Links to Consider, 10/6

Laurie Miller Hornik on seeing the other side; Matt Yglesias on the regulated state; Martin Gurri on the censorship agenda; Michael Tanner on increasing work incentives for the poor

Laurie Miller Hornik writes,

What if when we read the pieces we agree with, we wonder, “What would someone who doubts this think? What would their best arguments be?” What if when we read the pieces we don’t agree with, we ask, “What would someone who believes this say? What would their best arguments be for why they think this way?” 

…On the surface, believing and doubting might not seem very different from agreeing and disagreeing or from arguments and counterarguments. But Elbow’s terms do something special: they evoke empathy. They keep the thinker focused on the ideas themselves while also pointing them toward the fact that it is our fellow humans who hold these particular opinions. This calls for putting oneself in the metaphorical shoes of the other, as well as humanizing those whose opinions you don’t share.

Matt Yglesias writes,

what’s regulated most strictly of all is the public sector. And this overregulation of the public sector locks us into a vicious cycle. First, we make it very difficult for public center entities to execute their missions. Second, this leads public sector entities to develop a reputation for incompetence. Third, the low social prestige of public sector work leads to the selective exit of more ambitious people. Fourth, elected officials in a hurry to do something often seek ways to bypass existing public sector institutions further reducing prestige.

…I seriously doubt that this kind of cult of proceduralism and desire to regulate the public sector is what most people have in mind when they talk about “neoliberalism.”… But this is a genuine trend that corresponds with the time period in which “neoliberalism” is supposed to have occurred

I would differentiate between regulating procedures and limiting scope. Limiting scope means saying, “Your branch of government must not do this.” Regulating by procedures means, “You can do it, but we’re going to make it slow and painful by imposing a lot of procedural rules.”

Libertarians believe that the Constitution imposed a lot of scope limits. Powers reserved for the states, not the Federal government. Rights reserved for the people. We complain that the scope limits have been blasted away.

What Yglesisas is complaining about are procedural regulations. I will concede that those are excessive, but I take the libertarian view that the demise of scope limits is the more serious problem.

If you ask me how to get the Federal government to do its job better, I would say to lop 90 percent of its functions. Then it will stand a better chance of performing the remaining 10 percent well.

Martin Gurri writes,

Mir assumes digital censorship to be a demonstration of elite strength. I believe it’s quite the opposite: a panicked reaction to a precipitous loss of power and prestige.

…The electoral triumphs of Meloni in Italy, Milei in Argentina and Wilders in the Netherlands, the continued popularity of Victor Orban in Hungary and Nayib Bukele in El Salvador, the advance of pariah parties like Marine Le Pen’s National Rally in France and the Alternative fur Deutschland in Germany, all give evidence to the harrowing political landscape the elites must traverse.

…governments under elite control are in deep trouble. The ruling coalition in Germany is hanging by a thread. The new Labour government in Britain has seen its popularity decline sharply to 29%percent.

Michael Tanner writes,

As welfare recipients earn more income, they face the benefit cliff. The combination of lost benefits, payroll taxes, and new job-related expenses reduces the value of non-welfare income. It can sometimes leave those returning to the workforce worse off financially in the short term. 

If welfare recipients try to go to work and earn income (or if they marry a working spouse), they face an implicit marginal tax rate of 80 percent or more. How can we instead encourage upward mobility through work and marriage?

There have generally been three strategies: 1) raising eligibility levels and reducing phaseouts so that the cliff occurs much farther up the income scale; 2) decreasing benefits overall; and/or 3) making work a mandatory requirement for receiving benefits. For different reasons, none of these approaches has proven satisfactory. 

The UBI is a radical version of “raising eligibility levels and reducing phaseouts.” But nobody (other than a few economists like me) is willing to get rid of the current welfare system and replace it with what I want: a small UBI (not enough to live on), with local governments and charities helping out people who truly cannot fend for themselves.

Tanner instead proposes,

to establish “transitional benefits” to offset the loss in benefits that occurs as a recipient earns non-welfare income. Rather than immediately losing benefits when an individual’s income reaches the eligibility threshold, benefits would be “stepped down” in proportion to increases in non-welfare income. Doing so would reduce the impact of welfare cliffs, but unlike a general increase in eligibility, it would not draw large numbers of new recipients into the system.

The idea is that instead of losing all your benefits as soon as you cross some income threshold, you would only gradually lose those benefits. This lowers the marginal tax rate on poor people who work, while not having the expense of the UBI going to the well-off.

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Believing and Doubting