I’ve spent rather more time than I’d like over the past couple of weeks wrangling with Amazon over their stocking of my book. For some reason they’d listed it as “hard to obtain” and therefore subject to a £1.99 surcharge. When I questioned this, I received an email from their customer service people in India saying “yes, we’ve looked at the website and that is the case.” When I pointed out that I too could look at the website but that it was what was said there that was the problem, they replied “yes, we’ve looked at the website and that is the case.” [DO … LOOP] . Anyway, I’m pleased to be able to say, that the surcharge is now gone.
From the monthly archives:
September 2003
I’ve spent the past couple of days at the second of a series of conferences with the title “Priority in Practice” which seek to bring political philosophers in contact with more gritty policy questions. It was good fun, there were some good papers and I learnt a fair bit. One of the interesting papers was by John O’Neill from Lancaster who discussed the controversial question of “contingent valuation”, which is a method by which researchers engaged in cost-benefit analysis attempt to establish a shadow value for some (usually environmental) good for which there is no genuine market price, by asking people what they’d be prepared to pay for it (or alternatively, and eliciting a very different set of answers, what they’d need to compensate them for its loss).
Naturally, people often react with fury or distaste to the suggestion that they assign a monetary value to something like the preservation of an ecosystem. They think that just isn’t an appropriate question and that it involves a transgression of the boundaries between different spheres of justice or value. John had a nice quote to show that researchers have been asking just this sort of question (and getting similar tetchy responses) for rather a long time:
bq. Darius, after he had got the kingdom, called into his presence certain Greeks who were at hand, and asked- “What he should pay them to eat the bodies of their fathers when they died?” To which they answered, that there was no sum that would tempt them to do such a thing. He then sent for certain Indians, of the race called Callatians, men who eat their fathers, and asked them, while the Greeks stood by, and knew by the help of an interpreter all that was said – “What he should give them to burn the bodies of their fathers at their decease?” The Indians exclaimed aloud, and bade him forbear such language. (Herodotus, _Histories_ , III).
A new Labour (but definitely _not_ New Labour) ginger group has been launched, by the name of Compass. It looks interesting and some good people are involved.
Donkey Rising has some amazing results from a recent poll:
It’s been remarked that Bush’s poll ratings in most respects seem to be returning to about what they were prior to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. That’s true and in some cases they’re actually worse. The public is now 10 points less likely to think Bush is honest and trustworthy; 7 points less likely to think he is moderate, not extreme, 6 points less likely to think he is for working and middle class families and 5 points less likely to think he “cares about people like you”. In addition, the public is 12 points more likely to think he has a go-it-alone policy that hurts our relations with our allies.
Similarly, when comparing the ratings on which parties are trusted to do a better job on the issues, Democrats now have the same leads or better that they had prior to 9/11 and Republicans are not doing much better today than they did then. Democrats are favored by 35 points on the environment today (33 points before 9/11), by 26 points on Medicare (26 points previously), by 24 points on health care (21 previously), by 20 points on retirement and social security (16 previously), by 20 points on prescription drugs (22 previously), by 20 points on the federal budget and deficits (just 3 previously), by 12 points on the economy (3 previously) and by 11 points on education (7 previously). For the Republicans, they are favored by 6 points today on taxes (but were favored by 12 points before 9/11) and by 22 points on keeping America strong (but they were running a 16 point lead even before 9/11).
The conclusion is inescapable. Much of the Bush’s political capital from 9/11 has been dissipated. More than anyone would have thought a year ago, the 2004 election seems likely to be fought on the actual merits and demerits of the entire Bush presidency, not just the two months after 9/11. And, in DR’s opinion, that’s pretty bad–extremely bad–news for Bush.
I spent some time looking at the results, and there’s a lot here to make someone like me smile. (Detailed results here, slideshow here.) It was commissioned by Democrats, but it still seems like a useful survey. I don’t see a leftward bias in the sample: 19% of them describe themselves as liberal, 41% as moderates, and 38% as conservatives.
A few things got my attention:
– Between July 2002 and September 2003, the percentage of people who said that they would vote Bush or lean Bush in the next Presidential election never topped 52%. I thought that it would have been higher right after “Mission Accomplished”.
Democrats couldn’t exactly crow- it wasn’t until August 2003 that “the Democratic nominee” got within striking range. (In September, it’s 47% Bush, 45% Democratic nominee.) Still, the landslide talk was probably always misplaced.
– Respondents were asked which of these statements came closer to their views:
“America’s security depends on building strong ties with other nations.”
or
“Bottom line, America’s security depends on its own military strength.”
50% agreed with the first statement, while 39% agreed with the second.
– On the other hand, the argument that Bush is too conservative in his appointments to the federal courts is an apparent loser. Only 37% agree, while 46% disagree.
– In the most recent poll, for the first time, about as many people said they opposed Bush’s tax cut plan (45%) as favored it (44%).
– From November 2001 until the end of 2002, more respondents said that Republicans were better on the economy than Democrats. That has reversed in a big way- in the most recent poll, 48% of respondents said Democrats were better on the economy. Only 35% said Republicans.
– On the federal budget and deficit, in the most recent poll 47% said that Democrats were better. Only 27% said Republicans.
(I think that this discrepancy is worth highlighting. I’ve been told so many times that Democrats have no credibility on budgetary issues that I had started to believe it. It’s also worth highlighting because 80% of respondents say the federal deficit is a serious problem, compared to 69% who say high taxes are a serious problem.)
– As previously noted, the biggest weakness is the discrepancy between Republicans and Democrats on who does a better job on keeping America strong. 50% say Republicans, 29% say Democrats.
If only there were a Democratic candidate who could overcome that weakness…
Everyone should take a look at this; it shows what 30-second advertising slots in the Fall schedules went for this this year. Most expensive show is Friends (obviously), followed by “Will and Grace” (surprising?). I don’t really have a handle on US media, but I can’t believe that a lame one-joke effort like W&G is pulling in the ratings, so it must have really good demographics (the pink economy, I guess). I’m also surprised that Monday Night Football is only in the middle of the table and cheaper than “The Simpsons”. Anyway, enjoy.
Update: Closer perusal shows that the priciness of Will & Grace is unlikely to have anything to do with the pinkness or otherwise of its viewers. It’s just that CBS seems to totally own Thursday night, and W&G is in a slot between “Friends” and “ER”. The mystery is actually why “Scrubs” and “Coupling” are comparatively weaker; they’re both pretty bad, but I wouldn’t have said that they were between 10% and 30% worse than Will & Grace.
Maria’s post on the Adam Smith Institute blog1 reminded me of an old joke from the ASI’s halcyon days of the 1980s when Sir Keith Joseph was at the heart of Margaret Thatcher’s government pushing a serious Hayekian agenda. In those days, the role of the ASI was described as “taking ideas from the edge of lunacy to the edge of policy”. I only thought of this joke after reading Thomas Friedman‘s latest effort in the New York Times (I actually read it by mistake; I thought that Krugman had shaved off the bottom half of his beard and if you look at the two photos side by side it’s an understandable error).
Time was when a man who seriously talked about the likelihood of imminent uprising by the French Muslim population and called articles things like “War With France” could safely be laughed at, or at least confined to the WSJ’s increasing eccentric online editorial supplement. Time no longer, apparently. Oh dear. Friedman is possibly wrong, by the way, in claiming that “France, with its large Muslim minority”, would necessarily see its “social fabric” hugely affected by Islamic militancy; as a French acquaintance pointed out to me recently, the Islamic population of France is heavily concentrated in metropolitan Paris and Lyon, and France is actually a country of small towns. But mistaking Paris for France is a common enough error (particularly by Parisians) so I’ll let that pass.
Well, as a matter of fact, there are.
Hotspots are multiplying all over the place, not just in Stateside Starbucks’, but even along the Paris metro. The only time I’ve used wifi so far was at CFP 2003 where it came in extremely handy for blogging the event. But think of it; free internet, wherever you go – how great is that going to be?
Commenting on the whole Erik Rasmusen thing at Indiana, Dan Drezner and the voice in his head write:
… the cure for promulgated ideas that are believed to be offensive or wrong is more speech, not less. … What need there is for a review beyond that is truly beyond me. … [Wait, wait, you forgot the ritual denunciation of Rasmusen’s views on homosexuality.–ed. That’s completely irrelevant to this question. … however, it’s worth highlighting a fact that Louis Menand pointed out in The Metaphysical Club:
One of the triggering events for the emergence of academic freedom was when a Stanford University professor was fired for making a speech that contradicted co-founder Jane Stanford’s views on the matter. The professor made a eugenicist argument against Asian immigration.
Looks like one of those irregular verbs that used to come up so often on Yes, Minister. In this case we get:
bq. I make provocative analogies.
You draw inappropriate comparisons.
He is an idiotarian fixated on moral equivalence.
Jacob Levy revives the debate about the tax system and the poor — or, as the Wall Street Journal called them when it kicked off the argument, those lucky duckies who make up the “non-taxpaying class”. Jacob wants to argue that the underlying form of the WSJ’s argument is very common — indeed, almost inescapable — in political philosophy. He says it goes as follows:
bq. If we subject everyone to the same rules, institutions, or conditions, then there will be political demand to make them fair or otherwise tolerable. If we only subject some people to them, then some may be unfairly singled out or burdened; there will be opportunities to divide the citizenry, play the interests of some against those of others, and to undermine the overall desirable outcome. … The final thing to notice about this kind of reasoning is that some form of it is common to virtually all political philosophies. Stated at a sufficiently general level, it is the standard classical liberal argument for the rule of law, for not being ruled by an aristocracy exempt from the legislation it writes, and for hoping that justice will be blind.
Over at Volokh, Jacob describes this column as his “most contrarian to date“. I worry that he’s putting his talents to waste looking for a neat angle on things. If you end up making the case that the bottom 20% of income earners (that’s people who make $15,000 a year or less) are logically equivalent to “an aristocracy exempt from … legislation” then you have a choice. You can conclude you have a solid new argument for calling someone a welfare queen, or you can wonder whether something’s gone wrong somewhere.
Egregious disinformation abounds on the Internet, but I was a little disappointed to see Josh Chafetz talking smack about smoked salmon. He advances the self-evidently preposterous thesis that
smoked salmon must be eaten with a bagel, cream cheese, and red onion.
Wrong. As any fule kno, smoked salmon ought to be eaten on lightly buttered brown bread, with a couple of drops of lemon juice squeezed over it. The butter should be Irish, and mildly salted (Kerrygold butter is widely available in the UK, continental Europe, US and Canada, and will do quite nicely). Ideally, the brown bread should be made by my mother. Since very few of you have had the privilege of eating my mother’s brown bread (Chris and, obviously, Maria are the lucky exceptions), I’ll share the recipe.
Bruce Ackerman has an “op-ed piece”:http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/17/opinion/17ACKE.html in the New York Times today arguing that the Ninth Circuit should not delay the vote in California. I have to admit that I was a bit surprised by Ackerman’s willingness to limit the possibilities raised by the equal protection claims upheld in Bush v. Gore. Here’s his argument:
bq. This time around, the candidates in California have already invested heavily in a short campaign. Their competing strategies have been designed to reach a climax on the Oct. 7 election date. If they had known they would have to compete until March, they would have conducted their campaigns very differently. By suddenly changing the finish line, the three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit disrupts the core First Amendment freedom to present a coherent political message to voters . . . Worse yet, the decision disrupts the First Amendment interests of the millions of Californians who have participated in the recall effort. State law promised them a quick election if they completed their petitions by an August deadline.
It also offered them a fair election. It seems reasonable for a court to postpone an election long enough to permit the installation of fair voting systems, rather than going through with error-prone machines and then trying to sort out the mess afterwards.
What about Ackerman’s First Amendment argument? It always helps to have the text around. So the First Amendment says: “Congress shall make no law . . . 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.” The core of the First Amendment may be the protection of political speech. But even if that’s right, it’s a big stretch to say that its core is the freedom to present a coherent political message to voters. That’s either rhetorical flourish or wishful thinking. Ackerman is asserting a First Amendment right to have an election run on time. I’m sure it would be a good thing to have prompt elections, and there may be statutory law requiring it. But, if there’s a constitutional claim involved here, it is the right to have one’s vote counted equally in a fair election. Ackerman thinks that this claim isn’t strong enough to override his First Amendment concerns. I think those concerns are overstated, at best. But even if they aren’t, this is an opportunity to see whether the Supreme Court was serious about the equal protection arguments of Bush v. Gore. It’s worth waiting for a decision about whether the Court meant what it said about guaranteeing fair elections.
The UK Adam Smith Institute has started its own blog. It’s quite a good, snappy read, and the first few days cover many of the hoary old chestnuts you might expect; how vouchers are the panacea for under-performing public services, how Naomi Klein attacks branding, but actually is a brand herself (fair enough), and how, erm, left-wingers are too angry and put upon to be funny.
It’s worth keeping a look at to see how this blog develops. Though, as with other more ‘corporate’ blogs, the house style is a bit uniform. There seems to be a word limit on entries which has the effect of making the pieces sound a bit samey, and also rather superficial.
Funnily enough, on my way back from lunch today I was giving out (extremely superficially) that all the rich seem to do is distort markets by defending their privileges and/or monopoly rents. While the ASIs of this world seem to spend their time defending these guys (you know, ‘the rich’, i.e. suitably vague) – e.g. saying embezzlement and fraud should be dealt with by companies, not law enforcement – it seems to me that the really rich have no interest at all in truly competitive markets. Just ask Bill Gates, Halliburton, et al. And then the conversation turned to whether George Bush was a kleptocrat, plutocrat or just a plain old vanilla flavoured oligarch…
Maybe there’s a joke in there, but I was too down-trodden to see it.
I just got back from an interesting conference in Newcastle (UK) organised by the Institute for Public Policy Research, and presided over by Matthew Taylor as his last big act before going to direct policy at number 10. (Actually I got back a week ago, but pressures of work and technical set-backs have kept me silent till now). Basically it was a ‘looking for a new big idea’ kind of gathering for New Labourish types – IPPR had asked a bunch of academics to present their thoughts and findings about meritocracy, social mobility, and equality of opportunity, and a bunch of politicians, policy makers, and representatives of domestic NGOs to engage with them. I confess that I anticipated a kind of dialogue of the deaf, but it wasn’t like that at all. The academics (including John Goldthorpe, John Roemer, Stephen Machin, Adam Swift, Michael Hout) made brief, pertinent, and not-dumbed-down presentations; and the in-session and out-of session discussions were to the point and thoughtful. Gordon Brown gave a talk on the first afternoon with which I, very much not a New Labour person, was very impressed. He seemed not only to have a coherent, worked out view, and a straightforward comfortableness with the language and concerns of traditional social democracy, but also to have read and understood all of the preparatory readings. (Apparently he called up John Goldthorpe the previous Thursday to ask him about some of the technical points in Goldthorpe’s paper). My brief was to respond to the minister for school standards, David Miliband’s, speech on why the government is focussing its attention on teaching and learning more than on admissions and funding. Again, I was impressed by the thoughtfulness and reasonableness of his presentation, and the care with which he distinguished issues of what should ideally be done and what is feasible given political and constitutional constraints; though, fortunately, disagreed with enough to make it worth debating him. One large disagreement among the attendees was the extent to which a society should try to reward ‘merit’ financially. Again, though, whereas I’d assumed on going in that I’d be in a minority with Swift and Roemer against meritocracy, it was striking how soft the support for meritocracy was in all the discussions, and how well disposed Brown was, for example, to prioritizing the interests of the least advantaged.
Cynics will dismiss my impressions as the consequences of either being over-susceptible to politicians charm, or (more likely) jet lag, and in another couple of weeks I’m sure I shall relapse into my own negativity. But the fact remains (as Americans I’ve described the conference to keep saying) that such a conference, in which senior elected politicians discuss the work of serious left-wing academics on their own terms, in the presence of senior policy-makers, is utterly unimaginable in the US.
All the papers for the conference, by the way, are accessible here at Ippr.
I suppose lots of people will have seen it anyway, but for those who didn’t it’s worth pointing out that Kevin Drum has an excellent but thoroughly terrifying interview with Paul Krugman.
An appropriately spine-chilling taster:
Train wreck is a way overused metaphor, but we’re headed for some kind of collision, and there are three things that can happen. Just by the arithmetic, you can either have big tax increases, roll back the whole Bush program plus some; or you can sharply cut Medicare and Social Security, because that’s where the money is; or the U.S. just tootles along until we actually have a financial crisis where the marginal buyer of U.S. treasury bills, which is actually the Reserve Bank of China, says, we don’t trust these guys anymore — and we turn into Argentina. All three of those are clearly impossible, and yet one of them has to happen, so, your choice. Which one?
I’m almost certainly spending too much time reading lefty American blogs, but I now have far more emotional investment in the result of the US Presidential Election in 2004 than I have in that of the next electoral flurry in the UK.