Month: July 2010

Douthat sketched out the conservative case against cap-and-trade yesterday. Leonhardt takes issue with one of Ross's parallels:

[Douthat's case is that] just as ingenuity came to the rescue in the past, allowing people to use resources more efficiently than they ever had before, it could do so again — providing us with ways to emit far less carbon for every dollar of gross domestic product. And I — like many others, I imagine — would be thrilled if that were what the future held. But I think there are two big reasons to doubt that we’re on another Ehrlich-Simon path when it comes to global warming.

The first is basic economics. When the problem is resource scarcity, companies and individuals have a powerful incentive to become more efficient. It keeps their costs down. Mr. Simon understood this, and it’s the fundamental reason he won the bet.

But global warming is different. The fact that carbon emissions are warming the planet doesn’t make it more expensive to produce those emissions. So companies do not have an ever-increasing incentive to emit less — the way they would if the problem were, say, a lack of oil. Global warming doesn’t solve itself the way that resource scarcity does.

The second reason is the data: it's far more robust on global warming than on predictions of future resource scarcity. My view is that a small but steadily increasing carbon tax is a modest way to help accelerate energy innovation and guard against the possibility of quite drastic shifts in temperature caused by climate feedback loops. I also find a pure human cost-benefit analysis lacking when it comes to something like the health of the planet. But then that's my Catholic side coming through, I guess. We have a moral duty for proper stewardship, in my view, not relentless exploitation until disaster strikes. And I fail to see why such prudence is now regarded as un-conservative.

A reader writes:

I'm a big believer in expanding class-based affirmative action.  But I think one important step that should also be taken is the ending of legacy admissions at private schools, colleges, and universities. 

The fact that the children of America's elite are given an opportunity to get an Ivy League education, and the prestige that goes with it, even though they may be less qualified than other applicants is one of the major flaws in any claim that the U.S. is, or ever has been, a true meritocracy.  The child of a Harvard graduate should be treated no differently than the child of a high school dropout when Harvard makes its admission decisions, if merit truly is the basis for those decisions.

I don't think there's necessarily an easy way to simply ban legacy admissions.  But we could condition the receipt of federal funding on an agreement that a parent's status as a graduate of a school will not be a factor given any consideration in the admissions process.

Another writes:

While I generally agree with Beinart's sentiments, the way he frames them does more to reinscribe distinctions between red and blue Americans than challenge them.

The only reason I can discern that Harvard is brought up in these discussions so frequently is that people seem to believe that students who are unable to get into Harvard are disadvantaged in some way, as if going to Oklahoma State University or Texas A&M is the booby prize for not lucking out in the affirmative action lottery. In spite of what the makeup of the current Supreme Court suggests, it's not necessary to attend an Ivy League institution to have a great education.

More ability to speak across the red-blue divide would be a wonderful thing, and three cheers if Harvard decides to be more equitable in their admissions. But why don't we see Beinart calling upon the scions of Ivy League elite to enroll at schools outside of the Northeast? Or does the promotion of dialogue only go one way?

The reason behind this seems to be that very few people outside of what are not so endearingly termed the flyover states actually believe you can get a decent education in any of them. Instead of combating this prejudice, Beinart reinforces it, suggesting that the best way to promote dialogue is for red-staters to gain access to blue state power networks. How much more effective would it be if the people in power stopped rewarding only those people who come from familiar networks?

Another:

During my sophomore year of college (2006), I was involved with a group that promoted issue-driven dialogue and we were able to get representatives of the campus organs of the two parties to organize an event discussing affirmative action. Our Republicans completely blindsided the crowd by arguing for a class-based version. Even as a liberal, I found their arguments compelling. It may not have popular support right now, but I could certainly see a younger generation of conservatives promoting these sorts of alternatives.

Dan Ariely has a tentative answer:

One of the more appealing aspects of neoconservatism in the wake of 9/11 was its belief – utopian in retrospect, idealist at the time – that the only way past the pathologies of Jihadism was some kind of model Arab democracy that could pave the way for others to follow, thereby draining the Arab desert of the autocracy that breeds terror. We know what happened in Iraq – about as catastrophic a failure as one can imagine. The face-saving patch-up is still unraveling before our eyes, as al Qaeda (which did not exist in Iraq before the invasion) still shows an ability to kill and maim and murder and intimidate fellow Sunnis at will. The end-result of an invasion that led to the deaths of countless thousands and removed no WMD threat may well be far greater influence for Iran in the region and a lawless Sunni desert where al Qaeda retains a foothold. Meanwhile, the latest neocon fantasy is an alliance with Sunni Arab dictators in order to launch a war against Shiite Iran's nuclear facilities, thereby both inserting the US into one of the oldest theologico-political disputes in human history and deepening the alienation of Muslims on the street toward the little and big Satans of their imagination. I cannot think of a greater boon to Islamism than an atatck on Iran, or a more powerful way to cut the Green Movement off at the knees.

But the concept of a model Arab democracy is still latent within the cynical circles of the pro-Israel wing of neoconservatism. So let me pose a question: where is there a fledgling Arab state whose leaders are now focusing on the humdrum details of housing and economic development and better policing? Where is the state that could be used to show the benefits of cooperation with the West – as opposed to the brutality of Hamas?

It's sitting right there on the map just to the East of Israel proper. Its leaders want more autonomy, its population is showing signs of economic vitality, Europe, Russia and China would be eager to join the US in aiding and helping the nascent state, and it would help resolve one of the core issues fueling Jihadism worldwide: the Israeli occupation and colonization of the West Bank.

And yet it is a visceral stance of the neocons that the radical Israeli settlements, which prevent any such state from emerging, must remain. Or rather that no pressure should be brought to bear on Israel to freeze or curtail let alone reverse them. The result is a walking away from an obvious experiment that brings the positive and liberal aspect of neoconservatism to the fore. And I ask you: what else that is actually doable would transform the region more than this?

In the end, I fear, the neocons' paranoia about Israel's security – which apparently required the deaths of so many civilians in Gaza and demands the daily humiliation of so many Muslims in the occupied territories – renders any such game-changer moot. My view is that a neoconservatism that wasn't rooted and founded in the ideology of Greater Israel would leap at this chance. And support for a real, democratic, Muslim Palestinian state on the West Bank is the acid test of neoconservatism's broader principles.

So far: fail. But maybe some will see the folly of their current stance and move tioward a more constructive engagement. Is neoconservatism just about Israel? Or is it about Israel, America, democracy and a future where Jihadism is defused in the war of ideas as well as defeated in the heat of a long and arduous battle?

The cranky independent merely wonders why open discussions between lost of journalists couldn't be conducted, you know, in public:

"Journolist" was all about careerism from the get go. Salam's defense both confirms it and fits right in.

Contra Noam Scheiber, McArdle has a long post against Elizabeth Warren. Megan doesn’t like how Warren uses data:

If we’re going to have a consumer financial protection agency, I want one that has a keen eye to the empirical evidence on consumer welfare–not one that makes progressives most happy by reinforcing their prior beliefs.

Cowen is leery as well, with a provocative analogy.

Sometimes it takes an outsider to see what's staring us in the face. His core message, it seems to me, is a clear one. Anyone who wants to cut the debt and restore fiscal balance in America would be insane to vote Republican this fall. Why? Because they have still not abandoned supply-side economics, which was taken to its logical extremes under Bush and Cheney. Money quote:

First, if Republicans win the mid-terms in November, as seems likely, they are surely going to come up with huge tax cut proposals (probably well beyond extending the already unaffordable Bush-era tax cuts).

Second, the White House will probably veto these cuts, making itself even more politically unpopular.

Third, some additional fiscal stimulus is, in fact, what the US needs, in the short term, even though across-the-board tax cuts are an extremely inefficient way of providing it.

Fourth, the Republican proposals would not, alas, be short term, but dangerously long term, in their impact.

Finally, with one party indifferent to deficits, provided they are brought about by tax cuts, and the other party relatively fiscally responsible (well, everything is relative, after all), but opposed to spending cuts on core programmes, US fiscal policy is paralysed.

I may think the policies of the UK government dangerously austere, but at least it can act. This is extraordinarily dangerous.

The danger does not arise from the fiscal deficits of today, but the attitudes to fiscal policy, over the long run, of one of the two main parties. Those radical conservatives (a small minority, I hope) who want to destroy the credit of the US federal government may succeed. If so, that would be the end of the US era of global dominance.

The destruction of fiscal credibility could be the outcome of the policies of the party that considers itself the most patriotic. In sum, a great deal of trouble lies ahead, for the US and the world. Where am I wrong, if at all?

I do not think he is wrong at all, I'm afraid, although I hold out hope that the sheer scope of the crisis and the rhetoric of the tea-partiers might make the Debt Commission's proposals feasible. I favor more spending cuts than tax hikes in such a grand bargain, but if the GOP cannot raise taxes at all (under the loopy notion that revenue would thereby be reduced) and if the Dems cannot tackle Medicare and are too spooked by Fox to cut defense, then we're truly screwed.

But Wolf's irony is well-taken. The Republican party has long prided itself on strong national defense and conservative economics. In fact, their recklessness in foreign adventurism has destroyed the deterrent effect of American power for a generation, while their fiscal policies have hollowed out this country's core fiscal health that we have almost no room for maneuver.

And yet slogans and amnesia still seem to be winning against arguments and data.

Some data:

When we polled New Hampshire in April we found Ayotte's favorability numbers with moderates on positive ground at 32/27, something very unusual for a Republican candidate. Now in the wake of the Palin endorsement that is no longer the case- 27% of moderates see Ayotte favorably while 46% see her unfavorably- a 24 point drop in her favorability spread over the last three months.