Four years ago, Casey Burgat of George Washington University and Matt Glassman of Georgetown University wrote in National Affairs that the presidency “changes more abruptly than other governing institutions.” A “strong disruptive incentive” grows stronger as presidents, impatiently disdaining Congress as an impediment to the flowering of their reputations, increasingly resort to achieving changes unilaterally, by executive orders.
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Americans by the millions are rendering a mandate — albeit a negative one — as much with their feet as with their ballots. The mandate is in domestic migration from progressive states. Edward Pinto of the American Enterprise Institute notes that between 1990 and 2021 net migration subtracted 13 million residents from California, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York, and added 13 million to Arizona, Florida, Nevada, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas. Entrepreneurial federalism — states competing for attractive economic and cultural climates — disfavors progressive policies.
At their peril, progressives disparage this as a “race to the bottom.” Particularly regarding their cultural aggressions, progressives should heed the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the four-term Democratic senator from New York: “Liberals have simply got to restrain their enthusiasm for civilizing others. It is their greatest weakness and ultimate disease.”
The greatest weakness of the U.S. government in the 21st century is the bipartisan embrace of executive strength — of unfettered presidents.
Here’s the abstract of an excellent new paper by Michael Davies, R. Jisung Park, and Anna Stansbury: (HT Tyler Cowen; emphasis added)
Do minimum wage changes affect workplace health and safety? Using the universe of workers’ compensation claims in California over 2000-2019, we estimate whether minimum wage shocks affect the rate of workplace injuries. Our identification exploits both geographic variation in state-and city-level minimum wages and local occupation-level variation in exposure to minimum wage changes. We find that a 10% increase in the minimum wage increases the injury rate by 11% in an occupation-metro area labor market which is fully exposed to the minimum wage increase. Our results imply an elasticity of the workplace injury rate to minimum-wage-induced wage changes of 1.4. We find particularly large effects on injuries relating to cumulative physical strain, suggesting that employers respond to minimum wage increases by intensifying the pace of work, which in turn increases injury risk.
In 2009, the Obama Administration imposed a tariff on “new pneumatic tires, of rubber, from China, of a kind used on motor cars (except racing cars) and on-the-highway light trucks, vans, and sport utility vehicles.” This tariff would be “imposed for a period of 3 years” and would start at 35 percent in the first year, drop to 30 percent in the second, and drop again to 25 percent in the third before being phased out or “sunset.”
What happened to the price of tires in the US, you ask?
They rose from 2009 — 2012 before starting to fall back down in 2013, after the tariff ended. More to the point, the price of tires never rose the full 35 percent, 30 percent, or even 25 percent. In fact, from 2009 to 2012, the price of tires “only” rose 21.7 percent. Where did the remaining tariff revenue come from? From the Chinese manufacturing companies accepting lower prices per unit than they previously had.
Importantly, though, all of the money used to pay these tariffs came from the American consumers, not China. Yes, Chinese tire manufacturers received fewer dollars per tire than they did previously and, in that sense, “paid” some of the tariff in the form of lower price per tire. But the American consumer paid a higher price for tires, whether they were Chinese- or American-made, and in that sense paid some of the tariff in the form of higher prices.
First, the private sector’s mission is far simpler. While every company functions differently, businesses share the overarching goal of strong profitability over time. That focus is fundamental to our market economy. In government, however, there are always competing concerns, interests and ideologies. One idea isn’t inherently worthier than the other. Early in the Clinton administration, I told Paul Begala, a senior political adviser, that I believed effective government was critical to our country’s future. He replied, “Effective government in pursuit of what?” Public-sector leaders have to define, balance and set priorities among different missions in ways private-sector leaders don’t.
