Third-World Poverty: That Was Easy

There was a story in The NewYork Times a few months ago that startled me. The story was of an American clothing manufacturer with a factory in the Dominican Republic, who decides that he wants to start having a more positive impact on the world. So he starts paying the workers a "living wage," defined in the article as the amount of money needed to adequately feed and shelter a family

This turns out to be about three times the minimum wage in the Dominican Republic, and the results for the lucky workers have been dramatic. The article leads off with the story of a woman who lived with her husband and three children in a windowless shack, sharing an outhouse two doors away. They are now building a new house with two bedrooms and an indoor bathroom. Another woman is planning to send her daughter to college.

OK, so a heartwarming story about a do-gooder, right? And this company can get away with it, because they do a lot of business with colleges, where there are already big anti-sweatshop campaigns organized that can help them do marketing. Not really earth-shaking.

But that wasn't what startled me. Far down in the article you read this: In a T-shirt that retails for $18, the cost of more than tripling the workers' wages is 80 cents.

What?

I started trying to figure out what other costs in the $18 might be affected. The interest cost of holding inventory might go up by whatever fraction eighty cents is of the wholesale price. What else? Shipping: the same as before. Marketing? The same. Retailing? The same. It doesn't appear that the cost of lifting these workers from miserable Third-World poverty to a hopeful Third-World middle-class life is more than five or six percent of the retail cost.

I was mulling this over when I came across another article in the Times. This one was making the unsurprising point that any change in the value of China's currency would affect different U.S. companies differently: if Chinese currency became more expensive ("stronger") relative to the dollar, it would help companies that export to China and  hurt companies that import from China. (That's why the U.S. wants it to happen, after all.)

Again, nothing startling except... The story includes an interview with a Chinese sock manufacturer who makes socks that retail in the U.S. for 2.99 a pair. He sells them for 25 cents a pair. That includes everything, not just labor but material and machinery. At the factory in the Dominican Republic, labor was about 10% of the cost of a shirt before the wage increase. Figure 20% for the socks. That's five cents. Triple that and you've raised the cost by ten cents, or about three percent.

Here's where it gets interesting. Let's say we survey Americans, with this question: "Suppose you could wave a magic wand and ensure that all the clothing imported into this country was made by workers who work in decent conditions and make enough to support a family, and not by workers working in a sweatshop at the minimum wage. But if you wave the wand, the cost of clothing will go up by five percent. Would you do it?" (Ideally, conduct the survey in such a way that the interviewer won't know an individual subject's response.) My guess is that a large majority would say yes.

So what's the problem? First, of course, people usually don't know which kind of T-shirt they're looking at. So you would need a big campaign (though probably quite cheap compared to the scale of the problem) along the lines of the old "Look for the union label" campaign, without, God forbid, mentioning unions. You would need an estimate of a living wage for each country, which some international organizations have taken a stab at, some kind of certifying organization, and an advertising campaign. Maybe George Soros's foundation can come up with a couple hundred million.

The other problem is that people might not actually do it. This is intellectually a trickier problem: even though everyone might want everyone to pay five percent more, strictly speaking it's irrational for anyone to do it. Whatever other people do, my own contribution is going to be too small to make a difference. This is a very familiar problem in political economy.  The same problem exists with installing pollution control equipment on your car, paying for national defense, or voting.

As the example of voting suggests, there are a couple of saving graces here. First, people may get some satisfaction from the activity itself. Second, most people are not rational; try to tell them that their vote's probability of affecting the outcome is essentially zero, and they'll say, "But what if everyone thought like that?" (Yossarian's reply in Catch 22 was, "Then I'd be crazy to think any differently, wouldn't I?") So voluntary action might work better than one would expect.

The examples of pollution-control equipment and national defense suggest what the alternative is: what Garrett Hardin called "mutual coercion mutually agreed upon." That is, we could pass a law saying that imported goods must be produced by workers who are paid a living wage. In principle, even though without the law we might buy the sweatshop stuff, we could unanimously agree to pass a law like that.

In practice, not so much. In general, manufacturers of competing goods and unions would probably support a law like this; importers of inputs would oppose it. Actually, the politics might get quite interesting. While the libertarians over at the Volokh Conspiracy would go through the roof, it might be possible to get liberals to link arms and sing "Kumbaya" with xenophobic opponents of immigration (under the slogan "Keep Them Where They Belong!").

I should mention that I've always thought "living wage" laws were pretty silly. Why is this not silly? If you try to regulate the supply side, by setting a wage rate that local businesses must pay, the businesses will move to the next town over. But if you regulate the demand side, what are businesses going to do? Not sell to us? If you bring those bleeding-hearts in Europe on board, you've got a huge chunk of total world demand.

All right, I haven't got all the details of this worked out. Most people in the Third World are self-employed farmers. Should we ignore them and hope that a rising tide will lift all boats? Would this change lead to a mass migration to cities? Is it legal under World Trade Organization rules?

Hey, implementation is someone else's problem.

A Couple More Notes From the Fringe

1. The prize for most unintentionally depressing subject line in an email goes to townhall.com, which sent me one titled "It's a Savage Nation." The reference, of course, is to "[b]estselling author, conservative icon, and popular radio host Dr. Michael Savage," who has a new book out.  But that seems to be increasingly true, doesn't it? It is a savage nation.

2.  Recently I commented on the right's bizarre rage against Obama. Yesterday I was visiting The Volokh Conspiracy, a website that I mentioned here last week. (I assume the name is an allusion to Hillary Clinton's claim of a "vast right-wing conspiracy" to bring about impeachment. The slogan of redstate.com is, "Where the VRWC conspires." That's from memory, of course, as I'm banned. Personally, I think "vast" might have been a little over the top.) Anyway...

I was reading, and commenting in, a thread about global warming. As  you might expect, the thread started out being reasonable and was quickly overpowered by passionate denialists skeptics. I came across this remarkably frank account:

...I stopped hiking and travelling because of physical problems that preclude hiking 20+ mile days in the backcountry. And I'm one pissed-off dude because of that.  This kind of "discussion" gives me an outlet that is both socially acceptable AND useful.

Now - I've already said some things about the "denialist" thing. For the moment, I'll just add this - it's kinda like those who use the F-word 3 times in every sentence - it's an indication of their immaturity, mental capacity, lack of imagination, lack of socialization and how thin their veneer of civilization is.  IOW, it's rude, crude and uncalled for and deserves no respect at all. 

For those who understand what science is, how it operates, its history and possible future, the word "Consensus" is utter nonsense. It's not an argument and it's only persuasive to those who are either ignorant or stupid (or both). 

Yes, that's one pissed-off dude, all right. I'm not too clear on why he's so exercised about being called a "denialist," or why that's worse than a term that he uses elsewhere, "the Church of AGW" (anthropogenic global warming). But what's noteworthy is that he is quite open about his rage being completely unrelated to the topic, and about finding an outlet for it in the "discussion" (in quotation marks, I suppose to indicate that discussing things is only his ostensible purpose). No doubt that is more socially acceptable than shooting someone, or beating the crap out of them.

But have the non-political, exogenous causes of rage increased for some reason, or has it just become more common for people to channel their rage into politics? And when they do, does violence go down, or does public expression of rage become more socially acceptable? And does that, possibly, increase the temptation to feel rage in a variety of situations (say, physical limitations)?  Is there a vast Satanic conspiracy against the better angels of our nature? Are we in fact turning into a savage nation?

Just speculating.

Misreading the Constitution

I have continued my optimistic, if quixotic, quest to bring civility and open debate to the Internet by visiting sites I don't agree with. Recently I have been spending time at the Volokh Conspiracy, a collective blog by a group of right-wing libertarian law professors. I am pleased to report that I haven't been banned, and that the tone is generally non-abusive and the opinions non-uniform. (There is one guy who referred to "Sonia Sodomizer" and commented on the "Muslim-in-Chief," but he doesn't really fit in there.)

In fact, I am finding this site a bit addictive, because it's actually possible to have a serious discussion there, though so far neither I nor anyone else appears to have been convinced. I did have a sudden intellectual epiphany, though, that I want to tell you about.

It was during discussion of a rather pointless post about a rather silly statement by Rep. Peter DeFazio that he was investigating articles of impeachment against Chief Justice Roberts. Part of the reason was the Citizens United decision immortalized in the last State of the Union address, in which a 5-4 majority struck down limits on corporations' political advertising as violations of the First Amendment.

There was some huffing and puffing about DeFazio (as if no one had ever proposed impeaching a Supreme Court Chief Justice before), and then talk turned to Citizens United. That led to this exchange, with me in italics:

Let me reframe it this way: Suppose (arguendo, as I believe they say) that CU results in big corporations and billionaires having a dominant influence on democratic elections. What would your response be? 1) I’m happy, because it would help my party, and the ends justify the means. 2) I’m happy, because big corporations and billionaires are smarter than average people and should determine policy. 3) I’m unhappy, and I would support legislation to reduce the effect of money, even though it might hurt my party. 4) I don’t care, because the assumption is wildly implausible.

You omit option #5: It doesn’t matter whether I’m happy or unhappy because free speech is not contingent on my approval of the speech.(Of your four choices, I’d go with #4, however.)

So the fact that big corporations and the rich can (hypothetically) take over the electoral process is not something we should do anything about? We shouldn’t do anything if (hypothetically) democracy is a sham, because that would infringe on people’s rights? I doubt the Constitution would have been ratified if people had known that was the deal. Would you (hypothetically) at least support disclosure legislation, or would that have a chilling effect on the speech of Goldman Sachs?

There was no response, though that may have been because this particular thread was getting a bit old at this point.  In any case, that's when I had my epiphany. I had been incredulous that they could be this cavalier about democracy.  Then I realized: Of course they don't care about democracy! They're libertarians!  It's not that they're anti-democratic. But democracy is a form of government, and government is tyranny. Sometimes, of course, it's a necessary evil, but it's still an evil.

Well, it's a free country. If that's what you want to think, I won't report you to the authorities. The important point is that libertarians have read the Constitution to comport with their ideology. So they see the Founders as people who were primarily concerned with keeping government from getting too powerful, and with protecting individual rights.

I think that is a complete distortion of the Constitution. What was really daring and original was to set up a government where sovereignty rested in the people. Literally, no one had done that before. (To this day, sovereignty in Britain rests in Parliament.) And the Founders got the Constitution approved by having the people (white and male, but not necessarily propertied) vote on it. Democracy is the very essence of what the Constitution is about.

Whether you take the libertarian or the democratic view of the Constitution turns out to make a big difference. Citizens United is one example. If free speech is a right of individuals that overrides everything, then the rich (let's leave aside the trickier issue of corporations) have an unlimited right to buy political advertising. If you're interested in a workable democracy, on the other hand, you want to provide strong protections for unpopular speech, but also ensure that open debate is not drowned out by money.

The difference is also stark with libertarians' favorite amendment, the second. (By the way, what is the deal with gun, uh, enthusiasts? It's a piece of machinery, for crying out loud. Like a lawnmower. Why don't we have outdoor refrigerator shows? "You'll take away my dishwasher when you pry it from my cold, dead hand...") The libertarian view blithely ignores that troublesome phrase, "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State..." Why would the Founders have put such a phrase in an amendment intended to enshrine the right to defend one's home? To me, it seems clear that the text is talking about an individual right necessary to ensure a collective activity. Like free speech, as a matter of fact.

So it's probably a mistake to think of the current majority on the Court as being  merely conservative. Yes, they no doubt have more, uh, empathy for corporations than they minority does. But they seem to have a different view about democracy as well.

Hold Off on the CAT Stampede

NBC opened the Nightly News last night with a story about how screening heavy smokers for lung cancer can reduce lung-cancer deaths. Specifically, when heavy smokers and people who used to be heavy smokers were screened using spiral (helical) CT scans, the death rate from lung cancer was lowered by 20%. (I prefer the old name CAT scan, because it lends itself to so many geeky jokes, such as that when you generalize the principle of the CAT scan, you get the PET scan. And the whole idea of a spiral scan makes one think about there being more than one way to scan a ...) CBS and ABC also gave prominent coverage the the story.

No doubt, this is good news. But every journalist should read (among others) my first substantive post on this blog, in which I mentioned the importance of long division in policy analysis. There were 53,000 people in the study. Over eight years, 442 people in the group getting chest X-rays died of lung cancer, versus 354 in the group getting spiral CT scans.

Let's assume equal numbers in each group. Then if you're a heavy smoker, your chance of dying of lung cancer over eight years is 1.67% with the chest X-ray, and 1.34% with the CT scan. By getting the CT scan you reduce your chance of dying of lung cancer over the next eight years by 0.33%. When you consider that the CT scan has a higher dose of X-rays, and that information about deaths from other causes won't be published for several months, it would seem wise to hold off on the stampede for now. At least the health care debate is over, sort of, so we'll probably be spared Republicans saying that Democrats want to ration CT scans.

By the way, does anyone else find these numbers (remember, heavy smokers and former heavy smokers) surprisingly low? I guess I was so heavily propagandized in elementary school that I thought your odds were about like playing Russian roulette. Of course this still represents hundreds of thousands of people, and doesn't include other cancers, heart disease, emphysema, and so on.

Projection

I have received an e-mail from Townhall.com offering me, with purchase of a subscription to Townhall Magazine, a free copy of the new Dinesh D'Souza book The Roots of Obama's Rage.  The e-mail tells us, "In this mind-blowing book D'Souza explains why Obama's economic policies are designed to intentionally make America poorer, why he welcomes a nuclear Iran, why he sees the United States as a rogue nation, and much more."  The e-mail features a blurb describing the book as "profound" from the morally decayed Newt Gingrich, whose personality appears to have been completely taken over by his Mr. Hyde side.

In short, the usual right-wing crackpot stuff. But what is most striking about this book is its title. Rage? True, it's an obvious ripoff from an article by Bernard Lewis in The Atlantic some years ago entitled "The Roots of Muslim Rage." But one can see angry Muslims on TV on a regular basis. Has anyone ever seen a really angry Obama? No-drama Obama? Can you imagine him burning a flag? Or throwing rocks? No, too weird.

So why rage? Here's a quotation from Wikipedia:

In Freudian psychology, Psychological projection or projection bias is a psychological defense mechanism where a person unconsciously denies their own attributes, thoughts, and emotions, which are then ascribed to the outside world, such as to the weather, or to other people. Thus, it involves imagining or projecting that others have those feelings.^[1]
 
Projection reduces anxiety by allowing the expression of the unwanted unconscious impulses or desires without letting the conscious mind recognize them.

It's not Obama's rage against America that needs explaining; it's the right's rage against Obama. I don't know what the roots of right-wing rage are. But there's no doubt that it's there, and has been since before Inauguration Day. It's not anger, it's apoplectic rage, and it predates anything Obama did in office.

Perhaps D'Souza should have actually read Lewis's article, instead of name-dropping it, for it is relevant not to Obama's fictional rage against America but to the right's real rage against Obama. In Lewis's view, Islamic rage against America has less to do with America's actions than with America as the symbolic leader of a way of life that threatens to change everything, i.e.,  modernity. Just so, the rage against Obama probably has less to do with his actions than with Obama as symbol of a (relative) loss of power by groups that had gotten used to being in power.

Fact-Based Politics

     "What we need is a balanced tax program. Right now the ratio between income tax and total income for the state gives an index that--" 
     "Yeah," I said. "I heard the speech. But they don't give a damn about that. Hell, make 'em cry, make 'em laugh, make 'em think you're their weak erring pal, or make 'em think you're God-Almighty....Tell 'em anything. But for Sweet Jesus' sake don't try to improve their minds." 

         Robert Penn Warren
            "All the King's Men" 

That's what you might call the Jack Burden theory of politics, and a few pages later it becomes the Willy Stark theory of politics. Warren stacks the deck, of course; any speech that contains the words "ratio" and "index" is bound to be a stinker, let alone both in the same sentence. 

But a version of this theory, a sort of Jack Burden Lite, is commonly applied even to voters who are not uneducated, poor, or living in the 1930s. That theory says that speeches should appeal primarily to emotions and not bore voters with a lot of facts. Basically, you should emulate Reagan and have touching or heart-wrenching stories to drive home your points.

I don't know that this theory is wrong. But I keep noticing how the political debate in this country is shaped by voters' ignorance of simple facts. For example:

1. The U.S. does not have the longest life expectancy in the world, nor the second longest. It has the 41st longest. It does not have the lowest infant mortality rate in the world, nor the second-lowest. It has the 41st lowest. (The exact rankings vary a bit depending on the source, but in any case, we're behind Cuba.)

2. If the U.S. spent as much on health care as the second-most-expensive country in the world, we would spend around $8,000 per household less than we're spending now. That other country has universal health care and better statistics on life expectancy and infant mortality than we do.

3. Less than one-fifth of third-generation Mexican-Americans in Los Angeles are fluent in Spanish, and 96% prefer to speak English at home.

4. If your ancestors immigrated to the U.S. before the twentieth century, they came at a time when there were no restrictions on immigration by country of origin (only racial restrictions on Chinese). Even if they came in the twentieth century, they probably had refugee status if they came from a Communist country. If your ancestors faced the restrictions of immigrants today, you probably wouldn't be here.

5. The ten years from 2000 to 2009 had the slowest economic growth of any decade since the Great Depression.

6. The top marginal tax rate in the 1950s was over 90%.

Obviously, any of these bald facts needs a little elaboration to help the audience see the policy implications. But any competent speechwriter can do that, and even tug at the heartstrings a little once the basic facts are established.

It is a mystery to me why people who have the facts on their side are so reticent about using them. The biggest offender is of course President Obama, and from the outside it's hard to figure out why.

One factor may be the apparent allergy in American politics to talking about other countries, except as adoring supporters. But why not get that old competitive spirit going? If we care about being number one at the Olympics, why not in health? Education? Infrastructure? Or if not number one, how about number five or six? If pride won't work, how about shame?

Another factor may be the strange reluctance of this Administration to talk to the public at all. Who dreamed that a president famous for being articulate would hold so few press conferences or Oval Office addresses? I don't have my finger on the pulse of the American electorate. But it certainly appears that part of the anger we are seeing today ("elites," "taking back our country," etc.) is about feeling cut out of the loop. You can't listen to each of hundreds of millions of people individually, but you can reduce their alienation a lot by talking to them.

For democracy to work, people need to know the facts. Those who don't have the facts on their side may have to resort to peddling myths. Those who do have the facts on their side, however, have a patriotic obligation to put them before the public. The country needs more than comforting or infuriating fantasies.

We're All Doomed

Three youngish Republican congressmen, Eric Cantor, Kevin McCarthy, and Paul Ryan, have published a book with the strikingly self-important title Young Guns, explaining how they're going to fix America's problems. Is this what we've been waiting for, intelligent and thoughtful Republican policy proposals?

Sadly, no. In fact, it's worse than I feared. Ray Suarez interviewed Cantor and McCarthy for PBS. Here are some highlights: 

REP. ERIC CANTOR: First of all, as far as the tax rates are concerned, you know, so many people are talking about tax cuts, when the reality is, one of two things is going to happen January 1, 2011. Either your tax rates are going to go up or they're going to stay the same.

Nobody's talking about any tax cuts. And small businesses out there right now are looking to see, oh, my goodness, are my taxes going to go up? Can I really afford to keep the lights on and employ people right now?So, that's when Kevin says first order of business has got to be to settle the uncertainty, so we can get folks back into a mind-set that they can begin to grow again and create wealth, not just depend on the government to take it from them and redistribute it.

Well, hang on a second, Congressman. One of two things is going to happen on January 1: the Bush-era tax cuts that Republicans passed as temporary are going to expire, or they're not. True, everyone knew Republicans were lying so that they wouldn't have to admit what a hole they were blowing in the budget, but the fact is that's the law you passed. If you're so worried about uncertainty, why did you make the tax cuts temporary?

RAY SUAREZ: Members of your own caucus have said, don't worry. Social Security's not on the table, military spending's not on the table, and Medicare's not on the table.
Well, if you take those three and you say, we're walling them off, it's hard to imagine what you could cut to get us to balance at some point in the future.
REP. KEVIN MCCARTHY: Not really. Not really.

Yes, really, Congressman. Take total federal discretionary spending, exclude defense spending, and we're left with about $700 billion. That includes the State Department, Homeland Security, Justice, Treasury, Agriculture, Commerce, the Small Business Administration, Veterans' Affairs, and everything else. Cut everything by twenty percent and you reduce the deficit by $140 billion.  So now, how are you going to get us to balance? 

RAY SUAREZ: Well, give me some examples.
REP. KEVIN MCCARTHY: I will give you an example. Anybody that rides a first-class ticket on Amtrak, that's only 16 percent. But you know, when you buy that sleeper car, the taxpayer spends $364 subsidizing your ticket, so you could have your bed drawn down.

To start with, Congressman, I don't believe that anything but a really bad cost-accounting system is going to tell you that the taxpayer is spending $364 subsidizing a first-class sleeper ticket. According to a website I found (it's hard to figure this out from Amtrak's website) the accommodation charge for a deluxe bedroom is $332, not including rail fare. Are you saying a first-class sleeper ticket costs Amtrak $700 a night? Sorry, I don't believe it. But apart from that, what do all the first-class subsidies on Amtrak total up to? Chump change. 

Do you realize that we give economic aid -- not humanitarian aid -- to countries that have $50 billion or more in debt they own for us, meaning that we're borrowing 40 cents out of a dollar from China to give them the millions of dollars?

Huh? Sorry, Congressman, now you're just gibbering. "And to the republic for Richard Stans, one nation, invisible..."

What is most depressing about this is not that intellectually the Republicans are once again firing blanks. It is that they seem anxious to return to the golden Reagan years of meaningless but inflammatory anecdotes. In place of welfare queens we have sleeper cars. And no one will call them on this. How far can Ray Suarez go before Republicans start trying to cut the budget of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting? Who is going to say it's not so if you claim that a first-class ticket is costing taxpayers $364? Or $463? Or $643?

I won't say political debate in America is going to get more dishonest, trivial and irresponsible than it is now. But there's no sign of its getting any better.

Issues for Incumbents in an Angry Year

It looks like it's going to be a bad year for incumbents. We're mad as hell, and we're not going to take it anymore, whatever "it" is. Politicians have responded as politicians usually do, like a bunch of frightened bunnies heading for cover. They're shocked, shocked at the goings-on in Washington, and they're going to do their outsider best to change things. What things? Oh, things in general. Do candidates think voters actually buy this?

Instead of assuming, "Voters are idiots and I'm doomed if they find out the truth," why not talk about issues they might care about? For example: 

Political reform. Periodically voters decide it's time to throw the bums out. Then they discover they've elected new bums, and they decide that politicians as a class are no good. This is not good for democracy. Incumbents should suggest that just maybe, the problem is with the system.

This is easiest if you're running for the Senate. A lot of things that many voters assume are in the Constitution, like the filibuster, are actually part of the once-clubby, insider System. If you want to start small, why not go after the hold, which allows a single person to hold up bills and nominations indefinitely? And what about the fact that C-Span reveals that nowadays those speaking to world's greatest deliberative body have no audience most of the time?

If you're running for the House, why not go after the three-day workweek? This custom really goes back, if I'm not mistaken, to Newt Gingrich (who told Republicans not to move their families to Washington), and was something the Democrats had said they would change. Gingrich's idea was that they would show they were not part of evil Washington by going home every weekend, but nothing says "privilege" and "out of touch" like a public servant with a three-day week.

Anonymous money. The Citizens United decision has, as expected, resulted in a huge flood of money from corporations and billionaires into political advertising. Rather than whimper, incumbents should make that the issue. Who are these people? Who's behind Citizens for a [whatever] America? Do they live in-state? Whom do we hold to account if they're lying? Are they motivated by the public interest, or their own interest? Do they think they can buy the election? Get people sensitized, so every anonymous attack ad makes your opponent look like a tool of special interests. Make fun of those voice-of-doom voiceovers.

Unfairness in the tax system. No one, ever, thinks the tax system is fair. This year, it's a real policy issue. Use it. "In 1981, one-tenth of all the income in America went to the richest one percent. Today, it's almost a quarter. Now, I've got nothing against rich people. God bless 'em. I don't want to take away all their money. I'm just saying that when the country is facing kind of the fiscal problems it is, they ought to pay their fair share. They've done really well for themselves recently, when everyone else has been struggling. Now it's time for them to pitch in."

The Future. How about some optimistic, future-oriented (yet values-oriented) ads? "In the 1950s and 1960s we built the interstate highway system, which knit the country together and laid a foundation for strong economic growth. Over that period, the real income of the average family almost doubled. But since that time, we've been consuming our children's future-- letting our roads crumble and our bridges collapse. And family income growth has slowed to a crawl. Our education system used to be the best in the world. Now we're struggling to catch up. It's time to stop coasting, and get serious again about this country's future."

Civility. Polls and focus groups have been showing for a long time that people are unhappy about a lack of civility in public life, from politics to driving. This seems like a winning issue for incumbents, since they are the ones most likely to be targeted by those voice-of-doom attack ads.

If people are mad, they've got plenty of reason to be. Give them a reason to vote for you.

And once again, you heard it here first

 
Claritas, September 26

New York Times, September 29

Democrats and Dunkin' Donuts

As you have surely noticed, many businesses are organized as franchises. Fast-food restaurants, some auto-repair shops, and car dealers are examples. The point I want to make here is how these businesses advertise: centrally. GM does not take its advertising budget and hand it out to its dealerships to buy ads, nor does Perdue hand over its advertising dollars to its chicken farmers. Nearly all advertising in national franchises is done nationally. And I doubt the franchisees would wish it otherwise; it's hard to believe that Ernie Boch Toyota could do a better job of advertising the Camry than Toyota could.

Yet no one ever does this in politics. The job of the House and Senate campaign committees, and of the national committees, is to raise money for individual candidates to use on making their own commercials. Why does national advertising make sense for Dunkin' Donuts, but not for Democrats?

"All politics is local!" someone will say, meaning that voters really only care about local issues. Well (sorry, ghost of Tip O'Neill), that's not true. Democrats are having a tough time this year all over the country. This is not some bizarre coincidence; the fortunes of politicians of a particular party tend to rise and fall together. After all, some of the determinants of burger sales are local, too, but that doesn't mean a Hardee's franchise is worth as much as a McDonald's franchise. Even supposing that a Hardee's burger is better suited to local tastes, I'd rather own a McDonald's franchise, because it's a  brand name supported by a lot of advertising.

Clearly, Democrats have a brand-name problem. But before they decide that people don't like their product, they need to make sure people know what it is. And when misinformation is being spread nationally, why rely on locals to deal with it? In New Hampshire, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is running an ad accusing Paul Hodes, the Democratic candidate for Senate, of having voted for a "government takeover" of health care. Why should individual candidates be the ones to deal with this nonsense? (Especially since some of them don't seem to have the spine for it. Instead of hitting back, Hodes is running an ad which doesn't mention that he's a Democrat--the equivalent of running a burger ad and hoping people won't notice that you're a Hardee's. Coincidentally, the ad uses a hot-dog eating contest as a metaphor for those awful people in Congress.)

If we really are moving toward an increasingly polarized politics (which I think is, given the American constitutional system, not a good thing), let's have the parties duke it out one-on-one, with advertising and slogans and idiotic sound bites and the whole thing.  At least then people would know what they're voting for. More or less.