23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism, Chang, 2010: https://1lib.us/book/888686/6099ba Notes failures of neoliberalism and suggests utility of partial state planning from a socialist left perspective.

Capital in the 21st Century, Piketty, 2014: https://1lib.us/book/2329124/3da90d Reviews wealth accumulation, inequality, and growth (mostly) from 1800's to 2000's from a non-Marxist socialist perspective.

Nitzan and Bichler 2009: Capital as Power: https://1lib.us/book/884514/cb3e0f https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/418850379518705675/787343598810824755/nitzan2009.pdf Argues that the chief source of inequality and oppression is hierarchy; argues against LTV; argues against central planning

Allen 2009: Farm to Factory: https://1lib.us/book/2606184/eda7a0 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/858785806578876457/allen2009.pdf Reviews economic growth in the USSR and suggests central planning was a partial success, at least from ~1930-1970, unable to handle intensive growth and beset by political failure.

Peters 2016: How Not to Network a Nation: https://1lib.us/book/2729819/021dc8 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/858785800857714738/peters2019.pdf Non-fictionally reviews the failure of the USSR to adopt internetted communication and computerized planning.

Spufford 2012: Red Plenty: https://1lib.us/book/993327/6085e0 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/418850379518705675/778117660042723328/spufford2010.pdf Fictionally reviews the failure of the USSR to adopt internetted communication and computerized planning.

The Entrepreneurial State, Mazzacuto, 2013: https://1lib.us/book/5218819/c937e7 Reviews the role of the state in spurring and spreading innovation from a non-socialist left perspective.

Dow 2018: The Labor-Managed Firm: Theoretical Foundations https://1lib.us/book/11651644/7e6e3d https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/862791546222805062/dow2018.pdf

Schweickart 2016: Economic Democracy: https://thenextsystem.org/node/204 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/858785798747979804/schweickart2016.pdf https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/868666688248381490/unknown.png Argues for Economic Democracy, a socialist market system, as superior to capitalism

Schweickart 2011: After Capitalism: https://1lib.us/book/5558600/b5b825 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/827934025355624498/schweickart2011.pdf Argues for Economic Democracy, a socialist market system, as superior to capitalism

Roemer 1994: A Future for Socialism: https://1lib.us/book/3405993/b5bc91 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/418850379518705675/782280842231414785/roemer1994.pdf Analytic Marxist argues that positive freedom and equality of opportunity are the hallmarks of socialism, argues that market socialism is both socialist and efficient

Ellman 2014: Socialist Planning: https://1lib.us/book/2481030/a891e5 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/858786911140053022/ellman2014.pdf Reviews the commonalities and differences, successes and failures of socialist planning schemes from a very critical Keynesian perspective.

Cockshott and Cottrell 1993: Toward a New Socialism: http://ricardo.ecn.wfu.edu/~cottrell/socialism_book/new_socialism.pdf https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/858788472592400384/cockshott1993.pdf Argues for socialist central planning based on cybernetic information-gathering, integrated labor values, and labor-vouchers.

Cockshott and Zachariah 2012: Arguments for Socialism: http://eprints.gla.ac.uk/58987/ https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/858789425655578664/cockshott2012.pdf

Phillips and Rozworski 2019: The People's Republic of Walmart: https://1lib.us/book/3705952/801cf6 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/858787271905116210/phillips2019.pdf Light reading by non-economists who think that the internal central planning of most companies suggests socialist central planning may work.

Robinson 1974: Economic Philosophy: https://1lib.us/book/2445823/472a30 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/418850379518705675/782291801570672660/robinson1974.pdf post-Keynesian approach to economics

Roemer 1981: Analytical Foundations of Marxian Economic Theory: https://1lib.us/book/989975/7d7f98 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/858791899032453131/roemer1981.pdf Analytic Marxist provides micro-foundations to support Marxian economics

Roemer 1988: Free to Lose: https://1lib.us/book/815428/4e2811 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/418850379518705675/782280843875319808/roemer1988.pdf Analytic Marxist shows that labor theory of value isn't necessary to prove that exploitation exists, shows that unequal capital ownership is sufficient to automatically create class

The History of American Law, Friedman, 2005: https://www.google.com/books/edition/A_History_of_American_Law/gLPziJlFMMAC Reviews the origins and development of laws in the postcolonial and industrializing USA. Understand why institutions developed as they did!

The Politics of Rage, Carter, 2000: https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Politics_of_Rage/K3Z5AAAAMAAJ Reviews the rise of populist conservatism via the career of arch-segregationist George Wallace.

The Narrow Corridor, Acemoglu and Robinson, 2019: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/418850379518705675/765054182217613322/AcemogluRobinson2019.pdf Reviews where and why democracy has thrived within the "narrow corridor" of strong, competing civil society power and state power.

Why Countries Fail, Acemoglu, 2012: https://1lib.us/book/1835660/482a34 Reviews the institutional causes of corruption and economic growth from a non-socialist left perspective.

How Democracies Die, Levitsky and Ziblatt, 2018: https://1lib.us/book/2826730/2c8632 Reviews the institutional causes of democratic breakdown.

Politics Is For Power, 2020, Hersh: https://1lib.us/book/5409346/01788b Reviews the ineffectiveness of "political hobbyism" and "postmaterialism" and effectiveness of citizen organizations.

Why Civil Resistance Works, Chenowith and Stephan, 2011: https://1lib.us/book/3656840/d89e0d https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/418850379518705675/713784950964355132/ChenowethAndStephan2011.pdf Reviews the relative success of resistance among violent and nonviolent movements.

Innuendo Studios: socialist, mostly cultural analysis: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5fdssPqmmGhkhsJi4VcckA

Three Arrows: socialist, mostly historical analysis: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCT8a7d6S6RJUivBgNRsiYg

Shaun: socialist, wide variety of videos: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJ6o36XL0CpYb6U5dNBiXHQ

Riley Grace Roshong: socdem, mostly social-left issues: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC72V_10TPhNUkJMdy5HMAEg

hbomberguy: socialist, mostly cultural analysis: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClt01z1wHHT7c5lKcU8pxRQ

LastWeekTonight: socdem, mostly current affairs: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3XTzVzaHQEd30rQbuvCtTQ

Paul Cockshott: socialist, mostly theoretical issues: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVBfIU1_zO-P_R9keEGdDHQ

Knowing Better: socdem, wide variety of videos: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8XjmAEDVZSCQjI150cb4QA

Jos : socialist, mostly cultural analysis: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeDKIj0G5XbultKOQnacu_w

Internet Comment Etiquette: lefty, mostly memes: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCyWDmyZRjrGHeKF-ofFsT5Q

Alexander Tersakian: socdem, mostly current affairs: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-wwX_sQLi2c5QZ6-xE2VKw

Cuck Philosophy: socialist, mostly theoretical issues: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSkzHxIcfoEr69MWBdo0ppg

C0nc0rdance: progressive, "skeptic" style channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPFnHiJx1P9UY05_F9sOu1g

donoteat01: socialist, mostly urban planning: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFdazs-6CNzSVv1J0a-qy4A

The Moa: socialist, mostly cultural analysis: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSQHoO6ByppH6Ldr0pdytFA

Contrapoints: socialist, mostly cultural analysis: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNvsIonJdJ5E4EXMa65VYpA

PhilosophyTube: socialist, mostly cultural analysis: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2PA-AKmVpU6NKCGtZq_rKQ

Folding Ideas: socialist, mostly cultural analysis: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCyNtlmLB73-7gtlBz00XOQQ

Srsly Wrong: socialist, wide variety of videos: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCam_6nCM4Yd-zmAOz6IYLNg

Robert Reich: socdem, mostly current affairs: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuDv5p8E-evaRSh542hDV5g

Halim Alrah: socialist, mostly summaries of theory:

lastname year: {"tag": short description of study}: <...> image_url {"details": additional details necessary to quickly understand study, such as sample size, methodology, limitations}

Killingsworth 2021: increased income correlates with increased happiness with diminishing returns (each doubling of income only increases happiness linearly; example: happiness gain from $30k/yr to $60k/yr is same as from $240k/yr to $480k/yr) and with no inflection point (there is no point at which happiness gains drop off): https://www.pnas.org/content/118/4/e2016976118 http://sci-hub.st/10.1073/pnas.2016976118 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/801686919540375582/killingsworth2020.pdf https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/801687076960731166/F1.png

polity iv: democracy has greatly increased over time: https://ourworldindata.org/democracy

economist democracy index (flawed metric) by country: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index

strong democracies and strong civil rights result in many, many fewer killings by the government: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0022002795039001001 http://sci-hub.st/10.1177/0022002795039001001 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/418850379518705675/758088118711615499/rummel1995.pdf

democracy increases economic growth: countries that transition to democracy see substantially higher growth afterward: http://www.nber.org/papers/w20004.pdf https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/700936 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/418850379518705675/758088115549241444/acemoglu2018.pdf ```Our index of democracy combines information from several datasets, including Freedom House and Polity IV, and only codes a country as democratic when several sources agree. The full construction of our measure is explained in detail in the Appendix, and we just provide an overview here. We code our dichotomous measure of democracy in country c at time t, Dct, as follows. First, we code a country as democratic during a given year if: Freedom House codes it as Free , or Partially Free and it receives a positive Polity IV score.```

consistent democracies and consistent autocracies are about equally stable; mixed systems are much less stable: http://www.systemicpeace.org/polity/PTfig03.htm

leftists are more supportive of democracy than rightists or centrists: NYT: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/05/23/opinion/international-world/centrists-democracy.html http://archive.is/UX2L5 Study: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1fOGwtRUF-y-98IcDs-3YYrtREl8GbaoH/view

^ possible response: http://web.archive.org/web/20180613175008/https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2018/06/12/not-centrists-but-radicals-and-extremists-are-more-hostile-to-democracy/?utm_term=.a84645f2754f

29% of Americans think direct democracy is "very good", 38% "somewhat good", 19% "somewhat bad", and 12% "very bad" http://www.pewglobal.org/2017/11/07/europe-north-america-publics-more-supportive-than-experts-of-direct-democracy/

Foa and Mounk 2016 claim that support for democracy has dramatically declined: https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/articles/the-danger-of-deconsolidation-the-democratic-disconnect/

this only occurs when looking at one response (10 out of 10): in reality, the mean score for "How important is living in a democracy?" is virtually unchanged from 2006 to 2017: https://jacobinmag.com/2018/02/public-opinion-democracy-authoritarianism-populism-trump

true democracy requires that the people be able to "set" the political agenda themselves: http://blog.felixbreuer.net/2011/11/21/mckelvey.html

vTaiwan usefully converts citizen suggestions about a proposed law into "blocs" of agreeing and differing opinion, allowing legislators to better tailor laws: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/611816/the-simple-but-ingenious-system-taiwan-uses-to-crowdsource-its-laws/amp/ https://pol.is/3phdex2kjf

basic math allows for direct votes on expenditure and taxation: https://paulcockshott.wordpress.com/2017/02/03/socialism-and-direct-democracy/

on average, studies find that US presidents keep about 67% of their promises: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/trust-us-politicians-keep-most-of-their-promises/ [unformatted reread]

Japanese one-party rule incorporated the nuclear industry, which resulted in less powerful and less transparent regulation: https://www.cairn.info/revue-annales-historiques-de-l-electricite-2003-1-page-133.htm https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/418850379518705675/727595692201214012/AHE_001_0133.pdf ```In Japan, there is considerable stress on voluntary compliance with nuclear regulations, which are less strict in the critical plant operating stage.``````And it is the reasons for this behind the scenes collaboration that must be analyzed here, based upon the gap between theory and practice in the case of Japanese nuclear regulation. First of all, while Japan s Diet [Parliament] was, in theory, based upon an open multi-party parliamentary system, in practice, it acquired a centralized Byzantine-like nature based upon a party-political machine , i.e. the long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) that was essentially unresponsive to changing or competing interests and changes in the composition of interest groups. The desire of LDP beneficiaries such as the Japanese nuclear-industrial complex were facilitated by governmental organizations with which they were closely linked. What occurred in Japan, therefore, was that the centralized government agencies regulating nuclear power, MITI and NSC (Nuclear Safety Commission), simply collaborated on safety issues to the benefit of the Japanese nuclear-industrial complex. Secondly, in Japan, not only were the parliamentary and regulatory structures centralized, but the nature of the domestic power interests industries and utilities was also monolithic and uncompetitive.```

populist rule correlates with a 15.3% decline in a country's Polity IV democracy score; each year of populist rule correlates with a 30.3% decline: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/12/hard-data-populism-bolsonaro-trump/578878/ https://institute.global/policy/populist-harm-democracy-empirical-assessment

rate of democratic backsliding by ideology was basically indifferent: of 13 right-wing populists, 5 (38.5%) backslid; of 15 left-wing, 5 (33.3%) backslid; of 17 unclassified (often centrist), 5 (29.4%) backslid: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/12/hard-data-populism-bolsonaro-trump/578878/ https://institute.global/policy/populist-harm-democracy-empirical-assessment ```Between 1990 and 2014, 13 right-wing populist governments were elected; of these, five have significantly curtailed civil liberties and political rights, as measured by Freedom House. Over the same period, 15 left-wing populist governments were elected; of these, the same number reduced such freedoms. (Over the same period, there were also 17 populist governments that cannot easily be classified as either right- or left-wing; again, five of these governments diminished civil liberties and political rights.) Although this indicates a slightly higher rate of backsliding among right-wing populists than left-wing ones (38 per cent vs. 33 per cent), these data clearly contradict the belief that left-wing populism does not pose a threat to democracy.```

populists tend to rule for more years than non-populists: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/12/hard-data-populism-bolsonaro-trump/578878/ https://institute.global/policy/populist-harm-democracy-empirical-assessment

13% of countries today have compulsory voting at any level (eg, Australia nationwide, Switzerland with one canton): on average, their turnout is 7.3% higher than those without compulsory voting: https://www.idea.int/data-tools/data/voter-turnout/compulsory-voting

after adopting compulsory voting, Australian voter turnout increased by 24%; Labor vote share increased by 9%: https://www.nowpublishers.com/article/Details/QJPS-12055 https://sci-hub.st/10.1561/100.00012055

Engelen 2007: when compulsory voting has been abolished, turnout has fallen by 7-22%: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/palgrave.ap.5500167 https://sci-hub.st/10.1057/palgrave.ap.5500167 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/858783920190390312/engelen2007.pdf ```In the Netherlands (1971) turnout dropped from 92.1% in 1967 to 77.8% in 1971 (and to a historic low of 70.1% in 1998). In Switzerland (1974), where compulsory voting was only partially abolished, it fell from 53.2% in 1967 to 43.6% in 1975 (and to a historic low of 34.9% in 1999). In the only canton where voting remained compulsory, turnout is up to 20% higher than in the others (IDEA, 2004, 26 29). In the Philippines (from 1972 until 1987) turnout rose from 53.5% in 1967 to 78.6% in 1978 and fell from 78.2 per cent in 1987 to 65.3 in 1992 (and 64.8% in 2001). In Venezuela (from 1958 until 1993) turnout rose from 52.1% in 1947 to 79.7% in 1958 and fell from 72.7% in 1988 to 50.0% in 1993 (and 46.5% in 2000).``````While every Austrian citizen had to attend presidential elections until 1980, this was only the case for four provinces in 1986. As everything else remained the same, the evolution in turnout levels can be attributed exclusively to compulsory voting. Before 1986, turnout nowhere deviated much from the average of 95.2% of registered citizens. It rose from 91.6% in 1980 to almost 95% in 1986 in regions retaining compulsory voting and dropped to 85% in regions abolishing it.```

Engelen 2007: survey results from Belgium and Australia suggest that abolishing compulsory voting would reduce turnout by about 30%: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/palgrave.ap.5500167 https://sci-hub.st/10.1057/palgrave.ap.5500167 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/858783920190390312/engelen2007.pdf ```Another way of doing within-country comparisons is by means of surveys in which citizens that have to attend elections are asked whether they would vote if they no longer had to. Although this method tends to overestimate turnout in voluntary voting (would-be abstainers are more likely not to respond at all), results show that abolishing compulsory voting would probably lead to a decline of about 30% in countries like Australia (Jackman, 2001, 16316) and Belgium (Hooghe and Pelleriaux, 1998, 420 421).```

even when not enforced, compulsory voting increases turnout: turnout in countries with non-enforced compulsory voting is still about 6% higher than countries voluntary voting: https://www.idea.int/publications/catalogue/voter-turnout-1945-global-report https://www.idea.int/sites/default/files/publications/voter-turnout-since-1945.pdf https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/418850379518705675/739264712692334652/pintor2002.pdf

the vast majority of nonvoters in Australia don't even pay a fine: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S026137949800047X https://sci-hub.st/10.1016/S0261-3794(98)00047-X ```In practice, the proportion of voters required to pay penalties or taken to court never exceeds 1 per cent of the electorate and is normally much less. For example, following the 1993 federal election, the AEC investigated 490 230 cases of persons who appeared not to have voted, there being a total of 11 384 638 enrolled voters at that election. Of the 490 230, fines of $A20 each were paid by 23 230 electors who had voted (or 4.7 per cent of all nonvoters). The remainder gave valid reasons for not voting, save for 4412 who went to court (or 0.9 per cent of all non-voters). The AEC has no information on what happened thereafter to them.```

Australia and Belgium (both of which have compulsory voting) have some of the lowest income bias (difference between high-income and low-income voter turnout) in the OECD: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.577.2450 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/418850379518705675/739234485144518736/finseraas2007.pdf

higher turnout correlates with lower income bias (difference between high-income and low-income voter turnout): http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.577.2450 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/418850379518705675/739234485144518736/finseraas2007.pdf

in Bendigo in 1899, property owners were 10% more likely to turn out than non-owners; in Victoria in 1877, property-owners comprised 84% percent of voters despite comprising just 59% of eligible voters (unfortunately, no data exists for comparison immediately after implementation of compulsory voting): https://www.nowpublishers.com/article/Details/QJPS-12055 https://sci-hub.st/10.1561/100.00012055 ```Put another way, property-owners comprised 84 percent of the electorate even though they only comprised 59 percent of the eligible voters.``````Consistent with expectation, owners were 10 percentage points more likely to vote than occupiers. Also, property values are highly correlated with turnout for both owners and occupiers. A single standard deviation increase in property value is associated witha7percentage point increase in an individual s probability of voting for owners and a 10 percentage point increase in an individual s probability of voting for occupiers.4```

Engelen 2007: higher participation genuinely means more democracy: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/palgrave.ap.5500167 https://sci-hub.st/10.1057/palgrave.ap.5500167 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/858783920190390312/engelen2007.pdf ```Indeed, where few take part in decisions there is little democracy; the more participation there is in decisions, the more democracy there is (Verba and Nie, 1972, 1).``````This forms a problem because governments normally respond to the opinions expressed by citizens in elections: if you don t vote, you don t count (Burnham, 1987, 99). This assumption has been empirically confirmed. In their cross-country comparison, Mueller and Stratmann (2003, 2151) found that political participation has a positive impact on income equality. The more citizens abstain, the greater income inequality will become.```

moderates are the least likely to vote in general elections and in primary elections: https://www.people-press.org/2014/06/12/section-5-political-engagement-and-activism/

in the USA, nonvoters are disproportionately moderate Democrats: https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691159355/who-votes-now http://web.archive.org/web/20100921001908/http://www.nyu.edu:80/gsas/dept/politics/faculty/nagler/leighley_nagler_midwest2007.pdf https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/418850379518705675/739244174599258155/leighley2007.pdf

higher turnout correlates with higher economic redistribution: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.577.2450 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/418850379518705675/739234485144518736/finseraas2007.pdf

Engelen 2007: compulsory voting is a very small imposition; if you would not allow the state to force citizens to cast a ballot (taking perhaps 15 minutes), one must also not allow the state to force citizens to pay taxes (literally taking a proportion of their work-hours): https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/palgrave.ap.5500167 https://sci-hub.st/10.1057/palgrave.ap.5500167 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/858783920190390312/engelen2007.pdf ```However, opponents of compulsory voting are not so easily fobbed off and claim that no government may oblige its citizens to attend elections. This argument functions as some kind of rock-bottom: I oppose compulsory voting because it infringes on my freedom by which I may well prefer to stay at home. One can doubt whether the resistance of opponents who prefer to stay at home is really based on libertarian conscientious objections. Against those who abstain because of pragmatic considerations, one can argue that attending the polling station every two or three years is not too much to ask, especially compared to governmental obligations such as compulsory education and tax duties, which are much more time-consuming (Keaney and Rogers, 2006, 7, 30, 35). Given the importance of democracy, I believe a government has every right and reason to demand this much from its citizens```

justices received higher campaign funds and proportionately more funds from businesses in retention elections (3%), nonpartisan elections (17%), and partisan elections (25%): https://www.acslaw.org/wp-content/uploads/old-uploads/originals/documents/JusticeAtRisk_Nov2013.pdf https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/418850379518705675/727630557478912090/justice_at_risk.pdf

relative to appointed judges, a higher proportion of business contributions correlated with a higher likelihood with siding with a business; however, this correlation was only significant in nonpartisan elections (not retention elections or partisan elections): https://www.acslaw.org/wp-content/uploads/old-uploads/originals/documents/JusticeAtRisk_Nov2013.pdf https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/418850379518705675/727630557478912090/justice_at_risk.pdf

in partisan elections, campaign contributions from pro-business groups correlate with voting for businesses, labor groups with voting against employers, insurance companies with businesses and defendants in liability and tort cases; some, but not all, of these correlations are present in nonpartisan elections: (note: this study is weaker b/c it tests each type of contribution separately) https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1910787 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/418850379518705675/728329768772304956/shepherd2009a.pdf n1=>28,000 cases, n2=470 judges; Control variables: judge ideology score, tenure, industrial sector of litigant, type of issue under litigation, proportion of years since 1960 that Republicans have controlled state legislature, whether a lower apellate court exists, whether all supreme court justices vote on all cases (en banc), whether court has discretionary review

But decades of research suggest that money probably isn t the deciding factor in who wins a general election, and especially not for incumbents. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2605401

Most of the research on this was done in the last century, Bonica told me, and it generally found that spending didn t affect wins for incumbents and that the impact for challengers was unclear. http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0002764203260415

Most of the research on this was done in the last century, Bonica told me, and it generally found that spending didn t affect wins for incumbents and that the impact for challengers was unclear. https://www.jstor.org/stable/2138764

Most of the research on this was done in the last century, Bonica told me, and it generally found that spending didn t affect wins for incumbents and that the impact for challengers was unclear http://www.sas.rochester.edu/psc/clarke/214/Gerber98.pdf

And, beginning around the mid-2000s, they began making serious progress on understanding how ads actually affect whether people vote and who they vote for. The picture that s emerged is well let s just say it s probably rather disappointing to the campaigns that spend a great deal of time and effort raising all that money to begin with. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/money-and-elections-a-complicated-love-story/ https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.polisci.7.012003.104820

And, beginning around the mid-2000s, they began making serious progress on understanding how ads actually affect whether people vote and who they vote for. The picture that s emerged is well let s just say it s probably rather disappointing to the campaigns that spend a great deal of time and effort raising all that money to begin with. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/money-and-elections-a-complicated-love-story/ http://fas-polisci.rutgers.edu/lau/articles/Lau-Rovner_NegativeCampaigning.pdf

And, beginning around the mid-2000s, they began making serious progress on understanding how ads actually affect whether people vote and who they vote for. The picture that s emerged is well let s just say it s probably rather disappointing to the campaigns that spend a great deal of time and effort raising all that money to begin with. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/money-and-elections-a-complicated-love-story/ https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-political-science-review/article/minimal-persuasive-effects-of-campaign-contact-in-general-elections-evidence-from-49-field-experiments/753665A313C4AB433DBF7110299B7433

Take, for example, the study that is probably the nation s only truly real-world political advertising field experiment. During Rick Perry s 2006 re-election campaign for Texas governor, a team of researchers convinced Perry s campaign to run ads in randomly assigned markets and then tracked the effect of those ads over time using surveys. Advertising did produce a pro-Perry response in the markets that received the treatment. But that bump fizzled fast. Within a week after ads stopped running, it was like no one had ever seen them. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/money-and-elections-a-complicated-love-story/ https://www.jstor.org/stable/41480831

in 2017, Bonica published a study that found, unlike in the general election, early fundraising strongly predicted who would win primary races. https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/10.1089/elj.2016.0413

Ongoing research from Alexander Fouirnaies, professor of public policy at the University of Chicago, suggests that, as it becomes normal for campaigns to spend higher and higher amounts, fewer people run and more of those who do are independently wealthy. In other words, the arms race of unnecessary campaign spending could help to enshrine power among the well-known and privileged. https://www.dropbox.com/s/t96hcfls5a1g3ss/SpendingLimits.pdf

about 10,000 "model" bills are passed per year in the united states: https://mobile.twitter.com/robodellaz/status/1113868879338434560 https://www.azcentral.com/pages/interactives/asbestos-sharia-law-model-bills-lobbyists-special-interests-influence-state-laws/

types of selection systems by state: https://academic.oup.com/jleo/article-abstract/26/2/290/830985 https://sci-hub.st/10.1093/jleo/ewn023

relative to appointed judges, elected judges are more productive (write more opinions per year: +61.6% for partisan, +29.1% nonpartisan), have similar quality (non-significantly-different citation rates by out-of-state judges), have substantially more dissents (+92.7% for partisan, +76.9% for nonpartisan), and have similar independence (measured by likelihood of disagreeing with same-party judges on the same case): https://academic.oup.com/jleo/article-abstract/26/2/290/830985 https://sci-hub.st/10.1093/jleo/ewn023 n1=27596 opinions, n2=408 state supreme court justices```Productivity is measured by total number of opinions written for any given year, including dissents and concurrences (Total Opinions).``````Our primary quality variable is the number of out-ofstate citations to a particular opinion by a particular judge (Outside State Citations).``````Our independence measure focuses on the tendency of judges to write opinions that disagree with co-partisans when the pool of judges provides opportunities to do so. We define an opposing opinion as either a majority opinion when a dissent exists or a dissent when a majority exists. We assume that a judge exhibits independence when she writes an opposing opinion against a co-partisan.```

^ control variables: https://academic.oup.com/jleo/article-abstract/26/2/290/830985 https://sci-hub.st/10.1093/jleo/ewn023 whether justice is chief justice, experience in court, experience after law school, years before retirement, age, sex, whether they had served in private practice, justice ideology score, justice salary, whether any new justices joined the court, number of justices, whether retirement is mandatory, clerks per judge, number of trial cases, whether the decision went through an intermediate appellate court, whether publication is mandatory, state age, state population size, crime, median age of state population, median income of state population, proportion black people in population, and ideology of state citizens

the rate of "incorrect" decisions (those that disagrees with the rest of the court) is substantially higher for elected judges (.3%) than appointed judges (.1%): https://www.princeton.edu/news/2013/02/22/researchers-find-appointed-justices-outperform-elected-counterparts https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0047272712000941 https://sci-hub.st/10.1016/j.jpubeco.2012.08.007 1 = probability voting correctly, 0 = incorrectly ```[J]udges that are shielded from voters' influence on average also have a lower probability of reaching an incorrect decision (0.1%) than justices that face retention elections (0.5%), and elected justices (0.3%). The effect is larger when we consider the probability of incorrectly overturning the decision of the lower courts. While judges that are shielded from voters' influence incorrectly overturn the lower court very infrequently (0.03%), the corresponding probabilities are 0.7% for justices facing retention elections and 0.6% for justices facing competitive reelections.```

justifications for above methodology: https://www.princeton.edu/news/2013/02/22/researchers-find-appointed-justices-outperform-elected-counterparts https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0047272712000941 https://sci-hub.st/10.1016/j.jpubeco.2012.08.007 n1=5958 cases, n2=520 state Supreme Court justices: Control variables: `appeal or original or habeas corpus` `whether Petitioner is original defendant or the State` `evidence, sentencing and jury instruction` `years of prior judicial experience` `whether each justice had prior political experience or not` `number of years serving in the state Supreme Court` `whether the justice was elected or appointed` `whether she was appointed for life by elected officials, appointed for one term by elected officials with a possible reappointment by the same elected officials, or appointed for one term by elected officials with a possible reappointment depending on an up-or-down decision by voters in a retention election` `party-adjusted judicial ideology` `citizen (CIT) and government (GOV) ideology for the relevant state`Argument for why non-unanimous decisions are incorrect: ```Now, as it is, this identification scheme appears to penalize maverick justices who go against the grain by assigning them a low precision parameter. However, in the empirical work, we control for many case-specific covariates, and take into account inherent differences among justices due to political ideology, judicial experience, etc. Therefore, justices with low 's are those who have attributes that characterize justices who vote inconsistently, even after taking characteristics of the case into account: these are not maverick justices, but erratic ones.```

Republican judges elected in partisan elections are substantially more likely to vote for businesses over individuals, employers over workers, doctors/hospitals over malpractice claimants, and defendants in tort cases -- however, these relations all disappear (except tort) if the judge is in their final term before mandatory retirement, suggesting re-election is the motivating factor: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1910787 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/418850379518705675/728329768772304956/shepherd2009a.pdf n1=>28,000 cases, n2=470 judges; Control variables: judge ideology score, tenure, industrial sector of litigant, type of issue under litigation, proportion of years since 1960 that Republicans have controlled state legislature, whether a lower apellate court exists, whether all supreme court justices vote on all cases (en banc), whether court has discretionary review

justices selected by the legislature or governor and justices elected in partisan races are more likely to vote in favor of the state, and this likelihood increases as they approach the end of their term (regression coefficient = percentage point difference in cases decided): https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1910897 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/418850379518705675/728329767782318110/shepherd2009b.pdf ```The magnitudes of the marginal effects are statistically significant, but not huge. For example, the results suggest that a judge facing a gubernatorial reappointment, compared to the base category of judges facing unopposed retention elections, is approximately 7 percentage points more likely to vote in favor of the executive branch litigant.```

both elective and appointive systems are producing similarly poor outcomes in terms of the diversity of judges: https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/improving-judicial-diversity https://www.brennancenter.org/sites/default/files/2019-08/Report_Improving-Judicial-Diversity.pdf ```Mark S. Hurwitz & Drew Noble Lanier, Diversity in State and Federal Appellate Courts: Change and Continuity Across 20 Years, 29 Just. Sys. J. 47, 52-53 (2008); see also id. at 52 (showing in 2005 nationally 12.97% of merit selected state appellate judges and 11.48% of elected state appellate judges are minorities and 23.35% of merit selected state appellate judges and 28.12% of elected state appellate judges are women); id at 66 (stating black women do fare somewhat better in electoral systems but Hispanic men seemed disadvantaged by elections); see also Mark S. Hurwitz & Drew Noble Lanier, An Examination of Judicial Diversity in the State Courts Over Time, 85 Judicature 84, 88.(2001) (finding by 1999 there was no tangible difference in the ability of NWMs [nonwhite males] to attain a position in the judiciary via either merit or non-merits systems. ).```

judicial elections emerged as an anti-corruption reform: https://today.law.harvard.edu/book-review/in-new-book-shugerman-explores-the-history-of-judicial-selection-in-the-u-s/ ```Shugerman discovered that at first the plan to create a more independent judiciary through popular elections worked. The first generation of elected judges in the early 19th century exercised the power of judicial review far more often than their predecessors did. Perhaps ironically, these democratically elected judges were also the first to criticize democratic excesses and to argue from a countermajoritarian perspective.`````` I began the book feeling horrified by American judicial elections, Shugerman says. When his research revealed that a significant impetus behind them was to correct for the corruption and partisanship of judicial appointments, he saw that judicial elections had a good-faith logic in their 19th-century context. From the republic s earliest days, Shugerman notes, the challenge of judicial selection has been to balance judicial accountability, which demands that judges bend to popular and political pressures, and judicial independence, which demands judicial allegiance to the rule of law. As he mined the historical record, he found that judicial election advocates vied for popular support for their cause by framing it primarily in terms of judicial independence.``````Of all the methods he looks at, Shugerman claims that merit selection, which involves vetting by a panel of professionals and executive appointment to a first term, followed by retention elections, has yielded the most judicial independence. It is currently employed in about 20 states. But he warns that it, too, may be adversely affected by the excessive campaign spending that preceded and may now be accelerated indirectly by Citizens United.``` [unformatted]

total federal, state, and local spending on legal aid was just $1.385 billion in 2013: https://www.law.com/almID/1202730102717/The-Justice-Gap-How-Big-Law-Is-Failing-Legal-Aid/?/&slreturn=20191002113100 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/418850379518705675/640215461199347732/BTB_23_PRECON_Poverty_Simulation_2.pdf

JPMorgan Chase alone spends $3-12 billion per year on legal cases: https://qz.com/809963/weirdly-jpmorgan-chase-jpm-is-now-making-money-from-litigation/

the USA spends far less per capita on legal aid than other countries: https://mobile.twitter.com/PeteDDavis/status/1118884965771632640 https://books.google.com/books?id=mtGltAEACAAJ

the USA spends far less per capita on legal aid than other countries: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/46711885_International_Journal_for_Court_administration_2008_no_1

per capita spending: https://www.unodc.org/documents/justice-and-prison-reform/LegalAid/Global-Study-on-Legal-Aid_Report01.pdf https://www.unodc.org/documents/justice-and-prison-reform/LegalAid/GSLA_-_Country_Profiles.pdf

per capita spending: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228591899_Report_on_costs_of_legal_aid_in_other_countries

per capita spending: http://www.niassembly.gov.uk/globalassets/documents/raise/publications/2010/justice/15610.pdf

mandatory arbitration reduces employee winrate by 15% in absolute terms and (41.2% in relative terms) and reduces employee damages received by 140000 (79.3%): https://www.epi.org/publication/mandatory-arbitration-unfairly-tilts-the-legal-system/ https://www.epi.org/publication/the-arbitration-epidemic/

56.2% of private-sector nonunion employees are subject to mandatory employment arbitration -- preventing them from using public courts: https://www.epi.org/publication/the-growing-use-of-mandatory-arbitration-access-to-the-courts-is-now-barred-for-more-than-60-million-american-workers/

the text of the US constitution, Article 3, does not set the number of Supreme Court justices: https://constitutioncenter.org/media/files/constitution.pdf

the number of Supreme Court justices has varied substantially over time; prior to 1869, a supreme court justice was added for each federal circuit added (we currently have 13 -- 11 + DC + FED): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Justices_of_the_Supreme_Court_of_the_United_States_by_seat

1789: 6 justices: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judiciary_Act_of_1789

1807: 7 justices: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seventh_Circuit_Act_of_1807

1837: 9 justices: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eighth_and_Ninth_Circuits_Act_of_1837

1863: 10 justices: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenth_Circuit_Act_of_1863

1866: 7 justices: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judicial_Circuits_Act

1869: 9 justices: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judiciary_Act_of_1869

since 1993, the partisanship of every Supreme Court nominee has steadily increased: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-the-supreme-courts-reputation-is-at-stake/

1987: Democrats win Bork partisan vote: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Bork_Supreme_Court_nomination

2005: Republicans threaten to end filibuster, de-escalate in deal to withdraw some nominees: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_option#2005_debate_on_judicial_nominations

2013: Democrats win 52-48 vote to eliminate filibuster for non-Supreme-Court judicial nominees: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_option#2013:_Nominations_except_Supreme_Court

2016: Republicans fail to consider Garland nomination: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merrick_Garland_Supreme_Court_nomination

2017: Republicans win 52-48 vote to eliminate filibuster for Supreme Court judicial nominees: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_option#2017:_Supreme_Court_nominations

2019: Republicans win 52-48 vote to appoint Barrett nomination: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amy_Coney_Barrett_Supreme_Court_nomination

when the Court is unpopular, it strikes down fewer laws: a hostile Congress strongly correlates with a decrease in laws struck down by the Supreme Court: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1540-5907.2009.00411.x https://sci-hub.st/10.1111/j.1540-5907.2009.00411.x https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/418850379518705675/772593813554331648/clark2009.pdf

public opinion strongly predicts court decisions at the case level (better than previous studies, which aggregate over each year): https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2087255 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/418850379518705675/772598275084779550/epsteinMartin2012.pdf

the Supreme Court's decisions on politically salient issues (defined as "appearing on the front page of the NYT") are not significantly predicted by popular opinion -- however, this may be endogenous due to the definition of "salient" (nonsalient issues ARE predicted by popular opinion; it's possible the NYT does not report on cases that align with public opinion): https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1540-5907.2010.00485.x http://sci-hub.st/10.1111/j.1540-5907.2010.00485.x https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/418850379518705675/772596053407957012/casillas2010.pdf

the Supreme Court is more popular when it aligns with public opinion: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1540-5907.2010.00485.x http://sci-hub.st/10.1111/j.1540-5907.2010.00485.x https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/418850379518705675/772596053407957012/casillas2010.pdf

the addition of ACB would make the Supreme Court the most conservative it's ever been -- and with the largest gap between House (-.3), Senate (-.3), Presidential (-.9), and Supreme Court (+.8) ideology scores ever: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/09/22/if-trump-appoints-third-justice-supreme-court-would-be-most-conservative-its-been-since-1950/ https://archive.is/QxSO5 ```While very liberal during the Warren Court from 1953 to 1969, the court median has hovered on the center right since the mid-1970s, except for a brief liberal interlude after Justice Antonin Scalia s death in February 2016 until Neil M. Gorsuch filled that seat in early 2017.``````[N]ot only would the court median become substantially more conservative than it is today, it would become the most conservative court across the entire measured period. The court could also be more conservative than the elected branches to a degree not seen in 70 years. Given the high probability that Democrats will retain control of the House, the expected court median is likely to be vastly more conservative than the House median.```

despite previous escalations, the SCOTUS has remained near "0" (neither liberal or conservative leaning) since 1935; this is because judges have usually replaced ideologically similar judges; the appointment of ACB will shift the court dramatically rightward even if she is a moderate: https://sci-hub.st/10.1093/pan/10.2.134 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/418850379518705675/772578456792989717/martin2002.pdf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideological_leanings_of_United_States_Supreme_Court_justices ```How does this measure compare to existing measures of judicial preferences? We first correlate our measure with the percentage conservative voting on civil rights, civil liberties, economics, and federalism cases across a justice s career [these measures, as well as the percent liberalism scores below, are taken from Epstein et al. (2001)]. This is in the spirit of the methodological audit of Epstein and Mershon (1996). The results are quite interesting: the posterior means correlate with these issue areas at 0.86, 0.83, 0.70, and 0.60, respectively (J = 29). These clearly outperform the scores of Segal and Cover (1989), which correlate at 0.63, 0.60, 0.43, and 0.33 (J = 29). This justifies the unidimensionality assumption because one dimension explains a good deal of variance across many issue areas. The measure also correlates highly with Schubert s (1974) C-scale (0.77) and E-scale (0.56) (J = 17) and Rohde and Spaeth s (1976) freedom ( 0.79), equality ( 0.75), and New Deal ( 0.85) scales (J = 18).```

since 1960, the average justice joined the court at ~45 and left at ~75 years old: https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2017-supreme-court-justice-tenure/ https://archive.is/UQSKX

^ we haven't been appointing them younger, they've just been living longer: https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2017-supreme-court-justice-tenure/ https://archive.is/UQSKX

since ~1950, the average Supreme Court justice's tenure rose from ~15 years to ~25 years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_Supreme_Court_justices_by_time_in_office

organization in favor of this effect: https://fixthecourt.com/fix/term-limits/

ro khanna's bill: https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/8424

ro khanna on 5-4 podcast: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vV1dPNTU5MTczNjcwNQ/episode/MjlmMmJmNWMtNWNkNC0xMWVhLTlmZDYtMGJjNTE0NGIwZjY0

another article on the same subject: https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/courts/reports/2020/08/03/488518/need-supreme-court-term-limits/

^ critique of term limits -- to me, this just suggests that longer term limits (eg 30 years) + fixed appointment rates (eg, 1 per 2 years) are better: https://hbr.org/2018/07/the-supreme-court-has-a-longevity-problem-but-term-limits-on-justices-wont-solve-it

inspiration: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3210665 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/418850379518705675/772622103231987762/Seligman2018.pdf

inspiration: https://cullenokeefe.com/blog/scotus ```In the first step, Democrats will pass a bill that adds four new Supreme Court seats. Crucially, however, the bill would contain two limitations: 1: The new seats would not be open until (say) September 1, 2022 (while the Democrats still control the White House and Senate). 2: The new seats would never be open (i.e., the bill would have no effect) if a stabilizing constitutional Amendment was passed by that date.``````Republicans would be faced with two options: 1: Escalatory option: Cede their hard-won SCOTUS majority to the Democrats in two years by allowing President Biden to appoint four new Justices. 2: Stabilizing option: Work with the Democrats to pass the Amendment and temporarily preserve their 2/3 SCOTUS majority.```

the GOP has already played hardball and ignored the rules: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/oct/09/kavanaugh-us-supreme-court-fight-back-court-packing ```[I]f the Democrats pack the courts, Republicans will retaliate by packing the courts even more when next they are in power. [....] That is, if the left expands the court s membership to 15, then the Republicans will expand it to 17, or 19, when they are in power next. And that makes sense until you remember: didn t the Republicans already adjust the size of the court (shrinking it to eight, by refusing to consider Judge Merrick Garland s nomination) when they had the power to do it?```

if the GOP did retaliate, the left and Democrats would be in just as bad a position as they currently are: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/oct/09/kavanaugh-us-supreme-court-fight-back-court-packing ```And if, in a decade, the right did further expand the court and take back control of it how would that leave the left in any position that s worse than now? This objection ( what if they retaliate?! ) feels, in present circumstances, a bit like worrying that if the Allies invade Normandy, the Nazis will shoot at them. It s not wrong, exactly, but it seems bereft of some of the essential context.```

the GOP happily held up lower court appointments: Obama was the only modern president to leave office with more vacancies than he entered with -- Trump has enormously lowered vacancies: https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2020/01/28/judicial-appointments-in-trumps-first-three-years-myths-and-realities/

^ vacancies were enormously larger than appointments for every year of Obama's term: https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2016/09/06/recess-is-over-time-to-confirm-judges/

Trump appointed 28% of circuit of appeals judgeships, compared to Obama's 14%; Trump appointed 21% of all judgeships (district + appeals), compared to Obama's 14%: https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2020/01/28/judicial-appointments-in-trumps-first-three-years-myths-and-realities/

Republican-appointed judges are now 54% of the appeals judges (up from 40% at Trump's inauguration): https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2020/01/28/judicial-appointments-in-trumps-first-three-years-myths-and-realities/

50000 trial graph of 179 50/50 split court decisions (+1 to one side):

50000 trial graph of .5 binomial distribution:

50000 trial graph of 0,3 normal distribution:

if the court can't find 5 justices to fill the "middle", the party who has control of Congress/President may simply choose not to rule on cases that year

this formalizes two party rule, which makes it harder to move towards a diverse party system.

it's hard.

support for impeachment rose sharply from 51% against 38% support (-13) to 43% against 49% support (+6) after the Democrats announced impeachment articles: https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/impeachment-polls/

support for court packing is currently 47% against 34% support (-13): https://today.yougov.com/topics/politics/articles-reports/2020/10/07/supreme-cort-packing-poll

support for term limits for the Supreme Court is very strong, at 77% support 23% against (+54%): https://fixthecourt.com/2019/06/new-poll-americans-still-prefer-supreme-court-term-limits-court-packing/

summary of the debate:

minimum demand: balanced courts; maximum demand: court reform --> game theory: structure demand in such a way that escalation (accepting minimum demand but rejecting maximum demand) is less desireable than reform (accepting maximum demand)

my proposal: the ranked choice term limited or RCTL supreme court

- 20 year term limit

^ prevents any president from appointing more than 8/20=40% of the court

^ prevents justices from exceeding historical term limit

- every 2 years, ranked choice selection of 5 justices (total court size: 50)

^ ensures ~2 lib, ~2 con, ~1 moderate

"This seems to be Bastiat's preferred solution. Maybe you guys can simply agree on that lol:" https://twitter.com/PinkWug/status/1322265152578871303

"Yeah, this is my position - thanks" https://twitter.com/EverydayBastiat/status/1322269461630619652

news article describing solutions: https://www.scotusblog.com/2018/12/academic-highlight-epps-and-sitaraman-on-how-to-save-the-supreme-court/ https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2018/9/6/17827786/kavanaugh-vote-supreme-court-packing

academic article describing solutions: "Under this framework, we evaluate existing proposals and offer two of our own: the Supreme Court Lottery and the Balanced Bench." https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3288958 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/418850379518705675/772614999117791243/EppsSitaraman2019.pdf

federalist no. 78: https://guides.loc.gov/federalist-papers/text-71-80#:~:text=has%20no%20influence,purse&text=and%20must%20ultimately,judgments The legislature not only commands the purse, but prescribes the rules by which the duties and rights of every citizen are to be regulated. The judiciary, on the contrary, has no influence over either the sword or the purse; no direction either of the strength or of the wealth of the society; and can take no active resolution whatever. It may truly be said to have neither FORCE nor WILL, but merely judgment; and must ultimately depend upon the aid of the executive arm even for the efficacy of its judgments.

Ginsberg opposed court-packing because she felt it would reduce judicial independence: https://www.npr.org/2019/07/24/744633713/justice-ginsburg-i-am-very-much-alive ```"If anything would make the court look partisan, it would be that one side saying, 'When we're in power, we're going to enlarge the number of judges, so we would have more people who would vote the way we want them to.' We are blessed in the way no other judiciary in the world is. We have life tenure. The only way to get rid of a federal judge is by impeachment. Congress can't retaliate by reducing our salary, so the safeguards for judicial independence in this country, I think, are as great or greater than anyplace else in the world."```

Ginsberg's argument hinges on the idea that people follow the judiciary's rulings: https://www.npr.org/2019/07/24/744633713/justice-ginsburg-i-am-very-much-alive ```But the whole notion of the country's independent judiciary hinges on public trust, she noted. "The court has no troops at its command," Ginsburg pointed out, "doesn't have the power of the purse, and yet time and again, when the courts say something, people accept it." She recalled Bush v. Gore, the controversial case in which the Supreme Court stopped a Florida recount in the 2000 presidential election. "I dissented from that decision," Ginsburg said. "I thought it was unwise. A lot of people disagreed with it. And yet the day after the court rendered its decision, there were no riots in the streets. People adjusted to it. And life went on."```

Left Realism: crime hurts the poor the most: deprivation, despair -> crime; crime -> deprivation, despair: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left_realism

Overpoliced but Underprotected: too much policing of small crimes, too little crime prevention overall

https://mobile.twitter.com/samswey/status/1180655779180879872

https://www.joincampaignzero.org/research

https://8cantwait.org/

https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/09/the-counted-police-killings-us-vs-other-countries

wandering officers https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/faculty_scholarship/4004/

meta-study on reducing recidivism: https://www.div12.org/violent-offender-treatment-effectiveness-what-we-know-and-where-to-from-here/ https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/cpsp.12282 https://sci-hub.st/10.1111/cpsp.12282

possibly https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8TjbeaKIb0

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/06/07/over-past-60-years-more-spending-police-hasnt-necessarily-meant-less-crime/

https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/actual-police-defunding/comments#comment-825177

https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2020/06/65309/

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/investigations/2019/02/13/marshall-project-more-cops-dont-mean-less-crime-experts-say/2818056002/

Tella 2004: https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/000282804322970733 https://sci-hub.st/10.1257/000282804322970733 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/812030234739212318/ditella2004.pdf

Ba 2021: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/371/6530/696 http://sci-hub.st/10.1126/science.abd8694

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/06/07/over-past-60-years-more-spending-police-hasnt-necessarily-meant-less-crime/

https://lawandcrime.com/george-floyd-death/kamala-harris-dismisses-notion-that-hiring-more-cops-results-in-safer-communities-heres-what-the-studies-say/

https://www.fraserinstitute.org/sites/default/files/police-and-crime-rates-in-canada.pdf

in 1997, the US had 242 police officers for every 100,000 residents; in 2016, 217: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/investigations/2019/02/13/marshall-project-more-cops-dont-mean-less-crime-experts-say/2818056002/ https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/812034486140141618/unknown.png

bad meme about LAPD funding:

Los Angeles budget: 10.53 billion overall, 1.86 billion (17.7%) directly for police: http://cao.lacity.org/budget20-21/2020-21Budget_Summary.pdf https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/418850379518705675/751266814842896416/2020-21Budget_Summary.pdf

graphical representation: 10.5 billion overall, ~3 billion for police in general: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-08-11/defund-lapd-la-budget-spending-priorities https://archive.is/wsSiw https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/812031395672752128/90.png

^ trend over time: upward: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-08-11/defund-lapd-la-budget-spending-priorities https://archive.is/wsSiw https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/812038243008249856/872af818fbf2066eb756e9755e46e86984d85ab9.png

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/06/16/camden-nj-police-reboot-is-being-misused-debate-over-police-reform/

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/03/01/most-violent-and-property-crimes-in-the-u-s-go-unsolved/

baltimore https://www.baltimoresun.com/maryland/baltimore-city/bs-md-ci-crime-policy-20191230-zk2v2auuhbgq3f7zsh3t7rt6cm-story.html

https://foxbaltimore.com/news/city-in-crisis/baltimore-police-departments-clearance-rate-now-426

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/bookclub/la-reading-los-angeles-kennedy-ghettoside-20150404-story.html

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-underpolicing-of-black-america-1422049080

Chalfin 2020: hiring 1 additional officer reduces https://twitter.com/MWillJr/status/1339971033697300483 https://www.nber.org/papers/w28202 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/418850379518705675/790776020152221706/chalfin2020.pdf """While we find that investments in law enforcement save Black lives, the number of averted homicides (1 per 10-17 officers hired) is modest and might even be zero in cities with large Black populations. [....] While information on the use of force by police officers is not collected nationally, if we use the estimate in Weisburst (2019a) that 2.7 percent of arrests lead to an incident in which force was used by a police officer then hiring one additional police officer would yield between 3 and 6 use of force incidents per life saved through homicide abatement."""

Zeoli 2010: correlational evidence suggests that intimate partner homicide is ~32% per logged police officer per 1000 in 46 cities: https://injuryprevention.bmj.com/content/16/2/90.full https://sci-hub.st/10.1136/ip.2009.024620 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/821830513673240607/zeoli2010.pdf https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/821830845294968842/unknown.png

Similar to previous studies, our work also questions whether the aggressive policing of low-level offenses deters or incapacitates more serious crime: https://www.jstor.org/stable/4495553 https://sci-hub.st/10.2307/4495553 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/418850379518705675/790778077667393556/harcourt2006.pdf """Since larger police forces lead to reductions in index crimes, the decline in index crime arrests that we observe suggests that larger police forces reduce serious crime primarily through deterrence rather than by arresting and incapacitating additional offenders."""

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/418850379518705675/790776020152221706/chalfin2020.pdf Of course, reducing funding for police could allow increased funding for other alternatives. Indeed an array of high-quality research suggests that crime can, in certain contexts, be reduced through methods other than policing or its by-product, incarceration. Among the many alternatives to police for which there is promising evidence are placebased crime control strategies such as increasing the availability of trees and green space (Branas et al., 2011), restoring vacant lots (Branas et al., 2016, 2018; Moyer et al., 2019), public-private partnerships (Cook and MacDonald, 2011), street lighting (Doleac and Sanders, 2015; Chalfin et al., 2019), and reducing physical disorder (Sampson and Raudenbush, 2001; Keizer et al., 2008). There is also evidence that social service-based strategies such as summer jobs for disadvantaged youth (Heller, 2014; Gelber et al., 2016; Davis and Heller, 2017), cognitive behavioral therapy (Blattman et al., 2017; Heller et al., 2017), mental health treatment (Deza et al., 2020) and local non-profits more generally (Sharkey et al., 2017) can have important crime-reducing effects. While social service terventions are often difficult to scale (Mofiitt, 2006; Ludwig et al., 2011), the increasing number of studies which show that there are ways to reduce crime outside the deterrence channels of the traditional model of Becker (1968) is encouraging.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/418850379518705675/790776020152221706/chalfin2020.pdf At the same time, our findings on low-level arrests highlight the potential benefits of changing the priorities of law enforcement. This could occur through changes in policy like the decriminalization of drug possession or via efforts to recruit a larger number of Black or female police officers (Donohue III and Levitt, 2001; McCrary, 2007; West, 2018; Miller and Segal, 2019; Harvey and Mattia, 2019; Ba and Rivera, 2020; Linos and Riesch, 2020). Moreover, there is growing evidence to support the efficacy of de-escalation training (Engel et al., 2020) and procedural justice training (Owens et al., 2018; Nagin and Telep, 2020; Wood et al., 2020), federal oversight of police agencies (Powell et al., 2017; Goh, 2020), and the use of and training in non-lethal weapons (MacDonald et al., 2009; Sousa et al., 2010). There is likewise support for the idea that reforms to police unions may be effective (Dharmapala et al., 2019) especially if unions can be incentivized to self-regulate, which could take the form of transferring the burden of liability insurance from municipalities to unions (Ramirez et al., 2018; Ba and Rivera, 2019). Finally, police officers tend to be highly responsive to managerial directives (Mummolo, 2018), which suggests that procedural reforms could meaningfully alter officer behavior even holding police force size fixed.

Ba 2021: The role of officer race and gender in police-civilian interactions in Chicago: https://sci-hub.st/https://science.sciencemag.org/content/371/6530/696 http://sci-hub.st/10.1126/science.abd8694

PPI 2020: police in the USA kill Americans at much higher rates than other high-income countries: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2020/06/05/policekillings/ https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/862847007001280552/policekillings_rates.png

Zivari 2020: homicides per capita and police killings per capita strongly correlate: https://kavehzivari.com/2020/06/02/violence-in-the-united-states/ https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/864696290980921354/z7qxx933jf251.png

MPV: police killings have no clear correlation with violent crime rates: https://www.vox.com/2020/5/31/21276004/anger-police-killing-george-floyd-protests https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/862846969835814972/6eeebab7684f656d9d7f3fc005c5f43bbd98d575_original.png

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/2/13/18193661/hire-police-officers-crime-criminal-justice-reform-booker-harris https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/426877 https://sci-hub.st/10.1086/426877 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/418850379518705675/751267870863917156/klick2005.pdf

The criminologist Lawrence Sherman has observed that the United States is very unusual in spending much more money on the prison system than on our police departments. https://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/26/nyregion/police-have-done-more-than-prisons-to-cut-crime-in-new-york.html?pagewanted=3&_r=0&smid=tw-share&pagewanted=all&login=email&auth=login-email

This suggests the possibility of switching to a formula Tabarrok has summarized as more police, fewer prisons, less crime : uniformed officers patrolling the streets stopping crime before it starts rather than working in prisons surveilling convicts. https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2013/01/more-police-fewer-prisons-less-crime.html

About a year ago, Stephen Mello of Princeton University assessed the Obama-era increase in federal police funding. Thanks to the stimulus bill, funding for Clinton s Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) hiring grant program surged from about $20 million a year in the late-Bush era to $1 billion in 2009. The program design allowed Mello to assess some quasi-random variation in which cities got grants. The data shows that compared to cities that missed out, those that made the cut ended up with police staffing levels that were 3.2 percent higher and crime levels that were 3.5 percent lower. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0047272718302305 http://sci-hub.st/10.1016/j.jpubeco.2018.12.003 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/418850379518705675/751272248509333515/mello2019.pdf

A larger historical survey by Aaron Chalfin and Justin McCrary looked at a large set of police and crime data for midsize to large cities from 1960 to 2010 and concluded that every $1 spent on extra policing generates about $1.63 in social benefits, primarily through fewer murders. https://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/REST_a_00694 https://sci-hub.st/10.1162/REST_a_00694 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/418850379518705675/751272535701717123/chalfin2017.pdf

It s important in that context to note a recent study by John MacDonald, Jeffrey Fagan, and Amanda Geller that looked at localized policing surges in New York City (dubbed Operation Impact by the NYPD) over a period of years. They found that surges led to both less crime and more stop and frisk -type incidents where officers stopped citizens (typically young black or Latino men) without probable cause. That suggests a sharp trade-off between crime reduction and civil rights. But the same study, by looking at the covariance of stop and frisks and crime reduction, found that the additional stops were doing nothing to reduce crime. All of the anti-crime impact, in other words, came from putting more cops on the beat rather than from the use of aggressive tactics. New York City, not coincidentally, has continued to enjoy low and falling crime rates since stop and frisk tactics were curtailed. What s helpful is more officers, not more harassment. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0157223 https://sci-hub.st/10.1371/journal.pone.0157223 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/418850379518705675/751274851616030800/macdonald2016.PDF

The key mechanism here is fatigue which while obviously not a substitute for curing systemic racism, is a lot easier to fix with concrete short-term steps. Tired officers, across a variety of studies, generate more complaints from the civilians they interact with. https://www.governing.com/topics/public-justice-safety/gov-police-officers-overworked-cops.html

A 2017 audit of the Kings County Sheriff s Department in Washington found that working a single hour of overtime led to a 2.7 percent increase in the odds that the officer would be involved in a use-of-force incident the following week. https://www.kingcounty.gov/~/media/depts/auditor/new-web-docs/2017/kcao-overtime-2017/kcao-overtime-2017.ashx?la=en

A 2015 study of police officers in Phoenix found that being assigned to a 13-hour rather than 10-hour shift led to increases in fatigue and Professional Standards Bureau complaints. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1098611115584910?journalCode=pqxa

A 2018 study found that working back-to-back night shifts increased the odds of public complaints, and that the effect is particularly large when the officers had to make court appearances in the daytime between the night shifts. https://academic.oup.com/sleep/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/sleep/zsy231/5195409?redirectedFrom=fulltext

proportion of time that officers spend responding to violent & nonviolent calls, proactive policing, traffic issues, medical & other issues: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/19/upshot/unrest-police-time-violent-crime.html

Pew 2017: most crimes go unreported (including 55% of violent and 65% of property crime) and most reported crimes go unsolved (including 55% of violent and 80% of property crime): https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/03/01/most-violent-and-property-crimes-in-the-u-s-go-unsolved/ https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/862858598723092530/FT_17.png

Falk 2013: in Sweden from 1973-2004, persistent violent offenders (3+ convictions) did the majority of violent crime [sexual violence excluded]: 0.12% of the population received 19.8% of the violent crime convictions (1/10 do 20), 1.02% received 63.2% (1 do 63), and 3.91% received all 100% (4 do 100); compared with sex- and age-matched non-offenders, violent offenders were significantly more likely to have personality and mental disorders, violent convictions before 19 and , and nonviolent criminality: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00127-013-0783-y https://sci-hub.st/10.1007/s00127-013-0783-y https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/865143068180217866/falk2013.pdf https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/865137886000578560/127_2013_783_Fig2_HTML.png """The distribution of convictions was highly skewed; 24,342 persistent violent offenders (1.0 % of the total population) accounted for 63.2 % of all convictions. Persistence in violence was associated with male sex (OR 2.5), personality disorder (OR 2.3), violent crime conviction before age 19 (OR 2.0), drug-related offenses (OR 1.9), nonviolent criminality (OR 1.9), substance use disorder (OR 1.9), and major mental disorder (OR 1.3). [....] Among individuals convicted of one violent crime, 44% (41,257 of 93,642) were reconvicted. After 2 violent convictions, 59% (24,342 of 41,257) were reconvicted, and after 3 convictions, 68% (16,435 of 24,342) were reconvicted. If violent careers could be stopped after 3 convictions, 53% of all violent convictions would be prevented. The recurrence rate increased from about 70% after 4 convictions to about 80% after 7 and to about 90% after 11 crimes per individual, after which the low number of perpetrators at each new step made further analyses difficult to interpret."""

Falk 2013: as a result, reducing recidivism rates would enormously reduce violent crime: if every persister had done just 1 violent crime, 78% of violent crimes would have been avoided: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00127-013-0783-y https://sci-hub.st/10.1007/s00127-013-0783-y https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/865143068180217866/falk2013.pdf https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/865147319519674378/unknown.png

rates over time: https://www.ebpsociety.org/blog/education/205-tough-crime-policies-have-struck-out It was found that in 1994, 51.8% of individuals released from prison in the United States were re-incarcerated within three years (Lagan & Levin, 2002). In more recent years, it was found that in 1999, 45.4% of individuals and in 2004, 43.3% of individuals were re-incarcerated within three years of their release (Pew Center on the States, 2011). https://www.themarshallproject.org/2014/12/04/the-misleading-math-of-recidivism

rehabilitation reduces recidivism rates: www.antoniocasella.eu/nume/Mastrobuoni_Terlizzese_bollate_oct14.pdf

rehabilitative programs reduce recidivism and increase employment: https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR564.html

longer prison sentences increase recidivism by 3% (0.18% per month after 12.7 months), but there was no difference https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm?abstractid=2701549 http://madgic.library.carleton.ca/deposit/govt/ca_fed/publicsafety_prisonsentences_1999.pdf The essential conclusions reached from this study were: 1. Prisons should not be used with the expectation of reducing criminal behaviour. 2. On the basis of the present results, excessive use of incarceration has enormous cost implications. 3. In order to determine who is being adversely affected by prison, it is incumbent upon prison officials to implement repeated, comprehensive assessments of offenders attitudes, values, and behaviours while incarcerated. 4. The primary justification of prison should be to incapacitate offenders (particularly, those of a chronic, higher risk nature) for reasonable periods and to exact retribution.`

three strike laws are positively (!) associated with homicide rates (however, this is probably not causal): https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/07418820400095791 http://sci-hub.st/10.1080/07418820400095791 Our study used a multiple time series design and UCR data from 188 cities with populations of 100,000 or more for the two decades from 1980 to 2000. We found, first, that three strikes laws are positively associated with homicide rates in cities in three strikes states and, second, that cities in three strikes states witnessed no significant reduction in crime rates.

three-strike laws are extremely expensive -- costing about $12,000 per crime prevented: https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1023/A:1011098100458.pdf https://www.jstor.org/stable/23366832

juvenile incarceration decreases schooling and increases re-incarceration later in life: https://news.mit.edu/2015/juvenile-incarceration-less-schooling-more-crime-0610 https://academic.oup.com/qje/article/130/2/759/2330376

juvenile incarceration is very expensive: https://www.aecf.org/resources/no-place-for-kids-full-report/ https://www.aecf.org/m/resourcedoc/aecf-NoPlaceForKidsFullReport-2011.pdf Multisystemic Therapy (MST) and Functional Family Therapy (FFT) are intensive family treatment models for delinquent youth. In MST, therapists lead a regimented three- to five-month family intervention process involving multiple contacts each week in the family s home and surrounding community. FFT employs office-based counseling (an average of 12 sessions) designed first to engage family members and then to support meaningful behavior changes that improve family interaction and address the underlying causes of delinquent behavior. Costs average $6,000 to $9,500 per youth for MST and $3,000 to $3,500 for FFT, whereas **a typical stay in a juvenile corrections facility (9 to 12 months at $241 per day) costs $66,000 to $88,000.**

legalizing marijuana has cut violent crime: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ecoj.12521/full

legalizing marijuana reduces opioid deaths: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/1898878

legalizing marijuana reduces opioid abuse: https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/full/10.2105/AJPH.2016.303426

needle programs work: https://www.health.ny.gov/diseases/aids/providers/reports/docs/sep_report.pdf https://www.politico.com/states/new-york/albany/story/2014/12/report-documents-success-of-state-needle-exchange-program-017909 Intravenous drug users were among the most at-risk populations for contracting AIDS in the earliest years of the epidemic. In 1992, 52 percent of newly diagnosed AIDS cases in New York were among I.V. drug users. By 2012, intravenous drug users accounted for only 3 percent of new H.I.V. diagnoses.

the illegal drug market causes violent crime and cannot be solved by increased law enforcement: http://www.ijdp.org/article/S0955-3959(11)00022-3/fulltext The present systematic review demonstrates that drug law enforcement interventions are unlikely to reduce drug market violence. Instead, and contrary to the conventional wisdom that increasing drug law enforcement will reduce violence, the existing scientific evidence base suggests that drug prohibition likely contributes to drug market violence and increased homicide rates and that increasingly sophisticated methods of disrupting illicit drug distribution networks may in turn increase levels of violence.

after colorado legalized marijuana in 2014, marijuana use increased among 18+ (from ~30% to ~32%) and decreased among 12-17 (from ~10% to ~8%): https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2019/mar/25/john-hickenlooper/did-spike-marijuana-use-colorado-after-legal/ https://www.samhsa.gov/data/sites/default/files/NSDUHsaePercents2016/NSDUHsaePercents2016.pdf https://www.samhsa.gov/data/sites/default/files/NSDUHsaeMethodology2016/NSDUHsaeMethodology2016.pdf sample size 5207 for 2015-16, in-person interviews based on Census-weighted population data

monthly drug use has declined among adults and teens: https://transformdrugs.org/the-success-of-portugals-decriminalisation-policy-in-seven-charts/ http://archive.ph/xEg3m

drug deaths have declined: https://transformdrugs.org/the-success-of-portugals-decriminalisation-policy-in-seven-charts/ http://archive.ph/xEg3m

HIV and AIDS transmission among drug users has declined almost 100 times: https://transformdrugs.org/the-success-of-portugals-decriminalisation-policy-in-seven-charts/ http://archive.ph/xEg3m

decriminalization is not expensive; drug policy costs just 0.05% of Portugal's GDP: http://www.emcdda.europa.eu/system/files/publications/4508/TD0116918ENN.pdf while in Europe, on average, just incarceration for drug offenses cost 0.05 % of GDP or EUR 5.9 billion http://www.emcdda.europa.eu/attachements.cfm/att_228272_EN_TDAT14001ENN.pdf

decriminalization reduced the number of people charged with drug possession and therefore reduced the pressure of drugs on the criminal justice system: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/13325/1/BFDPP_BP_14_EffectsOfDecriminalisation_EN.pdf.pdf

in 2019, 66% of Americans said "marijuana should be made legal": https://news.gallup.com/poll/243908/two-three-americans-support-legalizing-marijuana.aspx

study about Ireland: https://www.drugsandalcohol.ie/6868/1/McElrath_4051_Drug_use_and_drug_markets.pdf

data about Ireland: https://www.health-ni.gov.uk/publications/statistics-northern-ireland-drug-misuse-database-200102-201516

not clear that drug prices are rising: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-philippines-duterte-drugs/more-blood-but-no-victory-as-philippine-drug-war-marks-its-first-year-idUSKBN19G05D In July 2016, a gram of shabu cost 1,200-11,000 pesos ($24-$220), according to agency s figures. Last month, a gram cost 1,000-15,000 pesos ($20-$300), it said.

in Philippines, 2% of population uses meth: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_drug_trade_in_the_Philippines

118,000 "drug personalities" have been arrested: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/02/senator-rodrigo-duterte-drug-war-killed-20000-180221134139202.html

wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippine_Drug_War

the death penalty in Washington state costs 1.43x more than comparable life without parole: https://ballotpedia.org/Fact_check/Is_the_death_penalty_more_expensive_than_life_in_prison https://files.deathpenaltyinfo.org/legacy/documents/WashingtonCosts.pdf

the vast majority of criminologists hold that the death penalty does not reduce crime: https://www.jstor.org/stable/20685045 https://sci-hub.st/10.2307/20685045 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/418850379518705675/750920918104145960/radelet2009.pdf ```To shed light on this dispute, we drew up a list in mid-2008 of every living person who (1) was a Fellow in the American Society of Criminology (ASC),69 (2) had won the ASC's Sutherland Award, the highest award given by that organization for contributions to criminological theory,70 or (3) was a president of the ASC between 1997 and the present. The American Society of Criminology was founded in 1941 and is the world's largest organization of academic criminologists, boasting a membership in 2008 of 3,500 criminologists from fifty countries.71```

among 1088 released homicide offenders after a followup period of mean 10.3 years, 60% were re-arrested for any crime, 21% for a serious offence (robbery, assault, sxual assault, abduction, extortion, burglary, arson, child pornography), and 0.28% were re-arrested for murder: http://regnet.anu.edu.au/news-events/news/6874/how-likely-it-murderers-will-re-offend https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0004865817722393 http://sci-hub.st/10.1177/0004865817722393 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/418850379518705675/750924330137026620/broadhurst2017.pdf

1.6% of death row inmates have been exonerated and at least 4.1% are expected to be exonerated: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/many-prisoners-on-death-row-are-wrongfully-convicted/ https://www.pnas.org/content/111/20/7230 http://sci-hub.st/10.1073/pnas.1306417111 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/418850379518705675/750929003572887645/gross2014.pdf

life sentencing provides closure while death penalty does not: among 46 close family members of a homicide victim, those in Texas (where the homicidal agent was sentenced to death) and Minnesota (to life imprisonment), Minnesotans had higher satisfaction, were less likely to still be involved in prosecution, and more likely to have post-prosecution growth: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/death-penalty-bring-closure-victims-family https://scholarship.law.marquette.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=5144&context=mulr

mass incarceration cannot explain the decline in crime: https://www.brennancenter.org/publication/what-caused-crime-decline xxx reread

only 1 in 5 rapes are committed by strangers: https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/sexual-assault-victims/

only 1 in 4 sexual assaults are committed by strangers: https://www.rainn.org/statistics/perpetrators-sexual-violence

police steal more than burglars do: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/11/23/cops-took-more-stuff-from-people-than-burglars-did-last-year/

police officers are about 3-4x more likely to violently abuse their spouses: http://womenandpolicing.com/violenceFS.asp https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED338997.pdf In a 1988 Arizona study of 553 police officers and their spouses, 41% of male officers and 34% of female officers reported violent assaults in their marital relationships compared with 16% of civilians. Over one-third of wives of police officers (37%) reported violence in their marriage. (Neidig, Russell, and Seng, unpublished). A 1981 survey of Toronto police officers found a divorce and separation rate of 63%, almost double the national average among Canadians at the time. Recent studies indicate that as many as 75% of police marriages in large metropolitan areas are likely to end in divorce. (Came, et al., 1989). [....] A 1986 review suggested that as many as 30% of all police officers abuse alcohol, compared with less than 10% of the population at large. (Hepp, 1987)

police officers and military are about 3x more likely to abuse their spouses: http://womenandpolicing.com/violenceFS.asp https://heinonline.org/HOL/Page?handle=hein.journals/polic15&div=12&g_sent=1&casa_token=&collection=journals

literally every kind of inequality is getting worse (wealth, income, consumption): https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/feds/files/2018001pap.pdf https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/418850379518705675/727611018758455357/fisher18.pdf

the US has the greatest wealth inequality: http://www.oecd.org/officialdocuments/publicdisplaydocumentpdf/?cote=SDD/DOC(2018)1&docLanguage=En

the US has much more wealth inequality than income inequality: http://www.oecd.org/officialdocuments/publicdisplaydocumentpdf/?cote=SDD/DOC(2018)1&docLanguage=En

in 2018, the top 0.8% held 44.8% of all wealth: https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2018/12/04/the-top-1-own-48-of-all-global-personal-wealth-10-own-85/

^ scrollbar-based representation of global wealth inequality: https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/

^ graphical representation of global wealth inequality: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/01/visualizing-the-extreme-concentration-of-global-wealth/

the top 1% owns 56% of all equities (stock and ownership stakes), while the bottom 90% own just 12%: https://www.ft.com/content/2501e154-4789-11ea-aeb3-955839e06441 ```Three decades ago, ownership was also lopsided, but the top percentage point of Americans by wealth only controlled 46 per cent of all US equities held by households. By the end of September 2019, that proportion had hit a record 56 per cent, amounting to $21.4tn, according to the investment bank s calculations. That includes both public stock and ownership stakes in private companies.```

america is less mobile than the UK or any Scandinavian country: http://ftp.iza.org/dp1938.pdf

relative movement of income across generations: https://www.bostonfed.org/inequality2014/papers/reeves-sawhill.pdf https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/879081943373848646/reeves-sawhill-2021.pdf

absolute movement of income across generations: https://www.bostonfed.org/inequality2014/papers/reeves-sawhill.pdf https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/879081943373848646/reeves-sawhill-2021.pdf

on average, it would take 5 generations to move from the bottom 10% to the median 50% of incomes in the USA: http://www.oecd.org/social/broken-elevator-how-to-promote-social-mobility-9789264301085-en.htm

income mobility is dead: you've got a 50/50 chance of earning more at 30 than your parents did at 30: http://www.equality-of-opportunity.org/assets/documents/abs_mobility_summary.pdf

those with higher incomes have seen faster income growth than those with lower incomes: http://gabriel-zucman.eu/files/PSZ2017.pdf https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/8/8/16112368/piketty-saez-zucman-income-growth-inequality-stagnation-chart

Reeves and Sawhill 2014: those disadvantaged in early stages of life are much more likely to be disdvantaged at later stages of life: https://www.bostonfed.org/inequality2014/papers/reeves-sawhill.pdf https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/879081943373848646/reeves-sawhill-2021.pdf https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/879080433978052628/unknown.png https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/879080104817483887/unknown.png

poverty literally stunts brain growth -- there are significant impacts for family income below 50,000 or so: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-inequality-does-to-the-brain/ https://issuu.com/1magazine18/docs/9sdcsdc https://www.nature.com/articles/nn.3983

poverty during childhood harms the growth of the brain, reduces academic performance, and reduces intellectual performance: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/2381542

higher parental income increases a student's college graduation rate by 1.8-5.3 times: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/02/upshot/for-the-poor-the-graduation-gap-is-even-wider-than-the-enrollment-gap.html http://archive.is/38kns

income and education between generations have a strong relationship: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/rich-kids-stay-rich-poor-kids-stay-poor/

^ the causal pathways for this are not yet fully understood: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnins.2014.00276/full

academic performance differences between the rich and the poor have increased, not decreased: https://cepa.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/reardon%20whither%20opportunity%20-%20chapter%205.pdf

higher income inequality is associated with reduced mobility: https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/jep.27.3.79

CEO compensation vs worker compensation has increased from 20x higher to 200x higher -- are CEOs 10x more productive today than they were in 1960? https://www.epi.org/files/pdf/130354.pdf

luck very probably has a significant role in financial and scientific success: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1802.07068.pdf

the poor don't spend more on entertainment; instead, they spend more on food and healthcare: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/04/being-rich-means-having-money-to-spend-on-being-richer/389871/

the poor do not spend frivolously: https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/issue-briefs/2016/03/household-expenditures-and-income

the poor spend very little on luxury spending (here defined as "goods whose consumption increases as income increases") https://www.db.com/newsroom_news/Inequality_Jan2018.pdf

the rise of superstar incomes is mostly due to the rise of financial/manager incomes: https://web.williams.edu/Economics/wp/BakijaColeHeimJobsIncomeGrowthTopEarners.pdf https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/418850379518705675/779160420212408320/bakija2012preprint.pdf """Our findings suggest that **the incomes of executives, managers, supervisors, and financial professionals can account for 60 percent of the increase in the share of national income going to the top percentile of the income distribution** between 1979 and 2005.""" """The incomes of executives, managers, financial professionals, and technology professionals who are in the top 0.1 percent of the income distribution are found to be very sensitive to stock market fluctuations. **Most of our evidence points towards a particularly important role for financial market asset prices, shifting of income between the corporate and personal tax bases, and possibly corporate governance and entrepreneurship, in explaining the dramatic rise in top income shares.**"""

divergence of very-top incomes: relative shift towards financial and manager incomes, not "worker" incomes: https://web.williams.edu/Economics/wp/BakijaColeHeimJobsIncomeGrowthTopEarners.pdf https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/418850379518705675/779160420212408320/bakija2012preprint.pdf """[E]ven within the top one percent of income earners, there has been a large amount of divergence in the incomes of people within the same profession. This point is highlighted in Table 11, which reports the ratio of the annual real growth rate among people in each profession in the top 0.1 percent of the national income distribution to the growth rate for taxpayers in the same profession in the 99th to 99.5th percentile range, again holding the occupational composition of the top quantiles constant. Most notably, the real income growth rate for non-financial executives in the top 0.1 percent was 7 times as large as for non-financial executives in the 99th to 99.5th percentile range."""

the top 0.1% has seen their income increase mostly due to an increase in salary income, not capital gains income (which is similar) or interest income (which declined): https://web.williams.edu/Economics/wp/BakijaColeHeimJobsIncomeGrowthTopEarners.pdf https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/418850379518705675/779160420212408320/bakija2012preprint.pdf """As a result, salary income and business income account for about 63 percent of the increase in the share of national income (including capital gains) going to the top 0.1 percent of the income distribution between 1971-1980 and 2001-2010, so theories to explain the rising top income shares shown in Figure 1 must largely be about compensation for labor. Among taxpayers who were in the top 0.1 percent of the income distribution ranked by income including capital gains, salary income and business income accounted for 34 percent of income including capital gains, on average 1971-1980, and 56 percent of income including capital gains, on average 2001- 2010. The total share of national income including capital gains going to the top 0.1 percent increased from an average of 2.9 percent during 1971-1980 to an average of 9.6 percent during 2001-2010. The 63 percent figure noted in the text is (0.56*9.6 0.4*2.9) / (9.6 - 2.9). Capital gains accounted for 34 percent of the incomes of people in the top 0.1 percent on average 1971-1980, and 30 percent 2001-2010. Other capital income such as dividends and interest declined from 26 percent of income to 14 percent of income for the top 0.1 percent of income earners over this period."""

Jorda 2019: https://academic.oup.com/qje/article/134/3/1225/5435538 https://sci-hub.st/10.1093/qje/qjz012 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/806957908096057394/jorda2019.pdf

"""Using a measure of portfolio returns to compute r minus g in Piketty s notation, we uncover an important finding. Even calculated from more granular asset price returns data, the same fact reported in Piketty (2014) holds true for more countries, more years, and more dramatically: namely r >> g. [....] Benhabib and Bisin (2016) show that in a wide class of models featuring stochastic returns to wealth, a higher gap between r and g increases the Pareto index of the steady-state wealth distribution, making it more unequal. [....] Our research speaks directly to the relationship between r, the rate of return on wealth, and g, the growth rate of the economy, that figures prominently in the current debate on inequality. One robust finding in this paper is that r >> g: globally, and across most countries, the weighted rate of return on capital was twice as high as the growth rate in the past 150 years."""

Barkai 2020: pure profit share increase: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/jofi.12909 https://sci-hub.st/10.1111/jofi.12909 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/806957906113069057/barkai2020.pdf https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/809554889088565288/unknown.png

Reeves and Sawhill 2014: a few interventions in early life stages result in large cumulative benefits: https://www.bostonfed.org/inequality2014/papers/reeves-sawhill.pdf https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/879081943373848646/reeves-sawhill-2021.pdf https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/879080433978052628/unknown.png https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/879084296143511603/unknown.png https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/879084573990998086/unknown.png

more-equal societies have higher intergererational income mobility: https://www.oecd.org/centrodemexico/medios/44582910.pdf

income inequality can be solved by progressive economic policies: https://wir2018.wid.world/files/download/wir2018-summary-english.pdf https://www.vox.com/2018/7/29/17627134/income-inequality-chart

higher unemployment benefits and higher tax progressivity decrease intergenerational income inequality: https://www.oecd.org/centrodemexico/medios/44582910.pdf

intergenerational immobility of education can be decreased by larger teacher payscales, higher unemployment replacement rate, higher tax progressivity, higher enrollment in preschoool, less tracking (ie, less nonuniform education), and lower enrollment in vocational school: https://www.oecd.org/centrodemexico/medios/44582910.pdf

education reduces inequality: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/joes.12056 The conditional MRA predictions reported in Table 3 suggest that education has had no effect on average levels of inequality when measured by the Gini coefficient. However, the MRA also indicates that education has led to a compression in incomes: it has resulted in reduced income inequality at both ends of the income distribution. The results also suggest that compared to primary schooling, secondary schooling and educational attainment are more effective at reducing inequality.

increased public education spending is associated with increased educational mobility (difference between years of schooling of child and parent): http://www.oecd.org/social/broken-elevator-how-to-promote-social-mobility-9789264301085-en.htm

increased health employment is associated with increased health mobility (difference between self-reported health of child and parent): http://www.oecd.org/social/broken-elevator-how-to-promote-social-mobility-9789264301085-en.htm

decreased middle class residents falling into poverty is associated with increased active labor market policy (programs to help residents find work) spending: http://www.oecd.org/social/broken-elevator-how-to-promote-social-mobility-9789264301085-en.htm

Cingano 2014: income inequality hurts economic growth: https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/social-issues-migration-health/trends-in-income-inequality-and-its-impact-on-economic-growth_5jxrjncwxv6j-en http://www.oecd.org/els/soc/trends-in-income-inequality-and-its-impact-on-economic-growth-SEM-WP163.pdf

Dabla-Norris 2015: income increases for the bottom 60% are associated with increased GDP, while increases for the top 20% are associated with decreased GDP: https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/Staff-Discussion-Notes/Issues/2016/12/31/Causes-and-Consequences-of-Income-Inequality-A-Global-Perspective-42986 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/418850379518705675/729362995523616768/dablanorris15.pdf ```More importantly, we find an inverse relationship between the income share accruing to the rich (top 20 percent) and economic growth. If the income share of the top 20 percent increases by 1 percentage point, GDP growth is actually 0.08 percentage point lower in the following five years, suggesting that the benefits do not trickle down. Instead, a similar increase in the income share of the bottom 20 percent (the poor) is associated with 0.38 percentage point higher growth. This positive relationship between disposable income shares and higher growth continues to hold for the second and third quintiles (the middle class). This result survives a variety of robustness checks, and is in line with recent findings for a smaller sample of advanced economies (OECD 2014).```

meta-analysis finds that inequality has a weak negative effect on growth: https://research.vu.nl/en/publications/growth-and-inequality-a-meta-analysis https://sci-hub.st/10.1111/j.1467-9485.2008.00470.x ```The use of fixed-effects estimators or the inclusion of regional-specific dummies in the regressions has a similar effect of reducing the negative impact of inequality on growth in the cross-section estimates, and of accentuating the positive effect in studies based on pooled data. In accordance with Barro (2000), we found that the correlation between growth and income inequality is different in rich as compared to poor countries. The negative impact of an uneven distribution of income is higher in less developed countries.``````The longer the length of the growth period (ie, from 5 to 10 to 20 years), the lower the coefficient estimates of the correlation between income and economic growth [become]. This result supports the assertion that the mechanism at the basis of the relationship between inequality and growth works differently in the short run as compared to the long run. We also found that the quality of data on income inequality and economic growth is weaker, regardless whether the correlation is estimated to be positive or negative.```

Neves 2016: meta-analysis finds that inequality has a medium negative effect on growth, and that wealth inequality has a stronger effect -- a 10% increase in inequality correlates with a 3% decrease in growth: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0305750X15002600 https://sci-hub.st/10.1016/j.worlddev.2015.10.038 ```After correcting for these two forms of publication bias, we investigated the sources of heterogeneity by means of a metaregression. As in Dominicis et al. s (2008) our results suggest that for a 5% level of significance: the effect of inequality on growth is negative and more pronounced in less developed countries than in rich countries; the inclusion of regional dummies in the growth regression of the primary studies considerably weakens such effect; expenditure and gross income inequality tend to lead to different estimates of the effect size. However, contrary to it Dominicis et al. (2008), we find that: the impact of inequality on growth is not significantly influenced by the quality of the data on income distribution or by the use of different panel estimation techniques; crosssection studies systematically report a stronger negative impact than panel data studies. Furthermore, our results suggest that wealth inequality is more pernicious to subsequent growth than income inequality is. With the exception of the impact of using expenditure versus gross income, all these results are robust.```

Martin 2001: income inequality explains most of the homicide differences between Canadian provinces, between US states, and between Canada and the US: https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2003-99209-003 Comparison across the Canadian provinces provides a test case in which average income and the Gini are, instead, positively correlated, and we find that the positive relationship between the Gini and the homicide rate is undiminished. Temporal change in the Gini is also shown to be a significant predictor of temporal change in provincial homicide rates. When Canadian provinces and U.S. states are considered together, local levels of income inequality appear to be sufficient to account for the two countries' radically different national homicide rates.

Metz 2016: income inequality within and between neighborhoods strongly predicts property crime; 1% higher poverty in a housing block -> 0.5% higher property crime; 1% higher income difference with poorest neighboring neighboring block -> 0.25% higher property crime: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0042098016643914 https://sci-hub.st/10.1177/0042098016643914 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/862869420418007051/metz2016.pdf https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/862859295745507348/unknown.png """The average total impact of a 1% increase in the percentage of households under the poverty line is estimated to have a 0.48% increase in the block group property crime rate. The average total impact of a 1% increase in the percentage of high income households is estimated to have a 0.81% decrease in the block group property crime rate. The average total impact of a 1% increase in the income difference from the poorest neighbouring block group is estimated to have a 0.25% increase in the block group property crime rate."""

higher income inequality significantly predicts higher homicide and lower trust: https://academic.oup.com/eurpub/article/21/2/241/498070 The association between income inequality and homicide (Path c) was statistically significant; each SD increase in income inequality corresponded to 0.82 SD increase in homicide. Associations between income inequality and trust, and between trust and homicide, were also significant. Each SD increase in income inequality corresponded to a 0.65 SD decrease in trust, and each SD increase in trust corresponded to a 0.58 SD decrease in homicide.

higher wealth inequality correlates with lower home ownership: http://www.oecd.org/officialdocuments/publicdisplaydocumentpdf/?cote=SDD/DOC(2018)1&docLanguage=En

Kahneman 2010: money buys diminishing happiness: people with higher incomes are happier, but the returns from income decrease as income increases: http://www.pnas.org/content/107/38/16489 http://sci-hub.st/10.1073/pnas.1011492107 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/801686917766840361/kahneman2010.pdf

Killingsworth 2021: increased income correlates with increased happiness with diminishing returns (each doubling of income only increases happiness linearly; example: happiness gain from $30k/yr to $60k/yr is same as from $240k/yr to $480k/yr) and with no inflection point (there is no point at which happiness gains drop off): https://www.pnas.org/content/118/4/e2016976118 http://sci-hub.st/10.1073/pnas.2016976118 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/801686919540375582/killingsworth2020.pdf https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/801687076960731166/F1.png

higher social class is associated with greed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IuqGrz-Y_Lc https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/why-those-who-feel-they-have-less-give-more http://www.pnas.org/content/109/11/4086.full

in 1965, if wealth had been equally distributed between countries, 14,060,000 deaths (22.7% of 62,000,000 deaths total) could have been avoided: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/002234337601300405 http://sci-hub.st/10.1177/002234337601300405

~60% of private wealth in the USA and ~55% of private wealth in Europe is inherited: http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/files/AlvaredoGarbintiPiketty2015.pdf

very few old people in the USA have over 1 million dollars: https://www.nber.org/chapters/c12429 https://www.nber.org/papers/w17824.pdf

poor people don't survive to become seniors: http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/05/poor-people-often-dont-survive-to-become-seniors-who-vote.html unformatted

between 1980 and 2008, less than 2.5% of deaths were subject to the estate tax: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Estate_Tax_Returns_as_a_Percentage_of_Adult_Deaths,_1982_-_2010.gif

in the USA, higher-income and higher-wealth people are more likely to inherit wealth, and more likely to inherit more wealth, than lower-income people: https://www.nber.org/papers/w16840 https://www.nber.org/papers/w16840.pdf ```We also found, somewhat surprisingly, that inheritances and other wealth transfers tend to be equalizing in terms of the distribution of household wealth. Indeed, the addition of wealth transfers to other sources of household wealth has had a sizeable effect on reducing the inequality of wealth.```

in the UK, higher-income people are more likely to inherit wealth, and more likely to inherit more wealth, than lower-income people: https://www.ifs.org.uk/uploads/publications/bns/bn192.pdf

inheritance accounts for 50-60% of the effect of parental wealth on child wealth: http://ftp.iza.org/dp10126.pdf The results suggest that bequests are an important source of an individual s wealth status. Regressing child wealth rank on inheritance rank (columns 1 and 4) show high and statistically significant correlations between 0.32 and 0.38. Turning to the baseline generational equation (columns 2 and 5), parental wealth correlations are around the same levels as seen before, between 0.26 and 0.31. When adding ranked inheritance to the baseline model (columns 3 and 6), parental wealth correlations drop to 0.12 and 0.14, which represents a drop of between 50 and 60 per cent. This is a remarkably large reduction, suggesting that inherited wealth accounts for the majority of the measured intergenerational wealth correlation.

direct transfers probably account for most of the environmental correlation between parent and child wealth: https://www.nber.org/papers/w21409.pdf Column 6 of Table 5 presents the estimates when we control for all these possible mechanisms together. All together, we can explain almost 50% of the effect of the biological parent s wealth effect on children s wealth, while we are able to explain only a bit more than 20% of the adoptive parent s wealth effect. 47 Given that most of the environmental effect remains unexplained by earnings, savings rates, and investment returns, direct financial transfers from parents to children are a likely explanation for much of the environmental effect. 48 However, we do not have data on financial transfers that would allow us to study this directly.

inheritances are squandered: https://www.nber.org/papers/w12569.pdf The estimated coefficient on the latter is 0.79 with a standard error of 0.03. This suggests that wealth increases by only $0.79 for every dollar in inheritance received. Alternatively stated, individuals consume 21 percent of the inheritance received. With an adjusted R squared of 0.53, inheritances seem to explain quite a bit of the observed change in wealth.

large inheritances reduce laborforce participation (the rich clock out): https://www.nber.org/papers/w12569.pdf When the observations are weighted, the estimated effects of inheritances change little as shown in column (3). The estimated coefficient on inheritances becomes -2.66 (se=0.85), with an estimated marginal effect of -0.035 (se=0.018).14 An inheritance of $1 million, other things equal, reduces labor force participation by about 11 percent.

just 11% of wealth rank can be explained by genetics: https://www.nber.org/papers/w21409 Using the simplest behavioral genetics model the ACE model (Cesarini et al., 2010; Cronqvist and Siegel, 2015) the proportion of the variance due to shared environment equals the first correlation and the proportion of the variance due to genetics equals twice the difference between the second correlation and the first. **We find that, for net wealth, the first correlation is 0.288 (0.047) and the second correlation is 0.343 (0.001) implying that the shared environmental component accounts for 29% and the genetic component for 11% of the variance of the rank of net wealth of children.** This finding is consistent with our main results using regression analysis.

among millionaires, lesser (self-reported) unearned sources of wealth is associated with greater happiness from greater (self-reported) net worth: https://www.psypost.org/2018/02/large-amount-wealth-linked-increased-happiness-especially-among-earned-50767 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0146167217744766

the staircase model requires people to obtain increasing levels of treatment and social integration (eg, get clean, get a job) before getting full-time housing: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/02/how-finland-solved-homelessness/ https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/801941710494105630/unknown.png

The United States achieved substantial success in nearly halving homelessness among veterans by attaining the same sort of political consensus and providing resources for example, greatly expanding a scattered-site supported housing program for veterans called the HUD-VASH program2 . Without Finland s social benefit programs, the United States would need to rely more heavily on an expansion of housing subsidies, particularly the Housing Choice Voucher program. HUD-U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs (VA) Supportive Housing (HUD-VASH) Program

^Rosenheck 2003: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/207801 http://sci-hub.st/10.1001/archpsyc.60.9.940 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/801938783758974996/rosenheck2003.pdf

^ Montgomery 2013: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/jcop.21554 https://sci-hub.st/10.1002/jcop.21554 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/801958791222525972/montgomery2013.pdf

^ Evans 2019: https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/abs/10.2105/AJPH.2019.305231 https://sci-hub.st/10.2105/AJPH.2019.305231 Results. For each additional voucher, permanent supportive housing units increased by 0.9 and the number of homeless veterans decreased by 1.

^ Byrne 2014: https://www.va.gov/HOMELESS/Estimating_Cost_Savings_Associated_With_HUD_VASH_Placement.pdf https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/801938984728002640/byrne2014.pdf

^ Tsai 2014: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0306460313000415 https://sci-hub.st/10.1016/j.addbeh.2013.02.002 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/801939647650856960/tsai2014.pdf

^ Cusack 2017: https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Fser0000110 https://sci-hub.st/10.1037/ser0000110

In its greater reliance on congregate as well as scattered-site housing models, the Finnish approach to Housing First differs from the evidence-based programs pioneered by Pathways to Housing in New York City (Tsemberis, Gulcur, and Nakae, 2004) and again proven successful for people with serious mental illnesses in the five-city Canadian At Home/Chez Soi experiment (Aubry et al., 2016; Stergiopoulos et al., 2015).

More homogenous societies, like Finland and the Netherlands, tend to have more generous social welfare programs compared to those in the United States (Alesina and Glaeser, 2004). The choice of spending on social welfare is essentially a political choice, not one dictated by homogeneity. We could choose differently

Shinn 2020: in Finland between 1987 and 2017, one-night estimates of homelessness as the US defines it (long-term homelessness) declined from ~9500 (of 4.9 million, ~0.19%, 1 in 515) to ~500 (of 5.5 million, ~0.009%, 1 in 10,000); all types of homelessness declined from ~18,000 (~0.37%, 1 in 272): https://www.jstor.org/stable/26926894 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/801931444779614268/shinn2020.pdf https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/801931592497889311/unknown.png

Shinn 2020: the staircase model halved homelessness in Finland but stalled in the 1990s: https://www.jstor.org/stable/26926894 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/801931444779614268/shinn2020.pdf """Using the staircase approach, Finland more than halved homelessness by 1994, but then progress slowed, as shown in exhibit 1. In particular, between 2004 and 2008, the number of single homeless individuals hovered between 7,400 and 7,960. Finland s annual homeless reports attributed the stalled progress to a group of people with high support needs who were experiencing long-term homelessness, analogous to chronic homelessness in the United States (Pleace, 2017). Researchers suggested that the staircase approach can work well with those who have opted for substance abuse rehabilitation and can cope with shared housing. However, the insistence on service users being intoxicant-free and able to take control of their lives has proven to be an insuperable barrier for many homeless people with multiple problems (Tainio and Fredriksson, 2009: 188)."""

Henley 2017: the Y-Foundation is a construction firm and a major landlord: https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/jun/03/its-a-miracle-helsinkis-radical-solution-to-homelessness We own much of the land, we have a zoning monopoly, we run our own construction company, says Riikka Karjalainen, senior planning officer. That helped a lot with Housing First because simply, there is no way you will eradicate homelessness without a serious, big-picture housing policy.

Shinn 2020: starting in 2008, the "Housing First" model converted and purchased thousands of units of housing: https://www.jstor.org/stable/26926894 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/801931444779614268/shinn2020.pdf """A Housing First approach requires housing, and Finland set about converting shelters into apartment units and buying and constructing housing for Housing First. In 1985, Helsinki had 2,121 shelter and hostel beds, and by 2016, the number had shrunk to 52. Meanwhile, supported housing units in Helsinki grew from 127 to 1,309, and independent rental apartments for (formerly) homeless people increased from 65 to 2,433 (Y-Foundation, 2017: 30). The Y-Foundation is currently the fourth largest landlord in Finland."""

Henley 2017: https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/jun/03/its-a-miracle-helsinkis-radical-solution-to-homelessness """In each new district, the city maintains a strict housing mix to limit social segregation: 25% social housing, 30% subsidised purchase, and 45% private sector. Helsinki also insists on no visible external differences between private and public housing stock, and sets no maximum income ceiling on its social housing tenants."""

Shinn 2020: residents often performed highly visible social work: https://www.jstor.org/stable/26926894 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/801931444779614268/shinn2020.pdf """Because programs that house a group of clients in the same building can encounter more community resistance than scattered-site apartments, the Finns have developed elaborate strategies to combat opposition from neighbors. Tenants engage in neighborhood work, such as collecting litter or maintaining parks. In one neighborhood, residents donned safety vests and kept watch over a bus stop used by schoolchildren. Neighbors have access to a 24-hour hotline to report any problems (Y-Foundation, 2017)."""

91-96% of Pheonix homeless reported wanting to leave the streets, suggesting 4-9% were there voluntarily: https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/011335704 https://books.google.com/books?id=PS8gAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA597 (n=150 in 1982, 195 in 1983)

78% of Pheonix homeless reported wanting to leave the streets, suggesting 22% were there volunthttps://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/011335704 https://books.google.com/books?id=PS8gAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA1037

57-63% of among Pheonix homeless would be considered unable to work (of whom, about 1/3 are severely mentally disabled, 1/3 chronic substance abuse, 1/6 physically handicapped, 1/12 socially maladjusted, and 1/12 over 65 years): https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/011335704 https://books.google.com/books?id=PS8gAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA597 (n=150 in 1982, 195 in 1983)

46% of Portland homeless reported having military experience: https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/011335704 https://books.google.com/books?id=PS8gAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA1031 (n=133 in 1983)

private social spending (such as employer-sponsored healthcare) constitutes ~27.5% of total US consumption of goods and services: https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2018/03/26/the-u-s-spends-far-too-little-on-social-welfare/

in 2011, the top 1% by wealth of Americans gave only .5% of their wealth to charity, regardless of wealth: http://www.russellsage.org/news/survey-wealthiest-1-and-common-good https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/418850379518705675/660097602821423127/Wealthy_Americans_Philanthropy_and_the_Common_Good.pdf

during the Great Depression, private charity rose from ~$10 million to $70 million at its peak (+$60 million increae, 696%); public spending increased from ~$33 million to $1035 million (+$1002 million, 3130%): https://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/Charity.html#lfHendersonCEE2-022_table_008

there was never a time when the state was uninvolved in helping the needy: https://democracyjournal.org/magazine/32/the-voluntarism-fantasy/ [A] significant amount of research has been done over the past several decades to overturn the myth of a stateless nineteenth century and to rediscover the lost role of the state in the pre-New Deal world. [....] As the political scientist Theda Skocpol has documented, there were also multiple examples of state-issued social insurance programs before the New Deal. In the wake of the Civil War, Congress established an elaborate system of pensions for veterans. At its height in 1910, this de facto disability and old-age pension system delivered benefits to more than 25 percent of all American men over 65, accounting for a quarter of the federal government s expenditures. Between 1911 and 1920, 40 states passed laws establishing mothers pensions for single women with children. These programs provided payments for needy widowed mothers in order to allow them to provide for their children.

public social spending as a percent of total consumption correlates with decreased poverty; private social spending does not: https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2018/03/26/the-u-s-spends-far-too-little-on-social-welfare/

higher social spending correlates with lower inequality: https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2018/03/26/the-u-s-spends-far-too-little-on-social-welfare/

in 2011 in the USA, the top 1% by wealth of Americans gave 6.2% of their donations (.031% of their wealth) to political causes, 6.3% (.0315%) youth development, 7.3 (.0365%) private/community foundations, 7.9% (.0395%) anti-poverty causes, 9.7% (.0485%) arts and culture, 11.6% (.058%) health, 16.3% (.0825%) religious causes, and 22.2% (.111%) to education: http://www.russellsage.org/news/survey-wealthiest-1-and-common-good https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/418850379518705675/660097602821423127/Wealthy_Americans_Philanthropy_and_the_Common_Good.pdf

in 2005 in the USA, private charity towards religion and basic needs of the poor decreased with income, while charity towards the arts, education, and health increased with income: https://scholarworks.iupui.edu/handle/1805/5838 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/418850379518705675/660113444959158292/giving_focused_on_meeting_needs_of_the_poor_july_2007.pdf

in 2005 in the USA, just 30.3% (upper estimate) of private charity could be focused on meeting basic needs of the poor: https://scholarworks.iupui.edu/handle/1805/5838 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/418850379518705675/660113444959158292/giving_focused_on_meeting_needs_of_the_poor_july_2007.pdf

in 2005 in the USA, private charity focused on meeting basic needs of the poor decreased with income from 35% at <$100k/yr to 22% at >$1,000k/yr: https://scholarworks.iupui.edu/handle/1805/5838 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/418850379518705675/660113444959158292/giving_focused_on_meeting_needs_of_the_poor_july_2007.pdf

in 2005 in the USA, just 23.9% of religious spending ultimately went to meeting basic needs of the poor: https://scholarworks.iupui.edu/handle/1805/5838 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/418850379518705675/660113444959158292/giving_focused_on_meeting_needs_of_the_poor_july_2007.pdf

private charity stays around 2% of GDP: private charity is procyclical -- it declines during recessions and increases during expansions -- meaning that private charity increases recession depth: https://slate.com/business/2014/03/private-charity-and-the-safety-net-why-philanthropy-cant-replace-government.html https://inequality.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/CharitableGiving_fact_sheet.pdf ```It is perhaps reassuring that there s no evidence of increasing stinginess in times of need. Then again, neither is there evidence of increased largesse, which is problematic because need is countercyclical. Indeed, because needs increase dramatically as the economy contracts, our reliance on charity and the nonprofit sector contains some built-in structural challenges, at least relative to other countries that can more readily engage in direct governmental spending when additional needs must be met.```

in 2008-09, public spending jumped from .1 to 2.2% of GDP: in contrast, automatic stabilizers are countercyclical -- they increase during recessions and decrease during expansions -- meaning that public spending decreases recession depth: https://democracyjournal.org/magazine/32/the-voluntarism-fantasy/ During 2009, while private charity collapsed, automatic stabilizers expanded rapidly, from 0.1 percent of GDP to 2.2 percent of GDP or a number roughly akin to all charitable giving in the United States. This was directly targeted at areas that suffered from the most unemployment, and helped those most in need efforts that, as we ve seen, private charity does only partially. As Goldman Sachs economists concluded, this shift made a crucial difference, and, alongside the government s efforts to prevent the collapse of the banking sector and the Federal Reserve s expansion of monetary policy, was a core reason the Great Recession didn t become a second Great Depression.

even a flat income tax and flat basic income would together be very progressive: https://www.degruyter.com/downloadpdf/j/bis.2014.9.issue-1-2/bis-2014-0005/bis-2014-0005.pdf

a basic income would grow the economy by 13%: http://rooseveltinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Modeling-the-Macroeconomic-Effects-of-a-Universal-Basic-Income.pdf According to the Levy Model, the largest cash program - $1,000 for all adults annually - expands the economy by 12.56% over the baseline after eight years. After eight years of enactment, the stimulative effects of the program dissipate and GDP growth returns to the baseline forecast, but the level of output remains permanently higher.

participants in basic income were much less likely to report problems with the community and less likely to report hiding their status than were welfare recipients: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/cars.12091

for basic income recipients, hospitalization rates (due to injury etc.) fell by 8.5%: https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/23050182.pdf

basic income experiments reported increased birth weight, decreased hospitalization time, decreased chronic disease duration: https://jech.bmj.com/content/jech/53/11/725.full.pdf

basic income experiments report increasing child cognitive outcomes: https://unnaturalcauses.org/assets/uploads/file/MoneySchoolingHealth.PDF

children of parents who received a $4,000/yr income boost from a Cherokee casino (similar to a basic income) had significantly lower rates of substance abuse and of psychiatric disorders that persisted to adulthood: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/185890 As adults, significantly fewer Indians than non-Indians had a psychiatric disorder (106 Indians [weighted 30.2%] vs 337 non-Indians [weighted 36.0%]; odds ratio [OR], 0.46; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.30-0.72; P=.001), particularly alcohol and cannabis abuse, dependence, or both. The youngest age-cohort of Indian youth had the longest exposure to the family income. Interactions between race/ethnicity and age cohort were significant. Planned comparisons showed that fewer of the youngest Indian age-cohort had any psychiatric disorder (31.4%) than the Indian middle cohort (41.7%; OR, 0.43; 95% CI, 0.24-0.78; P=.005) or oldest cohort (41.3%; OR, 0.69; 95% CI, 0.51-0.94; P=.01) or the youngest non-Indian cohort (37.1%; OR, 0.66; 95% CI, 0.48-0.90; P=.008).

children of parents who received a $4,000/yr income boost from a Cherokee casino (similar to a basic income) had significantly lower rates of behavioral disorders and higher rates of conscientiousness: https://www.nber.org/papers/w21562.pdf The size of the effects is relatively large; the effect reduces behavioral disorders by 26.7 % of a standard deviation and increases conscientiousness by 42.8 % of a standard deviation.

children of parents who received a $4,000/yr income boost from a Cherokee casino (similar to a basic income) had significantly better behavior, especially those who lived for a longer time period under the income gain: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4846561/ Main effects of race were not significant, but planned comparisons among the 3 age-cohorts showed that the youngest Indian cohort had significantly fewer diagnoses than either of the older cohorts, between whom there were no differences. The youngest Indians also had fewer disorders than the youngest non-Indians. The youngest Indians were significantly less likely to report delinquent friends in adulthood.

amount and type of welfare received by a chicago parent with two children, by income, in Chicago: https://files.illinoispolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Welfare_Report_finalfinal.pdf

the vast majority of welfare is deserved by its recipients: https://www.cbpp.org/research/contrary-to-entitlement-society-rhetoric-over-nine-tenths-of-entitlement-benefits-go-to?fa=view&id=3677

demographics of food stamp recipients: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/07/12/the-politics-and-demographics-of-food-stamp-recipients/

those on welfare spend much less on education and on food away from home than those not on welfare: https://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-2/spending-patterns-of-families-receiving-means-tested-government-assistance.htm

regions with decreased walkability had increased obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart disease: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214140514000486 https://sci-hub.st/10.1016/j.jth.2014.06.002

higher density development monotonically decreases the cost of city services by about 4 times: https://usa.streetsblog.org/2015/03/05/sprawl-costs-the-public-more-than-twice-as-much-as-compact-development/ https://usa.streetsblog.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2015/03/Halifax-data.pdf

suburban development requires 2x higher government expenses than urban development: https://usa.streetsblog.org/2015/03/05/sprawl-costs-the-public-more-than-twice-as-much-as-compact-development/ https://institute.smartprosperity.ca/library/publications/infographics-cost-sprawl

suburban sprawl is subsidized by cheap fuel and cheap roads and increases global warming and obesity: https://usa.streetsblog.org/2015/03/05/sprawl-costs-the-public-more-than-twice-as-much-as-compact-development/ https://institute.smartprosperity.ca/library/publications/infographics-cost-sprawl

more-dense areas and higher-household-income areas had higher rates of depression, controlling for individual income, age, education, area race, and area land use: https://www3.nd.edu/~adutt/activities/documents/oliver-hapconf_000.pdf

higher housing density, higher green space, and higher poverty predicted decreased depression: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11524-011-9621-2 https://sci-hub.st/10.1007/s11524-011-9621-2

a libertarian think-tank found that Medicare For All would decrease national health expenditures by 250 billion dollars per year: https://twitter.com/SenSanders/status/1023966741679038466 https://archive.is/o/u0Bnb/https://www.mercatus.org/system/files/blahous-costs-medicare-mercatus-working-paper-v1_1.pdf [5671 - 5307 - 846 - 482 - 1572]/(2032-2022) = 253.6 billion saved per year

^ note that this quote is somewhat misleading: the authors argue that the above table makes bad assumptions (because they, as libertarians, disagree with them) and that a M4A plan would increase health expenditures. https://economics21.org/blahous-study-didnt-find-medicare-for-all-lowers-costs-two-trillion

most studies show that VA hospitals do better on safety and effectiveness than private hospitals: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5215146/ Safety: Mortality, Morbidity, Complications, Other Safety Measures; Effectivness: Outpatient Care, Non-Ambulatory Care, Medication Management, Availability of Services, End-of-Life Care

VA hospitals did better than non-VA hospitals on 6 of 9 patient safety indicators, did better on mortality and readmissions, did worse on 4 of 10 patient experience indicators, and did worse on 4 of 9 behavioral health: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/article-abstract/2618816 Veterans Affairs hospitals had better outcomes than non-VA hospitals for 6 of 9 PSIs. There were no significant differences for the other 3 PSIs (Table 1). In addition, VA hospitals had better outcomes for all the mortality and readmissions metrics (Table 1). However, on the patient experience measures, non-VA hospitals scored better overall than VA hospitals for nursing and physician communication, responsiveness, quietness, pain management, and on whether the patient would recommend the hospital to others (Table 2). For behavioral health measures, non-VA hospitals did better on 4 of 9 measures, while VA hospitals did better on 1 of 9 measures (Table 2).

Americans with state healthcare plans are more satisfied than those with private plans, including active and past military members: https://news.gallup.com/poll/186527/americans-government-health-plans-satisfied.aspx

the US spends as much of its GDP on just private healthcare as other countries do for both private AND public healthcare: https://data.oecd.org/healthres/health-spending.htm

US healthcare spending has been growing faster than that of any European country for the past half century: https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/health-spending-u-s-compare-countries/#item-since-1980-gap-widened-u-s-health-spending-countries

including compulsory payments (including employer and employee payments for healthcare, pensions, etc.), the USA actually has one of the highest labor taxation rates in the OECD: https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2019/04/08/us-workers-are-highly-taxed-when-you-count-health-premiums/

since 1960, federal and state governments have risen from paying 20% to 45% of national health expenditure: https://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Statistics-Trends-and-Reports/NationalHealthExpendData/Downloads/HistoricalNHEPaper.pdf

most cost increases are due to price increases rather than utilization increases: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/1769890 Since 2000, (1) price (especially of hospital charges [+4.2%/y], professional services [+3.6%/y], drugs and devices [+4.0%/y], and administrative costs [+5.6%/y]), not demand for services or aging of the population, produced 91% of cost increases; (2) personal out-of-pocket spending on insurance premiums and co-payments have declined from 23% to 11%; and (3) chronic illnesses account for 84% of costs overall among the entire population, not only of the elderly.

Americans receive less on virtually every metric of "real" care delivered, yet pay more: https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/full/10.1377/hlthaff.22.3.89 ```As shown in Exhibits 4 and 5 , in 2000 the United States had fewer physicians per 1,000 population, physician visits per capita, acute care beds per capita, hospital admissions per 1,000 population, and acute care days per capita than the median OECD country. These simple comparisons suggest that Americans are receiving fewer real resources than are people in the median OECD country.``````The researchers estimated that Americans paid 40 percent more per capita than Germans did but received 15 percent fewer real health care resources. A similar comparison revealed that the U.S. system used about 30 percent more inputs per capita than was used in the British system and spent about 75 percent more per capita on higher prices.```

since 1960, price increases have represented >50% of each year's increase in national health expenditure: https://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Statistics-Trends-and-Reports/NationalHealthExpendData/Downloads/HistoricalNHEPaper.pdf

drug companies waste medicine (about $765 billion per year) in unnecessary treatments: https://www.propublica.org/series/wasted-medicine https://www.vox.com/videos/2017/10/18/16496590/how-drug-companies-waste-medicine

administrative spending as a portion of overall healthcare spending is 8% in the US (compared to a mean of 3% for other high-income countries): https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/2674671

overhead takes 31% of US healthcare but just 17% of Canadian healthcare spending: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmsa022033 In 1999, health administration costs totaled at least $294.3 billion in the United States, or $1,059 per capita, as compared with $307 per capita in Canada. After exclusions, administration accounted for 31.0 percent of health care expenditures in the United States and 16.7 percent of health care expenditures in Canada. Canada's national health insurance program had overhead of 1.3 percent; the overhead among Canada's private insurers was higher than that in the United States (13.2 percent vs. 11.7 percent). Providers' administrative costs were far lower in Canada.

in 2014, administrative expenses (including fraud and abuse control expenses) were $8.8 billion of $613.3 billion total expenditures (1.43%): https://www.cms.gov/research-statistics-data-and-systems/statistics-trends-and-reports/reportstrustfunds/downloads/tr2015.pdf

in 2017, administrative costs and profits accounted for $144.1 billion of $1183.9 billion (12.2%) for private insurance, $36.1 of $705.9 (5.11%) for Medicare, and $33.6 of $581.9 (5.77%) for Medicaid: https://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Statistics-Trends-and-Reports/NationalHealthExpendData/NationalHealthAccountsHistorical.html (NHE tables, Table 4)

administrative costs were 13% overall (11% for large group plans, 16% for small group plans, and 20% for individual plans) and profits were 2% overall (2% for large group plans, 3% for small group plans, and -1% for nongroup plans) for private insurance from 2010-2012: https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/114th-congress-2015-2016/reports/51130-Health_Insurance_Premiums.pdf

fraud elimination has been effective: http://archive.is/Dn9UB Federal prosecutors had over 2,000 health-fraud probes open at the end of 2013. A Medicare strike force , which was formed in 2007, boasts of seven nationwide takedowns . In the latest, on May 13th, 90 people, including 16 doctors, were rounded up in six cities more than half of them in Miami, the capital city of medical fraud. One doctor is alleged to have fraudulently charged for $24m of kit, including 1,000 power wheelchairs.

the reason Medicare has high fraud rates is because they pay out without checking whether a bill is legitimate(!): http://medicareintegrity.org/error-rate-drops-but-medicare-still-lost-31-6-billion-to-preventable-billing-errors-in-fy2018/ ```Like private payers, Medicare can leverage pre-payment audits to prevent improper payments. In FY2012, CMS successfully tested prepayment audits during the Medicare Prepayment Review Demonstration project. Recovery Audit Contractors (RACs) were authorized to review certain error prone Medicare claims for billing accuracy before they were paid. As a result of this short pilot program RACs prevented more than $192 million in improper payments from leaving the Medicare Trust Funds in error. The pilot program was so successful that the GAO recommended that CMS should actively seek legislative authority to have RAs conduct prepayment claim reviews. ```

the fraud rate of medicare fee-for-service is about 2x that of healthcare at large: http://web.archive.org/web/20070813221400/http://www.nhcaa.org/eweb/DynamicPage.aspx?webcode=anti_fraud_resource_centr&wpscode=TheProblemOfHCFraud Each year, for example, the Office of Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services conducts a formal audit of the Medicare program s fee-for-service claim payment system. On February 21, 2002, the HHS-OIG reported its finding that of the $191.8 billion such claims paid in 2001, 6.3 percent amounting to $12.1 billion should not have been paid due to erroneous billing or payment, inadequate provider documentation of services to back up the claims and/or outright fraud. In May, 2004, the National Health Care Anti-Fraud Association (NHCAA) reported in its Anti-Fraud Management Survey that 52 of its member insurers collectively recovered or prevented payment of $503 million in 2003 as a direct result of their anti-fraud activities a great deal of money, but barely a measurable fraction of the total estimated loss. The bottom line: The NHCAA estimates that of the nation s annual health care outlay, at least 3 percent or $51 billion in calendar-year 2003- is lost to outright fraud. Other estimates by government and law enforcement agencies place the loss as high as 10 percent of our annual expenditure or $170 billion each year.

medicare-medicaid improperly pays about $65 billion per year (8.7% of $743 billion total): https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2011/jan/04/darrell-issa/rep-darrell-issa-claims-government-could-save-125-/ https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2010/11/16/improper-payment-progress https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/sites/default/files/Background_on_Accountable_Government_Initiative.pdf On June 8, 2010, the President announced that the Administration would cut the improper payment rate in the Medicare Fee for Service program in half by FY 2012. Considering that Medicare and Medicaid combined had about $65 billion in improper payments in FY 2009 including about $35 billion in Medicare Fee For Service alone, halving the improper payment rate would help avoid more than $20 billion in payment errors by FY 2012. [....] About a third of Medicare's improper payments are the result of a claim not having enough, or proper, documentation. Upon further investigation, many of those claims are ultimately deemed proper. One example is a payment based on a claim by a doctor who submits forms that are illegible. Also, not all improper claims can be completely recouped. For example, say a surgeon was paid $10,000 for an inpatient procedure when Medicare only reimburses for an outpatient procedure that costs $5,000. The government wouldn't recoup the full $10,000, just the $5,000.

the overall cost of fraud is estimated at $85 billion to $272 billion per year: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/1148376 Fraud and Abuse: the waste that comes as fraudsters issue fake bills and run scams,28 and also from the blunt procedures of inspection and regulation that everyone faces because of the misbehaviors of a very few. We estimate that this category represented between $82 billion and $272 billion in wasteful spending in 2011.20,29

the US does worse then most European countries on the Healthcare Access and Quality metric, which estimates preventable mortality rates: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(18)30994-2/fulltext

based on its healthcare spending, the US underperforms on the Healthcare Access and Quality metric, which estimates preventable mortality rates: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(18)30994-2/fulltext

the US has the highest disability-adjusted life year (DALY) burden of high-income countries, suggesting disease and disability play a stronger role in the US than elsewhere: https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/indicator/health-well-being/disability-adjusted-life-years/

the United States has the 2nd lowest healthcare coverage in the OECD: https://read.oecd-ilibrary.org/social-issues-migration-health/health-at-a-glance-2017_health_glance-2017-en#page91

even in poor countries, the public sector provides higher quality care: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3378609/ Public sector provision was associated with higher rates of treatment success for tuberculosis and HIV [61] [64] as well as vaccination [65],[66]. For example, in Pakistan, a matched cohort study in Karachi found that public sector tuberculosis care resulted in an 85% higher treatment success rate than private sector care [63]. In Thailand, patients seeking care in private institutions had significantly lower treatment success rates for tuberculosis, which was attributed to a three to five times greater likelihood of being prescribed non-WHO-recommended regimens than in the public sector [61]. In South Korea, tuberculosis treatment success rates were 51.8% in private clinics as opposed to 79.7% in public clinics, with only 26.2% of patients in private clinics receiving the recommended therapy, and over 40% receiving an inappropriately short duration of therapy [62]. Similarly higher rates of treatment failure were observed for private than public system patients on antiretroviral therapy for HIV in Botswana [64]. In India, an analysis of over 120,000 households, adjusted for demographic and socioeconomic factors, found that children receiving private health services were less likely to receive measles vaccinations [65]. Similar findings were reported from Cambodia [66].

one in five pharmaceuticals prescribed in the US are skipped due to cost: https://read.oecd-ilibrary.org/social-issues-migration-health/health-at-a-glance-2017_health_glance-2017-en#page93

one in five consultations prescribed in the US are skipped due to cost: https://read.oecd-ilibrary.org/social-issues-migration-health/health-at-a-glance-2017_health_glance-2017-en#page93

one in three people in the US skipped some healthcare due to cost: https://read.oecd-ilibrary.org/social-issues-migration-health/health-at-a-glance-2017_health_glance-2017-en#page93

the US was much more likely to have problems with access to healthcare services: https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/fund-reports/2007/may/mirror-mirror-wall-international-update-comparative-performance

the US healthcare system is shit (2014 survey): https://www.commonwealthfund.org/press-release/2014/us-health-system-ranks-last-among-eleven-countries-measures-access-equity http://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/press-releases/2014/jun/us-health-system-ranks-last

the US healthcare system is shit (2017 survey): https://www.commonwealthfund.org/sites/default/files/documents/___media_files_publications_fund_report_2017_jul_schneider_mirror_mirror_2017.pdf https://interactives.commonwealthfund.org/2017/july/mirror-mirror/

42.4% of those with cancer lose their entire life savings in just 2 years: https://www.amjmed.com/article/S0002-9343(18)30509-6/fulltext Across 9.5 million estimated new diagnoses of cancer from 2000 2012, individuals averaged 68.6 9.4 years with slight majorities being married (54.7%), not retired (51.1%), and Medicare beneficiaries (56.6%). At year+2, 42.4% depleted their entire life's assets, with higher adjusted odds associated with worsening cancer, requirement of continued treatment, demographic and socioeconomic factors (ie, female, Medicaid, uninsured, retired, increasing age, income, and household size), and clinical characteristics (ie, current smoker, worse self-reported health, hypertension, diabetes, lung disease) (P<.05); average losses were $92,098. At year+4, financial insolvency extended to 38.2%, with several consistent socioeconomic, cancer-related, and clinical characteristics remaining significant predictors of complete asset depletion.

even among working-age Americans, 33.6% of cancer survivors had to borrow money or enter debt to pay for their care: https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/pdf/10.1377/hlthaff.2015.0830

58.5% of people in bankruptcy say direct medical costs "very much" or "somewhat" contributed to their bankruptcy: http://www.pnhp.org/docs/AJPHBankruptcy2019.pdf

52.1% of debt collections originate from medical companies: https://files.consumerfinance.gov/f/201412_cfpb_reports_consumer-credit-medical-and-non-medical-collections.pdf

1/3 of GoFundMe's are for medical issues: https://www.mprnews.org/story/2018/07/02/health-care-gofundme-crowdfunding-doctor-bills-minn It's become a go-to way for people in need to help pay their doctors. Medical fundraisers now account for 1 in 3 of the website's campaigns, and they bring in more money than any other GoFundMe category, said GoFundMe CEO Rob Solomon.

healthcare and quality of life were universally better in socialist countries than comparable nonsocialist countries: https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/pdfplus/10.2105/AJPH.76.6.661

lack of insurance before Obamacare killed 45,000 people per year: https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2009/09/new-study-finds-45000-deaths-annually-linked-to-lack-of-health-coverage/ https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/full/10.2105/AJPH.2008.157685

the United States performs the worst for life expectancy measures and the worst for maternal and infant health measures among high-income countries: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/2674671

people in the United States visit a doctor half as often as the high-income country average: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/2674671

doctors are least informed about their patients in the United States, according to patients: http://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/enough-with-the-wait-times-already/ https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/surveys/2007/nov/2007-international-health-policy-survey-seven-countries

doctors don't spend enough time with patients, according to patients: http://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/enough-with-the-wait-times-already/ https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/surveys/2007/nov/2007-international-health-policy-survey-seven-countries

US life expectancy lags 7 years below the trendline for the amount of money we spend on healthcare: https://read.oecd-ilibrary.org/social-issues-migration-health/health-at-a-glance-2017_health_glance-2017-en#page51

the US continues to spend more and more money than other countries for less gains in life expectancy: https://read.oecd-ilibrary.org/social-issues-migration-health/health-at-a-glance-2017_health_glance-2017-en#page41

in a 2005 survey, only Canada (1 of 6) had worse waiting times than the United States: https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/fund-reports/2006/sep/why-not-best-results-national-scorecard-us-health-system

in a 2010 survey, only Canada, Norway, and Sweden (3 of 11) had worse waiting times than the United States: http://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/enough-with-the-wait-times-already/ https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/10.1377/hlthaff.2010.0862

in a 2016, survey, only Canada and Sweden (2 of 10) had worse waiting times than the United States: https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/quality-u-s-healthcare-system-compare-countries/

patients in the US are much more likely to use the emergency room than a regular physician: https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/quality-u-s-healthcare-system-compare-countries/

in general, the US has middling wait times: https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/fund-reports/2007/may/mirror-mirror-wall-international-update-comparative-performance

transitioning from a single-payer to a multi-payer system actually *increased* wait times in Australia: http://www.publish.csiro.au/ah/pdf/AH050087

the USA is in the top 25% of cancer survival rate countries: https://www.cancer.org/content/dam/cancer-org/research/cancer-facts-and-statistics/global-cancer-facts-and-figures/global-cancer-facts-and-figures-4th-edition.pdf Survival is expressed as the percentage of people who are alive a certain period of time (usually 5 years) following a cancer diagnosis. It does not distinguish between patients who have no remaining evidence of cancer and those who have relapsed or are still in treatment.

alternative explanations like "the US is more obese" cannot explain the fact that the United States has higher death rates from a variety of sources, including infectious diseases, pregnancy complications, and perinatal period deaths: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4112220/

the United States *is* more obese: https://read.oecd-ilibrary.org/social-issues-migration-health/health-at-a-glance-2017_health_glance-2017-en#page83

but the United States smokes less: https://read.oecd-ilibrary.org/social-issues-migration-health/health-at-a-glance-2017_health_glance-2017-en#page73

and the United States drinks less: https://read.oecd-ilibrary.org/social-issues-migration-health/health-at-a-glance-2017_health_glance-2017-en#page75

the United States is not significantly more rural or more urbanized than other high-income countries: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/2674671

^ 56.2% of calories consumed in the US come from heavily subsidized food commodities: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2530901

^ lobbying on meat: https://qz.com/523255/the-us-meat-industrys-wildly-successful-40-year-crusade-to-keep-its-hold-on-the-american-diet/ [unread]

^ lobbying on meat: https://www.theverge.com/2016/1/7/10726606/2015-us-dietary-guidelines-meat-and-soda-lobbying-power [unread]

^ changes in american nutrition: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3403271/

^ changes in american nutrition: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/soil-depletion-and-nutrition-loss/ https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/07315724.2004.10719409

^ changes in american nutrition: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/12/13/whats-on-your-table-how-americas-diet-has-changed-over-the-decades/

among the Essential Evidence medical reference (commonly used and aimed at evidence-based medicine), only 18% of treatments were rated quality A, 34% quality B, and 49% quality C: https://www.aiin.healthcare/topics/business-intelligence/only-18-clinical-recommendations-are-evidence-based https://ebm.bmj.com/content/22/3/88 http://sci-hub.st/10.1136/ebmed-2017-110704 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/418850379518705675/750922543048949830/ebell2017.pdf ```Essential Evidence Plus (http://www.essentialevidenceplus.com) is a comprehensive online medical reference published by Wiley-Blackwell. Its primary audience is primary care physicians, emergency physicians and hospitalists. Use of this reference has been shown to improve knowledge and attitudes towards EBP,13 15 and, in combination with daily evidence summaries emailed to subscribers, leads to practice change and improvement.16 17 Essential Evidence Plus includes 742 chapters, each focused on a different symptom, disease or procedure, as well as extensive collections of clinical calculators, decision support tools and critical appraisals of individual studies.``` ```A: Recommendation based on consistent and good quality patient-oriented evidence. B: Recommendation based on inconsistent or limited quality patient-oriented evidence. C: Recommendation based on consensus, usual practice, opinion, disease-oriented evidence or case series```

2007 book suggests that less than half of medical practice is evidence-based, reviewing 6 studies: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK64784/ Estimates range widely concerning the proportion of medical care in the United States that is based on, or supported by, adequate evidence [9-14]. However, given concerns about the extent to which this information may be generalized and the quality of the evidence that is used, some place this figure at well below half.

establish regulatory bodies with the purpose of creating high-quality evidence and limiting un-evidenced treatments: https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/12/28/16823266/medical-treatments-evidence-based-expensive-cost-stents https://twitter.com/SocDoneLeft/status/1301560461238906881 ```A proposal from the Hamilton Project would give the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) more resources to scrutinize medical technologies and allow the agency to experiment with reference pricing : Medicare would pay a single price for all treatments, for a given condition, that have similar therapeutic effects, up to a cost-effectiveness threshold. Patients who want to receive less cost-effective treatments could still get them, but they d have to pay any difference out of pocket. That strikes the right balance.```

90% of students in elementary and secondary schools are in state institutions: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/jack-jennings/proportion-of-us-students_b_2950948.html

62% of postsecondary degrees are from state institutions: https://nces.ed.gov/das/library/tables_listings/Fall2009.asp https://nces.ed.gov/das/library/tables_listings/showTable2005.asp?popup=true&tableID=7122&rt=p

private school enrollees are much more likely to be high-income: https://www.educationnext.org/who-goes-private-school-long-term-enrollment-trends-family-income/

in 2011-12, average private school tuition *alone* was $7,770/pupil enrolled for elementary and $13,030/pupil for secondary (overall average $11,170/pupil) in 2014-15 dollars: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d15/tables/dt15_205.50.asp in 2011-12, average public school expenditures were $11,074/pupil enrolled: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d15/tables/dt15_236.15.asp

low-income students cost about between 1.224x and 1.592x (Census poverty measure) or between 1.361 and 2.145x (subsidized lunch measure) more than non-low-income students in big cities: https://surface.syr.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=1102&context=cpr

accounting for student characteristics (gender, race, disability, ESL, poverty), private schools had insignificantly different reading scores and slightly lower math scores (model c) even without accounting for school characteristics (model d): https://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/pubs/studies/2006461.asp https://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/pdf/studies/2006461.pdf

controlling for family characteristics (mother's age, education, vocabulary, and depression; psychological adjustment; parenting quality; two-parent status; and income) reduces (model 1 to model 2) every alleged benefit of private school attendance (overall cognition, literacy, math, working memory, GPA, likelihood of graduation, likelihood of college graduation, social skills, risky sex, and crime victimization) to insignificance: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.3102/0013189X18785632 https://sci-hub.st/10.3102/0013189X18785632

2006 meta-analysis finds a positive correlation between homework time and class grades (reading and math) and standardized test grades for 7-12th grade (+.25) but negative for K-6th grade (-.04): https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.3102/00346543076001001 http://sci-hub.st/10.3102/00346543076001001

2015 meta-analysis finds a positive correlation between homework time and both standardized and unstandardized assessments of mathematics and science of 0.357 for elementary, .146 for middle, and .297 for high school: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1747938X16300628 http://sci-hub.st/10.1016/j.edurev.2016.11.003

2006 meta-analysis finds a positive correlation between homework and attitudes towards learning and a negative correlation between homework and bad conduct: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.3102/00346543076001001 http://sci-hub.st/10.3102/00346543076001001

Pham 2020 (published version): teacher pay scales based on merit increased student performance by .043, equivalent to about 3 additional weeks of learning: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.3102/0002831220905580 http://sci-hub.st/10.3102/0002831220905580 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/847873116083453952/pham2020.pdf https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/858847434183933952/unknown.png

Pham 2017 (preprint version): teacher pay scales based on merit increased student performance by .052, equivalent to about 4 additional weeks of learning: https://fordhaminstitute.org/national/commentary/does-teacher-merit-pay-affect-student-test-scores https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/847879947514806303/pham2017.pdf """Based on empirical benchmarks established by Hill and colleagues (2008), an effect size of 0.052 is roughly equivalent to 4 additional weeks of learning assuming a standard deviation of 0.40 per year and 36 weeks in a school year."""

Pham 2020 (published version): the most effective pay scales were individual pay scales for teachers: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.3102/0002831220905580 http://sci-hub.st/10.3102/0002831220905580 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/847873116083453952/pham2020.pdf https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/858847342970535966/unknown.png

Pham 2017 (preprint version): the most effective pay scales were group pay scales for teacher teams or entire schools: https://fordhaminstitute.org/national/commentary/does-teacher-merit-pay-affect-student-test-scores https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/847879947514806303/pham2017.pdf group incentives = "whether there was a group incentive at the teacher-team or school level [rather than the individual teacher]"; "merit pay + other" = whether merit pay was implemented in conjunction with other reforms such as additional training; "merit pay + training" = merit pay program that was implemented in conjunction with a training/professional development component

Woessman 2011: among OECD countries, countries with higher rates of teacher performance pay have 24.8% of a standard deviation higher PISA math scores (controls: base teacher pay, student and family backgrounds, GDP/capita, expenditure/student, school resources, school location): https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0272775710001731 https://sci-hub.st/10.1016/j.econedurev.2010.12.008

^ results hold across locus of decisionmaking (principal, local, national) and against other kinds of pay: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0272775710001731 https://sci-hub.st/10.1016/j.econedurev.2010.12.008

grading teachers is an ineffective strategy: https://www.fastcompany.com/90179967/how-the-gates-foundations-plan-to-grade-teachers-failed-students https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR2242.html https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RR2200/RR2242/RAND_RR2242.pdf

receipt of a financial award did not consistently relate to higher mean student test score gains or teachers likelihood of retention: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.3102/0002831217716540

van Kleeck 2010: summary of literacy learning models in Rome and the early American colonies: https://pubs.asha.org/doi/10.1044/1058-0360%282010/09-0038%29 https://sci-hub.st/10.1044/1058-0360(2010/09-0038) https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/888888012392509450/vankleeck2010.pdf https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/888887946625810582/unknown.png

Kohn 1999: https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Schools_Our_Children_Deserve/NXead57GHSwC https://1lib.us/book/5915728/925f68 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/890064875051704340/kohn1999.pdf xxx todo see appendix a

Veysey 1979: Ferrer children "often did not learn to read until they were ten or twelve" years old https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Communal_Experience/-RZy-l3nHfoC?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PA77 https://archive.org/details/communalexperien0000veys/page/78/mode/2up https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/888876537842139156/unknown.png

^ NAAL: according to the Census, self-reported literacy rates for people over 14 years old were 98% for native white, 87% for foreign white, and 77% for black people: https://nces.ed.gov/naal/lit_history.asp https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/888879089082073148/unknown.png

compared to no grades, grading generally improved student performance and had mixed-bad effects on student motivation; compared to grades plus comments, comments alone improved both student performance and motivation: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01443410.2019.1659939 https://sci-hub.st/10.1080/01443410.2019.1659939 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/418850379518705675/767883888961519626/koenka2019.pdf

^ above author's recommendations for written feedback: [1] be specific, [2.1] be task-focused, [2.2] be self-referenced (discuss change since last feedback), [2.3] should identify next steps, [3] don't compare student to peers, [4] don't suggest student's flaws are inherent: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00940771.2019.1674768 https://sci-hub.st/10.1080/00940771.2019.1674768 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/418850379518705675/767888160155631646/koenka2019b.pdf ```Principle 1: Specificity is critical. [....] [S]tudents benefit more from written feedback that is specific and personalized rather than generic. For example, individuals who educators tell are simply right or wrong [...] do not perform better than their counterparts who receive no feedback at all[.]``````Principle 2: Feedback should be task-focused, self-referenced, and should identify next steps. [....] First, feedback should be task-focused. That is, it should target specific features of a student s performance on a particular task or assessment. Second, self-referenced feedback encourages the student to focus on their own previous performance, as opposed to the performance of other students. Third, feedback that identifies next steps conveys information about specific aspects of a student s performance on which he or she should focus for continued improvement.``````Principle 3: Avoid normative feedback. One way that personalized feedback can be harmful is when it includes normative information (i.e., information that implicitly or explicitly compares a student s performance to the performance of his or her peers).``````Principle 4: Avoid making personalized feedback about the person. Somewhat ironically, personalized feedback should not focus on the individual student. We have made a case for the importance of personalized feedback, but educators should not equate this strategy with a focus on personal characteristics that students could perceive as unchangeable.```

grading does suffer from discrimination biases: Experienced graders were ~.1 standard deviations (SD) less biased; Grading using a rubric was ~.15 SD less biased; Individuals signalled to have an educational deficiency faced a ~.4 SD bias; to be an ethnic/racial minority a ~.25 SD bias; female ~.6; poor previous perfomance ~.4; unattractive ~.6: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0004944116664618 https://sci-hub.st/10.1177/0004944116664618 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/418850379518705675/767884095908216892/malouff2016.pdf

Harmon: https://wol.iza.org/articles/how-effective-is-compulsory-schooling-as-a-policy-instrument/long

Mcgrath 2019: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S088303551831334X

Reyes 2020: causes of truancy: https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7102/10/3/75/htm

NCES table: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/statereform/tab5_1.asp

DOE 2014: about 13% of students are chronically absent (for 15 or more days per year): https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED577234 https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED577234.pdf """Nationwide, more than 6.8 million students or 14% of all students are chronically absent (absent 15 or more school days during the school year). More than 3 million high school students or 19% of all high school students are chronically absent."""

Fischer 2013: variation in imposition of Sweden's compulsory schooling reform causally reduced mortality; the average Swede lived about 0.8 years longer as a result: https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/10/8/3596/htm https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/890060553521877032/fischer2013.pdf https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/890060390808047676/unknown.png https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/890361035612127242/unknown.png

Fischer 2013: literature review of causal evidence: evidence generally either supports mortality reduction or is statistically insignificant: https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/10/8/3596/htm https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/890060553521877032/fischer2013.pdf https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/890061035741007892/unknown.png

Margo 1996: DID estimates from birth date discontinuity; states that had compulsory schooling below 15yo did not see significantly higher school attendance; states that also banned child labor below 15yo saw significantly higher school attendance (around 10-20%) for students of that age: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0165176596008828 https://sci-hub.st/10.1016/S0165-1765(96)00882-8 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/890325672311013376/margo1996.pdf https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/890325614760951938/unknown.png

^ Figinski 2019: https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/S0731-90532019000040A013/full/html xxx todo unread

AttendanceWorks 2020: punitive responses against children for truancy tend to reinforce the root causes preventing attendance: https://www.attendanceworks.org/the-urgent-need-to-avoid-punitive-responses-to-poor-attendance/

AttendanceWorks 2018: https://www.attendanceworks.org/reducing-chronic-absence-requires-problem-solving-support-not-blame-punishment/

blogs: https://www.attendanceworks.org/research/evidence-based-solutions/

Acemoglu 2000: causal evidence suggests that education has large positive externalities (around a 1-4% increase of income per year): https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/654403 https://sci-hub.st/10.1086/654403 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/890465445373673503/acemoglu2000.pdf https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/890465719848947722/unknown.png https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/890466364769333278/unknown.png

^ returns to schooling: Clay 2021: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0927537120301391 xxx unread

metastudy: summer vacation over had significant negative effects on student performance in math and reading, excluding the Sustaining Effects Study (SES), which had different results than most other studies: study: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.3102/00346543066003227 http://sci-hub.st/10.3102/00346543066003227 graph: https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ630023 https://sci-hub.st/10.1111/1540-5834.00069

low SES students stagnated over the summer while high SES students gained; this difference accounts for 66% (48.48/73.16) of the absolute difference: 2007 publication: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/000312240707200202 https://sci-hub.st/10.1177/000312240707200202 1996 publication: https://books.google.com/books?id=6tveJqNXcWQC https://1lib.us/book/885106/7ac405 n=326 full, 790 initial

modified school calendars that have students learn during the summer (with same or comparable overall school days) have positive but small effects on student learning: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.3102/00346543073001001 https://sci-hub.st/10.3102/00346543073001001

decade-long decline in fights, crimes, and fear at schools: https://books.google.com/books?id=8-vYCwAAQBAJ&lpg=PP1&pg=PA443#v=onepage&q&f=false https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED483086.pdf

from 1992-93 to 2016-17, fewer students have been victims of homicide at school: 34 students were murdered in 1992-93 (of ~50 million students) and 18 students were murdered in 2016-17 (of ~55 million students): https://nces.ed.gov/programs/crimeindicators/ind_01.asp

from 1991-2018, fewer kids have reported being the victim of a crime at school: theft declined from ~100 per 1000 to ~10 per 1000 and violent crime from ~90 per 1000 to ~25 per 1000: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/crimeindicators/ind_02.asp

crime victimization: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/crimeindicators/ind_03.asp

discipline: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/crimeindicators/ind_07.asp

gangs: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/crimeindicators/ind_08.asp

from 2001-2017, fewer kids have reported being bullied at school: bullying declined from ~30% to ~20% of students: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/crimeindicators/ind_10.asp

teacher reports on misbehavior and tardiness: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/crimeindicators/ind_11.asp

from 2001-2017, fewer kids have reported having had a physical fights: fights inside school declined from ~15% to ~10% of students and fights outside school declined from ~35% to ~20%: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/crimeindicators/ind_12.asp

carrying a weapon: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/crimeindicators/ind_13.asp

safety measures: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/crimeindicators/ind_19.asp

safety measures: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/crimeindicators/ind_20.asp

Ritchie 2018: each year of education increases IQ by between 1 and 5 IQ points; these effects persisted reasonably well through time: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0956797618774253 http://sci-hub.st/10.1177/0956797618774253 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/888178481412837446/ritchie2018.pdf

meta-analysis of the fadeout effect: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S016028961500135X http://sci-hub.st/10.1016/j.intell.2015.10.006 unformatted

IQ strongly correlates with education success: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289606000171 https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Steve_Strand2/publication/222403422_Intelligence_and_Educational_Achievement/links/59fb3c30458515d070606cf6/Intelligence-and-Educational-Achievement.pdf This 5-year prospective longitudinal study of 70,000+ English children examined the association between psychometric intelligence at age 11 years and educational achievement in national examinations in 25 academic subjects at age 16. The correlation between a latent intelligence trait (Spearman's g from CAT2E) and a latent trait of educational achievement (GCSE scores) was 0.81.

IQ strongly correlates with education success: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289615001269 The analyses involved 240 independent samples with 105,185 participants overall. After correcting for sampling error, error of measurement, and range restriction in the independent variable, we found a population correlation of = .54. Moderator analyses pointed to a variation of the relationship between g and school grades depending on different school subject domains, grade levels, the type of intelligence test used in the primary study, as well as the year of publication, whereas gender had no effect on the magnitude of the relationship

popularity of various college degrees: business (~15% in 1970, ~22% in 2011), education (22%, 6%), English (~8%, ~3%), psychology (~5%, ~6%), engineering (~5%, ~5%), health (~3%, ~9%), art (~4%, ~5%), journalism (~1%, 5%): https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/05/09/310114739/whats-your-major-four-decades-of-college-degrees-in-1-graph

college selectivity doesn't increase return on investment for STEM degrees but does for humanities: https://www.economist.com/united-states/2015/03/12/it-depends-what-you-study-not-where

the future requires college education: projections to 2020 suggest that 64% of jobs will require an associate's or more: https://cew.georgetown.edu/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Recovery2020.ES_.Web_.pdf

your degree doesn't determine your career: https://www.census.gov/dataviz/visualizations/stem/stem-html/

most "worthless" degrees are just stepping stones to a law degree: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/students-at-most-colleges-dont-pick-useless-majors

nationwide sample of 25,000 students: growth in critical thinking was positively predicted by participation in the following general education courses courses: writing (8.5%), interdisciplinary (5.3%), honors (4.1%), history (4.15), women's studies (5.3%), science (2.0%), math (3.2%); not predicted by: foreign language, ethnic studies, remedial, reading skills: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1018734630124 https://sci-hub.st/10.1023/A:1018734630124 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/418850379518705675/714297383512440893/tsui1999.pdf 24837 students, 392 four-year institutions, Cooperative Institutional Research Program s (CIRP) 1989 Follow-Up Survey ```The dependent variable is students self-reported growth in the " ability to think critically" since entering college. The possible responses are " much weaker," " weaker," " no change," "stronger," and " much stronger."``````Further credence for the use of this measure comes from some correlates of self-reported growth in critical thinking found within the CIRP data set. As one might expect, self-reported growth in critical thinking is positively, albeit moderately, correlated with college grades (.13), undergraduate degree attain- ment (.11), and graduate degree aspirations (.14).```

participation in a "Democracy Academy" course improved self-reported critical thinking and leadership skills: https://muse.jhu.edu/article/194929 https://sci-hub.st/https://muse.jhu.edu/article/194929

single-state sample of 3100 students: post-course test performance increased (relative to pre-course test) in general courses of "college algebra" by 2.69x, in "economic history of the US" insignificantly, and in "civilization of the US" by 1.36x: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02602930600679639 https://sci-hub.st/10.1080/02602930600679639 ```College algebra students averaged individual improvement ratios of 169% across all students in all institutions[.]``````Economic history of the US: [....] The data analysis showed that only two of the institutions reporting results showed statistically significant student improvement from pretest to posttest[.]``````Civilization of the US: [....] The data analysis indicated statistically significant improvement from pretest to posttest (t = 7.10 to 15.65, p < .0001 for all). [....] Individual student improvement ratios, calculated as indicated above, averaged 36%.```

sample of 367 students: diversity courses enrollment positively predicts higher-quality interactions with diverse peers and higher engagement with social action: https://muse.jhu.edu/article/185442 https://sci-hub.st/10.1080/00221546.2005.11772292 ```The social action engagement construct was composed of seven items that measure the importance students place on creating social awareness, volunteering for a cause, and working to eliminate poverty.``````On the STIS, students were asked to identify the racial group other than their own with whom they interact most. For example, an Asian student in the sample might interact most with African American students[.] [....] Relative to interactions with that group, students were then asked to identify the frequency with which they had meaningful and honest discussions outside of class, shared personal feelings and problems, and worked effectively through conflict.`````The number of previous diversity courses taken by a student was an exogenous variable that indicates how many courses students took focusing on women s studies, ethnic/cultural studies, general diversity issues, intensive dialogue, and serving communities in need prior to enrolling in the diversity or management class.```

sample of 48 students in two courses: students became significantly less ethnocentric by the end of the course https://muse.jhu.edu/article/180382 https://sci-hub.st/10.1353/jge.2005.0007 A random sample of 48 students was chosen from those who completed all of the writing responses. ```[T]here was a statistically significant difference in the level of intercultural sensitivity after the second intervention (p = 0.000). The mean score for the third writing response was 3.984.``````In terms of Bennett s Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity, the mean scores for the first and second responses indicate that students abilities to negotiate difference were in the range of minimization, an ethnocentric stage. The mean score for the third response indicated that students abilities to negotiate difference had moved into the range of acceptance, an ethnorelative stage.```

declining state support for colleges explains the vast majority of rising college costs: https://www.demos.org/publication/pulling-higher-ed-ladder-myth-and-reality-crisis-college-affordability

administrative bloat cannot explain rising tuition prices: there are no more employees per student in 2012 than in 1990, and the portion of employees who are faculty has risen from 1 in 3 to 1 in 2: https://www.demos.org/publication/pulling-higher-ed-ladder-myth-and-reality-crisis-college-affordability

construction cannot explain the rise in tuition: https://www.demos.org/publication/pulling-higher-ed-ladder-myth-and-reality-crisis-college-affordability To get an idea of the maximum impact that the additional borrowing could have on college costs, enrollment at the largest public institutions approximating the 224 universities and university systems included in the Moody s data totaled 10.2 million in fall 2012.25 If all debt service costs were paid for by students, this would yield a figure of $367 per student in increased debt service costs over the past decade. [....] Though we can t estimate an exact impact on tuition, if we fairly estimate that half of these costs are paid for by students, we find that increased borrowing to fund college construction could account for about 5 percent of the tuition increases over the past decade. Clearly, increased college construction costs are not a major cause of rising tuition.

increased student aid doesn't correlate with increased tuition: https://www.demos.org/publication/pulling-higher-ed-ladder-myth-and-reality-crisis-college-affordability The claim that increased student aid causes tuition to rise was originated by William Bennett, the secretary of education under Ronald Reagan, in a 1987 New York Times opinion piece.19 Numerous academic studies since have tested the Bennett hypothesis, and though a few have found some link between rising aid and tuition in at most one sector of higher education,20 the vast majority have found not a shred of evidence of an empirical relationship, as David Warren wrote in the Washington Post.21 As Warren notes, three major federal reports in the last fifteen years have each surveyed the existing academic literature, and each concluded that no such relationship exists. The most recent, conducted by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) in 2011, took advantage of a unique natural experiment to test the Bennett hypothesis: the substantial increases in Stafford Loan limits between 2007 and 2009.22 In 2007, the yearly loan limits, adjusted for inflation, ranged from $2,925 for freshmen to $6,125 for upper classmen. By 2009, they had risen to $5,750 and $7,825, respectively. All told, the yearly borrowing limit for all undergraduates increased by an average of $2,340. However, average tuition at public 4-year universities rose by just $540 over the same two years, in line with recent historical averages, leading the GAO to reject the possibility of a relationship between the two. Additionally, these increases in borrowing limits were the first since 1993, meaning that the inflation-adjusted value of the limit had declined for more than a decade during which tuitions rose steadily. All told, both the empirical evidence and academic consensus deem the Bennett hypothesis false.

PISA results 2015: https://read.oecd-ilibrary.org/education/pisa-2015-results-volume-i_9789264266490-en#page46

the US does not spend more on primary and secondary education expected by GDP per capita: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cmd.asp

the US does spend more on postsecondary education expected by GDP per capita: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cmd.asp

accounting for all funding streams, 47 of 50 US states have net progressive education spending: http://apps.urban.org/features/school-funding-do-poor-kids-get-fair-share/

adjusting for the additional funding needs of low-income students, in terms of state and local funding 20 states are regressive, 21 neutral, and 6 progressive: https://edtrust.org/resource/funding-gaps-2018/ https://edtrust.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/FundingGapReport_2018_FINAL.pdf

in terms of state and local funding, about 50% of states provide greater funding to schools with more minorities and about 50% provide less (without accounting): https://edtrust.org/resource/funding-gaps-2018/ https://edtrust.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/FundingGapReport_2018_FINAL.pdf

in terms of state and local funding, the USA funds its schools mostly locally, as do about 2/5ths of the OECD : https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/education/the-funding-of-school-education/distributing-school-funding_9789264276147-7-en

students from poorer districts perform substantially worse: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/04/29/upshot/money-race-and-success-how-your-school-district-compares.html

the USA spends somewhat, but not much more, on non-teacher expenses than other countries: https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/education/the-funding-of-school-education/distributing-school-funding_9789264276147-7-en

breakdown of where the money goes: https://www.usccr.gov/pubs/2018/2018-01-10-Education-Inequity.pdf

people open to ideas perform better academically: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0361476X05000664 https://sci-hub.st/10.1016/j.cedpsych.2005.11.003

people in all degrees except engineering were, after a few years of college, more likely to believe that epistemology is uncertain: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0361476X05000664 https://sci-hub.st/10.1016/j.cedpsych.2005.11.003

positions taken in student debates influences student positions on those topics (and can therefore open minds): https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ977172.pdf

debaters have significantly better critical thinking than nondebaters: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00028533.1987.11951345

philosophy education improves academic performance: https://v1.educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/uploads/pdf/Philosophy_for_Children.pdf

among 6807 students in 47 four-year colleges, 27% moved to the left and 16% moved to the right between freshmen and senior year; however, faculty political orientation was insignificantly associated with this change; students at nonreligious schools moved more left than religious, women moved more left than men, and higher-income students moved slightly less left: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/ps-political-science-and-politics/article/indoctrination-u-faculty-ideology-and-changes-in-student-political-orientation/25ABD9B1A3577F27B5659941CD52D6C9 https://sci-hub.st/10.1017/S1049096508081031 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/418850379518705675/753305694194892930/mariani2008.pdf

among 1643 faculty in 183 four-year colleges in 1999, 72% identified as left or liberal; faculty who were conservative, Christian, or women, were more likely to teach at lower-selectivity colleges: https://www.degruyter.com/view/journals/for/3/1/article-for.2005.3.1.1067.xml.xml https://sci-hub.st/10.2202/1540-8884.1067 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/418850379518705675/753307126667018370/rothman2005.pdf

among a sample of freshmen undergraduate essays, there is no evidence that Democratic TA's gave lower grades to Republican students (or Republican TA's to Democratic students): https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1532673X14561655 https://sci-hub.st/10.1177/1532673X14561655 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/418850379518705675/778113053261561896/musgrave2014.pdf

list of several socialist economic planning systems: https://spiritofcontradiction.eu/rowan-duffy/2012/06/28/which-way-the-economic-revolution

controlling for past performance, privatized assets perform worse than public assets in the short term and about equal in the long (10yr) term: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378426613001052 http://sci-hub.st/10.1016/j.jbankfin.2013.02.017 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/418850379518705675/643476490402529291/2013_Ownership_Change.pdf Our main sample is based on Privatization Barometer (PB) privatizations in Old (Western) and New (Central and Eastern) European economies. [....] The findings highlight the importance of recognizing endogeneity and the nontrivial performance challenges facing newly private enterprises in a framework with agency and expropriation costs. The tradeoff is most pronounced for enterprises that enjoyed subsidies prior to privatization. They experience negative effects for up to 10 years. In the long run, the effect becomes insignificant.

controlling for past performance, short-term performance of assets is worse after privatization for heavily subsidized and better after privatization for weakly subsidized public assets, but both converge to about equal performance after ~10 years: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378426613001052 http://sci-hub.st/10.1016/j.jbankfin.2013.02.017 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/418850379518705675/643476490402529291/2013_Ownership_Change.pdf ```In cases of greater pre-privatization reliance on the government for subsidies and transfers prior to privatization, the short- and medium-run effects of privatization are negative, consistent with the newly private enterprises struggling to achieve profitability after subsidies are removed. However, the effect is mitigated in the long run as the necessary efficiency improvements are implemented. Thus, consistent with what one might expect, privatization effects grow weaker and become insignificant in the long run (10 years since the reform completion), corroborating the notion that the tradeoffs are felt more acutely in the short to medium term. With the passage of time, companies are able to leverage the incentive improvements associated with the switch to private ownership and compensate for the costs of restructuring. By comparison, in cases where the government did not subsidize heavily prior to privatization, newly privatized firms do not experience the adverse shock of subsidy reduction and instead appear to benefit right away from a switch to private ownership through privatization```

public infrastructure investment produces longterm economic growth: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00036849700000023 Annual data over 1970-90 for 48 developing countries form the basis of the empirical analysis. Our findings suggest that infrastructural public investment facilitates private investment, especially in the long-run. It also promotes economic growth and efficiency whereas non-infrastructural investment does the reverse. Also, long-term effects of public investment tend to be much more positive than short-term ones on growth.

community-owned fiber networks (ISPs) tend to provide cheaper and better services than commercial ISPs: https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/34623859/2018-01-16-Pricing.final.pdf

among concrete production plants (high quality data), n(competitors)<5 is associated with decreased gross value added; n(competitors)>5 is associatd with increased gross value added (+.015); being a multi-unit firm had a +.177 effect, assets +.127, salaries +.733; : http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~acollard/Productivity%20Dispersion%20and%20Plant%20Selection.pdf

productivity does not increase with concrete plant age: http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~acollard/Productivity%20Dispersion%20and%20Plant%20Selection.pdf

crises have always, always, always occurred under capitalism (USA: 1819, 1837, 1839, 1857, 1873, 1884, 1893, 1896, 1907, 1929, 1980, 2007): https://ideas.repec.org/p/wse/wpaper/52.html http://kolegia.sgh.waw.pl/pl/KAE/struktura/IE/struktura/ZES/Documents/Working_Papers/aewp03-11.pdf ```To summarize, the financial crises of the twentieth century were similar to their ancestors. They followed a pattern similar to their nineteenth century counterparts, usually 14 beginning with a speculative bubble, which was followed by a severe stock market crash and a recession. While the response by government has not always been the same, the boom and bust cycle has continued. Some common causes for this cycle include inadequate regulation of the financial sector. Many of these aspects have carried over into the current financial crisis.```

crises have always, always, always occurred under capitalism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_recessions_in_the_United_States

large economic stimulus prevented the 2006-2008 Recession from reducing growth in china -- despite facing the same export crises as Russia and South Africa: https://files.stlouisfed.org/files/htdocs/wp/2014/2014-007.pdf ```Also, total industrial production in China nearly doubled between 2007 and 2013 despite the crisis and an extremely weak international demand for Chinese goods, whereas the United States has experienced zero growth in industrial production and that in the European Union and Japan has declined by 9.3% and 17.1%, respectively. No wonder China s economic growth contributed 50% of global GDP growth during the crisis period (IMF, 2010), even though its income level accounted for less than 10% of world GDP and its total exports have remained 45% below trend since the crisis.```

interest rates can explain just 20% of the 2006 housing crisis: http://realestate.wharton.upenn.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/679.pdf ```The modest predicted impact of interest rates on prices is in line with empirical estimates, and it suggests that lower real rates can explain only one-fifth of the rise in prices from 1996 to 2006. We also find no convincing evidence that changes in approval rates or loan-to-value levels can explain the bulk of the changes in house prices, but definitive judgments on those mechanisms cannot be made without better corrections for the endogeneity of borrowers decisions to apply for mortgages.```

the USA has made ~125 billion in profit from the bailouts, which were fundamentally loans: https://projects.propublica.org/bailout/

political economy (obviously) affects cyclical crises: http://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WP/Issues/2018/01/15/Regulatory-Cycles-Revisiting-the-Political-Economy-of-Financial-Crises-45562

cyclical crises kill people; about 10k suicides can be attributed to the 2007-08 recession: https://www.forbes.com/sites/melaniehaiken/2014/06/12/more-than-10000-suicides-tied-to-economic-crisis-study-says/ https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/the-british-journal-of-psychiatry/article/economic-suicides-in-the-great-recession-in-europe-and-north-america/DF85FA16DFB256F4DC7937FAEA156F8B These conservative figures suggest that, in total, there have been at least 10 000 more economic suicides than would have been expected in the European Union, Canada and the USA since the Great Recession began in 2007

the two main critiques of central planning have been 'theoretical incomputability' (computing optimal resource allocation is mathematically impossible) and 'practical incomputability' (insufficient information or computation is available for this problem): http://ricardo.ecn.wfu.edu/~cottrell/socialism_book/calculation_debate.pdf

infite possible commodities does not imply uncomputability, as very few possible commodities have nonzero price, inputs, or outputs: http://www.macs.hw.ac.uk/~greg/publications/ccm.IJUC07.pdf

calculation of an input-output model has a time complexity of n*m*r: http://ricardo.ecn.wfu.edu/~cottrell/socialism_book/calculation_debate.pdf

markets are efficient if and only if P = NP: https://arxiv.org/abs/1002.2284 ```I prove that if markets are weak-form efficient, meaning current prices fully reflect all information available in past prices, then P = NP, meaning every computational problem whose solution can be verified in polynomial time can also be solved in polynomial time. I also prove the converse by showing how we can program the market to solve NP-complete problems. Since P probably does not equal NP, markets are probably not efficient. Specifically, markets become increasingly inefficient as the time series lengthens or becomes more frequent.```

when companies establish internal markets, they collapse -- for example, Sears was restructured in 2008 and went bankrupt in 2013: https://www.salon.com/2013/07/18/ayn_rand_killed_sears_partner/ https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-07-11/at-sears-eddie-lamperts-warring-divisions-model-adds-to-the-troubles

in practice, planning for economies of modern scale is easily computed even on home computers: http://www.macs.hw.ac.uk/~greg/publications/ccm.IJUC07.pdf

capitalism can be conceptualized as an iterative input-output model: http://www.macs.hw.ac.uk/~greg/publications/ccm.IJUC07.pdf Firms add up wage costs and costs of other commodity inputs, add a markup, and set their prices accordingly. This distributed algorithm, which is nowadays carried out by a combination of people and company computers, is structurally similar to the solution of linear equations by an iterative method. This models one phase of the iterative solution of Sraffa s equations. Empirical evidence indicates that the price vector upon which the process converges lies somewhere near the vector of labour values see [29, 24].

neither capitalism nor socialism properly 'prices in' finite resources: http://ricardo.ecn.wfu.edu/~cottrell/socialism_book/calculation_debate.pdf Socialist planners presumably would have to develop some kind of proxy for the value of nonreproducible resources in units of labour hours. It is difficult to imagine how this could be done in a way that would not be completely arbitrary. We do not wish to deny there is a problem here. We do, however, find it rather remarkable that Mises (and his expositor, Lavoie) should talk as if the problem solves itself under capitalism. Neither offers any criticism of the classic Ricardian theory, according to which the market price system also fails to take into account non-reproducible resources. For Ricardo, natural resource constraints manifest themselves in the price system via rising marginal cost of production, i.e. just the effect which Mises takes to be inadequate. [....] In fact, matters are not infrequently worse under capitalism. The fact that a certain resource is ultimately exhaustible does not necessarily mean that it is subject to diminishing returns in the short run. In the westward expansion of American agriculture, for instance, the (geographically) marginal land was actually the most productive. In such cases the market provides no incentive whatever for resource conservation; the results were painfully evident in the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. We are not claiming that labour-time calculation would necessarily do better in cases where the market fails to conserve resources. We do contend, however, that socialist planners should be able to take more far-sighted decisions on resource conservation than profit-maximizing firms.

among soda bottling firms, vertical integration across double margins (eg, a bottler bottling both Coke and Pepsi was purchased by Coke and one "double margin" was eliminated) decreased prices: http://www.law.northwestern.edu/research-faculty/searlecenter/events/antitrust/documents/Luco_Marshall_VISoda_Searle.pdf We find that vertical integration decreased the prices of own brands bottled by a vertically-integrated bottler by 1.7 percent (e.g., Diet Pepsi bottled by PepsiCo) and it increased the prices of rival brands bottled by a vertically-integrated bottler by 3.9 percent (e.g., Dr Pepper bottled by PepsiCo). The overall impact of vertical integration was to increase the prices of products bottled by vertically-integrated bottlers by 1.6 percent. Dynamic effects estimates show that the price increases in products bottled by a vertically-integrated bottler only started after the vertical transactions took place, and the price increases persisted in time. These results suggest that vertical integration with multiproduct firms has the potential of harming consumers because of how the vertically-integrated multiproduct firms use rival-brand prices to divert demand to their (more profitable to sell) own brands.

the value of skilled labor may be calculated as the "labor price" required to produce said skilled labor: http://ricardo.ecn.wfu.edu/~cottrell/socialism_book/calculation_debate.pd True, labour is not homogeneous, but there is no warrant for the claim that the reduction factor for complex labour has to be arbitrary under socialism. Skilled labour may be treated in the same way that Marx treats the means of production in Capital, namely as a produced input which transfers embodied labour to its product over time. Given the labour time required to produce skills and a depreciation horizon for those skills, one may calculate an implied rate of transfer of the labour time embodied in the skills. If we call this rate, for skill i, ri , then labour of this type should be counted as a multiple (1 + ri) of simple labour, for the purpose of costing its products. Of course the labour input required for the production of skills is likely to be a mixture of skilled and simple, which complicates the calculation of the skill multipliers. An iterative procedure is needed: first calculate the transfer rates as if all inputs were simple labour, then use those first-round transfer rates to re-evaluate the skilled labour inputs, on this basis recompute the transfer rates, and so on, until convergence is reached.

labor vouchers: http://ricardo.ecn.wfu.edu/~cottrell/socialism_book/calculation_debate.pdf The labour certificates Marx talks of here are quite different from money. They do not circulate, rather they are cancelled against the acquisition of consumer goods of equivalent labour content. And they may be used for consumer goods alone; they cannot purchase means of production or labour power, and hence cannot function as capital.

There is no strong evidence that socdem countries have reduced innovativeness; if anything, the reverse might be true.

social democratic states rank as the most innovative European states: https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/news/sweden-ranked-the-eus-most-innovative-nation/ar-AAD0H9r https://ec.europa.eu/growth/industry/policy/innovation/scoreboards_en

^ methodology of innovation index: https://ec.europa.eu/docsroom/documents/41861 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/418850379518705675/726808154918092890/EIS_2020_Methodology_report.pdf ```1.1.1 New doctorate graduates per 1000 population aged 25-34 1.1.2 Percentage population aged 25-34 having completed tertiary education 1.1.3 Percentage population aged 25-64 participating in lifelong learning 1.2.1 International scientific co-publications per million population 1.2.2 Scientific publications among the top-10% most cited publications worldwide as percentage of total scientific publications of the country 1.2.3 Foreign doctorate students as a percentage of all doctorate students 1.3.1 Broadband penetration 1.3.2 Opportunity-driven entrepreneurship (Motivational index) 2.1.1 R&D expenditure in the public sector (percentage of GDP) 2.1.2 Venture capital expenditures (percentage of GDP) 2.2.1 R&D expenditure in the business sector (percentage of GDP) 2.2.2 Non-R&D innovation expenditures (percentage of turnover) 2.2.3 Enterprises providing training to develop or upgrade ICT skills of their personnel 3.1.1 SMEs introducing product or process innovations (percentage of SMEs) 3.1.2 SMEs introducing marketing or organisational innovations (percentage of SMEs) 3.1.3 SMEs innovating in-house (percentage of SMEs) 3.2.1 Innovative SMEs collaborating with others (percentage of SMEs) 3.2.2 Public-private co-publications per million population 3.2.3 Private co-funding of public R&D expenditures (percentage of GDP) 3.3.1 PCT patent applications per billion GDP (in PPS) 3.3.2 Trademark applications per billion GDP (in PPS) 3.3.3 Design applications per billion GDP (in PPS) 4.1.1 Employment in knowledge-intensive activities (percentage of total employment) 4.1.2 Employment in fast-growing enterprises (percentage of total employment) 4.2.1 Exports of medium and high technology products as a share of total product exports 4.2.2 Knowledge-intensive services exports as percentage of total services exports 4.2.3 Sales of new-to-market and new-to-firm innovations as percentage of turnover```

social democratic states like Iceland, Sweden, Finland have no problem generating startups and investing in them: https://medium.com/quack-ventures/european-startup-ranking-per-capita-and-per-gdp-be6a3a0ae04c https://2018.stateofeuropeantech.com/

the USA has seen a declining savings rate and and a decline in new firm creation rate: https://news.gallup.com/businessjournal/175499/starved-financing-new-businesses-decline.aspx

in manufacturing, higher innovation (as measured via publication in relevant manufacturing journals) is associated with higher large firm (500+) employment, higher R&D, lower concentration, lower unionization, higher skilled labor, and larger industries; however, innovation per capita is much higher in small than large firms: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1811167 https://sci-hub.st/10.2307/1811167 ```Thus, based on the U.S. Small Business Administration's classification of the significance level of innovations, there does not appear to be a great difference in the "quality" and significance of the innovations between large and small firms. However, the extent of innovative activity does not necessarily correspond to the market values of the innovations. It is conceivable that larger firms may tend to focus on innovations with a higher market value. [....] A random sample of 600 firms (with 375 responses) was used to allocate the entire set of innovations into 55 percent from small firms and 45 percent from large firms, resulting in an innovation- per-employee ratio 2.38 times greater in small firms than in large firms.```

most industries have very low rates of R&D: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/2089358

the profit motive creates fake journals: https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2018/06/23/some-science-journals-that-claim-to-peer-review-papers-do-not-do-so http://archive.is/Dz8zB: It is estimated that the number of articles published in questionable journals [those that don't do peer review] has ballooned from about 53,000 a year in 2010 to more than 400,000 today.

capitalism ruins textbooks: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23294515.2018.1436095 [unformatted, reread]

in China, privatization of an SOE is associated with a decline or negligible change of innovation parents (POST row) except in regions with strong intellectual property rights, where a substantial increase occurs (POSTxIPR row); in addition, university density is ~100x more powerful: https://academic.oup.com/rfs/article-abstract/30/7/2446/3098495 https://sci-hub.st/10.1093/rfs/hhx023 """Overall, the results in this section are consistent with the Schumpeterian view: within China, both private ownership and IPR protection are conducive to innovation. Importantly, the effect of privatization on innovation is highly influenced by local IPR protection; privatization has essentially no effect on innovation when IPR protection is weak, and a moderate increase in IPR protection can lead to large gains in post-privatization innovation. This is strong evidence that private sector innovation in China is particularly sensitive to IPR protection."""

^ methodology notes: https://academic.oup.com/rfs/article-abstract/30/7/2446/3098495 https://sci-hub.st/10.1093/rfs/hhx023 ```SOEs in China, in fact, have a two-tiered defense against expropriation: through administrative measures by the government (the firms owners), and through the courts, which are often biased in their favor (Snyder 2012). This explanation suggests that China s innovation should be led by the SOEs, and because they rely on the state, institutions such as IPR protection do not matter much. We call this the alternative mechanisms view. ``````To address these empirical challenges, we exploit China s privatizations of SOEs as an identification method. The idea is that the privatization events result in a sharp change in the firms ownership structures and state affiliations, while keeping other firm attributes fixed.``````Invention patents have the highest innovative content, as they cover novel technologies. Utility patents cover new applications of existing technologies.```

innovation is highly increased by parental income and exposure to innovation locations and innovators: https://academic.oup.com/qje/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/qje/qjy028/5218522?redirectedFrom=fulltext We then directly establish the importance of environment by showing that exposure to innovation during childhood has significant causal effects on children s propensities to invent. Children whose families move to a high-innovation area when they are young are more likely to become inventors. These exposure effects are technology-class and gender specific. Children who grow up in a neighborhood or family with a high innovation rate in a specific technology class are more likely to patent in exactly the same class.

the United States doesn't patent more new pharmaceutical drugs (NMEs) than would be expected by its spending on pharmaceuticals, suggesting that free-er markets for medicine prices don't necessarily cause more innovation: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2866602/ https://sci-hub.se/10.2105/AJPH.2009.178491

^ another study found that more drugs are produced in the USA over time, but it's only based on headquarter location: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Publication%20Files/09-118.pdf

pharmaceutical companies in Canada spend 1-2x more on research and development than on advertising: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5848527/ Depending on the method used to determine promotion spending, industry-wide the ratio of R&D spending to promotion ranges from 1.45 to 2.18 (sales representatives and journal advertising only) or from 0.88 to 1.32 (total promotion spending estimated based 2003-2005 data.) For the individual companies promoting one or more of the 50 most promoted drugs, 2.11 to 2.32 times more is spent on R&D compared to promotion. However these results should be interpreted cautiously because of data limitations.

pharmaceutical companies in the USA spend 2x more on advertisements than on research and development: http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.0050001 Excluding direct-to-consumer advertising, CAM considers that around 80% of the remaining promotion is directed towards physicians, with 20% of this figure going to pharmacists. (IMS does not provide any comparable values.) With about 700,000 practicing physicians in the US in 2004 [20], we estimate that with a total expenditure of US$57.5 billion, the industry spent around US$61,000 in promotion per physician. **As a percentage of US domestic sales of US$235.4 billion [21], promotion consumes 24.4% of the sales dollar versus 13.4% for R&D.**

^ sources of funding: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/2089358

public sector pharmaceutical research is 2x more likely to get primary review: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmsa1008268 https://sci-hub.st/10.1056/nejmsa1008268 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/418850379518705675/762496258970877962/stevens2011.pdf The FDA assigns the application one of two types of review on the basis of its therapeutic potential: priority review if the drug shows substantial improvement, as compared with currently marketed products for the treatment, diagnosis, or prevention of a disease, or standard review if the drug appears to have therapeutic qualities similar to those of one or more drugs that are already on the market. [....] During this period, the FDA approved 1541 new-drug applications but granted priority review to just 348 applications (22.6%) (Table 2). **Of the 1541 total approvals, 143 (9.3%) resulted from PSRIs. However, of the 348 priority reviews, 66 (19.0%) resulted from PSRIs, or twice the overall rate for priority reviews. Viewed from another perspective, 46.2% of new-drug applications from PSRIs received priority reviews, as compared with 20.0% of applications that were based purely on private-sector research, an increase by a factor of 2.3.

^ drugs approved close to (within 2 months of) their Congress-mandated deadline had greater adverse effects (black-box warnings and safety-based withdrawls), but priority review products were not more likely to have adverse effects: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1540-5907.2011.00544.x http://sci-hub.st/10.1111/j.1540-5907.2011.00544.x To assess claims that lower-quality policy outcomes may arise from inherent drug uncertainty, we include two measures to capture agency uncertainty. One is an indicator of whether the FDA designated the drug for priority review, a designation reservedfor drugs that represent significant innovation over existing therapies. Such innovation holds potential for greater drug safety and efficacy but greater uncertainty as new formulations are introduced into the market for the first time. [....] There appears to be no stratification in the deadline effect across priority and nonpriority reviews, save for dosage-form discontinuations, where there is a deadline effect among standard drugs but not among priority drugs (see the online appendix, Tables A13a, b).

^ drugs approved close to (within 2 months of) their Congress-mandated deadline had greater adverse effects (disability, hospitalization, or death), and priority review products were more likely to have adverse effects: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/589934 http://sci-hub.st/10.1086/589934 Initiation of the PDUFA requirements concentrated the number of approval decisions made in the weeks immediately preceding the deadlines. As compared with drugs approved at other times, drugs approved in the 2 months before their PDUFA deadlines were more likely to be withdrawn for safety reasons (odds ratio, 5.5; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.3 to 27.8), more likely to carry a subsequent black-box warning (odds ratio, 4.4; 95% CI, 1.2 to 20.5), and more likely to have one or more dosage forms voluntarily discontinued by the manufacturer (odds ratio, 3.3; 95% CI, 1.5 to 7.5).

^ the FDA's priority review system is effective at categorizing drugs with high clinical added value: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00228-016-2104-3 http://sci-hub.st/10.1007/s00228-016-2104-3 The Haute Autorit de Sant (HAS) is a French government agency that provides recommendations on reimbursement decisions of medicinal products made by the public authorities. Their decisions are based on a clinical added value (CAV) using a five-level scoring system that takes into account the comparative efficacy and safety data of a new drug with regards to available treatments[.] [....] The positive predictive value corresponded to the number of NME seen in shorter review time and highly clinical added value (i.e., true positive) among the total of shorter review time NME. The negative predictive value corresponded to the number of NME not seen in shorter review time and slightly clinical added value (i.e., true negative) among the total of non-shorter review time NME. [....] Secondly, among the 43 NME judged as of highly clinical added value by HAS, shorter review time was considered for 37 of them by the FDA compared to 13 of them by the EMA.

according to a survey of 100 medium-size firms in 1981-82, between 0 and 60% of inventions would not have been developed without a patent system and 60-80% of patent-able inventions are patented: https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/abs/10.1287/mnsc.32.2.173 https://sci-hub.st/10.1287/mnsc.32.2.173

in 1982, countywide patents were highly correlated with innovations (as measured by the Futures Group for the Small Business Administration): https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0048733301001846 https://sci-hub.st/10.1016/s0048-7333(01)00184-6

cooperatives represent 1 billion people, 23% of banks, and 30% of insurance firms: http://archive.is/vPE88 https://www.thenews.coop/37480/sector/retail/cooperative-membership-hits-1-billion-worldwide/ https://books.google.com/books?id=-wM84ZnZacwC&pg=PA106#v=onepage&q&f=false Approximately 1 billion people in 96 countries now belong to a cooperative -- a form of business characterized by democratic ownership and governance -- according to the International Co-operative Alliance. Cooperatives are low-profile but powerful economic actors, with the world's 300 largest ones generating revenues in 2008 of more than $1.6 trillion. [....] [T]he cooperative model is widespread and by at least one measure surpasses shareholder corporations: the 1 billion member-owners of cooperatives worldwide exceed the 893 million shareholders of corporations. The latter figure includes direct shareholders, who own stock as individuals, and indirect shareholders, who own stock through mutual funds and other indirect vehicles. If individual stockholders are considered alone, cooperative member-owners outnumber direct shareholders three to one. [....] In some advanced industrial countries, coops generate a meaningful share of economic output: 21% in Finland, 17.5% in New Zealand, 16.4% in Switzerland, and 13% in Sweden. [....] A 2010 World Bank report found that credit union branches account for 23 percent of bank branches worldwide and serve 870 million people, making them the second largest financial services network in the world. [....] Similarly for insurance: more than 30 percent of the market in the five largest insurance markets globally is controlled by mutual and coop firms.

in the USA, coops directly employ 856,000 full time equivalents and indirectly account for 2 million jobs (1.8% of all jobs): http://www.ncba.coop/ncba/about-co-ops/research-economic-impact http://web.archive.org/web/20130122071937/http://www.ncba.coop/ncba/about-co-ops/research-economic-impact

in France in 2010, coops employ 750,000 people (3% of private salaried employees): https://www.entreprises.coop/component/content/article/78-decouvrir-les-cooperatives/164.html

in France in 2018, coops employ 1,300,000 people (5.5% of private salaried employees) and represent 70% of retail banking, 40% of agriculture, and 30% of retail commerce: http://www.ess-france.org/actualites/coop-fr-presente-ledition-2018-du-panorama-sectoriel-des-entreprises-cooperatives Elles repr sentent 70% de l'activit banque de d tail, 40% de l'agro-alimentaire et 30% du commerce de d tail en France. [....] Avec 1,3 million de salari s, en milieu rural, en zone urbaine, au coeur des centres-villes et en p riph rie, la part des salari s travaillant dans les coop ratives est de 5,5%, en hausse constante depuis 2008. [....] 1 fran ais sur 3 est membre d'au moins une coop rative. Ces entreprises comptent 27,5 millions de soci taires qui peuvent tre entrepreneurs, usagers, clients, ou salari s, et salari s de leur coop rative.

in 2008, the 300 largest coops made up 1.6 trillion / 63.575 trillion = 2.5% of world GDP. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/ny.gdp.mktp.cd World GDP 2008: 63.575

in 2011, the top 100 coops in the USA had $215 billion in revenue: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20121018005983/en/NCB-Co-op-100-Reports-Top-Producing-Cooperatives http://web.archive.org/web/20120425050149/http://www.coop100.coop/

in 2017, the top 100 coops in the USA had $208 billion in revenue: https://www.ncb.coop/press-releases/the-ncb-co-op-100-reports-top-producing-cooperatives-with-revenues-of-208-billion https://impact.ncb.coop/hubfs/assets/resources/NCB_Co-op_100_2018_WEB.pdf

cooperative logging enterprises and unionized logging enterprises are more productive than traditional logging enterprises: https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/1995/01/1995_bpeamicro_craig.pdf ```In table 3, average values of output per worker-hour (labor productivity) are consistently higher for the classical firms, but there is little difference between the co-ops and the unionized mills. By contrast, average values of output per log input (material productivity) are usually higher for the co-ops and the unionized mills and lowest for the classical mills. This implies quite different labor-log ratios as shown in the last line: computed over all production types, the average ratio of worker-hours to log inputs in cooperative and unionized mills is more than double its value in classical mills. These differences in input ratios are less marked in mills specializing in plywood and in veneer production. Output per size of largest lathe (XIK) is consistently highest among the unionized mills and usually lowest among the classical mills.``````Craig and Pencavel conclude, "Worker participation has neither major efficiency gains nor efficiency losses." I found this conclusion rather bold given the imprecision of the estimates. Moreover, a 14 percent increase in productivity could be considered a major gain. To achieve this large a gain, one would have to increase logs by some 30 percent.```

Olsen 2013 argues that "financing constraints" because of lender reluctance and lack of collateral and "elevated early risk" because firms are usually entirely worker-funded (ie, high liability) cause cooperatives to be formed less than conventional enterprises: https://community-wealth.org/sites/clone.community-wealth.org/files/downloads/article-olsen.pdf

Abell 2014 argues that "culture" (the cultural dominance of conventional capitalist enterprise), "business expertise" (the lack of worker experience in business management), "financing" (lack of startup funding), "management" and "organizational democracy" (the need to build an egalitarian, democratic decisionmaking style in order for the enterprise to succeed) are the main barriers to entry for cooperatives: https://community-wealth.org/sites/clone.community-wealth.org/files/downloads/WorkerCoops-PathwaysToScale.pdf

in the UK from 2008-2013, the 5-year survival rate for an enterprise was 80% for cooperatives and 41% for other ownership models: https://www.uk.coop/sites/default/files/uploads/attachments/co-op_economy_2015.pdf https://www.ons.gov.uk/businessindustryandtrade/business/activitysizeandlocation/bulletins/businessdemography/2014-11-27

in Quebec from 1998-2008, the 10-year survival rate was 44% for cooperatives and 19.5% for other enterprises: http://collections.banq.qc.ca/ark:/52327/bs1906652

in Quebec from 1998-2008, it took 10 years for the yearly survival rate of non-cooperatives to catch up with the unchanging yearly survival rate of cooperatives: https://www2.gwu.edu/~iiep/assets/docs/papers/Smith_Rothbaum_IIEPWP2013-6.pdf

in Quebec from 1989-1998, the 10-year survival was 46% for cooperatives and 20% for non-cooperatives (across many sectors): https://contenu.william.coop/Librairies/Documents/taux%20de%20survie%20des%20coop.pdf

in British Columbia, the 5-year survival rate was 67% for cooperatives and 43% for non-cooperatives: https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/58776589.pdf https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/418850379518705675/747445687372873748/murray2011.pdf

in Alberta, the 3-year survival rate was 81.5% for cooperatives and 48% for conventional firms: https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/58776588.pdf https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/418850379518705675/747445686865231942/stringham2011.pdf

retail cooperatives invested 6.9% of their pre-tax profits in their communities, compared with 2.4% for other retail stores: https://web.archive.org/web/20150626103146/http://www.thenews.coop/93737/news/general/community-investment-index-giving-back-to-neighbourhoods/

white workers who gain union membership became less bigoted against / more supportive towards black people -- 4.2% less in VSG, 4.8% less in CCES: https://twitter.com/jakemgrumbach/status/1131983763762819073 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ajps.12537 https://sci-hub.st/10.1111/ajps.12537 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/418850379518705675/744747588095574096/frymer2020.pdf three sources: Cooperative Congressional Election Survey (CCES); Voter Study Group (VSG); American National Election Studies (ANES, n=3,994 whites); racism measure is 4 questions: ```(1) The Irish, Italians, Jews, and many other minorities overcame prejudice and worked their way up. Blacks should do the same without any special favors. (2) Generations of slavery and discrimination have created conditions that make it difficult for Blacks to work their way out of the lower class (reverse coded).``````(3) It s really a matter of some people not trying hard enough; if blacks would only try harder they could be just as well off as whites. ``````(4) Over the past few years, blacks have gotten lessthan they deserve (reverse coded).```

unionized companies have a lower risk of a stock market crash: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3394379 no significant difference for: return on assets (ROA), market-to-book ratio (MB), firm size (SIZE), leverage (LEV), de-trended share turnover (DTURN), standard deviation of firm-specific weekly returns (SIGMA), annual average of firm-specific weekly returns (RET), and the absolute value of discretionary accruals (ABACC)

unionization slightly decreases stock value, but only significantly so when the vote to unionize is substantially above 50: https://www.nber.org/papers/w14709.pdf

right to work laws directly increase occupational deaths: https://oem.bmj.com/content/early/2018/06/13/oemed-2017-104747 Methods Two-way fixed effects regression models are used to estimate the effect of unionisation on occupational mortality per 100 000 workers, controlling for state policy liberalism and workforce composition over the period 1992 2016. In the final specification, RTW laws are used as an instrument for unionisation to recover causal effects. Results The Local Average Treatment Effect of a 1% decline in unionisation attributable to RTW is about a 5% increase in the rate of occupational fatalities. In total, RTW laws have led to a 14.2% increase in occupational mortality through decreased unionisation.

IGM 2015 survey of economists: gradual increase of the minimum wage to $15 in 2020 would increase unemployment: weighted by confidence, 34% agreed, 37% were uncertain, and 29% disagreed (net: +5%). https://www.igmchicago.org/surveys/15-minimum-wage/ https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/812054701445087292/unknown.png

IGM 2021 survey of economists: federal minimum wage of $15 per hour would lower employment for low-wage workers in many states: 31% agree, 48% uncertain, 21% disagree: https://www.igmchicago.org/surveys/the-us-minimum-wage-2/ https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/812055363402334208/unknown.png

Card and Kueger 1995: minimum wages don't cause any employment effects, after accounting for publication bias: https://eml.berkeley.edu//~card/papers/time%20minwage.pdf

Doucouliagos and Stanley 2009: minimum wages don't cause any employment effects, after accounting for publication bias: https://www.ctdol.state.ct.us/lweab/Doucougliagos%20&%20Stanley%20Publication%20Selection%20Bias%20in%20Min%20Wage%20Research-A%20Metaregression%20Analysis.pdf

Chletsos and Giotis 2014: minimum wages don't cause any employment effects, after accounting for publication bias: http://www2.aueb.gr/conferences/Crete2015/Papers/Giotis.pdf

Neumark 2021: https://www.nber.org/papers/w28388 http://sci-hub.st/10.3386/w28388

Neumark 2006: this study is explicitly *not* a meta-analysis: https://www.nber.org/papers/w12663 https://sci-hub.st/10.3386/w12663 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/812047032172675072/neumark2006.pdf """In putting together this review, we have intentionally foregone a formal meta-analysis in favor of a traditional narrative review that attempts to provide a sense of the quality of the research and tries to highlight and synthesize the findings that we regard as more credible."""

Dube 2021: xxx https://twitter.com/arindube/status/1356309122791174145 https://www.nber.org/papers/w28399 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/807477714087968790/dube2021.pdf

Meer 2015: http://jhr.uwpress.org/content/51/2/500 https://sci-hub.st/10.3368/jhr.51.2.0414-6298R1 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/812046626649800714/meer2015.pdf

Allegretto 2017: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0019793917692788 https://sci-hub.st/10.1177/0019793917692788 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/812048652037259294/allegretto2017.pdf """We make one additional observation about the results in Table 4. Meer and West (2016) criticized the inclusion of state-specific trends and argued that they produce spuriously small disemployment estimates because trends soak up lagged effects. This argument is categorically not true here. Using Meer and West s preferred distributed-lag first-difference specification also produces an employment estimate for teens that is close to zero, similar to estimates with state-specific trends but different from the two-way fixed-effects estimate in levels. [....] Table 4 thus raises questions about whether the findings that minimum wages reduce aggregate employment in Meer and West (2016) are likely to reflect causal effects."""

Azar 2017: using an instrumental variable specification, going from the 25th percentile to the 75th percentile in concentration is associated with a 17% decline in posted wages: https://rooseveltinstitute.org/2017/12/18/how-widespread-is-labor-monopsony-some-new-results-suggest-its-pervasive/ http://jhr.uwpress.org/content/early/2020/05/04/jhr.monopsony.1218-9914R1.abstract https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/812059085729038396/azar2020.pdf https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/812060106924621875/unknown.png we calculate the average of log(1/N) for the same occupation for every other commuting zone. We use log(1/N) instead of HHI as the instrument because it is less likely to be endogenous, as it does not depend on market shares.

Azar 2019: commuting zones with fewer employers (with presumably higher monopsony) have more benign effects from minimum wages: minimum wage effects for the least concentrated zones are slightly negative, for middle zero, and for the most concentrated zones are actually positive: https://www.nber.org/papers/w26101 https://sci-hub.st/10.3386/w26101 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/812056004719280228/azar2019.pdf https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/812057436366045184/unknown.png HHI = Herfindahl-Hirschman index, a measure of labor-market concentration

Azar 2019: comparison with other concentration and elasticity findings: https://www.nber.org/papers/w26101 https://sci-hub.st/10.3386/w26101 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/812056004719280228/azar2019.pdf https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/812057488106586142/unknown.png

Dube 2019: reviewed 78 estimates from 13 studies, found that doubling the minimum wage would decrease poverty by 22-45 percent; minimum wages significantly increase incomes, particularly for the poor: https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/app.20170085 https://sci-hub.st/10.1257/app.20170085 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/807065605886836757/dube2019.pdf https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/807065900750602280/unknown.png

raising the minimum wage strongly reduces inequality: https://www.minneapolisfed.org/publications/the-region/reducing-inequality-with-the-minimum-wage

real consumption growth in some sectors follows minimum wage increases: this suggests that the minimum wage has a net positive impact on consumption: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/jmcb.12684 https://mitsloan.mit.edu/shared/ods/documents/?PublicationDocumentID=5548 ```The finding that some categories of real consumption growth rise following an increase in the minimum wage suggest that the average consumer is better off.```

a 10% increase in the minimum wage increases inflation by ~0.25% and increases consumption by ~0.22%: https://research.upjohn.org/up_workingpapers/260/ https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/418850379518705675/704154225680187412/macdonald16.pdf ```Quantitatively, we find that an increase in the minimum wage is associated with a modest rise in city-level prices: A 10 percent increase in the minimum wage increases the local-aggregate CPI by 0.14 percentage point in the year of the increase. This city-level inflation effect is persistent, with a cumulative price gain taking into account the lagged minimum wage change of about 25 basis points for a 10 percent hike in the minimum wage.``````Second, a 10 percent increase in the minimum wage is followed by 0.22 percentage point increase in nominal consumer spending, presumably as a result of greater income and perhaps higher employment, but also through relative prices and other channels as the local economy adjusts to the higher minimum wage.``````Whereas the commonly accepted elasticity of prices to minimum wage changes is 0.07, we find a value almost half of that, 0.036. Importantly, the value we found, 0.036, falls far short of what would be expected if low-wage labor markets are perfectly competitive.```

1981 meta-analysis of 4 studies suggested that a 10% increase in minimum wage would increase wages by .8% (overall growth: 9%) and prices by .3% (overall growth: 9.3%): https://books.google.com/books?id=M1RwvCGV5DEC https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/40324816.pdf https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/418850379518705675/704151939688038470/sellekaerts81.pdf ```The Commission found that the effect of a 10 percent sustained annual rise in the minimum wage over its historical level from 1974 to the second quarter of 1979 would have increased wages 0.8 percent and consumer prices somewhat less than 0.3 percent. This effect is small, considering that the actual average annual rate of inflation during the same period was 9 percent for wages and 9.3 percent for consumer prices.```

1st literature review: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1467-6419.2007.00532.x http://sci-hub.st/10.1111/j.1467-6419.2007.00532.x [unformatted, reread]

2nd literature review: http://ftp.iza.org/dp1072.pdf https://sci-hub.st/10.0000/papers.ssrn.com/524803 [unformatted, reread]

in Germany, about 25% of the wage increase due from minimum wage increases results from workers switching from less-productive (less profitable) firms to more profitable firms; higher minimum wage increases resulted in higher increases in firm efficiency: https://ideas.repec.org/p/crm/wpaper/2007.html http://sarkoups.free.fr/dustmann719.pdf

Gertner 2019: higher minimum wages are non-causally correlated with lower suicide rates: a $1 higher minimum wage correlates with 2% lower suicide rates: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-suicide-wages/higher-state-minimum-wage-tied-to-lower-suicide-rates-idUSKCN1RV17R https://www.ajpmonline.org/article/S0749-3797(19)30028-5/fulltext https://sci-hub.st/10.1016/j.amepre.2018.12.008 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/866070244552212530/gertner2019.pdf """A one-dollar increase in state minimum wage was associated on average with a 1.9% decrease in the annual age-adjusted suicide rate. Such a decrease in the suicide rate during the study period would have resulted in roughly 8,000 fewer suicide deaths.""" """Though steps were taken to reduce bias using robust model specification and covariate adjustment, the association between minimum wages and suicide rates detected in this study should not necessarily be interpreted as causal. Fixed effects models account for important differences between states that are stable over time but are unable to control for time-varying unobserved factors."""

Kaufman 2020: difference-in-difference estimates suggest that raising the minimum wage by $1 causally decreases suicides by about 3.5% among people with high school degree or less: https://jech.bmj.com/content/74/3/219 https://sci-hub.st/10.1136/jech-2019-212981 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/866072846773911552/kaufman2020.pdf https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/866074343733985290/unknown.png https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/866074078325243963/unknown.png

Americans produce $63.45 per hour worked: https://twitter.com/ChicagoCityDSA/status/977560606407458817 https://data.oecd.org/lprdty/gdp-per-hour-worked.htm

Americans earn $28.86 per hour worked: https://twitter.com/ChicagoCityDSA/status/977562018549989376 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CEU0500000003

stop blaming taxes: the vast majority of your labor goes to capitalists, not the government:

in the last 30 years, productivity increased 73% but hourly compensation increased just 12%: https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/ https://www.epi.org/publication/understanding-the-historic-divergence-between-productivity-and-a-typical-workers-pay-why-it-matters-and-why-its-real/

the EPI calculates that this is almost entirely due to increasing inequality: https://www.epi.org/publication/swa-wages-2019/ https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/851659391911460884/184209-24598.png

^ alternative inflation metrics -- PCE is best at estimating inflation of prices of consumed goods and IPD at prices of produced goods -- find a smaller difference (but still a real one) between productivity and compensation: https://www.heritage.org/jobs-and-labor/report/productivity-and-compensation-growing-together

^ the EPI graph's productivity index is based on all private workers but its compensation index includes public sector workers but excludes supervisors; when corrected, no major gap appears: https://www.americanactionforum.org/research/does-compensation-lag-behind-productivity/

between 1979 and 2007, the average worker worked 10.7% longer for 26.9% higher real wages: https://www.epi.org/publication/ib348-trends-us-work-hours-wages-1979-2007/

the US labor share of output has declined for the past century: https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2017/article/estimating-the-us-labor-share.htm

the US labor share of GDP has declined for the past century: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LABSHPUSA156NRUG

^ note: the reasons for this are more complicated than you'd think: https://www.vox.com/2015/1/8/7511281/labor-share-income xxx reread

wage theft (theft by employers from employees) is three times larger than criminal theft: https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/7ebdyu/billions_of_dollars_stolen_every_year_in_the_us/dq3rtgk/ http://www.nelp.org/content/uploads/2015/03/BrokenLawsReport2009.pdf

wage theft is three times largrer than criminal theft: https://www.epi.org/publication/wage-theft-bigger-problem-forms-theft-workers/

concentrated labor markets (those with fewer hirers) have substantially lower wages: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3088767 Using a panel IV regression, we show that going from the 25th percentile to the 75th percentile in concentration is associated with a 17% decline in posted wages, suggesting that concentration increases labor market power.

moving from a 6-day workweek to a 5-day workweek increased weekly free and physiological needs time by 10h46m for women and 10h11m for men in the USSR: https://books.google.com/books?id=x8JYjwEACAAJ https://1lib.us/book/2669908/77497f

the USSR had problems with scheduling free time in the workweek, especially before the move to a 40-hour, 5-day workweek: https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/2520459.pdf

engaging in enjoyable leisure appears to improve physical and mental health, health behaviors, and buffer against the effects of stressful life events: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2863117/

excessive work increases risk: https://oem.bmj.com/content/oemed/62/9/588.full.pdf After adjusting for those factors, working in jobs with overtime schedules was associated with a 61% higher injury hazard rate compared to jobs without overtime. Working at least 12 hours per day was associated with a 37% increased hazard rate and working at least 60 hours per week was associated with a 23% increased hazard rate. A strong dose-response effect was observed, with the injury rate (per 100 accumulated worker-years in a particular schedule) increasing in correspondence to the number of hours per day (or per week) in the workers customary schedule

the average worker reports spending just 40% of their work time on their "primary duties" https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/12/the-wasted-workday/383380/ https://www.workfront.com/sites/default/files/files/2019-01/2019%20US%20State%20of%20Work.pdf

unemployment scarring = earnings losses due to unemployment = the difference between the earnings change among workers experiencing unemployment and the estimated earnings change they would've had if they had not experienced unemployment

Pons 2021: workers in countries with low EPL have worse unemployment scarring during rising unemployment; in contrast, countries with high EPL have near-equivalent scarring in all unemployment directions: https://academic.oup.com/ser/advance-article/doi/10.1093/ser/mwaa049/6118376 https://sci-hub.st/10.1093/ser/mwaa049/6118376 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/807445397156265994/pons2021.pdf https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/807446028936413214/unknown.png

Pons 2021: the above effects of rising unemployment on greater scarring are even stronger when comparing short-term and long-term unemployment spells: https://academic.oup.com/ser/advance-article/doi/10.1093/ser/mwaa049/6118376 https://sci-hub.st/10.1093/ser/mwaa049/6118376 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/807445397156265994/pons2021.pdf https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/807446092252708904/unknown.png

^ Pons 2021: note on cutoff points: https://academic.oup.com/ser/advance-article/doi/10.1093/ser/mwaa049/6118376 https://sci-hub.st/10.1093/ser/mwaa049/6118376 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/807445397156265994/pons2021.pdf """We select two cutoff points to present the results, the low-EPL scenario represents the lowest EPL level observed in our dataset corresponding to the USA (EPL 0.26) and the high-EPL scenario corresponds to the highest EPL level observed in our dataset corresponding to Czechia (EPL 3.3). In countries with robust EPL, unemployment scarring is largely insensitive to changes in macroeconomic conditions. By contrast, in countries with weaker EPL, unemployment scarring is cyclical and becomes larger as macroeconomic conditions deteriorate. In a country with weak EPL, it makes a big difference whether workers lose a job in a context of rising unemployment or not. In a country with robust EPL, the penalty to unemployment does not substantially change when macroeconomic conditions deteriorate."""

meta-analysis of 75 studies over 881 estimates overall found that employment protection legislation (EPL)'s estimated impact on employmet is near-zero impact: https://academic.oup.com/oep/advance-article/doi/10.1093/oep/gpaa037/6008973 https://sci-hub.st/10.1093/oep/gpaa037 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/418850379518705675/784831169594261564/heimberger2020.pdf

^these results were robust to data source: the only data type subsample where EPL had significant unemployment effects were those where EPL was estimated by surveys of managers & executives, which are probably lower-quality than the EPL estimates based on the actual statutes: https://academic.oup.com/oep/advance-article/doi/10.1093/oep/gpaa037/6008973 https://sci-hub.st/10.1093/oep/gpaa037 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/418850379518705675/784831169594261564/heimberger2020.pdf

^ these results were robust to demographic groups: youth, long-term, and other unemployment measures also had no robust, statistically significant effects; female unemployment has a statistically significant effect, but it only had 2 studies: https://academic.oup.com/oep/advance-article/doi/10.1093/oep/gpaa037/6008973 https://sci-hub.st/10.1093/oep/gpaa037 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/418850379518705675/784831169594261564/heimberger2020.pdf

large "shocks" to EPL do not correlate with GDP growth in the next five years (cr_t_ terms): https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0954349X17301649 https://sci-hub.st/10.1016/j.strueco.2017.09.001 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/418850379518705675/784998012464136212/brancaccio2017.pdf endogeneity definition -- not causal! """An endogenous definition relates the average value of the variable of interest, where an above-average value can be classified as abnormal. In this case, given the extremely heterogeneous character of EPL percentage variations among different countries an endogenous threshold should take this heterogeneity into account, and therefore be differentfrom country to country. Looking at Fig. 2, we can see that there are countries, such as Belgium, where the EPL index is almost stable with only one single leap over the whole period. On the contrary, there are some countries, such as Portugal, where the index shows much more variability, the single changes being less pronounced."""

large "shocks" to EPL *do* correlate with significant reductions in the labor wage share of national income: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0954349X17301649 https://sci-hub.st/10.1016/j.strueco.2017.09.001 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/418850379518705675/784998012464136212/brancaccio2017.pdf

47% of US jobs might disappear through labor-saving automation https://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/downloads/academic/The_Future_of_Employment.pdf

a 2018 OECD study suggests that 45% of jobs are at risk of automation (37% in USA): https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2018/04/24/a-study-finds-nearly-half-of-jobs-are-vulnerable-to-automation https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/employment/automation-skills-use-and-training_2e2f4eea-en

automatic cars are extremely overhyped: https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/10/self-driving-cars-how-badly-is-the-technology-hyped.html

current worker retraining programs are ineffective: https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2018/01/the-false-promises-of-worker-retraining/549398/

ederal regulations in the United States saved a net $131-$636 billion over 10 years: https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/draft_2017_cost_benefit_report.pdf

the projected cost of US environmental regulations is routinely higher than the real cost: https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/fact-sheets/2015/05/government-regulation-costs-lower-benefits-greater-than-industry-estimates

almost no industry is profitable if direct environmental costs are considered as costs: http://web.archive.org/web/20131126051654/http://www.trucost.com/_uploads/publishedResearch/TEEB%20Final%20Report%20-%20web%20SPv2.pdf

vaping industry: https://theintercept.com/2018/12/27/juul-vaping-industry-regulation/

Ripley Entertainment (duck boats), 2018: https://www.kansas.com/latest-news/article215757310.html

Shell (oil) and ExxonMobil (oil), 2018: https://theferret.scot/shell-exxonmobil-profit-safety-fife/

Palabora Mining Company (copper), 2018: https://www.sowetanlive.co.za/news/south-africa/2018-07-20-mine-sorry-for-workers-deaths/

Opioids in Covington, KY, 2018: http://www.rcnky.com/articles/2018/07/24/covington-sues-recover-costs-treating-addiction

American truckers, 2018: https://medicalxpress.com/news/2018-07-truck-drivers-overtired-overworked-underpaid.html https://www.wusa9.com/article/news/investigations/underrides/moms-push-tractor-trailer-law-as-underride-deaths-are-at-10-year-high/65-546090814

Australian trucking, 2018: https://redflag.org.au/node/6438

Johnson and Johnson (baby powder), 2018: https://www.npr.org/2018/07/13/628684038/jury-awards-4-7-billion-to-women-in-johnson-johnson-talcum-powder-suit

this study finds that regulation decreases growth, but measures "regulation" as "number of pages in the federal register"; terrible quality: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10887-013-9088-y http://sci-hub.st/10.1007/s10887-013-9088-y

in total, the clean air act prevented 205,000 premature deaths (10,250 deaths per year) and saved $5.6-49.4 trillion (median $22.2 trillion, $1.11 trillion per year) and cost $523 billion ($.026 trillion per year) between 1970 and 1990: https://www.epa.gov/clean-air-act-overview/benefits-and-costs-clean-air-act-1970-1990-study-design-and-summary-results https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2015-06/documents/contsetc.pdf https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4133758/

the clean air act reduced mobile vehicle emissions and is estimated to save $15 billion and 39,000 premature deaths per year: https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2015-05/documents/2030annualbenefits.pdf

the clean air act reduced fine particulate emissions and reduced dementia, saving $214 billion per year: https://www.nber.org/papers/w24970 [unformatted, unread]

the EPA rapidly reduced blood lead levels under the Clean Air Act: https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2015-06/documents/contsetc.pdf

lead emissions rapidly decreased after the 70's: http://infohouse.p2ric.org/ref/06/05724/

lead in gas per person was increasing until 1974: https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/02/lead-exposure-gasoline-crime-increase-children-health/

^ timeline of rollout of unleaded gasoline: http://web.mit.edu/ckolstad/www/Newell.pdf As is summarized in Table 1, the phasedown of lead in gasoline began in 1974 when, under the authority of the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1970, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) introduced rules requiring the use of unleaded gasoline in new cars equipped with catalytic converters.

^ leaded gasoline sales continued to increase until 1976: http://archive.ph/oftYC https://p2infohouse.org/ref/06/05725.pdf https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/418850379518705675/640907859273449482/05725.pdf

international comparisons on lead reduction: https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/10.1146/annurev.eg.20.110195.001505 https://sci-hub.st/10.1146/annurev.eg.20.110195.001505 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/418850379518705675/763851750728794112/thomas1995.pdf

the clean air act reduced nitrogen oxide (NOx) and sulfur compound (SO_2, sulphur dioxide & SO_4^2-, sulphate) pollution without increasing power costs: https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/2011_napap_508.pdf http://web.archive.org/web/20091002222354/http://www.epa.gov/airmarkets/progress/ARP_2.html

^ nitrogen oxides effects: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NOx#Health_and_environment_effects

^ sulphur dioxide effects: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulfur_dioxide#As_an_air_pollutant

^ sulphate effects: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulfate#Environmental_effects

the clean air act reduced nitrogen oxide (NOx) and sulfur compound (SO2 & SO42-) pollution-related health costs by $174-427 billion per year, reduced premature deaths by 7,000-66,000 per year, and cost industry just $3 billion per year: https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/2011_napap_508.pdf http://web.archive.org/web/20091002222354/http://www.epa.gov/airmarkets/progress/ARP_2.html https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/194704 https://www.atsjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1164/rccm.200503-443OC In the most recent study evaluating the cost of implementing only Title IV, Chestnut and Mills (2005) estimated total annualized costs at a slightly higher level than studies reported in the 2005 NAPAP RTC (NSTC, 2005). Chestnut and Mills (2005) estimated the total annual costs for reducing SO2 at approximately $2 billion (2000$) per year, with NOx emission reductions costing an additional $1 billion annually still a fraction of the initial cost estimates.

the clean air act reduced mercury emissions by 90+% in hospitals and municipal waste plants and is expected to reduce emissions by 90% for power plants: https://www.epa.gov/mats/cleaner-power-plants The final rule establishes power plant emission standards for mercury, acid gases, and non-mercury metallic toxic pollutants which will result in: preventing about 90 percent of the mercury in coal burned in power plants from being emitted to the air; reducing 88 percent of acid gas emissions from power plants; and reducing 41 percent of sulfur dioxide emissions from power plants beyond the reductions expected from the Cross State Air Pollution Rule.

^ mercury effects: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_(element)#Toxicity_and_safety

extension of the clean air act mercury rule to power plants in 2015 is expected to prevent 4,200-11,000 premature deaths per year and save $33-89 billion per year (likely an underestimate) and cost just $9.6 billion per year: https://www3.epa.gov/ttn/ecas/regdata/RIAs/matsriafinal.pdf We estimate the monetized health and climate co-benefits of MATS to be $37 billion to $90 billion at a 3% discount rate and $33 billion to $81 billion at a 7% discount rate in 2016, depending on the epidemiological function used to estimate reductions in premature mortality. All estimates are in 2007$.

emissions of Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) have nosedived while distance travelled has grown linearly: https://www.epa.gov/clean-air-act-overview/progress-cleaning-air-and-improving-peoples-health Compared to 1970 vehicle models, new cars, SUVs and pickup trucks are roughly 99 percent cleaner for common pollutants (hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides and particle emissions), while Annual Vehicle Miles Traveled has dramatically increased.

^ VOC effects: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volatile_organic_compound#Health_risks

^ definition of Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs): https://www.epa.gov/indoor-air-quality-iaq/technical-overview-volatile-organic-compounds

the laffer curve (gov't revenue vs tax rate) for the United States peaks at 70% income tax and 70% capital tax: http://www.nber.org/papers/w15343.pdf

Young 2016: accounting for out-migration of millionaires, the revenue-maximizing marginal tax rate for income-millionaires would be 68%: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0003122416639625 http://sci-hub.st/10.1177/0003122416639625

tax cuts on income for the bottom 90% increase economic growth, but not for the top 10% (column 4 suggests, if anything, higher taxes on the top 10% increase real GDP): https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/701424 https://sci-hub.st/10.1086/701424 ```In particular, the 3.4 percent estimate for the increase in state employment from a 1 percent of GDP tax cut for the bottom 90 percent translates to roughly $31,500 per job.31 These cost-per-job estimates are consistent with those reported in Ramey (2011): $25,000 in Wilson (2012), roughly $28,600 in Chodorow-Reich et al. (2012), $30,000 in Su rez Serrato and Wingender (2011), and $35,000 in Shoag (2010).32 My estimates for the impact of tax cuts for the top 10 percent on employment are statistically and economically indistinguishable from zero, so the corresponding cost-per-job estimate is much higher. Therefore, given my estimates by income group, the overall impact of a tax cut of 1 percent of GDP that goes half to the bottom 90 percent and half to the top 10 percent will have roughly a $63,000 cost per job.```

Young 2016: states with higher taxes on income-millionaires do not have significantly more emigration of income-millionaires: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0003122416639625 http://sci-hub.st/10.1177/0003122416639625

states with higher taxes (yellow) don't see lower growth in the number of millionaire tax filers (4 of the 10 states with above-average growth in millionaire tax filers have high taxes; 4 of the 40 states below average have high taxes): http://massbudget.org/report_window.php?loc=What-Has-Happened-in-Other-States-with-High-Tax-Rates-on-Million-Dollar-Incomes.html

the "flight of the wealthy" after raising taxes is almost entirely a myth: https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=27987 [unformatted]

estimate of the scope of tax haven wealth: about 26 trillion in 2007: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2012/jul/21/offshore-wealth-global-economy-tax-havens https://www.taxjustice.net/price-offshore-revisited/ https://www.taxjustice.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Price_of_Offshore_Revisited_120722.pdf ```As for TJNs original estimates, when the errors are corrected, the most likely quantity of private offshore financial assets in June 2004 was not $9.5 trillion, but $12.1 to $20 trillion, depending on whether we use the very conservative 3.0 liquidity multiplier or something more realistic. Since then, offshore deposits by nonbanks nearly doubled from 2004 to December 2007, when the global economy took a tumble. During that period, offshore financial assets may have grown to be worth as much as $22 to 33 trillion. Since then the model indicates that they have slumped slightly to the $21 trillion to $32 trillion range, with a plausible midpoint of about $26 trillion. But this still represents enough growth since 2004 to be consistent with the growth in global private banking AUMs noted above. Assuming a developing country wealth share of 25 to 30 percent, this range is also consistent with the results of our accumulated wealth model.```

state and local taxes are regressive: https://itep.org/whopays/

federal taxes are progressive: the bottom 60-80% net benefit or are net unchanged from federal taxes and transfers: https://www.cbo.gov/publication/55413#interactive-graphic https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2019-07/55413-CBO-distribution-of-household-income-2016.pdf relevant to Yang universal basic income (UBI)

status of wealth taxes and death transfer / gift taxes in the OECD, 2015: https://www.nber.org/papers/w26544 http://www.pse-journal.hr/upload/files/pse/2020/2/1.pdf

status of wealth taxes and death transfer / gift taxes in the OECD, 1985: https://www.nber.org/papers/w26544 http://www.pse-journal.hr/upload/files/pse/2020/2/1.pdf

fewer OECD countries have a wealth tax in 2015 than 1985: https://www.nber.org/papers/w26544 http://www.pse-journal.hr/upload/files/pse/2020/2/1.pdf ```Of the eleven countries with a direct wealth tax in 1985, only four still had one in 2015 the Netherlands (on the provincial level only), Norway, Spain, and Switzerland (on the canton level). Spain abolished its wealth tax on January 1, 2009, but then re-introduced it in 2012. Austria and Denmark discontinued their wealth tax in 1995, Germany in 1997, Finland and Luxembourg in 2006, and Sweden in 2007. Iceland abrogated its wealth tax in 2006, reintroduced it in 2010 for four years, and then eliminated it in 2015. However, France reintroduced a direct wealth tax in 2011 and abolished it again in 2018, except on highvalue real estate assets.7 As of 2016, three of the original 24 OECD countries had a national wealth tax and two had a provincial (or canton-level) wealth tax.``````Why the retrenchment in wealth taxes (both direct and inheritance)? One can think of the backlash on taxes in general that began with Reagan and Thatcher in the 1980s. This was followed by a conservative backlash in continental Europe in the 1990s and 2000s. For example, the conservative government elected to power in Sweden in the mid-2000s engineered the elimination of both the direct wealth tax and the inheritance tax.```

^ explanation for above: https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2019/09/05/estimating-the-economic-impact-of-a-wealth-tax/ ```Critics cite three reasons to oppose a wealth tax. The first reason is that wealth taxes have failed in Europe. Indeed, eight of the twelve European countries with a wealth tax in 1990 had abandoned them by 2019. Saez and Zucman argue that the wealth tax repeals in Europe were the result of poor policy choices. For example, European wealth taxes were levied on households with little cash but substantial illiquid wealth due to low exemption thresholds. To avoid this problem, Saez and Zucman advocate for a high exemption threshold. The authors note that the exemption threshold in Elizabeth Warren s wealth tax proposal which is set at $50 million is 50 times higher than the typical European wealth tax.```

the US is in a strong position for wealth tax evasion: https://www.brookings.edu/bpea-articles/progressive-wealth-taxation/ https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Saez-Zucman_conference-draft.pdf ```EU efforts at curbing offshore tax evasion have been weak. As shown for example by Johannesen and Zucman (2014), half hearted tax enforcement efforts can be easily circumvented and end up having minimal effects on tax evasion. In contrast, the US has taken a bold step in the enforcement direction with FACTA in 2010 that imposes steep penalties on foreign financial institutions that fail to report accounts of US residents to the US tax authorities (see Zucman, 2015 for a detailed discussion).``````FATCA follows the route of policing directly foreign financial institutions but with the difficulty that the US tax authorities have less power to audit effectively foreign financial institutions than home financial institutions. Another route is to get foreign governments to share the information they can collect from their financial institutions. The second route is best in the long-run but likely more difficult to establish as it requires international cooperation.```

the US is in a strong position for wealth flight: https://www.brookings.edu/bpea-articles/progressive-wealth-taxation/ https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Saez-Zucman_conference-draft.pdf ```Second, how much residence decisions of the wealthy are affected by taxation is also heavily dependent on policy. The EU is organized to foster such tax competition. Individual income and wealth taxation depends solely on current residence. Hence, when France had a progressive wealth tax before 2018, moving from Paris to London would extinguish immediately progressive wealth tax liability (except for domestic real estate assets).``````What is more, EU countries have schemes to lure away the high skill or the wealthy from their home countries by promising tax breaks to movers. Contrast this with US policy: US citizens remain liable for US income taxes for life and regardless of residence (but with full credit for foreign income taxes paid). The only way to escape the US income tax is to renounce US citizenship and even then, the US imposes a substantial exit tax. The exit tax, formally known as the expatriation tax, is essentially a tax on all unrealized capital gains upon expatriation. It applies to high income (incomes over $160,000) or high wealth (wealth above $2 million) expatriates. It applies to citizens who renounce citizenship and also to long-term residents who end their US resident tax status. The wealth tax proposal by Elizabeth Warren proposes to further strengthen the exit with a 40% wealth tax on expatriates assets. Such exit taxes can effectively eliminate incentives to exit for tax reasons.```

estimates of wealth tax hiding: http://gabriel-zucman.eu/files/saez-zucman-wealthtax-warren.pdf ```Seim, David. 2017. "Behavioral Responses to an Annual Wealth Tax: Evidence from Sweden", American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 9(4), 395-421 and Jakobsen, Kristian, Katrine Jakobsen, Henrik Kleven and Gabriel Zucman. 2018. Wealth Accumulation and Wealth Taxation: Theory and Evidence from Denmark NBER working paper No. 24371, obtain small avoidance/evasion responses in the case of Sweden and Denmark in two countries with systematic third party reporting of wealth: a 1% wealth tax reduces reported wealth by less than 1%. Londono-Velez, Juliana and Javier Avila. "Can Wealth Taxation Work in Developing Countries? Quasi-Experimental Evidence from Colombia", UC Berkeley working paper, 2018 show medium size avoidance/evasion responses in the case of Colombia where enforcement is not as strong: a 1% wealth tax reduces reported wealth by about 2-3%. The study for Switzerland, Br lhart, Marius, Jonathan Gruber, Matthias Krapf, and Kurt Schmidheiny. Taxing Wealth: Evidence from Switzerland, NBER working paper No. 22376, 2016 is an outlier that finds very large responses to wealth taxation in Switzerland: a 1% wealth tax lowers reported wealth by 23-34%. This extremely large estimate is extrapolated from very small variations in wealth tax rates over time and across Swiss cantons and hence is not as compellingly identified as the other estimates based on large variations in the wealth tax rate. Switzerland has no systematic third party reporting of assets which can also make tax evasion responses larger than in Scandinavia. Our 15% tax avoidance/evasion response to a 2% wealth tax is based on the average across these four studies (2%*(.5+.5+2.5+28.5)/4=16%).```

https://www.brookings.edu/bpea-articles/progressive-wealth-taxation/ https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Saez-Zucman_conference-draft.pdf ```Aggravated millionaires are taxpayers wealthy in illiquid assets (or at least wealthy enough to be above the exemption threshold) but poor in cash. As a result, such taxpayers feel the wealth tax as a heavy and unjust burden.``````The cleanest solution to liquidity issues is to increase the exemption thresholds so that mere millionaires are not liable. This route was followed for the US estate tax.``````The recent wealth tax proposal by Elizabeth Warren has also a very high exemption level of $50 million which is 50 times higher than typical European progressive wealth taxes. As a result, the policy debate on the proposal has not emphasized the issue of illiquid wealth and lack of cash.58```

a small wealth tax like Warren's or Switzerland's would raise substantial revenue but would have small effects on inequality: https://www.nber.org/papers/w26544 http://www.pse-journal.hr/upload/files/pse/2020/2/1.pdf

wealth taxes reduce wealth inequality: growth in wealth held by the top 400 Americans would have been halted by a "radical" of 10% marginal wealth tax above $1bn and permanently reduced by a "confiscatory" marginal wealth tax of 90%: https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2019/09/05/estimating-the-economic-impact-of-a-wealth-tax/ https://www.brookings.edu/bpea-articles/progressive-wealth-taxation/ https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Saez-Zucman_conference-draft.pdf

higher corporate taxes are not significantly associated with higher or lower growth rates: https://www.epi.org/publication/ib364-corporate-tax-rates-and-economic-growth/

taxing businesses mostly taxes the owners of capital, rather than workers themselves: https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2017/10/trumps-treasury-department-deleted-research-that-contradicts-republicans-on-tax-reform/ https://www.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/May2012corptaxpaper.pdf We compute the percentage of capital income attributable to normal versus supernormal return, the percentage of normal return attributable to a cash flow tax versus a burdensome capital tax, and the portion of the burdensome tax on normal return to capital to distribute to capital income versus to labor income. **In summary, 82% of the corporate income tax burden is distributed to capital income and 18% is distributed to labor income.**

integration of corporate and income taxes would be enormously beneficial: https://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/tax-policy/Documents/Report-Integration-1992.pdf

taxes should be automatic: https://www.vox.com/2014/4/11/5603974/taxes-dont-have-to-suck https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlFeAPdmIM8

taxes are automatic for 100% of Danes, Estonians, Icelanders, Swedes, and Chileans: http://www.oecd.org/tax/administration/36280368.pdf

about half of tax filings could be automated: https://www.brookings.edu/research/the-simple-return-reducing-americas-tax-burden-through-return-free-filing/ https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/200607goolsbee.pdf

automatic filing could save up to "up to 225 million hours of time and more than $2 billion a year in tax preparation fees" for the 40% of the population it would apply to (~): https://www.brookings.edu/research/the-simple-return-reducing-americas-tax-burden-through-return-free-filing/ https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/200607goolsbee.pdf

the average American spends 17 hours preparing returns: https://thehill.com/regulation/finance/329390-study-taxpayers-spend-17-hours-preparing-returns

a 70% marginal income tax above $10 million has net +16% support (58% support, 42% oppose, don't know excluded): https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2019/03/14/americans-want-the-wealthy-and-corporations-to-pay-more-taxes-but-are-elected-officials-listening/ https://morningconsult.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/190202_crosstabs_POLITICO_RVs_v1_AP.pdf

a 70% marginal income tax above $10 million has net +18% support (59% support, 41% oppose, don't know excluded): https://thehill.com/hilltv/what-americas-thinking/425422-a-majority-of-americans-support-raising-the-top-tax-rate-to-70

most income-millionaires support taxes on income-millionaires: https://blogs.wsj.com/wealth/2011/10/27/most-millionaires-support-warren-buffetts-tax-on-the-rich/ Fully 61% of those with net worths of $5 million or more support the tax on million-plus earners.

a 2% marginal wealth tax above 50 million + 3% marginal wealth tax above 1 billion has net +50% support (75% support, 25% oppose, don't know excluded): https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2019/03/14/americans-want-the-wealthy-and-corporations-to-pay-more-taxes-but-are-elected-officials-listening/ https://morningconsult.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/190202_crosstabs_POLITICO_RVs_v1_AP.pdf

Americans want to tax billionaires but not eliminate them: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/wealth-inequality-billionaires-poll_n_5c7d98d8e4b069b2129ec865 https://big.assets.huffingtonpost.com/athena/files/2019/02/28/5c78213ee4b010e7c5653787.pdf

a majority of Americans support repealing the estate tax (53% support, 48% oppose, don't know excluded), but by a much smaller margin than 2002 (73% support, 29% oppose, don't know excluded): https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2019/03/14/americans-want-the-wealthy-and-corporations-to-pay-more-taxes-but-are-elected-officials-listening/

1: (market interest rate < natural interest rate) causes easy credit 2: easy credit causes excess capital investment 3: excess capital investment causes unsustainable growth (ie, ultimately unprofitable growth) 4: unsustainable capital projects fail and recession occurs: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11293-014-9415-5 https://sci-hub.st/10.1007/s11293-014-9415-5 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/418850379518705675/725726136402706442/luther2014.pdf ```[T]he Austrian economists Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich A. Hayek developed a unique theory of the business cycle. In their view, an unsustainable boom ensues when the rate of interest prevailing in the market falls below the natural rate. Mistaking the easy credit for a genuine increase in savings, entrepreneurs are led to take on more capital-intensive projects. According to the Austrians, the boom is characterized not only by an increase in aggregate production but also by a distortion of the structure of production. Once the errors are realized, a recession follows: aggregate production declines as the structure of production is repaired.```

graphical summary of ABCT: the Hayekian triangle: https://efaj.vse.cz/pdfs/efa/2014/03/05.pdf

Kuehn 2013: reviewing Young 2012 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08913811.2013.853863 https://sci-hub.st/10.1080/08913811.2013.853863 The most sophisticated empirical research on Hayekian business-cycle theory to date is offered by Andrew Young (2012), who develops a measure of the length of the capital structure rather than relying on qualitative industrial or process classifications. He estimates the position of an industry in the capital structure with the total industry output requirement (TIOR), or the gross value of all other industries output required by an industry to generate one dollar s worth of that industry s final good. Industries that fall relatively early in the capital structure will use fewer inputs to produce their (gross) output, and so they will have a lower measured TIOR. Using this method, Young (2012) calculates the TIOR for sixty-five industries, and determines that the aggregated length of the capital structure measured using his methods is pro-cyclical and closely correlated with the federal funds rate from 1998 to 2009, as Hayekian theory suggests. One problem with this measure that Young (2012) points out is that it is not clear how much meaning can be ascribed to a given change in the TIOR. From 2008 to 2009, the aggregate TIOR fell from about 1.8 to a little over 1.7. Is this a large change or a small one? Does it matter for macroeconomic fluctuations? At this point, it is difficult to say. If nothing else, the empirical work suggests that Kaldor (1942, 363) was quite wrong in dismissing the lengthening of the structure of production as one of those blind alleys of economic speculation which appear very suggestive for a time, but whose significance evaporates as soon as one tries to fit the theoretical conclusions more closely to the observed phenomena. The theoretical discussion fits the best analyses of the observed phenomena quite well. Questions remain, however, about the strength of the Hayekian mechanisms or their significance for the business cycle.

^ Kuehn 2013 appendix, studies to review: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/808128603371864094/kuehn2013appendix.pdf xxx

Claeys 2015: graphical depiction of plucking model and actual data from Europe's 2008 recession: http://bruegel.org/2015/02/the-plucking-model-of-recessions-and-recoveries/

Kuehn 2013: Hayekian theory predicts that "boom size" should predict "bust size": https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08913811.2013.853863 https://sci-hub.st/10.1080/08913811.2013.853863 """Another cutting critique grounded in an assessment of how well Hayek s theory fits the data is Milton Friedman s (1969, 1993) plucking model of the business cycle. [....] A correlation between the depth of a recession and the height of the subsequent boom would strongly imply that recessions are the consequence of a shock that had nothing to do with the preceding growth period, and that the recovery was just a reversion of the economy back to its stable growth path. Friedman found that in a data series going back to the late nineteenth century recession depths were correlated with the subsequent boom and not the prior boom. He called this the plucking model because it implied that recessions were caused by plucking the economy down from an otherwise steady growth path. In many ways, Friedman s simple empirical exercise offers the greatest blow to Hayek of all the criticisms discussed here. A theory of the unsustainable boom is of little use if busts are not caused by booms."""

Kuehn 2013: Hayekian theory poorly predicts recessions; neither tight or loose monetary policy, relative to the "natural" rate of interest, consistently precedes or postcedes recessions: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08913811.2013.853863 https://sci-hub.st/10.1080/08913811.2013.853863 Figure 2, below, subtracts the real federal funds rate from this estimated natural rate. If this difference is equal to zero, then the actual federal funds rate set by the Federal Reserve is equal to the best estimate of the natural rate of interest, and monetary policy is neutral. A positive value for the difference indicates tight monetary policy, while a negative value indicates loose monetary policy. Vertical lines are provided to indicate the start date of recessions, as determined by the National Bureau of Economic Research. [....] The recessions of the 1960s and 1970s at least have the virtue of exhibiting the pro-cyclical (albeit persistently loose) monetary stance required by Hayek. Far less is available for Austrians to work with in the case of the 1981-82 and 1990-91 recessions, which were not preceded by any monetary loosening at all. Regardless of the actual level of the real interest rate, if this rate is not below the natural rate if monetary policy is not expansionary there can be no unsustainable boom according to Hayekian business cycle theory. [....] Hayekians who think that the capital structure lengthens and contracts with the price signals sent by monetary policy are confronted with an awkward question: exactly what were entrepreneurs doing between 2005-06 and 2008? [....] Given the weak evidence for Hayek s unsustainable boom, it seems far more plausible that Keynesian (or monetarist) forces drive the business cycle, and that the capital structure behaving in an otherwise purely Hayekian manner lengthens and contracts as a consequence the of the business cycle, rather than as its cause.

Luther 2014: ABCT predicts that an increase in interest rates should cause crude and finished goods to increase in both quantity and price relative to intermediate goods: for both price and quantity and crude and finished goods, empirical results are statistically insignificant and opposite in sign to these predictions: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11293-014-9415-5 https://sci-hub.st/10.1007/s11293-014-9415-5 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/418850379518705675/725726136402706442/luther2014.pdf ```If the Austrian view is empirically relevant, the authors surmise, a positive monetary shock should increase the production and prices of goods at early and late stages relative to the production and prices of goods at middle stages.``````With the exception of early- to middle-stage prices, which responded positively to the productivity gap but negatively to TGt, the responses depicted in Figs. 1 and 2 are qualitatively similar. For the most part, the responses of the four ratios are small, statistically insignificant, and of the opposite sign as that predicted by the Austrian theory. From this, we conclude that our results are robust to selection of a measure of the natural rate and, accordingly, are more confident in our assessment that the available data provides little empirical support for the Austrian business cycle theory.

Hayekian theory predicts that consumption and investment move oppositely; they move together: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08913811.2013.853863 https://sci-hub.st/10.1080/08913811.2013.853863 Cowen (1997) points out that over the business cycle, investment and consumption move together, a phenomenon he refers to as co-movement . [...] Hayek s theory predicts that investment and consumption should move in opposite directions over the business cycle[.] [...] First, Prices and Production assumed that the economy starts in a position of full employment before the unsustainable boom begins. [...] [S]ince the economy is operating at capacity any increase in capital goods production has to come at the expense of consumer goods production. [...] [Second,] the upper-turning point [...] accounts for the end of the boom with the Ricardian assumption that capital intensification occurs at the expense of labor income, and that this tension between capital and labor ends the boom. [....] Garrison (2000, 2004) provides a supply-side response by assuming that capital intensive production processes are more productive than labor intensive production processes, so the move to capital intensive processes can accommodate a simultaneous increase in consumption and investment. [....] Hayek clearly expected a movement of consumption and investment in opposite directions: an increase in the demand for consumer goods will tend to decrease rather than increase the demand for investment goods [...] [I]f Garrison [...] is accurate, it is not clear what needs to be rebalanced in a market correction (i.e., a recession). [...] [T]he upper turning point occurred precisely because of this tension between consumption and investment. If that tension is explained away [...] then [...] the inevitable bust is explained away as well.

Hayekian theory ignores the fact that businesses largely ignore the interest rate for day-to-day operations: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08913811.2013.853863 https://sci-hub.st/10.1080/08913811.2013.853863 A more substantial rebuttal to Hayek s concerns about a distorted capital structure is offered by Tullock (1987), who objects to the whole idea that firms care much about interest rates in determining the volume of production. Hayek s theory requires that an artificially low interest rate makes production that takes a longer time more profitable than it otherwise would be, but if interest costs are not even considered by firms the whole theory falls apart. [....] He further noted that the reason why firms ignore interest rates in production decisions is that even highly capital intensive production processes (after all capital equipment has been acquired and installed) do not usually take a substantial amount of time to complete. Tullock s experience with interest rates anticipates a finding by Akerlof, Dickens, and Perry (2000) that as long as inflation is modest, firms ignore it in their decision making. Although entrepreneurial responses to interest rate variations (in Tullock s case) or low inflation (in Akerlof, Dickens, and Perry s case) need not be identical, the common conclusion of this and other behavioral research seems to be that these sorts of minor costs are discounted in the decision making process relative to larger concerns. If interest rates and inflation fail to drive distortionary production decisions it is hard to see why a market correction would be inevitable or even necessary. Interest rates are still critical for large capital expenditures, but the widely cited empirical work of Davis, Haltiwanger, and Schuh (1996) suggests that most job creation and destruction happens at large, mature establishments which are presumably primarily making capacity utilization decisions rather than new capital expenditure decisions.

Austrian economists routinely assert that we should prefer "praxeology" (ie, deductive "logic" about how they think humans behave) over statistical measures of how humans actually behave (ex: behavioral economics).

video: https://youtu.be/bibfslEFk2s?t=752 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8w7BDHEfNM

edited transcript picture: http://libertyunbound.com/sites/files/printarchive/Liberty_Magazine_July_1991.pdf https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/418850379518705675/778348289115815946/Liberty_Magazine_July_1991.pdf

edited transcript text: http://libertyunbound.com/sites/files/printarchive/Liberty_Magazine_July_1991.pdf https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/418850379518705675/778348289115815946/Liberty_Magazine_July_1991.pdf ```So far as von Mises is concerned, I refer to his methodological doctrine of praxeology. [....] Because his fundamental idea was that we knew things about "human action" (the title of his famous book) because we are human beings. As a result, he argued, we have absolutely certain knowledge of motivations of human action and he maintained that we can derive substantive conclusions from that basic knowledge. Facts, statistical or other evidence cannot, he argued, be used to test those conclusions, but only to illustrate a theory. They cannot be used to contradict a theory, because we are not generalizing from observed evidence, but from innate knowledge of human motives and behavior. That philosophy converts an asserted body of substantive conclusions into a religion.```

Mises asserted that praxeology was un-empirical, un-testable, and un-verifiable: https://mises.org/library/human-action-0/html/pp/638 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/418850379518705675/782272708162748417/mises1963.pdf ```In the field of human history a limitation similar to that which the experimentally tested theories enjoin upon the attempts to interpret and elucidate individual physical, chemical, and physiological events is provided by praxeology. Praxeology is a theoretical and systematic, not a historical, science. Its scope is human action as such, irrespective of all environmental, accidental, and individual circumstances of the concrete acts. Its cognition is purely formal and general without reference to the material content and the particular features of the actual case. It aims at knowledge valid for all instances in which the conditions exactly correspond to those implied in its assumptions and inferences. Its statements and propositions are not derived from experience. They are, like those of logic and mathematics, a priori. They are not subject to verification or falsification on the ground of experience and facts. They are both logically and temporally antecedent to any comprehension of historical facts. They are a necessary requirement of any intellectual grasp of historical events. Without them we should not be able to see in the course of events anything else than kaleidoscopic change and chaotic muddle.```

Mises famously rejected statistical measures of economic performance in general: https://mises.org/library/human-action-0/html/pp/730 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/418850379518705675/782272708162748417/mises1963.pdf ```In the field of praxeology and economics no sense can be given to the notion of measurement. In the hypothetical state of rigid conditions there are no changes to be measured. In the actual world of change there are no fixed points, dimensions, or relations which could serve as a standard. The monetary unit's purchasing power never changes evenly with regard to all things vendible and purchasable. The notions of stability and stabilization are empty if they do not refer to a state of rigidity and its preservation. However, this state of rigidity cannot even be thought out consistently to its ultimate logical consequences; still less can it be realized.```

Mises rejected statistical measures of macroeconomic performance in specific: https://mises.org/library/human-action-0/html/pp/730 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/418850379518705675/782272708162748417/mises1963.pdf ```The pretentious solemnity which statisticians and statistical bureaus display in computing indexes of purchasing power and cost of living is out of place. These index numbers are at best rather crude and inaccurate illustrations of changes which have occurred. In periods of slow alterations in the relation between the supply of and the demand for money they do not convey any information at all. In periods of inflation and consequently of sharp price changes they provide a rough image of events which every individual experiences in his daily life. A judicious housewife knows much more about price changes as far as they affect her own household than the statistical averages can tell. She has little use for computations disregarding changes both in quality and in the amount of goods which she is able or permitted to buy at the prices entering into the computation. If she "measures" the changes for her personal appreciation by taking the prices of only two or three commodities as a yardstick, she is no less "scientific" and no more arbitrary than the sophisticated mathematicians in choosing their methods for the manipulation of the data of the market.```

Murphy, Barnett, Block 2010a claim that praxeology is akin to geometry and cannot be tested: http://www.academia.edu/download/8456307/5058young-22.doc https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/418850379518705675/725731680664682637/murphy2010.pdf```For the Austrian economist, the most fundamental problem we encounter is that apodictic economic theories cannot be empirically tested at all. Rather, they are aspects of praxeology, and, as such, can only be illustrated, not tested. For praxeologists, economic theories are equivalent to mathematical or geometrical claims, such as the Pythagorean Theorem, or to the assertion that the three angles of a triangle sum to 180 degrees. One can indeed illustrate such declarations, but it would be meaningless to even attempt to test them. Young in this regard points to the unwillingness of the Austrian school to pursue econometrics. But Austrians are by no means unwilling to pursue econometrics; there are numerous praxeological publications that utilize such statistical techniques. All of them, however, illustrate, but do not purport to test, economic law.```

Young's response explains that even if Austrian logical claims follow qualitatively, they cannot explain magnitude quantitatively: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11138-010-0126-0 https://sci-hub.st/10.1007%2Fs11138-010-0126-0 ```I never claim that the results in Young (2005) reject ABCT qualitatively. Quite the opposite: I report a statistically significant, Hayekian allocative channel for monetary policy (Young 2005, p. 281). However, I additionally claim that the results suggest that Hayek s theory [is] operative but lack[s] economic significance (p. 275). Concluding that ABCT is not associated with economically significant effects (i.e., does not account for a large portion of reallocation s variance) is a statement outside of the realm of pure theory.``````Once it is accepted that quantitative, economic importance is something that pure theory can not speak to directly, quibbling about whether econometrics (or economic history) is testing or illustrating is an unfruitful exercise in semantics.```

Murphy, Barnett, Block 2010b repeat this claim in Section 4, where they also make several empirical claims and assert that they follow "apodictically" from praxeology: https://ideas.repec.org/a/rau/journl/v7y2012i3p7-20.html http://www.rebe.rau.ro/RePEc/rau/journl/FA12/REBE-FA12-A1.pdf https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/418850379518705675/725732463879520356/murphy2010b.pdf """Since Young (2010) appears interested in economic praxeological laws that are qualitative, not quantitative, here are a few, provided by Hoppe (1995): [....] Or as another example: Whenever minimum wage laws are enforced that require wages to be higher than existing market wages, involuntary unemployment will result.""" (note: Young was specifically asking for quantitative statements lol)

Vedder 1997 claims that if statistics contradict theoretical predictions, we should change the statistics, not the predictions! https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF02538485 https://sci-hub.st/10.1007/BF02538485 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/418850379518705675/782295071520718848/vedder1997.pdf ```Only partly tongue in cheek, I think it is legitimate to use Austrian praxeological principles to clarify some of the existing statistical mayhem. To illustrate, accept the Austrian proposition that wages are determined by the marginal productivity of labor. The rate of growth in aggregate prices over time, then, would equal that growth necessary to be consistent with this Austrian proposition. If Bosh's 1.1 point adjustment to the CPI leads to wage growth exceeding productivity change, while no adjustment leads to productivity changes exceeding wage growth, the correct adjustment is one that equates these two measures, perhaps 0.5 or 0.7 percentage points.```

Vedder 1997 claims that free markets are by definition economically efficient; therefore, measuring them isn't worth the time: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF02538485 https://sci-hub.st/10.1007/BF02538485 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/418850379518705675/782295071520718848/vedder1997.pdf ```Even accepting the dominant method of modern economics, and believing that the use of empirical means to verify or falsify economic hypotheses is valid, the reality of data aggregation problems makes empirical exercises a hazardous and often dubious enterprise. On basic theoretical grounds, the problems of generalizing with any precision about the magnitude of price changes are substantial. In Rothbard's (1993) "evenly rotating economy" with freely operating market forces, the issue of aggregate economic performance is one that is either irrelevant or of a second order of importance. If economic agents are freely expressing their economic will in their decision making, the existing level of economic performance is optimal, and whether it is larger or smaller than in other time periods is not very important.```

video: https://youtu.be/bibfslEFk2s?t=979 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6aW7gFAg_RU

edited transcript picture: http://libertyunbound.com/sites/files/printarchive/Liberty_Magazine_July_1991.pdf https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/418850379518705675/778348289115815946/Liberty_Magazine_July_1991.pdf

edited transcript quote: http://libertyunbound.com/sites/files/printarchive/Liberty_Magazine_July_1991.pdf https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/418850379518705675/778348289115815946/Liberty_Magazine_July_1991.pdf ```The same thing is true of Ayn Rand, as her phrase about Hazlitt's supposed commitment to altruism suggests. Rand did not regard facts as relevant, as ways of testing her propositions. She derived everything from the basic proposition that A=A. And from that follows everything. But if it does, again, suppose two Objectivists, two disciples of Ayn Rand, disagree, or that a disciple disagrees with her. Both agree that A is A. There's no disagreement about that. But for one reason or another they have different views on another subject. How do they reconcile that difference? There is no way. And that's the basic reason for the stories that Barbara Branden tells in The Passion of Ayn Rand about what happened when people disagreed in any minute detail with Ayn Rand.```

Rothbard's ethical framework explicitly allows for parents to starve their children: https://mises.org/library/children-and-rights https://1lib.us/book/1670179/9283e5 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/418850379518705675/782293106594152490/rothbard1998.pdf https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742557921849901077/885694502877163540/unknown.png """As a corollary this means that, in the free society, no man may be saddled with the legal obligation to do anything for another, since that would invade the former's rights; the only legal obligation one man has to another is to respect the other man's rights. Applying our theory to parents and children, this means that a parent does not have the right to aggress against his children, but also that the parent should not have a legal obligation to feed, clothe, or educate his children, since such obligations would entail positive acts coerced upon the parent and depriving the parent of his rights. The parent therefore may not murder or mutilate his child, and the law properly outlaws a parent from doing so. But the parent should have the legal right not to feed the child, i.e., to allow it to die."""