Airs – Ian Lance Taylor

New plan: let’s let people pay to vote. Everybody gets one vote free, just like today. You can also pay, say, $1000 for another vote, then $2000 for the next one, $3000 for the one after that, etc. Also, you can sell your vote, so a cheaper way to get more votes is to pay a bunch of people $500.

Advantage: it’s no longer necessary to give candidates money so that they can advertise for votes. Currently politicians spend at least half their time asking for money. This would let them spend all their time on their actual job.

Advantage: money paid for votes goes straight to the treasury, rather than to television stations.

Advantage: Many fewer horrible political ads.

Disadvantage: politicians do what rich people want them to do. But wait, that is already the case. So this isn’t a disadvantage at all.

The U.S. is already a plutocracy. Making it explicit is more efficient all around.

I have long felt that there is a space in U.S. politics for a party which holds traditionally right-wing views on social issues but traditionally left-wing views on economic issues. Many voters in the U.S. vote against their economic interests in support of their social views. The limousine liberal is a cliché, a wealthy person who votes in favor of higher taxes on the wealthy. Conversely there are many poor people who vote for Republican candidates because they oppose abortion, accepting the fact that those same candidates will vote to cut services their supporters rely on every day, such as food stamps and WIC. So why not a candidate who stands against abortion, against teaching evolution in schools, against gay marriage, but in favor of governmental support for the poor? Some conservative Democrats do take that position, but they are a small minority within the party.

I read recently that France’s National Front has moved into exactly this space. Marine le Pen the traditionally right-wing, racist and anti-Semitic party to be more of an economically left-wing, socially anti-immigrant party. I disagree with her positions in many ways, but I wonder if any U.S. politicians will see an inspiration there.

I suppose the flip side would be socially left-wing and economically right-wing, but many Democrats are in that space already. It pretty much describes Bill Clinton, for example, and Barack Obama is not far off either. The Republican party has been steadily shifting rightward economically–Obama is well to the right of Nixon on economic issues, for example. I don’t know if the Republicans are leading the Democrats to the right, or if the Democrats moving right are pushing the Republicans into ever more extreme positions in order to differentiate themselves.

During the Reagan administration, the U.S. reduced tax rates and increased defense spending. The national debt as a percentage of overall GDP increased from 32.5% to 53.1% (Reagan called this increase in debt the “greatest disappointment” of his presidency). During the first Bush administration, it continued to rise, reaching 66.1%. During the Clinton administration, the government raised taxes, the economy grew, and defense spending was reduced somewhat; the debt decreased to 56.4% of GDP. During the second Bush administration, again taxes were reduced and defense spending was increased; the debt increased to 83.4% of GDP.

Today fiscal conservatives are arguing that the high levels of debt require that government spending be reduced. At the same time, the plan put forward by Republican representative Paul Ryan, and strongly supported by the Republican House, calls for more tax cuts and higher defense spending. While it’s understood that his plan will not be adopted, it’s hard to see how it can be a serious proposal for debt reduction.

It’s clear that the U.S. has a high level of debt due largely to past steps of reducing taxes while increasing spending. One can argue details back and forth quite a bit, but it’s also clear that the debt has increased significantly under Republican administrations. Fiscal conservatives now argue that the high level of debt shows that the U.S. can not afford social programs like Social Security and Medicare. But while one can argue about increasing health care costs, history suggests that that simply isn’t true. What is true is that the U.S. can not steadily cut taxes without cutting spending.

It’s perfectly consistent to say that the U.S. should be a low-tax, low-service country. But arguments about debt which don’t mention the possibility of tax increases are not telling the whole truth about how the U.S. got into its current situation. What has happened, intentionally or not, is that tax cuts are being leveraged to reduce spending on social programs.

Incidentally, I think most people agree that governments should use tax money to invest in infrastructure. It’s generally most efficient to let the government build and maintain roads and bridges, as they require a large investment and the payback is indirect. I think one could make a good argument that health care is another form of infrastructural investment, an investment in people, which is most efficiently done by government.

Last summer’s bizarre California ballot initiative was proposition 16, a PG&E funded measure which was fortunately voted down. This season’s appears to be proposition 23. Proposition 23 is admittedly much less crazy than proposition 16: it calls for the California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 to be suspended until California’s unemployment rate drops to 5.5% or below for four consecutive quarters. The Global Warming Solutions Act requires that greenhouse gas emission levels in the state be cut to 1990 levels by 2020.

What’s bizarre about proposition 23 is that the monetary supporters are primarily oil companies based out of state. Their argument is that the Global Warming Solutions Act will cost jobs. That argument makes little sense. Working to reduce greenhouse gas emissions creates jobs, as people must work to develop and implement new technologies. The argument is that this will lead to increased costs for businesses, and that they will pass the costs on to consumers. That is most likely correct, but what it means is that money is shifted around. It doesn’t mean that money or jobs is lost, although certainly some specific people will gain and some will lose.

So the question is how the money would shift. And the answer is that the money would shift away from technologies which generate greenhouse gases and toward technologies which do not. The former are found in places which generate fossil fuels, such as Texas. The latter are found in places which do green technology research and development, such as Silicon Valley. So the overall effect of the law is most likely to cause more of the money that California residents spend on energy to stay in California rather than to move to places like Texas. Or, for that matter, Saudi Arabia. It is clear why so many out of state oil companies are supporting proposition 23.

Now, I happen to think that there is a straightforward case to be made for why we don’t want to increase greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and the counter-arguments to that do not make sense to me. But I am of course aware that it is, for reasons that continue to escape me, a controversial topic. What is, however, not controversial is that there is a limited amount of oil on this planet, and that the most pointless possible thing we can do with that limited oil is burn it. Moreover, the U.S. is a net oil importer, and the money we send overseas to purchase oil is being sent directly to countries which do not share our values and often work against our interests. I believe that any rational calculation would lead us to decrease our use of oil, which in turn means decreasing our generation of greenhouse gases.

So I see exactly one argument in favor of proposition 23: it supports the profits of oil companies. And I see many reasons against it. I sincerely hope the proposition is defeated.

I don’t have a well thought out view of Afghanistan. But General McChrystal’s counter-insurgency plan never made much sense to me. The plan by definition requires a government which the people can trust. But all reports are that Hamid Karzai is not trusted by the people in Afghanistan. The election last year was a total fiasco. That kind of seems like a big gaping hole in the middle of the counter-insurgency plan. You can’t build trust in a government whose leader stays in power by fraud. McChrystal was reportedly trying to build trust in Karzai by travelling with him and boosting his position, but since frankly I can’t see why the Afghan people would trust McChrystal or the U.S. either, that seems like a flawed plan.

So now McChrystal is out amid reports of bickering and infighting. But we’re still going to follow the same plan under General Petraeus. The basic dynamic of the situation is unchanged. How is this not going to be a disaster?

The U.S. made progress in Iraq, against my expectations, by showing that people had more to gain by participating in politics than they did by staying out. In particular, the Iraqis showed themselves what a civil war would look like, and many of them backed away. Iraq remains a long way from normal, and the former middle class remains largely outside the country, but it’s hugely better than it was four years ago.

Afghanistan is a much bigger country than Iraq with a much smaller population. The political dynamics are by necessity quite different. The political class is much smaller. I don’t see why one would expect the same process to work.

It’s also worth questioning what the U.S. has to gain from Afghanistan. Al Qaeda has relocated into Pakistan. No reasonable person would want to let the Taliban regain control, but there is no U.S. national interest in Afghanistan. There is no oil. The recently trumpeted minerals wealth has little national interest to the U.S., no slouch in mineral wealth itself. What is going to keep us there for the time it takes to turn Afghanistan into a modern society?

At this point I think the military approach is entirely wrong. I think an economic approach would be much more effective. Maybe we should try to make Kabul as secure as we can and as rich as we can, and open its gates to anybody who will enter without weapons. Hand out radios and food. Let the Taliban fight for the rest of the country, but show most of the people that a better way is available. I don’t know if this would work at all, but it would be cheaper in lives and money than the current approach.

Since we’re not going to do that, I just hope that I’m wrong again, and that something useful comes out of this, even if I can’t see what.