Sunday, January 26, 2014

Can the Nation's Mayors Save the Federal Government from Itself?

The press has planted a phrase in our heads – dysfunctional government.  It’s hardly a phrase the man on the street would invent.  Yet, it has overtaken the economy as voters’ biggest concern.  Sounds like a problem we should try to solve, doesn’t it?

There’s a central truth to this issue that most are missing.  The government was designed to be dysfunctional.  If you were designing a system to function efficiently, would you come up with this?



Indeed, if one were to design a government system to function efficiently, one might choose the British Westminster system.  In the UK, elections can be called at irregular intervals to throw the bums out and the leader of the party who achieves a majority appoints the ministers (from among those elected) who run the bureaus of government.

No separation of powers, no process of advice and consent, no oversight committees or any of the other nonsense that clogs up the works in D.C.

In the midst of all this federal Sturm and Drang, many states have stepped into the breach.  And, why shouldn’t they?  In a nation that is geographically larger than all of Europe, it makes sense that we would have diverse cultures with different values.  Continental Europe certainly does.

Former Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels forged a new path by selling some of the state’s assets – including highways -- to pay down their debt and balance their budget without raising taxes.  It was a bold move.  What can we learn from Indiana’s experience?

In California, new/old Governor Jerry Brown chose a different direction.  He raised taxes on the wealthy to address the state’s budget issues. Unlike Indiana, California benefits from thriving entertainment and technology industries and geographically important seaports like Long Beach and Oakland.  A recovering economy has boosted state revenues and balanced the budget.  The very wealthy haven’t abandoned the state to move to Indiana or even to Arizona or Texas.

Texas pursues a different model.  A no-income tax state, it benefits from a booming energy industry and low costs of living and doing business.  Want to move from high-tax states like California, Illinois or New York?  No problem.  You’ll be welcomed. 

That Texas and California can pursue such different models and both thrive is an expression of the diversity of our economy.  There’s no need for the federal government to be involved.

Last June’s Supreme Court ruling allowed each state to make its own decision about gay marriage.  And, each state is doing so.  Easy?  For some yes and for others no.  But, the decisions made at a local level are more likely to reflect local values.

Mississippi will never have it.  Vermont always will.

Contrast that to the 40-year-old Supreme Court ruling on abortion.  Proponents and opponents are still marching in the streets. 

Enter the nation’s mayors. 

More than 80% of the population now lives in or near a big city.  So, our mayors are likely to have an increasing impact on society.

Many focus on economic development.  Denver has established a Business Incentive Fund that has attracted large national companies like Southwest Airlines to its environs.  Raleigh, NC has a well-educated workforce and has attracted financial companies like Fidelity, Credit Suisse and MetLife.  Seattle benefits from a resurgent Boeing and has also attracted technology companies like Amazon and Google to build new operations there. 

But, it’s not all about economics.  Cities may also serve as laboratories for social experiments. New York’s new mayor, Bill de Blasio, ran on a platform of taxing the rich to fund universal pre-K.  If he receives the necessary support of the state government, we’ll get to see if that experiment works before liberals in Washington take a crack at it.  Will Wall Street big shots relocate their HQ’s to White Plains, Princeton or Greenwich?  It will be interesting to find out, won’t it?

Seattle’s city government considers raising the minimum wage to $15 per hour.  Will the rise in incomes lift local businesses and cause the city to thrive or will it drive out local employers who reckon they can’t carry that burden? Will Seattleites be buying Tex-Mex from Taco Bell or from Burrito Box?

Conservatives point to the first principles of economic freedom as drivers of prosperity.  The elected governments of California and Seattle have chosen a different direction.  Liberals see the divergent incomes at the top and bottom of the economic ladder as a challenge they must address directly.  The elected governments of Indiana and Texas have chosen a different direction. 

I don’t know about you.  But, I would rather see how these many experiments work on a small scale before imposing them on the entire nation. 

The accretion of special interest lobbying and its impact on the federal taxes and regulations violate Americans’ sense of fair play.  The decentralization of American governance can only serve to make elected officials more responsive to the electorate and the results better aligned with our values and beliefs.  The folks in Washington will not endeavor to slow the momentum of our central government.  Change must be driven from outside the system and it’s more likely to be driven by political, social and economic forces at play in our states and cities than by those who pretend to represent us in Washington.


WHO WILL LEAD?

Sunday, January 12, 2014

If you can't score a touchdown, move the goal post

Have you bought any food lately?  How about gas?  Have you filled up your tank?  Of course you have.  And, it’s getting a bit more expensive, isn’t it? 

Take a look at this chart of inflation over the last 70 years.





So, why do we keep hearing that inflation is under control? 

Listen carefully the next time you hear it.  They’ll say, “Core inflation excluding volatile food and fuel prices” is under control or something like that.

If you can’t score a touchdown, move the goal post. 

There’s more.  The chart above shows the Consumer Price Index (CPI) which is the measure of inflation we have all grown up with.  However, the boys and girls over at the Federal Reserve have decided to use Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE)as a measure of inflation (starting in 2000).   Here’s how the two compare.




So, what’s the difference?  In simple terms, the CPI measures the change in prices of a fixed set of goods and services – bread, clothing, gasoline, etc.  The PCE fiddles with that calculation a bit.  For example, if you bought a new computer a few years ago for $800, you got a certain amount of processing power, memory, ports to plug stuff into and so on.  If you spend $800 today for a new computer, you would get more of all that stuff.  Or, to put it another way, buying the same processing power etc. today as you did a few years ago costs less.  PCE averages that lower cost of the same features into its index holding down this particular measure of inflation. 

The Full Employment and Balanced Growth Act of 1978 established two goals for the Federal Reserve:  reducing unemployment and reducing inflation.

If your goals included holding down inflation like the Fed Chairman, wouldn’t you prefer to use PCE?

If you can’t score a touchdown, move the goal post. 

In fairness, a lot of economists think PCE is a better measure inflation.  But, out here in the real world where the cost of gasoline and food has been moving up steadily over the past five years or so, I don’t really care what they think.

So, what should we make of all this?

Perhaps the best perspective is provided Dylan Grice, author of the Edelweiss Journal.  He tells us “inflation is not measurable”.  He tells policy makers that “trying to control a variable you can’t measure (inflation) with a tool you don’t fully understand (money) in a complex system with hidden, unobservable and non-linear interrelationships (the economy) is a guaranteed way to ensure that most things which happen weren’t supposed to happen”. 

And, when was the last time the government’s forecast for economic growth came true?


WHO WILL LEAD?