Make Love, Not War?

Kottke has a post with this timeline map of the global median age from 1960 to 2060.  It's interesting to see the various countries aging at different rates, until many of the OECD countries are median age of 50+.

But what's also striking is the correlation of young countries with unrest and war.  For example, today the media age of Iraq, Afghanistan and a country in Central America (likely Guatemala) is in the teens.  The other such countries are in central Africa.

So maybe the slogan of the 60's should have read: "make love and war", or "make love amidst war"?

Drum's TrumpamaCare Compromise

I hope my fellow liberals are not so stuck in opposition that they wouldn't be open to a compromise on healthcare similar to that outlined by Kevin Drum.  I fear though that we are, though my fears are somewhat assuaged by the idea that Trump will never go for it. But maybe I underestimate him?

Why Big Farms

This Successful Farming piece on big farms:

A quarter-century ago, small farms generated 46% of U.S. agricultural production. Today, the powerhouse of production is the large family farm with more than $1 million a year in gross cash farm income (GCFI). They represented 2.9% of the U.S. farm total in 2015 but were responsible for 42% of ag output, say USDA economists James MacDonald and Robert Hoppe.

 And the midpoint for cropland has moved from 589 to 1234 in the 30 years from 1982 to 2012.

Why is that?   Illinois extension has interesting graphs, relating the cost of machinery per acre to the size of the farm; in other words the way increasing the land farmed spreads machinery costs over more land.

This has been true since farming began, and more so the more farmers invest in equipment.

Tax Reform Easier Than Obamacare Repeal?

Secretary of the Treasury Mnuchin is optimistic about getting tax reform done by August--he says:

""We're able to take the tax code and redesign things, and I think there is very, very strong support," he said. "I think in healthcare, it's [a] much, much more complicated issue, where you start out with ObamaCare, which had all these issues, and you're trying to kind of get rid of it and make changes simultaneously.""

Minority Leader Pelosi was talking "rookie day" yesterday, mocking the difficulties the Republicans were having with healthcare.  I'd call Mnuchin another "rookie", given his optimism.  I remember the problems Reagan had in the 1980's with his tax reform, back in the days when he had Sen. Bill Bradley and Rep. Danny Rostenkowski in Congress to get the necessary Democratic votes.  Even with those advantages there was a lot of cliff hanging and logrolling and the final package came up short of the initial promises.

Remember, while healthcare affects 1/6 of the economy, taxes affect the whole thing.
 

Immigrants and Produce Production

When I was young during the summer when we'd drive to Greene for livestock feed, we'd see an old bus parked by the fields bordering the Chenango river, fields in which grew green beans, a bus which provided transport for those Negroes (as we said then) who picked the beans.  It was a moment of quickly passing contact with another world, strange to a child of dairy/poultry farmers. I've no idea where the pickers spent the night, presumably a tent or the bus.

These days the people who harvest our fruits and vegetables are almost all immigrants, mostly undocumented.  That leads to multiple issues, as described in this good Tamar Haspel piece for the Post.  If undocumented immigrants are deported and Trump's wall is built and is effective (big "ifs"), will citizens fill their places?  Could higher wages attract enough workers? Or would innovation come to the rescue, providing machinery and robots to do the harvesting, perhaps at the cost of changing the nature of the produce?

Virginians Steal Pennsylvanian Glory

I've a ggggrandfather who served in the Revolution in the Pennsylvania militia.  While other researchers have come up with the idea he was at Valley Forge, the best I can determine is he may have commanded a company of York militia guarding prisoners from Burgoyne's army. 

Kenneth Roberts wrote some popular historical fiction about the Revolution, and Washington Irving wrote a two-volume bio of George Washington, both of which praised the "Virginia riflemen", often under Morgan.  But J.L. Bell at Boston 1775 suggests cautiously that history may have gotten it wrong, that there were more Pennsylvanian riflemen than Virginians.

Innovation in Farming: Software and Tractors

Farmer populism shows its face in a revolt against John Deere's attempt to protect its software running its tractors.  See this piece.

Moving as a Metaphor for Budget Cutting

In my view of government, legislation is a compromise among different interests and people, assembled by politicians to get a majority of votes.  Some laws are narrow in focus and effect, often driven by one or a few politicians under the stimulus of a narrow and small group of fervent believers.  Think perhaps of an earmarked program for research by NIH on an uncommon disease.  Call these the laws of passion. Other laws are broader in focus, meaning more politicians came together in a compromise, often through judicious backscratching and logrolling. Call these the laws of interest.

Once legislation is enacted, and appropriations made, there develops the familiar iron triangle, of  bureaucrats who administer the law, the interest groups supporting it, and the legislators who derive votes from passing and maintaining it. 

As time passes, technology changes, and society changes, some laws lose their relevance, or become a misfit with the environment. But because people are creatures of habit, it's easiest not to rock the boat.

I can argue that there's value to having a Trump come along with a drastic budget proposal simply because it forces the reevaluation of existing laws.  Is there still a valid coalition backing the law--does the old combination of passion and interest still live, does it still have the clout it had back in the days of creation?

I'd compare the situation to moving: a family buys a house and gradually fills it with things.  Time passes and they need to move, to downsize to an apartment. Then you discover which things are useful enough to take to the new place and which are not.  Or maybe instead of moving to an apartment you need to move to a McMansion.

Chevron and Regulations

One of the big things about Judge Gorsuch as he tries to be confirmed by the Senate is his position on
Chevron, not the oil company but the Supreme Court case which determined how much deference, if any, should be given to an executive agency's interpretation of laws which resolve ambiguities in the language of the law. The majority opinion said courts should defer; Judge Gorsuch says "no deference" (very short summary there).

As a bureaucrat you know I come down on the deference side.  One of my reasons isn't much discussed: the reality of Congress and politicians.  For a given issue politicians have to come to some consensus, some resolution, else they'll get blasted as "do-nothing" by Harry Truman or the Dems in 2018.  But the reality is resolution is hard in a democracy--there's no magic sauce to make everyone happy.  The result is that Congress cobbles together something to show the voters.  That "something" is often a law which straddles both sides of the issue, or fuzzes the issue with vague language or lawyerisms such as "as appropriate", "reasonable", etc. etc.In other words, Congress often doesn't make decisions, it kicks them over to the poor bureaucrats in the agency who have to implement the law.

IMHO the people who agree with Gorsuch are living in a dream, one where ambiguities in legislation are mistakes by Congress, mistakes which can easily be fixed if the Court, instead of going along with the agency's fix by regulation, kicks the problem back to Congress for an easy and expeditious fix. 

In my view ambiguities aren't mistakes, they are features of the democratic process of legislation.

Judicial Vacancies: More Than You Want to Know

Ballotpedia has a piece today.  Incidentally, I recommend the site.