Odds and ends
1. In a recent post, I asked people why I should be impressed when people tell me that conservative judges are being appointed. After all, I’d not impressed if someone tells me they know a conservative plumber. Alex Tabarrok has a couple of recent posts that help to clarify my thoughts on this issue. Before discussing the posts, let me emphasize that I am not a legal expert. But that disclaimer cuts both ways. If I’m not even smart enough to understand the issues that Alex raises, how could I possible be expected to have an intelligent (and positive) opinion of “conservative judges”?
Alex points out that in many states the police are given legal protections that other Americans do not have. Thus if they are arrested for a crime, they cannot be vigorously interrogated, in the way that an ordinary person is questioned. On the face of it, that would seem to violate the “equal protection” clause of the 14th amendment. Why should some Americans be denied legal rights available to others?
So here’s where the conservative judges come in. How come I never read about conservative judges upholding the Constitution by striking down these violations of the equal protection clause? I’m not saying that conservative judges never make “liberal” rulings. In some obvious cases, such as flag-burning, conservatives did uphold the 1st amendment. (Of course in this period of radical left-wing speech codes, the 1st amendment is being increasingly viewed as a right wing idea, similar to the 2nd amendment.) But overall, when I read articles about how conservative justices rule, it usually tends to favor policy outcomes that are “conservative”.
2. I recently did a post showing how pessimism is intellectually fashionable. Another good example of this problem is Greece’s supposedly “unpayable” public debt. I’ve always been skeptical of the claim that Greece’s debt was unpayable. To me, it seemed more a question of the Greek’s not wanting to repay the debt. Like a number of other European countries, Greece’s government spends over 50% of GDP. But you can have a perfectly fine Western social welfare state spending far less (say 30% to 40%), as we observe in both rich countries like Australia and Switzerland and poorer countries such as Estonia and Slovakia. If Greece reduced the non-interest part of its spending down that range, it would be able to divert enough funds to service its debt.
I have not followed events in Greece, but I do notice that yields on Greek debt are now plummeting, to levels suggesting that Greece is not likely to default on its debt. I did a post last May that pointed out that the debt market’s implied probability of default had fallen to 40%. Since then, bond yields on Greek public debt have plunged to well below 4%, 200 basis points below the levels of last May.
That does not prove that Greece will not default on its debt, rather that default is certainly not inevitable. Once again, the pessimists were wrong. And once again the good news got almost no press attention, while the previous bad news got headlines in the “serious” international media.
If you form an opinion about the world by consuming the media, you will be consistently wrong about things. Your views will be too pessimistic on issues where the media is already pessimistic, and perhaps a bit too optimistic in areas receiving no media attention, but where a “back swan” could appear suddenly.
3. In an opinion piece in the NYT, Angus Deaton made the following claim:
This evidence supports on-the-ground observation in the United States. Kathryn Edin and Luke Shaefer have documented the daily horrors of life for the several million people in the United States who actually do live on $2 a day, in both urban and rural America. Matthew Desmond’s ethnography of Milwaukee explores the nightmare of finding urban shelter among the American poor.
It is hard to imagine poverty that is worse than this, anywhere in the world.
A person may have difficulty imagining far worse poverty levels in other countries, but that’s not because they do not exist. In fact, the bottom 2% of the world community is so much worse off than the bottom 2% of Americans that they might as well be living on different planets. For people who don’t understand this fact, I’d suggest they read more about what life is really like for the world’s poorest people in places like Congo, North Korea, Somalia, Mali and Yemen. (I’m actually pretty surprised to read this comment from Deaton, who’s an expert on poverty.) Or read a book about the Great Leap Forward.
4. Unlike me, Ross Douthat does not suffer from Trump Derangement Syndrome. Indeed he writes opinion pieces that are 10 times more thoughtful and 100 times better written than the trash in this blog. I agree with almost everything is this brilliant essay:
And where an abnormal response to Trump has kept things on an even keel, it hasn’t been furious protests; rather, it’s been a collective decision by many different actors, from his own appointees to his congressional opponents to foreign leaders the world over, to simply behave as if he isn’t actually the president, as if the system around him is what matters, and his expressed desires are just a reality TV performance.
So why will some readers be surprised by my claim that Douthat and I agree? Because it looks like we disagree:
Me: THE TRUMP PRESIDENCY IS A COMPLETE $&%@&# FARCE!!!!!!!!!!!!
Douthat: Calm down folks, the Trump presidency is not a tragedy, just a farce.
Like I keep saying, don’t be fooled by framing effects.
There is one silver lining to Trump—he triggers some truly inspired writing. Kevin Williamson is one of the best.
5. I recently did a post on the rise of racism in the conservative movement. Others are seeing the same thing:
That says a lot about the conservative movement. Intolerance always existed within it, but part of its success was how it managed to suppress the appearance of intolerance, to hide it behind terms and ideas that masked the movement’s true motivations. [William] Kristol said that those elements were “less healthy than I thought or hoped.”
Those elements started to come forward in the 1990s, Kristol said, starting with Pat Buchanan and continuing with Trump. “He’s an effective demagogue,” Kristol said of the president. “And then the rationalization of Trump, acceptance of Trump by so many Republicans and some conservatives, including conservatives I worked with and respect, has been disturbing to me.”
Kristol’s lament echoed what conservative commentator Charlie Sykes told Andrew O’Hehir in October 2017. “I knew that it was there, but I did think it was the drunk at the end of the bar, or it was your bigoted uncle at Thanksgiving,” he said. “This was a fundamental moral failing [of the conservative movement] that we did not draw the line on things like that. And as a result, that kind of racism, those conspiracy theories, that paranoid style festered. And it festered to the point that we can no longer control it.”
6. My 12 recommendations for better living:
1. Lead by example, don’t tell other people what to do. (I.e. Tyler’s best advice is his life, not his list.)
2. Don’t emulate me.
3. Don’t write a principles of economics textbook.
4. Don’t be born in North Korea.
I’m still working on the other 2/3rds of my list.