Matt Yglesias

Infrastructure

If you drive from Washington, DC to Brooklin, ME you certainly won’t feel like you’re driving through a country in which there are no potentially useful infrastructure projects that could be undertaken during the several-year period of elevated unemployment that we’re now projected to face. For example, there’s the bridge from New Hampshire to Maine: “The application says the bridge is ’structurally deficient’ and ‘functionally obsolete’ and has a weight limit of three tons.”

And that’s to say nothing of ideas that are a bit more forward-thinking than roads and bridges—new electrical grid, GPS-equipped buses that display arrival times at stops, supertrains, etc.

Tidal Power

As of this week, the state of Maine is home to the largest ocean tidal generator in the United States. The pilot project currently charges the batteries of an electrically powered Coast Guard search and rescue boat.

Traveling With Stuffed Animals

According to a study that looks a bit methodologically suspect to me, one in four adult men travel with stuffed animals. For my part, my apartment is home to four stuffed pandas (the softer side of Matt Yglesias) but I don’t generally travel with them. The exception, such as it is, is that I picked up Panda #4 (aka “Mr Tung”) in China and thus had to travel with it for part of the trip.

Partisanship and Democracy

Jamelle Bouie on the bipartisanship fetishists:

Masket only hints at this, but there seems to be a real anti-democratic undertone to the Beltway fantasy of perpetual bipartisanship. Think about it: In the bipartisan fantasy land of Mark Halperin or David Broder, elected officials would ignore their constituents in favor of a “bipartisan agenda” defined entirely by a handful of elite opinion writers. For members of Congress, political loyalty would extend as far as themselves, and you would see a steady disregard for grassroots groups and other outside actors. Politics would have far fewer avenues for citizen participation, and voters would completely tune out, as they could never expect to see their votes reflected in policy.

I wrote on this theme for the Atlantic in the spring of 2008:

For veteran Washington hands—wheelers and dealers in the lobbying game or at the major interest groups—the new system is worse than dull. It’s emasculating. This is why political elites find polarization so distasteful. In a polarized world, elections and procedural rules largely determine policy outcomes; there’s little room for self-styled players to construct coalitions on the fly, and enhance their own power in the process. The growth in the lobbying industry might seem to belie the point, but consider Tom DeLay’s post-1994 “K Street Project”—which pressured lobbying firms who wanted access on the Hill to hire more Republicans—or the swing of the pendulum back after the Democratic takeover in 2006. Power in Congress is firmly in the hands of the party leadership; lobbyists become less powerful, not more, in a polarized system.

But for voters, the boring new ways can be looked at in another way—they’re straightforward. Elections have a predictable and easy-to-understand relationship to government action. Electing a Democrat means, on the margin, more spending on the federal safety net and more government regulation, while electing a Republican produces policies more favorable to business interests. You don’t necessarily get everything you want (ask any liberal disappointed by the continued flow of funds for the Iraq War), but at least on domestic measures, things move predictably.

As I detail in the article, in the less-polarized fifties and sixties the relationship between election results and policy outcomes was very murky. It’s not something to be idealized.

The High Cost of Free Parking

Parking at the various scenic attractions of Acadia National Park is “free” with the price of admission, even during the high summer tourist season:

And yet space is limited. The result—shortages. At a park, this is perhaps all for the best, the general chaos is part of the fun. But there’s no reason we should run our city streets this way.

Recovery Summer

Sign at Acadia National Park:

One can only wish that Senators Collins & Snowe had responded to the White House’s initial stimulus request by asking for more local pork as the condition of their vote. Instead, they asked for a smaller and less effective overall bill.

Entitlements Out of Control

Unfortunately my photo of the price listings at Acadia National Park turns out to be insanely blurry. My point, however, was that the National Park Service’s senior citizen discounts are absurdly generous. An “America the Beautiful” pass to all National Parks for one year costs $80, whereas U.S. citizens over the age of 62 can get a lifetime pass for just $10.

I think the deficit commission ought to take this on and leave Social Security alone.

Whatever Happened to the Westminster Model

Food for thought: “For the first time in history, the Australian outcome means that every key ‘Westminster model’ country in the world now has a hung Parliament. These are the former British empire countries that according to decades of political science orthodoxy are supposed to produce strong, single party government. Following Duverger’s Law their allegedly ‘majoritarian’ electoral systems (first past the post and AV) will typically produce reinforced majorities for one of the top two parties.”

House Price Expectations

From the department of stuff people are wrong about:

In an annual survey conducted by the economists Robert J. Shiller and Karl E. Case, hundreds of new owners in four communities — Alameda County near San Francisco, Boston, Orange County south of Los Angeles, and Milwaukee — once again said they believed prices would rise about 10 percent a year for the next decade.

Do people understand what that would entail?

Of course housing in a particular location can become more desirable relative to housing elsewhere, but there’s no reason housing in general should increase in price much faster than the general cost of goods and services.

Maine Tea Party Travel Guide to DC

While I’m in Maine, Maine Tea Party leaders are sending the following advice to Tea Partiers headed to DC to fight tyranny:

Many parts of DC are safe beyond the areas I will list here, but why chance it if you don’t know where you are?

If you are on the subway stay on the Red line between Union Station and Shady Grove, Maryland. If you are on the Blue or Orange line do not go past Eastern Market (Capitol Hill) toward the Potomac Avenue stop and beyond; stay in NW DC and points in Virginia. Do not use the Green line or the Yellow line. These rules are even more important at night. There is of course nothing wrong with many other areas; but you don’t know where you are, so you should not explore them.

Five years ago I would have said definitively that the most terrifying thing about the Green/Yellow lines is the black people, but more recently this may be a caution against interacting with hipsters. But honestly this is bad advice. When visiting DC you might want to check out the baseball stadium, the many bars and clubs of U Street, the dining and shopping options of Columbia Heights, all of which are best-reached on the Green/Yellow lines. You can also take these lines to the vibrant Gallery Place / Chinatown station.

A Cato Purge

It seems that Brink Lindsey and Will Wilkinson are leaving the Cato Institute under circumstances that certainly make it seem that the higher-ups decided the Lindsey/Wilkinson critique of conservative/libertarian fusionism is unkosher. Wilkinson’s blogging for the Economist and Lindsey has a new gig at the Kaufmann Foundation. These sound like good jobs and good fits for those two, but as someone who’s interested in their ideological project, it’s too bad to see that it seems to be lacking the kind of intellectual support it would need to work.

Licensed to Blog

Philadelphia issuing fines for blogging without a license:

FFor the past three years, Marilyn Bess has operated MS Philly Organic, a small, low-traffic blog that features occasional posts about green living, out of her Manayunk home. Between her blog and infrequent contributions to ehow.com, over the last few years she says she’s made about $50. To Bess, her website is a hobby. To the city of Philadelphia, it’s a potential moneymaker, and the city wants its cut.

In May, the city sent Bess a letter demanding that she pay $300, the price of a business privilege license.

Bess should be made to report her income properly—including small amounts she may earn from sidelines like blogging—and to pay taxes on it. But it’s strongly contrary to the public interest to make it unduly difficult for people to engage in small-scale entrepreneurial activity.

Murder in Maine

Bangor Daily News on June 29:

Maine’s historic homicide average is 24 per year, he said Tuesday, with about half of those classified by police as acts of domestic violence. With the year nearly half over, the state’s homicide rate is not on track to break recent records, he said. Six of this year’s homicides have been classified as “domestics,” he said, including the death of Deborah Littlefield, allegedly at the hands of her husband, Michael Littlefield.

The homicide rate in Maine has had some fluctuations recently, according to information provided by the Maine Department of Public Safety’s Public Information Office. In 2008, when 31 people were killed, it marked a 32 percent increase from the 2007 rate. The 2008 murder rate was the highest since 1989, when 40 people were killed.

Maine has 1.3 million year-round residents (and of course many more people than that during the summer) making the overall murder rate very low. It’s a reminder that even after 15-20 years of generally falling crime, the United States of America as a whole remains a country with a very high level of violent crime. I think this is an underrated problem, with both the crime itself and the crime-evading behavior it engenders being quite costly.

Fed Split

Kill me now as the WSJ makes it clear that the FOMC is sharply divided over monetary policy: “At least seven of the 17 Fed officials gathered around the massive oval boardroom table, made of Honduran mahogany and granite, spoke against the proposal or expressed reservations. At the end of an extended debate, Mr. Bernanke settled the issue by pushing successfully to proceed with the move.”

Sure would’ve been nice for Barack Obama to have had some nominees confirmed.

Most People Don’t Graduate From College

A persistent problem with MSM coverage of young people is the fairly relentless focus on attendees and graduates of selective colleges. So I think Jamelle Bouie’s response to the latest NYT Magazine article on twentysomethings is spot on. There’s good in the piece, but:

That said, my main problem with the piece was simply the fact that there wasn’t much of an attempt at making class distinctions. It delves into the “extended adolescence” of relatively sheltered graduates from major universities, but what about the mass of 20-somethings who either didn’t go to college, or pursued degrees at community colleges and local universities? I graduated from a high school of roughly 2,400 people in 2005, and judging from the Facebook profiles of those I graduated with, many of my former classmates have built fairly adult lives for themselves. Most have jobs and live independently of their parents. Some have spouses or long-term partners, a few have children. For those who do live with their parents, it has less to do with maturity, and more to do with the terrible job market. Obviously, anecdotes can’t substitute for statistical data, but I’d wager that the above is true for many 20-somethings of modest means.

Most Americans don’t have bachelor’s degrees, and this is true at all age cohorts. What’s more, most Americans who do go to college don’t go to schools with selective admissions. Obviously, lots of people with BAs from selective schools have problems in life, and their problems (our problems, my problems) count in the moral scheme of things. But the less-privileged have more pressing problems and are also more numerous.

Socialism

Seen on the door at Blue Hill Books:

But of course Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe don’t see it that way. Also seen in Blue Hill: Lunch at the Fishnet.

Dropout Factories

My friend Ben Miller and Phuong Ly has a great piece in The Washington Monthly about college dropout factories, schools that earn nice money enrolling students but don’t seem to manage to graduate many or teach anyone useful skills.

The Partisan Fed?

It’s impolite to raise such concerns in polite circles, but it’s worth noting that there’s some evidence that the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy has historically been biased against Democratic elected officials. Is that going on today? We’ll never know for sure. We do know that presidents have some authority over the Fed. But when you use that authority to renominate the incumbent Republican GOP Fed Chair, and then don’t fill the other vacancies on the Fed board in a timely manner you’re virtually asking to be punished with policy biased against your political interests.

Where Have All the African Revolutionaries Gone?

Chris Blattman and William Reno (PDF) wonder why armed conflict in Africa has taken on a decreasingly ideological character in recent decades. You still have rebels, but you have fewer revolutionaries.

I’d say global politics has in general become less ideological in most places. US domestic politics is an exception to this overall trend, but you see it in a lot of other places, from the domestic politics of European countries to geopolitical rivalries to intrastate conflict in Africa. My impression is that politics wasn’t especially “ideologically” before the late 18-th century and perhaps post-1991 we’re just returning to the long-term norm.

Something to Read

Steve Randy Waldman’s writeup of economics bloggers’ meeting with Treasury officials makes for pretty interesting vacation reading.

Where’s the Brazilian Right

Latest polling of the Brazilian election:

Dilma Rousseff holds a significant advantage over fellow presidential candidate Jose Serra just months before an election takes place in Brazil, according to a poll by Ibope. 43 per cent of respondents would vote for Rousseff of the ruling Workers’ Party (PT) in the October ballot, up three points since June.

Jose Serra of the Brazilian Party of Social Democracy (PSDB) is second with 32 per cent, down three points. Marina Silva of the Green Party (PV) is third with seven per cent.

The funny thing here is that none of these seem to be the names of right-of-center parties. I know something similar happened in Portugal where the main center-right party is called the Partido Social Democrata (Social Democrats) and the center-left party is the Socialist Party. Is that’s what’s happening in Brazil with the PSDB being a de facto center-right party despite its left-sounding name?

What’s the Matter With Dolan?

Scroll all the way down to Bill Simmons’ last item for the best take I’ve read on the NY Knicks’ absurd owner.

Purchasing Power Parities

John Quiggin concludes a post with a “very wonkish note” on Purchasing Power Parities:

(Very wonkish note) Although PPP numbers are often treated as if they are are raw facts, they are index numbers which are fundamentally imprecise (even if the underlying data is perfectly accurate, which it isn’t). From work I did with Steve Dowrick in the 1990s, I estimate the difference between upper and lower bounds at around 10 per cent. It’s likely that any bias in PPP numbers favors the US. That’s because they are a generalized kind of Laspeyres index, and (as I understand it) the base data is derived largely from Europe.

I call for more wonky blog posts about PPP data. This kind of information is sort of the most dangerous kind—it’s easy to look up, it produces precise-looking ordinal lists, but few people (certainly not me) really understands how it works. Take a country like China, where the nominal GDP per capita is about $3,800 but the PPP GDP per capita is a much-higher $6,600. China is also a very large and diverse society with substantial class divisions. Presumably the typical “basket of goods” purchased by an urban professional is very different from the basket of goods of a peasant farmer. So whose purchasing power are we talking about here? I think relatively few of us who mention this data now and again really have a firm grasp on it.

Maine Fact of the Day

Maine is the whitest state in the union, edging out long-time rival Vermont. In fact, the state is so white that white people even cook the Mexican food.

Ideological Positioning

A colleague mentioned to me the other day that I’m “pretty conservative” on some state and local government issues, with reference to some recent posts on occupational licensing. Someone on twitter asked if I’m trying to score a date with a Cato staffer. I’m not. And I’m not. And I think that whole framing represents a bad way of understanding the whole situation.

I think it’s pretty clear that, as a historical matter of fact, the main thing “the state” has been used to do is to help the wealthy and powerful further enrich and entrench themselves. Think Pharaoh and his pyramids. Or more generally the fancy houses of European nobility, the plantations of Old South slaveowners, or Imelda Marcos’ shoes. The “left-wing” position is to be against this stuff—to be on the side of the people and against the forces of privilege. It’s true that some useful egalitarian activism over the past 150 years has consisted of trying to get the state to take affirmative steps to help people—social insurance, the welfare state, infrastructure, schools—but dismantling efforts to use the state to help the privileged has always been on the agenda. Don’t think to yourself “we need to regulate carbon emissions therefore regulation is good therefore regulation of barbers is good.” Think to yourself “we can’t let the privileged trample all over everyone, therefore we need to regulate carbon emissions and we need to break the dentists’ cartel.”