Category: Economics
Coal (literally) Blows
Each year, from its smokestacks, a typical coal plant blows off 200 lbs of arsenic, 170 lbs of mercury, 100 lbs of lead, 4 lbs of cadmium, smaller amounts of thorium and uranium, plus an extraordinary 1 MILLION lbs of assorted particulate junk, perfectly sized to fit into your lungs’ alveoli. Remarkably, coal contains 76 of the 92 naturally-occurring elements on planet Earth – so when it’s burned, clouds of toxins are released into the environment, to settle on lakes, farms and cities, to find their way into our bodies through the food we eat and the air we breath. We havent even mentioned the coal ash that gets left behind – which is so radioactive that, kW for kW, coal delivers 100 times more radioactivity into the environment than nuclear power.
And so even if coal released no CO2 at all – as in the case of so-called “clean coal” (which doesnt exist) – it would still spectacularly suck. But coal billows CO2 into the atmosphere like nothing else. Few are aware that even though natural gas and coal create electricity via similar processes, coal is so inefficient that it releases DOUBLE the CO2 per unit of energy generated.
Obama this week released a plan to reduce American CO2 emissions. Given that 40% of all such emissions come from electric power plants, and 40% of all American electricity is generated by burning coal, any such plan will involve transitioning out of coal. But what makes the transition so economically attractive in the short term isnt about CO2 – it’s about the 25,000 premature deaths and MILLIONS of days of work lost each year in the US because of all the other stuff released when we burn coal.
Quite reasonably, rich and poor countries have different attitudes toward environmentalism. In rich countries, people have huge individual stockpiles of human capital, and so it’s extremely costly when workers get sick and are unable to work – and even more costly if they die prematurely, taking their human capital with them. In poor countries, coal may make economic sense, because workers are less productive, and so you can come out ahead trading off health for cheaper fuel. Even poor areas within rich countries may likewise be tempted by cheap energy. The logic driving the demand for coal in China also drives demand in Kentucky.
In rich countries, coal is only cost-effective because health and environmental costs incidental to its use are not internalized by users. Coal would not be cheap if the electric companies who burn it, and their customers, bore the cost of the harm that their activities impose on others. Again, it isnt just about the CO2 they pump into the atmosphere, adversely affecting climate for everyone on the planet – it is no less about the people downwind from coal-fired plants who are sickened and killed. One major problem with the US federal system – and Obama’s state-by-state plan – is that the costs and benefits of coal use sprawl across state lines. Coal might be mined in West Virginia, burned in Ohio, to generate cheap electricity in Pennsylvania and lung disease in New Jersey.
Environmentalism disproportionately benefits middle class people in wealthy countries. The poor would often prefer to have a bit more income, at the cost of their health – ask any coal-miner. The rich frequently have the means to buy their way out of environmental degradation, e.g., by moving to someplace cleaner, or by filtering their air and water. It’s the middle class who gain the most by sacrificing a fraction of their income for a cleaner environment.
And thus conservative opposition to environmentalism usually takes the form of the wealthy and powerful drumming up support from low-wage workers – which, for the GOP, is simply business as usual. Environmentalism for Americans of ordinary means is common sense. Many of the tradeoffs conservatives cite in opposition to environmentalism generally – and the move to cleaner fuels specifically – are false in rich countries. American lives are too valuable to be compromised by a 19th century fuel source, which made sense in its time and place, but is today an anachronism. Coal indeed helped America become rich – but to continue to improve our lives, we as a nation must move on to cleaner energy.
Refs:
http://news.yahoo.com/u-unveil-sweeping-rules-cut-power-plant-pollution-101054675–finance.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_the_coal_industry#Annual_excess_deaths
http://www.desmogblog.com/coal-power-industry-united-states-facts
http://www.psr.org/resources/coals-assault-on-human-health.html
http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/whats-the-deadliest-power-source
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste/
http://www.euractiv.com/climate-environment/europe-loses-5-working-days-year-news-528512
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil-fuel_power_station#Environmental_impacts
Get Out and Stay Out (of the hospital)
America doesnt have one problem with its healthcare apparatus*, but many – including shorter lives, higher costs, and inadequate access to care. The ACA is likewise meant to ameliorate not one but several problems. One change the ACA introduced are penalties for underperforming hospitals, whose patients have a tendency to go back to the hospital within a short time of being discharged.
Hospitals are the most expensive place to render healthcare, with per-patient costs typically approaching $2000 per day, and the aggregate amounting to about one-third of all US national health expenditures. Medicare noticed that, all too often, shortly after someone is discharged from a hospital, they get readmitted for reasons that were entirely avoidable. And while high readmission rates dont speak well of patients’ health, they’re great for the health of a hospital’s bottom line, because hospital stays are highly profitable – and two stays pay twice as much as one. Churning patients out and ignoring them is great business for hospitals, but awful for patients, and costly to insurers. But under new ACA readmission rules for Medicare patients, that jig is up.
Across the country, so-called “readmission rates” vary considerably place to place and hospital to hospital. The ACA made changes in Medicare to penalize hospitals with high readmission rates – to give them a stiff incentive to see to it that their patients remain healthy after discharge – so that physically leaving a hospital does NOT also mean leaving their care altogether. The new rules only apply to Medicare patients who go to the hospital for 3 specific conditions: heart attack, heart failure or pneumonia. If, after discharge, such a patient is readmitted to any hospital within 30 days, it’s counted against the original hospitals’ readmission stats. If the rate goes too high, penalties accrue – with the size of the fine commensurate with hospital performance.
The good news is that hospitals are altering their post-discharge procedures for the better. To ensure that patients understand post-discharge care instructions, hospitals are following up with phone calls. They’re dispatching nurses to make house calls. They are GIVING AWAY FREE MEDS to their poorest patients! While all of this costs money, overall these new policies are cost-effective, simply because hospitalizations are so outrageously expensive that you can spend a small fortune avoiding them and still come out ahead. The fines are meant to get hospitals on the same page with patients and their insurers.
So far so good: According to a CEA report, growth in healthcare costs during 2010-13 were the lowest ever recorded in any 3 year period in US history, with Medicare leading the way, and hospitalizations performing especially well. In the years ahead, Medicare plans to add other diseases to the no-fly list for readmissions – and private insurers are expected to phase in their own penalties for underperforming hospitals. The US healthcare apparatus is multi-faceted, and solutions to its many issues will require creativity. But the new Medicare readmission policy so far is working as planned – for the good of senior’s health, and for the good of the nation’s financial health as well.
Refs:
* some, CT included, use the term “US healthcare system” – but “system” is simply too flattering. “apparatus” is itself too kind, if easier to type than “thingamabobby.”
Of a Healthcare System on the Moon
A nation might build the universe’s greatest hospital on the moon – but in the absence of a lunar lander, the claim that that nation has the “best medical care” cannot be made without irony. But this is what conservatives who defend America’s national healthcare apparatus must do every day. The US healthcare system, by design, keeps needed care out of reach for a large fraction of the US population. And so millions of Americans get told every day that America has “the best healthcare in the world” – though they themselves are unable to access it. For them, it might as well be on the moon – which only a lunatic could envy.
In theory, any country could improve healthcare for a fraction of its population by excluding another fraction from care. Putting aside the morality of such a system, you dont come out ahead in the bargain anyway, because you tend to lose more at the bottom than you gain at the top. The metrics, which count everyone, betray the true cost of such policies, as seen in higher American mortality, from birth through till age 75.
American babies are more likely to die before their 1st birthday than babies in other rich countries. American children are more likely to die before age 5 than children in other rich countries. American adults at all ages are more likely to die than adults in other rich countries. It’s only Americans surviving till age 75 who compare favorably with 75 year-olds elsewhere – and we’re left to wonder whether it’s their single-payer government-provided universal health insurance (aka Medicare) that’s responsible – or if it’s merely selection bias: that it’s so much harder for Americans to make it to 75 without dying, that those who succeed are hardier.
We might parse out health outcomes by income, and find the same result. Wealthy Americans live shorter lives than their wealthy counterparts in other rich countries. Poor Americans live MUCH shorter lives than their poor counterparts in other rich countries. White babies born in America are more likely to die before their 1st birthday than white babies born in other rich countries.
To put it differently, it is NOT the case that the US has a bimodal distribution of life expectancy, with rich Americans doing better and poor Americans doing worse. ALL Americans do worse – it’s just a matter of degree. Hey, if living long is important to you, it definitely helps to be born rich, white and female – but it’s also beneficial to be born elsewhere.
To give it a Rawlsian twist: imagine yourself as an Unincorporated Spirit, hovering in the ether, about to be inserted into some body to live out a life. You are given a choice of populations to be cast into randomly. If life expectancy is your sole criterion – the US would be about 30th on your list of preferred destinations. As Regina sings it: it’s all about the moon.
Refs:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2661456/
Cynicism with a Body Count
The government shutdown and the downgrading of the nation’s creditworthiness over the debt-ceiling was the previous high water mark for GOP cynicism. But now the GOP has outdone themselves – the toll for their refusal to expand Medicaid in 24 states might as well be measured not in dollars, but in corpses.
A new study out of Harvard Medical School estimates that between 7,000 and 17,000 people will die as a result of states’ refusal to expand Medicaid. And how much money will those states save, to justify that loss of life? Nothing at all! Zero, zippo, nada. As a kicker, businesses within those states will be subject to fines of $2,000 per uninsured – and workers within those states will still pay the same federal taxes to benefit the residents of the 26 other states who opted into expanded Medicaid. To score political points, the GOP is today killing poor working people – while local business pays for the fun. Expanded Medicaid is already paid for – state officials just have to sign on the dotted line to start receiving benefits – but conservatives would rather pay the bill and refuse the benefit, ensuring that thousands of poor people will needlessly die.
People with incomes between 100% and 138% of the federal poverty line do NOT qualify for federal subsidies to purchase private insurance. (Subsidies only go to people between 138% and 400% of the poverty line.) Their solution was Medicaid expansion. When the Supreme Court rewrote the law to let states opt out, those people were given no alternative – they were categorically shut out of the system. Plan B for the working poor is Dont get sick. Many of them now will not get screened for breast or cervical cancer; many diabetics will have to do without medicine; many others will be at greater risk of depression; many will be bankrupted by catastrophic medical expenses. And many will die – needlessly.
This study is not alone. More modest studies scrutinizing individual states tell a similar story. When a state opts out of Medicaid expansion, people die, businesses get hit with penalties, and Federal taxes effectively siphon money out of the state – paying for a benefit that they obtusely refuse to receive!
Still more studies are already documenting how opting out adversely affects the numbered of uninsured. Opt-out states have seen rates of uninsured drop by just 1.5% since September – while opt-in states have seen that rate fall by 4%. As of March, the rate of uninsured for opt-in states was 12.4% – while for opt-out states it was 18.1%.
Medicaid expansion is a sweetheart deal for states. For the first 3 years of the program, states pay nothing at all. Their share gradually increases thereafter, but will never exceed 10%. And since expansion is likely to offset other state expenditures, states’ effective share of the program is likely to be even less than 10% over the long haul. Adding perversity to perversity, conservative refusal to expand Medicaid serves to regressively redistribute wealth out of poor (GOP) states and into rich (DNC) states – yet another opportunity for the GOP to sock it to their own constituents for a hollow ideological purpose.
Refs:
http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=3801
http://pnhp.org/blog/2014/01/30/state-medicaid-opt-out-will-cost-over-7000-lives-maybe-17000/
http://orlandoweekly.com/news/the-perils-of-florida-s-refusal-to-expand-medicaid-1.1665144?pgno=2
http://www.wral.com/new-studies-medicaid-opt-out-costly-for-nc/13349683/
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/obamacares-impact-differences-emerge-between-states/
http://www.thenation.com/blog/168634/supreme-court-upholds-mandate-mixed-ruling-medicaid-expansion
Gun Economics
(For Memorial Day – a favorite from the LFG archive.)
It was another splendid morning in America – as folks woke up to the news that yet another child had gloriously sacrificed her 9 year-old life for other peoples’ enjoyment of their 2nd Amendment right to keep and bear arms. Gabby Giffords took time out of her busy skeet-shooting and armadillo-hunting schedule to advocate for more stringent background checks. Surely, Madison would weep for joy at all his law had engendered….
There’s a stark asymmetry: that the people who ENJOY the right to keep and bear arms are rarely the same people who PAY the cost of their enjoyment. And so I began a-wondering: would gun manufacturers., sellers, buyers and owners make different decisions if they had to absorb the full cost of their actions? At the extreme, one might have a law that prescribed the death penalty for a gun owner whose weapon caused the death of another person, no matter if he or someone else pulled the trigger. Yeah, that’ll never happen, but….
What if lawmakers (1) make the parties to gun transactions (manufacturer, buyer, seller, owner) strictly liable for all damages the gun causes; (2) and require the parties to obtain insurance to cover prospective losses.
Economically, the market for guns is rife with negative externalities that keep prices artificially low. Forcing market participants to absorb the full costs of their decisions will only improve market efficiency. Conservatives will love it, because, y’know, they’re all about free enterprise – and surely it will pain them to recognize that gun owners, effectively, are welfare moochers, leaving a tab for society to pick up.
An employed middle-income 40something with a clean record might pay a pittance to insure a shotgun or hunting rifle that’s kept in a safe. A gun shop owner will be happy to have him as a customer. But an unemployed 20something male might pay a small fortune to insure a 12-in-the-clip 9mm that he plans to keep alternately in his glove compartment and night stand. Shop owners, seeking to control their premiums, might be very careful about who they sell to. And of course, a careless shop owner might find himself unable to obtain affordable insurance. These are all positive effects.
The present interpretation of the 2nd amendment is not likely to survive another Democratic presidential term. But even assuming that we have to operate within that stricture, it should be clear that the 2nd amendment does NOT require that guns be free. Requiring that gun sellers and owners bear the full cost of their actions does NOT technically increase the cost of selling and owning guns – it simply reallocates the cost onto the parties themselves, and off of society.
Fairer McPay for McWork
Fast food workers are striking for better pay – and while many media outlets are dutifully burying this worldwide event, a trickle of information is coming in, with the usual anecdotes about impoverished single mothers flipping burgers for $8/hr, year in and year out, on public assistance, struggling to buy groceries and pay rent.
Conservatives often come back with the smarmy insight that fast-food jobs werent “intended” to be lifelong careers. To which we ask: intended by whom?!? Y’see, one slap-in-the-head aspect of the invisible hand (which conservatives love, honor and obey, if not understand) is that markets dont have intentions, any more than they have fingernails. Employers advertise jobs, and by market magic, workers appear, offering their labor. And it so happens that adults with dependent children, and not just high school kids, are a large fraction of the fast-food workforce.
The good news is that when conservatives deem a market outcome or market-participant behavior to be “wrong,” they unwittingly take a giant conceptual leap forward. Because in order to reject classical economics, one must first accept the premise that markets sometimes screw the pooch, making it necessary for Keynesians to step in and apply a fix. Seems many conservatives, in their limited way, already appreciate that we have a national problem with many single heads-of-households trying to support families on minimum wage jobs.
Conservatives just have to take the next step. Complaining that an increase in the minimum wage will force fast-food firms to raise prices misses the point: their prices are held artificially low through a kind of corporate welfare. Income that fast food workers receive in the form of public assistance (through medicaid, EITC, food stamps, housing, etc.) must be regarded as a government subsidy to fast food firms, who, in its absence, would have to pay more in compensation. Thus, raising the minimum wage will serve primarily to shift that burden off of taxpayers, and onto those firms and its customers, where it belongs.
Earlier this year, CBO came out with a report that both puffed up and pooped on Obama’s plan to raise the minimum wage. While they predict that an increase in the minimum wage to $10.10 will succeed in increasing the wages of most low-wage workers (raising many families out of poverty), they also predict that some will lose their jobs, and that the overall rate of employment for low-wage workers will likely drop a bit (0.3%).
CBO is a respectable non-partisan source, so we will for the moment politely ignore the fact that a long line of empirical research has failed to observe any such drop in low-wage employment rates following a modest increase in the minimum wage. We might focus instead on CBO’s bottom line: the prediction that an increase in the minimum wage to $10.10 will send an additional $17 billion of income to workers making less than triple the poverty line. In a time of high poverty and sky-high inequality, that might not be a whopper of a increase, but surely it would be a modest mcpositive.
Refs:
http://www.cbo.gov/publication/44995
http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2014/05/15/fast-food-workers-strike/9114245/
http://money.cnn.com/2014/05/15/news/economy/fast-food-strike/
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/01/along-the-minimum-wage-battle-front/?_r=3
Bundy: Welfare Queen
The predictably pathetic story of Cliven Bundy – and the story of that story, as it was first told by the usual right-wing infotainment outlets – is a fine demonstration of the chasm between rural, red state America’s image of itself and reality.
America’s loony right imagines a wholesome, rural and (of course) white America, of morally upstanding Christians – self-reliant individualists, all – struggling beneath a heavy federal burden of taxes and regulations. Like most of the loony right’s fantasies, this description bears no relation to reality.
Divorce rates in the countryside have now caught up to cities and suburbs. Rural rates of alcohol abuse are among the highest in the country, and rural America has perhaps the highest teen pregnancy rates in the developed world. Rural Americans furthermore are less educated than their urban counterparts, less likely to have health insurance, and, tellingly, have the highest suicide rates in the country: (The top 6 states for suicide, in order, are Alaska, Wyoming, New Mexico, Montana, Nevada and Idaho.)
But it isnt simply that rural America is poor, uneducated, unhealthy and unhappy. They are also dependent on rich liberal states to pay their way. Red states typically pay far less in federal taxes than they receive back in federal aid. No matter how they rail against Washington and the intrusiveness of government, red states are the real welfare queens. Bundy is a typical case – whining, in effect, that the federal government isnt generous enough as it subsidizes his cattle by letting them graze at below-market rates. Bundy literally wants a free lunch (for his cattle) – the bill to be picked up by everyone else.
Ironically, the people with the most legitimate complaint are the 640,000 residents of Washington, DC, who suffer taxation without representation – paying federal taxes, yet lacking representatives in congress.
Refs:
http://www.cnn.com/2013/02/27/opinion/stepp-teenage-pregancies/
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/24/us/24divorce.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/rural-suicides-follow-medicaid-cuts/story?id=15058964
https://www.apa.org/monitor/2014/04/rural-suicide.aspx
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/13/health/13rural.html?_r=0
great in depth report on Bundy: http://www.forbes.com/sites/jjmacnab/2014/04/30/context-matters-the-cliven-bundy-standoff-part-1/
http://mediamatters.org/blog/2014/04/27/foxs-howard-kurtz-slams-foxs-coverage-of-cliven/199044
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_taxation_and_spending_by_state
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/11/states-federal-taxes-spending-charts-maps
Three Time Loser
Paul Ryan’s latest sham-budget follows in the conservative tradition of Reagan and Bush Duh, each of whom gifted generous tax cuts to the rich, while leaving the nation with giant deficits and tepid growth for a decade after. And so it’s useful to revisit why Reaganomics, in its would-be third iteration, is still stupid.
We’ve all become revoltingly familiar with Job Creator – the idol behind the conservative altar. When mighty Job Creator is appeased with tax cuts on His Ginormous Income, He favors His people with jobs. Indeed, Ryan’s latest supplication to Job Creator bestows fully half of its tax cuts on people making more than $620k/yr – AKA the one percent. People with incomes over $1 million would enjoy an average tax cut of over $200k/yr.
While it’s true that if you let the investor class keep ever more of its absurdly large fraction of national income, they have to park it someplace – the problem is WHERE. Since capital is free to roam in search of its best return, tax cuts on the wealthy are as likely to create jobs in Asia and Latin America as they are in the US.
And that’s why trickle-down economics is (still) stupid. It’s created millions of new jobs in Asia and Latin America, and greatly enriched America’s already stupendously wealthy, but it’s done squat for Americans who weren’t already members of a yacht club. And it’s a bit curious how conservative enthusiasm for free trade extends only to one production factor: capital. They’re less keen on porous borders for labor.
There’s a much more efficient way to stimulate the US economy via fiscal policy. The lower your income, the greater the fraction of it that you consume (as opposed to save or invest). And consumption is primarily done locally – through rent, groceries, gas, etc. So when you give ordinary working people a tax cut on their wages, that little extra in their take-home is almost certain to go into the local economy, to boost aggregate demand, to which firms respond by hiring.
Ryan couldnt be satisfied with giving away the farm to the very rich – he does it by taking money out of the pocket of people who really would spend it locally: students, the working poor and the elderly – by cutting Pell Grants, EITC, Food Stamps, Medicaid and Medicare. As a bonus, he’d also cut Head Start and public investment in renewables. Ryan one-ups Reagan’s dumb with dumber.
This aint rocket science. Because their 30 year-old fantasies have been so utterly discredited, conservatives have to come up with ever more elaborate fictions – like Job Creator’s faithful servant, the Confidence Fairy – to obfuscate the true basis of their fiscal policies. Conservatives seek to cut taxes on the wealthy as an end in itself – the rest is lipstick for the pig. Reagan and Bush Duh’s big tax cuts led to weak deficit-fueled recoveries, compared to the tax increase on the rich that kicked off the Clinton Boom and surplus. The other great post-war boom occurred during the 1960s, when marginal tax rates on the wealthy were over 70%.
The good news is that Ryan’s budget has zero chance of becoming law. We might be thankful that conservatives in Congress content themselves with empty partisan gestures – Ryan’s latest offering to a make-believe deity is of the same species as the House’s 50th vote to repeal the ACA. That the Tea Party’s economic illiteracy is exceeded only by its parliamentary ineptitude is a happy coincidence for which we all should be grateful.
Refs:
http://www.politico.com/story/2014/04/paul-ryan-budget-medicare-health-care-105234.html
http://mediamatters.org/research/2014/04/02/fox-touts-paul-ryans-new-budget-plan-ignores-ec/198715
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/leo-w-gerard/gop-budget-the-anti-robin_b_5142770.html
HAPPY EASTER !
The Self-Interested Liberal and Trickle-Up Economics
Too often liberals base their policy arguments in social justice. We should give poor kids a chance, we should take care of the old and sick, we should ensure that workers are treated fairly by their employers. While these are noble sentiments, people differ in their notions of justice, and about how much one should sacrifice for other people. Arguments based in social justice require that others subscribe to a similar set of moral principles, and as a consequence, they are often unpersuasive.
But liberal positions neednt be based on altruism, nor justified by “the greatest good for the greatest number.” The reason we should gladly pay more in taxes so poor kids have better schools, for example, is because the sum total of such investments will substantially and directly improve our own lives. The reason a job should come with mandatory paid maternity leave, vacation time and workman’s comp, is because more people will want to work, and in the aggregate that will raise our own income. Subsidizing healthcare and education for the poor isnt about sacrifice – it’s about self-interest. You might call it “trickle-up” economics.
All conservative economic policies are based on the myth that small government is the recipe for economic success. Despite their fairy tales, our humble planet has yet to see a rich country in the absence of a large government directing investment into sectors that the markets neglect (health, education and insurance). Back in 1900, when the US government was one-quarter its present size, the US was as poor as present-day Paraguay. The US government was still small in 1928, when US per capita GDP was about the same as present-day Botswana. By 1932, the Great Depression had brought the US down to the level of present-day Turkmenistan.
Of course these are unfair comparisons. Present-day Paraguay is a much nicer place to live than 1900 America: life expectancy in Paraguay is 25 years longer, infant mortality is one-fifth, and literacy is much higher too. The best things ever got in the small-government pre-war era was pretty crappy. The divide – between where we were then and where we are now – was only ever bridged with a big government. The notion that it could have happened otherwise – well hey, anything’s possible. But in all of human history, it never has.
Should you overhear a conservative waxing nostalgic over pre-New Deal America, you might ask his feelings about the 15 recessions and 3 depressions that occurred between 1865 and 1930. The answer to the question, “When was the Golden Age of Capitalism?” is “You’re livin’ it now, baby!” Before 1928 – when US government spending was less than 10% of GDP – 50 year growth rates in per capita GDP were generally under 150%. Since World War II – with a government three to four times larger – 50 year growth rates have been greater than 175%, and frequently north of 200%.
Or just ask a conservative: if small government is so awesome, why isn’t the world teeming with small-government juggernauts? Why isn’t there JUST ONE such country? Why is it that every rich country on Earth has a large government – and only became rich with that government in place? Conservative belief in the wonders of small government is simply that: naked belief, unsubstantiated by a scintilla of evidence, much less a single case history.
And so when liberals advocate for generous social insurance, universal public pre-K and single-payer healthcare, it isnt out of kindness – it’s because the long-term consequence of liberal policies have made the fortunate residents of western democracies the healthiest and wealthiest people the world has ever seen.
PS: It’s Spring Break at the Field Guide – and our staff (cough) has been turned loose for fun and frolic! While reserving the right to take a few gratuitous swipes next week, all-out two-fisted conservative-thrashing activities will resume on Monday, April 21st.
Refs:
http://www.nber.org/cycles/cyclesmain.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_infant_mortality_rate
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28nominal%29_per_capita
US in 1900:
http://demog.berkeley.edu/~andrew/1918/figure2.html
http://www.ssdan.net/content/infant-mortality-rate
http://www.measuringworth.com/index.php
Texas, Messed
Texas is fairly described as a state for the young and hungry. Among US states, it has the 2nd lowest average age, and the 2nd largest under-18 population. It also has among the highest rates of child poverty and food insecurity.
Frequently trotted out as a national exemplar of conservatism, Texas does indeed have a small state government, and has seen excellent economic growth since the Great Recession. But prosperity is not shared – Texas also has one of the worst rates of income inequality, the country’s highest fraction of minimum-wage and sub-minimum wage workers – and is afflicted by social ills at rates typical of much poorer states.
We begin with poverty – Texas has the 5th highest rate in the country, which is striking because Texas is not an especially poor state. The states near Texas in poverty rankings – Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, Arkansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, West Virgina – are all among the bottom 10 states for median household income and per capita income, so their poverty rates are not surprising. Texas is the odd man out, ranking 25th and 30th in those same income measures. While the other 7 states are very poor by any measure, Texas is a middle-income state that has a lot of poor people because its income in unequally distributed.
With its tiny state government – ranking near the bottom for both per capita tax collection and public spending – Texas does little to ameliorate the plight of its many poor. Texas isnt even willing to spend OTHER PEOPLES’ money to help them! Of the state’s 5 million uninsured, fully 1.5 million of them would be insured, if only Texas signed on to Medicaid Expansion, the cost of which would be borne by the Federal Government. Texas declined.
Texans’ health plight only begins with its national-worst rate of health insurance coverage, and its second-worst rate of children’s health insurance coverage. Texas teenagers have the 3rd highest pregnancy rate and the 3rd highest birth rate. Texas children are in the bottom 10 for food insecurity. Life expectancy is in the bottom half of US states.
Remarkably, Texas is the only state in which workers’ compensation is not mandatory – employers are free to opt out – and about 40% do, leaving injured employees to fend for themselves. As you might expect, Texas has among the worst records for workplace injuries and fatalities. When a fertilizer plant blew up a year ago, killing 15 people and injuring 150 more, we learned that Texas has no state fire code. Neither was there a county code where the plant was situated.
While crime has dropped in recent years, Texas is among the nation’s top 5 for incarceration rates, and has the second highest execution rate. Some conservatives point out that if Texas were its own country, it’s economy would rank 14th in the world, just ahead of South Korea. They rarely mention that if Texas were its own country, it would rank 8th in executions – just ahead of North Korea.
Environmentally, Texas has some of the worst air quality in the US, with Houston and Dallas among the 10 worst cities for ozone pollution. Texas coal- and oil-fired electric plants release more CO2 than the next two largest states combined. Rick Perry has come a long way since working for Al Gore’s 1988 presidential campaign – as Texas Governor, he’s slashed the state environmental protection budget, and sued the EPA to prevent it from regulating greenhouse gas emissions.
A few factors advantaged Texas relative to the rest of the US since the Great Recession hit in 2007. Because Texas experienced a smaller run-up in housing prices, the housing crisis left the state with a relatively small fraction of distressed properties. Also, the high, sustained price of oil over the past several years has brought windfalls to oil producers, and rescued the state from the huge budget deficits it was facing. Texas rates of unemployment – good for about 17th best in the US, about 1 pct. pt. better than the national average – fail to convey that Texas jobs come in quantity, not quality, with the largest fraction of minimum wage and sub-minimum wage workers in the country.
And so people should take notice of Texas – as a cautionary tale. From extreme inequality, to the sad state of its children, to its miserable environmental record, to a disregard for workers and workplace safety – what prosperity Texas has recently seen has been enjoyed by the few, amidst widespread poverty, and the swelling ranks of the working poor.
Refs:
poverty/income:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_poverty_rate
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_income
health/hunger:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/19/us-child-hunger-rates-by-state_n_3460942.html#slide=2587846
http://247wallst.com/special-report/2013/09/05/states-where-the-most-people-go-hungry/3/
http://kff.org/other/state-indicator/teen-birth-rate-per-1000/
http://www.livescience.com/27417-teen-pregnancy-rates-by-state.html
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113042669
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workers%27_compensation#United_States
environment:
http://www.stateoftheair.org/2013/city-rankings/most-polluted-cities.html
crime:
http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/state-execution-rates
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_incarceration_rate
government:
http://kff.org/other/state-indicator/per-capita-state-spending/
http://www.governing.com/gov-data/State-Expenditures-per-Capita-2009.html#
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_tax_levels_in_the_United_States
http://taxfoundation.org/article/state-tax-collections-capita-fiscal-years-2007-2011
economic measures:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_unemployment_rate
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_Gini_coefficient
articles:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bob-burnett/texas-americas-dream-or-n_b_3515896.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/christopher-brauchli/perry-and-the-poor_b_3398827.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/17/rick-perry-environment-epa_n_1015273.html
Carlton Thurman's Liberal Field Guide 