The African century

In this astonishing piece of analysis what the authors show is that the growth rate of the African population will mean that Africa and particularly Nigeria will become one of the most populous parts of the world, likely making it an engine of world growth in the next 100 years.  Of course, we should likely look at the specifics somewhat skeptically given the time horizon.  How likely is it that people sitting in 1913 could have accurately predicted the fate of the world in 2013?  Why do we think we are better?

Is the House really in the grips of conservatives?

Charles Krauthammer is lauding the principled House.  Kathleen Parker also calls the House principled, if a little misguided (like stubborn children refusing to come out of their rooms for supper, even though the alternative is going to bed hungry).

What's all this about?  Well, in an interesting move, after the GOP failed to pass the GOP led Farm Bill earlier, the House has passed the Farm Bill at a second attempt.  The Farm Bill, however, drops all financing of food stamps. The purported reason for this omission is that: (a) Food stamps are a waste, and (b) that its an unrelated measure so should be voted on separately.

Hmmm ... all seems very conservative and principled at first glance.  The problem, of course, as Gail Collins points out, the Farm Bill is not really very conservative and full of unnecessary wasteful handouts.  Here are some pertinent facts:

• The Farm Bill has contained the Food Stamps provision for the last 40 years,  This isn't a last moment afterthought.  It's basically the structure with 40 years precedent.  Conservatism is usually supposed to look for incremental change and not dramatic change.  This sudden separation of the two is pretty radical.
• The error rate and fraud in the agricultural subsidies is massive.
• The Farm Bill includes $147 million a year in reparations to Brazil to make up for the fact that the US was ruled to have violated the World Trade Organization through market-distorting effects of cotton subsidies..
• The House Bill actually increases the amount of subsidies for farmers and increases crop insurance.

Here's Gail Collins' humorous description of crop insurance:

"Crop insurance gets bigger under the new plan. Here’s how: You, the taxpayer, fork over the majority of the cost of the farmers’ policy premiums. (Up to 80 percent in the case of cotton.) Also, you spend about $1.3 billion a year to compensate the insurance agents for the fact that they have to sell coverage to any eligible farmer, whatever his prospects for success. Plus, if yields actually do drop, you have to compensate the insurance companies for part of the cost of claims."

Got all that?  So, the House protected us from the hugely deficit increasing entitlement program called Food Stamps, vowing to pass it separately, only to pass a Farm Bill that increases subsidies and crop insurance to farmers and has stupid unnecessary payments totaling million to keep illegally subsidizing farmers.  That's conservative?  I am not sure what principle Krauthammer and Kathleen Parker think the House adhere's to.

Meanwhile, David Brooks has a scathing piece in which he dissects and tears apart the arguments against the Immigration Bill that is stalled in the House.  As Brooks points out about the Senate Immigration Bill:

• Based on estimates from the Congressional Budget Office, the Senate bill would increase the gross domestic product by 3.3 percent by 2023 and by 5.4 percent by 2033. 
• A separate study by the American Action Forum found that it would increase per capita income by $1,700 after 10 years.
• According to government estimates, the Senate bill would reduce federal deficits by up to $850 billion over the next 20 years. 
• The Senate bill reduces the 75-year Social Security fund shortfall by half-a-trillion dollars.
• According to the C.B.O., the bill would reduce illegal immigration by somewhere between 33 percent to 50 percent.  It does not eliminate illegal immigration, but its much better than the do nothing policy at the moment. 
• Conservatives say they want to avoid a European-style demographic collapse. But without more immigrants, and the higher fertility rates they bring, that is exactly what the U.S. faces.

As Brooks points out, much of the argument on wage depression is wrong, ill informed and not conservative:

"conservatives are not supposed to take a static, protectionist view of economics. They’re not supposed to believe that growth can be created or even preserved if government protects favored groups from competition. Conservatives are supposed to believe in the logic of capitalism; that if you encourage the movement of goods, ideas and people, then you increase dynamism, you increase creative destruction and you end up creating more wealth that improves lives over all."

Hmmm ... seen in this light, can the GOP House's opposition be called very conservative?

Gerrymandering and the current Congressional gridlock

In a recent piece by Jamelle Bouie in The Washington Post, he wonders, "What explains the Republican Party’s intransigence?"  His piece argues two points.  The first point he makes is that it is at least partially due to gerrymandering.  Here's what he writes:

Politico points to gerrymandering as the source of this GOP strength, but that overstates the situation. There’s no doubt gerrymandering plays a part, but the GOP’s current majority has much more to do with geographic sorting and the natural malapportionment of the House. In short, because the Constitution provides a representative for every state, regardless of population, some smaller states have more relative representation than their larger counterparts.

For instance, California — with a population of 38 million — has nearly 717,000 constituents per representative. By contrast, Wyoming has one representative and a population of 576,000 — giving each Wyoming resident a little more representation than a given Californian. When you couple this with political geography — Democrats tend to live in urban centers, Republicans tend to live in rural counties and exurbs — you have a situation where the GOP begins the game with a small advantage that magnifies in situations like 2010, where a large chunk of the country had turned decisively against the Democratic Party. 

Hmmm ... what intrigued me was his claim that there is "no doubt gerrymandering plays a part".  I always get suspicious when people make such emphatic claims and then cite data that does not actually support their claim.

I was unable to get the exact Congressional district by district breakdown, but I did manage to find the 2012 apportionment of Congressional districts, and  2010 census data that was used to apportion the districts.  The chart below shows the resulting distribution of average population by Congressional district by state:

In this chart, red columns represent states where >50% of the congressional districts were won by the GOP in 2012 and blue lines represent states where >50% of the congressional districts were won by Democrats in 2012, with grey being states where they split it evenly.

Note in this chart the higher the average number of people per congressional district, the less each voter's vote counts.  So, lower is better.

Looking at this chart you'll notice that in fact, the GOP does not really have an advantage.  In fact, if you compute the weighted average of the number of voters in Congressional districts won by GOP vs Democrats, assuming the congressional districts are relatively evenly apportioned and are unbiased, you find that the Democrats land up with ~707K people per Congressional district vs GOP lands up with ~710K people per Congressional district, i.e. the Democrats have an advantage.

On the other hand, if you glance through this analysis of margins of victory by Ballotopedia and look at the margins of victory of Congressional seats, it becomes clear that the GOP has 204 seats they won by margins of 10%+ vs 168 such seats for the Democrats.  The system is rigged a little bit more in favor of the GOP than the Democrats.

So, how do we explain the fact that Democrats won more votes than the GOP in the House races and yet lost the House?  The answer is buried in Ballotopedia's analysis: "The average margin for Democratic victors was 35.7 percent, which is significantly higher than the Republican figure of 28.6 percent."

So, let's explain what's happening.  The Democrats win a lot of seats by landslide margins.  The GOP tends to win seats by slimmer but still comfortable margins.  The result is that the GOP wins more seats, while the Democrats waste votes.

Part of this may well be gerrymandering, and if so, it suggests that the GOP purposely designs districts to be less polarized for them than for the Democrats or that the Democrats design their districts to be more Democrat leaning than the GOP.

Another reason may well be a simple question of urban rural divide.  If you look below, you'll see urban areas are almost always Democratic.  If urban areas are overwhelmingly Democratic, short of breaking up urban areas and combining them intelligently with rural areas, the Democrats are likely to have a disadvantage.



In summary, gerrymandering may well be an issue, but its not the whole story.

Jamelle Bouie's other point is that the current climate of intransigence may have more to do with a culture in the GOP  that does not reward compromise, i.e. a culture of ideological purity.  There is no easy empirical way to prove this.  However, there are two considerations that suggest he may be right.  

If you have a safe seat, i.e. a seat that your party usually wins by 10%+ margin, then the key to victory may actually be winning the party's primary.  An example of this is Mark Sanford, who despite many a question about his conduct defeated his Democratic rival in the special election in 2013.  According to ballotopedia, in 2012 the GOP had 245 contested primaries vs 227 for the Democrats.  If you combine this with the fact I mentioned above, that the GOP has 204 safe seats to 164 for the Democrats, you;d conclude that the higher number of safe seats and more contested seats may be driving GOP representatives to be more extreme to pander to their primary voters.

Another interesting hypothesis is that a second more important factor may be at play - a lack of leadership and vision in the GOP.  

In the Democratic party, first with Clinton and then, even more so, with Obama, there has clearly been a national leader who can effectively speak for the party.  The biggest evidence of this has been Obama's ability to forge legislative coalitions to back his policies.  Obama has been able to ram through his agenda with his own party with very little dissent from his ranks.  In fact, Obama's signature accomplishment, The Affordable Care Act, should, by all accounts, never have passed muster with Democrats as it does not really meet the party's platform, yet, he has managed to get his party to sign on.

By contrast, the GOP has had no equivalent voice since Reagan.  Even George W Bush failed to get the necessary votes for his immigration reform initiative, despite his own party having majorities in both the House and the Senate.  That is not to say that the GOP is not disciplined.  However, the GOP discipline appears to be driven by ideology and bottoms up orthodoxy than by leadership which can help them accept difficult decisions.  Without a spokesperson whom the base can trust, the GOP is left to the whims and fancies of its most fanatical supporters.