When Things That Are Bad for You Are Good for the World

Legislation is currently making its way through the U.S. Congress that would require online retailers to charge sales tax on domestic sales.

People who do not live in the U.S. will find this idea very confusing, so let me briefly explain it: In most of the world, consumption is taxed at a standard national rate, and that tax is built into the price of something. So if you see a book price at 10 Euros, when you take the book up to the cashier and pay for it, you will learn that the book actually costs 10 Euros.

This is not the case in the United States, where consumption taxes (here known as sales taxes) are 1. not built in to the advertised price, and 2. are set and collected by individual states and sometimes even cities. So if you see a book priced at $10, in Chicago that book will actually cost $10.92, whereas if you buy exactly the same book in South Dakota, it will (probably) cost you $10.40, although some South Dakotan municipalities have higher sales tax.

It’s complicated, as you can see from this hilariously convoluted wikipedia article. Now of course what we should do is get rid of all these taxes and replace them with a single national consumption tax like every other country in the world, but we will never do this because states’ rights.

If online retailers have to charge sales tax on every item they sell in the U.S., it will create a massive headache: Software will need to be built that calculates sales tax based on the shipping address and then charges that sales tax and then remits it quarterly to the gazillion different municipalities that charge sales tax. This is not such a big problem for a huge company like Amazon, but it is a VERY BIG PROBLEM INDEED for a small company like DFTBA Records.

So this bill is bad news for me, and really for everyone who works for or often shops with DFTBA Records, because it will increase overhead and prices and decrease royalties.

But I think the bill is still good news for the world, because brick-and-mortar retailers, who really are important to a community’s success, are at a competitive disadvantage right now, because goods sold through the Internet are (on average) 5-10% cheaper due to being exempt from consumption taxes. That’s a huge competitive advantage for online retailers, and it also means they don’t contribute to the well-being of the communities where they do business: They don’t pay for the roads that their goods are shipped on, or the schools where their employees and customers are educated.

That’s not right. This bill will be a big blow to DFTBA Records and other independent online retailers, and some won’t be able to continue doing business. But most will (we’ll figure something out), and we can’t continue to exempt online sales from consumption tax in the U.S. We need a single national sales tax rate. But that ain’t gonna happen, and this is probably the best option remaining.

Sometimes bad news for you is good news for the social order. In those cases, it can be hard to be rational. (I know my first impulse in re. this bill was to be like, “WE MUST DEFEAT THIS THING THAT WILL HARM MY COMPANY.”) But ultimately I don’t think that kind of selfishness makes for better governance.

This bill is bad for me. And I’m in favor of it.

oh p.s. Shop at DFTBA quickly, while it’s still deliciously free of sales tax.

thecrashcourse:

The Constitution, the Articles, and Federalism: Crash Course US History #8

In which John Green teaches you about the United States Constitution. During and after the American Revolutionary War, the government of the new country operated under the Articles of Confederation. While these Articles got the young nation through its war with England, they weren’t of much use when it came to running a country. So, the founding fathers decided try their hand at nation-building, and they created the Constitution of the United States, which you may remember as the one that says We The People at the top. John will tell you how the convention came together, some of the compromises that had to be made to pass this thing, and why it’s very lucky that the framers installed a somewhat reasonable process for making changes to the thing. You’ll learn about Shays’ Rebellion, the Federalist Papers, the elite vs rabble dynamic of the houses of congress, and start to find out just what an anti-federalist is.

One of those historical lessons that is really about contemporary American politics.

Here’s the full video of President Obama’s fireside hangout with several nice people and me (and eventually my wife Sarah). I asked him about pennies, how ideological rigidity is stymying climate change policy, and then he told my unborn kid not to forget to be awesome.

All of these things really happened. Thanks to the President, whomever prepped him about nerdfighteria, and everyone at YouTube and google+ for making this possible.

An Announcement

Thursday afternoon at 4:50 EST, I’ll be part of a google+ hangout.

Also present will be THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES BARACK OBAMA.

I’ll be asking the President a couple questions (like for instance “OH MY GOD WHAT IS AIR?!”) and he’ll also answer some questions submitted by viewers. You can ask questions here and RSVP for the google+ livestream here.

An Open Letter to Undecided American Voters

fishingboatproceeds:

Somewhere around two percent of voters are ostensibly still undecided about who they’ll be voting for in the Presidential election. These people are often ridiculed, because it’s easy to make fun of a small minority, but many voters (including myself) are balancing competing interests and also trying to make conclusions about a candidate’s true intentions, which are always masked by a degree of political doublespeak.

In general, I’m disappointed by the tone of the political conversation this year, which is too rarely about policy and too often mean-spirited. Nobody running for President wants to destroy America. Nobody is evil.

The policy positions aren’t even that different: In the end, the purportedly “pro-rich” Romney wants the top marginal tax rate to be 28%; the purportedly “anti-rich” Obama wants it to be 39%. That may seem like a huge difference, but it really isn’t: In 1962, the top marginal income tax rate was 90%. In 1986, it was 50%. 

I’m not going to give you a quiz that will tell you who to vote for; these already exist. Instead, I’m going to share what matters to me, and how I decided to vote to re-elect President Obama. This is a partisan attempt to convince you to vote for my guy, and I’m not going to pretend otherwise, but it comes from a true independent who has voted for many Republicans for state and national offices in the past (and will vote for a couple this year).

Here are the issues that matter to me:

1. The Economy: The Deficit. We can’t continue to take on debt without risking the long term financial health of the United States, but it’s really important to note that almost all of our current debt is extremely cheap, because interest rates are on T-Bills and the like are very low. So our current debt poses no risk to the American economy. (Here’s a further explanation.) But debt could become more expensive in the future, which could be a big problem. Both candidates for President have plans to reduce the deficit: Romney wants to cut spending and end some tax credits and deductions while also cutting overall income tax rates by 20%; Obama wants to cut spending and raise taxes, primarily by rolling back the Bush-era tax cuts on income over $250,000 a year. (Obama also wants to raise the capital gains tax modestly, from 15% to 20%, but this will never happen with a Republican congress.)

It’s not clear whose plan would cut the deficit more, because Romney hasn’t said which deductions he’d eliminate, and neither has really outlined what kind of spending they would cut, except for rhetorical stuff that isn’t very expensive (like federal funding for public broadcasting).

But to me, Obama’s plan is a lot more balanced and measured. It also incorporates a lot of Republican ideas, especially in restructuring Medicare costs to make them more sustainable, and if Obama is re-elected, the Grand Bargain that will need to be struck on deficit reduction will probably focus on spending cuts while also rolling back the Bush-era tax cuts on income over $250,000. I think Romney’s plan is just disingenuous; you don’t cut deficits by cutting taxes. You may spur economic growth (as we saw in the Reagan years), but you’ll never see surpluses that will allow us to better manage our debt (as we saw in the Clinton years). I think the current economic climate calls for a Clinton-esque response rather than a Reagan-esque response.

Some will say that President Obama shouldn’t be trusted with the deficit after growing it so much the past four years. But deficits are supposed to grow during recessions, and even during recoveries. (Indeed, that’s one of the reasons our debt is currently so cheap.) The deficit should shrink during times of economic expansion, which I expect the next four years will be no matter who is President.

2. The Economy: Jobs. Here’s my honest opinion: Presidents don’t create many private-sector jobs. It’s true that regulation stymies some growth that might lead to more employment, but it’s equally true that inadequate regulation can hurt the job market in the long run (as we saw with the banking collapse of 2008). I share a lot of Romney’s pro-business worldview, but most facilitating of private-sector job creation happens in local government, not on the federal side. (If Romney were running for governor of Indiana against Obama, I’d have a harder time making up my mind.)

3. The Supreme Court. The next presidential term will likely see one or two Supreme Court appointments, and while all the ink will be spilled about abortion rights and marriage (both very important issues), the biggest question facing the court to me is about the role that corporations play in our country and whether they should be treated as people under the law. Romney has implied he is likely to look to conservative justices who believe in corporate personhood; Obama has shown that he is likely to appoint judges (whom to me seem centrist but to conservatives seem liberal) who argue against corporate personhood. This is a defining issue of our time, and I don’t think corporations should have the same set of rights as individuals, so this is a big push toward Obama for me.

4. Foreign policy. This is pretty simple: Governor Romney wants to increase defense spending at a time when I don’t think it needs to be increased. I think the Afghan War has been poorly managed under Obama, but it was also poorly managed before. Vitally, he brought an end to the Iraq War (although again, we were put on that road by the Bush administration). 

My biggest foreign policy concern is that Governor Romney has advocated for more intervention in Syria and Iran. I don’t think the US should act unilaterally anymore on the world stage. I also don’t want to see us return to the aggressive and hawkish rhetoric of the Bush era. We can’t afford it, and it doesn’t make us stronger.

5. Social issues. I believe in marriage equality and abortion rights, which line up with the President’s positions better than Governor Romney’s. 

So that’s how I decided. A lot of people are going to choose differently, and that’s okay. I think President Obama is a better choice at this historical moment, but I don’t think Governor Romney is evil or even that he’d be a bad President. In short, I don’t blame you for being undecided. Thanks for reading.

Reblogging because tomorrow is election day.

(via freelancewhalesarchive-deactiva)

Source: fishingboatproceeds

An Open Letter to Undecided American Voters

Somewhere around two percent of voters are ostensibly still undecided about who they’ll be voting for in the Presidential election. These people are often ridiculed, because it’s easy to make fun of a small minority, but many voters (including myself) are balancing competing interests and also trying to make conclusions about a candidate’s true intentions, which are always masked by a degree of political doublespeak.

In general, I’m disappointed by the tone of the political conversation this year, which is too rarely about policy and too often mean-spirited. Nobody running for President wants to destroy America. Nobody is evil.

The policy positions aren’t even that different: In the end, the purportedly “pro-rich” Romney wants the top marginal tax rate to be 28%; the purportedly “anti-rich” Obama wants it to be 39%. That may seem like a huge difference, but it really isn’t: In 1962, the top marginal income tax rate was 90%. In 1986, it was 50%. 

I’m not going to give you a quiz that will tell you who to vote for; these already exist. Instead, I’m going to share what matters to me, and how I decided to vote to re-elect President Obama. This is a partisan attempt to convince you to vote for my guy, and I’m not going to pretend otherwise, but it comes from a true independent who has voted for many Republicans for state and national offices in the past (and will vote for a couple this year).

Here are the issues that matter to me:

1. The Economy: The Deficit. We can’t continue to take on debt without risking the long term financial health of the United States, but it’s really important to note that almost all of our current debt is extremely cheap, because interest rates are on T-Bills and the like are very low. So our current debt poses no risk to the American economy. (Here’s a further explanation.) But debt could become more expensive in the future, which could be a big problem. Both candidates for President have plans to reduce the deficit: Romney wants to cut spending and end some tax credits and deductions while also cutting overall income tax rates by 20%; Obama wants to cut spending and raise taxes, primarily by rolling back the Bush-era tax cuts on income over $250,000 a year. (Obama also wants to raise the capital gains tax modestly, from 15% to 20%, but this will never happen with a Republican congress.)

It’s not clear whose plan would cut the deficit more, because Romney hasn’t said which deductions he’d eliminate, and neither has really outlined what kind of spending they would cut, except for rhetorical stuff that isn’t very expensive (like federal funding for public broadcasting).

But to me, Obama’s plan is a lot more balanced and measured. It also incorporates a lot of Republican ideas, especially in restructuring Medicare costs to make them more sustainable, and if Obama is re-elected, the Grand Bargain that will need to be struck on deficit reduction will probably focus on spending cuts while also rolling back the Bush-era tax cuts on income over $250,000. I think Romney’s plan is just disingenuous; you don’t cut deficits by cutting taxes. You may spur economic growth (as we saw in the Reagan years), but you’ll never see surpluses that will allow us to better manage our debt (as we saw in the Clinton years). I think the current economic climate calls for a Clinton-esque response rather than a Reagan-esque response.

Some will say that President Obama shouldn’t be trusted with the deficit after growing it so much the past four years. But deficits are supposed to grow during recessions, and even during recoveries. (Indeed, that’s one of the reasons our debt is currently so cheap.) The deficit should shrink during times of economic expansion, which I expect the next four years will be no matter who is President.

2. The Economy: Jobs. Here’s my honest opinion: Presidents don’t create many private-sector jobs. It’s true that regulation stymies some growth that might lead to more employment, but it’s equally true that inadequate regulation can hurt the job market in the long run (as we saw with the banking collapse of 2008). I share a lot of Romney’s pro-business worldview, but most facilitating of private-sector job creation happens in local government, not on the federal side. (If Romney were running for governor of Indiana against Obama, I’d have a harder time making up my mind.)

3. The Supreme Court. The next presidential term will likely see one or two Supreme Court appointments, and while all the ink will be spilled about abortion rights and marriage (both very important issues), the biggest question facing the court to me is about the role that corporations play in our country and whether they should be treated as people under the law. Romney has implied he is likely to look to conservative justices who believe in corporate personhood; Obama has shown that he is likely to appoint judges (whom to me seem centrist but to conservatives seem liberal) who argue against corporate personhood. This is a defining issue of our time, and I don’t think corporations should have the same set of rights as individuals, so this is a big push toward Obama for me.

4. Foreign policy. This is pretty simple: Governor Romney wants to increase defense spending at a time when I don’t think it needs to be increased. I think the Afghan War has been poorly managed under Obama, but it was also poorly managed before. Vitally, he brought an end to the Iraq War (although again, we were put on that road by the Bush administration). 

My biggest foreign policy concern is that Governor Romney has advocated for more intervention in Syria and Iran. I don’t think the US should act unilaterally anymore on the world stage. I also don’t want to see us return to the aggressive and hawkish rhetoric of the Bush era. We can’t afford it, and it doesn’t make us stronger.

5. Social issues. I believe in marriage equality and abortion rights, which line up with the President’s positions better than Governor Romney’s. 

So that’s how I decided. A lot of people are going to choose differently, and that’s okay. I think President Obama is a better choice at this historical moment, but I don’t think Governor Romney is evil or even that he’d be a bad President. In short, I don’t blame you for being undecided. Thanks for reading.

Who Doesn’t Pay Taxes And Why

Mitt Romney is in a bit of hot water for comments he made during a closed-door fundraiser about the 47% of Americans who don’t pay federal income taxes.

I’m generally pretty sympathetic to people saying stupid things in closed-door fundraisers, but the whole flap raises an interesting question: Is it really true that 47% of Americans pay no federal income tax? And who are these people? And do they believe that they are victims entitled to health care and housing?

So:

How many people don’t pay federal income tax in the US?

Lots of people. The 47% stat is accurate, as long as you only count federal income taxes. (More than 85% of Americans under 65 pay either income tax, federal payroll tax, or both—and almost all Americans who own land and/or buy things pay state and local taxes.)

Who are these people?

Many elderly people who live off social security pay no income tax (social security benefits are only taxable if your total income is over $25,000 a year). Only about 25% of Americans over the age of 75 pay federal income tax, but it’s important to remember that most of them did pay federal income tax when they were working.

Also, many young adults pay no income taxes, because they are full-time students or have very low incomes. You can see a chart here that shows that about 30% of 18-year-olds pay federal income tax, while over 65% of people in their 40s do.

People living in poverty are also unlikely to pay federal income taxes. A married couple filing jointly making under $18,700 annually pays no income taxes. But it’s worth noting that in 1996, 99.5% of all nontaxable returns came from people making less than $30,000 a year. Today, that number is closer to 76%.

The fastest growing segment of Americans who pay no tax are those who earn between $75,000 and $100,000 each year. As explained here, there’s been a 12,000% increase in nontaxable returns in this income category thanks to middle income tax cuts and tax credits introduced by both George W. Bush and Barack Obama.

Romney’s central mistake is imagining the data as static. In 2000, for instance, I paid no federal income tax. This doesn’t mean that I am a drain on the system: In fact, I have paid lots of federal income tax in other years. 2000 just happened to be a weird year, because I had a lot of health care expenses and not very much income.

This is the case for most Americans: Romney’s comments implied that the same 47% of Americans pay no federal income taxes every year. In fact, the members of that 47% are constantly changing as people age into and out of the work force. 

Do these people believe that they are victims entitled to health care and housing?

The most incendiary remark Governor Romney made was, “There are 47% who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care of them, who believe that they are entitled to healthcare, to food, to housing, to you-name-it.”

In fact, the number of Americans who feel the government should provide health care and food to those in need is much higher than 47%. 76% of Americans (including a majority of Republicans) favor medicaid, the program that offers health care to the poor. A majority of Americans also believe medicare, the program that offers health care to the elderly, is worth its cost. And more than three quarters of Americans support the federal food stamp program that provides food to low-income and elderly people.
Both these comments are rhetoric and not policy, so shouldn’t be taken too seriously, but the underlying ideas here are very important to me.  When the President says that higher education is an economic necessity, he’s is absolutely correct. If you look at the industrialized economies that are struggling around the world, they line up very closely with higher education rates. (Look at Portugal, for instance.)  So, like, “the U.S. experienced a fairly large growth in population from 2000 to 2009. During the period, the population increased 8.68% — the 12th highest among OECD countries. Meanwhile, the rate at which the share of the population with a tertiary [post high school] education is growing has slowed to an annual rate of 1.4% — the lowest among the 34 OECD countries. Just 71% of funding for educational institutions in the country comes from public funds, placing the U.S. sixth-lowest in this measure.” [source] So we already have one of the lowest rates of public investment in education in the industrialized world, and the lowest rate of growth in post-secondary education. This is a real long-term and structural problem for the US economy, because the only future growth available to industrialized nations is in jobs that require education. If we only offer higher education to people who can afford it, we will lose to the many nations where university education is more highly subsidized, because they’ll have better educated workforces that will earn more and in turn pay more in taxes, which will allow future generations to be better educated still.  Both parties would like to take political credit or assign political blame for the unemployment rate and the pace of growth etc. But the truth is, government doesn’t have a lot of say in that stuff (unless of course they screw things up so royally that there’s a debt default or something). A lot of the government’s role in economic growth is much longer term—it’s stuff like infrastructure and long-term political stability and creating a better-educated workforce.
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Both these comments are rhetoric and not policy, so shouldn’t be taken too seriously, but the underlying ideas here are very important to me. 

When the President says that higher education is an economic necessity, he’s is absolutely correct. If you look at the industrialized economies that are struggling around the world, they line up very closely with higher education rates. (Look at Portugal, for instance.) 

So, like, “the U.S. experienced a fairly large growth in population from 2000 to 2009. During the period, the population increased 8.68% — the 12th highest among OECD countries. Meanwhile, the rate at which the share of the population with a tertiary [post high school] education is growing has slowed to an annual rate of 1.4% — the lowest among the 34 OECD countries. Just 71% of funding for educational institutions in the country comes from public funds, placing the U.S. sixth-lowest in this measure.” [source]

So we already have one of the lowest rates of public investment in education in the industrialized world, and the lowest rate of growth in post-secondary education.

This is a real long-term and structural problem for the US economy, because the only future growth available to industrialized nations is in jobs that require education. If we only offer higher education to people who can afford it, we will lose to the many nations where university education is more highly subsidized, because they’ll have better educated workforces that will earn more and in turn pay more in taxes, which will allow future generations to be better educated still. 

Both parties would like to take political credit or assign political blame for the unemployment rate and the pace of growth etc. But the truth is, government doesn’t have a lot of say in that stuff (unless of course they screw things up so royally that there’s a debt default or something). A lot of the government’s role in economic growth is much longer term—it’s stuff like infrastructure and long-term political stability and creating a better-educated workforce.

(via eddplant)

Source: imgfave

“I am Republican. But kind of a RINO (Republican in Name Only.) Can I still be a nerdfighter, because it seems like the majority of us are Democrats?”

So asks Jack in my sometimes-still-broken ask box.

Responses:

1. Let’s take a wild guess and assume there are about 100,000 people who, if asked, would identify as a nerdfighter. About 30,000 of those people live outside of the United States, so they are probably neither Republicans nor Democrats. Of the remaining 70,000, I’d estimate that around 65% think of themselves as liberal or Democrats etc. That’s a sizable majority, but it also means that 35% consider themselves Republicans or conservative or whatever. That’s 24,500 people. Not the smallest club you’ll ever belong to. 

1a. So yes, you can be a nerdfighter and be a Republican. Many of us are. Ours is a big tent, and the entire definition of the word nerdfighter is “someone who thinks of themselves as a nerdfighter.” Nerdfighters invented the term, and nerdfighters define and redefine it over time. 

2. That said, I understand how Republican nerdfighters can feel excluded at times, because neither Hank nor I nor anyone else in this community should put aside their values merely to make everyone feel welcome. As an example, I believe same-sex marriage should be legal, and I’m not going to keep quiet about it just because it happens to be a controversial opinion at this historical moment. But I also believe lots of things that can make people on the Left feel excluded—like for instance, I support capitalist institutions like kiva.

Of course, I might be wrong. It’s possible that socialism addresses poverty better than access to capital markets does. It’s also possible that gay marriage would somehow damage the social order. I don’t think I’m wrong, obviously, but I understand that I might be. I’ve been wrong before.

3. A word about the term RINO: It can be difficult to keep extremists from taking a word away from you. Every time I identify as a Christian, people look at me funny, because they think being a Christian means opposing gay marriage, or thinking that atheists will burn in the fire of hell for eternity, or that human beings are not a product of evolution. In fact, Christianity is a big and diverse religious tradition and has never been a monolith. The same can be said of both major political parties in the U.S. The idea that we should all walk in lock-step with each other has hurt American political discourse and made it harder for either party to govern effectively. I’m not a fan of radicalization, and there is unfortunately much less ideological diversity in the Republican party than there used to be. I would encourage you not to cede the definition of Republican to the Tea Party.

4. On a personal note: I’m going to vote for President Obama in November, but I don’t think it’d be fair to call me a liberal. I believe that over-regulation of business limits growth and inhibits innovation. I favor market-based solutions to healthcare access like we see in the Affordable Care Act, which used to be a Republican idea. I favor a cap-and-trade system to control carbon emissions, which used to be a Republican idea. I favor a return to Reagan-era income tax levels, which used to be a Republican idea. Of course, there have always been places where I’ve disagreed with the Republican mainstream, but there have also always been places where I’ve disagreed with the Democratic mainstream. As the Republican party has drifted to the right in the past decade, though, I’ve personally felt increasingly distant from it.

I have friends and family who will vote for Romney in November. Generally, I think it’s both wrong and unproductive to dismiss those you disagree with as merely ignorant or cruel or evil or unAmerican or whatever. We are a nation born of compromise and complexity. Even our Revolution was, all things considered, quite moderate. Compromise may be out of fashion, but I still believe in it.

What the Death of the Canadian Penny Says about the U.S.

tiredandinspird:

“Canada is scrapping the penny, ending production of the country’s smallest unit of currency this spring.

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, whose department described the penny as a “nuisance” in budget documents, said the coin is now more trouble than it’s worth.

The Royal Canadian Mint will stop distributing pennies to financial institutions in the fall of 2012 and the government will work to withdraw one-cent coins from circulation.

The Harper government said the production cost of each penny exceeds its face value. “It costs taxpayers a penny-and-a-half every time we make one,” Mr. Flaherty told the Commons. “Therefore we will stop making them.”

In the United States, you never hear politicians or members of the cabinet saying things like, “It costs taxpayers a penny-and-a-half every time we make one. Therefore we will stop making them.” We don’t make politically neutral, factual statements.

This is why we still have pennies. It’s also why we can’t make sensible reform to medicare*, or end tax subsidies to oil companies**, or even agree to a long-term road building budget***.

Our government is so paralyzed by mutual distrust and ideological rigidity that it can’t implement even the most obvious long-term policies, which is a huge drag on our economy.

Anyway, congratulations on getting rid of your penny, Canada. Even though ours cost our taxpayers far more each year, it looks like we’ll be keeping ours indefinitely.

* The current Republican budget does pretty much dismantle medicare, the American program to get health care to seniors. But in the past few years, Republicans have proposed some sensible reforms to medicare. Medicare is far more efficient in some states than others, often while getting better health care outcomes. But the Democrats refuse to talk about it, because it would “hurt seniors.” (The President is an exception here.)

** I know of no economist who thinks ending these tax subsidies would result in the price of gasoline going up. It is insane to offer billions of dollars of tax breaks to oil companies that already have billions of dollars in profits; it does not incentivize them to do business in the US, and it does not affect the price of gasoline, and it is just insane. And yet Republicans refuse to act because it would mean “raising taxes.”

*** By far the most insane thing the US government is doing these days is refusing to agree to a long-term highway budget. Instead, they’re sending it out piecemeal. This means that states building roads must make short-term contracts, which cost much more per mile of road than long-term contracts. But if we agreed to a long-term roads package, it would mean agreeing to some huge number—400 billion dollars or whatever—and then one’s political opponents would be like, “S/he voted for 400 billion in GOVERNMENT SPENDING,” and … yeah. So we end up spending much more on roads than we need to so that it will SEEM like we are spending very much. That basically sums up the whole affair.