U.S. Politics: A Song Of Mimes And Musicians

[Week]

33 minutes ago, aceluby said:

Locker room talk.  Not just for the locker room apparently.

Depends on the locker room that you're in. 

[aceluby]

1 minute ago, Crazy Cat Lady in Training said:

Pennsylvania Republicans are still howling in rage that their gerrymandering was ruled unconstitutional and the map redrawn. Because of it, their pet Keith Rothfus is getting his butt kicked in the polls in the new PA-17. The latest poll had Conor Lamb at +12. When the decision was first handed down, he was on the local news whining that he'd lose his job. 

 

 

The House should be as close to the popular vote as you can get.  When a party is +2% and still down 50 seats, it's not working as intended.  It's a problem and no amount of 'both sides do it', faux centrism reasoning makes it ok.  Democrats are looking at a +8 right now and are just barely looking like they'll take it.  Again, not ok.

That's what the Senate is for.

[aceluby]

Just now, Week said:

Depends on the locker room that you're in. 

No locker room I've been a part of, but Republicans hang in different circles apparently.

[DMC]

12 hours ago, Maithanet said:

Both sides do gerrymandering, but gerrymandering varies state to state.  Democrats generally have been less aggressive with it than Republicans, as evidenced by the California redistricting being done in a nonpartisan way.  There are exceptions like Maryland and Illinois, but looking at the atlas you can see that not many Democratic states have a map similar to the "Democratic gerrymander" they descripe.  In comparion, many many states with Republican leadership in 2010 did that very thing (TX, NC, TN, GA, MO, OH, OK, IN, WI).

This is an interesting research question -- and one I realized I could come up with data fairly quickly.  So that's what I've been doing the past few hours.  The method I used (and I'm NOT saying it's best, but simply quick to do and can give an idea on what the empirics show) is to take the Democratic Vote Share from each state.  This was instantly accessible on a Brennan Center study we discussed at length here a while back (see Appendix 1, 29). 

My original idea was to take the 2010 number, then compare that to the proportion of seats the Democrats won in the following 2012 election once the gerrymandering took effect - so since the Dems won 12 of the 36 seats in Texas in 2012, that would be 33% (if you have issues with this comparison, wait).  Is this the best method?  No.  Would I submit this for review or even as a seminar paper?  Well, maybe the latter if I happened to have an easy grader and was blowing off the class, but no.  However, it was a relatively quick way to get at this question empirically instead of everyone making broad-based claims without evidence.

Two notes before I detail the rest of the IVs.  One, as has been mentioned Maryland is a blue state that has a reputation for being quite gerrymandered.  However, the most gerrymandered state by this "difference in proportionality" metric is easily Massachusetts.  That's because in all three cycles since the last census all 9 seats have been held by Dems even though the Dem vote share is ~ the mid 60s.  Using any type of veil of ignorance, that's..outrageous.  The closest GOP analogs would be South Carolina and Alabama, which each at least have one Dem seat out of 7.

Second, my prior was that the largest impact of GOP gerrymandering rested in purple states in which they enjoyed unified government to control the redistricting process after 2010.  We'll see how that expectation goes.

So, I used the Brennan Center list to get Dem Vote Share.  Granted, it's only 26 out of 43 states that have more than one district, but those 26 states account for 370, or 85 percent, of the seats in the House - pretty damn solid sample.  I then coded each state on whether they were GOP dominated, Dem dominated, or mixed (i.e. divided government) following the 2010 election.  This NCSL link was handy in confirming the makeup of each state legislature and their governor at the time.  In this process I omitted Arizona and California due to both using independent commissions - this leads to another footnote that California still consistently demonstrates a marked Democratic bias in spite of the "independence" of their new redistricting method (albeit Arizona performs quite well in terms of proportionality). 

The "GOP Dominated (GOPDom)" states are as follows:  AL, FL, GA, IN, LA, MI, NC, OH, PA, SC, TN, TX, VA, WI for a total of 14.

The "Dem Dominated (DemDom)" states are as follows:  IL, MD, MA, and WA - or only 4 in the sample...we'll get back to that later.

The "Mixed" (i.e. Divided Gov't) states are as follows:  CO, KT, MN, MO, NJ, NY for a total of 6.

I also coded 10 of the states as "Purple:"  CO, FL, MI, MN, MO, NC, OH, PA, VA, WI.  Admittedly this is arbitrary, but I think it's fair.  More importantly, see that 7 of those 10 state were GOP dominated at the time of redistricting (the other three will be negligible for what follows).  I don't think it's necessary for me to list what other states were coded as Blue or Red, should be obvious.

Ok, so what I did was subtract the percentage of vote share Democrats won in 2010 from the percentage of seats the Dems won in 2012.  So this would yield a negative number if there was a GOP bias and a positive number if there was a Dem bias for a "disproportionality score" or "gerrymandering index," whatever you like.  The results ("Total" includes California and Arizona) for 2012 (seat%) to 2010 (vote share):

• Total (26):  -2.64%
• GOPDom (14):  -13.34%
• DemDom (4):  21.4%
• Mixed (6):  8.95%
• GOPRed (7):  -14.25%
• GOPPurple (7):  -12.41%

So, the Dem bias is actually higher, but that percentage is obviously being disproportionately impacted by MA's 100% Dem seats.  I don't want to omit MA because that wouldn't be fair (e.g. why not omit SC in response?), but one thing to point out is New York is coded as "Mixed" because the GOP slightly won the Senate (32-30) in 2010 even though the Dems had a > 2 to 1 advantage in the House and Cuomo as Governor.  If we add NY to the DemDom group, it goes down half a percent - to 20.94.  Hm, well, mayhaps we can also include Colorado, that had Hickenlooper as Gov, the Dems controlling the Senate 20 to 15, and the GOP holding the House by one seat (33-32).  That lowers the score to 16.67.  If you think Cali would help further - not by much, their score in this iteration was 15.61. 

So, unless you omit Massachusetts, the GOP actually wins this iteration on a rate basis even with some finagling.  BUT, 2012 was a great presidential cycle for the Dems compared to the the 2010 shellacking - so c'mon DMC!  Aight, fair, let's compare midterm to midterm, 2014 (seat%) to 2010 (vote share):

• Total (26):  -5.87%
• GOPDom (14):  -15.9%
• DemDom (4):  18.62%
• Mixed (6):  3.73%
• GOPRed (7):  -17.26%
• GOPPurple (7):  -14.53%
• DemDom w/NY (5):  16.5%
• DemDom w/NY&CO (6):  12.96%

Here, once Colorado and New York are added, the Dems outperform the GOP (but it does take Colorado which had a negative, i.e. GOP bias, score of 4.71).  Also, once again, the 7 red states that are GOP dominated also demonstrate more GOP bias than the 7 GOP dominated purple states.  But, overall, there is clearly more of a GOP bias - likely a combination of the midterm electorate and newly made districts settling into their calculated partisan bias (demographically).  

But, you may say, why are you comparing to 2010?  I myself prefer that as that as the keystone election that established the redistricting process over the next two years, but certainly arguments could be made to simply compare the Dem vote share to their percentage of seats during the same cycle.  So, let's do that for 2012 (seat%) to 2012 (vote share):

• Total (26):  -6.80%
• GOPDom (14):  -17.79%
• DemDom (4):  17.85%
• Mixed (6):  -3.4%
• GOPRed (7):  -17.76%
• GOPPurple (7):  -17.81%
• DemDom w/NY (5):  16.83%
• DemDom w/NY&CO (6):  12.58%

Ok, so here we go.  The GOP and Dem dominated states show essentially equivalent bias.  And, once New York is added, the Dems show a near one percent less bias - don't even need the Colorado crutch.  Also, interestingly, the "Mixed" or divided gov states that were showing slight Dem bias before now switch to slight GOP bias.  Not sure what that's about.  Finish up the numbers with 2014 (seat%) to 2014 (vote share):

• Total (26):  -6.10%
• GOPDom (14):  -16.38%
• DemDom (4):  19.13%
• Mixed (6):  -3.58%
• GOPRed (7):  -17.01%
• GOPPurple (7):  -15.75%
• DemDom w/NY (5):  16.73%
• DemDom w/NY&CO (6):  13.03%

Not much variation from the 2012-2012 scores, interestingly.  Dems inched up and GOP inched down in bias, but not by much.  Same goes for the GOP Red vs. Purple comparison.

Finally, while data collecting, I glanced at the seat shares for the 17 other states not in the Brennan Center's sample.  It's about what you expect - the red states are either entirely or almost entirely GOP dominant and the blue states vice versa.  The three swing states in the sample - Iowa, Nevada, and New Hampshire, show a pretty solid partisan split.  I won't say these states wouldn't affect the above results -- actually they very much would because of the design.  As in, they would show increased "disproportionality" between vote share and seat share because it's easier to dominate when you only got a handful of seats.  Thus, I see why the Brennan Center guys left them out.

 

Three main takeaways from this exercise I did while avoiding doing actual data collection and analysis.  One, divided government clearly leads to the closest thing to proportionality, and, while this is an assumption, likely competitiveness within more districts.  Divided We Govern indeed, Lord Mayhew, at least in terms of reapportionment. 

Two, my prior that swing (purple) states that enjoyed unified GOP government would elicit higher levels of disproportionately/gerrymandering was clearly wrong - there was almost no discernible difference between purple and red states (which had an even 7 to 7 split) throughout all 4 models.  However, it should be emphasized that this still makes an impact as most GOP-dominated swing states are larger than most red states (other than Texas); so a 20% bias goes much further in seat gain in Pennsylvania than it does in Tennessee.

Third, empirically it is difficult to conclude that the GOP is "worse" in terms gerrymandering than the Dems are.  These data clearly show the only difference is the GOP capitalized on netting more seats in which they dominated state government.  I don't wanna get into this "both sidesism" bullshit - yes, the GOP upped the ante after the 2010 census and yes they employ plenty of other iniquities that are beyond compare - but the findings emphasize the Dems should be razor-focused on governorships and state legislatures.

Alright, that's a really long post, sorry for that and thank you if you got this far.  This was fun for me, but I didn't do 2016 because the data collection stopped being fun.  If anyone wants to do it, I think I explained the method clear enough up top and it's really simple - go bonkers.  Plus, while I always encourage transparency, I'm not gonna share the excel and stata files I did all this on on a public forum.  If you're interested, be happy to share via PM.

[The Anti-Targ]

4 hours ago, felice said:

I'm not sure cause and effect are the right way round there. Because immigrant labour is available, orchards don't need to pay enough to hire local people, so the cost of fruit and vegetables goes down. Competition from imports complicates the situation, of course, making it impossible for local producers to charge the real cost.

The only way to make fresh produce not cost too much (too much for people on a budget to afford, which is pretty tight already) and pay employees a decent wage is to mostly use automation with only a handful of employees.

Orchards didn't get the authority to hire immigrant labour (in New Zealand) for fruit picking until they were able to show that they couldn't hire locally. And of course you can't just sneak bus loads of Tongans, Fijians and Samoans across the border, here. If you want a mass influx of immigrant labour the govt will know what you are doing so you need to do it legally. Sure the govt could have said "pay more" but growers would have said they can't afford it. And while there was a bit of bullshitting going on, the reality is, they probably couldn't afford to pay all that much more and be viable year on year, in boom years, sure, in lean years no. We know pretty much how much most growers can pay workers by looking at the what the wholesale market price for produce is that makes it cost the grower less to let the food rot in the field / on the tree than to pay people to pick the produce. They have some margin to work with, but if you force them to pay local labour market rates (i.e. enough to get the worker numbers they need) then they will have almost no margin to work with at all, and will only be able to afford to harvest when wholesale market prices are higher than average. We have so much food waste in the world right now, we don't need more. Indeed the amount of food that goes to waste could alleviate a great deal of world hunger. If there was any kind of positive argument for govt subsidies in agriculture, it would be to subsidise wages (directly not via the grower), so that crops would always be harvested regardless of market prices.

Speaking of food. I've been talking to a few meat industry folks while I'm here in Chicago for work. And they've been talking a lot about the coldstores filling up with pork, which is now starting to cause a capacity problem for other products that need cold storage. Those tariffs and counter tariffs, been making trade smooth since never.

[felice]

2 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

The only way to make fresh produce not cost too much (too much for people on a budget to afford, which is pretty tight already)

So they need to pay low wages, otherwise people on low wages won't be able to afford stuff? Hmmm...

[Serious Callers Only]

More like they won't be competitive on exports.

 

I actually find it utterly bizarre that soy is such a important export cash crop for the americas considering how it's utterly tasteless unless drowned in condiments and i can only conclude it's a critical meat substitute for pig farming and poor people feed, a difference without distinction to corporate farms i'm sure.

[DireWolfSpirit]

Nike is Not getting "killed" as the lying orange one is claiming.  https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/nike-online-sales-soar-in-wake-of-kaepernick-ad-campaign_us_5b92f887e4b0511db3e24df2

 

[OldGimletEye]

20 hours ago, Rippounet said:

Don't affect them negatively that much.

I'd done a quick research on that for the UK a few months ago and of course found some studies for the US. The least that can be said is that the issue is highly controversial, but from that quick research I'd gathered that immigrant labor has very little negative effect, in other words that the wages barely go down because of it.
The problem is, if wages barely go down, by definition they stagnate and the purchasing power goes down.
Which is pretty clearly in line with the well-known fact that the purchasing power of low-skilled workers has seen a dramatic drop in the last few decades while wages have in fact stagnated.

I guess what I'm saying is that while the causality has yet to be demonstrated it hasn't been debunked either.

1. I'm not sure how you arrive at the conclusion that if wages don't go down, then by definition they stagnate.
If somebody told me "wages didn't go down" my conclusion would only be they didn't go down. That would be the only thing I'd know.
Whether they stayed the same or went up, would require me to get further information.
2. Yes there are some people that disagree that immigrantion for the most part don't affect native wages that much. The leading propopent of this is a Harvard Professor named Borjas.
But the bulk of the profession that has studied this issue basically disagrees with Borjas, in large part because of his empirical methodlogy.
That econometrics papers conflict is nothing new. It happens quite a bit. A big reason why is because economics data is obvervational. It would be nice if we could generate all this data in a lab, control all variables, and then vary one variable at a time to see how it changes the dependent variable, but for obvious reasons that is not going to happen in the world we live.
Just as an example. Back in 2009 Borjas' colleauge in the Harvard Econ department published a paper in which he found the fiscal multiplier to be small.  But, they were a lot of reasons to be skeptical of that paper because most of the data was collected during World War 2, when there was strict government rationing and plus we were likely at something full employment probably by 1942. And I would throw in, that if I recall correctly, Barro used a linear VAR model to estimate the model. Although VAR models are often used, I believe nonlinear models are better as I don't the response stays the same during the business cycle.
The point here is that econometrics papers can and do conflict because different sets of data used and because of different modelling choices. And one would be wise to read a varietly of papers, using differnt datat sets, and/or models before coming to a conclusion.
But there is has been a lot of research on this issue and most of it seems to disagree with Borjas conclusions.
3. Well if you people like Borjas are wrong, then yes causality does seem to be established, which is immigration isn't the cause of stagnating wages. There are other explanations like growing monopsony power the decline of labor unions.

 

20 hours ago, Rippounet said:

Notwithstanding the fact that that might not be desirable on principle, this would probably not help the bus drivers much because their need for legal services is probably limited in the first place. What the bus driver might first want would be cheaper food, cheaper housing, cheaper energy... Cheaper legal services isn't going to help feed the kids.

Okay my example wasn't meant to be an exact commentary on the real world consumption habits of lawyers and bus drivers.
I don't think that many lawyers take the bus. In fact, most people that take the bus tend to have low incomes. I used to take the bus a lot and that was back in the day when I used to remove the cushions from the couch looking for loose change so I could by a 12 pack of Goebel for 2 or 3 bucks.
I was trying to make a point with a very simple example. Basically a two good economy with two types of labor. I like starting with very simple models to understand and to explain things. Maybe later I'll more complexitiy to make it more realistic, but I like starting out simple as I'm not Ayn Rand here trying to write verbose amd dense text that nobody can understand or at least I can't understand.
If you like, switch out lawyers and bus drivers with highly paid Justin Beiber impersonators and barbers and the only goods in this economy are haircuts and Justin Beiber impersonations.
If you need something with a more real world feel, then instead of lawyers substitute doctors. Surely, bus drivers, if they don't need legal services, would be interested in having medical care.

20 hours ago, Rippounet said:

And you have a real theoretical problem here. If you think that exposing lawyers to immigrant competition will bring the cost of legal services down, surely you are admitting that this is done by lowering the wages of lawyers, right? Aren't you factoring in the very causality that you are denying?

No actually I don't have real theoretical problem here. Imagine I have a very simple two good and two types of labor economy. The only goods produced are Justin Beiber impersonations and haircuts.
Supposing a bunch of immigrant barbers come into the country and their labor is completly substitutable for native born barbers. What would I expect to happen? The wages of barbers goes down. But because the wages of barbers goes down and with it the cost of haircuts goes down, which mean Justin Beiber impersonator's real wages goes up because they can get more haircuts because they are cheaper. But if the country lets more foreign born Justin Beiber impersonators into the country and if their labor is substitutable then wages of Justin Beiber impersonaters goes down and presumably the price of Justin Beiber impersonations goes down, allowing barbers to enjoy more of them, increasing their real wage.
Also note, in my example that I am explicitly making the assumption that both types of immigrant labor, whether barbers or Justin Beiber impersonators, are substitutes for native born labor. But, in the real world, that doesn't seem to be the case. Immigrants tend to take jobs that are complements to native jobs.

 

20 hours ago, Rippounet said:

Bur more importantly this goes beyond the economics themselves. The question here is why should workers be exposed to international competition in the first place? The old socialist project was that within a given society anyone could live decently with the fruits of their labor. In other words, even low-skilled workers should have a decent salary allowing them a number of modern comforts like their own house, their own car(s) and enough money to send at least one of their kids to college. And this was achieved thanks to unions among other things.
All this becomes far more difficult if you're introducing a significant amount of non-unionized immigrant workers willing to work for less (and/or find other ways to weaken unions). Over time, such immigration would obviously diminish the purchasing power of native low-skilled workers and hurt the middle-class as a whole.

I believe the weakeing of unions particularly in the US has been a disaster for labor in the US and explains why there has been growing income inequality. But I don't believe that immigrants are responsible the weakening of unions, but rather it's the result of many in the business community and organizations like Chamber of Commerce working hard to destroy their clout. And of course the Republican Party knows that by destroying unions they harm the Democratic Party. If immigrants were lowering native born labor's wages through pure labor substitution effects, then we wouldn't see growing evidence of monopsony power by companies. Many immigrants would probably like to join a union, if they could.  And again, there is a growing evidence that immigrants don't directly compete with natives in many occupations. Immigrants don't tend to become bus drivers, but end up being something more like bus driver helpers, allowing bus drivers to focus on driving buses becoming more productive bus drivers.

Yes, increased immigration might affect some groups negatively. But, there are better ways to help those folks, then just clamping down on immigration and losing many of it's upsides.
And plus, ya have to admit that conservative income inequality concern trolling, with regard to the imigration issues,  is hilarously funny or annoying, about as funny or annoying as conservative asset mispricing concern trolling.
 

20 hours ago, Rippounet said:

But if you introduce labor comeptition in one industry and impoverish native workers, won't the extra consumption done by immigrants be fairly limited since it is substituted to that of the native workers?

In other words all it takes is for the amount of jobs to be limited in some industries for the benefits of immigration to be considerably lessened. In order for immigration to be a net positive you'd need corresponding economic growth. Sustainable economic growth too. If growth is insufficient or temporary then immigration will mechanically end up hurting native workers, no?

 

Supposing I have two good, two types of labor economy. It has bus drivers and lawyers. In this simple economy bus drivers consume bus rides and legal services. And lawyers consume legal services and bus rides. And supposing we let in foreign lawyers and foreign bus drivers into the country in about the same proportion as the native population. Then what happens?  Immigrant lawyers want bus rides along with legal services. Good thing there is more bus drivers to provide more bus rides, without the cost going up. And immigrant bus drivers want to consume legal services. Good thing more immigrant lawyers are in the country, else the price of legal services might go up.

The point here is that both immigrant bus drivers and immigrant lawyers become suppliers of services, but they also become demanders of services too. In other words, when they come in, more jobs are created.

But as I've said before, in the real world, immigrants don't seem to become exactly bus drivers or lawyers, but become something more like bus driver helpers or legal assistants, making bus drivers better at doing bus driving stuff and making lawyers more efficient at legally stuff.

[Rippounet]

56 minutes ago, OldGimletEye said:

1. I'm not sure how you arrive at the conclusion that if wages don't go down, then by definition they stagnate.

I'm assuming they do go down, at least in the case of low-qualified workers (for example, Chojnicki and Ragot, 2012). If wages go down ever so slightly, then by definition they are not increasing, ergo at best they stagnate, ergo purchasing power goes down.

I'm surprised that some studies suggest wages can go up as a result of immigration (Ortega and Verdugo, 2011). However it seems those studies have shown correlation not causation, so I'd be cautious about drawing conclusions from them.

56 minutes ago, OldGimletEye said:

2. Yes there are some people that disagree that immigrantion for the most part don't affect native wages that much. The leading propopent of this is a Harvard Professor named Borjas.
But the bulk of the profession that has studied this issue basically disagrees with Borjas, in large part because of his empirical methodlogy.
[...]
3. Well if you people like Borjas are wrong, then yes causality does seem to be established, which is immigration isn't the cause of stagnating wages. There are other explanations like growing monopsony power the decline of labor unions.

Well, I don't want to play devil's advocate, but I am... Anyway I think one should define "immigration" here. Because quite obviously, depending on the numbers of immigrants coming in a specific labor market the consequences are going to be very different. Above a certain ratio there has to be a negative impact on natives' wages.

So I dunno about Borjas but it seems to me that what matters here is the optimal ratio of immigration in a given timeframe rather than trying to find any generic truth about immigration (which probably can't exist).

56 minutes ago, OldGimletEye said:

If you need something with a more real world feel, then instead of lawyers substitute doctors. Surely, bus drivers, if they don't need legal services, would be interested in having medical care.

Ok, fair enough. ^^

56 minutes ago, OldGimletEye said:

Supposing a bunch of immigrant barbers come into the country and their labor is completly substitutable for native born barbers. What would I expect to happen? The wages of barbers goes down. But because the wages of barbers goes down and with it the cost of haircuts goes down, which mean Justin Beiber impersonator's real wages goes up because they can get more haircuts because they are cheaper. But if the country lets more foreign born Justin Beiber impersonators into the country and if their labor is substitutable then wages of Justin Beiber impersonaters goes down and presumably the price of Justin Beiber impersonations goes down, allowing barbers to enjoy more of them, increasing their real wage.

Also note, in my example that I am explicitly making the assumption that both types of immigrant labor, whether barbers or Justin Beiber impersonators, are substitutes for native born labor. But, in the real world, that doesn't seem to be the case. Immigrants tend to take jobs that are complements to native jobs.

Yeah, that would be Chojnicki et Ragot (2012) again. Though I have to say, while Chojnicki debunks substitutability he does not go so far as to say that complementarity is always the norm either.

Right. But the problem you have here is that of "proportionality" (my own word). When you say "wages go down" it can be that wages indeed go down (there are more people competing to offer the same service so they offer more for less) or it can be that wages go down on average because some people are losing their jobs.
And in the second case it doesn't matter whether the cost of other services has gone down for someone who is now unemployed.
In your example: if a barber has lost their job they won't care whether the cost of hiring Justin Bieber (it's Bieber, right?) impersonators has gone down because they will no longer be able to afford one.
So my point is, whether the benefits and inconvenients are proportional for any given individual changes a lot of things. As someone earlier said, it only takes one person who lost their job (and blames immigrants for it) to have a ripple effect on his relatives, politically speaking.

Anyway, at this point in my quick research, you (and the literature) have actually convinced me.
I can see how immigration can stimulate demand (Ortega and Peri, 2009) and, generally speaking, increase the size of a national market.
The problem I still have at this point is... Immigration is not the source of any economic evil, all right. However, in a labor market that has seen the monopsony power of companies* increase... Wouldn't immigration make that even worse?
My question becomes then, accepting the fact that immigration is in itself a positive, can it not nonetheless become an aggravating factor for negatives? What I mean by that is, wouldn't it prevent workers from collectively organizing against employers? Especially, if -ironically- native workers and immigrant workers are constantly pitted against each others through the spread of xenophobic ideologies?
We could be reaching an interesting theory whereby xenophobic ideologies create the very problem that they pretend to fight by preventing the collective organizing of workers, thus reinforcing the monopsony power of companies...

*by "monopsony power of companies" I assume you mean the ability of very large companies to keep wages low because there are very few of them that oversee the labor market in a given sector, right?

And on a completely different note , can I be a bit greedy and ask you if you'd have a reliable source (i.e. article) showing that the "economic boom" at the beginning of the 1980s was due to Volcker's monetary policy rather than Reagan's supply-side policies? I'm desperately looking for an actual reference on this one.

 

[Martell Spy]

Study: Minimum Wage Hikes Are Paying Off

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/09/study-minimum-wage-hikes-increase-pay-without-killing-jobs.html

Quote

Drawing on data from the Labor Department, the economists found that across the six cities studied, a 10 percent increase in the minimum wage boosted weekly earnings in the food services industry by an average of between 1.3 and 2.5 percent (depending on which economic model they used) by the end of 2016. Meanwhile, their models pegged the wage hikes’ impact on jobs to a range of 0.3 percent reduction (i.e. negative but tiny) to a 1.1 percent increase.

 

[DanteGabriel]

9 hours ago, DMC said:

Two notes before I detail the rest of the IVs.  One, as has been mentioned Maryland is a blue state that has a reputation for being quite gerrymandered.  However, the most gerrymandered state by this "difference in proportionality" metric is easily Massachusetts.  That's because in all three cycles since the last census all 9 seats have been held by Dems even though the Dem vote share is ~ the mid 60s.  Using any type of veil of ignorance, that's..outrageous.  The closest GOP analogs would be South Carolina and Alabama, which each at least have one Dem seat out of 7.

I'm not going to dive into the larger point about Democratic vs Republican propensity for gerrymandering, except to say that most of the gerrymandering definitions I've seen involve how "compact" the district is. The most hideously gerrymandered districts tend to be ones that spread as long, thin, barely connected strips across wide expanses of a state, usually to avoid or cut up or isolate urban cores where Democratic voters concentrate. There's this Washington Post article with maps of the most gerrymandered districts. North Carolina has three, Texas has a couple, and Maryland and Illinois show up to represent Democratic states.

Massachusetts does have an all-Democratic contingent in Congress, which doesn't square with the percentages of registered voters, and with a state that's had three Republican governors and one US Senator in the recent past. But our districts are not particularly tortured. Not one single county in Massachusetts went for Trump over Clinton in 2016. It may just be that Republicans are evenly distributed enough here as a minority that no special effort had to be made to lock them out of power. I'd say the Democratic dominance in Massachusetts has more to do with local culture and strength of party organizations than it has to do with district boundaries.

This is not to say that Massachusetts is some lodestar (heh) of civic virtue. It's a state with a legislature dominated by one party, which leads to lazy and corrupt legislators just like anywhere else (maybe not as bad as Rhode Island, where Democratic dominance is so thick that even candidates who should be Republicans just sign on as Democrats anyway to get on the gravy train, and recently made headlines because the state Democratic party endorsed a MAGAt who changed affiliation to primary a progressive young woman incumbent who'd irritated leadership).

[Martell Spy]

The Last Word: David Simon on Twitter Trolls, Trump and Making ‘The Deuce’ in the #MeToo Era

In an intimate interview, the veteran reporter and ‘Wire’ co-creator gnashes his teeth over the states of journalism and politics, reflects on his friend Anthony Bourdain and reveals his biggest regrets

https://www.rollingstone.com/tv/tv-features/david-simon-interview-deuce-hbo-719397/

Quote

 

Twitter’s asking you to do one of two things: Ignore them, which allows the lie to stand, which is offensive. Or, they’re asking you to engage with it as if it’s serious, as if it is deserving of any rigor. And that, my friends, is 1935. That is, here comes Julius Streicher or Joseph Goebbels saying that the Jews drink the blood of Christian babies, and you’re being asked to respond, “No, y’know, there’s actually no evidence that they actually drink the blood of Christian babies. This is false.” And instead what you’re supposed to say is, “Go fuck yourself, you scumbag anti-Semite.”

 

 

[Ormond]

11 hours ago, DMC said:

 

Finally, while data collecting, I glanced at the seat shares for the 17 other states not in the Brennan Center's sample.  It's about what you expect - the red states are either entirely or almost entirely GOP dominant and the blue states vice versa.  The three swing states in the sample - Iowa, Nevada, and New Hampshire, show a pretty solid partisan split.  I won't say these states wouldn't affect the above results -- actually they very much would because of the design.  As in, they would show increased "disproportionality" between vote share and seat share because it's easier to dominate when you only got a handful of seats.  Thus, I see why the Brennan Center guys left them out.

 

Just to point out -- Like Arizona and California, Iowa has a nonpartisan redistricting plan. It's not set up exactly the same way as it is in those two states, but it seems to have actually done a very good job with both congressional districts and the state legislature districts in terms of "proportionality."

http://www.ncsl.org/research/redistricting/the-iowa-model-for-redistricting.aspx

[OldGimletEye]

3 hours ago, Rippounet said:

And on a completely different note , can I be a bit greedy and ask you if you'd have a reliable source (i.e. article) showing that the "economic boom" at the beginning of the 1980s was due to Volcker's monetary policy rather than Reagan's supply-side policies? I'm desperately looking for an actual reference on this one.

I was going to write a response to your last post but I'll answer this one now. Try Feldstein & Elmensdorf 1989.

There are many, but I like this one because Martin Feldstein is hardly a Democrat left wing friendly sort of person. So it's kind of hard for conservative sorts of people to cry "liberal bias".

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

6 hours ago, DireWolfSpirit said:

Nike is Not getting "killed" as the lying orange one is claiming.  https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/nike-online-sales-soar-in-wake-of-kaepernick-ad-campaign_us_5b92f887e4b0511db3e24df2

 

Some thoughts while my mind is not so nimble.

1) Nike still has stuff to answer for regarding offshoring and working conditions. Once the right wing outrage media figures out a way to link that Kaepernick’s protest that:

a) doesn’t make them look like total hypocrites.

b) can fit on a bumper sticker or internet meme.

I expect it will be parroted all over the place. This should of happen around Tuesday or Wednesday of next week.

2) Social conservatives; wrong side of history again.

3) this was a major component in Trumps culture war strategy. Since we know people weren't actually saying, “merry Christmas” in May... someone needs to finish that for me because I’m zonked.

[Zorral]

8 hours ago, Serious Callers Only said:

More like they won't be competitive on exports.

 

I actually find it utterly bizarre that soy is such a important export cash crop for the americas considering how it's utterly tasteless unless drowned in condiments and i can only conclude it's a critical meat substitute for pig farming and poor people feed, a difference without distinction to corporate farms i'm sure.

Soy is an industrial use product, which is why soy beans took off in the US agriculture sector during WWII, when petroleum products were almost all diverted for the war machine.

Consumer / food products are actually a smaller percentage of what soy is used for.  It's an oil, for one thing, widely used throughout Asia, both industrially and for cooking.  It's utilized in many cosmetics, skin and hair care products.

http://unitedsoybean.org/media-center/issue-briefs/industrial/

[DMC]

3 hours ago, DanteGabriel said:

I'm not going to dive into the larger point about Democratic vs Republican propensity for gerrymandering, except to say that most of the gerrymandering definitions I've seen involve how "compact" the district is. The most hideously gerrymandered districts tend to be ones that spread as long, thin, barely connected strips across wide expanses of a state, usually to avoid or cut up or isolate urban cores where Democratic voters concentrate. There's this Washington Post article with maps of the most gerrymandered districts. North Carolina has three, Texas has a couple, and Maryland and Illinois show up to represent Democratic states.

"Compactness" is certainly a concern in terms of redistricting and avoiding gerrymandering.  This is actually a valid argument for why California's commission can't get at proportionality as well as they should.  But just in terms of the numbers man - if there was a GOP state akin to MA's districts it would definitely be pointed out, I think that's hard to argue.  Especially considering Elbridge Gerry was from there and Massachusetts is, ya know, where the term came from.

ETA:  

Quote

North Carolina has three, Texas has a couple, and Maryland and Illinois show up to represent Democratic states.

Just wanted to mention - the Illinois 4th has always been my teaching example.  It's like a pincer. 

50 minutes ago, Ormond said:

Just to point out -- Like Arizona and California, Iowa has a nonpartisan redistricting plan.

Aye.  Iowa wasn't in my sample.

[Ormond]

5 minutes ago, DMC said:

Aye.  Iowa wasn't in my sample.

? I was explicitly quoting the paragraph where you discussed your "glance" at the 17 states that were not in your original sample.

[DMC]

2 minutes ago, Ormond said:

? I was explicitly quoting the paragraph where you discussed your "glance" at the 17 states that were not in your original sample.

Sure, sorry if that came off defensive.  Just wanted to clarify it wasn't part of the dataset.