Voder-Vocoder

October 1, 1991 – October 1, 2011

0) More than anything, today's biggest economic problem is high unemployment.

1) More than anything, the banking industry's risky investments during the bubble caused the crash and the current high levels of unemployment. If the government had not bailed them out, most major banks would have gone bankrupt. We don't oppose banks or bailouts, but banks should be held accountable: strong regulation to prevent these things in the future, taxes to pay for future bailouts, and smaller banks that aren't “too big to fail.”

2) Federal tax and labor policy over the past thirty years has favored the super-rich (top 0.1%) at the expense of the median household. Too much of our productivity gains over this time period has gone to make the super-rich richer, and not enough has gone to the average American. Compare to the previous thirty years, when all Americans benefited more evenly from productivity gains.

3) Monetary policy is serving the super-rich (creditors) at the expense of the average American (debtors) If we were to raise the medium-term inflation targets from a current 1–2% to a modest 4–5%, we could relieve the debt burden of the average American, stimulate investment, and reduce unemployment. This is opposed by the super-rich and those who are confused about the utility of a strong currency.

4) Austerity (cutting government spending in the face of high unemployment) hurts more than it helps, especially when our long-term intrest rates are so low. The best way to balance the budget is to return to full employment and tax capital gains like any other income. And we don't need to balance the budget until we return to full employment.

“I advocate an empirical politics, an anti-ideological politics. We should find the right questions, then gather the data, then structure society based on what works, according to the data.” —Luke Muehlhauser (source)

Every so often, I meet someone who claims to be a libertarian. When I was young and stupid, I held these same beliefs; so I have to suppress the urge to educate them. Instead, I’ll rant on my blog.

The following is from the Libertarian Party’s platform

We support a clean and healthy environment and sensible use of our natural resources. Private landowners and conservation groups have a vested interest in maintaining natural resources. Pollution and misuse of resources cause damage to our ecosystem. Governments, unlike private businesses, are unaccountable for such damage done to our environment and have a terrible track record when it comes to environmental protection. Protecting the environment requires a clear definition and enforcement of individual rights in resources like land, water, air, and wildlife. Free markets and property rights stimulate the technological innovations and behavioral changes required to protect our environment and ecosystems. We realize that our planet’s climate is constantly changing, but environmental advocates and social pressure are the most effective means of changing public behavior.

(source)

That’s crazy. To begin with, it goes against every bit of real-world evidence on the subject. Here’s why. If you own a business, it makes sense to organize it as a limited liability company; this shields your family’s assets from the liabilities of the business. You can also grow the business faster by selling shares. Suddenly, you have a corporation and officers of the corporation have a single duty: to make as much money as possible for the shareholders by any legal means. In the absence of environmental laws and regulations, that will often mean lots of pollution. To protect itself from lawsuits, the corporation can create a second corporation to do the actual polluting. That second corporation will have very few assets. If it gets sued by those hurt by the pollution, it can go bankrupt, leaving the shareholders of the first corporation reaping the profits, shielded by limited liability.

Strong property rights are no substitute for regulations, unless you want to eliminate the corporation.

It’s so hard to argue against people who lie about what they believe. Remember that GWB increased the size of government more than any other president.

You are not against “big government”; you are in favor of “let’s trim 10-20% off the government while leaving it pretty big” or something like that.

If you really mean “let’s trim 10-20%” can we please stop being so melodramatic? As I’ve whined before, moving government size, or tax brackets, by a few percent is not the difference between capitalism and socialism.

• Libertarian: government should be 5% of its current size.
• Socialist: government should be 200% of its current size.
• Republicans and Democrats judged by actions not rhetoric: government should be 105% of whatever it just was. Disagreement on where the new 5% goes.

(—Havoc Pennington)

New idea. We reinstitute pay-as-you-go to the federal budget on a permanent basis, with the exception that it doesn’t apply in years where the unemployment rate is over 6%

“Lawrence Lessig calls for a Constitutional amendment on campaign financing.” Why not an amendment limiting the political rights of corporate people? Isn’t that the underlying problem?

Need a catchy slogan. This won’t do: What do we want? A stimulus big enough to close the output gap! When do we want it? Six months ago!

I went to early vote this morning. This is the first of two Saturdays that the polls are open. It seems to me that they should be open Sundays as well.

There are five early voting locations in this county, so I had to drive a bit to get there, but the convenience of being able to vote on a Saturday morning made it worth it.

I had to wait in line less than half an hour; I should have timed it. The line went out the door of the county supervisor of elections branch office and into the next door, some kind of abandoned store.

Since there were voters from all precincts there (all in different congressional districts, state senate districts, state house districts, county commission districts, fire control districts, and sub-municipalities), they printed out ballots as needed. To get our identity, they swiped the magnetic strip on our state ID (driver license).

After filling out the bubbles on the ballots, we fed them into a machine that read them. There was no feedback on whether the machine read the ballots correctly. I have to hope that somebody performs spot-checks to verify that the optical scan machines are functioning properly.

“Just as you suspected, Barack Obama is wrong for you.” –John McCain radio ad, heard in FLorida.

Think about this for a while. Why might someone be suspicious of Obama? Maybe they don’t want to admit out lout that that are afraid of black men. And the “for you” bit: this ties into a segregationist viewpoint where it’s okay if Obama wants to be president of black America, but not okay if he wants to be president of you, white America. In fact, it would be wrong for a black man to be president of you.

It’s subtle, though.

Examples of appropriate places for partisan political posters:

• Party Headquarters,
• Campaign Rally.

Example of inappropriate places for partisan political posters:

• The local produce stand.

I’m not arguing against your first-amendment right to free speech. And I don’t want to infringe on that right at all, but you did just lose a customer, if only because I find your politics distasteful.

Rules of the game:

You can change anything you want about the federal tax code, but your changes must be revenue-neutral. No starve-the-beast proposals.

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My suggestion.

–> Let A be the annual income a full-time (40-hour/week) minimum-wage worker would make.

–> Let B be the annual income of the median worker. (50% of Americans make less than him, 50% more.)

–> Let C be the income of the 67-percentile worker. (66.7% of Americans make less than him, 33.3% more.)

Replace current federal taxes with the following:

1) Increase the EITC (earned income tax credit) to a very large level. Make it 0 at zero income, maximum at A, and get down to 0 again at B.

2) Income tax of 50% on all income greater than C, minus philanthropic donations.

3) A huge tax on carbon emissions. On the order of $10 per gallon of gasoline, with an carbon-equivalent tax on coal, diesel, natural gas, etc.

4) A general policy that negative externalities are taxed equal to the indirect cost to society. Carbon emissions are the biggest part of this at the moment, but I like the idea of pollution taxes greater than the cost of totally cleaning up the pollution. And a big tax on non-reusable goods.

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UPDATE: Hey, there’s a website for revenue-neutral carbon taxes!