A second post-election piece I didn't post at the time I wrote it (Nov. 5):
I've explained why I voted for Obama and I don't regret it today. But I am feeling a bit defensive because I've seen some emails from McCain voters that make important points and I hope I can provide some reassurance to my conservative friends.
First, I've been thinking about the political shortcomings of the Baby Boom generation for some time (well before Obama was on the scene). And perhaps more than anything I felt we needed a President who wasn't defined by the Vietnam War. I saw a documentary the other night about the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago and I can see how each side thought the other was out to destroy the fabric of America. But it's not like that anymore and I'm tired of the silliness of it. Negative ads are fine if they help define the issues, and yes, I believe character still matters. But Elizabeth Dole's ads claiming her Sunday school teacher opponent was a closet atheist probably helped tip my vote. It was manipulative, irresponsible and personally and spiritually hateful. You know, for years Republicans have tried to convince minority voters that if they only vote for one party all the time they'll be (and have been) taken for granted. Well, the same holds true for Christian conservatives.
Second, I'm honestly not sure if I would have voted for Obama if I hadn't actually met the guy and, as President Bush famously said of Vladmir Putin, "gained a sense of his soul." Obama was a professor at my law school and I took a seminar from him. I got no sense that he's a radical, that's he's not pro-America, or that he's a socialist. If I'm right about Obama, the far left blogosphere is going to be deeply disappointed in his presidency. If I'm wrong about him (and look how well this looking-into-his-soul thing worked out for GW Bush w/r/t Putin) then I'll be very disappointed. In fact, a couple of my old law school professors recently had a debate on "whether conservatives should vote for Obama." Prof. Cass Sunstein, who is very liberal, made the case that conservatives should vote for Obama because, well, because he doesn't think Obama is really as liberal as his voting record and his anti-NAFTA campaigning in the primary would suggest. My best sense is that Sunstein is right. Imagine Clinton without the the sex and the lies and things don't seem too bad.
Third, look, I have to say that the top of the Republican ticket, John McCain is not a conservative except on a few social issues. McCain wasn't a conservative in 2000 and that's why he lost the primary. He pretended to be one this year but I didn't buy it. McCain voted against the Bush tax cuts. He came around on those because he knew he had to. But his economic instincts are not conservative and on any other issue I didn't trust him to govern as a conservative (his response to the foreclosure crisis and financial meltdown - a housing rescue plan of some $300 billion and blaming "greed on Wall Street"- sounded a lot like Chuck Schumer to me). If we're going to have socialism in this country I'd rather come by it honestly.
My last line of defense is this: Ronald Reagan started out as a Democrat. And he always said that he didn't leave the Democratic Party, but that the party left him. The Republicans are in the wilderness because of Tom Delay, Ted Stevens, No Child Left Behind, "You're doing a heck of job Brownie" cronyism, etc.
Showing posts with label Sunstein. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sunstein. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Take this 401(k) plan and Shove it
Automatically enrolling employees in 401(k) plans is all the rage these days. The theory that the mass of people are too stupid or lazy to recognize what's good for them has been around for quite a long time in certain government and academic quarters. But, not surprisingly, this theory turns out to be unpopular with the people themselves (as well as with others in government and academic quarters who've seen how paternalism tends to pan out -- hence William F. Buckley's famous quote about preferring to be governed by the first 100 names in the Cambridge phone book than by the Harvard Faculty).
The paternalists are back now with a brand new idea: "We'll make people do what's good for them, but we'll let them opt out if they really want to do the wrong thing! That way, we can say we're preserving their freedom, but in truth we know that they're still too lazy or stupid to undertake the effort required to opt out of what we're making them do!" Hence, a new oxymoronic name: Libertarian Paternalism. And, hence, automatic enrollment in the 401(k) that you can nevertheless always cancel.
Exhibit A in the libertarian paternalism front today is a new book by Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler, a law professor and an econmics professor, respecitvely, at the Univeristy of Chicago. Because goofy one-word titles are all the rage in nonfiction books these days (Blink, Collapse, Freakonomics) the book is not called "Libertarian Paternalism" but rather called "Nudge."
So, what's wrong with a little Nudge? Sure it's paternalistic, but hey, if you don't like it you can always opt out right? And I've heard some fairly smart people make arguments against libertarian paternalism that the Nudge authors have ready answers for. I won't rehash those here because I don't have anything new to add.
What I will say is that libertarian paternalism has long made me apprehensive even though I couldn't quite articulate why. Now I'm starting to get an inkling and it comes in the form of that old devil, the law of unintended consequences. The Wall Street Journal recently ran an article about the popularity (with regular folks, not with the paternalistic types) of 401(k) debit cards.(Click here, subscription required) It's always been possible to borrow against your 401(k), but it's a bit of a hassle. Now along comes a card that you just swipe, sign, and viola, you've just made yourself a loan.
Borrowing money from your 401(k) is crazy unless you really need to -- your just robbing yourself. But, according to the Journal, the availability of loans makes people more likely to join a 401(k) in the first place.
The bottom line for Thaler and Sunstein is that a theory is only as good as its practical results. Yes, you can probably get people to contribute to their 401(k) by automatically enrolling them; the laziness that keeps people from enrolling also keeps them from unenrolling. But it's not clear that this changes ultimate behavior. Will people just borrow more on credit cards because they figure they're in good shape for retirement? Or, will they be even more direct and just borrow right of the 401(k) you just put them in? No one knows this for sure yet, so it isn't game over for Nudge. But it's worth considering that the Journal article also mentions legislation that would ban 401(k) debit cards. For everybody. No opt-outs. That's not a Nudge, it's a Shove, and it's where paternalism has always tended to end up.
The paternalists are back now with a brand new idea: "We'll make people do what's good for them, but we'll let them opt out if they really want to do the wrong thing! That way, we can say we're preserving their freedom, but in truth we know that they're still too lazy or stupid to undertake the effort required to opt out of what we're making them do!" Hence, a new oxymoronic name: Libertarian Paternalism. And, hence, automatic enrollment in the 401(k) that you can nevertheless always cancel.
Exhibit A in the libertarian paternalism front today is a new book by Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler, a law professor and an econmics professor, respecitvely, at the Univeristy of Chicago. Because goofy one-word titles are all the rage in nonfiction books these days (Blink, Collapse, Freakonomics) the book is not called "Libertarian Paternalism" but rather called "Nudge."
So, what's wrong with a little Nudge? Sure it's paternalistic, but hey, if you don't like it you can always opt out right? And I've heard some fairly smart people make arguments against libertarian paternalism that the Nudge authors have ready answers for. I won't rehash those here because I don't have anything new to add.
What I will say is that libertarian paternalism has long made me apprehensive even though I couldn't quite articulate why. Now I'm starting to get an inkling and it comes in the form of that old devil, the law of unintended consequences. The Wall Street Journal recently ran an article about the popularity (with regular folks, not with the paternalistic types) of 401(k) debit cards.(Click here, subscription required) It's always been possible to borrow against your 401(k), but it's a bit of a hassle. Now along comes a card that you just swipe, sign, and viola, you've just made yourself a loan.
Borrowing money from your 401(k) is crazy unless you really need to -- your just robbing yourself. But, according to the Journal, the availability of loans makes people more likely to join a 401(k) in the first place.
The bottom line for Thaler and Sunstein is that a theory is only as good as its practical results. Yes, you can probably get people to contribute to their 401(k) by automatically enrolling them; the laziness that keeps people from enrolling also keeps them from unenrolling. But it's not clear that this changes ultimate behavior. Will people just borrow more on credit cards because they figure they're in good shape for retirement? Or, will they be even more direct and just borrow right of the 401(k) you just put them in? No one knows this for sure yet, so it isn't game over for Nudge. But it's worth considering that the Journal article also mentions legislation that would ban 401(k) debit cards. For everybody. No opt-outs. That's not a Nudge, it's a Shove, and it's where paternalism has always tended to end up.
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