On the opening day of law school, I always counsel my first-year students never to support a law they are not willing to kill to enforce. Usually they greet this advice with something between skepticism and puzzlement, until I remind them that the police go armed to enforce the will of the state, and if you resist, they might kill you.
I wish this caution were only theoretical. It isn’t. Whatever your view on the refusal of a New York City grand jury to indict the police officer whose chokehold apparently led to the death of Eric Garner, it’s useful to remember the crime that Garner is alleged to have committed: He was selling individual cigarettes, or loosies, in violation of New York law.
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The problem is actually broader. It’s not just cigarette tax laws that can lead to the death of those the police seek to arrest. It’s every law. Libertarians argue that we have far too many laws, and the Garner case offers evidence that they’re right. I often tell my students that there will never be a perfect technology of law enforcement, and therefore it is unavoidable that there will be situations where police err on the side of too much violence rather than too little. Better training won’t lead to perfection. But fewer laws would mean fewer opportunities for official violence to get out of hand.
Why I Am Optimistic About the Future of Race Relations in America →
... As recently as 1990, more than 40 percent of whites supported a homeowner’s right to discriminate on the basis of race; by 2008, that number had dropped to 28 percent (including 25 percent of highly educated Northern whites). The same goes for the percentage of whites who said blacks were “less intelligent” than whites, which dipped from nearly 60 percent in 1990 to less than 30 percent in 2008. And so few whites support school segregation that the General Social Survey has dropped the item from its questionnaire.Whites are also more tolerant of interracial marriage. When first measured in 1990, note the authors, fully 65 percent of whites opposed unions between close relatives and black Americans. By 2008, that number had declined to 25 percent, and in a 2013 Gallup survey, 84 percent of whites said they approved of interracial marriages between blacks and whites. Some of the most comprehensive polling–outside of the General Social Survey—comes from the Pew Research Center. According to a 2010 report, 64 percent of whites say they would be “fine with it” if a family member married a black American, while 27 percent say they would be “bothered” but accepting. Only 6 percent say they would reject the marriage. Support is lowest among older whites, and highest among white millennials, who don’t differ in approval from their black and Hispanic peers.
New Year's Resolutions: Ten Ways to Combat Upward Redistribution of Income →
In all these areas changes will be difficult, since the 1 percent will use their wealth and power to ensure that the rules not be rewritten to benefit the bulk of the country. However, this list should provide a useful set of market-friendly policies that will lead to both more equality and more growth.
Actually, Income Growth for the Middle Class Is No Mystery →
Five years?!
A NYT article on efforts to overcome stagnating incomes for the middle class bizarrely skipped over the most obvious and proven method: low unemployment. The problem shows up in the very first sentence, which tells readers:
"For average American families, the United States economy is like a football team that cannot move the ball, and has not been able to for 30 years."
Actually, the football team moved the ball very well in the years from 1996 to 2001, when families at middle and bottom of the income ladder saw large wage gains. In fact, this five year period accounted for all the growth in wage income for middle class families since 1980. The problem was that the recession that began in 2001 following the collapse of the stock market bubble led to higher unemployment and took away workers bargaining power.
Congratulations, 2014! You could’ve been a lot worse. →
It’s not that there was no positive news — the fall in global energy pricesput more money in people’s pockets, and crime continued to decline in the United States. Still, the bad seemed to crowd out the good.
But what if 2014 turned out better than expected? Thinking about what actually happened this past year may not be the best way to judge it. After all, an awful lot of smart people predicted a lot of even-more-terrible things that never came to pass. And these averted catastrophes point toward some interesting ways to think about 2015.
How the Pentagon's Quest For Insect-Sized Combat Drones Could End Up Saving Lives →
We are entering Wild Fantasy Land when it comes to the nature of warfare.
North Dakota will consider slashing income taxes to zero →
Cutting individual rates completely would cost North Dakota about $1 billion over two years, Tax Commissioner Ryan Rauschenberger told the Fargo Forum. Corporate income taxes generate another $525 million every two years.
Seven other states, including neighboring South Dakota, do not have personal income taxes.
After several biohazardous screw-ups, the CDC is hiring a safety chief →
The bit about ebola isn't meant to be alarmist, any more than the rest of these failures. As with everything, there needs to be a careful cost/benefit analysis, and we, as a society, guided by experts, need to figure out where to draw the line.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will hire a chief of laboratory safety, according to a Reuters report. Because apparently there wasn't one before; creating the position was a major recommendation of a lengthy internal investigation into mishandling of anthrax and bird flu in the agency's labs, according to a memo Reuters obtained.
The announcement comes a week after another lab mix-up — one involving Ebola.Last week, a wrong transfer of a sample containing the Ebola virus exposed at least one lab technician to the disease. The technician wore gloves and a gown, standard gear for inactivated viruses, but not all of the protective gear — like a face mask — recommended for working with the live virus. The worker was showing no symptoms as of December 29th; that person is being monitored for the standard 21 days. The CDC said Tuesday the worker's risk of being sickened by Ebola is "low, but not zero."