I didn’t catch the vice presidential debate. What happened? The transcript suggests that mostly the VP candidates talked about the presidential candidates rather than about what each might do personally. Is this conventional?
The transcript shows a long discussion about police, which seemed odd because running police departments is mostly done by states and cities, no? Most interesting to me was Pence’s comment: “Police officers are the best of us.” Can that be true? Pence implies that it is because they risk being killed: “African-American, Asian, Latino, Hispanic, they put their lives on the line every single day.” But the risk of death for a police officer is negligible compared to the risk incurred by a front-line combat soldier. Why wouldn’t it be “Combat infantry second lieutenants are the best of us” if the standard is risking one’s life for fellow citizens?
Kaine presents himself as the defender of women: “Donald Trump [should apologize] for calling women slobs, pigs, dogs, disgusting.” A scholar told me that in the old days we presented our enemies as subhuman, e.g., portraying the Japanese during World War II as monkeys. Now we point to their treatment of women and say that we are going to rush in with our military to defend those women. Kaine seems to be doing the same thing domestically.
Pandering to voters by telling them that they are going to get great stuff from the government but won’t have to pay for it with taxes seems to still be in style. The moderator: “According to the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, neither of your economic plans will reduce the growing $19 trillion gross national debt. In fact, your plans would add even more to it.” Pence seems to think that Americans are going to get off their sofas, put down the Xbox controllers, and return to the labor force: “when you get the economy growing, Elaine, that’s when you can deal with the national debt. When we get back to 3.5 percent to 4 percent growth with Donald Trump’s plan will do, then we’re going to have the resources to meet our nation’s needs at home and abroad, and we’re going to have the ability to bring down the national debt.” But he doesn’t say that he will scale back the programs listed in Book Review: The Redistribution Recession that make it irrational for Americans to work (or encourage states to adjust child support guidelines so that it becomes less profitable to have sex with a dermatologist than to go to college and work).
Kaine promises a Soviet-style planned economy for achieving economic growth: “First thing we do is we invest in manufacturing, infrastructure, and research in the clean energy jobs of tomorrow. Second thing is we invest in our workforce, from pre-K education to great teachers to debt-free college and tuition-free college for families that make less than $125,000 a year.” The “we” here seems to be the government’s central planners. “Third, we promote fairness by raising the minimum wage, so you can’t work full-time and be under the poverty level, and by paying women equal pay for equal work.” The central planners will decide how much each American should get paid, just as was done in the Soviet system. As the Democrats are solidly in the lead I would say that this demonstrates the continuing desire of Americans to enjoy a planned economy (see “Citizens for a Planned Economy”).
It seemed as though mostly the candidates talked about stuff that is too complex and technical for the average voter to know or care about. Was there an obvious winner?
[Meanwhile my Facebook feed continues to be filled with hatred of Donald Trump and celebration of Hillary’s wisdom. Hillary supporters have come to the conclusion that all Trump supporters are either stupid or sexist/racist or both. This makes some statistical sense because less than half of the voting population supports Trump and roughly half of Americans are less intelligent than average. I wonder if anyone has followed up by administering an IQ test to voters to determine if in fact IQ can be used to predict voting behavior.]
It is hard to see why anyone would care about the VP debate as the VP has almost no duties under the constitution and never in my lifetime has a VP had any clear influence on national policy except if the President left office. My guess is that Bill’s thoughts will be a lot more important to Hillary than Kaine’s and Trump couldn’t care less what Pence thinks about anything.
I think we should be paying a lot of attention. Once Hillary is impeached (probably for something she hasn’t even done yet), this Kaine guy will likely be president.
Scary that comrade Kaine would be just one more seizure aware from the presidency if Hillary won. Not likely though as the only polls showing her a few points ahead oversample democrats +60%, and with Trump drawing crowds of 10-20,000 at stadiums while Hillary is only getting 3-500 at high school gyms.
I watched the first half. Two grown men, frequently ignoring the questions, and hurling non-stop “soundbites” at each other to try and damage the other candidate. Not much decorum, lots of interrupting. Doubt if this moved the needle for anyone. Move along, nothing to see here.
If HC becomes president, prepare for extreme political correctness.
From, e.g. the daily caller:
During his opening statement at Tuesday’s vice presidential debate, Tim Kaine said his primary role will be to act as Hillary Clinton’s “right hand person.”
“According to the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, neither of your economic plans will reduce the growing $19 trillion gross national debt. In fact, your plans would add even more to it.”
Vox has put together a helpful cartoon illustrating the effects of Trump and Clinton’s tax and spending plans on the national debt.
Regarding Clinton’s plans to direct more funds (from taxes) into public education: Why do we have public education in the first place? Why not leave it up to employers, for example, to decide how much to spend on education and training? Joseph Heath explains, in Chapter 6 of Normative Economics:
Of course the problem that the US has is that it spends a lot of money on education, both public and private, while not getting a very well-educated workforce out of it. So it might be more appealing to argue for better quality of education. Still, it’s hard to see how to get better quality without putting in more money.
Russil: It is easy to get better quality without putting in more money! Put the students on an Airbus A380 and send them to a country where high-quality education is delivered affordably. Americans interested in value-for-dollar don’t vacation at high-cost low-quality domestic resorts. They go to Mexico and relax on the beach with a pina colada served by a hard-working professional waiter. Or they ride on a cruise ship staffed by non-Americans.
The British boarding school solution! Doesn’t really scale up, though. Improving education in the US is going to be a long slog. I still think the right approach is bottom-up rather than top-down: it makes sense to look at what other countries are doing, but it also makes sense to look at different US states to get a sense of what’s working and what’s not.
Also, I should point out that Disneyland still exists.
I predict educational results will largely be driven by demographics.
Also, the historical lack of improvement due to increased education spending suggests that, conversely, this spending could be reduced without imperiling outcomes.
From the outside, the middle/high school parts of the system seem particularly inefficient, ineffective and wasteful. Often more of a symbolic gesture than actually increasing human capital. I would furthermore say it’s significant (and lamentable) that the length of education is used as a proxy for human capital.
The above also holds for my own home land, Sweden. Partly because of a very foolish strategy for education in the 90s, based on a vision of Swedes managing the efforts of cheap third worlders, the “knowledge society”. Yet I now see no Swedes running Google or Microsoft. But then perhaps the details are irrelevant since we are seeing the same decline over much of the West.
“Also, the historical lack of improvement due to increased education spending suggests that, conversely, this spending could be reduced without imperiling outcomes.”
See Baumol’s cost disease. Teaching is labor-intensive, and therefore becomes more expensive over time. There’s many things we can and should do to make education more effective and efficient, but I doubt productivity in education will ever improve as fast as productivity in manufacturing.
Baumol’s cost disease provides a hypothetical floor to costs (e.g., you need to pay the members of an orchestra reasonable wages compared to other professions). However, I would say that floor is some distance below us.
I’m astounded that teachers are paid $100,000+ salaries in New York, for example. But note that the union rep makes a Baumol style argument here:
http://www.democratandchronicle.com/story/news/local/2013/10/06/more-ny-educator-salaries-top-100000-/2933899/
As usual, all the benefits and featherbedding are conveniently discounted when salaries come up.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/01/fashion/01generationb.html?_r=0
Second, the educational system is not so much explained by the goal of providing the best possible education (whatever that is) than by being captured and moulded by a collection of insiders (individuals, companies, organizations) extracting rents from the tax payer horn of plenty. Consider choices from how textbooks are written, topics to be taught chosen, and onwards and you may start feeling a bit depressed by how well this fits.