Real Majority Rule

Since January of 2017, one party has controlled the Presidency, the Senate and the House, and has been working to install enough judges to control the courts for decades.  In situations like this, the party in power will tend to say, "Elections have consequences," "The voters have spoken," and/or "We have a mandate from the people." However, our election and government systems are organized in such a way that the majority of voters - as distinct from anti-majority mechanisms in the system - may have actually said they wanted something else.  And the 2016 election is a good example of that - and not just in terms of the presidential selection by the Electoral College. Presidential election First, let's look at the popular vote in the 2016 presidential election.  Wikipedia shows us the vote counts below.  (I'm only showing the counts for the Democrats and Republicans as the candidate with the next highest vote count received only 3.28% of the ...

I saw a news item that the Trump administration expressed support for a lawsuit against Harvard University's affirmative action admissions policies. I thought this could start an interesting look at the social / political motivations in these kinds of matters. Generally, the affluent and/or members of traditionally privileged groups in society find anti-discrimination and affirmative action rules inconvenient.  In recent years, they've been pushing back the laws on such policies claiming government should not be involved in such things.  However, the privileged may consider it appropriate for the government to take action to tell a private company or college that they can't have anti-discrimination or affirmative action policies.  The logic or standard the privileged use changes depending on what benefits the privileged - "heads I win, tails you lose." I also thought this was an interesting example to discuss mainstream assumptions.  The lawsuit opposes Harvard g...

I recently read Martin Gilens' book Affluence and Influence .  It's an excellent, award-winning book from Princeton University Press. This book analyzes policy preferences of the nation's majority, and the preferences of demographic groups including income strata, and compares that to whether polices similar to those are enacted within 4 years of the opinion poll.  While the author knows this is not a perfect method to see how majority will is / isn't carried out, he explains why other methods are more flawed.  The analysis finds the most affluent 10% have much more political influence than the other 90%.  The book doesn't go into depth about the top 1% or 0.1% because there wasn't enough definitive data to make a fully scientific case for that.  The book doesn't merely focus on saying the top 10% have more influence, but tries to find more specific rules on when, in which areas and why the 10% have how much more influence. The book frequently discusses...

Over the last few years, there's been increasing discussion about the possibility of establishing a "universal basic income."  The discussion has become more significant with Stockton, California starting a program to implement one. What is a universal basic income?  Wikipedia says: a type of program in which citizens (or permanent residents) of a country may receive a regular sum of money from a source such as the government. A pure or unconditional basic income has no means test, much like Social Security in the United States. Basic income can be implemented nationally, regionally or locally. An unconditional income that is sufficient to meet a person's basic needs (at or above the poverty line), is called full basic income, while if it is less than that amount, it is called partial. CBS recently re-broadcast a segment which discussed the idea.  I thought there were several significant problems with their presentation, suggesting (intentional or unintentional) ...

Recently, the Apple corporation made news by reaching a company financial value of $1 trillion.  This reminded me of Apple as an example of business and the premises on which businesses are generally viewed and treated. Back in the 1970's, Apple began as a small company founded by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak.  I put those two names in that order because the name Steve Jobs will be more familiar to a lot of people.  And that's because of the relationship between business and our current society.  Steve Jobs was the founder who was more like a businessman.  Steve Wozniak was "only" the engineer who designed the first Apple computer and was involved in the technical work for following Apple computer models. We'll never know whether the early Apple computers would have been commercially successful if it had to depend on Wozniak's business skills.  However, especially in the context of competing in an environment of corporate marketplaces, it's likely Appl...

I recently finished reading Jeff Madrick's Seven Bad Ideas.  The book is written by an economist who supports the kinds of policies used during the 1950s and 1960s, and presents data critical of more recent "free market"-oriented policies.  Within the context of discussing the merits of 1960s policies versus 2010s policies, there's plenty of information.  However, you won't see efforts to look beyond these horizons. Readers who have limited knowledge of the underpinning of conservative / "free market" economic policies may appreciate the issues being divided into seven "bad ideas."  However, there's considerable overlap between a number of them.  One says individual selfish business transactions will result in a beneficial global economy.  Another says the economy is self-correcting.  Another says little government involvement is needed or desirable...  The book provides historical examples and shows that much of free market claims are si...

There's been a lot of discussion about Trump's Supreee Court nominee, Kavanaugh.  This has included references to the Senate GOP's refusal to consider Obama's nominee in 2016 - claiming it was better to wait to see the results of the 2016 election, and then decide if the voters wanted a nominee from Obama.  I don't want to discuss the pros and cons of Kavanaugh here.  I will just discuss how the handling of these nominees reflects ignoring the will of the majority. First, let's be clear.  When the Supreme Court vacancy occurred under Obama, it was further from the 2016 election than the current opening under Trump.  We should also note that in 2016, Obama was not running for re-election.  Therefore, regardless of who won the presidential election, it would not so clearly indicate that the voters did or did not want an Obama nominee. The Senate GOP demanded that no nominee be given any consideration until after the election.  OK, so what did the electio...