The Economist Slamming Trump and Endorsing Hilary is Like Getting a Fortune Cookie Actually Written in Chinese

"Donald Trump would be a terrible president. We disagree w/ virtually all his policies," says The Economist, a magazine no Trump voter has ever read. It's like the KKK's magazine trying to dissuade Clinton supporters from voting for her. And then of course you have the undecideds, people who obviously protect themselves from all thought and media regarding politics else how could they remain undecided this far into an election this public, divisive and incessantly covered?

Reaching minds - much less changing them - seems futile.

These are insular worlds where opinions from one community are not even heard much less understood, like a muffled foreign language you hear through the wall. 

On one side are people who believe the modern world is better because of a global economy with a free exchange of goods and ideas where race and ethnicity is secondary and nationality is defined by the difficult task of a living conversation and on the other side is a people who believe in global conspiracies where race and ethnicity is all and nationality has already been defined by dead people who have left us the simple task of discerning their original intentions. One side is betting on progress and all of the disruptive uncertainty that it brings and the other is clinging to tradition and the freedom from cognitive dissonance that it promises.

The 2016 Voters Guide for Good Christians

A friend of mine sent along an email with a list of recommendations for Tuesday's election based on advice from a Craig Huey at Foothills Christian Church. It's like a voter's guide for good Christians. As a fellow Christian, he wanted my opinion about the list. Here is my response.

First of all, I guess some people might prefer to hire a Christian plumber rather than a Jew or agnostic. They might believe that the Christian is less likely to rape your wife when he's come to work on your shower or less likely to spend the money you pay him on pornography or crack cocaine. Let's put aside for a moment whether any of that makes sense or can be backed up by data. Apparently that's what they're doing here: judging the local plumbers - or in this case politicians - as to who is more Christian.

I have lots of problems with this but most can be summarized in this. Would you rather hire an agnostic who is a fantastic plumber who charges reasonable rates or a Christian who does such a bad job that he has to keep coming back out to your house to repair the repairs he did before? And charges you every time he comes back? I don't pretend to know who God loves more but I can judge whether someone is more able at their job than another person. I don't think that politics is any different than plumbing; some people are good at the work and understand people and policies and actually help to lessen traffic congestion or keep us out of wars or do a better job of funding the education and research that lowers the rate of death from cancer, say. And some people - bless their hearts - may be God's absolute favorite on earth but are simply awful at actually implementing any useful policy and get us into foreign entanglements, recessions, fund and approve the design of roads that actually result in more fatalities, fund and approve education that result in lower literacy rates, etc.

I don't put any more stock in a "Christian" evaluation of politicians than I would a "Christian" evaluation of restaurants. So I'll ignore most of this list of recommendations because I don't know what Christianity has to do with any of it anymore than I would pretend to know which hamburger or rocking chair was more Christian.

But let's say that you are worried about religion in America. Let's say that you really do care about you and your friend's ability to worship freely and worry about the government encroaching on that. Fair enough. So let's look for candidates or propositions that threaten that. Which brings us to the very first recommendation on the list: Donald Trump.

Trump talks a lot about the second amendment. The second amendment addresses the right to bear arms. Second, though, suggests that the political geniuses who started our country thought one amendment was even more important and made that first. What is the first amendment? The right to freedom of speech and religion. It reads:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Trump proposes rejecting this first amendment. He has called for a ban on Muslims coming to this country. This country founded on freedom of religion. This is the very definition of unconstitutional. He is calling for a religious test. We have history on this. We know what happens when a government decides that it wants one religion but not another and it is why our founding fathers wanted religious freedom. People are left - at best - arguing about things they cannot prove ("Allah is more important than Jehovah!" "NO! Christ is more important than Moses!" "Women should have their heads covered!") and at worst fighting for what they cannot prove. (And resorting to violence almost seems inevitable when you're arguing topics that don't yield to any provable evidence. In the century before our country was founded, Europe was devastated by religious wars, attempts to settle this issue of the right religion. The result was that between 5% to 50% of able-bodied men in various regions of Europe were killed, a fatality rate that was multiples of WWI or WWII. A reaction to this tragedy and carnage might easily be the biggest reason our founding fathers were intent on religious freedom, of avoiding Europe's awful mistake of legislating religion.) Our founding fathers not only let people freely choose religions without pretending to know which one was best but even offered freedom FROM religion by rejecting the idea of religious tests as requirements for holding public office. Once you start down the path of deciding which religions are right and which ones are wrong, you open the door to arbitrarily banning any number of religions. Maybe I'm even more sensitive to this than the average person because - like you - I'm a member of a faith that doesn't even make up one-tenth of one percent of the population but I do not want the government - particularly in the form of Trump who cannot quote a single verse from what is supposedly his favorite book - to define what religion is and is not allowed.

So, I reject the notion that being Christian gives someone better insight into who is better able to get legislation and funding to, say, relieve traffic congestion. And to the extent that religion does matter to me, what matters is my freedom to believe without approval from a government. Any "Christian" advice on politics that ignores this attack on the first amendment by starting with a recommendation for Trump is either provided by someone who is clueless about Trump and the first amendment or hopes that you - the reader - are.

Just based on that alone, I'd throw out this guide and simply use your own judgement or that of folks you rely on without regard for whether they are - or consider themselves to be - the right kind of Christian. Once you accept that politicians are no more able to bring down God's blessing or curses on your country than a plumber is able to bring it down on your toilet or sink, it's a little easier to objectively judge who to vote for and how.

For the Record: Clinton Victory Next Week

Just Friday I wrote that we could see a fall in dominoes that would give Trump's odds a serious bump. Those dominoes started with that day's announcement by FBI director Come(d)y that they were looking again at Clinton's emails and then extended into this week's events. The dominoes this week have not fallen which makes me confident that Clinton will be the president-elect a week from today.

What were those dominoes?

Friday's job report could have come in negative. The ADP report that comes out 2 days earlier, focusing on just private jobs, came in at 147,000 private sector jobs. There is a very high probability that Friday's jobs report will extend the positive numbers run to 73 months in row. That domino appears to have stayed upright.

The other event was today's announcement from the Federal Reserve. They could have raised rates but instead just signaled that they likely will raise rates in December. Even that caused markets to fall but not nearly as much as they would have had Yellen raised rates today.

So, no crashing stock market and negative jobs report to form the context for voters trip to the polls next week.

Nate Silver at fivethirtyeight likes to remind folks that the polls could be wrong and Clinton could lose states where she now leads. Putin's hackers or some aspiring journalist could reveal some nasty secret about the Clinton campaign that will tilt this close election to Trump. Something could change predictions but at least in terms of economic events, the last of the surprises are past.

If you are a Trump supporter, bang the table in frustration. If you are a Clinton supporter, exhale. In any case, it's now over.

Gradually Turning up the Heat on Frogs in Water: GOP Voters in 2016

In his book on Happiness, Daniel Gilbert points to a really fascinating thing about predicting our happiness: we're really bad at it.

Put simply, if you have a mouthful of liver you are incapable of imagining chocolate. Our current reality so colors our perception of future possibilities that we simply can't predict how we'll feel in those futures.

Ask someone, "How would you feel if you lost the use of your legs in an accident?" They'll answer that they'd be devastated, depressed, inconsolable. Ask them how they'd feel if the spouse they loved left them suddenly. Same sorts of answers. Well, a funny thing happens if you ask people who actually have gone through these experiences. As it turns out, after feeling initially about how they had imagined, they find a way to construct a new life that doesn't depend on their legs or spouse. Most people move on and many will even say things like, "It seemed like the worst thing to ever happen but now I realize it really was for the good." Or, "I have so much more compassion now and it forced me to become more spiritual, It really made me a better person," or "I feel so lucky because I never would have met Greg if my husband hadn't left me."

Predicting your emotions after something bad happens is tough. We find a way to justify, to adapt, to make the best of things.

Which brings me to this election and Donald's surprising performance. If you had asked evangelicals how they would feel about voting for Trump earlier in the primaries when they thought that Cruz could win, they'll tell you that they'd never do it. Ask a Bush supporter who thinks Trump not only treated Jeb crassly but even the Republican agenda (things like the invasion of Iraq) that they'd defended at family dinners. The Bush supporter will say, "Not going to happen. I won't vote for him." But as mentioned, we poorly predict our own futures.

Given enough time, people adapt. Republicans are more likely to be religious people and for them the GOP s as much a religion as a political party. Sure they're upset that the local priest molested those boys but that doesn't change the fact that they're Catholic. They're not becoming Baptists because one person acted so poorly. They're not happy with Trump but they've only been unhappy with the GOP candidate for months whereas they've vilified the Democratic Party for decades. And it's not like they haven't already publicly committed to hating Clintons already. The family at the Thanksgiving dinner will remind them of the times they've ranted about the Clintons. It would be terribly embarrassing to admit to anyone that they voted for one.

Ask a Republican this series of questions a year ago:
1. Would you vote for a candidate who praised a Russian dictator and suggested disbanding NATO?
2. Would you vote for a candidate who said he wouldn't accept the results of a democratic election?
3. Would you vote for a candidate who won the endorsement of only one major newspaper, no former presidents from either party, no former secretary of states of either party, and only one of six former presidential candidates from his / her own party?
4. Would you vote for a candidate who mandated a religious test for people entering this country?
5. Would you vote for a candidate who attacked the leaders in the Republican Party, lowering Republican's odds of winning the House and Senate?

An overwhelming majority would have said no to each of these questions. But instead of asking them all at once, what if you just incrementally revealed that this was a feature of the candidate - the GOP nominee - they'd already committed to? That would give voters a chance to rationalize his flaws, to make the best of them. Earlier in the year they'd be devastated by such a candidate; later in the year they think it might actually be the best thing to happen to their party. "I would have thought it a tragedy to lose legs but these new wheel chairs are so amazing! I actually get through malls faster than I used to!"

Trump is the tragedy that Republicans have had enough time to re-frame as actually being a good thing. Sure he's a dubious character and he might make the deficit huge again and who knows what all but he's a Republican. Isn't he?

Alabama, Race and Education

This is Section 256 in Alabama's state constitution:

Duty of legislature to establish and maintain public school system; apportionment of public school fund; separate schools for white and colored children.

The legislature shall establish, organize, and maintain a liberal system of public schools throughout the state for the benefit of the children thereof between the ages of seven and twenty-one years. The public school fund shall be apportioned to the several counties in proportion to the number of school children of school age therein, and shall be so apportioned to the schools in the districts or townships in the counties as to provide, as nearly as practicable, school terms of equal duration in such school districts or townships. Separate schools shall be provided for white and colored children, and no child of either race shall be permitted to attend a school of the other race. 

In 2004, the state legislature defeated a constitutional amendment that would have struck down Section 256 from Alabama's constitution.

For those of you trying to process what seems unbelievable, I'll spell it out. Federal law prohibits segregation in American schools; Alabama's state constitution still mandates it.

Across the nation, Alabama's school system is 2nd worst and Trump's odds of winning are 2nd best. That might be just a coincidence.

Two More Events that Could Give Donald the Presidency

Trigger warning: if you don't want to contemplate a series of events that could put Trump in the White House, stop reading now.

Trigger promise: if you have friends who say that haunted houses and horror movies don't scare them, read them this. 

Major institutions of the federal government might just tip this election in Donald Trump's direction.

FBI Director Comey just announced that he was re-opening the the investigation into Clinton's emails. Nothing more may be revealed before 8 November but nothing more needs to be said for the right to have enough material to feed conspiracy theories and worst-case scenarios. The evening before Comey's announcement, Sean Hannity had a man on testifying about Hillary Clinton's wild sex parties. Who has this man? Former editor of the Weekly World News that had also reported on Hillary Clinton being shacked up with an alien. Illegal alien you ask? No, Actual space alien, complete with a photo. Seriously. Contrast that with an announcement by the head of the FBI and you can only imagine how far the media can run.

What else could happen?

Well, Tuesday and Wednesday - the 1st and 2nd of November - Janet Yellen and the Federal Reserve Board governors will meet to decide on interest rates. She's clarified that she does not consider politics when making this decision and there is plenty of evidence that the governors are ready to vote for an interest rate hike. If they do raise rates, the market will very likely to go into a short term, but dramatic, fall. This just 6 days before the election.

That Friday - the 4th - the job numbers come out for October. It's perfectly reasonable to expect yet another positive but we're at a special point in the recovery. The unemployment rate is now at 5% and it's getting harder to find unemployed people to hire. If two years ago a healthy rate of job growth was about 200,000 jobs a month, it is now probably closer to 100,000. But jobs numbers fluctuate by at least 100,000 jobs a month so a smaller healthy number means a higher probability of hitting - or dropping below - zero. For the first time since 2010, we could have a negative jobs report. Just days before the election.

The FBI, the Fed, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics may all - in the course of just doing their job - provide just what Donald needs to prove that its God's will that he lead this great (again) country.

On its own, it's doubtful that Comey's investigation will make a big difference in her numbers; she'll perhaps lose 5 points of her current 60 point lead on Donald. (5 points in the probability of a win.)

The odds are bad that Janet Yellen will leave rates the same. I think she'll raise them and make the market fall. Given a Democrat is in the White House and Donald has been warning that the the Fed is artificially propping up the economy, this could drop Hillary's lead by another 5 points.

The odds are good - but not great - that October's job numbers will stay above zero but few people realize how absurd it is that it's stayed above zero two years longer than any previous period. You might say that a bad report is due.

Put it all together and you have decent odds that all of this will fall in place to seriously hurt Clinton.

Imagine a stock market fall and a negative numbers job reports added in to this media's penchant for drama and Donald's conviction that we're sitting atop an economic Armageddon. It could be enough to drive up levels of fear to the point that his support surges and Hillary Clinton's supporters freeze. It's been such an utterly unbelievable campaign that it's believable that it would end in yet another unbelievable turn. If all of this happens, Donald's odds of victory raise from the 20% (fivethirtyeight is now forecasting) to 35%, from 1 in 5 to 1 in 3. What might have been a landslide for Clinton could turn out to be a win for Trump by margins as small as W. Bush's 2000 victory over Gore.

Additionally, we don't know what Julian Assange and Vladimir Putin have in store for Clinton for the final days of the election. They've both made it clear that they want Trump and hate Clinton and that they have more emails to unveil. They might yet have an email that would do to Clinton's support what the 2005 Access Hollywood tape did to Trump's. In that case, it might just be a toss-up, an election that will be decided on the 15th of November with a recount rather than at 5 PM on election day.

To clarify, I don't think this particular sequence of events is high probability or that even if they do play out this way that it will give Trump the election. I do, however, think it's a route to victory that isn't given enough - or indeed, based on what I've seen - any consideration.

The smart money is still on Clinton but the dominoes are lined up for the most bizarre finish to this most bizarre election.

A Proposal That May Raise Your IQ

I have a proposal that could raise IQs by tens of points.

My conservative friends are struggling with facts. Rush Limbaugh has warned his listeners that fact checking is a liberal conspiracy. Conservatives I interact with tend to dismiss facts as evidence of a grand conspiracy or as a distraction to really important facts. I post information about a simple fact and they trot out the same, tiresome and by now obsolete challenges. Unemployment claims at their lowest since 1970? Well labor force participation rates are down. Created another 200,000 jobs? Well wages are stagnant. Or they'll even dismiss these facts because they can't be trusted.

This falls into a tiresomely predictable denial that makes them look foolish. "We didn't land on the moon!" "The economy hasn't gotten any better since the height of the Great Recession." "There was no Spanish Inquisition!" It's made them stupid. And given that so many of their arguments begin by denying facts, they've done nothing to enhance the cognitive abilities of Democrats who've learned to tune them out.

Not only does it make everyone stupid but it derails real conversation about economic reality. I'm generally optimistic about the economy but I'm also aware that we face challenges that require policy changes. Our policies are tailored for a time when either capital or knowledge workers limited. Neither one now does. The policies that will now work are the policies that treat entrepreneurship as the new limit. (Fortunately, policies are changing to some degree in various places. The number of entrepreneurship programs inside of universities in the last 20 years has exploded, for instance, suggesting a wonderful grassroots response to entrepreneurial opportunities.) There are good reasons to be worried and good reasons to be optimistic. Deciding which facts are facts based on who is sitting in the Oval Office just muddles that.

So here's the proposal. You go ahead and take credit or assign blame on a fact and then let's move on to discuss it. Let me demonstrate.

The economy has created jobs every month for 6 straight years. That's good.

Republicans? You can take credit for this because you've got Congress and governors in 31 states.

Democrats? You can take credit for this because you've got the White House and governors in 12 of the 20 states with higher than average incomes.

One other tactic that works regardless of who you support is to laugh and say, "Really? You really think that the American economy cares that much about who is in office?"

Done?  Regardless of who you are, you make sure that your party - or no party - gets credit. Run through whatever justification filter you need in order to settle in your heart that you have no reason to doubt your party or political independence .... and then let's move on to analyzing the actual statistic and the question of what that suggests about policy with no commitment to making the statistic great or awful, with defending or attacking it.

Meanwhile, Republicans can stop with the conspiracy theories that require them to deny that anything good is happening or act like an Alzheimer's victim whenever mention is made of the terrible performance of the economy under the last Republican president and Democrats can stop pretending that the American economy magically responds to a change because of a new face in the Oval Office. It's more complicated than that and it is in this complexity that the really interesting discussions play out. And perhaps I'm naive about their intelligence but I actually think that once they start to again accept facts, Republicans will have some really interesting things to say - challenging Democrats and Independents in a way that will increase their IQs as well rather than continuing to make everyone stupid.

Most of the interesting changes in the economy in the future probably won't come about because of a change in laws or government budgets. They'll come about because businesses have figured out how to design work to be as engaging as video games. Or because birthrates continue to drop. Or because returns to capital continue to drop and pension funds and 401(k)s struggle to fund retirements. Or not. Economic policies at the federal or local levels can ignore or work with these realities in ways that will exacerbate or mitigate these trends but rarely will they start them. Meanwhile, if conservatives continue to pretend that every fact is further proof of a conspiracy, they'll just find themselves more and more marginalized. Because right now their biggest problem isn't their most prominent candidate: it's the fact that they are now committed to changing or ignoring facts rather than changing their mental models. Until that changes, not only will their prospects suffer but so will political dialogue in this country.

Sequel to Hillary Clinton's Best Seller, It Takes a Village

Hillary's favorable ratings are lower than any presidential candidate before 2013.

As it turns out, this has hurt her but may not keep her from the presidency for the simple reason that she's running against the candidate with the lowest ever favorable ratings.

So what did it take for America to finally elect a female president? Well, in part, it took the worst opponent in modern history.

In 1996, Clinton's It Takes a Village was published. I'm kind of hoping that 20 years later she'll release the sequel, a memoir about running against Trump that that she'll title, It Takes a Village Idiot.

Donald Trump is Not Such a Bad Candidate

It's been a bizarre election.

This graph might depict as simply as any how unique Trump is.

As of 24 October 2012, Romney had received 37 endorsements from major newspapers. 4 years later, Trump had received 1. One.

Politico adds smaller newspapers to this tally. By their count, the endorsements run like this:
Clinton: 200+
Not Trump: ~12
Not Clinton: 1
No endorsement: 38
Trump: 6

By Politico's count, twice as many newspapers told their readers to vote for anyone but Trump as told their readers to vote for Trump. And half of the newspapers to endorse Trump during the primaries were either owned by his son-in-law or were the National Enquirer. While he has struggled to get endorsements from newspapers not owned by Sheldon Adelson, as of 1 November the KKK's official newspaper endorsed Trump.

In addition, historically rare or unique endorsements went against him. USA Today had never before endorsed a candidate in their 40+ year history. They still haven't but they did endorse any candidate but Trump. The Atlantic endorses a presidential candidate about once per century. In 1860 they endorsed Lincoln and in 1964 they endorsed Johnson. This year they endorsed Clinton. Foreign Affairs is 40-some years old and has never before endorsed a candidate but this year they endorsed Clinton.

It's more personal than mere newspapers. Not a single living Secretary of State endorses Trump. Only one of six living nominees for the Republican presidency endorse him. And all former presidents - Republican and Democrats - oppose him.

These endorsements are partly about his outrageously sexist comments but mostly about his incoherent policies. His budget will explode the deficit but he dismisses that because he'll make GDP grow at 4%. (It has averaged 2% per capita for just about the entirety of the post-Civil War period.) He'll ban immigrants based on a religious test but that's okay because they're just Muslims. He will repeal NAFTA and other trade agreements, setting off a trade war that will end badly on both sides but with casualties in the form of lost jobs and higher prices. He'll disband NATO and cooperate with Putin. And he seems fairly ambivalent about the democratic process itself, the first candidate in history to both promise to jail his opponent (well, first candidate outside of banana republics and autocracies in developing nations) and refuse to accept the results of a democratic vote. And to top it off, he's attacked leaders of his own party, turning his supporters against them when he wants revenge for a perceived offense, starting what is essentially a civil war within the GOP.

So what's most bizarre of all? It doesn't seem to make a huge difference in his poll numbers.

Based on the latest from fivethirtyeight - which essentially averages dozens of reputable polls, adjusting for their historic bias and methodology - Trump now has 44% of the popular vote. This puts him ahead of George H. Bush in 1992 and Bob Dole in 1996 and only slightly behind John McCain in 2008. 44% is not good but it is not that far behind George W. Bush's 47.9% in 2000, which was enough to win the electoral vote (in spite of losing the popular vote).

He compares even more favorably to Democratic candidates.

His 44% puts him ahead of McGovern in 1972, Carter in 1980 (in his re-election run) , Mondale in 1984, and Clinton in 1992 (in his first run).  He's doing better than 4 of the last eleven Democrats who ran for the presidency.

You might think that Trump is easily the worst candidate in modern times. Based on polls just 2 weeks out from election day, you're wrong. The data suggests that he doesn't upset Americans as much as half a dozen of the candidates they've seen since the modern primaries began. (And 3 of those 6 actually sat in the Oval Office.) That might just be the oddest thing about this bizarre election.

Evolved Libertarians - Or Why Gary Johnson Couldn't Name a World Leader

Chris Mathews asked presidential candidate Gary Johnson to name a world leader who he admired. Johnson couldn't do it.

It's easy to dismiss Johnson's drawing a blank as proof that he's simply not that aware of the outside world. I suspect it instead gets to something more fundamental: Libertarians don't really have real-world examples of what they're advocating.

It's worth contrasting Ayn Rand - libertarians favorite thinker - with other folks who have founded economic theories. Most importantly, Rand was a novelist and possibly the best writer of the lot.

Adam Smith's Wealth of Nation is still a great read but it doesn't really have a plot like Rand's books. He had observed and heard reports of phenomenal changes that were taking place as the Industrial Revolution was beginning to transform Britain and its colonies. (1776 was an amazing year.  James Watts had made some final changes to the design of the steam engine that would allow it to spread across numerous industries, automating work as it did. The first engineering textbook was published. The American colonies began the most fascinating experiment in the history of government. And The Wealth of Nations was published. All of this fueled a transformation that began lifting incomes for the first time since Homer and the ancient Greeks.) He opens with specialization and how focusing on one element of a task can greatly increase output. It might not be an empirical work in today's sense of the word but it certainly was grounded in real world events that he projected outwards in time and impact. Adam Smith did less to describe some abstract possibility than explain what was already happening.

Karl Marx's Das Capital is, by contrast, a dense and confusing read. He did point to abuse and poverty and suggested the possibility of government intervention in this. That might have been a lasting contribution. But his explanations of how the economy actually works are more literary than practical, more a demonstration of genius locked behind closed doors than genius forced to accommodate real events. The book and the policies based on it make little sense and don't do a particularly good job of explaining current affairs, predicting future events, or guiding policy.

John Maynard Keynes' General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money is also a tough read but it rewards the effort.  He wrote it in the wake of the Great Depression, arguably the most wrenching economic event since Wealth of Nations had been published. The Great Depression had driven unemployment up to 25% and cut GDP by half. This demanded some sort of an explanation and Keynes provided one. He explained that it is possible for capital markets to hit an equilibrium that leaves labor markets in dire shape. That is, investors might have a great reason to avoid investing which could depress hiring which could, in turn, depress investing and so on. Economies can perpetuate misery if action isn't taken to intervene in this cycle. Put another way, there is a general equilibrium for the whole economy - measured in things like GDP and employment - that doesn't automatically or always realize its potential just because capital markets are at an equilibrium. Keynes' theories helped to create legislation, policies, and agencies that kept the West from anything close to the Great Depression until much of that legislation was dismantled in the 90s and aughts, just before the Great Recession.

Keynes wrote about capital markets and actually made millions investing in stocks. He did have bouts in which he lost money, as any investor does, but on the whole his returns beat the market by a considerable margin. He understood capital markets at the practical as well as theoretical level.

Which brings us to Ayn Rand.

She didn't do so well at the level of actual policy recommendation or personal success. It's worth remembering that she wasn't a researcher who based her studies on extensive analysis of data. She was a novelist. Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged were exciting books but they are works of fiction. (The story of great people who dared to defy convention to go their own way is both central to progress and inimical to it. It is true that people who stand up to tradition are the source of progress; progress only follows, though, from their convincing the rest of their society to follow their lead, whether it be in the use of telephones or democracy. Social creators first separate themselves from the herd and then bring the herd along. Progress isn't like a monastery that you can retreat to alone; that's nature.) Her ideas are exciting but they're not actually based on data or anything you can translate into policy.  At a theoretical level, she didn't really leave much that could be translated into coherent policy, the way that Keynes did.

She also struggled at a personal level. Keynes was rich. Rand died living in public housing, dependent on Medicare and welfare. She wasn't exactly an example of fierce independence. Keynes' life helped to clarify his philosophy; Rand's life merely muddled hers.

And yet she is the intellectual parent of the libertarian movement in the same way that Marx was parent to communism or Smith father of capitalism and Keynes the modern welfare state. Ron Paul - perennial libertarian candidate - named his son Rand after her.

We can point to countries that have adopted Smith's capitalism, Marx's communism, and Keynes' managed market economy. There are dozens of examples of each.

We can't point to any countries that have adopted Rand's libertarian philosophy. There are a host of reasons for this but bottom line, this explains that when asked who he admired, Gary Johnson drew a blank because there are no examples of presidents or prime ministers or kings who have illustrated what Ayn Rand was advocating. The fact that there are no examples helps with the libertarian movement because it leaves the definition of libertarian loose enough that it has wider appeal than it might hope for had it been defined more specifically for actual countries or situations. ("Oh! You mean that we shouldn't regulate driving speeds but should just leave it people's judgement? I can't go along with that!" Or, "You don't think that we should have an FDA but should just let people sell whatever drugs or foods they can sell and let the market punish or reward them depending on whether their product ends or enhances life? Hmm. That sounds promising.")

Yet for all my criticism of libertarians - and I have plenty - I do think that it would be a fascinating experiment to see what happened if a random group of - say - 10 million people were put into a space without any laws or economic regulations to see what would happen. I think it would be fascinating and think that we could learn so much from such an experiment. That said, I also think that with time, we'd have government emerge, welfare for sick and elderly, community investment in childhood education, and even mechanisms put in place to make sure everyone had access to potable water, roads, and electricity. It's perfectly conceivable to me that more of those solutions would be purely "market" based but it also seems highly probable to me that this community would not only realize that even defining that market would actually mean agreeing on and passing laws that have to be enforced but also would mean the emergence of a public sector to solve the problems that markets simply don't. What would we get if we put in place a purely libertarian state? Within a quarter to half a century, I think that we'd see it evolve into what we have in places as diverse as San Francisco, Copenhagen, Singapore, and London. That is, I think we'd see a modern market-based, government enhanced economy tapping the dynamics Adam Smith described and subject to the occasional intervention Keynes recommended, just like we have now. Nixon famously said in the 1970s, "We're all Keynesians now." In the same way, I think it's true that we've been evolved libertarians for some time now.

Why We Had to Wait for the 100th Anniversary of the 19th Amendment for a Woman President

We have certain expectations of our presidents.

They'll go to the right schools.. About half of our presidents graduated from or attended prestigious schools like Harvard (8 did), Yale (5), Princeton (3), Columbia (3), William & Mary (3), or Stanford (1).

After attending these schools, they'll get important jobs like governor (17) or senator (16).

There are exceptions. Johnson used to ask around the table about which schools the folks gathered there had attended before saying, "Hmm. I guess I'm the only Southwest Texas College graduate here." [Thanks for that tidbit Bill Abendroth.] As you might guess, 8 presidents - including George Washington - didn't even graduate from university but none served after 1900. You won't be taken seriously in a presidential election today if your only schooling was at Mesa Community College.

Which brings me to my point. We expect a certain level of accomplishment of the presidential candidates we take seriously but we didn't even let women attempt those accomplishments until recently. We've had no women presidents in part because we haven't let women enter the institutions we expect our candidates to come from.

Yale began to admit women in 1969.
Hillary Rodham started Yale Law School in 1969.

To put that in perspective, Harvard awarded its first degree to a black man in 1870. It did not go coed until 1977, 107 years later.

Given that the graduates of certain prestigious schools have to then go on to get certain prestigious jobs before we generally consider them as serious candidates, it makes perfect sense that we haven't seen a serious woman candidate before Hillary Clinton. She got started on this journey as soon as it was institutionally possible. (And obviously if the country were completely indifferent between men and women, she could have been the Clinton who served from 1993 to 2000. Institutional realities weren't the only obstacle. So were attitudes and expectations.)

Institutional realities matter. It wasn't until 1623 that England passed legislation that gave inventors patent protection and provided an incentive to invest in developing new products. Almost no one had access to patent protection before the 17th century and inventions were rare. By the end of that century the first patent for a steam engine had been approved. In the next century, the Industrial Revolution had begun and incomes began to rise for the first time in thousands of years as hundreds and then thousands began to take advantage of this new institution of patent protection.

Whites held all the records for major league baseball before 1947. It wasn't because blacks couldn't play. It was because blacks weren't allowed to play.  Now, decades into the integration of baseball, 8 of the top 10 career home run hitters are players of color.

Progress depends on two things. One is inventing new institutions, as when the English passed patent law legislation. The other is when you give new groups access to old institutions, like when Major League Baseball let blacks join. Progress follows from creating new institutions and letting more people use them in the same way that it follows from inventing new technology and getting that widely adopted.

Outside of institutions, humans don't accomplish much. Let a person fight a gorilla one on one without any tools and it no contest. Within institutions, able to coordinate, specialize and leverage individual efforts, humans can accomplish a lot. Let 100 gorillas fight 100 humans with access to tools, language, training, planning, and coordination, and it is no contest. (This example of gorillas fighting humans is one that Yuval Noah Harari makes in his book Sapiens: A Brief History of Mankind.)

Now women have access to the same institutions men do. (This access is running at roughly the same rate in institutions like universities but at a lower rate in institutions like corporate boardrooms.) All this suggests that Hillary Rodham Clinton is just the start of this parade. Those prestigious schools may not have graduated any women before her, but they've graduated hundreds of thousands since. You can be sure that at least a couple will eventually sit in the Oval Office.

Before the rest of that parade comes, in 2020 - the 100th anniversary of the 19th amendment that gave women the right to vote - we will have our first woman president. It seems appropriate to commemorate that anniversary by broadening access to this country's most elite institution.

First woman and first man president, pictured 200 years apart.
Hair length and jackets similar but she gets jewelry and he gets ruffles.

What "Politically Correct" Really Means

"What I like about Trump," so many says, "is that he isn't politically correct. He's not afraid to say what he really means."

I've puzzled over what's meant by that. At first blush you might think they're happy to talk like an angry rapper but I know that this people don't talk like that. At second blush you might think they're happy to offend people. I think that is closer to the truth but still not really it. I've watched who they react to and who they bristle at and who they love to hear from and I think I know what "politically correct" actually means.

If you say, "Actually, you can't just say that deficit spending is bad. It really does depend. If you ....," what a lot of people hear is "I'm going to make an excuse for deficit spending ... blah blah blah blah."

What infuriates Trump delights his base. He speaks plainly about complex topics. There is a problem with terrorism? Ban Muslims. There is a problem with job creation? Build a wall. There is a problem with economic growth? Cut taxes.

It's not really that he speaks his mind. It's that he speaks so plainly people don't get lost or confused. He doesn't throw in any "if, then" statements that mark the speech of an expert but can confuse an amateur.

Why isn't simple speech politically correct? Because it makes for bad policy. You can't just "bomb the shit out of them" and expect it to result in good. Among other things, it would help to carefully define them. It would be valuable to explore other alternatives, to take care that whoever "them" is you don't indiscriminately kill their children, etc. Sloppy speech leads to bad policy in the same way that sloppy work in manufacturing or programming leads to a bad product. But Sloppy, politically incorrect speech is so much easier. It doesn't make any demands on the citizens to learn anything or to put out effort. It doesn't make any demands on them to trust experts who might talk in ways they don't quite understand. Bad policy might lead to every kind of miserable reality but it doesn't require the discomfort or hard work of thinking.

Disdain for politically correct speech means that people who are actually ignorant about policy can feel smart about it.

A Conspiracy of Conspiracies, Small Mind in a Big World, and Don John's Dying Wish

A Conspiracy of Conspiracies

Trump isn't losing. He's the victim of a media conspiracy.

To be more specific, he's not actually losing to Clinton because she isn't a legitimate candidate. She's guilty of a great crime and would be in jail except that there is an FBI conspiracy. Even the Department of Justice is conspiring against Don John.

And when the votes come in on November 8, he won't actually lose because there is a vast, nationwide conspiracy at the polls.

It is so much worse than Trump thinks. It's not just the media, the legal system and election system that is against him. It's the American people. They're in a conspiracy to keep him out of office.

The system - most every system - is rigged.

Small Mind in a Big World

Trump doesn't actually have any big ideas, it's just that his mind is so small that it makes his ideas look big.

For instance, he spoke so many times about how stupid the Obama administration is. "What happened to the element of surprise," Trump asks in discussing the attack to take back Mosul from ISIS in Iraq. "I started hearing about this, what, three months ago?" I would not tell anyone what I was doing, he says.

This is telling. In Trump's small mind, there is no one to coordinate with. There are no Iraqis or Kurds who live in this area and govern it. There are no American generals who might have better ideas about how and where to attack. In Trump's simple mind, it is a simple attack. He has the idea and then "poof!" his forces attack. But of course you don't attack ISIS within a city of two million within a foreign democracy quite that way. You have to coordinate and prepare. You have to communicate. What seems stupid in Don John's small and simple mind is actually necessary in the large and complex real world.

Trump's Dying Grasp on What Matters Most

In last night's debate, Trump seemed to prove at least one of three things:
1. He's stupid.
2. He thinks that enough American people are stupid to get him elected.
3. He has no desire to win this election.

1. and 2. might be exclusive. It is possible that he's really intelligent but just spouts complete nonsense because he knows that it sells with a certain group of Americans. [see below] It is possible but it is not likely. He has repeatedly shown in each debate that he can remain focused, concise, and coherent for only about 20 to 40 minutes. (Had these been 30 minute debates, he might have won each one, in the same way that he can write a tweet but not an op-ed, or in the same way he won his 6 to 12 minutes of debate time in each Republican debate with so many opponents.)

3. above seems likely. His desire to win the presidency has never been as clear as his desire for attention. Donald is 70. He vividly remembers the 80s when he came into the spotlight of media attention. That was about 35 years ago. Why does that matter? In 35 years, Donald will be dead. His death is closer in time than his rise to fame. It's not just that he's got an insatiable appetite for attention. He's running for the presidency as a fight against his own mortality and he's never more alive than when every media outlet in America is focused on his next word.

His "I"ll keep you in suspense," comment about whether he'll accept the election outcome should be heard in that light. He knows that he's going to lose. That doesn't bother him nearly as much as losing the attention he craves like a junkie craves heroin. He needs bigger doses every week and every week he says or does something even more outrageous to make sure he that he gets it. "I'll keep you in suspense" is his way of ensuring that even when he loses he can't be dismissed. The world will remain more riveted on his concession speech than they will on Hillary Clinton's historic win as the first female president in history. And in Don John's small mind, that makes perfect sense.

And finally, I leave you with this video recapping Don John's - and the Republican's - 2016 campaign.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVJiwuk75Ig


see below:
Evidence that he's either stupid or hopes that Americans are? He decries a debt of $19 trillion and yet his plan would add trillions more than current projections. How does he address this? His plan to cut taxes will drive GDP growth rate up to 4% or higher. Facts from this Stanford report show per capita GDP growth is remarkably stable and has been for about 150 years.

Trump very casually says that his plan will drive growth of 4% or higher as if this were trivial or common. It's neither. The fact that he would predict it as a way to dismiss arguments that his budget plan would seriously drive up deficits is proof that he's either stupid or thinks the voters are.

Why Labor Force Participation Rates Have Dropped

Here's a very simple graph with a very simple trend line:

The value it tracks over the decades is the percentage of men in the labor force. Every year this percentage declines and over a period of about 68 years, it has dropped from about 87% to about 69%, a fall of roughly 2.5 percentage points per decade. In no decade did it finish higher than it started.

I don't know why. I'll speculate at the end of this post but I do know that whatever is going on, it didn't just start in the last few years. It likely started before your career did.

Here's another simple graph and another simple trend line:

Between 1946 and 2000, women were joining the workforce at a faster rate than men were leaving. During that time, the participation rate of men dropped 11.6 points, from 86.7% to 75.1%. Meanwhile, women's participation rate rose 28 points, from 32% to 60.1%.

Why did women's participation rate rise? I don't know. The simplest explanation seems to be the pill, birth control options that let women delay careers for four to six years to get an education rather than for 20 to 30 years to raise children. Advances in contraception and female enrollment in schools (Yale only began to admit women in 1969) meant that women could plan families and careers in a way that let them choose one or the other or both.

The net effect of women joining the workforce faster than men were leaving was to drive steadily higher participation rates. Overall labor participation rate looks like this:

A question you might have reasonably asked in 2000 was whether women would continue to enter the workforce at a faster rate than men were going to leave it. I suspect that any reasonable person would take about five minutes to think this through and say, "Well at some point the rate at which women are joining the labor force will level off. It can't go above 100% and it's likely to stall out considerably short of 100%"

That seems like a reasonable thing for hypothetical you to have said and if you look at the labor force participation rate since, you'll see two things.

One, the rate at which men are leaving the workforce is still dropping off, and at about the same rate that it was last century.

Once we hit 2000, women's rate of participation began to drop off at a similar rate.

Women have possibly entered a plateau relative to men and have now joined them in their steady, decades long drop in participation rates.

The net effect is that labor force participation rate has dropped since 2000.

It would be foolish to think that the Great Recession and its aftermath hasn't impacted the rate of labor force participation for men and women. As I've mentioned so many times, in the last three decades of the 20th century, the American economy created 18 to 20 million jobs per decade. In the first decade of this century, it destroyed 1 million. That is going to impact everything from median income and unemployment numbers to labor participation rate. That said, a deeper trend than what would be explained by any boom or bust seems to be playing out here.

Here are some possible reason that the labor force participation rate is dropping every decade. 

More Leisure Time:

It might be what the technologists were enthused about a century ago: a future in which people have to work less.

In 1900, the average work week was nearly 60 hours. By 1950, it was just over 40 and people had more material goods and services than were imagined in 1900. Perhaps the drop in labor participation rate since 1950 shows a further continuation of this trend of needing fewer hours to get what we want and rather than showing up in shorter work hours it is showing up in a smaller workforce. 

More Education:

The labor force participation rate is for people over 16. In 1900, fewer than 10% of 14 to 17 year olds were formally enrolled in education. Now, roughly half are in college or university at 18. As people are in school longer, labor participation rates drop.

Earlier Retirement:

A growing portion of the population makes a lot of money. Sometimes they spend this on bigger houses. Sometimes they spend this on earlier retirement. It's conceivable that people are dropping out of the workforce earlier as people become more affluent.

Unqualified to Work:

Once upon a time, you could find work for anyone who wasn't seriously disabled. Increasingly, machines are automating work, from digging ditches to dispensing cash. The requirements for performing typical jobs may have gone up in terms of problem-solving ability, etc. It's conceivable that a growing portion of the population is unable to contribute enough value to justify paying them even minimum wage, leaving them out of the workforce. 

Video Games are More Engaging than Work:

It could be that we seek out flow experiences and leisure - from video games and spectator sports to hiking in the woods - now offers more joy than work. Beyond a certain income level, people would rather put themselves into play than work. Video game designers know how to fully engage us; efforts towards the gamification of work, by contrast, have only begun. We want to be engaged and it's harder to find that in work and easier to find that in leisure.

I don't know why participation rate is dropping but I do know this: any deeper reason will have to explain the data since 1948, not just 2008, because that is when the data began to show this trend. 

"Mexico's Not Sending Their Best:" How Trump May Have Poisoned the GOP's Future

Jamelle Bouie of Slate wrote an insightful piece on how Trump's alienation of Latinos could move them solidly into the Democratic camp in the same way that Goldwater's alienation of blacks in 1964 has made them such faithful Democratic voters since. It's definitely worth reading but in this piece I'll just focus on the numbers.

Hispanics are a growing percentage of the population. Since about 1980, they've had a growing tendency to vote Democratic. This combination is deadly for the GOP. In 1980,they had a small impact on the election. In 2016, their impact will be huge.

Republicans have won 5 of the last 11 presidential elections. If Hispanics had the same impact on each of those past elections as they'll have on this one, Republicans would have won only 2 of the last 11.

If your group makes up 50% of the population and your group is 50 points more likely to vote Republican (75% of your group votes Republican vs. 25% who votes Democrat), you will swing the whole election by 25 points. That is, if you're a big group and have a strong tendency to vote one way, you'll probably decide the election.

If an election is close, though, you don't have to be 50% of the population to make the difference. Even if you are 5% of the population, if your group is 50 points more likely to vote Republican, you will swing the election by 2.5 points, enough to give Republicans a victory in a close election.

In 1980, Hispanics made up 6.4% of the population. 56% of them voted Democrat and 35% voted Republican, giving Democrats a 21 point edge. So, with a 21 point edge among 6.4% of the population, Hispanics impacted the 1980 vote by 1.3 points. If the rest of the nation were evenly split, they'd have given the Democrat a victory by 1.3 points. (In fact, Reagan beat Carter by 9.7 points, 50.7% to 41%.)

The Hispanic edge in Reagan's first election in 1980 was 21 points. It was even smaller in 2004 at 18 points. (George W. Bush speaks Spanish.) But generally speaking, Hispanic's tendency to vote Democratic has edged steadily in Democrats' favor.

This year, the gap is the highest on record. and the percentage of Hispanics is its highest on record. That's a pretty powerful combination. 73% of Hispanics are likely to vote for Clinton and only 16% are likely to vote for Trump. Coupled with the fact that Hispanics are now 17.6% of the population, this translates into a 10 point impact. That's huge.

Of course this overstates their impact at least twice, though. First, Hispanics are not evenly distributed around the country; they are not going to impact Ohio's election as much as they will California's. (Although Florida, a swing-state, is third behind California and Texas for number of Hispanics and there is a decent chance that Hispanics will change Arizona's traditionally Republican vote this year.) Secondly, Hispanics are less likely to vote than the general population. Nonetheless, this calculation makes an important point: Hispanics will impact this election more than they have any election in history and that impact is big.

Trump didn't just attack illegal aliens. He attacked an American-born judge of Mexican heritage. As House Speaker Paul Ryan pointed out, that's a textbook definition of racism. It's no wonder that so Hispanics are voting against him. Central to the question of whether the GOP has a future is this question of whether Republicans can win them back.

How big is a 10 point impact? Enough to have made Reagan a loser in 1980. Think about that. Even if the GOP can offer a candidate with Reagan's broad appeal, it still will not be enough to win the presidency. That's not much of a future.

The GOP's Problem with Women Enters a New Chapter

"Sure Donald Trump said vile things but Bill Clinton did them."

The first problem with this is that it assumes Don John didn't do anything. That's dubious. But there's a deeper problem with this that gets to a theme in the GOP.

If you think that an affair and sexual assault is equivalent, you don't appreciate the importance of consent. Sometimes a woman wants sexual attention. Sometimes she doesn't. If she doesn't want your sexual attention, just about anything you say or do is at the very least offensive and might even be abusive. If she does want it, usually anything you say or do is fine. Assault is less about where you touch than whether or not the woman welcomes your touch. Woman's consent makes all the difference.

But this gets to the theme in the GOP: woman's will isn't that important. Most conservatives roughly fifty years ago thought that women shouldn't have access to contraceptives. Most conservatives today think they shouldn't have access to abortion. Some even to this day think that it's not possible for a man to rape his wife. And now we see that quite a few believe that there is no difference between an affair and assault. This fits a pattern.

[And lest you point out that an affair is rarely consented to by the wife, I'll readily agree. Still, if we're comparing a married man engaged in assault and a married man engaged in an affair, the wife's lack of consent is a constant.]

Is Seattle The Most Dynamic Economy in the US?

The average company in the S&P 50 was founded in 1930 and is worth $209.7 billion. 86 years old, it has created about $2.5 billion a year in stock value since its founding.

The regions of the country are very different though. Based just on total valuation, the top three regions are the Bay Area, New York, and Seattle.

New York metro area has the most companies in this list: 10 out of 50. They are more than a century old, though; the average founding date is 1899.

Second on this list is the Bay Area with 9. The average founding date here is 1955.

This plays into a simple measure of dynamics. Two companies might each be worth $100 billion but the one that is only a decade old is more dynamic than the one that is a century old.

The ten companies around New York are worth a combined $1,955.4 billion. The average value they've created per year since their founding is $3.2 billion.

The nine companies in the Bay Area are worth a combined $2,641.4 billion. Not only are they worth more on average, they've created far more value per year: $10.6 billion.

Seattle is third on the list of metro areas for valuation of S&P 50 firms even though it has only 2 on the list. Microsoft and Amazon are worth a combined $836.6 billion and - both relatively young firms - have created an average of $14.3 billion per year, making it the most dynamic region in the country by this measure.

The average age of New York's top companies is 117 years old. The Bay Area is 61. Seattle? Just 32, which is a pretty stark contrast to Dallas, which also has two companies on the list (Exxon and AT&T), but have an average age of 143 years.

I think we do a poor job of tracking wealth creation. Median and average wages matter but if one person makes $100,000 a year and gets no uptick in wealth from her share of the company and another makes $90,000 a year but gets $20,000 in extra wealth because of an uptick in stock, the second person arguably has a more valuable job. A more comprehensive measurement of dynamic (one that, for instance, actually included the S&P 500 at a minimum) might be a nice complement to wage information for an area. And it might even make the mediocre data on wage growth seem impressive.

Companies included on New York's list:

J&J

GE

JPMorgan Chase

Verizon

Pfizer

Merck

Pepsico

IBM

Citigroup

Verizon Communications

On Bay Area's list:

Apple

Alphabet (Google)

Facebook

Wells Fargo

Visa

Chevron

Intel

Oracle

Cisco

2016: Year of the Woman

Well, you know what Don John, first pick of evangelicals says: "Women. They're the assault of the earth."

Women won't just be the ones whose votes will beat Don John. They are the ones for whom the votes will be cast.

The first four votes I cast on my ballot - President, Senate, US Congress and State Assembly - were all for women and all are favored to win. (The only two choices for Senate are two women so there is no question about which gender will win that race.) It will be interesting to see if this is an anomaly for my district or if women are going to break records across the country.

Just Remember - These Are Real People and So is That Hatred You're Feeling

This summer I was talking to the nephew of a former premier of a major Canadian province (equivalent to the governor of a state). His uncle had been in the news quite a lot back in the 1980s, even here in the States, and, as a fiscal conservative governing over a recession, he made a number of painful cuts to the budget. He was vilified for his actions.

The premier died a couple of years ago and his mind had started to slip in his last years. Towards the very end of his life, he was re-living the trauma of the attacks on him by the press and political opponents. Of all the great things he accomplished, his power and fame, what shaped his last days was the struggle of his worst days. So powerful were those memories that they slipped from memory into what he was actually experiencing. All over again.

It's worth remembering that these are real people in office or running for it. You don't have to hate them to decide not to vote for them. And it's not just that they are real people. That hate that could so easily consume you is a real emotion.

Media and the Angry Voter

Fox was founded in October 1996. In the six presidential elections before that, the GOP won by an average of 5.6 points. (4 victories, two by double-digits.) In the six presidential elections since (counting this one, including the latest poll numbers at fivethirtyeight), they've lost by an average of 4 points. Even though George W. was elected twice, he won the popular vote only once, and that by 2.4 points. No other Republican has won since Fox began to broadcast.

I don't know if Fox style news is caused by their impotency at the polls or is causing it. In any case, it's hard to believe that it's helped. It has done wonders for Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes' net worth but it's not obvious that it's done much for the Republican Party.

...........

In any case, Fox is a specific instance of a wider trend. Media has become increasingly sophisticated at driving up ratings. It does this by finding the most alarming news or possibilities available from among all the things happening on 7 continents, in 200 countries, among 7 billion people. With that much to select from, there's always something. Always.

Then the media puzzles over why voters are increasingly frightened and angry.

Huh.