After getting back to the States from almost eight months in Europe, I've experienced less culture shock that I expected, but it all tends to fit into a green theme. I miss, for example, not having to bring a sweatshirt and a blanket to movie theaters and classrooms, which are A/Ced down to the mid-60s here. I miss toilets with a splash of water in the bowl, rather than a family's daily water intake. I miss escalators that don't start until you get on them.
But most of all, I miss recycling. I miss being able to recycle almost EVERYTHING, and being able to buy everything recycled. (The "sustainable" notebooks in the GW Bookstore, for example, are a paltry 30% post-consumer.) I'm sure this isn't a typical feeling, but I've been watching my carbon footprint balloon over the past two weeks and felt so helpless to stop it.
Can someone point out where we're greener than Europe? Maybe that would help reduce my culture shock.
Friday, September 5, 2008
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
The Upside of Tax Opacity
Ok, so y'all have done your taxes, and you're probably thinking that perhaps an anarchist system wouldn't be so bad after all. Much of that has to do with the fact that you gotta pay money that you thought was yours, but it's also the fact that taxes are really complicated, and therefore doing taxes is a horrible experience.
Everyone rightly laments the complications in the tax code, but it's worth it to point out that there is a nice silver lining. Basically, a progressive tax system in theory creates distortions in the labor supply by creating a disincentive to work (although the magnitude of this effect is HOTLY disputed). But incentives and disincentives only cause behavior changes if individuals know about them. In this case, the worker needs to know how many cents on the next dollar they make will be taken. Deductions, credits, and anything else that contribute to a more opaque tax system prevents workers from discerning their marginal tax rate, and thus make it more difficult to decide how they should change their behavior in response to the tax. Most likely, cognitive limitations are, to a certain extent, currently causing people to ignore the disincentive to work, thus avoiding the distortionary effect of the tax. Conversely, making the tax system more transparent might then create more distortionary effects of the tax.
Just something to think about.
Everyone rightly laments the complications in the tax code, but it's worth it to point out that there is a nice silver lining. Basically, a progressive tax system in theory creates distortions in the labor supply by creating a disincentive to work (although the magnitude of this effect is HOTLY disputed). But incentives and disincentives only cause behavior changes if individuals know about them. In this case, the worker needs to know how many cents on the next dollar they make will be taken. Deductions, credits, and anything else that contribute to a more opaque tax system prevents workers from discerning their marginal tax rate, and thus make it more difficult to decide how they should change their behavior in response to the tax. Most likely, cognitive limitations are, to a certain extent, currently causing people to ignore the disincentive to work, thus avoiding the distortionary effect of the tax. Conversely, making the tax system more transparent might then create more distortionary effects of the tax.
Just something to think about.
Thursday, April 3, 2008
National Geographic Event "Human Footprint"-- RSVP today!
Sorry this is kinda last minute (RSVP due TODAY), but it looks like it should be a great event on preserving our planet (click on image to enlarge):
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
DNC
The question was never about authority. I argue:
If you argue that the DNC should not have the power to issue a credible threat to states, how can we possibly prevent the frontloading chaos in the next election?
My underlying point was about DNC threat credibility. The four states didn't break the rules, so therefore their intransigence does not threaten the DNC's credibility. Sure, you may argue that it's unfair, and that, as you say, "we might have to change the system" and mention the 4 region idea. Great idea. But who enforces it? If one state pulls a short straw and is scheduled to go in May, what entity will prevent them from moving their election up? Basically, any solution requires that the DNC enforce the rules of the solution, and enforcement requires punishment.You can basically come down on one of two sides in this: either the DNC should have the power to issue credible threats (by having the power to enforce the rules if necessary), or they shouldn't.
If you argue that the DNC should not have the power to issue a credible threat to states, how can we possibly prevent the frontloading chaos in the next election?
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
Clinton campaign views on superdelegates
I can't believe I almost forgot this.
Let's rehash, because this is totally underreported: Clinton is now saying that even if every single metric imaginable says that the primary voters prefer Obama to her, she will still attempt to get the party establishment to overturn those results. WOW.
[Harold Ickes, Clinton campaign spokesman) confirmed that the Hillary campaign could still try to woo super-dels even if she lost the popular vote, with Michigan and Florida counted.So let me get this straight: it's OK to get superdelegates to overrule the pledged delegates because she might still win the popular vote at the end of the day, but even if she doesn't, it's still OK to get superdelegates to overrule the pledged delegates. So why are we even arguing about pledged delegate vs. popular vote? Even the Clinton campaign now says that it doesn't matter.
Let's rehash, because this is totally underreported: Clinton is now saying that even if every single metric imaginable says that the primary voters prefer Obama to her, she will still attempt to get the party establishment to overturn those results. WOW.
Primaries cont.
OK, I think we've talked the "who is accountable for FL/MI's actions" thing to death. Just a few parting responses.
You're right, they didn't do their best to express their opinions. If they had, they would have sent letters, made phone calls, and otherwise harassed their elected leaders demanding why they would risk having their votes not count. And you're right, it's possible that it's because they didn't realize what was going on, which I would argue is the most generous interpretation of the situation. But so what? Who's fault was it that they didn't know what was going on? We have internet news sites that track the actions of your representatives down to the hour. We have newspapers that were reporting on it for months. Hell, I remember when Florida and Michigan were threatening to move their election up, and I don't even live there. Ignorance is an explanation but it doesn't excuse responsibility, and it's obvious that in this case the voters of those two states did not do their due diligence, only bothering to pay attention after it was too late.
That's also the most generous interpretation. I tend to think that they (policymakers and citizens included) did know would could happen and just decided to take the risk because they didn't think that the DNC had the balls to enforce the decision. But I also have an irrational dislike for Florida, so maybe my personal biases are intruding (Michigan's cool though).
But let's remember something: both the DNC and MI/FL could get their votes to count. MI/FL could just do a revote. They chose not to. Why is the Clinton campaign not blasting MI/FL for not ensuring that their citizens' votes would count? Because they never wanted a revote in the first place (see here and here for evidence). It's obvious why: they'd rather have this issue as a political football than actually get a real election in those two states, and it's a helluva lot easier to bash the national party (the Clinton wing of the party never liked Dean anyway) than it is to bash the very state policymakers that are your biggest supporters in MI/FL. It's sad that her campaign is playing politics with civil rights issues because it dilutes the validity of all legitimate claims of voter disenfranchisement, of which there still are plenty.
OK, done. Next topic, primary calendars.
We have a problem with the primary calendar. State faces a prisoner dilemma, when deciding to schedule their primary: they have an incentive to move their state up (defection), but that hurts everyone else. Because each state's dominant strategy is to move their state up, in the end they will all arrive at a suboptimal outcome, which is the following: campaigns will start years and years before the actual voting starts. Presidential candidates will declare for 2012 two years earlier, in 2010. Presidential and midterm campaigns will start to overlap. The perpetual campaign will be the multilayered perpetual campaign, with campaigns running for 2010 and 2012 at the same time. Time spent campaigning displaces time spent governing, and as a result the quality of policy will decrease.
The solution to a prisoner's dilemma is to create an independent entity that can rearrange the payoffs by punishing defection, thus making it more sense for states to follow the rules than defect and move their states up. That's what the DNC tried to do, and it was successful for 48 states (actually 44, because IA, NV, NH, and SC got what they wanted). But Michigan and Florida pushed their elections forward, and actually laughed in the face of the DNC while doing it. No, literally. Watch the video for yourself.
A teacher friend of mine once told me that when you get a new class, you have about a week to succeed in bringing order, which you do by establishing yourself as someone who lays out the rules and then enforces them. Of course, there are always a couple students who want to test out the rules and see if the teacher will actually follow through on the threats. If the teacher does not enforce the rules for those students, he or she will have lost the class for the rest of the year. It is that critical.
The DNC's power to solve the frontloading problem rests on the credibility of its threats. Like the rest of the class who watches to see how the teacher handles the unruly students, all the other states are watching to see if the DNC will enforce its rules. If it does not, it will be lord of the flies chaos, with each state trying to leapfrog all the others, and the DNC sitting on the sidelines, its credibility demolished, impotent to create order.
In this situation, we the voters, all the voters, suffer. My question is this: how would you solve this problem? If you argue that the DNC should not have the power to issue a credible threat to states, how can we possibly prevent the frontloading chaos in the next election?
You're right, they didn't do their best to express their opinions. If they had, they would have sent letters, made phone calls, and otherwise harassed their elected leaders demanding why they would risk having their votes not count. And you're right, it's possible that it's because they didn't realize what was going on, which I would argue is the most generous interpretation of the situation. But so what? Who's fault was it that they didn't know what was going on? We have internet news sites that track the actions of your representatives down to the hour. We have newspapers that were reporting on it for months. Hell, I remember when Florida and Michigan were threatening to move their election up, and I don't even live there. Ignorance is an explanation but it doesn't excuse responsibility, and it's obvious that in this case the voters of those two states did not do their due diligence, only bothering to pay attention after it was too late.
That's also the most generous interpretation. I tend to think that they (policymakers and citizens included) did know would could happen and just decided to take the risk because they didn't think that the DNC had the balls to enforce the decision. But I also have an irrational dislike for Florida, so maybe my personal biases are intruding (Michigan's cool though).
But let's remember something: both the DNC and MI/FL could get their votes to count. MI/FL could just do a revote. They chose not to. Why is the Clinton campaign not blasting MI/FL for not ensuring that their citizens' votes would count? Because they never wanted a revote in the first place (see here and here for evidence). It's obvious why: they'd rather have this issue as a political football than actually get a real election in those two states, and it's a helluva lot easier to bash the national party (the Clinton wing of the party never liked Dean anyway) than it is to bash the very state policymakers that are your biggest supporters in MI/FL. It's sad that her campaign is playing politics with civil rights issues because it dilutes the validity of all legitimate claims of voter disenfranchisement, of which there still are plenty.
OK, done. Next topic, primary calendars.
We have a problem with the primary calendar. State faces a prisoner dilemma, when deciding to schedule their primary: they have an incentive to move their state up (defection), but that hurts everyone else. Because each state's dominant strategy is to move their state up, in the end they will all arrive at a suboptimal outcome, which is the following: campaigns will start years and years before the actual voting starts. Presidential candidates will declare for 2012 two years earlier, in 2010. Presidential and midterm campaigns will start to overlap. The perpetual campaign will be the multilayered perpetual campaign, with campaigns running for 2010 and 2012 at the same time. Time spent campaigning displaces time spent governing, and as a result the quality of policy will decrease.
The solution to a prisoner's dilemma is to create an independent entity that can rearrange the payoffs by punishing defection, thus making it more sense for states to follow the rules than defect and move their states up. That's what the DNC tried to do, and it was successful for 48 states (actually 44, because IA, NV, NH, and SC got what they wanted). But Michigan and Florida pushed their elections forward, and actually laughed in the face of the DNC while doing it. No, literally. Watch the video for yourself.
A teacher friend of mine once told me that when you get a new class, you have about a week to succeed in bringing order, which you do by establishing yourself as someone who lays out the rules and then enforces them. Of course, there are always a couple students who want to test out the rules and see if the teacher will actually follow through on the threats. If the teacher does not enforce the rules for those students, he or she will have lost the class for the rest of the year. It is that critical.
The DNC's power to solve the frontloading problem rests on the credibility of its threats. Like the rest of the class who watches to see how the teacher handles the unruly students, all the other states are watching to see if the DNC will enforce its rules. If it does not, it will be lord of the flies chaos, with each state trying to leapfrog all the others, and the DNC sitting on the sidelines, its credibility demolished, impotent to create order.
In this situation, we the voters, all the voters, suffer. My question is this: how would you solve this problem? If you argue that the DNC should not have the power to issue a credible threat to states, how can we possibly prevent the frontloading chaos in the next election?
Monday, March 31, 2008
Primary Pathos... just about done
1) I respond to this point in the most creative way possible: by using a Public Enemy song AND a Spiderman quote. Think it can't be done? Watch this:
If: power to the people
And: with great power comes great responsibility
Then: the people have responsibility
Ok, I'll add one thing. Yes, you personally may not be responsible for a decision that your representative might make, because hell, you're just one person, and while that letter you wrote might be strongly worded, it probably won't make it past the representative's Legislative Correspondent. But I still maintain that the people in aggregate assume responsibility for the actions of the politicians. In fact, not holding them responsible would seem weird. Do you really believe that Americans hold no responsibility for anything that our government does? Vietnam wasn't our fault, it was the Johnson's fault. The Iraq war wasn't our fault, it was Bush's fault. Tax cuts for the rich wasn't our fault, it was the GOP Congress's fault. Nothing is our fault!
Personally, I find that buck-passing to be disturbing. We the people, through the democratic mechanism of voting, have the power to make sure that our representatives actually represent us. If we fail in adequately exercising that power, we have no one to blame but ourselves.
2) Ok, that's just glib. I said "Wikipedia, et al", meaning that if I really wanted to look, I'm sure I could find a source or two that says that America practices a form of democracy. I mean, do you really doubt that we live in a democracy? If so, then join company with about a handful of political philosophy professors, but the rest of us are gonna go on living in what we call a democracy. Seriously, pointing out that we don't actually live in a democracy is like correcting someone when they incorrectly use the term "centrifugal force" - even if the correction is true, what's the point?
3) That is true, caucuses are confusing and overwhelming to a lot of people. I should know, I attended one in Iowa this year. But I also found that people tend to be much more informed. Part of that may be a selection bias; that is, caucuses attract only the most well-informed and engaged voters. But I think there's a reverse causation as well: caucuses make voters more informed than they otherwise would be. First off, unlike a primary, a caucus is a communal event, which of course comes with its own share of community pressures. Voters feel a need to be more informed because they will be expressing their political views in front of their neighbors, and so they want to be able to back them up. Second, the caucus isn't just where people vote - actual voter education goes on there as well. Neighbors talking to neighbors about who's better on the environment, who voted for the Iraq War, etc. And after the vote, members of the community were elected to act as delegates in the county convention. You don't get that kind of political participation in a primary.
I'm not saying that caucuses are better than primaries. But what they lose on turnout, I think they gain by bringing citizens to a higher level of political participation. Furthermore, I don't think that we should be answering these normative questions for the rest of the country. Both voting system has its benefits and drawbacks, and it's up to the states to decide which trade-offs they want to make.
You also said that we can't change the rules now. But using the popular vote as a measure would do just that! It is an unfair measure that is biased towards certain states and away from others. How can you say that we can't change the rules now, but then in the next sentence argue that we should use the popular vote to judge the winner of the primary?
By the way, I hope you're enjoying this as much as I am. Why no one else is chomping at the bit to jump into our little debate is beyond me.
If: power to the people
And: with great power comes great responsibility
Then: the people have responsibility
Ok, I'll add one thing. Yes, you personally may not be responsible for a decision that your representative might make, because hell, you're just one person, and while that letter you wrote might be strongly worded, it probably won't make it past the representative's Legislative Correspondent. But I still maintain that the people in aggregate assume responsibility for the actions of the politicians. In fact, not holding them responsible would seem weird. Do you really believe that Americans hold no responsibility for anything that our government does? Vietnam wasn't our fault, it was the Johnson's fault. The Iraq war wasn't our fault, it was Bush's fault. Tax cuts for the rich wasn't our fault, it was the GOP Congress's fault. Nothing is our fault!
Personally, I find that buck-passing to be disturbing. We the people, through the democratic mechanism of voting, have the power to make sure that our representatives actually represent us. If we fail in adequately exercising that power, we have no one to blame but ourselves.
2) Ok, that's just glib. I said "Wikipedia, et al", meaning that if I really wanted to look, I'm sure I could find a source or two that says that America practices a form of democracy. I mean, do you really doubt that we live in a democracy? If so, then join company with about a handful of political philosophy professors, but the rest of us are gonna go on living in what we call a democracy. Seriously, pointing out that we don't actually live in a democracy is like correcting someone when they incorrectly use the term "centrifugal force" - even if the correction is true, what's the point?
3) That is true, caucuses are confusing and overwhelming to a lot of people. I should know, I attended one in Iowa this year. But I also found that people tend to be much more informed. Part of that may be a selection bias; that is, caucuses attract only the most well-informed and engaged voters. But I think there's a reverse causation as well: caucuses make voters more informed than they otherwise would be. First off, unlike a primary, a caucus is a communal event, which of course comes with its own share of community pressures. Voters feel a need to be more informed because they will be expressing their political views in front of their neighbors, and so they want to be able to back them up. Second, the caucus isn't just where people vote - actual voter education goes on there as well. Neighbors talking to neighbors about who's better on the environment, who voted for the Iraq War, etc. And after the vote, members of the community were elected to act as delegates in the county convention. You don't get that kind of political participation in a primary.
I'm not saying that caucuses are better than primaries. But what they lose on turnout, I think they gain by bringing citizens to a higher level of political participation. Furthermore, I don't think that we should be answering these normative questions for the rest of the country. Both voting system has its benefits and drawbacks, and it's up to the states to decide which trade-offs they want to make.
You also said that we can't change the rules now. But using the popular vote as a measure would do just that! It is an unfair measure that is biased towards certain states and away from others. How can you say that we can't change the rules now, but then in the next sentence argue that we should use the popular vote to judge the winner of the primary?
By the way, I hope you're enjoying this as much as I am. Why no one else is chomping at the bit to jump into our little debate is beyond me.
Sunday, March 30, 2008
Washington DC is a Baseball Town
Baseball has found a new home in Washington, DC, and it's 15 minutes from my apartment (by bike).
Tonight, the Washington Nationals kicked off their season against the Atlanta Braves winning 3-2 in the bottom of the 9th. Ryan Zimmerman won they game by hitting a solo home run over center field. Here's what the Post says:
Nationals Park had quite an opening. Ryan Zimmerman hit a tiebreaking homer off Peter Moylan with two outs in the ninth inning, and the Washington Nationals beat the Atlanta Braves 3-2 Sunday night in the first regular-season game at the $611 million stadium.
The brand spanking new stadium (that was built on schedule and within budget!) has a great view of the U.S. Capitol building. There were also the requisite fireworks, red carpet, U.S. President, and general hooplah. It was great. I highly recommend the kosher hot dogs.... very tasty.
Random question: Does anyone out there know why in the 9th inning people were turning their baseball hats inside out?
Random question: Does anyone out there know why in the 9th inning people were turning their baseball hats inside out?
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