The Mode of Electing the President

Alexander Hamilton:

THE mode of appointment of the Chief Magistrate of the United States is almost the only part of the system, of any consequence, which has escaped without severe censure, or which has received the slightest mark of approbation from its opponents. The most plausible of these, who has appeared in print, has even deigned to admit that the election of the President is pretty well guarded. I venture somewhat further, and hesitate not to affirm, that if the manner of it be not perfect, it is at least excellent. It unites in an eminent degree all the advantages, the union of which was to be wished for.

It was desirable that the sense of the people should operate in the choice of the person to whom so important a trust was to be confided. This end will be answered by committing the right of making it, not to any preestablished body, but to men chosen by the people for the special purpose, and at the particular conjuncture.

It was equally desirable, that the immediate election should be made by men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station, and acting under circumstances favorable to deliberation, and to a judicious combination of all the reasons and inducements which were proper to govern their choice. A small number of persons, selected by their fellow-citizens from the general mass, will be most likely to possess the information and discernment requisite to such complicated investigations.

It was also peculiarly desirable to afford as little opportunity as possible to tumult and disorder. This evil was not least to be dreaded in the election of a magistrate, who was to have so important an agency in the administration of the government as the President of the United States. But the precautions which have been so happily concerted in the system under consideration, promise an effectual security against this mischief. The choice of several, to form an intermediate body of electors, will be much less apt to convulse the community with any extraordinary or violent movements, than the choice of one who was himself to be the final object of the public wishes. And as the electors, chosen in each State, are to assemble and vote in the State in which they are chosen, this detached and divided situation will expose them much less to heats and ferments, which might be communicated from them to the people, than if they were all to be convened at one time, in one place.

Nothing was more to be desired than that every practicable obstacle should be opposed to cabal, intrigue, and corruption. These most deadly adversaries of republican government might naturally have been expected to make their approaches from more than one querter, but chiefly from the desire in foreign powers to gain an improper ascendant in our councils. How could they better gratify this, than by raising a creature of their own to the chief magistracy of the Union? But the convention have guarded against all danger of this sort, with the most provident and judicious attention. They have not made the appointment of the President to depend on any preexisting bodies of men, who might be tampered with beforehand to prostitute their votes; but they have referred it in the first instance to an immediate act of the people of America, to be exerted in the choice of persons for the temporary and sole purpose of making the appointment. And they have excluded from eligibility to this trust, all those who from situation might be suspected of too great devotion to the President in office. No senator, representative, or other person holding a place of trust or profit under the United States, can be of the numbers of the electors. Thus without corrupting the body of the people, the immediate agents in the election will at least enter upon the task free from any sinister bias. Their transient existence, and their detached situation, already taken notice of, afford a satisfactory prospect of their continuing so, to the conclusion of it. The business of corruption, when it is to embrace so considerable a number of men, requires time as well as means. Nor would it be found easy suddenly to embark them, dispersed as they would be over thirteen States, in any combinations founded upon motives, which though they could not properly be denominated corrupt, might yet be of a nature to mislead them from their duty.

Another and no less important desideratum was, that the Executive should be independent for his continuance in office on all but the people themselves. He might otherwise be tempted to sacrifice his duty to his complaisance for those whose favor was necessary to the duration of his official consequence. This advantage will also be secured, by making his re-election to depend on a special body of representatives, deputed by the society for the single purpose of making the important choice.

All these advantages will happily combine in the plan devised by the convention; which is, that the people of each State shall choose a number of persons as electors, equal to the number of senators and representatives of such State in the national government, who shall assemble within the State, and vote for some fit person as President. Their votes, thus given, are to be transmitted to the seat of the national government, and the person who may happen to have a majority of the whole number of votes will be the President. But as a majority of the votes might not always happen to centre in one man, and as it might be unsafe to permit less than a majority to be conclusive, it is provided that, in such a contingency, the House of Representatives shall select out of the candidates who shall have the five highest number of votes, the man who in their opinion may be best qualified for the office.

The process of election affords a moral certainty, that the office of President will never fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications. Talents for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity, may alone suffice to elevate a man to the first honors in a single State; but it will require other talents, and a different kind of merit, to establish him in the esteem and confidence of the whole Union, or of so considerable a portion of it as would be necessary to make him a successful candidate for the distinguished office of President of the United States. It will not be too strong to say, that there will be a constant probability of seeing the station filled by characters pre-eminent for ability and virtue. And this will be thought no inconsiderable recommendation of the Constitution, by those who are able to estimate the share which the executive in every government must necessarily have in its good or ill administration. Though we cannot acquiesce in the political heresy of the poet who says:

"For forms of government let fools contest --
That which is best administered is best," --

yet we may safely pronounce, that the true test of a good government is its aptitude and tendency to produce a good administration.

The Vice-President is to be chosen in the same manner with the President; with this difference, that the Senate is to do, in respect to the former, what is to be done by the House of Representatives, in respect to the latter.

The appointment of an extraordinary person, as Vice-President, has been objected to as superfluous, if not mischievous. It has been alleged, that it would have been preferable to have authorized the Senate to elect out of their own body an officer answering that description. But two considerations seem to justify the ideas of the convention in this respect. One is, that to secure at all times the possibility of a definite resolution of the body, it is necessary that the President should have only a casting vote. And to take the senator of any State from his seat as senator, to place him in that of President of the Senate, would be to exchange, in regard to the State from which he came, a constant for a contingent vote. The other consideration is, that as the Vice-President may occasionally become a substitute for the President, in the supreme executive magistracy, all the reasons which recommend the mode of election prescribed for the one, apply with great if not with equal force to the manner of appointing the other. It is remarkable that in this, as in most other instances, the objection which is made would lie against the constitution of this State. We have a Lieutenant-Governor, chosen by the people at large, who presides in the Senate, and is the constitutional substitute for the Governor, in casualties similar to those which would authorize the Vice-President to exercise the authorities and discharge the duties of the President.

PUBLIUS

Allyshipping News

Ambrose Bierce defined friendship as “a ship big enough for two in fair weather, but only one in foul.”  So what’s the state of allyship in 2016?

Allyship, for those not familiar with it—and that clearly includes my spell-checker, though this may change before long—is the glue that’s supposed to bind together the various identities that make up identity politics.  According to this view of things, each identity has its own self-perceived interests which only it can promote.  Black people comprehend their own needs and, if given voice, will speak to them.  Undocumented immigrants the same.  LGBTQ, check.  Women, check.  Disabled people, check.  And there is also a patchwork of intersectional cross-identities, each with a unique self-awareness and drive to uplift itself through its exercise of voice.

So what about the “privileged”, those who don’t identify with any of these oppressions?  And what prevents the entire social array from breaking down into a warring tangle of competing self-interests?  That’s where allyship comes in.  (And we are all waiting for our allyship to come in.)

An ally is someone who is not from identity x who nonetheless puts aside a competing self-interest to support the x-ers.  According to this theory, why should they do this?  That’s actually a bit of a black hole.  An appeal is made to universal values, like justice and care, although identity politics as a whole presents itself as a critique of universalism.  Everyone is guided by self-interest (where it is assumed that this is shared by all situated in the same identity box), except that we are also enjoined to subordinate self-interest to a higher ideal of moral principal.  If the self-interest part of the story is right, the impetus to be an ally is perplexing.  Is this a sort of self-interest rightly understood à la Tocqueville?  Well, that depends on whether there really is a confluence of interests, and hard calculation won’t necessarily come to that conclusion.  (Another conundrum, interesting to fans of conundrums, is that objective self-interest contradicts the subjectivism underlying the “voice” imperative.)

So let’s take this to the election.  Every identity group spoke up for itself.  We heard from each hue of the color spectrum, including, alas, the alt-right white identitarians.  Each gender and alt-gender made its case.  To get to an electoral majority, however, a combination of two things had to happen for the identity bloc.  First, individuals within each identity group had to actually recognize their self-interest as fused with their identity, so they would go out and vote.  Second, the large number of people with privileged identities would need to embrace their allyship.

It seems that neither of these things happened.  Turnout fell among minorities, even though the difference between the two major candidates over questions of bigotry could hardly be greater.  And white voters without college degrees went for what they thought their self-interest demanded rather than casting their ballot as allies.

If you accept a political framework of self-interest for oppressed identities and allyship for the rest, you’ll need to come up with a plan to turn this around.  Simply shaming Trump voters is probably not going to work, since it was already tried and failed.  Maybe there’s a Plan B; I will stay tuned.

On Wisconsin!

This is part of the sort of sorting out after the election to  try and figure out just what happened, with a subtext of "Could Bernie Have Beaten Trump?"  I do not have an answer to that.  Certainly during the primaries he did much better in polls against Trump than HRC ever did, but then he was never exposed to the sort of relentless negative campaigning he would have faced if he had gotten the nomination.  Certainly he would have done better than she did in some of the white working class areas of those Rust Belt states that flipped and put him over.  But then Bernie may have done less well with some other groups, moderate GOP-leaning suburban women or maybe an even lower turnout among African-Americans, especially female ones.  No way to parse all that in any definitive way.

But I did want to note that in those Rust Belt flip states (which should include Iowa along with PA, OH, MI, and WI), it is interesting to look at  which counties flipped, and it is kind of amazing if one looks at the national map how few counties nationally actually did flip.  But, unsurprisingly there were higher numbers of  them in these states that themselves flipped.

So in PA and OH in particular, the "Bernie would have done better" claim looks strong.  In PA the two counties that flipped were Erie and the one with Scranton in it, both old industrial areas that have had major  job losses and been depressed for some time, with perceptions that much of this has been due to foreign imports and also having most of their local working class populations being white.  Anyway, they flipped, and the state went with them, even if Clinton did better than Bernie might have in some of those Philly suburbs.

Somewhat similar story in OH, with the county flipping the most being Turnbull, going from 5% for Obama in 2016 to 22% for Trump, Turnbull being where deeply depressed old steel town Youngstown is located.  Also, the depressed white working class suburbs west of Cleveland in Lorain county flipped.

Michigan is a little harder to tell.[Added later: It looks like MI is sort of between the PA and OH on one side and WI and IA on the other.  So, there was some shifting in counties near Detroit, looking like the working class types shifting to GOP, but there were also a bunch of rural counties in northern MI that shifted.]

But I want to note Wisconsin and also Iowa to a lesser degree, with those two being the states that may have flipped the most in aggregate numbers and also had the most counties that flipped.  One does see the Bernie story in Kenosha county in the southeast corner of WI, Orson Welles's birthplace, and old and depressed industrial town.  But the largest area of county flipping was in the rural southwest, lots of counties, with this spilling across the river into northeastern Iowa.  This is almost like the hot spot of the whole country, where an entire area pretty much just flipped en masse.

I am tempted to blame Scott Walker as bad governor producing a very poor economic growth record in WI, which got blamed on the national Dems.  But I am not sure, as this does not hold for IA. In IA there are  a lot of evangelical Christians, but less in WI. That is an old Progressive stronghold of Wisconsin (the northeast being traditionally conservative, where Joe McCarthy came from).  GOPsters might say that it was popularity of Walker  that helped Trump, although in general  the GOP in WI did not like him.

Bottom line, I really do not know.

Barkley Rosser

Against Normalization of Deviance

The 'fifth estate' will not tell you this but the electoral college outcome of the election is not baked in the cake. It is only enshrined in ritual, precedent and secret ceremony. What happens next is ultimately up to state legislatures and electors who will, presumably, normalize deviance and rubber stamp the conventional wisdom that There Is No Alternative.

That's a lie but it is a widely-believed lie and therefore impervious to the truth. State legislatures "make final decisions in any controversies over the appointment of their electors. ... Decisions by states’ courts are conclusive, if decided under laws enacted before Election Day."

Hypothetically, a state legislature could decide that winner-take-all allocation of electoral votes violates the 14th amendment. Hypothetically, the state court could uphold that determination and the Supreme Court could sustain that decision. This probably won't happen because it would be a break with precedent. But it could happen. It won't happen because it is more important to preserve the appearance of the legitimacy of institutions than it is to defend the integrity of those institutions. But to presume it couldn't happen is to foster the lie that there is no alternative because it is more important to normalize deviance than to admit the truth that the institutions have lost their legitimacy.

Remember what the Supreme Court ruled in Bush v. Gore? Many people considered that decision to be a politically-motivated legal travesty. If state legislatures, state courts and the Supreme Court were to throw out Trump's presumptive winner-take-all Electoral College victory on the grounds that it violated the 14th amendment, many people would consider such a decision to be a politically-motivated legal travesty. See the difference? The first happened -- the second, presumably, will not happen. That is the only difference.

On normalization of deviance from the University of Chicago Press, Chicago Blog:

The sociologist Diane Vaughan coined the phrase the normalization of deviance to describe a cultural drift in which circumstances classified as “not okay” are slowly reclassified as “okay.” In the case of the Challenger space-shuttle disaster—the subject of a landmark study by Vaughan—damage to the crucial O‑rings had been observed after previous shuttle launches. Each observed instance of damage, she found, was followed by a sequence “in which the technical deviation of the [O‑rings] from performance predictions was redefined as an acceptable risk.” Repeated over time, this behavior became routinized into what organizational psychologists call a “script.” Engineers and managers “developed a definition of the situation that allowed them to carry on as if nothing was wrong.” To clarify: They were not merely acting as if nothing was wrong. They believed it, bringing to mind Orwell’s concept of doublethink, the method by which a bureaucracy conceals evil not only from the public but from itself.

A Rigged System: Electoral College Skews Turnout and Popular Vote Totals

UPDATE: So it turns out, "100%" reported on the New York Times election result for California does not refer to 100 percent of votes counted but to 100 percent of precincts reporting incomplete counts. There remain millions of ballots to be counted and the currently estimated Clinton popular vote majority is MORE THAN TWO MILLION VOTES. So it turns out my speculation regarding turnout is mistaken but the resulting estimates of popular vote margin are nevertheless in the right ballpark.

According to the New York Times, Hillary Clinton currently leads Donald Trump in the popular vote by around 280,000 votes. Donald Trump leads in electoral votes, 290 to 228 with Michigan and New Hampshire yet to be declared. Trump leads in Michigan and Clinton in New Hampshire. Adding in those two states, Trump's marginal goes to 306 to 232.

If electoral votes were allocated proportionally, by state, rather than winner-take-all, Clinton would garner 271 electoral votes compared to 267 for Trump. That would be rather closer to the popular vote outcome than the current result.

But here is another issue that I haven't seen discussed at all. Florida, a swing state with 29 electoral votes had a total of  9,386,750 votes cast, while Californians, in a safe Democratic state with 55 electoral votes cast a total of only 8,9320,68 ballots. See how that works? Candidates campaign, spend money and run get-out-the-vote operations in swing states but neglect safe states, skewing voter turnout and thus popular vote totals in favor of the supposed swing states.

Assuming voter turnout  proportional to population in every state and assuming that the split between parties remains constant, Hillary Clinton's margin of popular vote victory would increase to over a million votes.The electoral college not only contradicts the popular vote outcome, it also skews the popular vote outcome by discouraging -- or not encouraging -- participation in supposedly safe states. If all states had the same level of turnout as Florida but retained their proportionate share between parties, Clinton's popular margin would increase to 1.4 million.

The conventional assumption is that low turnout hurts Democratic candidates most because Democrats receive a larger share of lower income voters and lower income voters have a relatively lower participation rate. Based on this conventional assumption, then the estimate of a 1.4 million vote margin for Clinton may be conservative.

Remember, though, this hypothetical popular vote margin of 1.4 million would not change electoral vote counts, which would still be 306 to 232 in Trumps favor on the current winner-take-all basis or 271 to 267 for Clinton if awarded proportionately by state.

The Trump Inversion

Only two days have passed since the election, but I think the story has been largely clarified.

Donald Trump first adopted his somewhat outrageous persona as part of his TV/celebrity hook; he offered himself as a billionaire businessman who was also one of the guys—direct, unfiltered, somewhat crude, but authentic.  His ratings were strong.  From this it was a rather straightforward segue into “reality politics”, with almost no change in behavior.  He remained a loudmouth, a fount of bluster, casually making things up as he went along.  He cultivated an air of scandal.

Yes, there was a strong element of racism, misogyny and xenophobia in his routine, and his normalization of bigotry was horrible, but I don’t think the point of his strategy was so much the content of his crudeness as the crudeness itself.  By being over the top and acting like the billionaire on the next barstool, Trump conveyed a message that was almost universally picked up: The man is a rebel!  He’s fighting the establishment!  He’s saying things that the elites say should never be said and getting away with it!  Voting for him will really shake things up!

For what it’s worth, on the morning after the election my students wondered how the election of such an “anti-establishment” candidate would pan out.

But media persona is one thing and actual politics another.  Practically the moment he was elected, Trump’s demeanor changed.  Suddenly he was just another Republican, preparing himself to govern with the support of a Republican house and senate, a soon-to-be Republican supreme court, and Republican control of a majority of state governments.  Rather than shaking things up, the American people had just elected the mainstream hard right to full-court political dominance.  I don’t know how many miles of wall will be built on the southern border, but I expect Paul Ryan’s agenda to fly straightway to signing ceremonies before daylight savings time rolls around again.

To put it as clearly as I can, following the election the mask came off—but instead of revealing a monster it was exactly the other way around.  The monster mask was dropped and behind it we saw the normal, unremarkable class politics of modern Republicanism.

It’s important to emphasize that, while the pre-election show put on by Trump was despicable, its appeal was based on the message it conveyed that Trump was outside the system, a loose cannon who just might turn things around where others had failed.  Bigotry mattered not because the agenda was to push bigotry, but because talking like a bigot seemed to show that the standard constraints on politics were being upended.  It’s like the role the confederate flag has played for much of the white working class, north and south.  Yes, the flag is reprehensible because it represents the cause of unrepentant slavery, but for many people that only adds to its luster as a symbol of the “rebel cause”.  It’s a middle finger shoved defiantly in front of anyone who wants to tell you how to speak, think or act.  Trump was a living rebel flag, right down to his courting of the alt-right, which, needless to say, ended the moment the last vote was cast.

So it’s like this: Trump as candidate was guaranteed most of the Republican vote through sheer partisanship.  His strategy was a bet that, while he would alienate some support through his calculated acts of outrageousness, he would attract even more from working class voters desperate for a champion, even only a maybe champion.  It was intentional, and it worked.

If this analysis is correct, Clinton’s strategy was the exact opposite of what it should have been.  Her campaign was based on the argument that Trump was a monster, not a normal, respectable Republican.  He had the wrong temperament.  He wasn’t serious.  Voting for him would be a lark, whereas she represented predictability and competence.  The more successful she was at painting him as “special”, the better his ruse worked.  Win or lose, her best chance was to say something like, “Yes, Trump has quite a mouth, but behind it he’s a regular Republican like all the rest, with the same agenda too.  He’ll cut taxes for the rich and gut social support for the poor.  He’ll do all he can to crush labor.  He wants low wages and high profits.  He’s like a used car salesman, acting like a lunatic, but it’s all about getting you to buy the car.”

Of course, Clinton was the worst possible messenger for attacking faux populism.

So now what?  Just as Trump has pivoted, so should we.  Yes, there are plenty of jerks who will interpret this election as a permission slip to insult or even attack women and minorities on a random basis.  That behavior is as ugly today as it was before Tuesday, and of course we should not put up with it.  From a political point of view, however, that’s secondary.  We can’t re-educate all the jerks among us, at least in the short term.  Moreover, I do not expect Trump to encourage crude displays of bigotry going forward.  The necessary political pivot is to be as clear as possible, as quickly as possible that this was a bait-and-switch election, and the immediate task is to stop the relatively well-behaved Republican leadership in Washington from gutting what remains of the few inhibitions on the rich and powerful.  Try to take the side of the Trump voters who were deceived.  Point out that Trump was not elected, at least not by many who voted for him, to simply set the table for Paul Ryan.  Scream about duplicity and betrayal.  This means not monolithically demonizing Trump voters.

If Trump returns to rude and crude, he’ll prove me wrong.  We will see.

Motherland! Freedom! Putin!

Amazingly enough, the plot by the Trilateralist-Bilderbergers-Jewish bankers-Illuminati-Zombie Economists-Martians to infiltrate the FBI failed to stop the working class hero to experience a Trumph in the US presidential election, standing up for white industrial workers in the Rust Belt as well as the oppressed workers in casinos and hotels in Atlantic City and Las Vegas.  Fellow Proletarian leader, Vladimir Putin, has expressed his praise for this triumphant leader on his election.  The support of Russian workers, led by worker-oligarch-billionaires, has been expressed as they marched on National  Unity Day as they marched in the streets of Moscow chanting "Motherland! Freedom! Putin!" How could the workers of the world be happier?

Barkley Rosser

Abolish the Electoral College -- Build the General Strike!

Donald Trump told us the election would be rigged. It was. By the DNC, the FBI, the MSM  and the slave owners who devised the electoral college swindle. Even Donald J. Trump has called the electoral college a "disaster for a democracy."

There is no reason on earth that the citizens of the United States have to take this reality show beer hall putsch as a done deal. Again, as Donald J. Trump said four years ago, "We can't let this happen. We should march on Washington and stop this travesty. Our nation is totally divided!"

From the National Archives and Records Administration:

Mid-November through December 19, 2016After the presidential election, the governor of your state prepares seven Certificates of Ascertainment. “As soon as practicable,” after the election results in your state are certified, the governor sends one of the Certificates of Ascertainment to the Archivist.
Certificates of Ascertainment should be sent to the Archivist no later than the meeting of the electors in December. However, federal law sets no penalty for missing the deadline.
The remaining six Certificates of Ascertainment are held for use at the meeting of the Electors in December.

December 13, 2016States must make final decisions in any controversies over the appointment of their electors at least six days before the meeting of the Electors. This is so their electoral votes will be presumed valid when presented to Congress.
Decisions by states’ courts are conclusive, if decided under laws enacted before Election Day. 

December 19, 2016The Electors meet in their state and vote for President and Vice President on separate ballots. The electors record their votes on six “Certificates of Vote,” which are paired with the six remaining Certificates of Ascertainment.
The electors sign, seal, and certify six sets of electoral votes. A set of electoral votes consists of one Certificate of Ascertainment and one Certificate of Vote. These are distributed immediately as follows:

• one set to the President of the Senate (the Vice President) for the official count of the electoral votes in January;

• two packages to the Secretary of State in the state where the electors met—one is an archival set that becomes part of the public record of the Secretary of State's office and the other is a reserve set that is subject to the call of the President of the Senate to replace missing or incomplete electoral votes;

• two packages to the Archivist—one is an archival set that becomes part of the permanent collection at the National Archives and Records Administration and the other is a reserve set that is subject to the call of the President of the Senate to replace missing or incomplete electoral votes; and

• one set to the presiding judge in the district where the Electors met—this is also a reserve set that is subject to the call of the President of the Senate to replace missing or incomplete electoral votes.

December 28, 2016Electoral votes (the Certificates of Vote) must be received by the President of the Senate and the Archivist no later than nine days after the meeting of the electors. States face no legal penalty for failure to comply.
If votes are lost or delayed, the Archivist may take extraordinary measures to retrieve duplicate originals. 

On or Before January 3, 2017The Archivist and/or representatives from the Office of the Federal Register meet with the Secretary of the Senate and the Clerk of the House in late December or early January. This is, in part, a ceremonial occasion. Informal meetings may take place earlier. 

January 6, 2017The Congress meets in joint session to count the electoral votes. Congress may pass a law to change this date.
The Vice President, as President of the Senate, presides over the count and announces the results of the Electoral College vote. The President of the Senate then declares which persons, if any, have been elected President and Vice President of the United States.
If a State submits conflicting sets of electoral votes to Congress, the two Houses acting concurrently may accept or reject the votes. If they do not concur, the votes of the electors certified by the Governor of the State on the Certificate of Ascertainment would be counted in Congress.
If no Presidential candidate wins 270 or more electoral votes, a majority, the 12th Amendment to the Constitution provides for the House of Representatives to decide the Presidential election. If necessary the House would elect the President by majority vote, choosing from the three candidates who received the greatest number of electoral votes. The vote would be taken by state, with each state having one vote.
If no Vice Presidential candidate wins 270 or more electoral votes, a majority, the 12th Amendment provides for the Senate to elect the Vice President. If necessary, the Senate would elect the Vice President by majority vote, choosing from the two candidates who received the greatest number of electoral votes. The vote would be taken by state, with each Senator having one vote.
If any objections to the Electoral College vote are made, they must be submitted in writing and be signed by at least one member of the House and one Senator. If objections are presented, the House and Senate withdraw to their respective chambers to consider their merits under procedures set out in federal law.

Enough with the Pseudo-Social-Scientific Exit Poll Demographic Tea Leaf Sophistry Already!

Did you know that 41% of voters with incomes under $50,000 and 53% of white women voters smoke camels? Neither did I. But there appears to be a trend.

People who may or may not have taken an introductory sociology course and may or may not know how to read a map nevertheless appear to place great faith in the explanatory power of some number that somebody posted in a tweet. I would call it a random number, except that random number has a precise technical meaning. So do the the pseudo-scientific demographic insights that emerge from exit polls. The technical definition of the latter is data junk.

Would you like to learn how to lose at bean bag? It's easy if you try:

• First, imagine you are playing eleven-dimensional chess. 
• Second, let "data" determine your next move. 
• Third, define "data" as some number you saw on twitter.
• Fourth, if all else fails, concede.

Politics is not beanbag.

Welcome to the Amusement Park at the Edge of the Abyss

I tried to tell them. I really did. I wrote a letter to Paul Krugman that he never replied to. I carried on an email exchange with Jonathan Portes, who graciously indulged my ignorant, obviously fallacious opinions. I nattered at Brad DeLong, who blocked me on twitter. I posted to EconoSpeak. All to no avail. Knee-Oh-Liberal Uber Alles...

The experts were not even wrong. They didn't know what they were talking about. They just copied from one another, assuming the guy they were copying from had the right answer. But that guy was just copying from somebody else...

On June 24, the day after the Brexit vote, I wrote:

So it turns out the establishment telling people they are a bunch of foolish xenophobes is not an effective electoral strategy. I wonder if the DNC is paying attention? I doubt it.

It turns out the DNC was not paying attention. I was not surprised.

Here is the thing... on July 3, I asked, "Why Are Experts Ignoring Voters?" correcting the title of an LSE blog post that wondered why voters were ignoring experts, as if it was the voters job to listen to the experts and not the other way around.

Then on August 31, I asked "Did Jonathan Portes Cause Brexit?" I answered my own question by concluding that he probably didn't because probably nobody paid much attention to him.

But my point in all this is that the BOGUS "lump-of-labor fallacy" is a weapon of mass destruction that can do tremendous harm in the wrong hands and the "experts" irresponsible handling of this canard insured that it would get into the wrong hands.

In another post from June 24, I quoted Ann Petifor:

If, as a result of Brexit, the economy crashes it will not vindicate the economists, it will simply illustrate once more their failure.

The big secret consensus behind "free trade" agreements, flexible labor market policies, austerity and expedited immigration is the professional faith of economists that wages are too damn high,  that lower wages will be good for GROWTH and growth is good. Wage earners are not supposed to notice or, rather, are supposed to be grateful for the bounty that the restriction of their wages has unleashed.

To the great dismay of the experts, the voters were not grateful. Thanks, experts, you did this.

It Is Monday Before Election Day And WaPo VSPs Whining About Social Security Yet Again

Robert J. Samuelson, of course, although he is only one, but I suspect backed up by the usual editorial gang at the Washington Post today.  Dean Baker has already taken him out on various aspects of his ridiculous post, but I shall pile on a bit more with some items Dean did not hit on.

So RJS posed that he was going to be above the fray and discuss two issues supposedly not discussed by the candidates during the campaign.  One was indeed old age entitlements, especially Social Security, but let me start with the other, not covered by Dean.  That is immigration reform.

Well, on the face of it, Samuelson's claim that they did not discuss it is just totally bogus.  It has been one of the most discussed of all issues by Donald Trump from the day he announced when he denounced Mexican immigrants as "rapists."  His promising to build a wall and make Mexico pay for it has been one of the most common memes of his entire campaign to the point that the Mexican peso moves up and down against movements in Trump's poll numbers. It is one of the few issues where he has had a more or less consistent position, despite some occasional zigs and zags.  He hates immigrants, especially illegal ones, but pretty much all of them, especially if they are minorities, especially Muslims and Latinos. 

Now it is true that Clinton has talked about it less than he has, but she has had a clear policy position on it and has mentioned the issue on a not too infrequent basis, if not as much as Trump, including today in her final ad, which had it as one of the four issues she is touting on the last day before the election.  It is hardly being ignored by either of them.

Regarding analysis of this, at least RJS is not too unreasonable.  He supports the Clinton proposals adding only that there be an E-enforcement of not hiring illegal immigrants.

Ah, but more of the article was about the old bugaboo, old peoples' entitlements, listed as Social Security, Medicare, and nursing home support under Medicaid.  So, he mostly repeated old tales, most of them shown the door well by Dean Baker today.  What else is there to say?

Well, I note that RJS mentioned two specific policy changes he thinks should be part of the new intergenerational "social contract": raising the retirement age and reducing benefits for higher income people.  Starting with the second, this would be a foot in the door to undermining long run support for Social Security, if higher income people came to view Social Security as "welfare for the undeserving poor," rather than as social insurance that covers them also. 

As for raising the retirement age, this is supposed to be something to help young people against the supposedly rapacious old farts. But the hard political reality is that it will not be imposed on those nasty old boomers (and certainly not on the already retired). If the past raising of the retirement age (which he also wants for Medicare and the Medicaid stuff) is any guide, it will be imposed on much younger people, proabably tail-end boomers and more so on Gen-Xers and Millennials, the people whom he claims are to be helped by all these "reforms" he and the usual gang of VSPs keep pushing.  That this claim of helping young people is totally hypocritical somehow never seems to occur to Samuelson or his pals.

Needless to say, he says not a word about the possibility of raising fica taxes, even though polls have consistently shown solid support for this if need be.  As it is, simply raising the income cap if necessary would be an easy way to go, and would stick it to the higher income folks without undermining their support for the system the way that explicitly cutting their benefits would.

I will give RJS one point on this.  This issue has indeed not been talked about much by the candidates, and clearly his and the more general VSP frustration here has been that the talk is now if anything about increasing benefits, at least from Clinton.  RJS has admitted that even Trump has mumbled occasionally about this, although as with many issues his views on it are murky. But he has at least been clear that he does not support any cuts in benefits. So, the poor VSPs are left with neither candidate saying much about this and certainly not openly supporting their agenda.  Tears are just gushing out of my eyes in sympathy for them on this (not).

Barkley Rosser

Celebrating The 99th Anniversary

of the Great October Socialist Revolution in Russia that happened on November 7, 1917 (October 25 on the then in place Julian calendar, hence the "October" in the title).  It is true that since 2005, it has not been an official holiday in Russia, displaced by November 4 as "National Unity Day" (which celebrates Russia overthrowing Polish rule of Moscow in 1613), with people marching in Moscow this past Friday declaiming "Rodina! Svoboda! Putin!" (Motherland! Freedom! Putin!).  But that holiday lets people off for a week, so those who like the older officially defunct holiday still get a holiday and can celebrate there as they please.  And while Putin may be officially anti-communist, not only his past as a communist Soviet KGB agent, but his ongoing efforts to rehabilitate that great communist leader, Joseph Stalin, show his true sentiments (maybe).

Anyway, unfortunately, while it looked like we might have been on the verge of a worldwide socialist revolution on this anniversary, that prospect appears to have been squashed.  It looked like a great tribune of the working class might win the presidency, a leader of strikes against exploitative owners of casinos and hotels in Atlantic City and Las Vegas, was on the verge of winning the US presidency.  That this champion and genuine leader of the international proletariat was near taking power could be seen by the fact that since James Comey's letter of October 28 that gave this heroic candidate a push against a total tool and paid lackey of capitalist Wall Street, US stock markets had experienced their longest sustained slide since 1980, and global stock markets were also sliding in anticipation of this possible world socialist revolutionary takeover.  But then the conspiracy to infiltrate the FBI by Trilateralists, Bilderbergers, Jewish bankers, Freemasonic Hocus Pocus Agents, Illuminati, Zombie Economists, and Martians succeeded in forcing Comey to undo his heroic efforts and reverse course.

Now we see that the global capitalists are triumphant with stock markets around the world soaring as their flunky tool prepares to take control of the White House.  All the working class can do on this sad anniversary is cry, or perhaps march in the streets of Moscow praising Motherland!, Freedom!, and Putin!.

Barkley Rosser

Understanding the “Left” Opposition to a State Carbon Tax

I’ve been dutifully reading the op-eds and campaign essays by people opposing I-732, Washington State’s carbon tax initiative, trying to understand what they’re missing.  Obviously, emotions are running hotter because of the state’s budget crisis, ultimately a product of its horrible revenue system.  And there is no question that 732 is flawed in fundamental respects, mainly because of its misguided attempt to return carbon revenues via tax cuts.  But the issue opponents of 732 have seized on is not the inefficiency of using the tax system for returning carbon money, but the principle of revenue recycling itself.  They view the carbon tax as a necessary and valuable new revenue source and accuse 732 supporters of being enemies of social justice for trying to return it.  If their public statements are to be believed, returning carbon money is no more than a cynical play for the votes of pro-business conservatives and serves no other purpose.  How to explain their inability to understand the case for recycling?

Well, I think I may have figured it out, or at least I have a hypothesis.  It goes like this:

For PR purposes, environmentalists have sold carbon taxes on the basis of a moralistic interpretation of the “polluter pays” principle: companies that generate carbon emissions should pay for their sins.  I can understand why they do this, and I’m sure it polls well and comes out favorably in focus groups.  Nevertheless, it’s based on an incomplete representation of how the price mechanism operates.  Yes, a tax on manufacturers or energy companies will initially be paid by them, but most of it will be passed along to consumers, as logic dictates it should be.  After all, it is not just a few companies, but all of us whose economic choices need to be shifted.  You can see this already in the taxes levied on various “sin” products.  Cigarette taxes, for instance, are not paid out of reduced tobacco profits; they are passed along to smokers in the form of much higher prices on cigarettes.  That’s exactly how the system ought to work, too.

Carbon taxes operate the same way.  The general public will end up paying virtually all of it through higher prices, and the argument for recycling the revenues is that doing this protects our real income and living standards.  The social justice dimension is about the progressivity of the recycling mechanism, especially since consumption taxes are intrinsically regressive.  The true incidence of eco-taxes and the consequent role of recycling are not emphasized by green activists, however, for obvious political reasons.  Nevertheless, I had thought that, being informed people, they would know how taxes function.

Maybe I was wrong.  Absolutely nothing in the argumentation of the anti-732 crowd conveys an awareness of who will actually pay the carbon tax.  These people claim to defend their communities, but their logic depends on ignoring the fact that their communities will pay the freight.  Defending them, from their point of view, therefore does not include defraying their higher living expenses.  Could this interpretation be correct?  It’s believable if you think these “left” groups are uninformed about economics and actually believe the rhetoric that it is only the corporations that will pay carbon taxes.  (I have noted this misconception in the writing of Naomi Klein, who has gone on record against 732.)  Or, perhaps, it is more devious than this—perhaps the opponents of 732 understand their constituents will pay the tax but believe they will come out ahead by asserting a claim on the tax revenues generated from other communities in the state.  Between not understanding and understanding but dishonestly manipulating, I prefer the first.

I could be wrong about all of this, of course.  The easiest way for me to be proved wrong would be for committed “social justice” opponents of 732 to explain out loud why they are not concerned about the regressive payments imposed on their own communities by a carbon tax, and therefore why defraying them is not part of their agenda.

Guns for All

The fracas at yesterday’s Trump rally in Reno shows why we need gun rights now.  A man was seen carrying an anti-Trump sign and someone else shouted out that he had a gun.  In the confusion, Trump was hustled offstage by his security detail, and meanwhile the crowd was in turmoil as people tried to figure out what was going on.

Obviously, the problem is that this crowd was unarmed, which is why they were afraid of a possible shooter.  If everyone had a gun they could go after whoever they thought was threatening them, and they would all be equally safe.

The Hard Core of Neoclassical Economics

There has been an ongoing debate over whether the very notion of a mainstream, neoclassical economics is still valid.  As many commentators have pointed out, various departures have been embraced by portions of the profession which, by sociological standards, have to be considered mainstream: these include game theory and interactive expectations with multiple equilibria, behavioral departures from homo oeconomicus, importation of biological and psychological measures of well-being, and so on.  So where are we now?

First, note that each item on this list constitutes a relaxation of a default assumption that other economists, not directly engaged in that departure, typically rely on in their own work.  Those who are not themselves behavioral economists generally invoke “U-max” unthinkingly, those who are not personally constructing game-theoretic or similar models invoke convexity assumptions to ensure stable, mono-equilibria, etc.  The violation of the core axioms coexists with the default status of those same axioms.  I think in this paragraph I am simply describing what currently takes place, not theorizing or explaining it.

Second, here’s a hypothesis.  Neoclassical economics has evolved to serve an ideological function which is promoted through incentives, the selection of new adepts, and a conceptual hegemony: the purpose of economics is to solve economic problems with minimum, and ideally no, recourse to politics.  Thus welfare economics in particular plays a central role, since it is the basis for proposing economic solutions that don’t depend on a political deliberation or selection process.  What the theoretical departures that don’t migrate to the core have in common is their incompatibility with welfarism.  The exception proves the rule here.  Consider the case of the new institutional economics largely centered on transaction cost theory.  This has arguably entered the core of the discipline despite having once taken the form of a departure.  Is it coincidental that practitioners in this field have no difficulty modifying welfarism to account for institutional frictions?

Reinforcing these ideological pressures are the network externalities associated with core doctrines: like computer programs they gain in value as more users employ them.  (I’m indebted to a manuscript I’m currently reviewing for this insight.)  That said, the example of NIE convinces me that pure lock-in is not the only consideration in the inertia at the heart of economic doctrine; ideology is also important.

UPDATE: Google is not indexing this post!  I wonder if it's because of the header?  Poor Imre Lakatos must be turning over in his grave.

UPDATE^2: Imre can relax.  Google, after a long hiatus, hoovered me up.