Archive for the ‘Cato Publications’ Category
Tuesday Links
- Iranian journalist Akbar Ganji awarded the $500,000 Milton Friedman Prize for Advancing Liberty.
- New rules for your taxes: Pretend your way to tax freedom — just like Congress!
- Americans this year will spend more on taxes than on clothing, food, and shelter combined.
- Is federal power now unlimited? To defend the nominee President Obama chooses to replace the liberal Justice Stevens, Democrats will be forced to say what they really believe about the Constitution.
- Podcast: “Stevens’ Undue Deference” featuring John Samples
Terrorism Is Not an Existential Threat, But Fear Doesn’t Care About That
Last week, coincidence brought together a pair of worthy articles attacking the political adage that terrorism is an “existential” threat.
Gene Healy debunked “existential” in his Examiner column. “Conservatives understand that exaggerated fears of environmental threats make government grow and liberty shrink,” he writes. “They’d do well to recognize that the same dynamic applies to homeland security.”
John Mueller and Mark Stewart, meanwhile, have an article on Foreign Affairs’ web site titled: “Hardly Existential: Thinking Rationally About Terrorism.” They show that conventional assessment methods place terrorism so low on the scale of risks that additional spending to further reduce its likelihood or consequences is probably not justified.
But some readers literally can’t absorb what appears in the two paragraphs above. You might be one of them.
Exquisitely rational arguments like these are “cognitively invisible” in the face of fear, as Priscilla Lewis puts it in the forthcoming Cato book Terrorizing Ourselves. I assume the arguments of Healy, Mueller, and Stewart will be dismissed out of hand by people who view terrorism through their personal lens of fear.
Mueller and Stewart touch on this problem briefly:
Because they are so blatantly intentional, deaths resulting from terrorism do, of course, arouse special emotions. And they often have wide political ramifications, as citizens demand that politicians “do something.” Many people therefore consider them more significant and more painful to endure than deaths by other causes. But quite a few dangers, particularly ones concerning pollution and nuclear power plants, also stir considerable political and emotional feelings, and these have been taken into account by regulators when devising their assessments of risk acceptability.
We know enough to be confident of our security. The questions remaining include: How do we convince others to join the ranks of the indomitable Americans? How do we undercut the political advantage taken of terror fears? And how do we rein in the massive government growth produced by terror politics?
Deal or No Deal?
It appears that the United States has reached a temporary deal with Brazil over U.S. cotton subsidies, which were deemed illegal under world trade rules many years ago. (Here’s Cato adjunct scholar Dan Sumner on the case and its implications. Bloomberg’s Mark Drajem and the New York Times’ Sewell Chan have more details on the deal.)
This comes not a minute too soon from the U.S. perspective: the deal was reached just one day before Brazil was to begin imposing over $800 million worth of tariffs and WTO-approved intellectual property rights violations against American firms in retaliation for U.S. intransigence in complying. (Snarky aside: where’s your commitment to ”trade enforcement” now, Mr. Obama?)
What’s in the deal, you ask? Well, it is certainly not, as might have been hoped, an end to all cotton subsidies immediately. What it does include are some “interesting” sweeteners to Brazil. First, over $147 million in “technical assistance” to Brazilian cotton growers. In an excellent blog post at SFGate, Carolyn Lochhead makes the obvious-to-everyone-except-policymakers point that now taxpayers are paying for support to Brazilian farmers as well as American ones.
Second, the United States will make some changes to the export subsidy-esque parts of the cotton program, and promise to address some of the broader issues in contention as part of the next farm bill. (I’ll believe that when I see it.)
The third element, though, is pretty worrying. Apparently the United States has also agreed to evaluate whether a certain area of Brazil is “disease free,” so that farmers from that area can export their beef to the United States. The reason why I find that a concern is that under the terms of the WTO Agreement on Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures, recognizing disease-free areas on a scientific basis is an obligation the United States has to WTO members. The area is either disease free or it is not, and the United States should not be using it as a compensatory tool (nor should Brazil accept it as such) . The International Food and Agricultural Trade Policy Council’s Carlo Perez del Castillo (a former Uruguayan trade minister) put it well, if subtly: “[P]ublically linking what should really be a scientific issue of whether a specific state in Brazil is or is not free of certain animal diseases, to a more political agreement such as this one on cotton, is rather unusual.”
I’m not a trade lawyer, and I have no inside knowledge of Brazil’s long-term legal strategy here. But I sure hope this isn’t the end of the saga. If they have caved in to (1) a bribe that puts money in the hands of U.S. farming consultants, and out of the hands of U.S. taxpayers, (2) a good dose of ”your cheque is in the mail,” and (3) a final insult of “OK, as a special favour to you, we’ll do what we were supposed to have been doing all along,” then it’s a sad day for the WTO’s dispute settlement system.
My good friend, ex-Catoite, trade lawyer, and all around smart fellow Scott Lincicome offers his excellent-as-usual perspective on the deal here.
Slippery Slopes and the New Paternalism
At Cato Unbound this month, economist and Cato adjunct scholar Glen Whitman discusses “soft” paternalism — the attempt to manage consumers’ choices in such a way that their “real” preferences come forward.
One often-cited example takes place in the cafeteria: Put fruit and healthy snacks up front, and people will be more likely to choose them. Put the chocolate cake first, and that’s what they pick instead. Paternalism, the argument runs, lies on a continuum, and some forms of it are really quite harmless. It’s not (or not only) a boot stamping on a human face forever. It’s also the nice lady at the cafeteria, who helps you pick out healthy food. Healthy food is what you really wanted anyway. So what could be wrong with that?
Whitman, however, turns the argument around a bit: Legislators, too, suffer from bias. What if paternalistic legislation proves sort of like that chocolate cake? By placing it up front, and by making it look appealing, legislators may choose it too often, and they may neglect the healthier — but to them less appealing — choice of freedom. What if a little paternalism now turns into a lot of paternalism later? And where are our “real” preferences, anyway? Whitman offers arguments for why a slippery slope may very well exist here, and examples of how the theory of soft paternalism has developed teeth in practice.
Joining him later this week will be noted economists Richard Thaler, Jonathan Klick, and Shane Frederick, for a discussion that should last through the next couple of weeks. Be sure to stop by often and see it develop.
Weekend Links
- A video challenge: Cato legal scholar Ilya Shapiro says he will debate whether Obamacare is constitutional “anytime, anyplace.”
- Not a pretty picture: The economic consequences of imposing more trade sanctions on Chinese imports.
- Real education reform: Unleash the freedoms and incentives of the marketplace so that children can thrive and benefit from teaching methods that fit their unique needs and abilities.
- Taking a second look at the Swiss model: Switzerland manages to run a smaller government as a share of gross domestic product than the United States and most other countries while providing a higher level of service, security, prosperity and freedom. How does it do that?
- Podcast: “Obamacare’s Unconstitutional Coercion,” featuring Robert A. Levy.
Citizens United Goes to Work
This post was co-authored with John Samples.
Another good day for free speech, and a bad day for campaign finance zealots. Following on the heels of the Supreme Court’s stunning decision two months ago in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, and applying that holding, all nine active judges on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled unanimously today that government restrictions on the right of citizens to pool their money for independent political ads are unconstitutional.
Individuals have long been able to spend unlimited funds on independent political ads. But if two or more people joined together and pooled their money for the same thing, they were considered a “political committee” and were subject to numerous burdensome regulations, including limits on how much they could contribute to fund the group’s political speech. Today’s ruling removes those restrictions. Citing the fundamental rationale for campaign finance restrictions, Chief Judge David Sentelle wrote, “the government has no anti-corruption interest in limiting contributions to an independent expenditure group.”
The case, SpeechNow.org v. FEC, was brought by the Institute for Justice and the Center for Competitive Politics. Although a major First Amendment victory, the decision was not a complete win. The court upheld regulations requiring SpeechNow to disclose its contributors and their contributions and to organize itself as a committee. The court concluded such requirements would not be much of a burden on the speech of the group. We shall see. Experience may indicate otherwise, especially if disclosure leads to retaliation against groups like SpeechNow.
For today, however, the First Amendment is once again vindicated. Take a moment to pause and smile at the achievement.
Another Argument for Limited Government
Megan McArdle writes:
Obviously, yes, I was upset yesterday. I’m glad that this could bring so much joy to peoples’ hearts, and of course to know that for many people, the happiest part of passing health care reform seems to have been knowing that it made people like me unhappy
For many people, a major reason to engage in politics is the pleasure gained from schadenfreude, a German word that means “joy from injury or harm.” Given that, shouldn’t we try to limit politics and its outcome, government? Or is a society with more schadenfreude better than one with less?
Monday Links
- Late Sunday night, the House voted 219-212 to pass the health care bill. Cato health policy experts were blogging throughout the weekend. Read all of their analysis here.
- Almost lost in the details of the massive health care overhaul was a broad reorganization of the student loan program, including eliminating private lenders from federal aid programs and $36 billion in new spending for Pell Grants.
- This week only, get a free copy of Healthy Competition for your Kindle. It’s a complete overview of the best and worst ideas in health care reform on both the right and the left.
- Don’t bet on it: Why Republicans won’t really try to repeal the health care overhaul.
- Podcast: “U.S. Debt Rise May ‘Test Social Cohesion‘” featuring Mark A. Calabria.
Innovation: the Most Important Kind of Health Care Reform
In the Orange County Register, I explain how ObamaCare would stifle innovations in health insurance and medical delivery:
Economist Glen Whitman and physician Raymond Raad found that, when it comes to basic medical sciences, diagnostics (e.g., MRIs and CT scanners), and therapeutics (e.g., ACE inhibitors and statins), the United States often produces more medical innovations than all other nations.
America’s health insurance markets are not following suit, despite the ready availability of innovations that can improve the delivery of care, insure the “young invincibles,” and provide secure coverage for the sick. Bringing those innovations to consumers requires tearing down regulatory barriers to competition — the very barriers that the Obama plan would stack higher.
Such innovations include comparative-effectiveness research, coordinated care, insurance policies that persuade the “young invincibles” to purchase coverage, and health insurance that comes with a total-satisfaction guarantee.
WWJC?
Or, whom would Jesus coerce? That’s the question that comes to mind when I read the Center for American Progress’ latest attempt to argue that, if Jesus were a member of Congress, He would vote for President Obama’s individual mandate.
I was raised Catholic, and I don’t remember Jesus teaching that we should put people in jail for not buying health insurance. As I recall, He let the priest and the Levite go their merry ways.
OK, technically all the CAP report claims is that the Obama plan is consistent with Catholic social teaching.
The authors invoke all the right Catholic doctrines: “human dignity, solidarity, special status of the poor … concern for the common good … stewardship.” Except they omit the Catholic doctrine of subsidiarity, which teaches that problems should be addressed at the most local level possible.
They left out what Pope John Paul II wrote about the welfare state in a 1991 encyclical:
By intervening directly and depriving society of its responsibility, the Social Assistance State leads to a loss of human energies and an inordinate increase of public agencies which are dominated more by bureaucratic ways of thinking than by concern for serving their clients and which are accompanied by an enormous increase in spending.
They sidestep the small matter of whether the legislation would actually force taxpayers to finance abortions, which Catholic doctrine teaches is the taking of innocent human life.
They note that “the Catholic Health Association is the largest provider of nongovernmental health care in the United States,” and the CHA has essentially endorsed the Obama plan. They do not mention the material fact that the CHA therefore depends on the government for much of its revenue, and is susceptible to retribution if it doesn’t play ball.
But I keep coming back to the absurdity of suggesting that using government coercion to achieve social change is the Christian thing to do. The authors do not channel Christ so much as Richard III:
And thus I clothe my naked villany
With old odd ends stolen forth of holy writ,
And seem a saint when most I play the devil.
Or to put it differently, they cast their lots with Caesar, not Christ.
Weekend Links
- Michael Cannon exposes and corrects seven myths about the health care overhaul.
- The real problem with the American health care system: Nearly nine of ten medical dollars is paid in the first instance by someone else. When you don’t have skin in the game, there’s little incentive to keep costs down.
- GOP Reps say that most Republicans in Congress now think the Iraq War was a mistake.
- “In sheep’s clothing”…how to spot a politician who calls himself a libertarian, but is really just another conservative.
- Podcast: “Transparency Suffers in Health Care Fight” featuring Jim Harper.
Lawrence Lessig’s Constitutional Amendment
Lawrence Lessig has proposed a constitutional amendment in response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United. It reads:
“Nothing in this Constitution shall be construed to restrict the power to limit, though not to ban, campaign expenditures of non-citizens of the United States during the last 60 days before an election.”
In Citizens United, the Court said that the First Amendment concerns speech rather than speakers. Congress has no power to discriminate against speakers; hence, a source of speech – people organized as a corporation – could not be prohibited from speaking (or funding speech).
Professor Lessig hopes to introduce a discrimination among speakers into the First Amendment. His proposed discrimination will not lose a popularity contest. He wishes to allow Congress to control the speech of non-citizens. He follows two lines of argument in support of his amendment, one less rational than the other.
The less rational line of appeal to the reader is both implicit and predictable. The Chinese are invoked along with the Chamber of Commerce. A denial of xenophobic intent follows immediately, and “We the People” appear near the end. Carl Schmitt would recognize the rhetorical construction of “friend and enemy.” Rather cleverly, Lessig manages to equate the foreign devils with the internal demons of the liberal mind. Corporations (including the Sierra Club?) and the Chinese (or other foreigner) are on one side of political struggles while “We the People” are on the other.
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