Four political scientists stuck in an orwellian world

NY Times: Can the Government Actually Do Anything About Inequality?

Four political scientists – Adam Bonica of Stanford, Nolan McCarty of Princeton, Keith T. Poole of the University of Georgia and Howard Rosenthal of New York University – take this issue head on in their paper, “Why Hasn’t Democracy Slowed Rising Inequality?” published earlier this year in Journal of Economic Perspectives.

Well, to start, these authors might notice that democracy does not produce a huge friggen economy like California with the same Senate representation as Nebraska.  How did they miss this? Stuck in Orwellianism, the semantics of fair voting are not available to these individuals.
They make this first point:

An intellectual and ideological shift within both political parties toward “acceptance of a form of free market capitalism which, among other characteristics, offers less support for government provision of transfers, lower marginal tax rates for those with high incomes, and deregulation of a number of industries. Financial deregulation, in particular, has been a source of income inequality.”

No, this was an intellectual shift to support the financial capital of New York in the face of the massive growth of California 3,000 miles away.

 “Immigration and low turnout of the poor have combined to make the distribution of voters more weighted to high incomes than is the distribution of households. Turnout, of course, can also be influenced by legal and administrative measures that make it relatively costly for the poor to vote.

No. It was the arrival of Latino immigrants who have only known Mexico and California as their government.  Most of these new citizens never really learn what a Senator is, and they take for granted there is some magical place called DC in which the Undemocratic party works magic.

 “Rising real income and wealth has made a larger fraction of the population less attracted to turning to government for social insurance.”

Maybe, maybe not, I dunno.

 “The rich have been able to use their resources to influence electoral, legislative, and regulatory processes through campaign contributions, lobbying, and revolving door employment of politicians and bureaucrats.”

Central banking and federal programs in a union with a large disparity in Senate democracy and the need to maintain large economies of scale in New York and California have led to points of arbitrage in the flow of government goods. 

 “The political process is distorted by institutions like gerrymandering that reduce the accountability of elected officials to the majority. Other political institutions, including a bicameral legislature with a filibuster, combine with political polarization to create policy gridlock, which in turn inhibits efforts to update social safety nets and regulatory frameworks in response to changing conditions.”

The distortion is mainly caused by a different language in the large states than in the small states.  They really do not talk about the same things.

Ley me state, again, a fact.  California is one of the highest taxed state, and up to 2005 was losing 25 cents on every dollar with DC in the flow of goods and taxes.  Yet, even being such a large doner state with high taxes we still cannot get education funding up to standard on a per pupil basis.  The main reason for this failure, as most Undemocrats will tell you, is federal interference with the hug economies of scale we have in California.  Something horrible has gone wrong in our relationship with DC, something unrelated to any issue that these authors brought up. The best fix is to deliver unto California, forthwith, our fair share of ten Senators.