At the Occupation of Wall Street, a man asking for change

Some, such as Ginia Bellafante of the New York Times, have questioned what exactly the demonstrators want.

Bellafante writes about the occupation with a rather distressing degree of disdain. She disparages the attire and age of the protestors, and notes:

“[their] cause, though, in specific terms, was virtually impossible to decipher. The group was clamoring for nothing in particular to happen right away — not the implementation of the Buffett rule or the increased regulation of the financial industry. Some didn’t think government action was the answer because the rich, they believed, would just find new ways to subvert the system.”

I am not on Wall Street right now, but I’m pretty sure everyone is clear that this is not a “Michelle Bachmann for President” rally.

Perhaps the protestors have no cohesive ask. Honestly, that’s fine with me. In fact, the lack of concrete demands actually makes the protest more powerful. Many groups and organizations stage with a clear political agenda or purpose: for example, to support or oppose a political campaign, a law, or a corporation’s practices. A few-hundred-person union rally is an important and impressive referendum on the importance of unions, but also most likely represents the organizing work of multiple union staff-people.

On the other hand, the #OCCUPYWALLSTEET movement is the result of, quite literally, a hashtag. These protestors had no union organizer to turn them out—they simply came. Is that not testament enough to their dedication?

The October 6^th movement, a movement to take the streets of Washington, DC on October 6^th “and not go home,” also has no specific demands yet. The website of the movement states, “One way to look at our demands is as a pyramid… At the top — end corporatism and militarism.” The group outlines seven major areas of concern, and notes that “we continue to work on these issues and will continue to do so during the occupation of Freedom Plaza beginning on October 6.” The concrete asks of the demonstration will be decided by the people mobilizing to demonstrate.

In this, the movement seeks to model itself after the popular uprisings that have swept the Middle East in recent months. True, demonstrators in Cairo called for Mubarak’s resignation—but they also wanted a fundamental democratization of their economic and political systems. I think that Salman Rushdie described the Arab Spring well when he noted that “this is not an ideological revolution, or a theological one; it is a demand for liberty and jobs, desires and rights that are common to all human beings.”

Similarly, the Occupation of Wall Street appears to me to be a demand for liberty, jobs, desires, and rights that are common to all human beings. The protestors are united in their demands for reform, for decentralization of political and economic power. Sure, perhaps not all of them understand the legal intricacies of corporate personhood—but a law degree is not necessary for political participation, and it doesn’t take an Ivy League education or a job at the New York Times to tell that our country’s economy is in a bad state.

Maybe in a few days, the Wall Street occupation will be united in a desire to abolish the Federal Reserve or enforce corporate tax payments—or maybe not. Either way, I think that these thousands of Americans are doing an admirable job of demonstrating their opinions, concrete asks or none. Perhaps, then, the right question for America to ask is not “why are they there?” but “what changes can we make so that people are not so angry that they #occupywallstreet?”

Photo credit: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.655294362867.2131982.18605402&l=99568b0858

Count me among the people that regard politics as primarily the art of getting things done — of deliberating on and then distributing out public goods to people, and trying to do this at the lowest costs possible, in the appropriate time horizons, with the greatest impact, and so on. Politics is not poll numbers; it’s not, ultimately, about feelings or even theories. Politics is about doing things.

Adopt this perspective, and the media-wide consensus that Obama has been “weak” on the BP Spill starts to look rather absurd:* the standard for success is a strictly material one; Obama should be judged, in the final analysis, by whether he succeeds at mitigating the effects of this crisis to the fullest extent possible — by whether he helps us plug that (goddamn) hole and then, afterwards, whether he goes to changing the material conditions that allowed the hole to burst open in the first place, the corrupt MMS regulatory regime and our insatiable appetite for crude oil. That is the standard we judge him by.

Theoretically, to judge Obama’s success by the standard of “is he getting it done” you’d need to create “counterfactuals,” where you test his choices against all other conceivable ones. (Note: not stopping the spill doesn’t mean failure; if we had counterfactuals, we might find out that even the best course of action conceivable wouldn’t have allowed the president to stop the spill sooner than he has.) But in practice, the fact of theoretical unknowability doesn’t mean we say “screw it” and decide, instead, to report on people’s perceptions of reality, on feelings or moods or zeitgeist or whatever it is Maureen Dowd is doing. No, it means we work a little harder, investigate the administration’s actions, use our analytical skills to make arguments (with evidence!) for or against them, and then draw conclusions. As it happens, I’ve seen embarrassingly little of that coming out of our press corps.

At the same time, this conception of politics as the material fact of getting goods to people in need helps give us perspective on the political back-and-forths of our moment. There’s a brilliant article out in Slate subtitled “What if political scientists covered the news?” It reads:

Obama now faces some of the most difficult challenges of his young presidency: the ongoing oil spill, the Gaza flotilla disaster, and revelations about possibly inappropriate conversations between the White House and candidates for federal office. But while these narratives may affect fleeting public perceptions, Americans will ultimately judge Obama on the crude economic fundamentals of jobs numbers and GDP.

Chief among the criticisms of Obama was his response to the spill. Pundits argued that he needed to show more emotion. Their analysis, however, should be viewed in light of the economic pressures on the journalism industry combined with a 24-hour news environment and a lack of new information about the spill itself.

Recast Obama’s popularity as a function of the structural forces at play at any given moment — as the result of the slumping economy, the progress of his agenda through Congress, and the fact that a blowout preventer a few thousand feet under the water has been spewing oil for a month — and you start to realize that the narratives about his “feelings” and “leadership” and “tone” are just ex post facto rationalizations. You realize that these narratives, as Jon Chait explains, are most properly understood as “bullshit.”

I think our pundit class would be a whole lot better if they acknowledged these simple truths: first, things happen to countries; then, presidents respond to those things that happen; those responses are bounded by the nature of those things that are happening (say, how much expertise the federal government has on offshore drilling), and, moreover, by the conditions of the world we live in. While the president steers the ship of state, he can’t be held responsible for the conditions of the water.

After all, isn’t this perspective what drew us to Obama in the first place? At the center of his campaign was a promise: to move us beyond the theatrics of politics — beyond the cynical new left/new right vocabulary of our parents, and beyond the erratic “suspend my campaign to fix the financial crisis!!” cowboy politics of his opponent — and towards a politics of reason, deliberation and decency, even when that doesn’t play so well in the media. Towards the politics of getting things done. That was the “change you can believe in” and it is perhaps the man’s deepest conviction: that we can be responsible and civic even in times of great urgency.

So let the guy be calm in crisis. That’s why we elected him, right?

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* Adopt this perspective and you see why racism is best understood as what you choose to do not what you feel and claim. (Re: Rand Paul.)

Photo credit: U.S. Coast Guard

In 1993, President Bill Clinton pushed the last bill through Congress to increase the gas tax. Even this, however, was watered-down reform; the tax was not indexed to inflation and increased the price of gas by only 4.3 cents per gallon. The modesty of the increase should not be surprising: since 1993, no prominent American politician has seriously supported a major increase in the gas tax. Virtually everyone agrees that supporting the gas tax is political suicide. As Michael Cragg, an energy consultant at The Brattle Group, told the HPR, “It’s hard to see in this political environment how you’d get a gas tax passed.”

A similar consensus exists among economists, but on a different issue. According to a study in the Journal of Economic Literature, the vast majority of economists support a gas tax in order to make the private cost of driving a car reflect its actual social costs: global warming, air pollution, traffic congestion, and highway maintenance. Economists from across the political spectrum—Freakonomics author Steven Levitt, Nobel laureate and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, and even the chairman of George W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisors, N. Gregory Mankiw—have come out in support of raising the gas tax.

How can a policy make so much economic sense and garner so little political support? Significant obstacles, including the anti-tax movement, vested interests in low energy prices, regional differences, and America’s short election cycle, have historically made the gas tax unpopular and unfeasible. Our energy future and climate security depend on either tweaking the tax to make it more politically palatable, or exploring creative alternatives.

The Anti-Tax Establishment

Perhaps the most fundamental reason why a higher gas tax is so controversial is because it hits everybody, and hits them in a very public way. William Gale, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and co-director of the Tax Policy Center, told the HPR that the anti-tax movement “will seize on every tax,” and the gas tax is an easy target. Represented by vocal advocacy groups such as Americans for Tax Reform and the various Tea Parties, the anti-tax movement “does not make a distinction between distortionary and distortionary-correcting taxes,” Gale said.

“They just hate all taxes,” he continued, “and every attempt at an increase in taxes becomes an opportunity for [their] political gain.”

Looking closer at the particulars of the gas tax raises an equally problematic obstacle: the culture of low energy prices. According to Henry Lee, director of the Environment and Natural Resources Program at Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, America’s energy policy has been governed by a single goal for the last 40 years. “Americans for almost two generations have lived under the idea of cheap energy,” he explained, making it almost impossible to pass laws involving price increases. At this point, such laws could seem almost un-American.

Democratic Divisions

The gas tax also raises a thorny question of fairness. Rural inhabitants, who drive farther and more often than do urban residents, would face steeper costs if the federal gas tax went up. Politicians that represent rural districts are simply responding to their constituents’ concerns by opposing the gas tax.

Gale identified this “urban-rural divide” as one of the two most salient obstacles to the gas tax, in addition to the anti-tax movement. Recognizing these regional disparities raises questions about institutional problems in American democracy. To say, as many do, that lack of progress on the gas tax is part of a Big Oil conspiracy ignores the ways in which representative democracy can often forestall consensus.

America’s short, two-year election cycle is a major barrier to passing a higher gas tax. Politicians tend to ignore proposals that involve an immediate, perceivable cost and provide less tangible, long-term benefits. Thomas Sterner, former president of the European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, told the HPR that this is the “big problem” of gas tax politics. In countries with short electoral cycles of two to four years, attempts to increase the gas tax “will only cause protests,” Sterner said. It can be very difficult to promote farsighted, technocratic solutions in a political environment defined by short-term gratification.

Tweaking the Gas Tax

Recognizing that political barriers will make increasing the gas tax difficult, policymakers need to start thinking outside the box. One possibility, Sterner proposed, is the “fuel price escalator,” raising the tax gradually over the course of many years. Sterner said that this is “the only workable model.”

By making the price increases less immediate, the fuel price escalator resolves some of the difficulty posed by an electoral system focused on short-term gain. This explains, in part, how the United Kingdom under Margaret Thatcher was able to move from a relatively low gas tax to one that charges over 300 percent of the retail price, the highest in Europe.

Efficient use of revenue from the gas tax, Sterner said, is also important. The careful use of rebates can correct the regressive elements of the tax and can also make the increase in fuel prices more palatable to rural residents. Furthermore, the gas tax is essential for deficit reduction. “It’s becoming abundantly evident that we need the money,” Gale said.

The current gas tax can no longer keep up with escalating road and highway spending; this year’s highway appropriations were made possible only by siphoning funds from the general budget, which, according to Lee, has never been done before. Lee noted, “You’re going to have to have a change in the system in the next five years,” because there is “no way” Congress can continue propping up the transportation budget with general funds.

A final component of a revised gas tax might be a price floor, which would keep the price of gas relatively stable by taxing the difference if the price dipped below a certain mark. This would create a predictable environment for long-term investment in new-energy technologies that hold the key to a low-carbon economy. As Lee explained, “[Oil price] volatility gets people to under-invest.” By giving investors a stable price they can use to gauge the cost-effectiveness of future energy sources, a price floor could contribute to innovation.

The disconnect between good policy and good politics is one of the most frustrating dilemmas of American democracy. Absent substantive change in the near future, the United States risks heightened fuel price volatility, decreased economic competitiveness, and the negative effects of climate change.

Policymakers will need to search for creative solutions that are both true to the spirit of economic efficiency and more palatable to constituents focused on short-term interests. If they are able to do this with the gas tax, they might learn lessons that can be applied in other difficult and thorny areas of public policy, like immigration and entitlement reform.

Will Rafey ‘13 is a Staff Writer.

Infographic: Neil Patel

Photo Credit: Flickr (Indy Charlie)

More than two-thirds of Americans are overweight or obese. Childhood obesity has tripled in the last thirty years. For the first time since the Civil War, Americans’ life expectancy may be declining. These facts paint a depressing, and by now familiar, picture.

After decades of failed attempts to convince individuals to make healthier eating choices, it is evident that reducing obesity will require changes in the food industry. Some recent initiatives undertaken by the Obama administration and the Food and Drug Administration will try to contribute to this effort by changing the way people think about food.

Forcing the Industry to Change

Many cities and states have taken the initiative in the fight against obesity by passing laws which put pressure on companies to make their food healthier. New York was the first major city to order a trans-fat ban in its restaurants, after a failed public education campaign. Other cities and states have followed suit and many are now also considering soda taxes and calling for reductions in salt content.

Kelly Brownell, director of Yale’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity, told the HPR, “You simply can’t do enough education to begin to compete with the food industry. We need to change the fundamental drivers of the obesity problem such as food marketing and the cost and content of food.” Local initiatives have been effective so far and have also had some positive unintended consequences: after facing trans-fat bans in major cities, nearly all fast food chains have removed trans fats from their national products. When faced with restrictions in large markets, it is often more efficient for companies to implement changes across the board.

But the most effective way to force the industry to change may be to create federal laws similar to those passed by lower levels of government. The food lobby, however, stands in the way. As Brownell explained, “The tobacco experience might be very informative here. The federal government had its hands tied because of lobbying by tobacco companies, and early on real action took place in cities and states.” But, she continued, “once enough victories occurred there, the federal government had cover and was able to take action.” Food companies will only change “if there is a threat of national government action or if these companies have to make changes for public relations reasons,” said Brownell.

Mobilizing the Public

The latter strategy is also being explored. The Obama administration has made fighting obesity a priority, with First Lady Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” campaign encouraging young people to exercise. The First Lady has worked with the FDA to increase public awareness, and a major focus has been nutritional labeling.

Siobhan DeLancey, a spokeswoman for the FDA, explained in an interview with the HPR that the FDA “has partnered with the First Lady … to make sure nutrition labeling is accurate and informative for people to rely on and make healthy choices in their day-to-day lives.” But she also acknowledged that even with this improved information available, consumers may not necessarily follow it. “With a busy lifestyle, it is difficult to spend the necessary energy and time to really comprehend food labels,” DeLancey said.

While improved food labels and the First Lady’s information campaign are potentially parts of the solution, an important—and often overlooked—step in the fight against obesity is getting the public to understand how much power the food industry has. For example, Pepsi recently announced that it will remove all sugared beverages from secondary schools in the United States. While this is a welcome move, Brownell cautioned that we have to make sure companies “don’t simply take their marketing muscle and apply it elsewhere like the Internet or store displays through which they can still encourage children to drink sugared beverages.” In order to ensure that companies such as Pepsi make and market healthier products, the public will have to confront them head-on and pressure them to take the correct action.

With the support of the Obama administration, the fight against the obesity epidemic is making strides. Nevertheless, it is important to realize that continued progress depends on changing the culture of food in the United States. As Brownell concluded, “We need to create the public sentiment to encourage change and then force companies to change.”

Neil Patel ‘13 is the Graphics Editor.

The Tea Party movement attracted a lot of attention with its vocal opposition to the Democratic health care legislation, but it took shape at the very beginning of the Obama presidency. It arose out of widespread libertarian and populist outrage over the federal government’s intervention in the economy. While opposing the Obama administration, the Tea Party movement has remained independent from the Republican Party, sometimes openly confronting the GOP establishment. Yet the two organizations are united by their opposition to the Democratic agenda. What will ultimately determine the future of the Tea Party movement, then, is how successfully Republicans can incorporate elements of the Tea Party’s doctrine into their party platform. And how effectively they can prevent the Tea Party from bringing down more electable, establishment candidates.

The Origins of the Tea Party

When CNBC commentator Rick Santelli railed against the “homeowner bailout” at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange in February 2009, he tapped into a widespread frustration with government “handouts.” Santelli famously declared that he wanted to oppose Obama’s economic agenda with a “Chicago Tea Party” in July. Within weeks, anti-tax groups had sprung up across the country. Zephyr Teachout, a professor of public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, emphasized the importance of these early events in an interview with the HPR. “While right-wing media and politicians fueled the anger around health care reform and other programs,” she said, “I suspect that some of the organic growth of the Tea Party movement came from extraordinary anger at the bank bailouts.” Indeed, the bailouts—combined with the stimulus package’s $787 billion price tag—were major instigators for the Tea Party movement.

Kate Zernike, national correspondent for the New York Times, told the HPR that “the motivating grievance for most [Tea Partiers] was when Congress passed TARP—under President Bush.” TARP, which provided emergency assistance for major financial institutions, was maligned by populists on both the left and right. Furthermore, many Ron Paul supporters, devoted libertarians, provided an organizational structure for the nascent movement. A loose populist-libertarian coalition arose that sought to limit federal spending and roll back newly acquired government powers. The stimulus bill, Zernike said, was just fuel on the fire.

Tea and GOP

The Tea Party movement has repeatedly rebuffed the GOP establishment’s attempts to co-opt it, which has alarmed some Republicans. Richard Parker, a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School, observed, “The RNC remains concerned about three things: the impact of Tea Party primary challengers on the electability of general election candidates, how Tea Party voters will vote in November, and the potential political damage that negative perception of the Tea Party can cause.”

Overall, though, the Tea Party movement has chosen to operate as a wing within the Republican Party in the upcoming midterms, recognizing that fielding candidates against Republicans in general elections would be counterproductive. Indeed, Rasmussen Reports has found that in three-way contests between Democrats, Republicans, and Tea Party candidates, the anti-Democratic vote is split down the middle. Zernike explained, “Tea Party leaders generally boil their issues down to three things: fiscal responsibility, constitutionally limited government, and free markets.” These issues comprise the core values of fiscal conservatives, and Tea Partiers generally recognize that Republicans are better aligned with their interests than Democrats. Still, there is no doubt that the Republican establishment should be concerned, as it has seen a number of preferred candidates receive strong challenges from the Tea Party movement.

Tea Futures

As the economy recovers, the anger and frustration driving the Tea Party could abate. The principles behind the movement, however, will survive. If the Republican establishment adopts Tea Party planks and refrains from voting for new spending programs, Tea Party leaders will feel more incorporated into the political mainstream. The Republican caucus has already unanimously opposed numerous Democratic proposals, most notably President Obama’s health care initiative. As long as Tea Partiers believe that Republicans are listening to their concerns, the Tea Party is likely to function as “an outside advocacy group” that “works for Republican candidates, but does not uniformly support them,” Zernike predicted.

The Tea Party, originally a reactionary movement against what was perceived as unnecessary federal intervention in the nation’s economy, has become an organized political force. Although the Tea Party movement has not outright endorsed the Republican Party, it can exert significant pressure on the GOP to maintain a platform of strict fiscal conservatism, as seen in such primary challenges as Marco Rubio’s in Florida or J.D. Hayworth’s in Arizona. Though the economic conditions fueling the Tea Party’s growth will dissipate, the movement itself may have a long-term impact on American politics.

Alexander Chen ’13 is a Staff Writer.

Photo Credits: Flickr (Caveman 92223 and bisongirl)

Rand Paul

Sam Barr’s most recent post makes the rather shocking claim that Rand Paul, the Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate seat in Kentucky being vacated by the retiring Jim Bunning, is a racist, or at least that he is not a non-racist. Sam deduces this from the fact that Mr. Paul is not a “consistent libertarian,” that he “picks and chooses” appropriate targets for government intervention and contends that eliminating racism in the workplace is an illegitimate function of government. Specifically, Rand Paul is pro-life and supports laws against abortion, but says he would have opposed the Civil Rights Act had he been in Congress in 1964.

In Sam’s estimation, Mr. Paul is not racist in the sense that he wears a white hood and burns crosses, but in the sense that, in the words of the illustrious Mr. Kanye West, he “does not care about black people.” Sam’s post rightly implies that the bar for calling someone the “R-word” should be relatively high, a standard many of his fellow partisans have often ignored: witness Sen. John Edwards’s absurd insinuation in the 2004 vice presidential debate that Dick Cheney was racist because he voted against the holiday for Martin Luther King, Jr., while in Congress, or Rep. Diane Watson, an African American congresswoman who condemned her Republican colleagues for the mere act of opposing “the first president who looks like” her, or the relentless attempts by the media to indict the Tea Partiers as a reincarnation of the KKK (we know this is not true, by the way, since if it were, the President pro tempore of the U.S. Senate would be scrambling to join its ranks). Sam’s accusation, unlike many leveled by trigger-happy race-baiting Democrats, is reasonable and deserves an answer. I should explain at the outset that I am not a libertarian per se, that I supported Trey Grayson, Rand Paul’s erstwhile opponent in the Republican primary, and that I have no intention of passing either positive or negative judgment on the Civil Rights Act. What I will argue here is that simultaneous opposition to anti-discrimination policies and support of anti-abortion laws does not a racist make. The reader will have to excuse the length of this post; such a serious charge requires a thorough response.

In Economics 1017, Professor Jeffrey A. Miron, Harvard’s foremost authority on libertarianism, provides an analysis of racial discrimination in the workplace from a libertarian perspective (and luckily for the HPR, I retained my lecture notes from the course). The economic model of discrimination, he explains, begins with the assumption that some people have a “taste” for discrimination, which in this case means people prefer hiring or buying from only persons of a certain race. As any graduate of Ec-10 knows, a free market will in theory drive racist employers out of business. Assume, for example, that some white employers do not like hiring blacks. This preference initially reduces the demand for black employees and reduces their wages, but this results in any employer with non-discriminatory preferences obtaining a cost advantage by hiring black employees. Since the non-discriminating firms have lower costs, they can set lower prices and take profits away from the discriminating firms. The discriminating firms exit the industry as they lose money, which then reduces the demand for white relative to black employees, and results in equal wages for blacks and whites in equilibrium. I would add to this that the economic disincentive to refrain from serving minority customers is even more obvious: business owners who choose not to serve an arbitrary segment of the population put themselves at a competitive disadvantage by depriving themselves of access to a broad swath of the market. In theory, therefore, competitive markets provide a potentially strong counterweight to employer discrimination.

An alternative assumption is that discriminatory preferences come from customers. For example, suppose restaurant patrons prefer to be served by white waiters, meaning they are willing to pay a higher price even if the quality of service is the same. In this case, Miron notes, a higher wage for white waiters can persist in equilibrium, but even here there are economic pressures that counteract the discriminatory preferences of customers. For one thing, restaurant owners face higher costs than they would if they could use both white and black wait staff, so they might still use both if customer discrimination is weak. And since some customers presumably do not care, the benefits of accommodating the customers with discriminatory preferences are potentially small. The same logic, incidentally, applies to situations in which some whites prefer not to be served in an establishment that accommodates blacks. A priori reasoning thus indicates that economic forces are likely to hinder discrimination in the workplace. As an example, Miron cites Levine, Levkov, and Rubinstein (2008), who determine that increased competition resulting from deregulation in the banking industry from the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s reduced both the racial wage gap and racial segregation in the workplace, particularly in states with a comparatively high degree of racial prejudice.

That said, Miron explains that what is known as “statistical discrimination” in employment may be rational as a result of the correlation of unobservable factors, such as educational achievement and general competence in the workplace, with observable factors like race. If African Americans are disproportionately likely to be poor workers because they receive disproportionately poor educations, in other words, then it can be rational for employers to use race as a proxy for the less observable characteristics of intelligence and competence. The fact that statistical discrimination might be rational, as Miron points out, does not mean it is acceptable. But if statistical discrimination is the underlying cause of workplace discrimination, improving the quality of education offered to minorities is likely to be more effective than direct anti-discrimination policies à la the Civil Rights Act. Incidentally, Republicans have long advocated school choice through government vouchers to improve education within minority communities, an effort that has been blocked by teachers’ unions and their allies among congressional Democrats.

Assuming workplace discrimination is based on employer or consumer preferences rather than statistical correlation with unobservable traits, policy may undertake to counteract discrimination either by prohibiting it in hiring, promotion, firing, establishing wages, selecting customers to serve, and so forth, or, in the job market, by “affirmatively” promoting the hiring of targeted groups through quotas. The Civil Rights Act of 1964, among other things, ended racial discrimination in all federal government agencies and organizations receiving federal support, and prohibited discrimination in the private sector to the extent permitted under the Constitution. While the private sector provisions probably had some impact, Sam’s opinion that “Paul gets the Civil Rights Act completely wrong” because the “ban on private discrimination was absolutely central to its achievement” is hardly a matter of scholarly consensus. I couldn’t agree more, by the way, with Max Novendstern’s comment in his response to Sam’s post that the Civil Rights Act should be judged based on its “material consequences, not just (and not primarily) the soundness of its ethical claims.” Although black-white wage differentials have declined substantially over the past fifty years, Miron points out that the gap began declining before the federal government adopted anti-discrimination policies, and that there is little dispute that “forces other than anti-discrimination policy played a significant role in reducing race … wage differentials.” One plausible candidate that he mentions is increasing educational attainment by African Americans. In “Catching Up: Wages of Black Men” in The American Economic Review, Finis Welch notes that he and James P. Smith observed that although the relative wages of blacks increased in the decades after 1960, “there was little evidence of improvement within cohort”; the narrowing wage gap was in other words a result of younger African Americans receiving better wages rather than increased wages for blacks already in the workforce (Smith and Welch, 1977, 1984, 1989). Although there were clear employment shifts toward industries with concentrations of firms presumed to be more sensitive to affirmative-action pressures, the wage gains were “pervasive and not restricted to these industries.” For these reasons, Smith and Welch conclude that improvements in the quantity and quality of schooling were more important in decreasing workplace discrimination than federal legislation. Miron further points out that the Civil Rights Act was accompanied by Justice Department suits against Jim Crow laws (which, let’s not forget, were racist government interventions frequently opposed by profit-seeking private firms) as well as private actions including boycotts and protests in the South. So while some academics and policymakers contend that the Civil Rights Act was crucial to eliminating racism, others have argued that it was unnecessary, and, as Miron points out, “reasonable people can disagree.”

One might assume that the Civil Rights Act was justified if it succeeded even to a very minor degree in eradicating racism in the private sector. This is a legitimate position, to be sure, but the fundamental libertarian philosophy as articulated by Professor Miron, which Sam appears to overlook, is that while the free market often delivers imperfect outcomes, government intervention generally does more harm than good. It is therefore necessary to examine the potential costs of anti-discrimination policy, including those that may accrue to the very minority communities they are intended to help, before arriving at a final evaluation. For one thing, libertarians often contend that the distinction between merely banning employment discrimination on the one hand, and implementing racial quotas on the other, is not meaningful in practice, since without affirmative action there is no way to enforce fair hiring practices (employers, in other words, can always claim that whites are simply more qualified). And Miron explains that affirmative action entails potentially draconian costs, including perpetuated negative stereotypes of minority communities (i.e., the perception that minorities are unable to find employment without the government’s help), resentment among non-minorities (i.e., whites who feel cheated out of positions for which they are more qualified), reduced educational attainment and effort within minority communities (i.e., reduced incentive for minority communities to improve themselves if the government guarantees them a certain number of jobs), and reduced efficiency (i.e., firms cannot hire the most qualified employees). But Miron explains that even anti-discrimination measures by themselves might do more harm than good. If an employer knows he might get penalized for firing, or not promoting, or not giving a raise to a minority employee, it might make sense to avoid hiring members of the protected group in the first place. One prominent example of this is the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990, which requires employers to accommodate disabled workers and outlaws discrimination against the disabled in hiring, firing, and pay. Acemoglu and Angrist (2001) observe a sharp drop in the employment of disabled workers after the ADA went into effect, and ironically isolate the ADA itself as the likely cause. Sam’s libertarian straw man advocates the right to do “whatever you want with what’s yours,” even if it means “perpetuating a system of race-based subordination.” While it would be difficult to oppose a government effort to eradicate discrimination that reliably produced results in excess of its costs, Miron points out that policy cannot ban discrimination without endorsing the view that firms are partially “public” and can be told to operate in “socially” approved ways. Even if this does more good than harm in the context of discrimination, he says, blurring the private/public distinction might legitimize ill-advised government intervention in other areas. All this is to say nothing of the deadweight loss from taxation needed to fund the personnel who enforce the laws. So the notion that anti-discrimination legislation in general, and the Civil Rights Act in particular, is an unequivocal good is far from accurate.

For pro-life libertarians like Rand Paul, the cost-benefit equation with respect to abortion is substantially different. Abortion restrictions, like anti-discrimination laws, undoubtedly entail costs. The difference is that pro-lifers equate the termination of unwanted pregnancies (at least those that do not result from rape or incest and do not threaten the mother’s life) with murder. Prohibiting abortion is therefore an attempt to prevent the needless slaughter of innocent human life, which, unlike ensuring equal employment opportunities for every citizen, is justified at virtually any cost. In the most recent issue of the Harvard Salient, Roger G. Waite notes that the United States has the highest abortion rate in the developed world, as well as a legal system extremely permissive of abortion. This does not imply causation, but it’s difficult to imagine that laws against abortion would increase the number of abortions, or that our high abortion rate results from Americans’ moral depravity (or, as Mr. Waite posits, the structure of our health care system). A true libertarian who opposes the Civil Rights Act and supports anti-abortion laws, therefore, is not being inconsistent, but making a rational cost-benefit analysis of government intervention in two distinct cases.

Sam ends his post by invoking the questions Ezra Klein poses to Mr. Paul as to whether the federal government can set the private sector’s minimum wage, tell private businesses not to hire illegal immigrants, tell oil companies what safety systems to build into an offshore drilling platform, tell toy companies to test for lead, or tell liquor stores not to sell to minors. I’ll spare you the explanations, but I can assure you that what Sam calls “consistent libertarians” can indeed oppose each of these forms of intervention, or oppose some and not others, according to a rational cost-benefit analysis. Sam and Mr. Klein might reach different conclusions, but this does not imply that libertarians or Mr. Paul are “willfully blind and insensitive to racism.”

None of this is to say that I endorse or condemn either anti-discrimination policies or the libertarian response thereto. The point is that it is entirely possible for Rand Paul to be a consistent libertarian, and not to be a racist, while both opposing the Civil Rights Act and supporting legal restrictions on abortion. Perhaps Mr. Paul is racist, but not by virtue of anything he has said about the Civil Rights Act. It is important to hold politicians accountable on an issue as fundamental as race, and I do not fault Sam for raising this accusation given Mr. Paul’s opposition to landmark civil rights legislation. I would advise Sam, however, that a valid charge of racism must withstand the strictest of scrutiny. This one does not.

Photo Credit: Wikipedia

INTERVIEWER: Would you have voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1964?

PAUL: I like the Civil Rights Act in the sense that it ended discrimination in all public domains, and I’m all in favor of that.

INTERVIEWER: But?

PAUL: You had to ask me the “but.” I don’t like the idea of telling private business owners—I abhor racism. I think it’s a bad business decision to exclude anybody from your restaurant—but, at the same time, I do believe in private ownership. But I absolutely think there should be no discrimination in anything that gets any public funding, and that’s most of what I think the Civil Rights Act was about in my mind.

I’m glad Paul is honest, and I’m glad he’s more consistent in his libertarianism than most are. What he doesn’t seem to realize is that this is exactly why sensible people aren’t libertarians, and why most libertarians aren’t consistent. Libertarianism means, at bottom, doing whatever you want with what’s yours. If that means perpetuating a system of race-based subordination, that’s fine. After all, don’t tread on me! Or, if you like, freedom for me, but not for thee. This is the reductio ad absurdum of libertarianism, but Paul doesn’t find it absurd at all.

Opposing racial hierarchy because “it’s a bad business decision” is incredibly weak. He couldn’t even say it’s unjust, because for libertarians, the only real injustice is when government interferes with private property. It’s not that Paul weighs two injustices (government interference versus racial discrimination) against each other. It’s that he only sees one injustice.

So I don’t agree with the commenter over at the Washington Monthly blog who says “it’s pretty clear he’s not a racist.” What we can tell about Paul from these comments is that he’s definitely not a non-racist. A non-racist would not say “it’s a bad business decision.” A non-racist would not be against government interference with racial discrimination, but for government interference with a woman’s reproductive choices. If he were a truly consistent libertarian on all counts, then maybe I’d grant that he’s probably not a racist, just willfully blind and insensitive to racism.

But since he picks and chooses which libertarian positions to take, and since he picks the one that opposes the ban on racial discrimination, I’m going to say, yup, he’s probably a racist. I know people get incredibly sensitive about using the R-word, and I’ll probably catch hell for this. But if we can’t say it’s racist to oppose the de-institutionalization of racism, then we’re pretty much saying that you’re only racist if you wear a white hood.

Paul also gets the Civil Rights Act completely wrong, by the way. The ban on private discrimination was absolutely central to its achievement.

UPDATE:

I’ve been thinking all day about whether I really should have called Rand Paul’s opposition to the Civil Rights Act racist. Ezra Klein has a post that helps clarify my thoughts:

Can the federal government set the private sector’s minimum wage? Can it tell private businesses not to hire illegal immigrants? Can it tell oil companies what safety systems to build into an offshore drilling platform? Can it tell toy companies to test for lead? Can it tell liquor stores not to sell to minors? These are the sort of questions that Paul needs to be asked now, because the issue is not “area politician believes kooky but harmless thing.” It’s “area politician espouses extremist philosophy on issue he will be voting on constantly.”

The reason I am comfortable making an admittedly harsh judgment about Paul is that, unlike Mark Kleiman, I doubt he’s a “completely consistent libertarian.” I suspect, for instance, that he thinks the federal government’s age limit on alcohol purchases is perfectly fine. Very few people are so libertarian that they really can’t think of anything bad enough for the federal government to regulate. If I had reason to think that Rand Paul was one of these very few absolutely consistent libertarians, then I would say, yes, he’s just a libertarian, not a racist. (Notice that this position might actually be more crazy than the alternative.) But because Paul’s position is probably more like, alcohol bad enough to be regulated, but racial discrimination not bad enough, then I think it’s perfectly reasonable to wonder what kind of person thinks that racial discrimination isn’t all that bad. What kind of person thinks that way? Fill in the blank yourself.

It’s also worth remembering that his campaign spokesman resigned last year for having undeniably racist messages on his Myspace page. And that his dad has a pretty despicable history of bigotry and racial fear-mongering. Circumstantial evidence, to be sure, but come on, Ockham’s Razor, people.

Photo credit: Wikipedia

It has been over a year since President Obama lifted the bans that his predecessor placed on federal funding for stem cell research. At the time, scientific researchers praised his decision; the consensus in the scientific community is that embryonic stem cells will play a crucial role in future medical breakthroughs. But the politics have not been put to rest: significant restrictions on research still remain, and the use of embryonic stem cells still sparks the same ethical debates as ever. Continuing limitations and a lack of support for any major changes to the status quo are likely to hinder scientific progress in the near future. Yet despite scientists’ frustration with policymakers’ lack of scientific expertise and suspicion of research that may lead to life-saving cures, politicians have an important role to play in overseeing  researchers and ensuring that ethical questions are not overlooked by an insular scientific community.

Meeting the Standards

Although partisan polarization is likely to prevent reform of stem cell policy in Congress, some experts have put faith in the president’s ability to issue executive orders. Andrew Siegel, a professor at the Berman Institute of Bioethics at Johns Hopkins University, told the HPR, “We really don’t need bipartisanship for this. As far as stem cells go, most of this is done by executive order. So I don’t think the current political atmosphere has much of an impact.”

But even after President Obama’s executive order lifted Bush-era bans, significant restrictions on stem cell research remain in place. Many argue, for instance, that the National Institute of Health’s review policy is too demanding. According to NIH guidelines, research may only be conducted on cells from approved stem cell lines that are part of the NIH’s Stem Cell Registry. It is illegal to create or destroy other human embryos for research. Furthermore, the NIH placed a freeze on research of stem cell lines that existed prior to Bush’s presidency, as many worried that these lines would not pass the NIH’s current standards.

A Defiant Status Quo

Stem cell researchers also face a mixed political climate at the state level.  During the Bush years, eight states provided their own funding for research, while some right-leaning states are currently in the process of considering legislation to define embryos as people. Arthur Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, told the HPR, “[This issue] is highly important to a small but powerful subgroup in the Republican Party. All the controversial [social] issues—stem cells, abortion, cloning, same-sex marriage—are very important to them.”

Immediate changes in national legislation are unlikely. Siegel explained that “research involving destruction of embryos may be difficult, especially after the recent changes in abortion funding, but Obama most likely won’t be promoting this anyway, as there really isn’t much momentum for [embryo-destroying research].” For the time being, stem cell researchers can expect more of the status quo.

The Line Between Science and State

Although valuable stem cell research can sometimes get caught in bureaucratic red tape, the government plays an important role as an overseer of this research. Indeed, for an issue that involves so many ethical questions, it may be best to get input from people outside the scientific community who can see research from another angle. Sterner explained, “Stem cells, cloning, genetic enhancement—this all falls into an ethical category. People will have quite different views. We need to recognize that in a pluralistic society, at a political level, all views have to be acknowledged.” Congress and state legislatures provide  an appropriate forum in which these viewpoints can be presented in a relatively civilized fashion.

Politicians, however, must rely on scientists to make informed decisions about funding. As Siegel argued, “It is critically important that policy be informed by good understanding of the science. You really need to understand what your funding is being used for.” Siegel is confident that federal policymakers will take this challenge seriously. “Congress will call on sources for expertise, and people will testify and work with congressional committees.”

Despite widespread yearning for a more supportive approach to stem-cell research at the federal level, the bioethical issues at the frontiers of science make research a legitimate question for legislators, review boards, and ethics committees. Progress on stem cell research may be slow in coming, but on an issue so controversial, incremental gains may be more expedient than radical policy changes which could provoke a grassroots backlash.

John Prince ‘13 is a Staff Writer.

Photo Credit: Flickr (amandabhslater)

John Sweeney was president of the AFL-CIO from 1995 to 2009, and is currently a fellow at Harvard’s Institute of Politics.

HPR: When you were president of SEIU Local 32B in New York in the ’70s, you led a strike against the New York Realty Advisory Board and won some major contract improvements. What is it like to lead a strike?

John Sweeney: The most important thing is that you have to have strong support from the workers themselves. Any strike is a tremendous sacrifice on the part of workers and their families, and you’re never sure how long it’s going to last. Whoever is leading the strike has to feel comfortable that they’ve built up the support of the workers and that the workers are firmly committed to achieving some success.

Having that support makes it more comfortable in terms of the charge that you’re leading and the issues that you’re striving to achieve, to get some negotiating success. I never went on strike without having that kind of spirit and that kind of enthusiasm.

HPR: You merged the Service Employees International Union with many other unions during your presidency. Was that effective? Do you find that broad unions are better than industry-specific ones?

JS: It depends. The greatest number of mergers that we had within SEIU were with independent, public unions such as state employees. They have to be convinced that the program the national union is proposing is something these folks understand, that would improve their representation of the workers. It makes their organization a lot stronger and more effective in dealing with employers.

We had a pretty good track record. We were pretty successful in merging those types of associations. For the most part, they stayed affiliated with SEIU for years.

HPR: What do you feel is the biggest threat to unions and unionization today, and how should unions respond?

JS: One of the biggest threats is the impact globalization has on workers and on their organizations. It’s important to recognize that the AFL-CIO isn’t going to stop globalization, but it certainly is going to strengthen its program in making globalization work for workers. Over the past couple of years, we’ve seen the impact globalization has had on the lives of workers.

There are a number of issues that the AFL-CIO has to focus on to represent their affiliates and their members. Rich Trumka, the new AFL-CIO president, has a very ambitious campaign focused on growth in the labor movement and raising member participation in the activities of the labor movement.

HPR: You won the only contested presidential election in the AFL-CIO’s history. What did you learn from the campaign and how did that affect your presidency?

JS: When I say it was the only contested election, you have to be mindful that the AFL and the CIO were two separate federations until they merged in 1955. It was the first contested election after the merger.

One of the things we learned was the importance of solidarity. It was so important for the affiliates to be united. The more united you are, the stronger the federation is. Once we won the election, it was important that we unify all the affiliates—those who had supported us and those who had supported Tom Donahue. That was what we were going to be stressing in all the proposals we were making as the new administration of the AFL-CIO.

HPR: How involved do you think unions should be with politics? Is it more important to focus on organizing members or on electing candidates?

JS: I think they have to do both. There’s no question about it, organizing is important and it has to be strengthened, but I also think it’s important that some of the organizing is focused on politics and mobilizing workers in support of candidates who support them and who are committed to an agenda that improves the lives of working people. You can’t do one without the other. You have to elect supportive people and hold them accountable to approve legislation that’s going to strengthen working folks and their families.

HPR: What do you think is the future of the Employee Free Choice Act? Will it pass? Will it have to be modified?

JS: I’m very hopeful that EFCA is going to pass and hopefully pass soon. I think it’s long overdue in terms of reforming our national labor laws. I believe that workers have been discriminated against in the way the National Labor Relations Act has been interpreted by administrations in the past and by judicial decisions on issues that affect workers. It’s about time we took a hard look at how workers can express themselves as to whether they want to unionize or they don’t want to unionize.

If we look at what different countries around the world do, there’s a number of different ways in which countries have changed their own labor laws, favoring workers, and strengthening collective bargaining and strengthening representation.

Kristin Eberts ’13 is a Contributing Writer. This interview has been edited and condensed.

I am struck by a few things from Peyton’s post, and I want to pull them out and talk about them directly.

First, Peyton argues that we should not consider the FICA tax when assessing the overall progressivity of the tax system, because, he says, those who pay FICA taxes “receive direct monetary benefits during retirement.” The idea here seems to be, if I may put it crudely, it’s not really a tax if you’re getting it back eventually. But when conservatives lament the overall tax burden that falls on, say, the top 5% of American earners, I am pretty sure they include FICA. Otherwise, taxes would seem pretty darn low! Moreover, the FICA tax isn’t the only one that is remitted back to the people in the form of some service or benefit. Peyton helpfully lists these: “the U.S. military, benefits for veterans and federal retirees, federal support for education, transportation and infrastructure, and international affairs, and the numerous other areas of federal spending not directly tied to workers’ retirement welfare.” Now, liberals and conservatives disagree about how much money should be spent on such things, and how cost-effective our current spending is, but we don’t try to calculate what proportion of our taxes is eventually remitted back to us in the form of services and benefits, and then say that only the remainder, only the waste that is, is our real tax burden. To sum up, taxes are taxes.

Second, Peyton responds to the point that everybody also has to pay state and local taxes by saying that these taxes “vary tremendously from state to state and from locality to locality.” Of course. But Republicans and conservatives media figures have been pushing the narrative for at least a week that 47% of Americans just don’t pay taxes, period. Even when they take care to say “federal” taxes (which they don’t always do, as I found out yesterday when I flipped to Fox News), the implication is clear to everyone: half the country is a bunch of freeloaders, and the other half is paying their way. One Tea Party sign, quoted by the New York Times today, read: ““I’m the 50 percent stuck paying for the other 50 percent.” If that were true, it would be quite objectionable. But it’s just not true, and the existence of state and local taxes makes it not true. Peyton can’t do these two things at once: recognize basic facts about our system of government, and imitate or justify the moral outrage of the Tea Partiers.

Finally, Peyton has a very interesting psychological argument about how voters who don’t pay much in taxes might not be responsible stewards of our fiscal future. But I don’t understand the leap from saying “I ultimately don’t pay the federal government any income taxes” to saying “I have no stake in anything the federal government funds.” Obviously this is the kind of thing that’s easier to say than to show, but I just don’t think people reason like that. It’s not that Peyton’s being too cynical, as he worries. It’s that he’s not being cynical enough! Voters don’t go through those sorts of calculations. Many if not most people vote out of atavistic party loyalty; many others vote based on the personal characteristics of candidates; many vote on symbolic issues or issues unrelated to taxing and spending; and many people who care about the deficit also don’t much in federal income taxes (unless we are to suppose that all fiscal conservatives are in the top 53%).

I also object to Peyton’s claim that “Such programs are all benefit and no cost for the bottom 47 percent of the country.” Just to pick an easy target, I hardly think it’s the case that military spending is all benefit and no cost for the poorest Americans. Not when they’re the ones fighting our wars.

Ultimately, I agree with Peyton that this debate comes down to irreconcilable moral positions. But I still think we need to get our facts straight, and talk about these issues with complete candor and statistical rigor. And as for the moral side, I’ll just say this: Peyton might be right that all citizens ought to have a stake in how the government spends its money, but I’m not willing to worsen the living conditions of the working and middle classes just to satisfy this abstraction.

Photo credit: Ezra Klein