The Morality of Capitalism

A discussion here a couple of weeks ago focused on a joint statement signed by over 180 CEOs, Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation, of major US companies about what social responsibilities, if any, that companies have toward anything other than making profit for owners. The guiding moral principle, articulated by economist Milton Friedman, had been anything that needlessly reduces profits is immoral. Thus, it would be moral for a company to donate money to a charity if it helped build public goodwill, thereby increasing profit. But, donating and not getting a profit would be immoral.

Friedman published an essay in 1970, The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits," argued that the best type of CEO was not one with an enlightened social conscience. CEOs with an enlightened social conscience were considered to be “highly subversive to the capitalist system,” at least in Friedman’s opinion.

An essay in the Economist magazine, What companies are for, comments on the joint statement. The essay argues it probably arose in part as a means to begin a defense against rising public sentiment that corporations should have some responsibility to society, the environment, business suppliers and workers. One source of concern is the rise of younger workers who feel that the businesses they work for should have a broader responsibility.

Also, democratic proposals for a broader corporate social conscience include a plan that would require U.S. corporations to turn over part of their board of directors to members chosen by employees and prohibiting corporations from buying back their own stock unless they offer a certain level of pay and benefits for workers. Another proposal is to require federal chartering of companies and revocation of their licenses if they unreasonably abuse the interests of staff, customers or communities. Such proposals would underpin a system where business determines and pursues social goals and not just narrow self-interest. Presumably, most corporations do not want that kind of regulation.

The Economist opposes efforts to impose a broader social conscience because it would risk “entrenching a class of unaccountable ceos who lack legitimacy,” arguing that would be a threat to long-term prosperity. The essay points out that some companies now endorse social causes popular with staff and customers or deploying capital for reasons other than efficiency, citing Microsoft financing $500 million for housing in Seattle. The Economist argues that such a broader social conscience creates two problems: a lack of accountability for the business elites who make decisions and a “lack of dynamism.” The essay asserts that “ordinary people would not have  a choice” in where resources are deployed. The implication is that special interests, politicians and business elites would corrupt the effort in the name of self-interest. To inject more citizen power into social conscience, the Economist proposes

The other problem, lack of dynamism, would arise from an alleged tendency of collective capitalism to not change. As evidence, the essay cited abuse of customers and poor quality products by AT&T and General Motors in the 1960s as being shielded in part by various claims of social benefit, e.g., jobs for life.

Not persuasive or realistic

The Economist’s libertarian arguments are not persuasive. Business elites already are not accountable. For example, no executive was prosecuted for any financial crime after the 2007-2009 financial crisis. American citizens already have no influence over policy, so that situation cannot get any worse. If it is true that collective capitalism turns out to dampen dynamism, then competitors will impose dynamism or the business will go away. The essay admits that businesses with a social conscience will continue to maximize profits. If laws are passed that impose a social conscience, the playing field will be leveled and no one will be allowed to play self-serving games shielded by false assertions of social conscience.

Finally, the essay argues that corporate accountability will be enhanced by broadening ownership so that more Americans own stocks by tinkering with the tax code. The essay admits that stock market power is heavily skewed toward rich people, so changing the tax code to expand the numbers of small investors will make no difference. In essence, the Economist raises concerns over the rise of problems that already exist and proposes solutions that will make little, if any, significant difference.

For the most part, most corporations will continue to have as little social conscience as they can for as long as they can. The major owners, not small shareholders, have power and they will fight to keep social conscience from damaging their investment. The only way to grow social conscience is to impose it by law. Corporations are already building their defenses to fight off social conscience. The the Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation is an early step in the defense against social conscience. The next steps? Most likely, the most obvious ones: bring on the campaign contributions and call out the lobbyists.

To impeach or not to impeach... that is the question.

A friend and I were discussing Trump's possible impeachment, on another blog.  While s/he thinks Trump should be impeached for ethical reasons, I imagined how that might play out:

As a progressive democrat, I also think Trump deserves impeachment for what I see as his unstable actions.  So I wonder, do we democrats do the ethical thing and formally address his seemingly bad behavior with impeachment proceedings?  Or do we do the practical thing and let him keep destroying himself and his credibility, daily, to our political benefit? It really seems to come down to those two options.

Let’s say the Democratic House formally impeaches, but the Republican Senate doesn't convict. That likely riles up his base, getting the “feels sorry for ‘poor persecuted’ Trump” crowd and the “we’ll show ‘em” crowd even more indignant and pissed off, as Trump emboldens and encourages them, via his tweets and rallies. His supporters come out in force for the 2020 election, and Trump not only gets four more years, but maybe a complete republican congress again, to back his policies. Then, for Trump and McConnell, the sky's the limit... and then some! No holds barred! The statute of limitations has expired on Trump's previous actions, and he can no longer be held legally responsible (by a powerless democratic minority) for his so-called "wrongdoings." Plus, a new precedent has been set as to how a POTUS can act and what s/he can get away with. Yes, a lot of tentacles, as always. Many alternate scenarios can play out, granted.

Barring something coming out of the (semi) blue (e.g., he has a heart attack and dies [btw, look for a "fake one" for next year's October's surprise], or he up and quits, or he’s proven to be involved in a scandal of inescapable and monumental proportions, or he manages to get republicans to finally turn against him, openly and in force, etc.); barring such events, we have 14 official months (16 if we count lame duck period) of him to still put up with.  "God help us" in those two intervening months!

Our country is already a political mess, IMO.  We're losing worldwide support from all our allies who no longer trust us, plus all the other problems festering out there. I’m thinking, just wait it out and hope not to stir his hornet’s nest of followers into reacting in his favor, and hope a democratic administration takes over (i.e., gets their chance to mess things up too ;).

But it’s really difficult (at least for me) to guess which way to go: To do the (ethically) right thing, or to do the practical (selfish) thing? IDK.

What is your opinion?  Should Trump be impeached?  Please present your argument(s).  And thanks for recommending.

The 9/11 Attacks: A Brief Origin and Cost Summary

Origin

Some of the origin story is bitterly contested. Bin Laden explained why he attacked the US in an open letter. Several main reasons are given. They are US support for Israel (an assertion that Israel and many or most of its supporters bitterly reject), aggression against Muslims and Palestinians (also contested), support of aggression against Muslims in Somalia, Russia and elsewhere, sanctions against Iraq, and bad morals, e.g., fornication, debauchery and lies. Bin Laden also mentions other reasons, e.g., America spreads diseases and created AIDS as a “Satanic American Invention.”

The US military presence in Saudi Arabia may also be part of the motivation behind the attacks.

Cost

The 9/11 attacks arguably led to two wars, Afghanistan and Iraq. It is unlikely that the US would have attacked Iraq if the 9/11 attacks had not provided some justification for it. The rationale for Iraq included an illusory threat from weapons of mass destruction and a false belief that Iraq harbored and supported terrorists that were somehow related to 9/11. Costs of wars since 9/11 and in the future are estimated to amount to about $6 trillion, with the bulk of that going to the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, which were significantly or mostly funded with added federal debt.

A close personal acquaintance is a senior federal bank regulator. He pointed out that the 9/11 attacks caused a major shift in the focus of his agency's effort from ordinary financial crimes to tracking terrorist funding. Much federal attention in multiple agencies turned from business as usual to anti-terrorism. One consequence of the attention shift in bank regulation was decreased pressure on ordinary crime. That, plus ideology-driven anti-regulation politics, were factors in the financial and housing crises of 2007-2009. Costs of those disasters are hard to pin down, but some individuals paid a high price, e.g., job loss causing loss of home. Economic cost estimates of the financial crisis run as high as $22 trillion (original GAO report). Not all of that loss can be attributed to 9/11, but some of it arguably can. My acquaintance believes that some of the loss should be attributed to 9/11.

There are other costs, including social disruption over the wars and exacerbation of the 2001 recession. Economic losses and costs from impaired ability of wounded veterans to work and for health care will be incurred over their lifetimes. America will be paying for the consequences of the 9/11 attacks for decades.

Human Cognitive Biases in Politics

Human cognition is complex. Perceptions of reality and thinking about what is perceived can be influenced by one or more biases. Most of our thinking, about 99%, is unconscious, so what we become aware of and consciously think about is almost always influenced by thinking we cannot be aware of. Science is still sorting out all the baises, conditions where they are triggered, their interactions, their relative influence on seeing reality accurately or distorting it and consciously thinking rationally or not. Irrational conscious thinking dominates politics for most people most of the time.

This organization of biases posits four kinds of situations that trigger our biases, such as when we need to act quickly or when there is too much information to process. Although cognitive biases are usually defined as systematic patterns of deviation from rationality in judgment, they evolved to help people make sense of the world, react quickly, survive and maybe even cooperate in groups. Because of that, biases must sometimes lead to rational judgment and good decisions. It is reasonable to believe that, under normal circumstances, our biases are at least as helpful in dealing with the world as they are in fostering mistakes and misunderstandings.

For better or worse, politics isn't normal circumstances because issues are usually complex, usually significantly opaque and often lied about or distorted. Also, politics implicates powerful psychological factors that trigger biases. Those factors include our morals, beliefs, self-esteem, identity and uncontrollable unconscious emotional reactions. Existing evidence suggests most people are more irrational than rational about politics most of the time. Two researchers describe the situation like this:

“. . . . the typical citizen drops down to a lower level of mental performance as soon as he enters the political field. He argues and analyzes in a way which he would readily recognize as infantile within the sphere of his real interests. . . . cherished ideas and judgments we bring to politics are stereotypes and simplifications with little room for adjustment as the facts change. . . . . the real environment is altogether too big, too complex, and too fleeting for direct acquaintance. We are not equipped to deal with so much subtlety, so much variety, so many permutations and combinations. Although we have to act in that environment, we have to reconstruct it on a simpler model before we can manage it.”

Biases affect how we remember and mentally reconstruct things so that we believe we can manage them.

Biases that affect thinking about politics include the following:

1. Confirmation bias is a belief bias that often leads people to seek out, interpret, and recall information in a way that confirms their preconceived beliefs and ideas. People attempt to protect and defend their existing beliefs by paying attention to information that confirms then and ignoring or discounting information that could challenge their beliefs. Some biased social media and other information sources play on confirmation bias to reinforce false beliefs by not conveying contradictory information. This bias can lead to beliefs in anything that supports beliefs, even if no facts are given or the facts given are incorrect. When a politician tells supporters what they want to hear, they’re using this bias.

2. Motivated reasoning is an emotion-biased decision-making process that tends to lead to beliefs that are psychologically more comfortable than less biased or unbiased thinking would lead to. This leads to false beliefs that do not change despite convincing contrary evidence. This bias leads people to unconsciously seek out information that confirms what they already believe, not to search rationally for information that would confirm or disconfirm a belief. Motivated reasoning leads some people to cherry-pick information so they can reject the science about climate change as false.

3. Framing bias leads to decisions based on the way information is presented, instead of basing decisions on facts and logic. The same facts presented in a different ways lead to different conclusions about the information. In politics, framing is often used to presents facts in such a way that implicates a problem that is in need of a solution. Death tax vs estate tax and tax reduction vs tax relief are different ways to frame those issues to elicit different unconscious responses.

4. Narrative fallacy is based on our affinity for stories because stories help make sense of information and our ability to relate to it. It arises from limited human ability to absorb at sequences of facts without creating an explanation for them. Our minds want to create a non-existent link or relationship among facts because ambiguity is uncomfortable for many or most people. This also helps us remember the facts and make more sense of them, even though our understanding is at least partly false. The narrative fallacy is related to, or overlapping with, framing bias.

5. Conjunction fallacy arises when occurs when a person assumes that specific conditions are more likely than a single general one. This is used in politics to make an unlikely event more credible for voters by adding certain facts. The president's claim that that millions voted illegally in the 2016 presidential election and that caused him to lose the popular vote is a conjunction fallacy.

6. Illusory truth effect arises because humans are more favorable toward familiar things that are easy to understand. The brain is wired to tend to accept what is familiar, which often comes from repeated exposure to false information. Repeated false assertions that president Obama was a Muslim in view of his middle name, Hussein, and his time living in Indonesia, a Muslim country, led many people to falsely believe Obama was a Muslim.

7. Halo effect arises from the weight of the first impression of something or someone and that transfers to false beliefs about other things that are unrelated. Many people believed that because the president was good at business (a false belief due to the illusory truth effect?), he would also be good at least with economic policy, if not all aspects of governing.

One political ideologue candidly described how his political ideology triggered unconscious bias in him:

“Ever since college I have been a libertarian—socially liberal and fiscally conservative. I believe in individual liberty and personal responsibility. I also believe in science as the greatest instrument ever devised for understanding the world. So what happens when these two principles are in conflict? My libertarian beliefs have not always served me well. Like most people who hold strong ideological convictions, I find that, too often, my beliefs trump the scientific facts. This is called motivated reasoning, in which our brain reasons our way to supporting what we want to be true. 

My libertarianism also once clouded my analysis of climate change. I was a longtime skeptic, mainly because it seemed to me that liberals were exaggerating the case for global warming as a kind of secular millenarianism—an environmental apocalypse requiring drastic government action to save us from doomsday through countless regulations that would handcuff the economy and restrain capitalism, which I hold to be the greatest enemy of poverty. Then I went to the primary scientific literature on climate and discovered that there is convergent evidence from multiple lines of inquiry that global warming is real and human-caused: temperatures increasing, glaciers melting, Arctic ice vanishing, Antarctic ice cap shrinking, sea-level rise corresponding with the amount of melting ice and thermal expansion . . . . .”

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