Category: Equitablog

Should-Read: Andrew Neather: Foragers, Farmers and Fossil Fuels: How Human Values Evolve by Ian Morris: “Ian Morris… argues that key societal values…

…are directly related to the way we answer our most basic practical need: energy. Foraging societies captured… energy… through hunting and gathering… semi-nomadic… little opportunity to accumulate wealth…. a daily average of 4,000-8,000 kilocalories per person. They tended to be egalitarian, since hunting and gathering required a high degree of co-operation. And while there was a sexual division of labour, attitudes to female sexuality were relatively relaxed. But they were also violent — Morris thinks 10 per cent or more of adults died violently.

Then around 10,000 years ago… farming…. With their high levels of energy capture — up to 30,000 kcal/day per person — came new values… the accumulation of wealth… [by the] industrious or lucky, inequalities… sustained labour…. Women’s sexuality became tightly controlled: these were societies in which inheritance — and therefore fidelity and bloodlines — mattered a lot. But they were also less violent, with rulers imposing legal structures. With the dawn of fossil fuels in the 18th century, energy capture increased exponentially… broke the Malthusian link… generated vast wealth… more egalitarian over gender, and much less violent….

What is less sure is whether certain values are really such direct products of a particular mode of energy capture — he shuns any language as Marxist as a mode of production — or more fundamental to the human condition. One place where this becomes clearer is in his brief discussion of post-fossil-fuel societies. Part of the problem is, of course, that he doesn’t know what will come next…

Should-Read: Nancy LeTorneau: There Is No Grand Strategy to Repeal Obamacare: “The Congressional Budget Office… released their report…. What we’ve seen from conservatives/Republicans/the White House since then…

…If anyone can see a grand strategy here, I’d like to hear about it:

1. HHS Sec. Tom Price and OMB Director Mulvaney said you can’t believe what the CBO says.
2. Speaker Paul Ryan praised the CBO report.
3. The White House produced a report that was even worse than CBO’s – suggesting that 26 million people would lose coverage.
4. Someone leaked the WH report to Politico.
5. Breitbart validated the CBO report by broadcasting the news that Paul Ryan’s plan would result in 24 million people losing their health insurance.
6. Almost simultaneously, Breibart released a tape from last October in which Ryan said he was abandoning Trump forever and wouldn’t support him.
7. Trump is telling conservative Republicans that he’ll work with them to make the bill even worse by speeding up the changes to Medicaid and basically saying, “who cares if that makes it less likely to pass the Senate, we’ll deal with that later.”

Let’s note one thing right away. The plan to rally right-wing media around the idea that the CBO report cannot be trusted has completely gone off the rails. When everyone from Ryan to Breitbart to the released White House report are validating it, that simply isn’t going to fly…. The theory that… Bannon is working… to discredit Speaker Ryan… Breitbart has consistently referred to this bill as “Ryan’s plan,” even though the president embraced it as “our wonderful new health care bill” the day it was released…. But then why is Trump working with conservative Republicans behind the scenes to get the bill passed, apparently with an assist from Bannon in dealing with the head of the Freedom Caucus, Rep. Mark Meadows (per Politico)?… I’m going to assume that the error in my thinking is assuming that there is either some grand strategy for passing Obamacare repeal or fighting the factional war…. The easier position to defend is that this is a party that doesn’t know how to govern and it’s being exposed for its inadequacies. The silver lining is that it could be good news for the 24 million people who want to keep their health insurance.

Should-Read: Anton Howes: Inducing Ideas for Industrialisation: “Perhaps the most popular modern theory of the causes of the Industrial Revolution is Robert C. Allen’s “Induced Innovation”…

…as outlined in his 2009 book The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective. The argument is straightforward, but compelling: Britain had uniquely high wages from about as far back as the Black Death, along with relatively low capital and energy costs.* At the same time, places like China had low wages and relatively higher capital and energy costs. Britain’s relative factor price structure therefore induced a lot of labour-saving inventions, whereas China was stuck with a bunch of labour-intensive innovations.

The benefit of this theory is that it even goes some way towards explaining why Britain might have been earlier than most other European countries: it had relatively higher wages…. But… imagine yourself a creative potter in the 18th Century-do high wages cause you to sit down and focus on a labour-saving invention? Or are you more likely to simply grumble and make do? There seem to be a few extra steps required here. One key facet of the IR is not so much the type of inventions that Britain witnessed, but their sheer volume: in every industry, and all around the same time. Indeed, many of these were saving labour, energy and capital indiscriminately. One thing that Allen’s theory does not explain is the source of this generalised and accelerated outburst of inventive activity….

[With] the out-of-the-blue, game-changing inventions like the steam engine, coke smelting, or the spinning machine… becomes even more stark than if we’re only talking about incremental improvements to a pre-existing technology (so-called ‘micro-inventions’)…. Allen’s theory is strongest when it comes to the success of an invention in the market… explaining why particular major inventions were successful in high-wage Britain. This rings true: look at the extraordinary successes in Britain of foreign-invented contraptions such as the Lombe silk loom (stolen from Piedmont), or of the Jacquard Loom (a French-invented attachment to looms enabling patterns to be programmed-the inspiration for Babbage’s proto-computer, the analytical engine). By focusing on market viability, this aspect of the theory also goes some way to explaining the rate and pattern of industrialisation’s spread….

Thus, while Allen’s theory might explain why some inventions were adopted for further development, many other inventions appear to have been developed further despite the bias of relative factor prices…. It’s only after research and development that Allen’s theory really kicks in…. For a fuller explanation of the Industrial Revolution, though, we need to go right to the inventive source-why was there so much more invention in Britain to be adopted in the first place? 

Should-Read: Kevin Drum: Here’s Why CBO Projects 10% Lower Premiums Under the Republican Health Care Bill: “One of the surprising things about the CBO score of… the Republican health care bill…

is… that premiums will fall starting in 2020. By 2026… 10 percent lower than they would be under Obamacare. But why…. CBO didn’t do anything wrong here. They simply did their projections based on a (correct) assumption that AHCA would be too expensive for many old people and would produce crappier policies that had higher deductibles and paid far less of your medical bills. The “average” premium is lower, but obviously not in a way that helps anybody in real life.

Must-Read: What is the rule of law here? What should courts do when the President announces that he will not take care that the laws be faithfully executed? When a president announces that his policies will violate the Establishment clause, should courts let him proceed and so ignore the question whether pretexts publicly announced to be mere pretexts are in fact mere pretexts?

Ronald Nikles: Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain: the Great Oz has spoken…: “When a presidential candidate promises to ban Muslims from the country as his first act in office…

…should the courts be allowed to investigate the motivations of an Executive Order barring entry to nationals of six Muslim countries, ostensibly to keep out terrorists? Should courts be allowed to look behind the curtain of an Executive Order?… On February 9, 2017 the 9th Cir. Court of Appeals affirmed the nationwide stay of Travel Ban 1.0 until a hearing could be held on the merits.  That order is now moot…. President Trump signed… Travel Ban 2.0… Travel Ban 1.0… [with] modifications designed to make it “court-proof.”… Ilya Somin  noted that Travel Ban 2.0 continues to be driven by hostility to Muslims and that its security rationale continues to be extremely weak. Travel Ban 2.0 continues to assert “nearly unfettered authority by the federal government,” he said. This week two federal trial courts, in Hawaii and Maryland, have agreed with Somin….

How do courts determine whether a governmental action (like Travel Ban 2.0) is animated by religious animus? The court looked at the 2005 U.S. Supreme Court decision in McCreary County v. ACLU of KY: “In determining purpose, a court acts as an ‘objective observer’ who considers ‘the traditional external signs that show up in the text, legislative history, and implementation of the statute, or comparable official act.'” In other words, the mere identification (or claim) of a valid secular purpose does not satisfy the test. Courts will look at objective signs. It’s something that courts do “all the time.”…

In defending Travel Ban 2.0, the administration’s lawyers point to Kleindienst v. Mandel (1972)…. Justice Blackmun… “when the Executive exercises this power (to grant an exemption) negatively on the basis of a facially legitimate and bona fide reason, the courts will neither look behind the exercise of that discretion nor test it by balancing its justification against the First Amendment interests of those who seek personal communication with the applicant.”… Most judges aren’t buying this argument…. One judge who thinks that courts should not be looking behind the curtain in reviewing Travel Ban 2.0 is Judge Jay Bybee of the 9th Circuit… joined… by… Kozinsky, Callahan, Bea, and Ikuda…. Bybee, of course is infamous for being one of the authors of the Bush torture memos…

Should-Read: David Dayen: “Brad DeLong is wondering what happened to the Trump infrastructure policy…

…He’s correct that the brief hope of an actual push of public money into a building boom is dead and buried. But that was never the Trump plan; it was what DeLong calls the “bunga-bunga” policy—tax breaks for public-private partnerships to give rich investors control of the commons.

And while Congress could give a rip, you can see what Trump is up to by looking at the 2018 budget.Granted, it’s a fantasy document Congress has no intention of looking at. But you have to look at all the cuts to infrastructure projects in there. It completely eliminates funding for the Federal Transit Administration’s New Starts program, affecting dozens of transit initiatives. TIGER, which Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao called her “favorite program” in confirmation hearings, is also zeroed out. A funding program for rural infrastructure is gone. Part of the $3 billion Community Development Block Grant program goes to infrastructure too.

When asked about this, OMB Director Mick Mulvaney said it was intentional. The administration plans to shift that money into “more efficient infrastructure programs later on.”

So not only will private equity guys get to scoop up infrastructure and put tolls on everything, they get their pick of projects that would already have had funding in place. It’s just a bonanza.

Must-Read: How, you ask, did Donald Trump’s Mad Management Skillz take DJT from $15/share to $0? This is how:

Ezra Klein:Does Donald Trump Know What the GOP Health Bill Does?: “With the help of Vox’s Jacob Gardenswartz, I collected and read absolutely everything Donald Trump has said publicly about the AHCA…

1. Trump has a very limited set of talking points on health care, and he repeats the same words and sentences constantly—his comfort zone on both the issue and the legislation is very narrow….

2. Trump seems confused about what the GOP bill does… spun by more ideologically motivated advisers (that’s certainly the narrative pro-Trump outlets like Breitbart are pushing)….

3. Trump has bought into a caricature of Obamacare… that heavily informs his thinking…. This could prove more consequential than people realize.

The AHCA does literally none of the things Trump says it does…. The AHCA doesn’t lower costs… “premiums would be 13% (~$1,000) higher under the AHCA than under current law, holding plan generosity and the individual market age distribution fixed at their current law levels.” To the extent that the AHCA sees lower premiums, it’s because older people can’t afford care and younger people buy sparer plans…. Most people will have fewer affordable choices…. Competition is likely to fall…. The idea that the AHCA will “ensure health care access for all Americans” is sufficiently absurd that I’m not even going to spend time on it.

But the idea that it will let you choose your doctor and plan is more interesting—it seems entirely possible to me that Trump doesn’t realize the limited choices people complain about in Obamacare are the result of people being unable to afford more generous plans with broader networks, and it seems likely to me that he doesn’t know the AHCA will make that problem worse, or why conservative health reformers think that’s a good thing…. On March 10, Trump said this:

You all remember, you can keep your doctor, you can keep your plan. I know, Greg, you’ve never heard that, right? But it was said many, many times, and it turned out to be not true. This is the time we’re going to get it done.

This is either an extremely foolish thing to say or it is the comment of a man who doesn’t realize that the plan he’s backing would, in a stroke, mean millions of people could no longer afford the subsidized insurance they were using, and would react with fury and surprise when they realize they were betrayed.

The absolute constant in Trump’s health care rhetoric is the idea that Obamacare is dead no matter what he does…. If your only trusted source of information on Obamacare were the furthest reaches of the conservative press, this is the impression of the law you would have. But it’s not true…. Trump… thinks “unless we gave it massive subsidies in a year from now, or six months from now, it’s not even going to be here,” and argued that “there’s not even going to be any people on the plan” unless he does something. This is flatly nonsense, but it might be nonsense Trump believes. The irony, of course, is that the AHCA will destabilize individual insurance markets further, and lead to far greater coverage losses than if Obamacare were left untouched…