the Skilled Workers our Economy Needs" - What workers? Through what policies? To what effect? It's a "Chicken in Every Pot"-type statement - twaddle.

5. "Restore Economic Freedom" - More twaddle. It's the type of line that might get him a cheer from the most ignorant participants at a Tea Party rally. (I'm curious, also - when he enacted "Romneycare", did he take the position that he was knowingly harming small businesses? No, of course not. He's simply coughing out a focus-group vetted applause line that has nothing to do with any policies he would care or dare to articulate in public.)

He's running for office, and the mainstream media on the whole appears satisfied that in a political campaign, something a candidate purports to be a policy but is in fact nothing more than populism, demagoguery, ridiculous promises and absurd overstatements is sufficient. "How can we press for more - we might hurt the candidate's chances in the election if we made him share genuine policy proposals." But when Romney says things like "I have no hidden agenda", is it not fair to ask him, "So that means you have no actual agenda"? (The question can be rephrased to be more delicate, if you wilt at the thought of being somewhat sarcastic when questioning a political candidate.)

So yes, as John Cassidy pointed out in the article linked above, Romney's promises fall far short of a "credible, fully-costed economic plan". Cassidy accepts the cynical explanation that if Romney were to be specific it would cost him votes. But Cassidy also points out that Romney is not being advised by stupid men:

The academic economists advising Romney—a group that includes Harvard’s Greg Mankiw and Columbia’s Glenn Hubbard—are moderate conservatives: they don’t believe in right-wing fairy stories about tax cuts being self-financing and budget cuts stimulating the economy. If Romney enters office and slashes tax rates without pushing through offsetting spending cuts, the budget deficit will shoot up—just as it did following the Reagan and Bush tax cuts. If he cuts government spending without stimulating demand in other ways, the unemployment rate will rise even further. In addition, the entire situation is greatly complicated by the so-called “fiscal cliff”: the fact that on January 1, 2013, the Bush tax cuts are due to expire and the automatic spending cuts agreed upon by both sides during last year’s debt-ceiling debacle are due to be introduced.

Let's back up for a minute here - way back to the days when Romney was advancing a Mssachusetts-style health insurance mandate for the nation, and speaking positively of federal legislation that would have created such a mandate. What else was he doing at that time? He was endorsing stimulus spending - and stating that as a Republican governor he would happily have taken stimulus money.

Here's a radical idea for you: Perhaps the reason Romney refuses to be specific about his economic policies is that he agrees that President Obama is doing all a president can do - and perhaps more than a Republican president could do - to revive the economy. Perhaps his economic advisors agree with him (the 2009 model) that the stimulus bill was sound economic policy and that, were it not made politically impossible by Romney's own party, another stimulus bill would be a really good idea.

Mankiw wrote an editorial some years back that could be interpreted as a suggestion that we use inflation or tax penalties to boost consumer spending. Perhaps Mankiw is now explicitly among those who argue that low, sustained inflation would be a good approach to dealing with debt overhang issues and pulling the nation out of the recession.

When he has unguarded moments, Romney appears to understand that, assuming he could actually identify targets for cuts, even when times are good you cannot significantly cut government spending without causing serious harm to the economy:

... because, if you take a trillion dollars for instance, out of the first year of the federal budget, that would shrink GDP over 5 percent. That is by definition throwing us into recession or depression. So I’m not going to do that, of course.

Various right-wingers call that a "gaffe", but to the extent that's a fair characterization it would be a Kinsey Gaffe (a politician accidentally telling the truth). It suggests that Romney is the inverse of the old "I'm not a doctor but I play one on TV line" - "I actually understand economics, but I play an idiot on TV". And note, consistent with his endorsement of stimulus spending back in 2009, the same logic he expresses in opposing tax cuts can be applied in favor of stimulus spending.

If Romney knows his "day one" promises are largely a lie - that if implemented they will actively harm the economy - then it shouldn't actually be a surprise that he won't state an actual policy. Because odds are it would end up sounding like, "My solution would be to do what President Obama is doing, but maybe I would have more success with my own party in terms of getting more stimulus spending or convincing them to pass the proposals the President has been pushing for the past year to boost employment. Significant spending cuts on my first day in office? Do I look like an idiot?"

Well, That Was Useful....

According to this infographic, based upon the relatively modest percentage of the described websites I use, I am a lowly-highly politically engaged likely Rombama voter.

Angry birds are lowly engaged swing voters? And here I was, thinking that the game was a visualization of Tea Party anger at politicians. ("Get your grubby pig hooves off of my nest egg!")

Seriously, half the time I wonder if there's any actual data behind these things - make stuff up, put it in graphic form, and post it as link bait?

The Working Poor Have Bigger Problems Than Single Parenthood

I was tempted to dissent David Brooks' recent piece on how boys are faring in school, his comparison of an unruly boy, chained down by "culturally homogenous schools", to Henry V as depicted by Shakespeare - first as a wild child in Henry IV, later as an accomplished leader in Henry V. According to Brooks, it seems schools would prefer to be teaching "a reflective Hamlet".

By about the third week of nursery school, Henry’s teacher would be sending notes home saying that Henry “had another hard day today.” He was disruptive during circle time. By midyear, there’d be sly little hints dropped that maybe Henry’s parents should think about medication for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Many of the other boys are on it, and they find school much easier.

What say you, Charles Pierce?

At which point, Henry IV, in all of his parts, and being pissed off with that whole Percy family squabble, would have the nursery school teacher drawn and quartered, her head hung on Traitor's Gate for a month, and I probably shouldn't give our country's school "reformers" any ideas.

But as tempting as it was to respond to Brooks' editorial with full-bore sarcasm, what I found problematic was less his dubious resort to Shakespeare and more the fact that he has difficulty maintaining a consistent thesis. Instead, by the end he becomes somewhat incoherent:

Schools have to engage people as they are. That requires leaders who insist on more cultural diversity in school: not just teachers who celebrate cooperation, but other teachers who celebrate competition; not just teachers who honor environmental virtues, but teachers who honor military virtues; not just curriculums that teach how to share, but curriculums that teach how to win and how to lose; not just programs that work like friendship circles, but programs that work like boot camp.

Seriously - the way we're going to engage a young Henry V in school, keep him out of trouble, keep him from rebelling, is by sending him to a school that embraces "military virtues" and resembles a "boot camp"? Is this a half-hearted defense of KIPP-type schools with their extensive behavior codes? Brooks seriously believes his young Henry V's will go unmedicated and be educationally successful in such schools?

But the incoherence runs deeper. This is the same David Brooks who has lectured us that a small child's ability to resist marshmallows is a harbinger of his future. In the past he proposed that schools focus on teaching children "to master the sort of self-control that leads to success". That's consistent with the military model he appears to be half-endorsing, but again that's not going to work with a Henry V.

The rich, privileged, self-indulgent Henry V can grab as many marshmallows as he wants, as his future is assured - he doesn't have to care about the rules. The less intellectually gifted, less economically fortunate Henry V is not going to take well to "marshmallow resistance training." Either way, while doing an admirable job of criticizing the current educational system for not catering to a Henry V (while nonetheless doing very well by way of boys like David Brooks and Hamlet), Brooks doesn't actually explain how we could create schools that can simultaneously inspire Henry V to resist marshmallows while also inspiring a young David Brooks to strive for the day he can take an AP literature class focused on the works of Shakespeare.

Brooks has also told us what he, himself, thinks of kids like Henry V:

Similarly, in every high school there are jocks, cheerleaders and regular kids who vaguely sense that their natural enemies are the brooding poets who go off to become English majors. These prom kings and queens may leave their adolescent godhood and go off to work as underpaid sales reps despite their coldly gracious spouses and effortlessly slender kids, but they will still remember their adolescent opposites and become conservatives. They will experience surges of orgiastic triumphalism when Sean Hannity eviscerates the scuffed-shoed intellectuals who have as much personal courage as a French chipmunk in retreat.

French chipmunks in retreat... Funny, right?

Brooks' subsequent column inspired me to revisit the subject. You won't believe this but, according to Brooks, over the past thirty years rich people have come to have a lot of discretionary income, and poor people have not. Seriously!

Affluent parents also invest more money in their children. Over the last 40 years upper-income parents have increased the amount they spend on their kids’ enrichment activities, like tutoring and extra curriculars, by $5,300 a year. The financially stressed lower classes have only been able to increase their investment by $480, adjusted for inflation.

The explanation for this is, once again, Brooks' theory that poor people have bad morals.

A long series of cultural, economic and social trends have merged to create this sad state of affairs. Traditional social norms were abandoned, meaning more children are born out of wedlock.

Wait a minute - aren't we supposed to support Henry V's sowing of his wild oats? Or is the "traditional value" at issue the notion that Henry will do so at the whorehouse while "good girls" remain chaste? "Guard your marshmallows, girls, Henry V is on the prowl."

Their single parents simply have less time and resources to prepare them for a more competitive world.

So the only children struggling are those from single parent homes? There are no "poorer kids" from two family homes? Fascinating stuff.

Working-class jobs were decimated, meaning that many parents are too stressed to have the energy, time or money to devote to their children.

What Brooks apparently means is that working class jobs that support a middle class lifestyle have been decimated, even if that's not quite what he says. How did that happen? Who knows? Perhaps it has something to do with single parenthood?

Affluent, intelligent people are now more likely to marry other energetic, intelligent people.

Unlike past eras during which intelligent, affluent people sought out unintelligent, indigent spouses?

They raise energetic, intelligent kids in self-segregated, cultural ghettoes where they know little about and have less influence upon people who do not share their blessings.

The rich now live in ghettoes? Oh, life is so cruel. Remember, back in the day, when the rich and poor lived near each other, sharing land and crops, or on different floors of the same opulent building? Ah... memories.

The political system directs more money to health care for the elderly while spending on child welfare slides.

So... the solution here is to spend less money on sick old people? To increase spending on programs for poor children - and if so, what programs?

Brooks insists that to change the unfortunate status quo, people will "have to make some pretty uncomfortable decisions":

Liberals are going to have to be willing to champion norms that say marriage should come before childrearing and be morally tough about it.

Yes, because once liberals get serious about teen pregnancy, like red state conservatives, we'll see... huge increases in teen pregnancy? But wait, David, I thought that was a big part of the problem. (I know, I know - when you get you facts wrong it's a joke. You're kidding the liberals.)

Conservatives are going to have to be willing to accept tax increases or benefit cuts so that more can be spent on the earned-income tax credit and other programs that benefit the working class.

If we're talking Republicans, let's see... what will they choose. Oh yeah, benefit cuts.¹ That bit about "spending more on the poor" is apt to get lost in the wash.

Political candidates will have to spend less time trying to exploit class divisions and more time trying to remedy them — less time calling their opponents out of touch elitists, and more time coming up with agendas that comprehensively address the problem.

You mean, by identifying a social problem and deciding it can be cured by throwing money at it? Yeah, there's no chance that Brooks' proposal for spending more "on the earned-income tax credit and other programs that benefit the working class" will be demagogued....

Political candidates will have to spend less time trying to exploit class divisions and more time trying to remedy them....

So at the end of a dissertation on the poor morals of the poor, and how we nonetheless need to spend more money trying to help poor children, Brooks believes that we can propose taxing wealthier people or cutting their benefits to pay for those new programs without anybody raising the specter of class warfare? No concerns about giving money to undeserving bleah people?

...less time calling their opponents out of touch elitists, and more time coming up with agendas that comprehensively address the problem.

Why not both? Seriously, Brooks wants to clean up some of the over-the-top rhetoric in modern politics. Fair enough. But it's not like that's either new or the real problem. The problem is that one party is doing a middling job at creating the policies necessary to help our nation avoid significant future problems, and the other party is actively obstructing the little that might otherwise be accomplished.

There is absolutely no reason why Brooks cannot call on politicians from both parties to start addressing the issues, and take them to task if they offer rhetoric or demagoguery instead of actual policy proposals. It wouldn't hurt if Brooks offered some policy proposals of his own as a starting point but, I guess, that would be above his pay grade?
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1. I'm reminded of the old Far Side cartoon... "Conservatives are going to have to be willing to accept blah blah blah benefit cuts blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah."

National Service for "Our Kids".... Again?

For reasons I can't quite fathom, Thomas Ricks wrote an essay arguing for a national service requirement for all young adults, and the New York Times published it. Thomas Ricks offers an informative blog, The Best Defense, through Foreign Policy Magazine. He's capable of informed comment on a variety of important issues relating to the military and national defense. I am thus surprised both by the superficiality of Ricks' argument on national service for high school graduates, and by why the Times would publish that essay instead of something more clearly within Ricks' established sphere of authority.

Ricks proposes a "revived draft" involving three tiers of service,

1. Eighteen months of military service, not involving deployment but instead focused on mundane tasks such as "painting barracks, mowing lawns, driving generals around, with "low pay but excellent post-service benefits, including free college tuition."

2. A non-military option involving "slightly longer period and equally low pay," performing such tasks as "teaching in low-income areas, cleaning parks, rebuilding crumbling infrastructure, or aiding the elderly". After two years participants would qualify for "tuition aid".

3. Opting out - with the consequence being a complete loss of eligibility for government programs, "no Medicare, no subsidized college loans and no mortgage guarantees".

Already, numerous problems appear. By offering significant benefits to those who choose the military without any associated risk - in fact, the proposed service sounds like a cushy cakewalk as compared to what Ricks has in mind for those who don't choose that option, and that's before you consider the shorter term of service and free tuition - you will flood the military with applications. Perhaps that's what Ricks intends, and he wants the military to have first pick of who can participate in its program, but there's only so much need - most applicants would be turned away.

That would put the military in a privileged position in terms of picking and choosing who would receive the most cushy forms of "service" and get the biggest benefit from service. Ricks suggests that this could be done by lottery", but I expect the military would want to be able to vet applicants before they even qualified for the lottery. And although I would like to believe that the military would approach the issue with a commitment to fairness and equality, I somehow believe that children of privilege would end up getting preference for admission and plum assignments. Also, given the significant privilege Ricks would provide for the military service, losers of the lottery would cry foul - "Expand the program," "This is discriminatory," "Do you have any idea who my father is"....

There's another issue: If all teens are required to participate in the "draft", kids who would enlist directly into the military will be stateside, "painting barracks, mowing lawns", etc., instead of being deployed. Perhaps Ricks would propose a fourth option - satisfying the national service through active duty enlistment? Would ROTC count as completion of the national service requirement, as if you remove the economic incentive to participate in ROTC while in college I suspect you would see a significant drop in participation by students who, having done their 18 months of barracks painting, were already getting free tuition. Five tiers, then?

Now compare what a person performing military service might do (painting barracks, mowing lawns) to what Ricks imagines an 18-year-old in non-military service might do (teaching in low-income areas, rebuilding crumbling infrastructure). I'm not aware of any reform movement that believes that 18-year-old kids are suitable classroom teachers for inner city schools, and the skills required to rebuild "crumbling infrastructure" are not modest. It appears that Ricks wants to privilege military service over non-military service, but he does not appear to appreciate the level of skill required by some of the tasks he would assign under the civilian program.

Finally, the libertarians. Government programs are funded through taxes, sometimes through dedicated taxes. If people who opt out are excluded from Medicare (and Social Security?) will they have to pay FICA? Even assuming, fifty years down the line, the "disqualified" individuals haven't achieved enough political clout to vote themselves back into Medicare, it's unlikely that we're going to tell retirees to die in the streets because they didn't participate in a public service program in their youth. Also, frankly, the potential loss of Medicare benefits is not likely to have much of an impression on an 18-year-old - Ricks has to appreciate from his experiences with the military how many 18-year-olds think, and it's not their robust abstract thinking skills and careful planning for the future that makes them appealing targets for military recruitment.

Ricks also presupposes that the participants in the national service program will be unmarried and will not have children. While I grant that marriage rates for 18-year-olds are low, there are plenty of older teens who are married, and even more who have children. And the same type of issues that arise with 18- and 19-year-old enlisted personnel will arise with older teens "drafted" to work on military bases. You will have single parents, you will have married couples, you will have program participants who become pregnant during their service, and you will have children to deal with. Let's also not forget about drugs and alcohol.

Some participants will also have medical issues and disabilities - unless we create yet another tier of (non-)service, allowing people to avoid service while remaining eligible for public benefits based upon their medical conditions.

Ricks seems to approach older teens with the eyes of a drill sergeant - that with enough discipline and oversight they can be made to work as a team, to comply with behavior codes, and to largely fall in line. Ricks appears to believe that a similar level of compliance can be achieved among teenagers, including many who would not be able to handle actual military discipline, in contexts that have high stakes and would necessarily involve a lot less oversight. It would be difficult to replicate the techniques used by the military to achieve unit cohesion, and peer pressure to comply with behavioral codes, even for those people whose service was performed on military bases. The idea that you could create such order and discipline in a gargantuan civilian program, offering everything from meals on wheels to daycare to public school teaching, is absurd.

And for housing, if the best idea Ricks can offer for accommodating hundreds of thousands of teenagers who are participating in the civilian public service program is that we should be "imaginative", "For example, V.A. hospitals might have space", why don't we admit up front that this is a non-starter? Ricks doesn't do much better in terms of the military side, suggesting that we might house "conscript soldiers on closed military bases". Reopen closed bases so that conscripts could paint the barracks, mow the lawns, and drive generals around closed bases? I'm not seeing the benefit.

Rick's basic lack of understanding of the civilian side of the equation is betrayed by his belief that governments could save money by having conscripts in the civilian program - who would have to be housed, fed and clothed by the government - performing tasks like "cleaning parks". I'm not sure how dirty the parks are out where Ricks lives, but around here they're pretty clean. And perhaps Ricks sees this as a purely federally funded project - although the cost per man-hour to the federal government would be substantial, local governments would pay nothing or perhaps at most pay for the supervisor who tells the teens what do do. However it's difficult, really impossible to imagine that the cost per man-hour for a "national service" worker would be less than that paid to the same individual (but with better screening for job skills and task completion) hired as a temporary summer worker or through a private contractor. It's also difficult to see how the program would actually contribute to character growth - what benefit the individual participant would gain that they wouldn't get from any other job.

Also, as Ricks notes, we're talking about more than 4 million 18-year-olds per year, so about 8 million in service at any given time. Ricks suggests "$15,000 plus room and board" for the civilian side, with the military side being better paid - let's say another $12,000 for room and board - $216 billion, and that's before we consider administration, infrastructure, transportation, supervision, medical and dental care.... Lets also assume that 25% of participants will qualify for free college, 50% qualify for a 50% tuition subsidy, and 1/3 of eligible individuals take full advantage for an average of three years each... and further, to save costs, the benefit covers only tuition and only up to the amount of a typical state college... that's another $42 billion or so per year. We're easily looking at a $300 billion per year commitment. I expect that the education cost will be considerably higher as eligible participants are targeted by the same sort of predatory private colleges that rake in huge profits while underserving G.I.'s.

Ricks' continues his argument with a statement that is shockingly wrong:

Imagine how many local parks could be cleaned and how much could be saved if a few hundred New York City school custodians were 19, energetic and making $15,000 plus room and board, instead of 50, tired and making $106,329, the top base salary for the city’s public school custodians, before overtime.

That's akin to confusing the compensation and skill set of a private with that of a sergeant major. Ricks should have been clued in by the fact that the original source behind his two-year-old link was a "scoop" from the "New York Post". Ricks is confusing the top compensation for a supervisor, somebody who not only manages employees but may have environmental certification, and has the necessary skill to maintain and repair boilers, heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems, electrical systems, elevator service and maintenance, sewage system maintenance, and potentially dealing with hazardous or infectious waste.

The job that Ricks is confusing with that of the "custodian engineer" is the job of "cleaner" - and in New York City the "15,000 plus room and board" Ricks is offering doesn't sound like it would offer cost savings over the $18.13 per hour (reduced by 15% during the first two years of service) presently paid to cleaners. Moreover, who does Ricks imagine will train and supervise the "energetic" 18-year-old cleaners if not the custodian engineers presently charged with the responsibility of hiring, training and supervising that category of worker?

I will grant, if a typical high school student enters the civilian program with the level of skills you would expect of a high school graduate, and completes it with the ability to Ricks seems to believe that participants in the national service program will be able to service boilers, repair elevators, engage in heavy demolition and infrastructure repair, and the like, that would be quite the achievement. The problem is, Ricks appears to believe that significant numbers of teenagers will possess those skills when they enter the program.

Part of Ricks' goal is to weaken public sector unions:

The savings actually might be a way of bringing around the unions representing federal, state and municipal workers, because they understand that there is a huge budget crunch that is going to hit the federal government in a few years. Setting up a new non-career tier of cheap, young labor might be a way of preserving existing jobs for older, more skilled, less mobile union workers.

It's not clear either why Ricks believes that government workers are unaware of the ongoing budget crunch, or what concessions he believes they should make.

How does Ricks imagine that older, more skilled workers will be protected, or have their incomes preserved, by having their fields flooded with "cheap, young labor"? Further, after two years of service when they're pushed out of their jobs, what does Ricks imagine that those "cheap, young" laborers will do? Their jobs will go to the next round of conscripts, there will be little demand in the marketplace for the skills they developed, and the few available jobs will be flooded with applicants with an associated reduction in how much those jobs pay. Everybody goes to college, even if normal market forces would have led some to choose other paths perhaps more suited to their skills and interests?

Ricks suggests that the most important consideration is that a "draft" might make the nation think twice about entering a war,

But most of all, having a draft might, as General McChrystal said, make Americans think more carefully before going to war. Imagine the savings — in blood, tears and national treasure — if we had thought twice about whether we really wanted to invade Iraq.

Except I can see no evidence from any nation, at any time in history, that a draft has preventing a nation from going to war. And given the non-military nature of Ricks' draft - even if you're in the military you're assigned to stateside support roles, not to anything that might put you in the line of fire - I would not expect such a draft to create any meaningful public pressure to avoid war.

As a thought exercise, thinking about possible national service programs, their costs and benefits, can be an amusing way to spend some time. But

Memories....

What a socialist....

• "Prosperity can be a tool in our hands -- used to build and better our country. Or it can be a drug in our system -- dulling our sense of urgency, of empathy, of duty."

• "We will strengthen Social Security and Medicare for the greatest generation, and for generations to come."

• "Medicare does more than meet the needs of our elderly, it reflects the values of our society."

• "To seniors in this country ... You earned your benefits, you made your plans, and [I] will keep the promise of Social Security ... no changes, no reductions, no way."

• "I will work to reduce nuclear weapons and nuclear tension in the world -- to turn these years of influence into decades of peace."

• "We will give low-income Americans tax credits to buy the private health insurance they need and deserve."

• "We will transform today's housing rental program to help hundreds of thousands of low-income families find stability and dignity in a home of their own."

• "We must help protect our children, in our schools and streets, by finally and strictly enforcing our nation's gun laws."

• "A hundred years from now, this must not be remembered as an age rich in possessions and poor in ideals. Instead, we must usher in an era of responsibility."

• "Corporations are responsible... to treat their workers fairly, and leave the air and waters clean."

How Dare the President Contradict Right-Wing Talking Points!

Michael Gerson is in full-scale stenographer mode today, serving up one right-wing talking point after another. Sometimes you have to wonder.... Leaving aside for the moment that Gerson is feigning apoplexy over the fact that the President is spinning the latest job numbers in, well, exactly the manner you would expect, some of Gerson's arguments are just plain absurd:

While the jobs number for June was bad, it was probably not bad enough to result in another round of quantitative easing when the Federal Reserve meets late this month. So Obama is left with a series of recycled State of the Union proposals — maintaining existing middle-class tax breaks, spending on infrastructure, funding some jobs for teachers — that no self-respecting Keynesian economist would judge sufficient.

In other words, as the President has no remedies he can administer without action by Congress, all he can do is urge Congress to act. Which it won't, because the House is controlled by Gerson's party and wants to harm the President's chance of being reelected. Gerson sputters that this means the President suffers from "ideological exhaustion" and "seems incapable of producing an economic agenda equal to his political challenge". Well, no, not if you look at the facts. It would be fair to say that the President, like most people, underestimated the severity of the recession and the probability for robust recovery when he took office, but for the past couple of years it has been the policy of the Republican Party to obstruct anything that might materially aid the recovery.

Gerson tells us the crucial question:

The relevant question: Has Obama accelerated or slowed the recovery?

And as Gerson knows, the overwhelming consensus is that, yes, Obama's policies, quantitative easing and stimulus spending have accelerated the recovery. So Gerson predictably resorts to a single fellow alumnus of the G.W. Bush Administration, a guy who consistently posts screeds against the Obama Administration, who says,

“Government, measured by federal spending, is this year about 15 percent bigger than the historical average, measured relative to the economy. . . . This drains resources from private firms and individuals and means slower productivity growth.”

You'll note first that this is a non sequitur. The quoted passage does not contradict the consensus view that Obama's policies have accelerated the recovery. Instead it's a canard - a conclusory statement that this year's public spending is causing reduced private investment. Never mind the facts. Corporations are floating on a sea of cash. When somebody purports that corporations have been drained of cash by the President's economic policies it raises that age-old question - fools or frauds?

Gerson carries on,

Obama’s major regulatory initiatives, particularly Obamacare and the Dodd-Frank financial reform, have added to economic uncertainty. Businesses are waiting for the implications of these laws to become clear, and federal rules to be written, before making investment choices.

Okay... first lets look at "the Dodd-Frank financial reform". That reform became law on July 21, 2010. Why does Gerson believe that, almost two years later, businesses have not figured out what it requires? Now I'll grant, the Republicans have done everything they can to complicate its implementation, to hobble and delay the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Board, and various lawsuits have been filed, but that's not the President's doing.

The "Obamacare" story is similar. The Republican Party did everything it could to obstruct the development and passage of the Affordable Care Act and, when unsuccessful, spent two years litigating the constitutionality of the ACA, culminating in its being upheld by the Supreme Court. The Republican Party has since encouraged Republican governors to be as obstructionist as possible when it comes to implementing the ACA.

In short, to the extent that confusion and uncertainty remain problems, it's not because of the President. It's because Gerson's own party has gone out of its way to create an unstable, uncertain environment. If Gerson believes that disqualifies his party from holding office, I see no reason to argue.

Gerson next resorts to platitudes, "the Obama administration has failed to make tough calls and secure legislative compromises on a variety of issues — the federal debt, future tax rates, the Keystone XL pipeline — that might remove sources of economic uncertainty". Gerson is apparently not familiar with separation of powers, and believes that the President is in fact a Prime Minister - able to introduce legislation and vote on it in the House of Representatives.

If Gerson double-checks, I am confident that he will discover that the President is in the Executive branch of government, and cannot "secure legislative compromises" unless the legislature is willing to compromise. While it's not even slightly surprising that Gerson blames the President for his party's rebuffing the President's attempt to negotiate a long-term budget deal, it is not the President's fault that Speaker Boehner developed wobbly knees when confronted with the need for a tax increase, nor is it his fault that Boehner has not since pushed his party to work with the President on budget issues.

Gerson is apparently asleep at the switch on "future tax rates", as if he reads his own paper he will see that the President is again proposing a deal on future tax rates. It is anticipated that the Republican Party will again refuse to negotiate, and perhaps again throw the country into turmoil through "hostage taking" tactics over the debt ceiling. You want to talk uncertainty? The Republican Party is its leading author.

The fact that Gerson is not even attempting to be serious - that he's coughing out one Republican talking point after another, facts be damned, is illustrated by his reference to the Keystone XL pipeline. The economic benefit of the pipeline, once approved, looks to be minimal, and contrary to Gerson's suggestion there are valid financial arguments about the project - both in terms of exaggerated job creation (permanent jobs will be somewhere between 20 and a few hundred, probably at the lower end) and financial risk. What uncertainty does Gerson imagine has been created by the delay, and how many fingers do I need to use to count the number of businesses affected buy that supposed uncertainty?

Gerson has faith in Romney - that he's soon going to pupate and emerge as, well, probably not a butterfly but perhaps as a reasonably attractive moth?

A humanizing Romney convention speech, some reassuring debate performances, a few innovative policy proposals appealing to Latinos or suburban women — and Romney becomes a more broadly imaginable president.

You will note that when it comes to a Republican all Gerson asks for is a "humanizing" speech (compassionate conservatism?), debate performances that aren't too embarrassing, and some pandering to "Latinos or suburban women". Policy proposals? Get real. Those are for the other side.

Robert Samuelson's Wrong Approach to the Wrong Deficit

Robert Samuelson has written an interesting editorial in which he all-but-states that President Obama was correct to attempt massive stimulus spending, that Paul Krugman was correct about the economics of the recession and how to best get out of it, and that our nation would be better off had it focused on having smaller deficits during good times in order to be able to afford stimulus spending during difficult times. Samuelson has made similar suggestions in the past - he has been relatively consistent, and has credited Obama's stimulus with saving millions of jobs - but I don't believe he has previously laid out his opinion this clearly.

It's a shame that he chose not to make this argument three years ago, although it's difficult to tell what part of the explanation Samuelson's past reticence results from politics and what part results from his obsessive concern... not that we'll have deficits, but that we'll borrow to pay for programs he doesn't support. I suspect it's primarily the latter, as otherwise one would expect him to be calling for another substantial round of stimulus spending. Instead, he wrings his hands about the deficit.

Until the 1960s, Americans generally believed in low inflation and balanced budgets. President John Kennedy shared the consensus but was persuaded to change his mind. His economic advisers argued that, through deficit spending and modest increases in inflation, government could raise economic growth, lower unemployment and smooth business cycles.

None of this proved true; all of it led to grief.

The problem with Samuelson's argument is that the 1960's do not represent a magical turning point at which public debt went from bad to good. While gross public debt has increased since the 1960's, the debt to GDP ratio was much higher during WWII, and did not again rise significantly until the Reagan presidency. To the extent that the 1960's factor in, Samuelson would have to mention a different deficit - the trade deficit. In simple terms, the books have to balance: a nation with a trade deficit has to make up for it by having more public or private debt on its books.

It is also fair to observe that Samuelson is not even slightly concerned with how the changes of the past half-century have affected the wealthy - those best positioned to bring about change. In fact, any suggestion that the massive increase in wealth accumulation by the wealthiest Americans is anything but good is a "backlash against the rich". Does Samuelson truly believe we can balance the budget without increasing taxes - magic away the social safety net and "we're all good"? If not, observing that the rich are doing better than ever and proposing a modest tax increase on the very wealthy would seem to be a no-brainer for him - not a solution to debt and chronic deficit spending, but a necessary part of the solution.

Also, while Samuelson is correct that we had very high inflation for a period of time in the 1970's, and that very high inflation is a problem, he also notes that it was quashed in the early 1980's - a fact that undermines Samuelson's notion that deficit spending leads inexorably to high inflation. Let's note here, also, that the housing bubble was born of out-of-control inflation in housing markets, but that was seen by many in Samuelson's circle as a good thing. But even if overall inflation remains under control, inflation in an important sector of the economy that leads to an asset bubble is not a good thing.

The problem of deficits became much worse, not better, starting in the 1980's yet inflation has remained under control. Arguably we have a larger problem with low inflation than with the potential for high inflation - and that a modest, sustained increase in the inflation rate for a few years would help assets appreciate (including housing) and help resolve the "debt overhang" from the collapse of the housing market. Recall, our trade deficit has not disappeared, and we still have to come up with the difference either through deficit spending or private debt.

Robertson lectures us that past deficit spending "has limited government’s ability to 'stimulate' the economy through higher spending or deeper tax cuts", an argument that is not actually true. Our government has ample ability to borrow large amounts of money, and could easily implement a stimulus program of $1 trillion or more. For all of Samuelson's complaints that we are somehow hostage to a fifty year legacy of spending like there's no tomorrow, how could he lose track of the fact that the constraints on additional stimulus spending are political, not financial.

Implicit in Samuelson's argument is the notion that the deficit is currently so high that we should forego stimulus spending, even though it is our best hope of accelerating the recovering, getting back to full employment, and restoring the nations' tax base - part of our deficit, after all, results from the recession itself. When you fund government by taxing income, revenues drop when employment and (collective) incomes fall. It should be easy for Samuelson to identify areas (e.g. infrastructure) in which stimulus spending could be directed in no small part as an investment - our nation has to build and maintain basic infrastructure in order to remain competitive, we've not done a good job with such obvious targets for investment as the electrical grid, and right now we can borrow at very low interest rates.

After lecturing us on how sustained, excessive borrowing can be harmful, Samuelson proposes,

Now, imagine that the country had adhered to its balanced-budget tradition before the crisis. Some deficits would have remained, but the cumulative debt would have been much lower: plausibly between 10 percent and 20 percent of GDP. There would have been more room for expansion. Balancing the budget might even have forced Congress to face the costs of an aging society.

The problem being, we don't have the luxury of living in an imaginary world. We have to make the best of this one. And in this one, part of the problem that keeps deficits high and causes accumulation of debt is that people like Robert Samuelson see us as having a blank check for their pet projects, and only get upset when money is spent on the "wrong" things - in this case, seemingly the stimulus spending that Robertson sees as crucial to accelerating recovery but... but what?

Let's take a look for a moment at a half-truth Samuelson shares about balanced budgets:

Since 1961, the federal government has balanced its budget only five times. Arguably, only one of these (1969) resulted from policy; the other four (1998-2001) stemmed heavily from the surging tax revenue of the then-economic boom.

Well, yes, the Clinton era budget surplus arose due to factors that were largely accidental, and arguably irresponsible.

The Internet bubble burst and Clinton was on his way out the door, and we might have avoided a recession had we sacrificed some of the economic growth and tax receipts that resulted from the bubble. But you cannot look at Clinton's balanced budgets and Bush's deficits without acknowledging that the two parties took a very different view of their budgetary responsibility.

Clinton saw an opportunity to balance the budget, while Bush preferred to give massive tax cuts to the rich even though it meant returning to deficit spending. Bush also chose to ignore the growing housing bubble - a growth of private debt that, as previously mentioned, helped sustain massive trade deficits as Bush directed his massive increases in government spending at other targets, including Medicare Part D and a massively expensive war of choice.

In the past, Samuelson has taken positions that are inconsistent with each other, as well as inconsistent with his present position on stimulus spending. Now, nobody can be consistent all the time, given enough time and enough arguments made we'll all be inconsistent at times, and it's a good thing to be able to reflect, see past errors and inaccuracies in your premises and thinking, and change your mind. But that's not what I'm talking about. For example, in 2010 Samuelson argued,

If the administration has $1 trillion or so of spending cuts and tax increases over a decade, all these monies should first cover existing deficits -- not finance new spending. Obama's behavior resembles a highly indebted family's taking an expensive round-the-world trip because it claims to have found ways to pay for it. It's self-indulgent and reckless.

That statement was made in relation to providing health insurance to the uninsured. I truly doubt that Samuelson sees his own health insurance as a form of self-indulgence. His choice of works reflects his reflexive dislike of social spending, no matter what its merits. But if you were to assume that it is possible to locate that $trillion, why not initiate a $800 billion stimulus bill to be paid for over the decade - you would boost the economy, bring down unemployment, and still have money left over.

A fetishistic desire to reduce government spending should not substitute for sensible prioritization. It would seem that somebody in Samuelson's position, not somebody who favored helping the working poor or reviving the economy, would be the person best described as "shortsighted and self-centered", not the person who didn't put deficit reduction above all else.

Samuelson has had his feet held (gently) to the coals over a column in which he suggested that the Iraq war could be paid for with pocket change. Back in 2007, he issued a non-apology for what he admits was a ridiculously optimistic estimate of the cost of the war,

The war on terrorism has clearly worsened the long-term budget outlook. How then can I treat that so lightly? What's missing is context. Dominated by Social Security and health care, the federal budget now totals nearly $3 trillion annually. Suppose the war's ultimate costs reach $2 trillion by 2017 (the figure is cumulative, not in any one year). That's a big number, perhaps too big. It's also a wild guess. Still, the CBO estimates all federal spending over the same period (2002-17) will total $48 trillion; war spending would be about 4 percent. In the same period, the income of the U.S. economy (gross domestic product) would total an estimated $248 trillion; war spending would be less than 1 percent of that. The point, as I said in 2002, is that we're so wealthy we "can wage war almost with pocket change."...

But I am certain -- now as then -- that budget consequences should occupy a minor spot in our debates. It's not that the costs are unimportant; it's simply that they're overshadowed by other considerations that are so much more important. We can pay for whatever's necessary.

When it comes to Samuelson's priorities, a $trillion, $2 trillion? The numbers remain something akin to "pocket change". By that logic we could easily afford a $1 trillion stimulus bill right now. And just as with the war, we should not delude ourselves into thinking that "any 'savings' will rescue us from our long-term budget predicament" - one might expand on Samuelson here by pointing out that an invigorated economy with significantly improved employment will be much better able to reduce deficits and pay for social programs, as well as the war spending Samuelson would prefer for us not to even consider relevant to long-term budgeting.

But again, and don't go looking for internal consistency, for Samuelson this type of spending is always a huge risk.

Suppose a new stimulus — beyond renewal of the payroll tax cut — did succeed at significant job creation. By piling up more debt, it would still risk aggravating a larger crisis later. There is no long-term plan to curb deficits.

Irrelevant for a $2 trillion war, but an overwhelming concern for a much smaller stimulus program? It's as if nobody has ever explained to Samuelson that dollars are fungible. Yes, every little bit hurts - every new obligation makes it more difficult to bring the budget into balance. The impact of each new dollar of debt is the same, whether or not Samuelson approves of the expenditure.

Update: Paul Krugman documents the actual history of the ratio of US federal debt to GDP.

I’d add that the recent rise in debt/GDP is very different from what happened in the 80s; this time around we really had a crisis that required fiscal support for the economy. What happened in the 80s had no such justification.

Right-Wing Bullying of Justice Roberts

Randy Barnett, inventor of the "activity/inactivity" distinction takes us back to the days before the Supreme Court decided the ACA case, and quotes himself approvingly. You see, after reading those great legal scholars, Jennifer Rubin and Kathleen Parker, it occurred to Barnett that if Roberts did anything other than overturn the ACA his reputation would be forever stained:

Now, however, if the Chief Justice rules to uphold the ACA after all these nonlegal pleas and threats, he will always be suspected by both supporters and opponents of the ACA of having changed his vote in response to this political pressure. As with Justice Owen Roberts’ vote, the supporters of the law will cheer and the opponents will complain, but both groups will have reason to believe that Chief Justice Robert’s decision reflected political considerations rather than his considered legal judgment in a close case. And, because Supreme Court deliberations are secret, he cannot defend himself by revealing that he did not in fact change his vote after conference.

Secret, that is, if we ignore the leaking from somewhere in the ranks of the dissenters, meant to embarrass Justice Roberts.

I've already suggested the first question raised by Barnett's brand of character assassination: None of this matters unless you believe Roberts is the sort of person who will bend to political pressure. If he will not, the story is over before it began - before the political right, through the pens of people like Kathleen Parker and Jennifer Rubin, implied that any vote except reversal would forever tar Roberts' reputation. If he is, then it's a distinction without a difference - whatever his vote, whether or not he had a change of heart somewhere along the way, people on the right perceived Roberts as being pliant to political pressure, their ultimate disappointment being that for some reason he bent the wrong way.

But more than that, when Barnett speculates about pressure on Roberts from "President Obama, Senator Leahy, and pundits like Jeff Rosen", exactly what form does he imagine that "pressure" could take? Exactly why is it that he believes Roberts would care what President Obama thought of an issue, let alone respond to "pressure" from the President? Of all the nonsensical right-wing conspiracy theories we've endured over the past few decades, the idea that the President has the power to cow the life tenured Chief Justice of the Supreme Court is right up there with the best of 'em.

It's even harder to imagine what Senator Leahy might have done that would cause Roberts to feel any amount of pressure. (Massage his shoulders?) Jeffrey Rosen? Does Barnett imagine that Rosen teaches at Hogwarts instead of George Washington University and somehow got his hands on the Elder wand? Rosen himself addresses the absurdity of the argument:

The idea that I was trying to “intimidate” or “bend” the Chief Justice came as a surprise to me. The justices have already voted in the health care case and are hardly influenced, in any event, by legal punditry. On the contrary, I suggested that this is a moment of truth for Chief Justice Roberts because I’ve been a staunch supporter of the vision of bipartisanship that he articulated when he became Chief Justice, and have continued to defend him during the past six years when others have denounced him for failing to live up to the standards he set for himself.

Yeah, but what do facts have to do with an otherwise good conspiracy theory?

So far we seem to be dealing with the following:

1. Somebody leaked to the right-wing media that Roberts might vote to uphold the ACA.

2. A number of right-wing political columnists, largely of the hack variety, started to write editorials claiming that Roberts was coming under pressure from the political left, and how atrocious that was.

3. No evidence was ever produced of any form of actual pressure on Roberts from the political left, let alone of why he would have been receptive or responsive to any such pressure.

4. Roberts ultimately voted to uphold the ACA.

5. Many on the political right has since engaged in a relentless attack on Roberts.

Sorry, Randy, but this whole thing appears to be on the political right. I don't know if you thought Roberts was pliant to right-wing pressure and would always vote the way you wanted on important cases, but if you did not it's difficult to believe you would continue to push this issue. The only evidence of pressure on Roberts, implied threats against his reputation (as opposed to mere observations of how history might treat his decision) have come from the political right. Since the decision came down, the only efforts to trash his reputation have come from the political right.

So far, I see no reason to believe that Roberts cares about all of the right-wing furor, or the implication that he can expect this type of personal attack every time he rules the "wrong way". After all, he has never shown even the slightest concern about opprobrium from the political left resulting from any of his past decisions. Do those on the political right who are still pushing this line of attack believe otherwise? Are the attacks a form of prolonged venting of misdirected anger? Of disappointment that he's a mindful as opposed to mindless partisan? Are they hoping to make Roberts or other justices more responsive to their pressure in the future?

Really, why do these attacks keep on coming?

Activists Should Assume Voter ID Laws Will Pass

I'm pretty sure I've commented on this before, but (surprise) nobody was paying attention. Even if you believe that voter ID laws are entirely misplaced, that voter fraud has virtually no relevance in any given election, and that voter ID laws are driven by partisan politicians wanting to suppress voter turnout by the other side, you should assume that those laws will pass. Sure, work against them, but work very hard to make sure that the voters likely to be affected by the laws obtain acceptable ID's.

What the law really does is move the field timeline up dramatically, she said. Her group is setting aside many of its normal activities like voter education and is instead scrambling to formulate a plan to get voters without ID into the system with enough time left for them to vote....

Winters set the window to get an ID at “four to six weeks” and said that most of the group’s efforts to find voters without IDs and get them IDs “will have to be done before mid-September.” She said the timeline makes the challenge of getting people ID’d “especially challenging.”

This issue is not new. The national trend is not new. The requirements imposed by voter ID laws are not surprising. Start with the assumption that your state will pass voter ID laws and work hard to get valid ID's into the hands of voters. Most people will benefit from having a valid ID that they can use in other contexts, so even if your state doesn't pass a voter ID law you're doing some good. And if it does, you won't be caught flat-footed.

And it Should Walk on the Water - And Be Free!

Consumer expectations like this lead me to believe that, should Apple produce a 7" (or so) tablet computer, it will be sold as an iPod.

Update: Upon reflection, I would consider branding the mid-sized device the "iPad Reader" - to attempt to position it as something other than a budget iPad, and also to provide clear notice up-front that the functionality will be a bit different because it's primary purpose is for reading.

The New [Brand] [Device] Could Upend the Industry

Yes, we get it. A mini iPad could disrupt the 7" tablet market. An Amazon phone could disrupt the smartphone market. Or.... they may not. Thanks for sharing that type of insight, as it's unlikely people would otherwise have figured it out.

Romney's Lack of Policy Detail

Bill Kristol is complaining that Mitt Romney isn't sharing enough policy details:

Is it too much to ask Mitt Romney to get off autopilot and actually think about the race he's running?

Adopting a prevent defense when it's only the second quarter and you're not even ahead is dubious enough as a strategy. But his campaign's monomaniacal belief that it's about the economy and only the economy, and that they need to keep telling us stupid voters that it's only about the economy, has gone from being an annoying tick to a dangerous self-delusion.

To the extent that he critiques this sort of behavior, Kristol is correct:

But what are voters to think when they hear the GOP nominee say, as he did yesterday to CBS’s Jan Crawford, "As long as I continue to speak about the economy, I'm going to win"? That they're dopes who don't know the economy's bad, but as long as the Romney campaign keeps instructing them that it is bad, they'll react correctly and vote the incumbent out of office?

No, I'm not talking about treating voters as dopes, lamentable though that may be, as that's pretty much how political campaigns are won. I'm talking about actually stating your policy in terms so blunt that, if the "dopes" don't figure out what you're up to, your opponent can plug your statement into a campaign ad and make it obvious. There's a difference between joking or poking your opponent about the economy, making it the center of your campaign, and describing that as your plan. It's like when the villain in a James Bond movie reveals the details of his previously inscrutable scheme - you tell everybody exactly what you're doing and let your opponent identify and exploit your vulnerabilities. If Romney were a coach, one wonders if he would give the other team his playbook.

Daniel Larison responds,

According to the emerging conventional wisdom, Romney’s political fortunes would improve if he would only be more specific about what he would do. That seems incorrect. Romney isn’t going to win the election on the strength of his “detailed policy proposals,” and we all understand that. Dukakis and Kerry weren’t lacking for policy proposals, and they didn’t lose because their proposals were considered insufficiently specific.

Larison also shares Jonathan Bernstein's observation that,

Exactly no one is going to vote against Romney because he declines to advocate specific policies, but there’s always the risk that embracing one set of policy choices could alienate voters who otherwise might just want to throw the bums out.

Charles Pierce, on the other hand, is trying to figure out where Kristol is going with this, pointing to Kristol's own history of attacking political positions not on their merits, but with the hope of harming their proponent. That ties in with Larison's argument that policy details can potentially alienate more voters than they attract.

But are they overlooking the elephant in the room? Kristol, a narcissist par none, has rarely given good campaign advice and is better known for the opposite.¹ But pierce the veneer and you see what you usually see with pundits like Kristol - they're not saying "You need to take a position" - they're actually stating, "You should take my position. Were Romney to endorse key positions shared by Kristol, and it may boil down to just one, Kristol would be happy as a clam.
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1. "Ooh.. I know who you should pick for your Veep!"

To Know the ACA Isn't to Love It

Fareed Zakaria writes,

Many liberals believe that the Affordable Care Act — Obamacare — is unpopular only because most Americans don’t understand it. There is some truth to this: Studies show that the core provisions of the bill are more popular than the bill itself. But there’s also a reason, rooted in reality, why many Americans worry about Obamacare — its cost.

Starting with the opening two words (How many liberals? Do you care to name one?) Zakari's thesis is problematic. I think it would be fair to say that "many liberals believe that the ACA is unpopular because the Republicans have targeted public opinion on the individual mandate, which they know is its least popular aspect, and the media has largely been pliant or ineffective when responding to that position. But while it's true that on the whole, were they to in fact look, people would find a lot of elements of the ACA that they like, and that a better understanding of the bill might have made Republican demagoguery less effective, the best you're likely to do is convince people that on the whole the ACA is better than doing nothing. That it may turn out to be a starting point for serious reform, but that the process of reform is far from over.

But really, while I will grant that the issue of cost is occasionally raised, you can track public opinion through the resonant elements of Republican demagoguery: "Death panels", "Government bureaucrats choosing your doctor", "The government taking away your insurance," "Your employer may stop offering insurance", "You'll have to buy insurance you can't afford..." When you hear details on cost, you get stuff like this:

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney's campaign and a like-minded conservative group launched seemingly uncoordinated but highly telling attacks Monday morning, both accusing President Barack Obama of trying to change Medicare dramatically, if not end the program outright.

And this:

"There's only one president in history who's cut $500 billion out of Medicare, and that's your guy, Barack Obama," Romney said recently. "And if I'm president, I'm going to preserve Medicare. I'm not going to cut $500 billion out of the Medicare that we have."

Yes, it's true that the Republicans have played a very good game of suggesting that "they" will be paying for health insurance for an undeserving other, never mind that many of the people targeted by that message will receive substantial benefit and subsidy from the ACA, but please - let's not pretend that cost control is a serious factor in the opposition to the ACA. For goodness sake, I saw a poll this morning that showed that far more people have an opinion on the validity of the Supreme Court's ruling than actually know what the Supreme Court did - when did this debate become rational?

I agree with Zakaria's larger point about the importance of having players in the game who take the long view on health, who in a market-based model of insurance may forego short-term profits in favor of achieving more substantial long-term savings that result from an insured person's improved health. I agree with him that consumers are poor consumers in a healthcare market due to asymmetry of information - and let's also mention undisclosed incentives held by the people recommending care, the difficulty of comparison shopping, and the lack of opportunity to comparison shop for sudden illness or traumatic injury.

But let's recall: flawed though it is, the ACA did include some serious steps to try to determine what treatments work and to compare the cost-effectiveness of different treatments. Those provisions were weakened in response to right-wing demagoguery, but some serious efforts remain. What's going on right now? Are the Republicans suddenly shifting gears and embracing a sensible, data-driven approach to determining the best, most cost-effective treatments that deliver the best options? Hardly.

Let's also be honest, if the public were concerned with all of the issues Zakaria raises, the Ryan "plan", voucherization of Medicare, transforming Medicaid into block grants, a Gingrichian assumption (or is it a pretense) that putting more of the cost of healthcare onto the backs of consumers will make them more informed consumers as opposed to less able to afford needed care, would be laughed out of the room. Yet it's their "serious" alternative to the ACA, as pushed by "serious" columnists like David Brooks.

So why don't we start again with the facts: Much of the ideological opposition to the ACA results from deliberate misinformation injected into the debate by the Republican Party and, but for that demagoguery, it would not necessarily be popular but it would be relatively non-controversial, would include additional measures to improve care and lower costs, and could be approached as a starting point for the additional reforms that we need to try to create a sustainable system of health care in this nation.

The Presidential Hopeful's Unfortunate Wife

Sometimes you wish that candidates would just keep their wives out of things, lest they end up having to pretend to like to bake cookies¹ or get caught saying silly things on camera.

For example....

"I feel like all [Obama]'s doing is saying, 'Let's kill this guy," she said, seated next to her husband, presumptive GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney, in an exclusive interview with CBS News chief political correspondent Jan Crawford. "And I feel like that's not really a very good campaign policy.

What does that over-the-top hyperbole actually mean?

Ann Romney said it's all part of a plan to portray her husband "in a light that is just completely wrong... they don't' get him at all."

How about a specific example?

Pressed by Crawford on what qualities in her husband she sees most misrepresented, she said, that "he's not as approachable as I am or something like that. That's like, really kind of funny to me because it's all - it's all backwards."

Um... yeah. You see, "The Adjustment Bureau" is based on real life, and... starting when he was in high school, perhaps before that, President Obama has been dispatching... agents that are similar to, but aren't quite angels... to change the path of Romney's life so that he appears stiff and unapproachable. Not to mention, the guy who was messing with Matt Damon's life in the Adjustment Bureau also played General Zod in Superman II - which could mean that his real-life counterpart is not only an alien but is evil... and has superpowers.

I don't mean to mock the actual argument, that the President is trying to "kill" Romney by making him look stiff and unapproachable. We need to be fair: the man is approachable by even the littlest of the little people - you just have to approach him in the right manner.


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1. There is nothing wrong with liking to bake cookies - you just shouldn't have to pretend.

Republican Illogic on Mandates vs. Taxes

Romney, as you would expect from his history, is a personification of the incoherent Republican attack on the ACA mandate and Justice Roberts.

1. It is beyond question that the health insurance mandate is not a tax.

"It’s not a tax hike," Romney responded. "It’s a fee. It’s an assessment." Businesses and workers who purchased health insurance already paid an assessment to help fund the "free care" pool, he noted, and "it makes sense to expand this assessment."

2. Justice Roberts was wrong, terribly wrong, by upholding the healthcare mandate by calling it a tax.

"Well, I certainly wouldn't nominate someone who I knew was gonna come out with a decision I violently disagreed with — or vehemently, rather, disagreed with," Romney said. "And he reached a conclusion I think that was not accurate and not an appropriate conclusion. But that being said, he's a very bright person and I'd look for individuals that have intelligence and believe in following the Constitution."

3. On the other hand, it is beyond question that the healthcare is a tax and how dare President Obama raise taxes?

Asked by CBS correspondent Jan Crawford why he thought the mandate was not a tax, Romney replied: "Well, the Supreme Court has the final word, and their final word is that Obamacare is a tax. So it's a tax."

If Romney (or his party) were worried about credibility, he would consider whether his attacks on Roberts and the Supreme Court were consistent with his simultaneous assertion that Roberts, and thus the majority that upheld the ACA, was correct in his decision - which would also mean that the dissenters got things terribly wrong. But when a candidate like Romney finds that demagoguery works better than logic, you get demagoguery.