Government Statistics: The Ridiculous, The More Ridiculous, And The Completely Preposterous

If President-elect Trump really wants to "drain the swamp" in Washington, one thing that seriously needs to be addressed is the state of the data and statistics on the economy that come out of places like the Commerce Department and the Labor Department.  Serious people every day try to figure out how the American economy and people are doing, and what kinds of policies might make things better or worse.  And all they have to rely on are data and statistics put out by the government, nearly all of which are not suited to the purpose at hand, and most of which are intentionally deceptive in ways that are mostly obvious but overlooked by nearly everyone who uses them, who are mostly in the media and academia.  The deceptiveness is always oriented toward the same goal, namely to support advocacy for increase in the size of the government and the budgets of government programs, and, even more disgracefully, in the context of elections, to support the election of Democrats over Republicans.  

Other than myself, the one guy I have found in American journalism who hammers repeatedly on this issue is John Crudele of the New York Post.  Today Crudele is on the issue once again, in an article headlined "Here's how Trump can easily get the economy humming again."  First point:

The Trump administration should audit all economic data coming out of the Commerce Department, Labor Department and, especially, the Census Bureau.

Amen to that!  Among the more important issues that Crudele has identified in government economic statistics over the years, we have, for example:

• Just this past September 16, Crudele was immediately on it when Census suddenly reported, in the run-up to the recent election, impossibly large gains in household income and declines in the poverty rate.  (See also my post on the same subject here.)  How could household income have suddenly gone up 5% and the poverty rate declined 3% in a period when GDP was only up 2.4% -- all reported in the final stretch of the campaign, just in time to make it look like President Obama's economic policies were suddenly "working" and to give a last-minute boost to Hillary?  Crudele identified certain methodological changes in how Census was treating answers to certain questions on its surveys as the source of the sudden upticks.
• Looking back to 2012, Crudele reported another version of about the exact same thing.  In October 2012, in its last reports before the 2012 election, the government stated that the unemployment rate had had a relatively sharp one-month drop from 8.1% in August 2012 to 7.8% in September.  According to a Crudele story from November 2013, those numbers had been "faked" by the fabrication of data: "The Census employee caught faking the results is Julius Buckmon, according to confidential Census documents obtained by The Post. Buckmon told me in an interview this past weekend that he was told to make up information by higher-ups at Census."  
• Then there are Crudele's many reports on so-called "seasonal adjustments" to economic data, which are essentially made up out of whole cloth and can be manipulated to make the numbers look better when the government wants them to look better and worse when the government wants them to look worse.  From a Crudele article on August 10, 2016:  "The US economy lost 1.03 million jobs in July [2016].  That’s a fact.  But John, didn’t the Labor Department announce last Friday [August 5] that July had a gain of 255,000 new jobs? . . .  [T]he discrepancy . . . was caused by seasonal adjustments. . . .  Were the seasonal adjustments applied fairly and consistently in July?  There’s evidence that they were not."  Plenty more details about the gamesmanship at the link.

These things run from the ridiculous to the even more ridiculous.  You are trying to use the government numbers to get a handle on whether economic conditions are getting a little better or a little worse, and now you find out that the bureaucrats can and do regularly manipulate the numbers in amounts larger than any real underlying changes in order to support favored narratives and help preferred political candidates in upcoming elections.  

Yet even Crudele can sometimes miss the forest for the trees.  So now let's move from the merely ridiculous to the completely preposterous.  I'm referring, of course, to the government's two fundamental counting conventions that underlie all of its most important statistics.  These two conventions are well known, and are there for all to see, but have somehow faded into the background such that nobody really notices them any more.  And yet these two conventions are what fundamentally undermine the usefulness of the statistics and render them deceptive in most of the uses to which they are put.  The two conventions at issue are:  (1) the convention that, in measuring the size of the economy, all government spending on goods and services is counted toward GDP at 100 cents on the dollar, as if each dollar of government spending is as valuable toward creating wealth as a dollar of private spending; and (2) the convention that, in measuring what is called "poverty" and "income inequality," nearly all government spending to benefit low-income people is counted at zero cents on the dollar toward increasing income or reducing measured poverty, as if government spending in massive amounts is completely worthless for the supposed beneficiaries.

Let's start with the poverty convention.  I can't even think how anyone can try to justify what the government does.  When the measure of poverty was created back in the 60s, there barely existed any of the vast array of means-tested support programs on which governments now spend about $1 trillion per year.  As "anti-poverty" spending and programs were created and added by the dozens over the years, the bureaucracy came up with one excuse after another why the spending should not be added to the income or resources of the beneficiaries in measuring poverty.  Medicaid?  It's counted at zero, although to buy your own private insurance you have to earn the money as income first.  Perhaps that one could be argued either way (I'm being generous).  How about a slot in a public housing project?  That's also counted at zero.  In my home county of Manhattan, many slots in public housing are worth $100,000 per year and up if measured by the price others are paying to live in the building next door.  Food stamps?  Other nutrition assistance?  Also counted at zero, although exactly how these things differ in any meaningful way from cash income is difficult to articulate.  EITC?  That one is paid in actual cash.  Many uninformed writers who are not attuned to the obscene level of government duplicity in measuring poverty laughably argue that the EITC is the best program for "reducing poverty."  I'll bet you can't even guess the excuse the bureaucrats offer to justify not counting the EITC against the measure of poverty.  To find out, go to this link.  Out of the approximately $1 trillion in annual means-tested and anti-poverty spending by governments at all levels, essentially the only thing that counts against the measure of poverty is TANF.  That's less than $20 billion per year, or less than 2% of total anti-poverty spending.  TANF alone is never enough to raise a single person out of poverty.  

And then there's the GDP convention.  What it means is that the most crazily wasteful government spending always looks like it adds to economic growth.  The Pentagon buys a $1000 toilet seat?  It adds $1000 to GDP!  Bridges to nowhere?  They add their full cost of construction to measured GDP!  A $4 billion structure as the entrance to a subway station?  It adds $4 billion to GDP!  No wonder politicians are always proposing more "infrastructure spending"!  And even worse, this convention always provides the rationale to oppose cutting any and all government spending, even the most completely wasteful.  GDP will go down!  Not real GDP, of course, but GDP as measured by the duplicitous government bureaucrats.

It doesn't take much deep thinking to figure out why government functionaries like these conventions.  If you want to advocate for more money for anti-poverty programs, you need a high rate of measured poverty to play on the heartstrings of the gullible public.  If you want more government spending and government growth generally, it is enormously useful that increases in government spending count as "economic growth" in all circumstances, and that spending cuts count as "economic shrinkage" in all circumstances, without anyone ever even looking or applying any critical thinking to see if the government is wasting the money.  With several trillion dollars of fake counting now occurring every year under these conventions, this game has gone well past the ridiculous and deep into the preposterous.  Drain the swamp!

Risks In Trumpian Economic Policy: Government Spending

There are many reasons at this point to be encouraged about the prospects for the national economy under President Trump.  As examples, EPA fossil fuel restrictions and Obamacare mandates are serious drags on economic performance, and Trump is promising to roll both back.  Stock market gains since the election reflect widespread optimism.  On the other hand, from what our President-elect has said both before and since the election, there are important areas where his proposed policy changes pose major risks.  Topping the list is the question of whether major new restrictions will be imposed on international trade.  I have previously covered that subject here and here, and will not discuss it further today.  Another area of significant risk is government spending.  Will there be massive increases in spending on wasteful and unproductive projects?

As discussed here last week, in the late stages of the campaign and the period since the election, Trump has gone in big for the idea of a major increase in federal "infrastructure" initiatives.  He has talked of a $1 trillion plan, covering ten years, which would be $100 billion per year.  His website on the subject, as usual, has many generalities and few specifics.  In particular, it is unclear how much of the trillion would be direct federal spending, since there is talk about things like "[l]everag[ing] new revenues and work[ing] with financing authorities, public-private partnerships, and other prudent funding opportunities."  Still, there is every reason to be concerned that Trump may be buying into the fallacy that blowout government spending, particularly (for some reason) on big construction projects, is the way to speed up economic growth.

It's not just Paul Krugman and the Keynesians who keep up the incessant drumbeat that further increases in government spending are the cure-all for every economic ill.  Recent weeks and months have seen remarkable repetition in Democrat-side sources of the theme that the economy performs better under Democrat presidents than Republican.  (It's almost as if they speak from a set of common approved talking points!)  Of course the idea is to promote increased government spending, since everybody knows that Democrats are for more spending, and that's the explanation for the difference.  Hillary Clinton used this theme throughout her campaign.  For example, here is a statement from Hillary at an early stage of the campaign (October 2015):

There’s a lot of evidence that when we have a Democrat in the White House, unemployment is lower, income is higher, and even the stock market is higher. But when you have a Republican in the White House you are four times more likely to have a recession.

Asked by factcheck.org to support the statement, Clinton cited to a study by Blinder and Watson, "Presidents and the Economy: An Economic Exploration."  You will recognize Blinder and Watson as partisan Democrats (Blinder was on the CEA during the presidency of Bill Clinton).  You won't be surprised to learn that there is a gigantic starting-point fallacy in their study:

The analysis consider[s] a 64-year period beginning with President Harry Truman and ending with President Barack Obama.

In other words, Blinder and Watson:

• Leave out the FDR presidency, when an intentional war against capital prolonged the depression for eight years from 1933 to 1940.
• Then start with Truman, whose first important act as president was to cut federal spending by well more than half in the World War II demobilization, in the face of dire warnings from the Keynesians that this would lead to an immediate and prolonged depression.  Of course, the economy then boomed.

For some more recent repetitions of the talking points, see Paul Waldman in the Washington Post on November 4 ("The economy is better under Democratic presidents"), or David Leonhart in the New York Times on November 29 ("'Big Marco' Or His Own Presidency").  From Leonhart:

All told, economic growth under Democratic presidents over the last half-century has been 25 percent faster than under Republicans. Private-sector job growth has been more than twice as fast. Republicans even have a worse record running up the deficit. (These comparisons hold no matter when precisely you start the clock on a president’s legacy.)

Well, OK.  But can we recognize that the best economic times in this period were (1) the six latter years of the Reagan administration, a time of both tax cuts and serious spending restraint, and (2) the six latter years of the Clinton administration, when serious spending restraint was imposed on the president by a Republican Congress?  In other words, the talking points are used as an argument for big spending increases, but on even a moderate inspection, that argument doesn't hold up.

If you still think that blowout spending, particularly on infrastructure, is the route to faster economic growth, I would highly urge you to look at the case of Japan.  Their economy has been in a funk since about 1989 -- going on 28 years now.  In that time they have somehow gone for one after another massive infrastructure "stimulus" spending program.  They have the fanciest and fastest trains anywhere, and top-notch roads and highways.  They also have national debt now at about 240% of GDP.  And the economy somehow never gets out of the funk.  See my detailed 2014 post here.  Only the private sector can create real economic growth, and that requires restrained government spending and taxes.

In the U.S., the gradually improving economy and spending restraint (under a Republican Congress) of the past few years have led to declining deficits -- but at $500 billion per year, we are still talking numbers that are way too big.  Going forward, even with spending restraint, automatic increases in entitlements promise to take the annual deficits to $1 trillion and above by the 2020s.  Adding massive new "infrastructure" spending to the mix is far likelier to be a negative -- and a major negative -- than anything positive.

I've been feeling like a lonely voice on this issue so far.  But Michael Tanner of the Cato Institute chimes in today at the National Review:

Stephen Moore, a Trump economic advisor and a man I know and respect, recently told congressional Republicans that, since Donald Trump won the election, it is their duty to deliver on his agenda — even if his policies are bad ideas. Umm, no. Bad ideas are bad ideas, even when voters choose them. . . .  Infrastructure spending is not likely to deliver the bang for the buck that Trump supporters expect in terms of either job creation or economic growth. . . .  [S]tudies show that, while infrastructure spending may provide a short-term boost to GDP, it can actually reduce economic growth over the long-term by diverting resources and creativity to less innovative and productive uses.     

I would only add that the supposed "short-term boost to GDP" from government infrastructure spending is likely to be completely fake -- an artifact of the unjustifiable convention of counting all government spending on goods and services as a 100 cents on the dollar addition to GDP, no matter how wasteful and unproductive the spending may be.  If counted in GDP at a more realistic rate like 50%, wasteful government infrastructure spending would be recorded as a reduction in GDP, which it is, rather than an increase.
 

Fidel Castro Roundup

They say never to speak ill of the dead, but every rule has exceptions.  Consider the case of the ultimate evil dictator, who enslaved and impoverished his people for decades, brutally suppressed all dissent, had thousands killed and tens of thousands imprisoned, forced hundreds of thousands to flee in boats and let them drown when the boats got in trouble, all while making his henchmen the richest people in the country and himself the single richest person.  Of course I'm talking about Fidel Castro.  Now that he's dead, say nothing about him if you wish; but for God's sake don't praise him, or even say something neutral. 

Yet Fidel was the master of playing to the favorite shibboleths of the progressive Left.  The United States is evil!  In Cuba we provide free health care for all!  Climate change caused by Americans is destroying the planet!  Five and ten and fifteen years after Castro took power, as it had become increasingly and painfully obvious that Castro was one of the most brutal and destructive strongmen on the planet, I was regularly amazed that he remained an icon and an idol for most progressives.  Could it really be that these people were so morally obtuse as to look away and forgive mass murder and torture and intentional impoverishment and starvation and oppression of the people because this guy put on some kind of a show of free health care (believe me, if you were not one of the elite, this was not any health care you would want) and periodically bashed the United States?  

And yes, 57 years after Castro first seized power in 1959, a huge chunk of the Left has still not let go of the dream; indeed, new generations of progressives have arisen to embrace it.  So in case you think that today's progressivism is just the innocent quest for a little more fairness and justice, I thought I'd collect a roundup of quotes from some of the bigger names and institutions who have embraced this brutal dictator.

Greg Grandin in The Nation:

In all his goodness and badness, Castro was a full man of the Enlightenment. It’s fitting, though depressing, that’s he’s left us on the cusp of a new darkness. But as he once said, the ideals of “Liberty, Fraternity, and Equality,” though routinely trampled, “will always sprout anew, everywhere.”

Presidential candidate Jill Stein:

Fidel Castro was a symbol of the struggle for justice in the shadow of empire. Presente!

Jesse Jackson:

In many ways, after 1959, the oppressed the world over joined Castro's cause of fighting for freedom & liberation-he changed the world. RIP

Jimmie Carter:

Rosalynn and I share our sympathies with the Castro family and the Cuban people on the death of Fidel Castro.  We remember fondly our visits with him in Cuba and his love of his country.

John Kerry:

We extend our condolences to the Cuban people today as they mourn the passing of Fidel Castro.

Actually, the Cubans who are able to speak freely -- the ones in Miami -- were dancing in the streets.

Justin Trudeau (Prime Minister of Canada):

A legendary revolutionary and orator, Mr. Castro made significant improvements to the education and health care of his island nation.  I know my father was very proud to call him a friend.

Jeremy Corbin (head of UK's Labour Party):

“Fidel Castro’s death marks the passing of a huge figure of modern history, national independence and 20th-century socialism,” said the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, who claimed that “for all his flaws” Castro would be remembered as an “internationalist and a champion of social justice”.

Jean-Claude Juncker, head of the European Commission:

With the death of #FidelCastro, the world has lost a man who was a hero for many.

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon:

He was a strong voice for social justice. . . .

California Congresswoman Barbara Lee:

My deepest condolences to Fidel Castro’s family and the Cuban people during this time. . . .  President Castro was a recognized world leader who was dedicated to the Cuban people.

Pope Francis:

Pope Francis said the death of Cuba's revolutionary leader Fidel Castro was "sad news" and that he was grieving and praying for his repose.

And of course let us not forget President Barack Obama:

At this time of Fidel Castro’s passing, we extend a hand of friendship to the Cuban people. . . . .  History will record and judge the enormous impact of this singular figure on the people and world around him. 

Pathetic.  Sorry, but it's not OK to leave it up to "history" to judge the crimes of this monster.  Barack Obama won't do it, because he is a man of the international Left, and ultimately a supporter of the program of Castro.

How about a few from the other side?  Here's an excerpt from the statement of our President Elect, Donald Trump:

Fidel Castro's legacy is one of firing squads, theft, unimaginable suffering, poverty and the denial of fundamental human rights.

Wow!  Do we finally have a President who will stand up to the nonsense that afflicts the world?  So far I'm liking what I'm seeing from this guy.

Marco Rubio:

History will remember Fidel Castro as an evil, murderous dictator who inflicted misery & suffering on his own people.

Ted Cruz:

There is more than enough evidence to judge the Castros’ legacy for what it is: the systematic exploitation and oppression of the Cuban people.

Andrew Roberts of Kings College, London:

Fidel Castro was a foul tyrant and his brother Raul is no better.

Perhaps the best have been some of the parodies of the left-wing dupes:

“While controversial, Darth Vader achieved great heights in space construction & played a formative role in his son’s life,” quipped Jason Markusoff, a correspondent for Canada’s Maclean’s magazine.

Canadian sports commentator Mike Hogan added: “Today we mourn the loss of Norman Bates, a family man who was truly defined by his devotion to his mother.”

Australian news columnist Rita Panahi wrote, “Although flawed, Hitler was a vegetarian who loved animals, was a contributor to the arts & proud advocate for Germany.”

Or this from Jonah Goldberg of National Review:

Controversy followed Jeffrey Dahmer but he helped cast a new light on the limits of low carb diets.

Of course, Castro easily fooled the credulous progressive press by refusing to put out any meaningful economic statistics on the Cuban economy.  To learn how bad it is down there, you need to read the reports from the occasional honest journalists who break free of their Cuban watchers and wander around the countryside.  As examples, see the October 2015 report from Scott Beyer in the National Review here, or the 2014 independent reporting of Michael Totten linked by me here.

UPDATE, November 28:  Brent Baker at MRC NewsBusters has this collection of statements from prominent American journalists:

On MSNBC, Andrea Mitchell insisted in a stock bio that Castro “gave his people better health care and education.” Appearing live by phone, she soon trumpted how Castro “will be revered” for “education and social services and medical care to all of his people.”

Along a similar theme, in an ABC Special Report during Nightline, Jim Avila maintained that “even Castro’s critics praised his advances in health care and in education.”

In a relatively tough report on Castro’s abuses, CNN’s Martin Savidge, in a pre-recorded bio piece, highlighted how “many saw positives, education and health care for all, racial integration.”

A meandering Brian Williams popped up by phone on MSNBC to ruminate and recalled how in his last visit to Cuba, in 2015: “You see the medicine system they are very proud of.”

ABC’s Avila went so far as to tout how Castro “was considered, even to this day, the George Washington of his country among those who remain in Cuba.”

Reminiscing about his high school years, via phone on MSNBC, Chris Matthews asserted that Castro was “a romantic figure when he came into power” and, Matthews wasn’t embarrassed to relay, “we rooted like mad for the guy” who “was almost like a folk hero to most of us.”

Hat tip:   Maggie's Farm.  Could it get more pathetic?

A Dose Of Renewable Energy Realism

An odd thing about the "climate" debates is the lack of much discussion of the practical challenges and costs of trying to convert production of energy for a modern economy to something near 100% "renewables," or maybe even something close to 100% from just wind and solar.  Currently, according to the EIA here, only about 10% of U.S. energy usage comes from all "renewables" combined -- and about half of that is from hydropower that is almost as much reviled by environmentalists as fossil fuels.  Trendy but intermittent wind and solar account for less than half the "renewable" share, at about 4% of the total usage.  Over in the "real energy that actually works" category, we find that more than 80% of U.S. energy usage comes from fossil fuels (coal, oil and natural gas), and the remaining about 8% comes from nuclear.   

So what is the problem with converting the U.S. economy over to almost entirely wind and solar over the course of the next few decades?  Can't we just build some more wind turbines and solar panels until we have enough of them to satisfy the demand?  In my post on Tuesday about New York Governor Andrew Cuomo's energy schemes, I cited Mark Mills's article for the proposition that New York already has wind turbines with about the same "capacity" as the Indian Point nuclear plant, but they produce only approximately one-fourth the amount of electricity over the course of a year.  So then, how about just building wind and solar facilities with four times the capacity of the existing fossil fuel or nuclear plants?  It might be a little pricey, but isn't this the complete answer to the problem?

If you think that might work, I suggest that you consider this January 10 article from something called Energy Post by prominent German economist Heiner Flassbeck.  The title is "The End of the Energiewende?"  Recall that Germany has managed to get its electricity production from solar and wind up to 31% of its consumption, averaged over the course of the year.  According to charts at a Wikipedia article here, as of 2014 Germany had installed wind "capacity" of about 40,000 MW, and installed solar "capacity" of another about 40,000 MW.  Presumably those numbers have gone up somewhat since.  Per a chart in Flassbeck's article reproduced below, Germany's average electricity demand is around 70,000 MW, with peak demand around 90,000 MW.  Doesn't that mean that the wind and solar should be supplying essentially all of the demand, rather than less than a third?

And of course the problem is that electricity production from wind and solar swings wildly and unpredictably back and forth from supplying all or nearly all of Germany's power some days to almost none on other days.  Flassbeck:

This winter could go down in history as the event that proved the German energy transition to be unsubstantiated and incapable of becoming a success story. Electricity from wind and solar generation has been catastrophically low for several weeks. December brought new declines. A persistent winter high-pressure system with dense fog throughout Central Europe has been sufficient to unmask the fairy tale of a successful energy transition, even for me as a lay person.

Here is Flassbeck's chart of total German energy demand and energy production for the first half of December 2016, with wind, solar and other "renewable" energy production broken out separately:

You can see that, although wind plus solar production sometimes met up to about half the demand, there were also two extended periods -- December 2 - 7, and December 12 - 16 -- when production from wind and solar was catastrophically low.  The worst days were the 12th and 14th:

Of power demand totaling 69.0 gigawatts (GW) at 3 pm on the 12th, for instance, just 0.7 GW was provided by solar energy, 1.0 by onshore wind power and 0.4 offshore. At noontime on the 14th of December, 70 GW were consumed, with 4 GW solar, 1 GW onshore and somewhat over 0.3 offshore wind. The Agora graphs make apparent that such wide-ranging doldrums may persist for several days.

At both of those times, they had sufficient wind and solar "capacity" to supply all of the electricity demanded; but the wind and solar facilities only provided about 3% of the demand at one of the times, and about 7% of the demand at the other time.  Fortunately, they had enough "conventional" facilities to supply the full demand.  But really, what good are the wind and solar facilities if, after building enough of them to have "capacity" to fulfill all of your need, you still literally can't afford to get rid of any of the fossil fuel facilities?

And then Flassbeck points out what he calls the "futility" of building still more wind turbines and solar panels:

[Even] three times the number of solar panels and wind turbines (assuming current technologies) could logically produce only three times the amount of electricity. The deficiency of prevailing winds and sunshine will affect all of these installations, no matter how many there are.  Even threefold wind and solar generation [on a day like December 14] would then fulfill just 20% of requirements. . . .    

So, to deal with a day like December 14, you would need wind and solar "capacity" equal to 15 times actual usage.  But even that wouldn't help you on the afternoon of the 12th, when it would have taken wind and solar "capacity" more like 35 times the usage to supply the demand.  

Many of the comments to Flassbeck's article are interesting.  Substantial numbers of the commenters agree that trying to get to 50% or more of a first world country's energy from just wind and solar is a complete joke.  But others think they have easy answers.  For example, commenter Helmut Frik says that on the same days of low German wind and solar production in December there were production records in Scotland and Sweden, presumably due to high winds there.  So, all they need to do is to build a big enough connector!  But of course, that assumes that on the maybe 20 or 30 days a year when Germany has no wind, Scotland and Sweden -- countries with combined population of less than 20% that of Germany -- will consistently have enough surplus wind power to sell to make up Germany's deficit.  As of now, Scotland and Sweden combined don't have remotely enough wind "capacity" to cover for a calm in Germany (their combined wind "capacity" is less than one-third that of Germany), and it's hard to believe they will be willing to essentially cover themselves over with wind turbines just so that they can bail out Germany a few days a year.  Who or what is going to pay for all those excess wind turbines the rest of the time?  And then, couldn't there be a day (or several days) when it is calm in Germany, Scotland and Sweden all at the same time?  It might be rare, but the big problem here is that you need to have a system that works all the time, even in the most extreme circumstances.  

Meanwhile, many of the commenters dismiss the proposed easy solutions as "fairy tales" or something similar.  I'm with them.  I would say that this is an enormously complicated engineering problem, where any potential routes to get a majority of energy from wind and solar are extremely expensive and still likely to work imperfectly.  Private investors are way to smart to even try, when we have abundant fossil fuel energy that works just fine and is ready for the taking.

Socialist Death Spirals, Young And Mature Versions

Every month when I pay my subscription fee for the print edition of the New York Times ($70.40 -- ouch!) I swear that this month will be the last.  But somehow I'm having too much fun bashing them to give it up.  One of my posts about Pravda a couple of weeks ago suddenly got about 50,000 readers (and counting).  So perhaps you readers out there -- particularly those who have had the good judgment to discontinue your Times subscriptions months or years ago -- would enjoy another post on today's dose of cluelessness.

We find on the front page of today's New York Times two big lead stories.  The one on the left is about the current economic crisis in Venezuela: "Risking Lives to Flee Ruin/Hungry Venezuelans Flock to Boats as Economy Collapses."  On the right, it's about Obamacare: "Where Trump Won, Many Want to Keep Health Care/Florida Offers Glimpse of G.O.P.'s Obstacles in Trying to Undo Obama's Law."   Now, in multi-thousands of words in these two articles put together, can we find any mention or recognition that these are two examples of a single economic phenomenon, namely the inevitable failure of socialism?  Of course not.  Indeed, a fair description of the Obamacare article is that it argues for continuation of the law without any change, and without containing any recognition that the current structure is not sustainable.

I started writing about the phenomenon of the Socialist Death Spiral in June 2015 here.  In a post in April 2016, I had this to say specifically about Obamacare:

There's every reason to think that Obamacare is in the early stages of a socialist death spiral.  After all, all you really need to know to predict a socialist death spiral is that people aren't stupid.  As soon as the government puts you on the "from" side of "from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs," you start to spend your waking hours figuring out how to minimize or otherwise get out from under the confiscation. 

Of the Times's two articles today, the one on Venezuela is far the longer, and should be given at least a little credit for slightly associating the economic collapse with the explicit Socialism of the economic program that caused it:

And as Mr. Chávez’s Socialist-inspired revolution collapses into economic ruin, as food and medicine slip further out of reach, the new migrants include the same impoverished people that Venezuela’s policies were supposed to help.

But aside from that one mention of the genesis of the problem in Socialism, the rest of the article -- several thousand words -- is mostly just a litany of stories of the thousands now fleeing and the hardships they are suffering. For example:

Desperate Venezuelans are streaming across the Amazon Basin by the tens of thousands to reach Brazil. They are concocting elaborate scams to sneak through airports in Caribbean nations that once accepted them freely. When Venezuela opened its border with Colombia for just two days in July, 120,000 people poured across, simply to buy food, officials said. An untold number stayed.

Do you mean that government efforts to provide for all by massive universal handouts can end in disaster?  The conclusion is never explicitly drawn.    

Over in the Obamacare article, the theme is that hundreds of thousands of people, even including some Trump supporters, have come to "depend" on the new Obamacare subsidies to obtain "health care."  

Ninety-one percent of plan holders in Florida this year receive premium subsidies — a higher percentage than in any other state — and 71 percent also have reduced deductibles, a benefit available to people at or below 250 percent of the poverty level.  Some of them, like Ms. Carmeli, voted for Mr. Trump. She pays $45 toward her monthly premium, with a subsidy of about $600 covering the rest.

Is there any possible problem with that?  Not that you'll find in this article.  If people have come to "depend" on a government handout once given, how could anyone be so cruel and heartless as to suggest that it should not be continued forever?

Well, Obamacare is still in what we might call the "young" phase of the Socialist Death Spiral.  It couldn't all fall apart some day, could it?  You can always look to the "mature" version of the death spiral if you want the answer.  Venezuela is a current example for anyone willing to look.

And a special bonus, try this lengthy article on the death of Fidel Castro.  It didn't make it into today's print edition, but is available online.  It's too long to quote extensively here, but a fair summary is that, despite some recognition of "repression" and "abject poverty," the Times still cannot let go of its fundamental admiration of this brutal dictator.  For a far more straight assessment of economic conditions in Cuba after 50+ years of the Castro dictatorship, try this article by Scott Beyer in National Review last October.  Average wages in Cuba are about $20 per month.  We can have that too if we pursue far enough the economic policies advocated by the Times!  Cuba is the really mature version of the Socialist Death Spiral.  Should we start a pool on how long the dictatorship lasts now that Castro is gone?  

Who Gerrymandered The Boundaries Of The States?

The subject of lawsuits challenging gerrymandered legislative districts has been relatively quiet since the Supreme Court's decision in Vieth v. Jubelirer back in 2004.  In that case the Supremes essentially found the whole subject of whether a redistricting has been used by one political party to disadvantage the other to be non-justiciable in almost all cases.  (Racially-based gerrymanders remained an exception.)  Prior to that decision, the courts had from time to time entertained challenges to particularly egregious gerrymanders, but had struggled to come up with any coherent generally-applicable test to distinguish the permissible from the impermissible.  In such ambiguous circumstances, almost any redistricting could bring forth a barrage of lawsuits.  Really, in the absence of any clear standard for what you could and couldn't do, it would almost be political malpractice for the winners of the most recent elections to fail to redistrict in a way to disadvantage their opponents at least a little.  

Vieth put an end to most of the endless litigation; but it did not quite completely end the issue.  That's because Vieth was what is called a plurality opinion.  Four judges joined the main opinion (written by Justice Scalia); four dissented (in three separate opinions written by Justices Stevens, Souter and Breyer); and the final justice, Kennedy, joined with Scalia on the result, but with different logic.  Basically, Kennedy agreed with Scalia that nearly all political gerrymanders are non-justiciable, but held open the door just a teensy crack that if one was bad enough it could be challenged:

A decision ordering the correction of all election district lines drawn for partisan reasons would commit federal and state courts to unprecedented intervention in the American political process. The Court is correct to refrain from directing this substantial intrusion into the Nation’s political life. While agreeing with the plurality that the complaint the appellants filed in the District Court must be dismissed, and while understanding that great caution is necessary when approaching this subject, I would not foreclose all possibility of judicial relief if some limited and precise rationale were found to correct an established violation of the Constitution in some redistricting cases. 

And what, pray tell, is the "limited and precise rationale" that might justify federal judicial intervention into a redistricting process conducted by a state legislature?  Kennedy forthrightly admits that he is unable to articulate it -- it's just that he doesn't want to foreclose forever even the possibility that somebody some day might come up with such a thing.  Meanwhile, each of Stevens, Souter and Breyer took a crack at the challenge, coming up with three different proposed tests.  And Scalia ridiculed the whole project, pointing out that not only were three different tests proposed in this case alone, but prior case law contained multiple proposed tests which were also different from the ones proposed by the dissenters.

Fast forward twelve more years.  Justice Scalia has died.  Justices Stevens and Souter have left the court.  And a three-judge District Court panel in Wisconsin, by a 2-1 vote, has just invalidated the 2011 redistricting plan adopted in Wisconsin by its legislature, in a case called Whitford v. Gill. It seems that when the 2011 redistricting came along, Wisconsin's Republicans had just retaken control of the state legislature and undertook to redistrict to their advantage.  In the 2012 election, for example, the plaintiffs in the case claimed that the Republicans won 48.6% of the votes for the state Assembly, but 61 of 99 seats.  Shocking!

There's no way this decision would pass muster under Scalia's plurality opinion in Vieth, so these judges must be playing to Justice Kennedy.  What, then, is the "limited and precise rationale" adopted by this court that would support judicial intervention only in egregious cases?  Here is the test that this court articulates:

[T]he First Amendment and the Equal Protection clause prohibit a redistricting scheme which (1) is intended to place a severe impediment on the effectiveness of the votes of individual citizens on the basis of their political affiliation, (2) has that effect, and (3) cannot be justified on other, legitimate legislative grounds. 

Doesn't sound very "limited and precise" to me, but what do I know?  (By the way, in case you are interested, the majority opinion was written by Judge Kenneth Ripple, who normally sits on the Seventh Circuit and was appointed by President Reagan.  The judge who joined the majority is Barbara Crabb, appointed by President Carter; and the dissenting judge is William Griesbach, appointed by President George W. Bush.)  Dissenting judge Griesbach makes a number of good points in his opinion, including that a far more egregious gerrymander in Indiana was upheld by the Supreme Court in 1986, and that a concept called the "efficiency gap," cooked up by experts for the plaintiffs, makes no sense as part of some kind of constitutional standard for gerrymandering cases.  The "efficiency gap" purports to be a measure of the effectiveness of each voter's vote toward actually electing a representative, and is calculated by comparing the number of votes for candidates of each party to the number of legislative seats won by that party.  The plaintiffs had offered the "efficiency gap" as their effort to find the "limited and precise" rationale that Justice Kennedy is looking for; but the majority did not use that "gap" as the deciding factor, and rather relied on it only as evidence of supposedly wrongful partisan intent.

In latching onto the "efficiency gap" concept, even if not as the sole gravamen of its decision, the court's majority essentially bought into a fallacy.  Sorry guys, but even in the absence of gerrymandering, there is no inherent reason why the percent of seats in a legislature should match, or even be be very close to, the percent of voters who vote for each party.  For example, consider a state with an electorate that is about 55% Democrat and 45% Republican, with the voters of each party evenly spread throughout the state; and assume that there is a complete absence of gerrymandering.  It is entirely possible that the Democrats would win every single seat, and highly likely that they would win way more than 55% of the seats.  As another example, the Conservative Party (Tories) in England often win an absolute majority of seats in Parliament even though they win only around 40% of the vote.  This happens because their opponents split the left-wing vote among multiple parties.  

Anyway, this Wisconsin case now goes direct to the Supreme Court under an unusual procedural statute that sends this type of case to three-judge panels first and then straight to the Supremes. For reasons stated, I think the reasoning of the case is weak, and maybe even so weak as to fail to attract some or all of the "liberal" votes on the Court.

If the subject of gerrymandering intrigues you, I'll give you a couple of additional situations to ponder.  In the world of naturally-occurring factors causing a big "efficiency gap" for voters in the absence of (very much) partisan gerrymandering, consider my own home state of New York.  In both national and local elections, our state-wide electorate in recent years has voted consistently about 55-60% Democrat and about 40-45% Republican.  Theoretically, a perfect gerrymander orchestrated by Democrats could give them nearly every seat of both houses of the legislature and of the Congressional delegation.  To achieve that result, the redistricters would somehow have to assign collections of Democratic New York City voters to upstate districts, creating a map that no one can even imagine.  In the real world, New York has what might be viewed as a "natural gerrymander" that substantially favors the minority Republicans.  The Democratic voters are concentrated in small areas (mostly New York City, plus upstate cities like Buffalo and Albany), while the Republicans are spread across the state in large areas where they have small but consistent majorities.  In any map of reasonably contiguous and compact districts, the Republicans continue to win large numbers of seats.  Result:  the Republicans just won 9 of 27 Congressional seats, and they actually have control of the State Senate!

And then there is the United States as a whole.  For the second time in just the last five elections, the Republicans have won the electoral college in a presidential race while losing the popular vote.  If the state boundaries had been drawn by an evil cabal of back room Republicans, it is hard to imagine that they could have come up with a much better gerrymander of the United States for electoral college purposes than the state boundaries as they exist.  The Democratic votes are heavily concentrated in a few places (California, New York, Massachusetts, Illinois, Maryland, D.C.), where they are then "wasted" (in the terminology of the Whitford case).  Here are a couple of extreme scenarios that are completely possible given our state boundaries as drawn:

1. In the recent election, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote in California by about 3.5 million votes, and in New York by about 1.5 million votes, for a margin of about 5 million votes from just those two states.  Consider a future Democratic candidate who wins just those two states by the same margins, while the Republican wins all the other states (and even D.C.!) by margins of 100,000 per state.  The Democrat wins the popular vote by 100,000, while the Republican wins the electoral vote by 454-84.
2. Or consider an election in which the Democrat wins all the states won by Clinton, and by the same margins as Clinton, while the Republican wins the states won by Trump, but by only 100,000 per state.  The electoral college majority for the Republican would be the same as Trump's 306-232 margin over Clinton, but the Democrat would have won the popular vote by some 10 million or so, while losing the election.

This all seems to be working to the tremendous advantage of the Republicans these days, but remember that it was not always so -- and the pendulum could easily swing back.  Probably the most famous gerrymander in my lifetime occurred when the Democrats took control of the legislature of formerly-Republican California in time for the 1981 redistricting.  California's house delegation promptly went from a 21-21 Democrat-Republican split to 28-17.  That handiwork was not overturned in court, but so offended the voters that they ultimately imposed a redistricting commission system.  Meanwhile, California has become so heavily Democratic that its Congressional delegation has gone to 39-14, even in the absence of (egregious) gerrymandering.