Two economists report on survey results of professional economists’ policy views and voting from the mid-2000s, before the financial crisis hit. Their abstract:
In Spring 2003, a survey of 1000 economists was conducted using a randomly generated membership list from the American Economics Association. 
The survey contained questions about 18 policy issues, voting behavior, and several background variables. The response was 264 (nonblank) surveys. The responses show that most economists are supporters of safety regulations, gun control, redistribution, public schooling, and anti-discrimination laws. They are evenly mixed on personal choice issues, military action, and the minimum wage. Most economists oppose tighter immigration controls, government ownership of enterprise and tariffs. In voting, the Democratic:Republican ratio is 2.5:1. These results are compared to those of previous surveys of economists. We itemize a series of important questions raised by these results.
Source: Daniel B. Klein and Charlotta Stern, “Economists’ policy views and voting,” Public Choice, March 2006, Volume 126, Issue 3-4, pp 331-342.
Posted 4 months, 2 weeks ago at 1:24 pm. Add a comment
In the following two passages, with a nod to Tocqueville, Mill makes two strong claims.
First he praises American culture: “Almost all travellers are struck by the fact that every American is in some sense both a patriot, and a person of cultivated intelligence. … No such wide diffusion of the ideas, tastes, and sentiments of educated minds, has ever been seen elsewhere.” (Thanks for the pat on the back, J.S.!)
But he follows with this about American politicians: “political life is indeed in America a most valuable school, but it is a school from which the ablest teachers are excluded; 
the first minds in the country being as effectuallly shut out from the national representation, and from public functions generally, as if they were under a formal disqualification.”
Mill published that 1.5 centuries ago, but comparisons to the present are apt. He is talking about democratic-republican politics, which he thinks is better in most respects than the alternatives. But it has its own weaknesses, one being the types of people it attracts and repels from political life. So some follow up questions, if this really is a systematic problem in our politics.
First: Are politicians really less able than the first-rate people in other walks of life — scientists, physicians, business executives, artists? How would we determine this? 
Second: If so, what is it that makes politics less attractive to the most able and more attractive to the moderately able?
Is it that smart and able people better see the compromises involved and the damage to their integrity? Or the scrutiny of their personal lives? Or they are interested less in wielding power over others than they are in positive values such as seeking scientific truth or building a great business or creating artistic significance?
And by contrast, are the moderately-able are more willing to be compromisers? They are less able to be first rate scientists, artists, or business professionals, so they are more likely to seek significance through power over others? 
Or is it that in our political system, elections are decided by marginal or moderate voters, and that fact in some way creates a lowest-common-denominator dynamic?
Other factors? (Please avoid ad hominem and other cheap shots abut particular politicians. Mill is pointing us to a systematic problem, not the foibles of particular individuals, parties, or generations.)
Source: John Stuart Mill, “Of the Extension of the Suffrage,” Chapter VIII of Considerations on Representative Government (Easton Press, 1995; originally published 1861), p. 157. Also available online here.
Posted 4 months, 3 weeks ago at 10:59 am. 4 comments
After a terrible yesterday, like many people I am still trying to understand how someone could do those horrible things. I run through the list of factors and wonder which ones contributed causally. His being male? His mental abilities/disabilities? How his parents raised him? His living in a society with access to firearms or with much violent entertainment 
— movies, video games, etc.? His socio-economic status? And having identified possible contributing factors, how do I weight them? Which were more significant in this case?
Below are six data sets. As I peruse them for significance, I remind myself that sociology is not destiny. That is, individuals in identical social circumstances make dramatically different choices. E.g., it may be true and important that 90% of violent crimes are committed by males, but it’s at least equally importantly true that 99% of males choose not to commit violent crimes.
1. Firearm deaths per 100,000 population. The top ten in the world:
El Salvador 50.36
Jamaica 47.44
Honduras 46.70
Guatemala 38.52
Swaziland 37.16
Colombia 28.11
Brazil 19.01
Panama 12.92
Mexico 11.14
Philippines 9.46
Common factors?
The next ten:
South Africa 9.41
United States 9.00
Montenegro 8.55
Paraguay 7.35
Nicaragua 7.14
Switzerland 6.4
Argentina 5.65
Canada 4.78
Zimbabwe 4.75
Serbia 3.90
2. Regional differences within the United States. The death rate varies significantly by region — South, West, Midwest, Northeast:
Also within the United States:
3. Victims by sex and gender: Deaths Due to Firearms per 100,000 Population by Gender, 2009.
4. Perpetrators of murders by sex/gender. From the FBI’s Expanded Homicide Data for 2010: “Of the offenders for whom gender was known, 90.3 percent were males.”
5. Deaths by race/ethnicity: Number of Deaths Due to Firearms per 100,000 Population by Race/Ethnicity, 2009.
6. International gun possession: Number of guns per capita by country.
Please feel welcome to suggest other interesting data sets.
Posted 5 months ago at 12:22 pm. 4 comments
Below is a transcript of an open letter Douglass wrote in 1848 to Thomas Auld, his former master, on the tenth anniversary of his escape from slavery to freedom. 
TO MY OLD MASTER.
Thomas Auld,
Sir:
The long and intimate, though by no means friendly, relation which unhappily subsisted between you and myself, leads me to hope that you will easily account for the great liberty which I now take in addressing you in this open and public manner. The same fact may possibly remove any disagreeable surprise which you may experience on again finding your name coupled with mine, in any other way than in an advertisement, accurately describing my person, and offering a large sum for my arrest. In thus dragging you again before the public, I am aware that I shall subject myself to no inconsiderable amount of censure. I shall probably be charged with an unwarrantable if not a wanton and reckless disregard of the rights and proprieties of private life. There are those North as well as South, who entertain a much higher respect for rights which are merely conventional, than they do for rights which are personal and essential. Not a few there are in our country who, while they have no scruples against robbing the laborer of the hard earned results of his patient industry, will be shocked by the extremely indelicate manner of bringing your name before the public. Believing this to be the case, and wishing to meet every reasonable or plausible objection to my conduct, I will frankly state the ground upon which I justify myself in this instance, as well as on former occasions when I have thought proper to mention your name in public. All will agree that a man guilty of theft, robbery, or murder, has forfeited the right to concealment and private life; that the community have a right to subject such persons to the most complete exposure. However much they may desire retirement, and aim to conceal themselves and their movements from the popular gaze, the public have a right to ferret them out, and bring their conduct before the proper tribunals of the country for investigation. Sir, you will undoubtedly make the proper application of these generally admitted principles, and will easily see the light in which you are regarded by me. I will not therefore manifest ill temper, by calling you hard names. I know you to be a man of some intelligence, and can readily determine the precise estimate which I entertain of your character. I may therefore indulge in language which may seem to others indirect and ambiguous, and yet be quite well understood by yourself.
I have selected this day on which to address you, because it is the anniversary of my emancipation; and knowing of no better way, I am led to this as the best mode of celebrating that truly important event. Just ten years ago this beautiful September morning, yon bright sun beheld me a slave — a poor degraded chattel — trembling at the sound of your voice, lamenting that I was a man, and wishing myself a brute. The hopes which I had treasured up for weeks of a safe and successful escape from your grasp, were powerfully confronted at this last hour by dark clouds of doubt and fear, making my person shake and my bosom to heave with the heavy contest between hope and fear. I have no words to describe to you the deep agony of soul which I experienced on that never to be forgotten morning — (for I left by daylight). I was making a leap in the dark. The probabilities, so far as I could by reason determine them, were stoutly against the undertaking. The preliminaries and precautions I had adopted previously, all worked badly. I was like one going to war without weapons — ten chances of defeat to one of victory. One in whom I had confided, and one who had promised me assistance, appalled by fear at the trial hour, deserted me, thus leaving the responsibility of success or failure solely with myself. You, sir, can never know my feelings. As I look back to them, I can scarcely realize that I have passed through a scene so trying. Trying however as they were, and gloomy as was the prospect, thanks be to the Most High, who is ever the God of the oppressed, at the moment which was to determine my whole earthly career. His grace was sufficient, my mind was made up. I embraced the golden opportunity, took the morning tide at the flood, and a free man, young, active and strong, is the result.
I have often thought I should like to explain to you the grounds upon which I have justified myself in running away from you. I am almost ashamed to do so now, for by this time you may have discovered them yourself. I will, however, glance at them. When yet but a child about six years old, I imbibed the determination to run away. The very first mental effort that I now remember on my part, was an attempt to solve the mystery, Why am I a slave? and with this question my youthful mind was troubled for many days, pressing upon me more heavily at times than others.
When I saw the slave-driver whip a slave woman, cut the blood out of her neck, and heard her piteous cries, I went away into the corner of the fence, wept and pondered over the mystery. I had, through some medium, I know not what, got some idea of God, the Creator of all mankind, the black and the white, and that he had made the blacks to serve the whites as slaves. How he could do this and be good, I could not tell. I was not satisfied with this theory, which made God responsible for slavery, for it pained me greatly, and I have wept over it long and often. At one time, your first wife, Mrs. Lucretia, heard me singing and saw me shedding tears, and asked of me the matter, but I was afraid to tell her. I was puzzled with this question, till one night, while sitting in the kitchen, I heard some of the old slaves talking of their parents having been stolen from Africa by white men, and were sold here as slaves. The whole mystery was solved at once. Very soon after this my aunt Jinny and uncle Noah ran away, and the great noise made about it by your father-in-law, made me for the first time acquainted with the fact, that there were free States as well as slave States. From that time, I resolved that I would some day run away. The morality of the act, I dispose as follows: I am myself; you are yourself; we are two distinct persons, equal persons. What you are, I am. You are a man, and so am I. God created both, and made us separate beings. I am not by nature bound to you, or you to me. Nature does not make your existence depend upon me, or mine to depend upon yours. I cannot walk upon your legs, or you upon mine. I cannot breathe for you, or you for me; I must breathe for myself, and you for yourself. We are distinct persons, and are each equally provided with faculties necessary to our individual existence. In leaving you, I took nothing but what belonged to me, and in no way lessened your means for obtaining an honest living. Your faculties remained yours, and mine became useful to their rightful owner. I therefore see no wrong in any part of the transaction. It is true, I went off secretly, but that was more your fault than mine. Had I let you into the secret, you would have defeated the enterprise entirely; but for this, I should have been really glad to have made you acquainted with my intentions to leave.
You may perhaps want to know how I like my present condition. I am free to say, I greatly prefer it to that which I occupied in Maryland. I am, however, by no means prejudiced against the State as such. Its geography, climate, fertility and products, are such as to make it a very desirable abode for any man; and but for the existence of slavery there, it is not impossible that I might again take up my abode in that State. It is not that I love Maryland less, but freedom more. You will be surprised to learn that people at the North labor under the strange delusion that if the slaves were emancipated at the South, they would flock to the North. So far from this being the case, in that event, you would see many old and familiar faces back again to the South. The fact is, there are few here who would not return to the South in the event of emancipation. We want to live in the land of our birth, and to lay our bones by the side of our fathers’; and nothing short of an intense love of personal freedom keeps us from the South. For the sake of this, most of us would live on a crust of bread and a cup of cold water.
Since I left you, I have had a rich experience. I have occupied stations which I never dreamed of when a slave. Three out of the ten years since I left you, I spent as a common laborer on the wharves of New Bedford, Massachusetts. It was there I earned my first free dollar. It was mine. I could spend it as I pleased. I could buy hams or herring with it, without asking any odds of any body. That was a precious dollar to me. You remember when I used to make seven or eight, or even nine dollars a week in Baltimore, you would take every cent of it from me every Saturday night, saying that I belonged to you, and my earnings also. I never liked this conduct on your part — to say the best, I thought it a little mean. I would not have served you so. But let that pass. I was a little awkward about counting money in New England fashion when I first landed in New Bedford. I like to have betrayed myself several times. I caught myself saying phip, for fourpence; and at one time a man actually charged me with being a runaway, whereupon I was silly enough to become one by running away from him, for I was greatly afraid he might adopt measures to get me again into slavery, a condition I then dreaded more than death.
I soon, however, learned to count money, as well as to make it, and got on swimmingly. I married soon after leaving you: in fact, I was engaged to be married before I left you; and instead of finding my companion a burden, she was truly a helpmeet. She went to live at service, and I to work on the wharf, and though we toiled hard the first winter, we never lived more happily. After remaining in New Bedford for three years, I met with Wm. Lloyd Garrison, a person of whom you have possibly heard, as he is pretty generally known among slaveholders. He put it into my head that I might make myself serviceable to the cause of the slave by devoting a portion of my time to telling my own sorrows, and those of other slaves which had come under my observation. This was the commencement of a higher state of existence than any to which I had ever aspired. I was thrown into society the most pure, enlightened and benevolent that the country affords. Among these I have never forgotten you, but have invariably made you the topic of conversation — thus giving you all the notoriety I could do. I need not tell you that the opinion formed of you in these circles, is far from being favorable. They have little respect for your honesty, and less for your religion.
But I was going on to relate to you something of my interesting experience. I had not long enjoyed the excellent society to which I have referred, before the light of its excellence exerted a beneficial influence on my mind and heart. Much of my early dislike of white persons was removed, and their manners, habits and customs, so entirely unlike what I had been used to in the kitchen-quarters on the plantations of the South, fairly charmed me, and gave me a strong disrelish for the coarse and degrading customs of my former condition. I therefore made an effort so to improve my mind and deportment, as to be somewhat fitted to the station to which I seemed almost providentially called. The transition from degradation to respectability was indeed great, and to get from one to the other without carrying some marks of one’s former condition, is truly a difficult matter. I would not have you think that I am now entirely clear of all plantation peculiarities, but my friends here, while they entertain the strongest dislike to them, regard me with that charity to which my past life somewhat entitles me, so that my condition in this respect is exceedingly pleasant.
So far as my domestic affairs are concerned, I can boast of as comfortable a dwelling as your own. I have an industrious and neat companion, and four dear children — the oldest a girl of nine years, and three fine boys, the oldest eight, the next six, and the youngest four years old. The three oldest are now going regularly to school—two can read and write, and the other can spell with tolerable correctness words of two syllables: Dear fellows! they are all in comfortable beds, and are sound asleep, perfectly secure under my own roof. There are no slaveholders here to rend my heart by snatching them from my arms, or blast a mother’s dearest hopes by tearing them from her bosom. These dear children are ours — not to work up into rice, sugar and tobacco, but to watch over, regard, and protect, and to rear them up in the nurture and admonition of the gospel — to train them up in the paths of wisdom and virtue, and, as far as we can to make them useful to the world and to themselves. Oh! sir, a slaveholder never appears to me so completely an agent of hell, as when I think of and look upon my dear children. It is then that my feelings rise above my control. I meant to have said more with respect to my own prosperity and happiness, but thoughts and feelings which this recital has quickened unfits me to proceed further in that direction. The grim horrors of slavery rise in all their ghastly terror before me, the wails of millions pierce my heart, and chill my blood. I remember the chain, the gag, the bloody whip, the deathlike gloom overshadowing the broken spirit of the fettered bondman, the appalling liability of his being torn away from wife and children, and sold like a beast in the market. Say not that this is a picture of fancy. You well know that I wear stripes on my back inflicted by your direction; and that you, while we were brothers in the same church, caused this right hand, with which I am now penning this letter, to be closely tied to my left, and my person dragged at the pistol’s mouth, fifteen miles, from the Bay side to Easton to be sold like a beast in the market, for the alleged crime of intending to escape from your possession. All this and more you remember, and know to be perfectly true, not only of yourself, but of nearly all of the slaveholders around you.
At this moment, you are probably the guilty holder of at least three of my own dear sisters, and my only brother in bondage. These you regard as your property. They are recorded on your ledger, or perhaps have been sold to human flesh mongers, with a view to filling your own ever-hungry purse. Sir, I desire to know how and where these dear sisters are. Have you sold them? or are they still in your possession? What has become of them? are they living or dead? And my dear old grandmother, whom you turned out like an old horse, to die in the woods — is she still alive? Write and let me know all about them. If my grandmother be still alive, she is of no service to you, for by this time she must be nearly eighty years old — too old to be cared for by one to whom she has ceased to be of service, send her to me at Rochester, or bring her to Philadelphia, and it shall be the crowning happiness of my life to take care of her in her old age. Oh! she was to me a mother, and a father, so far as hard toil for my comfort could make her such. Send me my grandmother! that I may watch over and take care of her in her old age. And my sisters, let me know all about them. I would write to them, and learn all I want to know of them, without disturbing you in any way, but that, through your unrighteous conduct, they have been entirely deprived of the power to read and write. You have kept them in utter ignorance, and have therefore robbed them of the sweet enjoyments of writing or receiving letters from absent friends and relatives. Your wickedness and cruelty committed in this respect on your fellow-creatures, are greater than all the stripes you have laid upon my back, or theirs. It is an outrage upon the soul—a war upon the immortal spirit, and one for which you must give account at the bar of our common Father and Creator.
The responsibility which you have assumed in this regard is truly awful — and how you could stagger under it these many years is marvellous. Your mind must have become darkened, your heart hardened, your conscience seared and petrified, or you would have long since thrown off the accursed load and sought relief at the hands of a sin-forgiving God. How, let me ask, would you look upon me, were I some dark night in company with a band of hardened villains, to enter the precincts of your elegant dwelling and seize the person of your own lovely daughter Amanda, and carry her off from your family, friends and all the loved ones of her youth — make her my slave — compel her to work, and I take her wages—place her name on my ledger as property — disregard her personal rights — fetter the powers of her immortal soul by denying her the right and privilege of learning to read and write — feed her coarsely — clothe her scantily, and whip her on the naked back occasionally; more and still more horrible, leave her unprotected — a degraded victim to the brutal lust of fiendish overseers, who would pollute, blight, and blast her fair soul — rob her of all dignity — destroy her virtue, and annihilate all in her person the graces that adorn the character of virtuous womanhood? I ask how would you regard me, if such were my conduct? Oh! the vocabulary of the damned would not afford a word sufficiently infernal, to express your idea of my God-provoking wickedness. Yet sir, your treatment of my beloved sisters is in all essential points, precisely like the case I have now supposed. Damning as would be such a deed on my part, it would be no more so than that which you have committed against me and my sisters.
I will now bring this letter to a close, you shall hear from me again unless you let me hear from you. I intend to make use of you as a weapon with which to assail the system of slavery — as a means of concentrating public attention on the system, and deepening their horror of trafficking in the souls and bodies of men. I shall make use of you as a means of exposing the character of the American church and clergy — and as a means of bringing this guilty nation with yourself to repentance. In doing this I entertain no malice towards you personally. There is no roof under which you would be more safe than mine, and there is nothing in my house which you might need for your comfort, which I would not readily grant. Indeed, I should esteem it a privilege, to set you an example as to how mankind ought to treat each other.
I am your fellow man, but not your slave,
FREDERICK DOUGLASS.
P. S. I send a copy of the paper containing this letter, to save postage. F. D.
Sources: The text of the letter is from Frederick Douglas: Selected Speeches and Writings and the image of the letter is from the (Library of Congress) via Letters of Note.
Posted 5 months, 2 weeks ago at 7:29 pm. Add a comment
The ten-point list from The Communist Manifesto, with my rough quantification:
1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
[Partial check: property taxes, zoning laws, the federal government alone owns 30% of all land in the USA. .6 points.]
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
[Check. 1 point.]
3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.
[Partial check: inheritance tax rates range from 18% to 55%. .4 points.]
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
[No check. 0 points.] (See * below.)
5. Centralization of credit in the banks of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.
[Check: Federal Reserve, US Treasury. 1 point.]
6. Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the state.
[Partial check: roads, airspace; controls on riverways, telecomm. .5 points]
7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state; the bringing into cultivation of waste lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
[Partial check, but very hard to measure rates of state-ownership or regulations in research, manufacturing, and agriculture. .5 points.]
8. Equal obligation of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
[No check: though suggestions of mandatory volunteerism and national service. 0 points.]
9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.
[No check. 0 points.] 
10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labor in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, etc.
[Check. 1 point.]
Total: 5 out of a possible 10 points.
Workers of the world, rejoice! We’re halfway there!
* Update: Neil Baxter informs me of new exit taxes for US expatriates, and Jeff Perren argues nicely that this ship has sailed too. So this should be a partial check, and we’re over 51% there.
Posted 5 months, 2 weeks ago at 12:27 pm. 5 comments
Can the differences between the cities after 1930 be explained by differences in the cities before that date? We highlight four major differences between Buenos Aires and Chicago in 1914. Chicago was slightly richer, and significantly better educated. Chicago was more industrially developed, with about 2.25 times more capital per worker. Finally, Chicago’s political situation was far more stable and it wasn’t a political capital. Human capital seems to explain the lion’s share of the divergent path of the two cities and their countries, both because of its direct effect and because of the connection between education and political instability.
