The Wrong Side of Liberalism

A few weeks ago, I wrote an article explaining what was wrong with the fiscal conservatism of the Republican Party from a fiscally conservative perspective. This week it is time to think about what is wrong with the fiscal liberalism of the Democratic Party from a fiscally liberal perspective.

Imagine a giant sphere comprised of thousands of tiny dots. Each dot is a person with two numbers. The first number is the amount of money he possesses, and the second is the value of the resources he owns. These numbers are constantly changing as the individuals conduct transactions with each other. Sometimes the total value of an individual decreases, but most of the time it increases. In theory, each transaction increases the total value of both of the individuals involved: Otherwise, the individuals would not be interested in the transaction. Moreover, each individual is constantly developing new and greater resources, whether by attending school to accumulate human resources, by growing a garden or running a factory to produce goods or by searching for buried treasure, fishing or laying claim to unowned territory to privatize communal resources.

In the free market, money constantly multiplies spontaneously, making the average wealth grow steadily higher. This is the appeal of capitalism. But, in its pure form, capitalism presents several very serious problems. Running around in a capitalist system is like driving without car insurance or playing football without health insurance. The insurance is comparable to government regulation. The total price of insurance over a 10-year period is greater than the expected price of whatever injuries or damages the populace experiences. In terms of sheer dollar value, insurance is a bad deal. A large chunk of premiums disappears in the bureaucracy without ever making it back to the people paying in. So why do we want government regulation? Why do we want insurance?

An economist might answer we should minimize government. This is because the answer lies in an area never touched by economists. Big word alert: interpersonal comparisons of utility. Essentially, an interpersonal comparison of utility contrasts the value of a hundred dollars in the hands of a college student — which is great — to the value of a hundred dollars in the hands of Mitt Romney, which is negligible. A college student will benefit greatly from an extra hundred dollars, because it means fruits and vegetables instead of mac and cheese or parking on campus instead of hauling 50 pounds of textbooks up Old Main Hill, but a hundred dollar bill would barely be worth Mitt Romney’s time to pick up if it were lying on the ground in front of him.

In times of economic recession, former Mitt Romneys are college students. In times of economic boom, former college students are running Fortune 500 companies. It makes sense a CEO would pay a hundred dollars in a time of boom in order to have an extra 50 bucks in his pocket when the rain starts pouring. Yes, the dollar value is decreased. But the utility per dollar is increased, and the total benefit to society is actually increased. This is the basis of the liberal argument.

Let’s be clear here. The government is inefficient. The military is inefficient. The government should never be in the business of job creation. The point of the military is to prevent the economic travesty of war. The point of the government is to protect human and property rights, and regulate the economy just enough to prevent significant recessions, allowing the free market to operate as unencumbered as possible.

The recession is over. All the regulations being implemented will only encumber the economy and prevent it from recovering. We are doing now what we should have been doing during George Bush’s presidency. Instead, we are slowing the recovery now with new regulation, and we will deregulate it again in a few decades in time to speed ourselves into the next recession.

Today’s liberals want job creation. They want stimulus. They want social security. They want wealth redistribution. These ideas are not justified. The government should borrow during a recession, yes. The government should stave off the worst of poverty and ensure children receive adequate sustenance. But social security is a Ponzi scheme, and running an unbalanced budget in times of peace and economic prosperity is a recipe for disaster. In other articles, I have suggested the Republican Party is sharply moderating on social issues and clarifying its stance on fiscal issues. Much of the recent success of the Democratic Party has come from demographic shifts in the populace and a rapidly liberalizing population on social issues. They are doing well now, but whether they can maintain their power may depend on their ability to soundly elucidate their fiscal argument.

Election 2016 predictions

Ok, here it is. It is time to start making early predictions for the 2016 presidential election. For the record, it is March 15th, 2013 at the time that I am writing this blog. Paddypower.com, an Irish booking website, currently lists Hillary Clinton with a 7/2 payoff, Paul Ryan with 8/1, and Marco Rubio with 10/1. They continue through fifty nine names to Andrew Basiago (whoever the hell that is) at 500/1. Since gambling is not currently legal in the USA, here is what I would bet with my hundred dollars, if it were legal: 70$ on Hillary, 29$ on Rubio, 1$ on Rand Paul. If Clinton won, I would win $315, total profit $215. If Rubio won, I would be looking at $319, $219 profit. Rand Paul, at a very profitable 66/1, would net me 67$, or save me from complete bankruptcy.

If Hillary runs, I think she has the primary handed to her on a silver platter, and, provided that Obama’s approval ratings hold up half as well as I expect them to as the economy recovers, shouldn’t have too much difficulty winning a general election. There remains, however, a substantial probability that she will not run. I give her a 75% chance of winning conditional on entering the race, but a 50% chance overall.

Rubio’s status as the GOP’s eventual nominee is significantly more certain in my mind. He is definitely running, and he is exactly what the GOP needs just now. He has the backing of the establishment, of the moderates, and of the conservatives all at the same time, and he can connect with a key constituency that is absolutely essential to the GOP’s future success. Without Rubio on the ticket, Texas could be a swing state in 2016, and the GOP simply cannot afford for Texas to be a swing state. However, the economy is recovering. Obama may not be particular right now after his recent brawls with Republicans, but his popularity looks like it will bubble almost as much as Reagan’s did as unemployment continues to tick downwards. Picking Rubio may bandage a sore that could potentially devastate the GOP long term, but at best that puts them back on an even footing with democrats. The 2016 election is really going to come down to a referendum on Obama’s job performance, and that is looking to be pretty good for democrats. I give Rubio a 75% chance of being the GOP nominee, and a 33% chance of winning conditional on being nominated, for a total 25% chance of being the next President.

Rand Paul is unlikely to be the GOP nominee, but stands a good shot at winning the general election if nominated. I have written previously that the USA is currently experiencing a political realignment, as the “culture war” loses its place in US politics. Essentially, the Democratic and Republican parties are migrating away from “moral” issues like gay marriage, and putting increasing emphasis on social welfare / fiscal issues. In fifteen years, I predict that the democratic party will look more like a French socialist party than today’s democratic party. In fifteen years, I predict that the republican party will look more like today’s libertarian party, or the classical-liberal republican party of the pre-Reagan era, than like the Republican party that has existed for the past thirty years since Reagan. The extraordinary success of the Ron Paul movement, and its subsequent recognition in the items of the Republican platform is evidence of this movement. It seems unlikely that the Republican party would move far enough to nominate Ron Paul in 2016, but his less extreme son, who is a little bit closer aligned with the Republican party of today might have more of a chance. If Rand Paul were to somehow clinch the nomination, he would stand a better chance at winning than most other Republicans. The social conservative base of the republican party would still vote for him, at least enough to allow him to take the traditional republican strongholds. Latino voters, who win continue to gain strength over the coming years, will likely vote democrat, albeit significantly weaker than they did so last November. Rand Paul’s true strength lies in individuals who are well off financially, yet socially moderate to liberal. Specifically, suburban women. If Hillary is running to be the first female president, then this demographic could prove especially problematic for Republicans, for whom it is ordinarily a swing demographic. If Hillary is not on the ticket, however, this demographic could swing several swing states into the republican aisle. I give Rand Paul a 5% chance of winning the primary, and a 2% chance of winning overall.

So, I have a 50% chance of winning $215, 25% chance of $219, a 2% chance of -$33, and a 23% chance of -$100. 107.5+54.75-.66-23=$138.59 in expected profit (after paying off my 100$ debt). Therefore, it would be good deal to play this game. I wish online gambling were legal in the USA…

Can the GOP Steal the 2016 Election?

Yet another master plan has been hatched –and thwarted– to devise a Republican Presidential victory regardless of how the nation swings. You may hear otherwise, here in Utah, but the truth is that the vast majority of cunning and devious plans to steal elections do come from the GOP. Personally, I think that Democrats are just too soft. They spend so much time arguing for equality for this group or that group that for many of them, an unfair victory is hardly a victory at all. Republicans know better. We have thought out our policies, and we believe that the nation will be best off in the long run with fiscally responsible leaders who learned arithmetic in first grade, however they came into power. That is why we control so many governorships, so many state legislatures, and so many superpacs. It is because we know that the absolute worst thing you can do right after a horrible recession is to churn out restrictive and intricate regulations that may have prevented the recession, but will now serve to stagnate the economy and prevent it from recovering naturally.

The problem is that when we win the battle, we lose the war. One of the biggest reasons that we lost Florida a few months ago is because people thought we were trying to cheat. Policies like cutting back the number of early-voting days, and refusing to extend the hours of polling places when it became clear that individuals who had been waiting in line for many hours would not have time to vote, made Obama’s people, rightfully, think that we wanted to prevent them from voting. It pissed them off. A 102 year old black woman who waited in line 6 hours to cast her vote became a hero and martyr for Obama’s people to rally around. A lot of ordinarily sensible, sane individuals crossed over to vote against us when they woke up to that kind of front-page news on Election Day. So, while 2/3 of the 200,000 or so who walked away from early voting say that they would have voted for Obama, the master plan probably backfired on the Grand Ol’ Party in the end.

But it wasn’t just Florida. All our Governors that were swept into power in swing states in the 2010 landslide election tried to shake things up. Black and Hispanic voters waited an average 20.2 minutes, while white voters only waited 12.7 minutes to vote nationwide. States like Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia, and Ohio made efforts to suppress student votes through misleading questionnaires, a deliberate lack of polling workers, blatant unfairness in ID requirements, and making first-time voters –read college students who are too poor to afford vehicles– drive home to vote in person. And of course, right here in Utah we experience confusion every election about whether students are eligible to vote who do not yet have residency for tuition purposes due to a confusingly-worded voter-registration form. For the record, you can vote if you live in Utah one month prior to an election.

That was the master plan for last election, and it failed. But, GOP lawmakers did the math, and found another scheme that could have worked. You might not be aware, but Republicans currently control the House of Representatives, even though they lost the last election. This did not happen because a lot of people were splitting their tickets between Obama and a local congressman. In fact, more people voted for democratic representatives than for Republicans. Due to a neat little trick called gerrymandering, and Republicans’ luck at controlling so many state legislatures of swing states after the 2010 census, we still won. Now imagine a situation in which the President were granted electors based on our gerrymandered congressional districts instead of the statewide vote. In this scenario, Romney wins the Electoral College despite losing by 4% of the popular vote. In fact, we don’t even need all of the states. Just give Romney 2/3s of the votes in a few of the swing states Obama won, and you have a close race again. But, unfortunately for us, Republican governors in blue-leaning states have largely decided that they are more dedicated to their reelection campaigns then they are to the party.

The GOP has been representing the morally upright for a long time. Some of those people just won’t vote for a cheater, no matter how right he is. Maybe it is time that we throw in the hat, and start focusing on winning our reelection bid.

Lincoln and Mormon Utah

It is not unusual to think of Abraham Lincoln as a hero. For all that he overstepped the bounds of his constitutional authority more than any other man in the history of the Presidency, the feats he accomplished and the good he managed to do erase it from our memory. And great feats he truly did accomplish. Lincoln oversaw our fledgling nation as it teetered near complete collapse. He pulled us away from the precipice exerting extraordinary and utterly unprecedented extra-constitutional powers, and yet managed to preserve the proper functionality of the constitution for peacetime prosperity. He actually held an election — which he thought he was going to lose — in the midst of the Civil War. Indeed, there is much to respect in the history of Abraham Lincoln. But what you may not be aware of is that in the middle of everything that Lincoln was doing, the Mormons in Utah were never far from his mind.

Lincoln’s taking notice of Utah begins with the famed Lincoln-Douglas debates. At the time, the admittance of new states to the Union was highly controversial as it could upset the balance between slave and free state representation in the Senate. Stephen Douglas was not an avid supporter of slavery, but neither was he willing to tread on Southern states’ toes. In the end, his justification for refusing to condemn slavery boiled down to a state’s right to institutionalize its own moral ethic. Lincoln quickly jumped in with the Utah card. If states should choose their own moral ethic, then why not let Utah into the Union as a polygamist state?

As much as we like to think that we helped Lincoln win a debate, Lincoln was no friend of polygamy. You may have heard that the Republican Party was founded in opposition to the grave moral wrong of slavery. Actually, the Republican Party was founded in opposition to “the twin relics of barbarism,” referring to both slavery and polygamy. In 1862, the Republican-dominated congress passed the Anti-Bigamy Act of 1862, and Lincoln quickly signed it into law. But Lincoln never tried to enforce that law.

Rather than imposing his will on the Utah Territory, then being governed by the theocratic pseudo-state of Deseret headed by Brigham Young, Lincoln instead sought knowledge. The New York Times reports that on November 18th, 1861, Lincoln “asked the Library of Congress to send him a pile of books about Mormonism…” These books included “The Book of Mormon” in its 1831 edition, and three other early studies of Mormons. Then, Lincoln decided to do … nothing. He let the Mormons be. They sent the telegraph and railroad through Utah, and Brigham Young famously remarked, “Utah has not seceded, but is firm for the Constitution and laws of our once happy country.”

Today, we recognize and remember Lincoln for his courageous and strategic inaction as he deftly maneuvered a trying political battlefield, and struggled to reunite a nation in chaos. We remember him for his firm resolve to fulfill the oath he took upon entering office to “preserve, protect and defend the constitution of the United States.” We remember him for firmly rejecting out of hand the idea of being monarch even as he held the powers of a monarch in his hand and had ample opportunity and motive to hold onto them. And finally, we remember Lincoln because almost 150 years after his death, Utah is a firmly loyal state of the Union.

Did Lincoln really read the Book of Mormon? Maybe. He certainly had means and motive. But we can never know for certain as long as we live. You’ll just have to ask him in Paradise.

The day the Tea Party and the Pope Gave up the Ghost

It has been coming on for a while now. With all the public relations failures, closet cases, and sex scandals, anybody with half an eye on the world could see that the social conservatism movement is crumbling.

But on Thursday, February 28^th, 2013, we can finally say that it has crumbled. The Pope’s announcement of his resignation after yet another sex scandal broke out –this time involving an actual cardinal, who will incidentally be voting for the new Pope—has been finalized on the same day that the Republican-controlled House of Representatives finally voted not just for the Violence Against Women Act, which the Tea Party has lambasted for being unconstitutional, but for the liberal Senate version of the bill, complete with new protections for LGBT individuals.

Speaking of which, the few remaining Republican politicians who have not outright endorsed some version of LGBT equality have started to be awfully quite about those issues. Gay marriage as an item of national debate is all but behind us as the Mexican Supreme Court recently interpreted US case law as already forbidding marriage discrimination, borrowing the US interpretation of our Equal Protection Clause to interpret their own Equal Protection Clause, striking down a Oaxaca law in the process. The issue has actually been endorsed by former Utah Governor John Huntsman (AKA the Other Mormon), saying, “There is nothing conservative about denying other Americans the ability to forge that same relationship with the person they love.”

Jim Demint, the leader of the Tea Party in the Senate, resigned to run the Heritage Foundation. Marijuana is being legalized. Immigration Reform is actually being pushed by Republican congressmen. Gun control, and expanded abortion rights are being discussed after a decade of silence. All of this was politically toxic even for some democrats prior to the election. Republicans actually voted for a tax increase for the first time in decades. And, of course, the numbers of Latino and Asian voters, 70% of which voted for President Obama, continue to skyrocket.

Truly, the ground has shifted in America. Through two wars, decades of fiscal irresponsibility and demographic change, and the greatest economic collapse since the Great Depression, the way in which we view the world has been fundamentally changed. The Tea Party’s place in national elections in the USA has been relegated to the backseat for the foreseeable future. This culture war, at least, is over. In 2016, the Republican Presidential candidates will sound more like Ron Paul than George Bush. And the Democratic ones will shift from moderates like Barack Obama to socialists like French President Nicolas Sarkozy. Our political spectrum, at least, will never be the same again.

A Liberal Reagan?

When Ronald Reagan took office, he inherited a rising unemployment rate of 7.2%, and an American public that was growing weary of the moderately liberal Democratic Party that had governed since FDR. The unemployment rate peaked at 10.8% in time for Reagan’s colleagues to lose big in the midterms. Then it drifted back down to 7.2% in time for him to sweepingly win a second term, winning a popular vote margin that went unsurpassed until Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign nearly thirty years later. Through his effective use of the bully-pulpit, Reagan capitalized on his electoral vote margin and convinced Democrats and Republicans alike to support his agenda. Reagan managed to realign America from a blue-leaning nation to a red leaning nation, an accomplishment that has lasted through three decades of politicians.

When Barack Obama took office, he inherited a skyrocketing unemployment rate of 7.8%, and an American public that had finally grown weary of Republicanism. The unemployment rate peaked at 10% just in time for Obama’s colleagues to lose big in the congressional midterms. It then drifted slowly back to 7.8% in time for him to sweepingly win a second term, gaining seats in both houses of congress, and gaining a majority of votes cast in congressional races despite failing to retake the House of Representatives. Through his effective use of the bully pulpit, and his effective capitalization on the demographic shifts in the nation, Barack Obama has convinced Democrats and Republicans to back parts of his agenda. And, the nation as a whole has taken a sharp turn back towards the moderate liberalism of the pre-Reagan years.