Worþy Reads: For 2021-08-12 Th
A preview of my weekly read-around for the Washington Center for Equitable Growth
Worthy Reads from Equitable Growth:
1) Back when I worked at the Treasury, it was completely and totally routine for us to have distribution tables by income—not by race, but the ones by income were not an unreasonable proxy. It was a problem that are distributional tables were not very good. To make them good would’ve required a significant staff boost. The same will be true for CBO. I want to be sure that everyone voting for this will also be voting for a substantial increase in the CBO budget that it will need to do a good job of carrying out this increase in mission:
Corey Husak: Congress Needs Distribution Analyses to Make Informed, Equitable Policy Choices, & the CBO FAIR Scoring Act Would Deliver It: ‘Before voting on legislation, members of Congress usually receive a cost estimate, or score, for that legislation from the Congressional Budget Office. This score provides nonpartisan CBO analysts’ best estimate of how the legislation will affect the federal budget deficit. A cost estimate… represents only one side of the equation…. Members of Congress rarely receive analysis to assess who will benefit from bills and by how much…. Reps. Ro Khanna (D-CA) and Dean Phillips (D-MN) in the U.S. House of Representatives and Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Michael Bennet (D-CO) in the Senate introduced the CBO FAIR Scoring Act… directing the Congressional Budget Office to prepare distribution analyses by race and income for all legislation with substantial budgetary effects… provid[ing] members… with CBO analysts’ best estimate of how the legislation would affect different groups of people—critical information for evaluating who would benefit…
2) Michelle Meagher is a truly impressive economist and policy analyst, and this is one of the most insightful an interesting interview sessions I have seen this year:
Michael Kades: In Conversation with Michelle Meagher: ‘Kades and Meagher discuss: The Balanced Economy Project and the missing infrastructure of antitrust policy. The global monopoly problem. The problem with worshiping competition. The broader impact of failing competition on the environment and society. The monopoly problem with global supply chains. The problem of monopoly power in global economic development. The big antitrust and competition research questions…
LINK: <https://equitablegrowth.org/in-conversation-with-michelle-meagher/>
3) Hoisting this from more than a year ago. I would say that it is not so much that the plague has increased income or wealth inequality, but rather that it has very much sharpened the stakes. Differences that you could say were differences between convenience and inconvenience before are now differences that are matters of health and sickness, and in the limit of life and death:
Leah Stokes & Matto Mildenberger (2020): A Plan for Equitable Climate Policy in the United States: ‘This crisis will increasingly and dramatically exacerbate economic inequality in the United States. Low- and middle-income Americans have minimal safety net protections from the impact of climate change. These communities are more vulnerable to health-related risks, don’t have the financial resources to recover from climate disasters, and are more vulnerable to climate-related hazards in the first instance. And U.S. workers and communities who may face economic costs from the energy transition to a more clean economy don’t have guaranteed access to healthcare, pensions, and the necessary assistance to maintain their dignity and quality of life. Already, insurers are declining coverage for housing against growing climate risks such as flooding and wildfires. Without equitable climate policies in place, low-income Americans will have to face a double threat. They will be more likely to die in heatwaves, struggle to recover from hurricanes and wildfires, and, without health insurance, face greater burdens from diseases pushing into new ranges as the planet warms. At the same time, they will struggle the most to pay for the costs associated with preventing even worse climate change impacts…. Equitable climate policy is both good economic policy and good politics…
LINK: <https://equitablegrowth.org/a-plan-for-equitable-climate-policy-in-the-united-states/>
4) Hoisted from last winter. The extent to which we have been under investing in infrastructure for a generation and a half now is truly appalling. We working in the Clinton administration understood the problem, but we found we had too much on our plate and too little time before our congressional majorities collapsed. And neither of the George W. Bush, Obama, or Trump administrations seemed to have a clue:
David Mitchell: The evidence Behind Biden’s Big Plans: ‘During his first 100 days in office, President Joe Biden turned core elements of his Build Back Better campaign plan into concrete policy proposals…. The American Jobs Plan… large-scale, and in some cases permanent, investments in the nation’s physical and human infrastructure…. Many of the big ideas included in the two new plans are backed by extensive academic evidence, much of which has been funded and featured by the Washington Center for Equitable Growth…. We know from academic research that the decline in public investments has weakened growth and increased inequality…
Worthy Reads from Elsewhere:
1) it’s not at all clear to me that we will get by the Delta wave on the plague without a substantial increase in the plague death rate. There are a lot of people who are not vaccinated, and while the non-vaccinated are disproportionately young, they are not entirely young, and they are extremely reckless:
Dylan Scott: The US Epidemic—& People’s Risk from Covid–19—Has Changed: ‘Covid cases rise with delta variant, but deaths don’t thanks to vaccine…. Unvaccinated people are up to eight times as likely to be infected with Covid–19 and experience symptoms. They are also 25 times more likely to be hospitalized with serious symptoms, and 24 times as likely to die of the infection, compared to people who are vaccinated. Unvaccinated people with natural immunity due to previous infection probably aren’t showing up much in the case numbers right now because… immunity appears fairly robust to date…. Immunocompromised people…. Vaccines appear less effective for them…. "Vaccines are literally life-saving, but only via the decisions of others,” Kumi Smith, a University of Minnesota epidemiologist, told me…. Partly thanks to the vaccine and partly because health care providers know a lot more now about how best to treat…deaths have not risen nearly as quickly as cases in the current wave…. The risk of asymptomatic vaccinated people transmitting the virus is currently one of the big open questions…
2) Highlighting this from three years ago because I think it is a very, very, very important to our understanding what is going on with our political economy:
Adam Serwer (2018): The Cruelty Is the Point: ‘President Trump and his supporters find community by rejoicing in the suffering of those they hate and fear…. Trump’s only true skill is the con; his only fundamental belief is that the United States is the birthright of straight, white, Christian men, and his only real, authentic pleasure is in cruelty. It is that cruelty, and the delight it brings them, that binds his most ardent supporters to him, in shared scorn for those they hate and fear: immigrants, black voters, feminists, and treasonous white men who empathize with any of those who would steal their birthright. The president’s ability to execute that cruelty through word and deed makes them euphoric. It makes them feel good, it makes them feel proud, it makes them feel happy, it makes them feel united. And as long as he makes them feel that way, they will let him get away with anything, no matter what it costs them…
3) Disillusion with utopian left-wing politics has long followed a standard pattern. There are impressive parallels between disillusionment with the French revolution, the Lenin-Stalin wave, the Mao wave, the Castro wave, and the North Atlantic “new left” wave. There are important lessons for remaining moored to reality and preventing overreach in times of political transformation to be gained from history here, but I am not quite sure what they are:
Isaac Deutscher (1957): The Ex-Communist’s Conscience: ’The communist of the early drafts was a revolutionary before he became, or was expected to become, a puppet. The communist of the later drafts hardly got the chance to breathe the genuine air of revolution. Nevertheless, the original motives for joining were similar, if not identical, in almost every case: experience of social injustice or degradation; a sense of insecurity bred by slumps and social crises; and the craving for a great ideal or purpose, or for a reliable intellectual guide through the shaky labyrinth of modern society…. Socialism, classless society, the withering away of the State—all seemed around the corner…. Communism seemed a new Prometheus—except that he would not be pinned to the rock by Zeus’s wrath…. Our ex-communist now bitterly denounces the betrayal of his hopes. This appears to him to have had almost no precedent. Yet as he eloquently describes his early expectations and illusions, we detect a strangely familiar tone. Exactly so did the disillusioned Wordsworth and his contemporaries look back upon their first youthful enthusiasm for the French revolution…
LINK: <https://archive.org/details/hereticsrenegade00deut/page/n11/mode/2up>
4) A very smart man here. The line that editors care not about objectivity but about not being accused of lacking objectivity is brutal, and true. Not in my wheelhouse, but very much worth reading:
Wesley Lowery: A Reckoning Over Objectivity, Led by Black Journalists: ‘Alex S. Jones…. Objectivity… “also means not trying to create the illusion of fairness by letting advocates pretend in your journalism that there is a debate about the facts when the weight of truth is clear.” He critiqued “he-said/she-said reporting, which just pits one voice against another,” as “the discredited face of objectivity. But that is not authentic objectivity.”… In newsrooms today… focus [is] on predicting whether a given sentence, opening paragraph or entire article will appear objective to a theoretical reader, who is invariably assumed to be white… depriv[ing] their readers of plainly stated facts that could expose reporters to accusations of partiality or imbalance…. Neutral objectivity trips over itself to find ways to avoid telling the truth…
LINK: <https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/23/opinion/objectivity-black-journalists-coronavirus.html>
5) Funny, but true:
Kameron Hurley: ’We’re paying $2000 a month to make spouse’s grandma’s longterm care possible on her pension plus Social Security. My parents have also hit this wall and, it’s not looking good. My long-term care plan is to keel over dead in my garden at 70 and get eaten by possums. America!…
LINK: <https://twitter.com/KameronHurley/status/1425065494244167680>
6) As I had predicted:
Matthew C. Klein: U.S. Inflation Is Normalizing: ‘The temporary acceleration in price increases is already fading. But keep an eye on a few consumer services dependent on low-wage workers…. Prices that were depressed during the pandemic continue to normalize and as consumer demand for motor vehicles continues to moderate. The Consumer Price Index in July was 0.47% higher than in June on a seasonally-adjusted basis. That’s the slowest monthly CPI inflation rate since February 2021 (0.35%) and significantly slower than in June (0.90%). Inflation is currently running just 1.1 standard deviations faster than the January 1995-February 2020 average, compared to 2.7 standard deviations faster in June…
LINK: <https://theovershoot.co/p/us-inflation-is-normalizing>
7) I think this is painting things a bit too rosy. Whether it is true or not will ultimately depend on the shape the Reconciliation Bill takes, and whether it passes. And the Reconciliation Bill may not pass at all, not in any form:
Noah Smith: Score 2 for Bidenomics: ‘The bipartisan infrastructure bill is a solid success for the new economic paradigm…. It’s a very rare thing for Republicans to pass legislation that helps the country while a Democrat is President; if Dems act too triumphant about the bill, it could cause the GOP to lose face, since that would mean they handed Biden a partisan victory. Instead, they have to wail and moan, both to allow Republicans to say “Hey look, we got away with stiffing the Dems”, and to leave no doubt in the Dems’ mind that they’ll be letting their voters down if the reconciliation bill gets watered down. In fact, the bill is a major success for the Bidenomics agenda, even if Biden himself ends up reaping only modest political rewards. Remember that government investment is a core element of Biden’s program. Government investment has been falling as a percent of GDP for decades, even as private investment has mostly held up…. Cleaning up lead is an amazing landmark initiative, and of course electric vehicles are great, but I’d have probably skipped the rural broadband (as the technology threatens to be obsolete soon). But you know what? These kinds of spending initiatives are highly encouraging, because they suggest that our leaders have at least some small smidgen of vision for a country that doesn’t just look like a patched-up version of 1985. I mean, come on—we just got Republicans to vote to replace all the lead pipes in the nation. How cool is that??…
LINK: <https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/score-2-for-bidenomics>
8) this is definitely not in my wheelhouse, but I found it funny and true enough to be worth highlighting here:
Jonathan M. Katz: Letter to Some Middle-Aged Contrarians: ‘You’ll never go broke selling racial innocence…. The successful contrarian’s… takes are always a bit edgy, a bit haute couture, but ultimately they reify what a substantial portion of the market and those in power are primed to believe. Just as with any other kind of fashion, the easiest sell is to refurbish and repackage what was popular a few years, if not decades, before…. There is always some excuse that can be made as the podcast host strokes her chin and says: “The simple, accepted narrative that we all seemed to go along with—that was just all too clean and too simple.” And as long as there is someone willing to pay for that sort of thing, anyone willing to disrupt the debates of the present with the pieties of the past will be able to find good, if not entirely honest, paying work…
LINK: <https://katz.substack.com/p/letter-to-some-middle-aged-contrarians>
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"Sure, their takes are always a bit edgy, a bit haute couture, but ultimately they reify what a substantial portion of the market and those in power are primed to believe. Just as with any other kind of fashion, the easiest sell is to refurbish and repackage what was popular"
Does this not remind you of Denis Dimbleby Bagley's speech in How to get Ahead in Advertising? It runs like this:
"Let me try and clarify some of this for you. Best Company Supermarkets are not interested in selling wholesome foods. They are not worried about the nation's health. What is concerning them, is that the nation appears to be getting worried about its health, and that is what's worrying Best Co., because Best Co. wants to go on selling them what it always has, i.e. white breads, baked beans, canned foods, and that suppurating, fat squirting little heart attack traditionally known as the British sausage. So, how can we help them with that? Clearly, we are looking for a label. We need a label brimming with health, and everything from a nosh pot to a white sliced will wear one with pride. And although I'm aware of the difficulties of coming to terms with this, it must be appreciated from the beginning, that even the nosh pot must be low in something, and if it isn't, it must be high in something else, and that is its health-giving ingredient we will sell."
Dylan Scott's "less effective" is a little too compressed, when you're talking about risk reduction factors around two rather than, say, ten. "Incredibly effective" would be another way to say the same thing.