election

Trump Won. Now what?

PNRJ current events, politics, tribal paradigm , , , , , ,

Nov 10 JDN 2460625

How did Trump win?

After the election results were announced, one of the first things I saw on social media, aside from the shock and panic among most of my friends and acquaintances, was various people trying to explain what happened this election by some flaw in Kamala Harris or her campaign.

They said it was the economy—even though the economy was actually very good, with the lowest unemployment we’ve had in decades and inflation coming back to normal. Real wages have been rising quickly, especially at the bottom! Most economists agree that inflation will be worse under Trump than it would have been under Harris.

They said it was too much identity politics, or else that Black and Latino men felt their interests were being ignored—somehow it was both of those things.

They said it was her support of Israel in its war crimes in Gaza—even though Trump supports them even more.

They said she was too radical on trans issues—even though most Americans favor anti-discrimination laws protecting trans people.

They said Harris didn’t campaign well—even though her campaign was obviously better organized than Trump’s (or Hillary Clinton’s).

They said it was too much talk about abortion, alienating pro-lifers—even though the majority of Americans want abortion to be legal in all or most cases.

They said that Biden stepped down too late, and she didn’t have enough time—even though he stepped down as soon as he showed signs of cognitive decline, and her poll numbers were actually better early on in the campaign.

They said that Harris was wrong to court endorsements by Republicans—even though endorsements form the other side are exactly the sort of thing that usually convinces undecided voters.

None of these explanations actually hold much water.

BUT EVEN IF THEY DID, IT WOULDN’T MATTER.

I could stipulate that Harris and her campaign had all of these failures and more. I could agree that she’s the worst candidate the Democrats have fielded in decades. (She wasn’t.)

THE ALTERNATIVE WAS DONALD TRUMP.

Trump is so terrible that he utterly eclipses any failings that could reasonably be attributed to Harris. He is racist, fascist, authoritarian, bigoted, incompetent, narcissistic, egomaniacal, corrupt, a liar, a cheat, an insurrectionist, a sexual predator, and a convicted criminal. He shows just as much cognitive decline as Biden did, but no one on his side asked him to step down because of it. His proposed tariffs would cause massive economic harm for virtually no benefit, and his planned mass deportations are a human rights violation (and also likely an economic disaster). He will most likely implement some variant of Project 2025, which is absolutely full of terrible, dangerous policies. Historians agree he was one of the worst Presidents we’ve ever had.

Indeed, Trump is so terrible that there really can’t be any good reasons to re-elect him. We are left only with bad reasons.

I know of two, and both of them are horrifying.


The first is that Kamala Harris is a woman of color, and a lot of Americans just weren’t willing to put a woman of color in charge. Indeed, sexism seems to be a stronger effect here than racism, because Barack Obama made it but Hillary Clinton didn’t.

The second is that Trump and other Republicans successfully created a whole propaganda system that allows them to indoctrinate millions of people with disinformation. Part of their strategy involves systematically discrediting all mainstream sources, from journalists to scientists, so that they can replace the truth with whatever lies they want.

It was this disinformation that convinced millions of Americans that the economy was in shambles when it was doing remarkably well, convinced them that crime is rising when it is actually falling, convinced them that illegal immigrants were eating people’s pets. Once Republicans had successfully made people doubt all mainstream sources, they could simply substitute whatever beliefs were most convenient for their goals.

Democrats and Republicans are no longer operating with the same set of facts. I’m not claiming that Democrats are completely without bias, but there is a very clear difference: When scientists and journalists report that a widely-held belief by Democrats is false, most Democrats change their beliefs. When the same happens to Republicans, they just become further convinced that scientists and journalists are liars.

What happens now?

In the worst-case scenario, Trump will successfully surround himself with enough sycophants to undermine the checks and balances in our government and actually become an authoritarian dictator. I still believe that this is unlikely, but I can’t rule it out. I am certain that he would want to do this if he thought he could pull it off. (His own chief of staff has said so!)

Even if that worst-case doesn’t come to pass, things will still be very bad for millions of people. Immigrants will be forcibly removed from their homes. Trans people will face even more discrimination. Abortion may be banned nationwide. We may withdraw our support from Ukraine, and that may allow Russia to win the war. Environmental regulations will be repealed. Much or all of our recent progress at fighting climate change could be reversed. Voter suppression efforts will intensify. Yet more far-right judges will be appointed, and they will make far-right rulings. And tax cuts on the rich will make our already staggering, unsustainable inequality even worse.

Indeed, it’s not clear that this will be good even for the people who voted for Trump. (Of course it will be good for Trump himself and his closest lackeys.) The people who voted based on a conviction that the economy was bad won’t see the economy improve. The people who felt ignored by the Democrats will continue to be even more ignored by the Republicans. The people who were tired of identity politics aren’t going to make us care any less about racism and sexism by electing a racist misogynist. The working-class people who were voting against “liberal elites” will see their taxes raised and their groceries more expensive and their wages reduced.

I guess if people really hate immigrants and want them gone, they may get their wish when millions of immigrants are taken from their homes. And the rich will be largely insulated from the harms, while getting those tax cuts they love so much. So that’s some kind of benefit at least.

But mostly, this was an awful outcome, and the next four years will be progressively more and more awful, until hopefully—hopefully—Trump leaves office and we get another chance at something better. That is, if he hasn’t taken over and become a dictator by then.

What can we do to make things less bad?

I’m seeing a lot of people talking about grassroots organizing and mutual aid. I think these are good things, but honestly I fear they just aren’t going to be enough. The United States government is the most powerful institution in the world, and we have just handed control of it over to a madman.

Maybe we will need to organize mass protests. Maybe we will need to take some kind of radical direct action. I don’t know what to do. This all just feels so overwhelming.

I don’t want to give in to despair. I want to believe that we can still make things better. But right now, things feel awfully bleak.

Please, don’t let Trump win this

PNRJ core principles, current events, ethics, politics , , , , , , , , ,

Oct 20 JDN 2460604

It’s almost time for the Presidential election in the United States. Right now, the race is too close to call; as of writing this post, FiveThirtyEight gives Harris a 53% chance of winning, and Trump a 46% chance.

It should not be this close. It should never have been this close. We have already seen what Trump is like in office, and it should have made absolutely no one happy. He is authoritarian, corrupt, incompetent, and narcissistic, and lately he’s starting to show signs of cognitive decline. He is a convicted felon and was involved in an attempted insurrection. His heavy-handed trade tariffs would surely cause severe economic damage both here and abroad, and above all, he wants to roll back rights for millions of Americans.

Almost anyone would be better than Trump. Harris would be obviously, dramatically better in almost every way. Yet somehow Trump is still doing well in the polls, and could absolutely still win this.

Please, do everything you can to stop that from happening.

Donate. Volunteer. Get out the vote. And above all, vote.

Part of the problem is our two-party system, which comes ultimately from our plurality voting system. As RangeVoting.org has remarked, our current system is basically the worst possible system that can still be considered democratic. Range voting would be clearly the best system, but failing that, at least we could have approval voting, or some kind of ranked-choice system. Only voting for a single candidate causes huge, fundamental flaws in representation, especially when it comes to candidate cloning: Multiple similar candidates that people like can lose to a single candidate that people dislike, because the vote gets split between them.

In fact, that’s almost certainly what happened with Trump: The only reason he won the primary the first time was that he had a small group of ardent supporters, while all the other candidates were similar and so got the mainstream Republican vote split between them. (Though it looks like the second time around he’d still win even if all the other similar candidates were consolidated—which frankly horrifies me.)

But it isn’t just our voting system. The really terrifying thing about Trump is how popular he is among Republicans. Democrats hate him, but Republicans love him. I have tried talking with Republican family members about what they like about Trump, and they struggle to give me a sensible answer. It’s not his personality or his competence (how could it be?). For the most part, it wasn’t even particular policies he supports. It was just this weird free-floating belief that he was a good President and would be again.

There was one major exception to that: Single-issue voters who want to ban abortion. For these people, the only thing that matters is that Trump appointed the Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade. I don’t know what to say to such people, since it seems so obvious to me that (1) a total abortion ban is too extreme, even if you want to reduce the abortion rate, (2) there are so many other issues that matter aside from abortion; you can’t simply ignore them all, (3) several other Republican candidates are equally committed to banning abortion but not nearly as corrupt or incompetent, and (4) the Supreme Court has already been appointed; there’s nothing more for Trump to do in that department that he hasn’t already done. But I guess there is at least something resembling a coherent policy preference here, if a baffling one.

Others also talked about his ideas on trade and immigration, but they didn’t seem to have a coherent idea of what a sensible trade or immigration policy looks like. They imagined that it was a reasonable thing to simply tariff all imports massively or expel all immigrants, despite the former being economically absurd and the latter being a human rights violation (and also an economic disaster). I guess that also counts as a policy preference, but it’s not simply baffling; it’s horrifying. I don’t know what to say to these people either.

But maybe that’s a terror I need to come to terms with: Some people don’t like Trump in spite of his terrible policy ideas; they like him because of them. They want a world where rights are rolled back for minorities and LGBT people and (above all) immigrants. They want a world where global trade is shut down and replaced by autarky. They imagine that these changes will somehow benefit them, even when all the evidence suggests that it would do nothing of the sort.

I have never feared Trump himself nearly so much as I fear the people of a country that could elect him. And should we re-elect him, I will fear the people of this country even more.

Please, don’t let that happen.

The worst is not inevitable

PNRJ core principles, current events, politics , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Jul 14 JDN 2460506

As I write this, the left has just won two historic landslide victories: In France, where a coalition of left-wing parties set aside their differences and prevailed; and in the UK, where the Labour Party just curb-stomped all competition.

Many commentators had been worried that the discredited center-right parties in these countries had left a power vacuum that would be filled by far-right parties like France’s National Rally, but this isn’t what happened. Voters showed up to the polls, and they voted out the center-right all right; but what they put in its place was the center-left, not the far-right.

The New York Times is constitutionally incapable of celebrating anything, so they immediately turned to worries that “turnout was low” and this indicates “an unhappy Britain”. Honestly this seems to be a general failing of journalists: They can’t ever say anything is good. Their entire view of the world is based around “if it bleeds, it leads”. I’m assuming this has something to do with incentives created by the market of news consumers, but it also seems to be an entrenched social norm among journalists themselves. The world must be getting worse, in every way, or if it’s obviously not, we don’t talk about those things—because good things just aren’t news. (Look no further than the fact we now have the lowest global homicide rates in the history of the human race. What, you didn’t realize we had that right now? Could that perhaps be because literally no news source even mentioned it, ever?)

Now, to be fair, turnout was low, and far-right parties did win some representation, and any kind of sudden political shift indicates some kind of public dissatisfaction… but for goodness’ sake, can we take the win for once?

These elections are proof that the free world’s slide into far-right authoritarianism doesn’t have to be inevitable. We can fight it, we are fighting it—and sometimes, we actually win.

So let’s not give up hope in the United States, either. Yes, polls of the Biden/Trump election don’t look great right now; Trump seems to have a slight lead, and it’s way too close for comfort. But we don’t need to roll over and die. The left can win, when we band together well enough; and if France and Britain can pull it off, I don’t see why we can’t too.

And don’t tell me they had way better candidates. The new UK Prime Minister is not a particularly appealing or charismatic candidate. I frankly don’t even like him. He either is a TERF, or is at least willing to capitulate to them. (He also underestimates the number of trans women by about an order of magnitude.) But he won, because the Labour Party won, and he happened to be the Labour Party leader at the time.

Biden is old. Sure. So is Trump. And if it turns out that Biden is really unhealthy, guess what? That means he’ll die or resign and we get a woman of color as President instead. I don’t see eye-to-eye with Kamala Harris on everything, but I don’t see her taking office as a horrible outcome. It’s certainly a hundred times better than what happens if we let Trump win.

Are there better candidates out there? Theoretically, sure. But unless one of them manages to win nomination by one of the two leading parties, that doesn’t matter. Because in a first-past-the-post voting system, you either vote for one of the top two, or you waste your vote. I’m sorry. It sucks. I want a new voting system too. I know exactly which one we could use that would be a hundred times better. But we’re not going to get it by refusing to vote altogether.

We might get a better voting system by voting strategically for candidates who are open to the idea—which at this juncture clearly means Democrats, not Republicans. (At this point in history, Republicans don’t seem entirely convinced that we should decide things democratically in the first place.)There are also other forms of activism we can use, independent of voting. But not voting isn’t a form of activism, and we should stop acting like it is. Not voting is the lazy, selfish, default option. It’s what you’d do if you were a neoclassical rational agent who cares not in the least for his fellow human beings. You should never be proud of not voting. You’re not sending a message; you’re shirking your civic responsibility.

Voting isn’t writing a love letter. It isn’t signing a form endorsing everything a candidate has ever done or ever will do. If you think of it that way, you’re going to never want to vote—and thus you’re going to give up the most important power you have as a citizen of a democracy.

Voting is a decision. It’s choosing one alternative over another. Like any decision in the real world, there will almost never be a perfect option. There will only be better or worse options. Sometimes, even, you’ll feel that there are only bad options, and you are choosing the least-bad option. But you still have to choose the least-bad option, because literally everything else is worse—including doing nothing.

So get out there and try to help Biden win. Not because you love Biden, but because it’s your civic duty. And if enough people do it, we can still win this.

Trump will soon be gone. But this isn’t over.

PNRJ core principles, current events, ethics, inequality, public policy, tribal paradigm , , , , , , , , , ,

Nov 8 JDN 2459162

After a frustratingly long wait for several states to finish counting their mail-in ballots (particularly Pennsylvania, Nevada, and Arizona), Biden has officially won the Presidential election. While it was far too close in a few key states, this is largely an artifact of the Electoral College: Biden’s actual popular vote advantage was over 4 million votes. We now have our first Vice President who is a woman of color. I think it’s quite reasonable for us all to share a long sigh of relief at this result.

We have won this battle. But the war is far from over.

First, there is the fact that we are still in a historic pandemic and economic recession. I have no doubt that Biden’s policy response will be better than Trump’s; but he hasn’t taken office yet, and much of the damage has already been done. Things are not going to get much better for quite awhile yet.

Second, while Biden is a pretty good candidate, he does have major flaws.

Above all, Biden is still far too hawkish on immigration and foreign policy. He won’t chant “build the wall!”, but he’s unlikely to tear down all of our border fences or abolish ICE. He won’t rattle the saber with Iran or bomb civilians indiscriminately, but he’s unlikely to end the program of assassination drone strikes. Trump has severely, perhaps irrevocably, damaged the Pax Americana with his ludicrous trade wars, alienation of our allies, and fawning over our enemies; but whether or not Biden can restore America’s diplomatic credibility, I have no doubt that he’ll continue to uphold—and deploy—America’s military hegemony. Indeed, the failure of the former could only exacerbate the latter.

Biden’s domestic policy is considerably better, but even there he doesn’t go far enough. His healthcare plan is a substantial step forward, improving upon the progress already made by Obamacare; but it’s still not the single-payer healthcare system we really need. He has some good policy ideas for directly combating discrimination, but isn’t really addressing the deep structural sources of systemic racism. His anti-poverty programs would be a step in the right direction, but are clearly insufficient.

Third, Democrats did not make significant gains in Congress, and while they kept the majority in the House, they are unlikely to gain control of the Senate. Because the Senate is so powerful and Mitch McConnell is so craven, this could be disastrous for Biden’s ability to govern.

But there is an even more serious problem we must face as a country: Trump got 70 million votes. Even after all he did—his endless lies, his utter incompetence, his obvious corruption—and all that happened—the mishandled pandemic, the exacerbated recession—there were still 70 million people willing to vote for Trump. I said it from the beginning: I have never feared Trump nearly so much as I fear an America that could elect him.

Yes, of course he would have had a far worse shot if our voting system were better: Several viable parties, range voting, and no Electoral College would have all made things go very differently than they did in 2016. But the fact remains that tens of millions of Americans were willing to vote for this man not once, but twice.

What can explain the support of so many people for such an obviously terrible leader?

First, there is misinformation: Our mass media is biased and can give a very distorted view of the world. Someone whose view of world events was shaped entirely by right-wing media like Fox News (let alone OAN) might not realize how terrible Trump is, or might be convinced that Biden is somehow even worse. Yet today, in the 21st century, our access to information is virtually unlimited. Anyone who really wanted to know what Trump is like would be able to find out—so whatever ignorance or misinformation Trump voters had, they bear the greatest responsibility for it.

Then, there is discontent: Growth in total economic output has greatly outpaced growth in real standard of living for most Americans. While real per-capita GDP rose from $26,000 in 1974 to $56,000 today (a factor of 2.15, or 1.7% per year), real median personal income only rose from $25,000 to $36,000 (a factor of 1.44, or 0.8% per year). This reflects the fact that more and more of our country’s wealth is being concentrated in the hands of the rich. Combined with dramatically increased costs of education and healthcare, this means that most American families really don’t feel like their standard of living has meaningfully improved in a generation or more.

Yet if people are discontent with how our economy is run… why would they vote for Donald Trump, who epitomizes everything that is wrong with that system? The Democrats have not done enough to fight rising inequality and spiraling healthcare costs, but they have at least done something—raising taxes here, expanding Medicaid there. This is not enough, since it involves only tweaking the system at the edges rather than solving the deeper structural problems—but it has at least some benefit. The Republicans at their best have done nothing, and at their worst actively done everything in their power to exacerbate rising inequality. And Trump is no different in this regard than any other Republican; he promised more populist economic policy, but did not deliver it in any way. Do people somehow not see that?

I think we must face up to the fact that racism and sexism are clearly a major part of what motivates supporters of Trump. Trump’s core base consists of old, uneducated White men. Women are less likely to support him, and young people, educated people, and people of color are far less likely to support him. The race gap is staggering: A mere 8% of Black people support Trump, while 54% of White people do. While Asian and Hispanic voters are not quite so univocal, still it’s clear that if only non-White people had voted Biden would have won an utter landslide and might have taken every state—yes, likely even Florida, where Cuban-Americans did actually lean slightly toward Trump. The age and education gaps are also quite large: Among those under 30, only 30% support Trump, while among those over 65, 52% do. Among White people without a college degree, 64% support Trump, while among White people with a college degree, only 38% do. The gender gap is smaller, but still significant: 48% of men but only 42% of women support Trump. (Also the fact that the gender gap was smaller this year than in 2016 could reflect the fact that Clinton was running for President but Harris was only running for Vice President.)

We shouldn’t ignore the real suffering and discontent that rising inequality has wrought, nor should we dismiss the significance of right-wing propaganda. Yet when it comes right down to it, I don’t see how we can explain Trump’s popularity without recognizing that an awful lot of White men in America are extremely racist and sexist. The most terrifying thing about Trump is that millions of Americans do know what he’s like—and they’re okay with that.

Trump will soon be gone. But many others like him remain. We need to find a way to fix this, or the next racist, misogynist, corrupt, authoritarian psychopath may turn out to be a lot less foolish and incompetent.

Reasons to like Joe Biden

PNRJ current events, public policy , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Sep 6 JDN 2459099

Maybe it’s because I follow too many radical leftists on social media (this is at least a biased sample, no doubt), but I’ve seen an awful lot of posts basically making this argument: “Joe Biden is terrible, but we have to elect him, because Donald Trump is worse.”

And make no mistake: Whatever else you think about this election, the fact that Donald Trump is a fascist and Joe Biden is not is indeed a fully sufficient reason to vote for Biden. You shouldn’t need any more than that.

But in fact Joe Biden is not terrible. Yes, there are some things worth criticizing about his record and his platform—particularly with regard to civil liberties and war (both of those links are to my own posts making such criticisms of the Obama administration). I don’t want to sweep these significant flaws under the rug.

Yet, there are also a great many things that are good about Biden and his platform, and it’s worthwhile to talk about them. You shouldn’t feel like you are holding your nose and voting for the lesser of two evils; Biden is going to make a very good President.

First and foremost, there is his plan to invest in clean energy and combat climate change. For the first time in decades, we have a Presidential candidate who is explicitly pro-nuclear and has a detailed, realistic plan for achieving net-zero carbon emissions within a generation. We should have done this 30 years ago; but far better to start now than to wait even longer.

Then there is Biden’s plan for affordable housing. He wants to copy California’s Homeowner Bill of Rights at the federal level, fight redlining, expand Section 8, and nationalize the credit rating system. Above all, he wants to create a new First Down Payment Tax Credit that will provide first-time home buyers with $15,000 toward a down payment on a home. That is how you increase homeownership. The primary reason why people rent instead of owning is that they can’t afford the down payment.

Biden is also serious about LGBT rights, and wants to pass the Equality Act, which would finally make all discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity illegal at the federal level. He has plans to extend and aggressively enforce federal rules protecting people with disabilities. His plans for advancing racial equality seem to be thoroughly baked into all of his proposals, from small business funding to housing reform—likely part of why he’s so popular among Black voters.

His plan for education reform includes measures to equalize funding between rich and poor districts and between White and non-White districts.

Biden’s healthcare plan isn’t quite Medicare For All, but it’s actually remarkably close to that. He wants to provide a public healthcare option available to everyone, and also lower the Medicare eligibility age to 60 instead of 65. This means that anyone who wants Medicare will be able to buy into it, and also sets a precedent of lowering the eligibility age—remember, all we really need to do to get Medicare For All is lower that age to 18. Moreover, it avoids forcing people off private insurance that they like, which is the main reason why Medicare For All still does not have majority support.

While many on the left have complained that Biden believes in “tough on crime”, his plan for criminal justice reform actually strikes a very good balance between maintaining low crime rates and reducing incarceration and police brutality. The focus is on crime prevention instead of punishment, and it includes the elimination of all federal use of privatized prisons.

Most people would give lip service to being against domestic violence, but Biden has a detailed plan for actually protecting survivors and punishing abusers—including ratifying the Equal Rights Amendment and ending the rape kit backlog. The latter is an utter no-brainer. If we need to, we can pull the money from just about any other form of law enforcement (okay, I guess not homicide); those rape kits need to be tested and those rapists need to be charged.

Biden also has a sensible plan for gun control, which is consistent with the Second Amendment and Supreme Court precedent but still could provide substantial protections by reinstating the ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, requiring universal background checks, and adding other sensible restrictions on who can be licensed to own firearms. It won’t do much about handguns or crimes of passion, but it should at least reduce mass shootings.

Biden doesn’t want to implement free four-year college—then again, neither do I—but he does have a plan for free community college and vocational schooling.

He also has a very ambitious plan for campaign finance reform, including a Constitutional Amendment that would ban all private campaign donations. Honestly if anything the plan sounds too ambitious; I doubt we can really implement all of these things any time soon. But if even half of them get through, our democracy will be in much better shape.

His immigration policy, while far from truly open borders, would reverse Trump’s appalling child-separation policy, expand access to asylum, eliminate long-term detention in favor of a probation system, and streamline the path to citizenship.

Biden’s platform is the first one I’ve seen that gives detailed plans for foreign aid and international development projects; he is particularly focused on Latin America.

I’ve seen many on the left complain that Biden was partly responsible for the current bankruptcy system that makes it nearly impossible to discharge student loans; well, his current platform includes a series of reforms developed by Elizabeth Warren designed to reverse that.

I do think Biden is too hawkish on war and not serious enough about protecting civil liberties—and I said the same thing about Obama years ago. But Biden isn’t just better than Trump (almost anyone would be better than Trump); he’s actually a genuinely good candidate with a strong, progressive platform.

You should already have been voting for Biden anyway. But hopefully now you can actually do it with some enthusiasm.

This attack on the postal service must not stand

PNRJ current events, public policy , , , , , , , , , , ,

Aug 23 JDN 2459085

Trump has done so many unprecedented and terrible things that we can become numbed by it all, unable to process each new offense because we are already overwhelmed by the others. Perhaps this is a kind of strategy on his part: Keep doing so many outrageous things that we lose our capacity to be outraged. Already it is fair to say that at least half of the 160,000 (and counting) Americans killed by COVID-19 would still be alive if a better President had been in office.

But the attack on the US Postal Service deserves particular attention, because the disruption of mail-in voting during a pandemic could radically alter the results of the election. Indeed, Trump has all but said that this was his goal in defunding the post office.

Trump has long hated the postal service (perhaps because it is a clear example of federal government doing things well and helping people), but his full-scale war upon it started with the appointment of Louis DeJoy as Postmaster General, whose main qualifications appear to be that he has given millions of dollars to Republican campaigns and hates everything the post office stands for. I am quite certain that if there were a Director of Henhouse Affairs, Trump would appoint the Fantastic Mr. Fox.

The White House chief of staff claims that there have been no mail sorting machines decommissioned aside from those that were normally scheduled for replacement. Yet it’s easy to find a number of different sources claiming that there have been far more machines shut down than usual. Postal workers have also spoken out about other kinds of restructuring in the postal system that claim to be about “reducing costs” but seem to be systematically impairing the speed and reliability of service.

Trump claims that mail-in voting is insecure, which has a kernel of truth: Mail-in voting certainly doesn’t have the ironclad security against fraud that in-person voting has. (Unlike in-person voter fraud, mail-in voter fraud actually exists.) But not only is his concern obviously overblown, the USPS has even taken measures to upgrade their security using blockchain encryption. Bitcoin has always been a stupid idea (though a very lucrative one for anyone who bought in early), but blockchain does have some major advantages for voting security, because it is one of the few ways to make a remote system that is simultaneously secure and anonymous. Indeed, I think blockchain encryption (combined with more standard SSL encryption that most web pages already use) might well be a way to implement full-scale online voting—though surely not in time for this election.

The US Postal Service is the most popular federal agency in the United States, followed by the CDC, the Census Bureau, and the Department of Health and Human Services, all of which deservedly have strong bipartisan majority support among voters. It may surprise you to learn that the Department of Homeland Security, the IRS, and the Department of Justice also have strong majority support—though with substantial partisan differences. The most divisive federal agency is ICE, which is beloved by Republicans but hated by Democrats.

Some 91% of Americans approve of the USPS—and why shouldn’t they? It is objectively rated one of the best postal systems in the world—and if anything this isn’t even fair, because most of the other top-rated postal services, particularly Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Singapore, have far smaller areas to cover than the US does. If we restrict ourselves to countries of at least 10 million people and territory of at least 100,000 square kilometers, there are only four postal services rated higher than the US: Japan, Germany, France, and Poland. If we restrict to countries of at least 100 million people, only Japan remains.

Thus, attacking the postal service is clearly not a winning proposition if your goal is to advance the interests of your constituents or even gain more votes. But during a pandemic, mail-in voting is likely to be—and well should be—a very large proportion of all votes. Sabotaging the mail system is a highly effective way to make it much harder to vote in general. And that seems to very much be Trump’s intention.

It is a general pattern that when voting gets harder, Republicans become more likely to win. Liberal voters are more likely to be young adults, poor people, or people of color, all of whom generally have a harder time making it to the polls. This may be less true in this election in particular, because against Trump in particular people who are highly educated and live in cities have been far more likely to vote against Trump—and these are groups of people with particularly high voter turnout. Empirical estimates of how a switch to mail-in voting will affect the election results have been highly ambiguous.

Indeed, perhaps this makes the Republican vote suppression campaign even more sinister: Perhaps they have moved beyond simply trying to tilt the scales in elections and are now willing to actively suppress democracy itself. It sounds radical, if not outright crazy, to assert such a thing—but many of the things that Trump and his Republican lackeys have done would have sounded crazy to me just a few years ago. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I honestly don’t know that Trump will concede defeat when he loses the election—he may refuse to accept the election results and try to stay in office via some sort of coup d’etat. Why do I think this could happen? Because he said so himself on national television. Vladimir Putin must be so embarrassed; his protege doesn’t even know how to be subtle about his authoritarianism.

FiveThirtyEight is currently giving Biden a 72% chance of victory, which is about 27% too low for my taste. That isn’t much better than the margin Hillary Clinton had four years ago. We can only hope that Trump attacking the most popular agency in our federal government will tilt those odds a little further.

Bernie Sanders may be our next President

PNRJ current events, public policy , , , , , ,

Feb 16 JDN 2458896

It’s too early to say who will win the election, of course. In fact, we’re not even entirely sure what the results of the Iowa caucuses were, because there were so many errors that they are talking about doing a recount.


But Bernie Sanders has taken a commanding lead in polls, and forecasts now have him as the clear front-runner. If we’d had range voting, Sanders probably would have won last time. But even with our voting system as terrible as it is, there’s a good chance he’ll actually win this time.

I would honestly prefer Elizabeth Warren; she shares Bernie’s idealism, but tempers it with a deep understanding of our political and economic system. Her policy plans are spectacularly good; she doesn’t just come up with a vague idea, she lays out a detailed roadmap of how it will be accomplished and how it will be paid for. Her plans cover a wide variety of issues, including a lot of things that most people aren’t even aware of yet nevertheless affect millions of people. Who else is talking about universal child care programs, the corruption in our trade negotiation system, antitrust action against tech monopolies, or reducing corporate influence in the military? Who else includes in their plan for corporate taxes detailed reforms to the accounting system? And who else has a plan for forgiving student debt that actually calculates the effective marginal tax rate induced by the phase-out? Elizabeth Warren is the economist’s candidate: Unlike almost everyone else in politics, she actually knows what she’s doing.

Bernie Sanders, by comparison, has an awful lot of laudable goals, but is often quite short on the details of how they will be achieved. His healthcare plan, in particular, “Medicare for All”, doesn’t seem to include any kind of cost estimate or revenue support. I’m all for single-payer healthcare, but it’s not going to get done for free. And at least in the past, he has made economic forecasts that are wildly implausible.

But we could certainly do a lot worse than Bernie. His most unrealistic ideas will be tempered by political reality, while his unflinching idealism may just shift our Overton Window in a much-needed leftward direction. He is a man of uncommon principle, and a politician of uncommon honesty—he does not have even one “Pants on Fire” rating on Politifact.

To say that he would obviously be better than Trump is a gross understatement: Almost anyone would obviously be better than Trump, and definitely any of the leading Democratic candidates would be.

In fact, Warren is the only candidate I unambiguously prefer to Sanders. Biden is too conservative, too willing to compromise with an uncompromising right wing. As historic as it would be to have an openly gay President, I’m not sure Buttigieg is the one I’d want. (On the other hand, the first gay President is almost certainly going to have to be extremely privileged and milquetoast to break through that glass ceiling—so maybe it’s Buttigieg or nothing.) Yang has some interesting ideas (like his basic income proposal), but no serious chance of winning. Bloomberg would be a good Libertarian Party candidate, but he’s no Democrat. The rest have fallen so far in the polls they aren’t worth talking about anymore.

Like I said, it’s really too early to say. Maybe Biden will make a comeback. Maybe Warren will win after all. But it does mean one thing: The left wing in America has been energized. If one good thing has come of Trump, perhaps it is that: We are no longer complacent, and we are now willing to stand up and demand what we really want. The success of Sanders so far proves that.

Reflections on Past and Future

PNRJ current events, personal, science and academia , , , , , , ,

Jan 19 JDN 2458868

This post goes live on my birthday. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to celebrate much, as I’ll be in the process of moving. We moved just a few months ago, and now we’re moving again, because this apartment turned out to be full of mold that keeps triggering my migraines. Our request for a new apartment was granted, but the university housing system gives very little time to deal with such things: They told us on Tuesday that we needed to commit by Wednesday, and then they set our move-in date for that Saturday.

Still, a birthday seems like a good time to reflect on how my life is going, and where I want it to go next. As for how old I am? This is the probably the penultimate power of two I’ll reach.

The biggest change in my life over the previous year was my engagement. Our wedding will be this October. (We have the venue locked in; invitations are currently in the works.) This was by no means unanticipated; really, folks had been wondering when we’d finally get around to it. Yet it still feels strange, a leap headlong into adulthood for someone of a generation that has been saddled with a perpetual adolescence. The articles on “Millennials” talking about us like we’re teenagers still continue, despite the fact that there are now Millenials with college-aged children. Thanks to immigration and mortality, we now outnumber Boomers. Based on how each group voted in 2016, this bodes well for the 2020 election. (Then again, a lot of young people stay home on Election Day.)

I don’t doubt that graduate school has contributed to this feeling of adolescence: If we count each additional year of schooling as a grade, I would now be in the 22nd grade. Yet from others my age, even those who didn’t go to grad school, I’ve heard similar experiences about getting married, buying homes, or—especially—having children of their own: Society doesn’t treat us like adults, so we feel strange acting like adults. 30 is the new 23.

Perhaps as life expectancy continues to increase and educational attainment climbs ever higher, future generations will continue to experience this feeling ever longer, until we’re like elves in a Tolkienesque fantasy setting, living to 1000 but not considered a proper adult until we hit 100. I wonder if people will still get labeled by generation when there are 40 generations living simultaneously, or if we’ll find some other category system to stereotype by.

Another major event in my life this year was the loss of our cat Vincent. He was quite old by feline standards, and had been sick for a long time; so his demise was not entirely unexpected. Still, it’s never easy to lose a loved one, even if they are covered in fur and small enough to fit under an airplane seat.

Most of the rest of my life has remained largely unchanged: Still in grad school, still living in the same city, still anxious about my uncertain career prospects. Trump is still President, and still somehow managing to outdo his own high standards of unreasonableness. I do feel some sense of progress now, some glimpses of the light at the end of the tunnel. I can vaguely envision finishing my dissertation some time this year, and I’m hoping that in a couple years I’ll have settled into a job that actually pays well enough to start paying down my student loans, and we’ll have a good President (or at least Biden).

I’ve reached the point where people ask me what I am going to do next with my life. I want to give an answer, but the problem is, this is almost entirely out of my control. I’ll go wherever I end up getting job offers. Based on the experience of past cohorts, most people seem to apply to about 200 positions, interview for about 20, and get offers from about 2. So asking me where I’ll work in five years is like asking me what number I’m going to roll on a 100-sided die. I could probably tell you what order I would prioritize offers in, more or less; but even that would depend a great deal on the details. There are difficult tradeoffs to be made: Take a private sector offer with higher pay, or stay in academia for more autonomy and security? Accept a postdoc or adjunct position at a prestigious university, or go for an assistant professorship at a lower-ranked college?

I guess I can say that I do still plan to stay in academia, though I’m less certain of that than I once was; I will definitely cast a wider net. I suppose the job market isn’t like that for most people? I imagine most people at least know what city they’ll be living in. (I’m not even positive what country—opportunities for behavioral economics actually seem to be generally better in Europe and Australia than they are in the US.)

But perhaps most people simply aren’t as cognizant of how random and contingent their own career paths truly were. The average number of job changes per career is 12. You may want to think that you chose where you ended up, but for the most part you landed where the wind blew you. This can seem tragic in a way, but it is also a call for compassion: “There but for the grace of God go I.”

Really, all I can do now is hang on and try to enjoy the ride.

How do we get rid of gerrymandering?

PNRJ public policy, statistics , , , , , ,

Nov 18 JDN 2458441

I don’t mean in a technical sense; there is a large literature in political science on better voting mechanisms, and this is basically a solved problem. Proportional representation, algorithmic redistricting, or (my personal favorite) reweighted range voting would eradicate gerrymandering forever.

No, I mean strategically and politically—how do we actually make this happen?

Let’s set aside the Senate. (No, really. Set it aside. Get rid of it. “Take my wife… please.”) The Senate should not exist. It is fundamentally anathema to the most basic principle of democracy, “one person, one vote”; and even its most ardent supporters at the time admitted it had absolutely no principled justification for existing. Smaller states are wildly overrepresented (Wyoming, 580,000 people, gets the same number of Senators as California, 39 million), and non-states are not represented (DC has more people than Wyoming, and Puerto Rico has more people than Iowa). The “Senate popular vote” thus doesn’t really make sense as a concept. But this is not “gerrymandering”, as there is no redistricting process that can be used strategically to tilt voting results in favor of one party or another.

It is in the House of Representatives that gerrymandering is a problem.
North Carolina is a particularly extreme example. Republicans won 50.3% of the popular vote in this year’s House election; North Carolina has 13 seats; so, any reasonable person would think that the Republicans should get 7 of the 13 seats. Under algorithmic redistricting, they would have received 8 of 13 seats. Under proportional representation, they would have received, you guessed it, exactly 7. And under reweighted range voting? Well, that depends on how much people like each party. Assuming that Democrats and Republicans are about equally strong in their preferences, we would also expect the Republicans to win about 7. They in fact received 10 of 13 seats.

Indeed, as FiveThirtyEight found, this is almost the best the Republicans could possibly have done, if they had applied the optimal gerrymandering configuration. There are a couple of districts on the real map that occasionally swing which wouldn’t under the truly optimal gerrymandering; but none of these would flip Democrat more than 20% of the time.

Most states are not as gerrymandered as North Carolina. But there is a pattern you’ll notice among the highly-gerrymandered states.

Alabama is close to optimally gerrymandered for Republicans.

Arkansas is close to optimally gerrymandered for Republicans.

Idaho is close to optimally gerrymandered for Republicans.

Mississippi is close to optimally gerrymandered for Republicans.

As discussed, North Carolina is close to optimally gerrymandered for Republicans.
South Carolina is close to optimally gerrymandered for Republicans.

Texas is close to optimally gerrymandered for Republicans.

Wisconsin is close to optimally gerrymandered for Republicans.

Tennessee is close to optimally gerrymandered for Democrats.

Arizona is close to algorithmic redistricting.

California is close to algorithmic redistricting.

Connecticut is close to algorithmic redistricting.

Michigan is close to algorithmic redistricting.

Missouri is close to algorithmic redistricting.

Ohio is close to algorithmic redistricting.

Oregon is close to algorithmic redistricting.

Illinois is close to algorithmic redistricting, with some bias toward Democrats.

Kentucky is close to algorithmic redistricting, with some bias toward Democrats.

Louisiana is close to algorithmic redistricting, with some bias toward Democrats.

Maryland is close to algorithmic redistricting, with some bias toward Democrats.

Minnesota is close to algorithmic redistricting, with some bias toward Republicans.

New Jersey is close to algorithmic redistricting, with some bias toward Republicans.

Pennsylvania is close to algorithmic redistricting, with some bias toward Republicans.

Colorado is close to proportional representation.

Florida is close to proportional representation.

Iowa is close to proportional representation.

Maine is close to proportional representation.

Nebraska is close to proportional representation.

Nevada is close to proportional representation.

New Hampshire is close to proportional representation.

New Mexico is close to proportional representation.

Washington is close to proportional representation.

Georgia is somewhere between proportional representation and algorithmic redistricting.

Indiana is somewhere between proportional representation and algorithmic redistricting.

New York is somewhere between proportional representation and algorithmic redistricting.

Virginia is somewhere between proportional representation and algorithmic redistricting.

Hawaii is so overwhelmingly Democrat it’s impossible to gerrymander.

Rhode Island is so overwhelmingly Democrat it’s impossible to gerrymander.

Kansas is so overwhelmingly Republican it’s impossible to gerrymander.

Oklahoma is so overwhelmingly Republican it’s impossible to gerrymander.

Utah is so overwhelmingly Republican it’s impossible to gerrymander.

West Virginia is so overwhelmingly Republican it’s impossible to gerrymander.

You may have noticed the pattern. Most states are either close to algorithmic redistricting (14), close to proportional representation (9), or somewhere in between those (4). Of these, 4 are slightly biased toward Democrats and 3 are slightly biased toward Republicans.

6 states are so partisan that gerrymandering isn’t really possible there.

6 states are missing from the FiveThirtyEight analysis; I think they couldn’t get good data on them.

Of the remaining 9 states, 1 is strongly gerrymandered toward Democrats (gaining a whopping 1 seat, by the way), and 8 are strongly gerrymandered toward Republicans.

If we look at the nation as a whole, switching from the current system to proportional representation would increase the number of Democrat seats from 168 to 174 (+6), decrease the number of Republican seats from 195 to 179 (-16), and increase the number of competitive seats from 72 to 82 (+10).

Going to algorithmic redistricting instead would reduce the number of Democrat seats from 168 to 151 (-17), decrease the number of Republican seats from 195 to 180 (-15), and increase the number of competitive seats from 72 to a whopping 104 (+32).

Proportional representation minimizes wasted votes and best represents public opinion (with the possible exception of reweighted range voting, which we can’t really forecast because it uses more expressive information than what polls currently provide). It is thus to be preferred. Relative to the current system, proportional representation would decrease the representation of Republicans relative to Democrats by 24 seats—over 5% of the entire House.

Thus, let us not speak of gerrymandering as a “both sides” sort of problem. There is a very clear pattern here: Gerrymandering systematically favors Republicans.

Yet this does not answer the question I posed: How do we actually fix this?

The answer is going to sound a bit paradoxical: We must motivate voters to vote more so that voters will be better represented.

I have an acquaintance who has complained about this apparently paradoxical assertion: How can we vote to make our votes matter? (He advocates using violence instead.)

But the key thing to understand here is that it isn’t that our votes don’t matter at all—it is merely that they don’t matter enough.

If we were living in an authoritarian regime with sham elections (as some far-left people I’ve spoken to actually seem to believe), then indeed voting would be pointless. You couldn’t vote out Saddam Hussein or Benito Mussolini, even though they both did hold “elections” to make you think you had some voice. At that point, yes, obviously the only remaining choices are revolution or foreign invasion. (It does seem worth noting that both regimes fell by the latter, not the former.)

The US has not fallen that far just yet.

Votes in the US do not count evenly—but they do still count.

We have to work harder than our opponents for the same level of success, but we can still succeed.

Our legs may be shackled to weights, but they are not yet chained to posts in the ground.

Indeed, several states in this very election passed referenda to create independent redistricting commissions, and Democrats have gained at least 32 seats in the House—“at least” because some states are still counting mail-in ballots or undergoing recounts.

The one that has me on the edge of my seat is right here in Orange County, which several outlets (including the New York Times) have made preliminary projections in favor of Mimi Walters (R) but Nate Silver is forecasting higher probability for Katie Porter (D). It says “100% of precincts reporting”, but there are still as many ballots uncounted as there are counted, because California now has almost twice as many voters who vote by mail than in person.

Unfortunately, some of the states that are most highly gerrymandered don’t allow citizen-sponsored ballot initiatives (North Carolina, for instance). This is likely no coincidence. But this still doesn’t make us powerless. If your state is highly gerrymandered, make noise about it. Join or even organize protests. Write letters to legislators. Post on social media. Create memes.
Even most Republican voters don’t believe in gerrymandering. They want to win fair and square. Even if you can’t get them to vote for the candidates you want, reach out to them to get them to complain to their legislators about the injustice of the gerrymandering itself. Appeal to their patriotic values; election manipulation is clearly not what America stands for.

If your state is not highly gerrymandered, think bigger. We should be pushing for a Constitutional amendment implementing either proportional representation or algorithmic redistricting. The majority of states already have reasonably fair districts; if we can get 2/3 of the House and 2/3 of the Senate to agree on such an amendment, we don’t need to win North Carolina or Mississippi.

What about a tax on political contributions?

PNRJ ethics, market failure, public policy, Uncategorized , , , , , ,

Jan 7, JDN 2458126

In my previous post, I argued that an advertising tax could reduce advertising, raise revenue, and produce almost no real economic distortion. Now I’m going to generalize this idea to an even bolder proposal: What if we tax political contributions?

Donations to political campaigns are very similar to advertising. A contest function framework also makes a lot of sense: Increased spending improves your odds of winning, but it doesn’t actually produce any real goods.

Suppose there’s some benefit B that I get if a given politician wins an election. That benefit could include direct benefits to me, as well as altruistic benefits to other citizens I care about, or even my concern for the world as a whole. But presumably, I do benefit in some fashion from my favored politician winning—otherwise, why are they my favored politician?

In this very simple model, let’s assume that there are only two parties and two donors (obviously in the real world there are more parties and vastly more donors; but it doesn’t fundamentally change the argument). Say I will donate x and the other side will donate y.

Assuming that donations are all that matter, the probability my party will win the election is x/(x+y).

Fortunately that isn’t the case. A lot of things matter, some that should (policy platforms, experience, qualifications, character) and some that shouldn’t (race, gender, age, height—part of why Trump won may in fact be that he is tall; he’s about 6’1”.). So let’s put all the other factors that affect elections into a package and call that F.

The probability that my candidate wins is then x/(x+y) + F, where F can be positive or negative. If F is positive, it means that my candidate is more likely to win, while if it’s negative, it means my candidate is less likely to win. (If you want to be pedantic, the probability of winning has to be capped at 0 and 1, but this doesn’t fundamentally change the argument, and only matters for candidates that are obvious winners or obvious losers regardless of how much anyone donates.)

The donation costs me money, x. The cost in utility of that money depends on my utility function, so for now I’ll just call it a cost function C(x).
Then my net benefit is:
B*[x/(x+y)+F] – C(x)

I can maximize this by a first-order condition. Notice how the F just drops out. I like F to be large, but it doesn’t affect my choice of x.

B*y/(x+y)^2 = C'(x)

Turning that into an exact value requires knowing my cost function and my opponent’s cost function (which need not be the same, in general; unlike the advertising case, it’s not a matter of splitting fungible profits between us), but it’s actually possible to stop here. We can already tell that there is a well-defined solution: There’s a certain amount of donation x that maximizes my expected utility, given the amount y that the other side has donated. Moreover, with a little bit of calculus you can show that the optimal amount of x is strictly increasing in y, which makes intuitive sense: The more they give, the more you need to give in order to keep up. Since x is increasing in y and y is increasing in x, there is a Nash equilibrium: At some amount x and y we each are giving the optimal amount from our perspective.

We can get a precise answer if we assume that the amount of the donations is small compared to my overall wealth, so I will be approximately risk-neutral; then we can just say C(x) = x, and C'(x) = 1:

B*y/(x+y)^2 = 1
Then we get essentially the same result we did for the advertising:

x = y = B/4

According to this, I should be willing to donate up to one-fourth the benefit I’d get from my candidate winning in donations. This actually sounds quite high; I think once you take into account the fact that lots of other people are donating and political contributions aren’t that effective at winning elections, the optimal donation is actually quite a bit smaller—though perhaps still larger than most people give.

If we impose a tax rate r on political contributions, nothing changes. The cost to me of donating is still the same, and as long as the tax is proportional, the ratio x/(x+y) and the probability x/(x+y) + F will remain exactly the same as before. Therefore, I will continue to donate the same amount, as will my opponent, and each candidate will have the same probability of winning as before. The only difference is that some of the money (r of the money, to be precise) will go to the government instead of the politicians.

The total amount of donations will not change. The probability of each candidate winning will not change. All that will happen is money will be transferred from politicians to the government. If this tax revenue is earmarked for some socially beneficial function, this will obviously be an improvement in welfare.

The revenue gained is not nearly as large an amount of money as is spent on advertising (which tells you something about American society), but it’s still quite a bit: Since we currently spend about $5 billion per year on federal elections, a tax rate of 50% could raise about $2.5 billion.

But in fact this seriously under-estimates the benefits of such a tax. This simple model assumes that political contributions only change which candidate wins; but that’s actually not the main concern. (If F is large enough, it can offset any possible donations.)
The real concern is how political contributions affect the choices politicians make once they get into office. While outright quid-pro-quo bribery is illegal, it’s well-known that many corporations and wealthy individuals will give campaign donations with the reasonable expectation of influencing what sort of policies will be made.

You don’t think Goldman Sachs gives millions of dollars each election out of the goodness of their hearts, do you? And they give to both major parties, which really only makes sense if their goal is not to make a particular candidate win, but to make sure that whoever wins feels indebted to Goldman Sachs. (I guess it could also be to prevent third parties from winning—but they hardly ever win anyway, so that wouldn’t be a smart investment from the bank’s perspective.)

Lynda Powell at the University of Rochester has documented the many subtle but significant ways that these donations have influenced policy. Campaign donations aren’t as important as party platforms, but a lot of subtle changes across a wide variety of policies add up to large differences in outcomes.

A political contribution tax would reduce these influences. If politicians’ sole goal were to win, the tax would have no effect. But it seems quite likely that politicians enjoy various personal benefits from lobbying and campaign contributions: Fine dinners, luxurious vacations, and so on. And insofar as that is influencing politicians’ behavior, it is both obviously corrupt and clearly reduced by a political contribution tax. How large an effect this would be is difficult to say; but the direction of the effect is clearly the one we want.

Taxing donations would also allow us to protect the right to give to campaigns (which does seem to be a limited kind of civil liberty, even though the precise interpretation “money is speech” is Orwellian), while reducing corruption and allowing us to keep close track on donations that are made. Taxing a money stream, even a small amount, is often one of the best ways to incentivize close monitoring of that money stream.

With a subtle change, the tax could even be made to bias in favor of populism: All you need to do is exempt small donations from the tax. If say the first $1000 per person per year is exempt from taxation, then the imposition of the tax will reduce the effectiveness of million-dollar contributions from Goldman Sachs and the Koch brothers without having any effect on $50 donations from people like you and me. That would technically be “distorting” elections—but it seems like it might be a distortion worth making.

Of course, this is probably even less likely to happen than the advertising tax.