According to her comments, Nancy Pelosi considers tax cuts to be spending.
If Pelosi really believed this, shouldn’t she be as supportive of tax cuts as she is of real spending increases?
What’s the difference? Does she think tax cuts are irresponsible spending? If so, are there any other types of government spending she considers irresponsible?
My guess, the only stuff she finds irresponsible are changes that put more in the hands of citizens and less in the hands of government.
In discussions about what government ought to do, rarely does one consider:
What if I’m wrong?
If there’s a chance that your policy causes more harm than good, or even any harm, shouldn’t you be more concerned?
Good intentions and the gotta-do-something attitude are often accepted as valid justification for causing harm, but I think that’s a mistake.
If I’m walking by someone on the street who is having a heart attack, I could attempt to perform open-heart surgery. That would cause him more harm since I have no medical experience. Even though I had good intentions and a gotta-do-something attitude, most people wouldn’t give me a pass for with that reasoning.
Yet, we let so many people and politicians get by on that reasoning when it comes to public policy.
I hear proponents of the minimum wage, for example, support their position with a ‘greater good’, cost benefit analysis that sounds like this: Sure, it might make it harder for some to find a job, but it’s worth it if some people get paid more than they otherwise would.
My response: The folks who will have a harder time finding a job want to thank you for making that decision on their behalf.
They usually chuckle and say something like: Well, that’s okay. The ones who get paid more will also thank me.
What amazes me about such exchanges is how blase folks are about making decisions that might harm others, even if their cost-benefit analysis is correct, and how little they care about whether they are right or wrong. They act as if their good intentions gives them a pass for being wrong and causing harm. That’s reckless.
A key reason I appreciate liberty isn’t because I believe the costs (like those in the above example) outweigh the benefits (though I do believe that), it’s because I believe I should be very careful when I’m thinking in terms of who to harm — even if I believe the benefits exceed the costs.
I don’t like it when others decide it’s okay to harm me for what they think is the greater good, so what entitles me to inflict harm on others? Treat others as you, yourself, would like to be treated.
Few of the reckless greater-do-gooders like it when others decide it’s okay to harm them. Yet, they rarely make the connection that because they don’t like it, maybe they should refrain as much as possible from advocating harming others.
I’m not a fan of society-level cost-benefit analysis, because it separates the analyzers from the direct costs and benefits and makes it too easy to be careless and support the outcome that garners the most favorable agreement with peers.
It’s to easy to say this: I support this because I think we* have to do something. We* just can’t sit by and let these people suffer.
*Of course, by ‘we’, they usually mean others.
It’s not so easy to say: You know, it may be unfortunate, but we all have unfortunate things happen to us and need to make adjustments. Besides, if we do something to help them though government, that just means we’re causing harm to others. Maybe, if we really do believe it is worth it to help them we should open our own checkbook, volunteer our time or start an organization to help them, rather than just make empty declarations.
In this article in Forbes magazine, the owner of 13 “hyperlocal” newspapers in Texas, John Garrett, tells us that his local editions serve a niche because “everybody is interested in roads and taxes.”
Garrett also said something that complemented my thought about bad journalism in this post:
We don’t editorialize. We lose all credibility when we take one side of an issue.
I wish I would have written that. Of course. How dumb are we?
It makes me laugh when I hear folks who believe media bias only exists on Fox News and in the Wall Street Journal. Not I that I don’t think those sources are biased. Of course they are.
What makes me laugh is that many of these same folks don’t see the bias in their preferred media outlets.
But, here Garrett gives us such a simple and obvious test for that bias. Just look at which sides of the issues they come down on in their editorials.
If they consistently come down on one particular side, how can you trust their reporting to be objective?
In today’s Wall Street Journal, Matt Ridley writes about the climate change nonscience. One passage, in particular, made me laugh out loud (emphasis added):
The big question is this: Will the lead authors of the relevant chapter of the forthcoming IPCC scientific report acknowledge that the best observational evidence no longer supports the IPCC’s existing 2°-4.5°C “likely” range for climate sensitivity? Unfortunately, this seems unlikely—given the organization’s record of replacing evidence-based policy-making with policy-based evidence-making, as well as the reluctance of academic scientists to accept that what they have been maintaining for many years is wrong.
From this article about co-habitating black holes:
“If there really are tons of black holes in there, then my old theory is completely toast,” says astrophysicist Steinn Sigurdsson of Pennsylvania State University. “This is a really nice piece of work.”
…someone who seems delighted with prospect of being wrong.
I enjoyed McGurn’s opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal today, …Lehrer Got it Right.
Despite all-around criticism that last week’s Presidential debate moderator ‘let things get out of control’, McGurn described Lehrer’s response to the criticism.
“I’ve always said this and finally I had a chance to demonstrate it,” he told Politico. “The moderator should be seen little and heard even less.”
He followed up Monday on radio’s “Imus in the Morning,” saying he wasn’t in the least “apologetic” for how things went. In particular Mr. Lehrer insisted that it wasn’t his job to challenge Mr. Romney on issues favored by the cognoscenti…
“If somebody was going to challenge Romney about the 47%,” Mr. Lehrer said, “it was going to have to be . . . the president and vice versa. They were there to do the challenging.” What a novel idea: Instead of leaving it to the press to decide what issues take priority, let the candidates choose and go at it.
Bingo.
I recommend listening to the latest Freakonomics podcast, The Power of the President. In it, Freakonomics economist Steven Levitt admits he was wrong about Obama.
At the 12:30 mark Levitt says:
I’ve probably never been more wrong about anything than I was about my projections for what the Obama administration would look like.
Levitt usually doesn’t pay much attention to politics and usually doesn’t vote. But he did in the last election. He credits Obama for being a great speaker and compares him to the Pied Piper, because:
…even though I disagreed with most of what he said, I immediately wanted to do them. I would have done whatever he would have told me to do.
That’s why I voted for Obama. I never vote, but I thought there was a good chance that Obama would be the greatest president in the history of mankind, and I wanted to be able to tell my grandchildren that I voted for Barack Obama.
One reason Levitt usually doesn’t vote is because he doesn’t think a president “matters all that much,” but he thinks the president can set a tone for the nation, and he thought “Obama would be able to set an incredible tone for our country.” He goes on:
…and what’s strange and surprising to me is that almost exactly the opposite happened. As soon as he got into office, it was just rancor and off-tune, off-pitch.
I’m glad someone can admit he was wrong. I wish he’d give other people, who weren’t wrong, more credit. Maybe we should more carefully consider their position in the future.
I’m reminded of a time where I participated in a mock government exercise as a high school student. In the gubernatorial campaign speeches, one candidate passionately recited some non-sense lyrics from a Prince song.
I remember thinking “what a disaster, this guy is bombing big time.” Much to my surprise, the auditorium erupted in applause and gave him a standing ovation. Myself and the guy sitting next to me were among the few who remained seated and silent with furled eyebrows. I asked him, “What the hell did he just say?” He responded, “I have no idea.”
That’s when it first occurred to me how many people could be swayed by style and emotion and there are very few of us that are more resistant to that.
Even Levitt, an economist, duped himself. He didn’t agree with much of what Obama said, but he would have done whatever Obama told him to do. For some reason, I have a natural tendency to put more weight — nearly all weight — on whether I agree or disagree with what someone is saying, not whether I like the way he or she says it.
I’m usually scanning for content and filtering out style. Much to my chagrin, I’m at the mercy of a population that appears to do the opposite.
But, they don’t just do the opposite. They often know they disagree with the person, but rationalize it away. I had friends in ’08 election who tried to convince me that while Obama appeared to be a bit far to the left (judging from what he said and his voting record), but he’d move to the middle when president. One even told me recently that while Obama hadn’t really moved to the middle in his first term, he expects that he will if he gets a second term. I’m sorry, what?
I would appreciate hearing Levitt say something like, “I’m going to make a point to be more careful about being swayed by style, emotion and fallacy in the future, and I encourage all of us to do the same. Listen to what people are saying. Ask yourself if you agree or disagree and then ask yourself why. Then find someone who can represent the disagreeing position well and talk to them.”
Over at Cafe Hayek, Russ Roberts points to an article from Reuters, In cancer science, many ‘discoveries’ don’t hold up. This is from the article:
A former researcher at Amgen Inc has found that many basic studies on cancer — a high proportion of them from university labs — are unreliable, with grim consequences for producing new medicines in the future.
During a decade as head of global cancer research at Amgen, C. Glenn Begley identified 53 “landmark” publications — papers in top journals, from reputable labs — for his team to reproduce. Begley sought to double-check the findings before trying to build on them for drug development.
Result: 47 of the 53 could not be replicated. He described his findings in a commentary piece published on Wednesday in the journal Nature.
That’s not science, folks. That’s randomness or noise.
No surprise. Scientists, after all, are humans and like all of us they respond to incentives. They want to get their studies published, they want to get their names out, they want to prove their theories. This satisfies their egos and keeps them employed. They aren’t monks. They’ll report noise if it gets them attention.
This was confirmed later in the article:
“If you can write it up and get it published you’re not even thinking of reproducibility,” said Ken Kaitin, director of the Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development. “You make an observation and move on. There is no incentive to find out it was wrong.”
Begley’s experience reminds me of what Gary Taubes’, author of Good Calories, Bad Calories, discovered as he reviewed landmark diet and health studies from over the past century. He found the “scientific foundation” on which much of the conventional wisdom and government dietary recommendations are based is shaky.
Here’s one of the best stories from the article that demonstrates the deception that we often call science:
“We went through the paper line by line, figure by figure,” said Begley. “I explained that we re-did their experiment 50 times and never got their result. He said they’d done it six times and got this result once, but put it in the paper because it made the best story. It’s very disillusioning.”
That should have been an important fact to mention before publishing the results.
I deal with this often in the business world too. Many folks play fast and loose with the facts. I often hear people support their position by saying, “Research shows that this is the best way” or “this is what customers prefer.”
Refer to “research” and most people will hear that and accept on blind faith that the research must be correct and correctly interpreted. Much to the chagrin of some of my business partners, I don’t.
I ask, “Would you mind if I took a look at that research?”
So far, about 10% of the folks I’ve asked showed me the research they referred to. The other 90% backed off their point quickly. And, of those 10% who did show me the research, I managed to point out several potential issues with the research method and interpretation that dramatically lowered the confidence in their conclusions in all cases.
I call that “pushing on the putty.” Backing your conclusion with flimsy research is like building a wall with putty. Push on it just a little bit and the wall crumbles.
In a recent blog post on EconLog, economist Bryan Caplan articulates an excellent example of the personal preference bias that keeps many people from accepting that government redistribution and welfare programs can have negative outcomes (and outcomes exactly opposite of what is intended).
In the blog post, he ties together the three books Charles Murray has written on poverty, Losing Ground, The Bell Curve and Coming Apart.
Murray doesn’t just explain poverty; he explains elites’ failure to understand poverty. Elites live in a high-IQ, low-impulsiveness Bubble. When they introspect, they correctly conclude that the welfare state has little effect on theirbehavior. They then incorrectly infer that the welfare state has little effect on anyone‘s behavior. If elites understood the world outside their Bubble a little better, they would have foreseen – and largely avoided – the welfare state’s negative effects on work and family.
Please watch this short video of Michelle Obama talking about her health campaign.
Notice the First Lady starts by saying:
Let’s Move [her health campaign that is changing what's in school lunches] isn’t about telling people what to do, because government doesn’t have all the answers.
Then she goes on to say:
The parents have to make some changes at home. They need the information to be able to make those choices. They need to have access to affordable food.
I guess the government doesn’t have all the answers, but the First Lady does. She just needs government to help her force her answers on the rest of us, or at least the ones who disagree with her.
