I’ve had a couple requests to do an examination of the Obamacare rollout. I haven’t commented to this point primarily because the returns are still early. There’s a lot of additional data that will come out in the coming months and a lot of unknowns–what will healthcare.gov look like a month from now, let alone by the end of March, the current sign-up deadline? Nevertheless, there are some useful things that can be said not merely about the rollout, but about the way in which the rollout is being covered in the popular press.
Tag: politics
Resisting Stagnation and the New Dark Age
There’s a lot of talk lately by Summers, Krugman, and others that we may be in a period of secular stagnation, in which the rate at which the economy grows in the wealthiest countries falls substantially and permanently. Observing this, some are quick to point to demography as the cause. If populations are not growing as swiftly as they once did, it would indeed make sense that growth rates would fall. Under this thinking, slower growth isn’t a problem, because per capita growth is theoretically still strong–the economy is growing slower in aggregate, but it’s growing at the same speed relative to the size of the population. The trouble is that on further investigation, the demographic explanation does not sufficiently account for what’s going on. Not only are growth rates slowing, but per capita growth rates are slowing, and have been slowing for a while, beginning far before the recent economic crisis. This throws Kurzweil’s theory of accelerating returns into doubt, and undermines the central precept underlying our capitalist society–that the labors of this generation today are meant to make the next generation’s lives go better. If stagnation is the way of the future, it’s a much more serious problem than we presently recognize, one that ultimately threatens not merely our dreams of better lives for ourselves, but the very stability of our civilization.
Continue reading “Resisting Stagnation and the New Dark Age”
Is Your Congressman Certified?
One of the biggest problems with our politics at present is the tendency for our politicians to be better glad-handers and fundraisers than they are statesmen. They know more about winning votes than they do about crafting good laws, and the former skill does not sufficiently track the latter. So what can we do to ensure our leaders have the knowledge and skills necessary to do their jobs well? I have offered a comprehensive solution in the past, one that requires a full reorientation of the structure of our political system, but today I’d like to consider something that, while more modest, would be much easier to do right away–certify our statesmen.
Is Chris Christie a Moderate?
In the aftermath of republican Chris Christie’s recent re-election as governor of New Jersey, many in the press have been quick to make sweeping claims about what this means for the republicans nationally. Chief among these claims is the notion that Christie is a moderate–consequently, Christie’s victory is an indication that the republicans should or will become more moderate in the future. But while Christie has attempted to cultivate an image nationally as a centrist, reasonable republican who chills with Barack Obama and disses Rand Paul, I have not seen many in the press taking any kind of serious look at what Christie has done policy-wise in New Jersey. So let’s do that today.
Robert Webb vs. Russell Brand
The other day, I wrote a piece commentating on British comedian Russell Brand’s argument against voting. Now another British comedian, Robert Webb (of Peep Show fame) has written an opinion piece for New Statesman criticizing Brand’s position. The irony that a critical issue in political theory is being debated in front of a wide audience for the first time in years by two comedians is not lost on me. All irony aside, as a serious political theory person whose interest is the political system and what’s wrong with it, so I want to have a look at Webb’s argument.
Benjamin Studebaker 
