Honestly, What Kind of a Nation Are We?

Recently, a number of news items have appeared that discuss unhappiness among at least some white people visiting plantations about mention of slavery and slaves. The article notes that visitors to plantations in the South are overwhelmingly white. The article notes that visitors to plantations in the South are overwhelmingly white. Some of those apparently do not want to hear anything about any role that slaves played in building and maintaining the economy of the old South.

A recent article quoted one visitor at Monticello, Thomas Jefferson’s estate, as saying: “Why are you talking about that? You should be talking about the plants.” in response to a guide describing how slaves built, planted and tended a terrace of vegetables on the estate. Another visitor at a plantation in South Carolina complained that she “didn’t come to hear a lecture on how the white people treated slaves.”

In recent months, plantations in the South that are open to the public have begun to talk more honestly about slaves, slavery and how they were the core of the economy and created the wealthy plantation owner class and its way of life. In parallel with polarized politics, history has now become polarized too. Just as some people want comfortable political echo chambers with the realities they portray, some want comfortable historical political echo chambers with their realities, true, false, incomplete or whatever else.

One online review explained that mention of slaves and slavery ruined the anticipated Monticello experience for one visitor: “For someone like myself, going to Monticello is like an Elvis fan going to Graceland. Then to have the tour guide essentially make constant reference to what a bad person he really was just ruined it for me.”

And, some historical sites have a different take on history. Another source included these comments from a guide at the Jefferson Davis estate in Mississippi talking about her role as a guide: “I want to tell them the honest truth about it, that slavery was good and bad. It was good for the people that didn't know how to take care of themself, and they needed a job. You had good slave owners like Jefferson Davis who took care of his slaves, and treated them like family. He loved them.”

That is the problem with reality. It does not care what people believe or want. It simply is what it is. This is an example of people wanting to see one reality by avoiding part of it. Even today, some Americans simply do not want to hear about (presumably deal with) American slavery.

What are we?

In the recent past, slaves at Monticello were referred to as “Mr. Jefferson’s people,” which is literally true, or occasionally “the souls of his family,” which isn't literally true. Over his life, Jefferson owned over 600 slaves. The shift to be more honest and open about slaves and slavery at some plantations is being prompted in part by “a hunger for real history” among some Americans. Other visitors are pushing back, calling reference to historical facts things like propaganda, playing politics or political correctness.

The issue of political correctness has been discussed here before and characterized as usually being cover for dark free speech and authoritarianism in political rhetoric. And, maybe reality aversion could be characterized as escapism at best and self-delusion and/or propaganda at worst.

So, one question that pops right up is this: What are we Americans? Clearly the answer is that we are  not a monolith. Some want history with all the gory, inconvenient details. Others want exposure to only a pleasant slice of historical reality. A few probably want to deny it. Probably more than a few want to distort it into something it isn’t.

Is it best to let people live with their beliefs without raising obviously unhappy facts? Since racism in America remains a serious problem, is it is better for talk of slavery to be tamped down in public so as not to aggravate people who find this kind of information both unpleasant and socially polarizing? What is the cost-benefit? Is it better to try to leave history as unpolarized and unpoliticized as possible, even if it means actively suppressing it under some circumstances?

Policy Proposal: Defense of Democracy and Rebuilding Trust

By now, most minds are made up about the president. Further complaining about him isn’t going to change hardly any of those minds, if any at all. It is reasonable to believe that if he is re-elected, we will get four more years of what we got to date. In view of what is incoherent messaging by democrats, a positive vision of policies that may be possible to at least consider seems to be timely. This is the first of a series of posts on policies that would generally seem to make at least some sense to most people.

Other likely topics include 1. economic sustainability, budget, tax gap, taxation, wealth distribution,2. health care, 3. immigration, 4. jobs, 5. environment, 6. foreign policy, 7. education, 8. church-state separation, and 9. social policy, racism and social polarization, safety net spending.

This post centers on defense of democracy and means to rebuild trust among Americans toward democracy, democratic institutions and fellow citizens. A defense of both are sorely needed because both have been under sustained attack for years. Several of the policy proposals are taken from HR1, the first major legislation the democratic House passed after taking control in January 2019. The Senate majority leader has promised to block the bill, so there is no chance of HR1 becoming law as long as the GOP controls the Senate or the White House.

Defense of democracy and trust-building – anti-corruption, anti-tyranny, pro-transparency

Policy	Rationale
1. Public campaign financing: Provide $1-5 in public funds to match each $1 in direct or indirect private funding for candidates and political parties	Public opinion: about 65% of Americans want the role of special interest money in politics reduced; Reality: private entities backed by campaign contributions write laws for their own benefit not for the public interest; the process is usually cloaked in secrecy to hide the truth of law-making from the public; Cost: Unknown; estimate $1-5 billion initially; Benefit: public financing will at least partially reduce special interest money influence and partially counteract the propaganda and lies that special interests and many or most politicians routinely employ against the public
2. Tax returns: At least 45 days before a primary, general or special election, all candidates for federal office and all federal judges must make public their tax returns for the previous 6 years All senior federal employees must make public their tax returns for the previous 4 years within 60 days after passage of this law and at least 45 days before they assume a new senior federal position	Public opinion: 59% of Americans believe it is necessary for presidential candidates to publicly release their tax returns; Reality: Requiring elected federal officials, judges and senior bureaucrats to publicly disclose their tax returns shows possible illegal conflicts of interest and that is evidence the person’s loyalty is to the constitution, the rule of law and the public interest, not self-interest; Cost: very low; some persons will refuse to disclose, resulting in loss of those politicians and employees; Benefit: transparency increases and disclosure provides a basis for trust that politicians, judges and bureaucrats are not conflicted or tax cheats
3. Campaign financing transparency: Super PACs and “dark money” political organizations must make their donors public within 2 weeks of any donation; violation is a felony and carries a minimum mandatory jail term of no less than 10 months for the first conviction and 24 months for each subsequent conviction	Public opinion: about 65% of Americans want the role of special interest money in politics reduced; Reality: private entities backed by campaign contributions usually go to the limit of the law or beyond to avoid disclosing their identities; most wealthy individuals and interests fight against transparency to hide the real extent of their influence over government from the public; Cost: very low; Benefit: transparency increases and disclosure provides a basis for the public to see how much money private sector special interests spend to buy influence over politicians and laws
4. Campaign and government operations transparency: Require social media, including Facebook and Twitter, to disclose the source of money for political ads on their platforms and disclose how much money was or will be spent within 2 weeks of the order for the ads Require disclosure of any political spending by government contractors to show the flow of domestic and foreign money into the elections by targeting shell companies and all other sources of money into federal politics Strengthen law and oversight to prohibit any coordination between candidates and Super PACs Violation is a felony and carries a minimum mandatory jail term of no less than 10 months for the first conviction and 24 months for each subsequent conviction	Public opinion: about 65% of Americans want the role of special interest money in politics reduced; Reality: private entities and foreign adversaries, including Russia and China, pay for propaganda and lies on social media to undermine trust in democracy, democratic institutions and trust in fellow citizens; these efforts are successful and have adversely influenced American society and social harmony; Cost: very low; Benefit: transparency increases and disclosure provides a basis for the public to see how much money foreign adversaries and domestic special interests spend to buy influence over politicians and laws
5. Anti-corruption and ethics: Ethics opinions by the Office of Government Ethics are binding, not advisory; all appearances, even tenuous appearances, of any kind of a conflict of interest are strictly prohibited, as are all actual conflicts of interest of any kind; expand the power of the Office of Government Ethics to do more oversight and enforcement; establish stricter lobbying registration requirements, including more oversight of foreign agents by the Foreign Agents Registration Act All ethics opinions are to be made public to the maximum extent possible as soon as possible	Public opinion: a majority of Americans' views of government remain negative; trust and approval ratings of the executive and legislative branches is low; Reality: Ethics has been reduced to at least an appearance of being relatively ineffective in fighting against both opacity and conflicts of interest; majorities hold unfavorable views of both major political parties; Cost: estimate tens of millions in added oversight and enforcement costs; some possible loss of federal employees due to refusal to comply; Benefit: transparency increases and ethics is elevated to a status of mandatory compliance; ethics is returned to a status of having real impact on all federal employees and that provides the public with some empirical basis for trust in terms of ethics, transparency and conflicts of interest
6. Vote integrity, vote participation and voter registration: Create automatic national voter registration that asks voters to opt out, rather than opt in; shift responsibility to states to maximize voter registration with loss of federal infrastructure or other funds for states that fail to register at least 95% of eligible voters Mandatory early voting at least one week before any election Election Day is a holiday for federal employees and private sector businesses are strongly encouraged to do the same where possible; move elections from Tuesdays to Saturdays or Sundays Require poll workers to provide a two week notice if poll sites are to be changed; make colleges and universities a voter registration agency, in addition to the DMV, etc. End partisan gerrymandering in federal elections and prohibit voter roll purging; prohibit use of non-forwardable mail to remove voters from rolls Increase election security, including requiring the director of national intelligence to do regular checks on foreign threats and make public as much of the findings as national security permits; provide federal funding for security measures Impose a tax penalty for eligible voters who do not vote, unless they are unable to vote for good reason, for example, $25 for low income non-voters, $200 for middle income non-voters, and $10,000 for high income non-voters; adjust penalty rates up or down to attain at least 85% voter participation by imposing the lowest effective penalty Conduct a mandatory evaluation of electoral changes such as a national popular vote for president and ranked choice voting; make the findings public	Public opinion: 74% of Americans believe that voting is a top priority for good citizenship; Reality: voter participation is under attack, primarily or completely by conservatives falsely claiming massive voter fraud and other untrue reasons; voter purges and other measures that conservatives tend to implement amount to voter suppression, not fraud prevention; Cost: unknown; estimate tens of millions to hundreds of millions in the first election cycle, with costs possibly decreasing for election cycles thereafter; Benefit: voter participation increases; voting is easier for more people; the tax penalty incentivizes voting
7. Legislative transparency and public opinion: For all new significant or ‘qualifying’ laws from congress (spending or saving more than $100 million), conduct fair and neutral but rigorous opinion polling to determine the level of public support and opposition for the law; for laws where reliable public opinion data exists, that can replace the polling requirement Congressional supporters and opponents must attach to each new qualifying law a detailed rationale (no less than 3,000 words with no upper limit) for their support or opposition, including a detailed list of individuals and business entities that directly or indirectly contributed money or promises of anything of present or future value to support or oppose the law, what and how much was contributed, and how much key legislators who supported and opposed the law received; the rationale must be complete and as transparent as existing law allows, and if existing law does not allow a complete, honest rationale, then all interested parties are given notice that privacy, trade secrets or any other information they want kept secret will not be heard or considered in drafting of the law so that the public can be fully informed; when private sector individuals or attorneys draft any qualifying law or any part thereof, their identities, contributed language and employers must be included in the rationale The detailed rationale must clearly and directly identify the key facts, key assumptions and lines of reasoning for support of, or opposition to, the qualifying law; it must also provide an honest assessment of all significant positive and negative impacts on all significantly affected individuals, groups and entities The detailed rationale must be made public at least 2 weeks before it can be sent to the president for acceptance or veto Failure to provide a timely complete and honest rationale is a felony and carries a minimum mandatory jail term on the individuals responsible (at least one person in congress on each side and optionally one or more other federal employees on each side, including all private sector individuals who wrote any of the law) for failing to provide the detailed rationales; the jail term will be no less than 10 months for the first conviction and 24 months for each subsequent conviction	Public opinion: unknown; Reality: research data suggests that public opinion is irrelevant in affecting policy choices and laws; wealthy individuals and organized special interests dictate policy, not public opinion; public trust in congress is low and opacity in legislating is a major reason for that distrust; Cost: unknown, likely hundreds of millions per year; legislation may be slowed more than it is now;  Benefit: the public is shown (i) the rationale of both supporters and opponents for why they support or oppose any new law, (ii) who contributed how much to whom, and (iii) who wrote what portions of each law; light is shed on the legislative process and that affords the public with some basis for trust in congressional legislation

Information sources:

HR 1: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/11/30/18118158/house-democrats-anti-corruption-bill-hr-1-pelosi

Proposals 1, 3, 4. Poll: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/05/08/most-americans-want-to-limit-campaign-spending-say-big-donors-have-greater-political-influence/

Proposal 2. Poll: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/05/19/us/politics/poll-presidential-race.html

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/04/trump-tax-returns-voters-polls-show-americans-want-them.html

Proposal 5. Poll: https://news.gallup.com/opinion/polling-matters/221171/americans-perceive-government-2017.aspx

Proposal 6. Poll: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/07/02/what-makes-a-good-citizen-voting-paying-taxes-following-the-law-top-list/

Proposal 7. Poll: https://news.gallup.com/poll/1600/congress-public.aspx  

https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/gop-pledge-o-meter/promise/664/publish-the-text-of-bills-online-at-least-three-da/

https://www.newyorker.com/news/john-cassidy/is-america-an-oligarchy

So What Went Wrong?

In light of #sharpiegate and Hurricane #AlaDoriangate, Donald Trump's latest personal meltdown, I feel I have to make this comment, for what it's worth.

I have to wonder if Trump knows he could have been the greatest president in the entire history of the United States, something he hopes for and would complete his fondest dream.  After the usual shenanigans of the rough-and-tumble primaries and 2016 election, he could have done a complete 180°. 

It was already widely known that his friendship with and financial contributions to both sides of the political aisle (Democrats and Republicans) had always been a plus going for him, and something he could have built on and used to his and everyone's advantage.  With complete backing of a GOP congress for the first two years, he could have gotten so much done that basically all the people of America want:

• a major infrastructure program which would also have further stimulated the economy
• some sort of affordable healthcare for all, as he once promised
• comprehensive immigration reform, including for DACA
• a full-speed-ahead, no-holds-barred green energy program
• higher education promotion and assistance, a tide that lifts all our boats
• reasonable gun regulations to mitigate mass shootings, our U.S. way of life today.  

He’d still have kept his entire 30-something % base relatively happy (since he can do no wrong with them), and he’d have won over political factions of all stripes, including progressives who say they want all these things too. He would have been considered godlike, going down in the history books right alongside of Washington, Lincoln and FDR. We’d even be seriously suggesting putting his face on Mt. Rushmore. Wow!

But did he try to address and accomplish these difficult problems?  No.  He squandered his political capital on, among other things:

• a border wall NOT paid for by Mexico, but out of our states’ military budgets
• a trillion-and-a-half dollar tax break to the already wealthy, most of whom reinvested it in stock buybacks of their own companies
• managed to make our society, this beautiful melting pot experiment called America, even more xenophobic

As history played out, to Donald Trump and everyone else’s surprise, he became the unlikely President of the United States, was handed the keys to the most powerful office on the planet which was served up to him on a silver platter, but wasted that kind of power and influence on self-interest.

Do you agree with this assessment?  What did I get wrong?  Let’s discuss.

Measuring Cost-Benefit of Social Spending Programs

Welfare, food stamp and other social spending is controversial. Conservatives generally want to reduce or completely eliminate it, while liberals generally want to increase or maintain it. The to sides tend to disagree about the cost-benefit of such spending. To try to at least partly rationalize the debate, In July of 2019, Harvard University economists, Nathaniel Hendren and Ben Sprung-Keyser devised a way to analyze the costs and benefits of social spending. They wanted to both try to find a reliable a way to do a cost-benefit analysis and then apply the analytic protocol to see how 133 different federal, state and local spending programs performed over the last 50 years.

The analytic protocol is explained in detail at this link. Click on the “How is the MVPF calculated?” button at the top of the page and then scroll down the pop-up box that explains how each cost and benefit is measured from the time benefits are paid until the recipient is 33 years old. MVPF stands for the marginal value of public funding. Each element of cost and benefit is then laid out for the spending program under scrutiny, admissions expansions at Florida International University (FIU) for the example spending program. The published paper is at this link.

The basic measure MVPF is recipient willingness to pay divided by net government cost. WTP, willingness to pay, is a measure of how much the recipient would be willing to pay for the benefits.

Cost-benefit at age 33 for FIU admissions expansion

Cost-benefit projected to age 65 for FIU admissions expansion

In their executive summary, Hendren and Sprung-Keyser comment:
1. Direct investments in the health and education of low-income children yield the highest returns, but not every policy targeting children has a high MVPF. We find that expansions of health insurance to children, investments in preschool and K-12 education, and policies increasing college attainment all yield high returns.

2. Many direct investments in low-income children’s health and education pay for themselves. MVPFs are lower for policies targeting adults. We find lower MVPFs for policies that target adults. Indeed, MVPFs for these policies are often close to 1, indicating that their benefits are approximately equal to their costs.

3. MVPFs are lower for policies targeting adults. We find lower MVPFs for policies that target adults. Indeed, MVPFs for these policies are often close to 1, indicating that their benefits are approximately equal to their costs.

4. Some policies targeting adults have high MVPFs, particularly if they have spillovers onto children We find that spending on adults can result in high MVPFs if those policies have positive spillover effects on children.

5. We find high MVPFs for policies that target children throughout the full duration of childhood. This is true for a range of policies spanning from preschool and health programs for young children to college policies for older youth. This finding directly challenges the notion that opportunities for high-return investments in children decline rapidly with age.

Medicare analysis: MVPF = 1.63

Medicaid analysis: MVPF = 10.24

If this method to analyze cost-benefit is reasonably accurate, it should help inform governments and policy makers to make better funding decisions. For people who want to increase or decrease welfare spending, they will either take this kind of analysis into account, or ignore or even reject it as flawed or lies. Presumably, most libertarians and anti-government conservatives will continue to argue that all welfare spending is illegal or unconstitutional. They will continue to make those arguments, but at least they do that in the face of data strongly suggesting there can be significant social benefit from at least some government spending programs.

1983 Medicaid expansion to children analysis: MVPF = infinite