Naked Economics: Undressing the Dismal Science pdfdrive com

Cut the politicians a break. In the fall of 2000, a promising political career was
launched. I was elected president of the Seminary Townhouse Association.
(Perhaps “elected” is too strong a word; the outgoing president asked if I would
do it, and I was too naive to say no.) At about that time, the Chicago Transit
Authority (CTA) announced plans to expand an elevated train station very close
to our homes. The proposed expansion would bring the station into compliance
with the Americans with Disabilities Act and allow the CTA to accommodate
more riders. It would also move the elevated train tracks (and all the
accompanying noise) thirty feet closer to our homes. In short, this plan was good
for Chicago public transportation and bad for our townhouse association. Under
my excellent leadership, we wrote letters, we held meetings, we consulted
architects, we presented alternative plans (some of which would have required
condemning and demolishing homes elsewhere in the neighborhood). Fullerton
Avenue eventually got a new elevated train station, but not before we did
everything in our power to disrupt the project.
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, we are the special interests. All of us. You may not
raise Angora goats (the source of mohair); you may not grow corn (the source of
ethanol). But you are part of some group—probably many of them—that has
unique interests: a profession, an ethnic group, a demographic group, a
neighborhood, an industry, a part of the country. As the old saying puts it,
“Where you stand depends on where you sit.” It is facile to declare that
politicians should just do the right thing. The hoary old cliché about tough
decisions is true. Doing the right thing—making a decision that generates more
benefits for the nation than costs—will not cause people to stand up and cheer. It
is far more likely that the many people you have made better off will hardly
notice while the small group you have harmed will pelt your car with tomatoes.
In 2008, my unpromising political career got more interesting (but not
necessarily any more promising). President Obama appointed Congressman
Rahm Emanuel to be his chief of staff, which left an opening in the Illinois Fifth
Congressional District. That’s my congressional district, and I, along with more
than twenty other candidates, decided to run in the special election to fill the
seat. (Our race should not be confused with the vacant Illinois Senate seat that
former Governor Rod Blagojevich tried to sell.) I figured that if I was going to
write books like this one that criticized public policies, then I ought to be willing
to step into the ring, rather than just cast rocks from the outside. (For the record,
I opposed the ethanol subsidy—a relatively meaningless position given that the

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Fifth Congressional District is entirely urban and has not a single farmer.)
The punch line of this chapter can be encapsulated in a single experience from
that campaign. At the first candidates’ forum, the moderator, a political
columnist for a Chicago newspaper, asked each candidate to comment on his or
her view of federal earmarks. Earmarks are the mechanism by which members
of Congress insert pork into bills; an earmark directs federal money to a specific
project in a member’s district and is therefore insulated from any formal review
as to whether the project makes sense or not. For example, an earmark in a
transportation bill, such as the notorious “bridge to nowhere” in Alaska,
allocates money for the bridge even if the Department of Transportation never
would have funded it. The subject of earmarks had come up because the first
spending bill signed by President Obama had nearly nine thousand earmarks.
(No, that is not an exaggeration.)
One by one, each candidate excoriated both the concept of earmarks and the
politicians who support them. One candidate even proposed arresting members
of Congress who cut such deals. But the earmark question was a trap, and a
clever one at that. The moderator asked a follow-up question, something like,
“So each of you would oppose an earmark to support Children’s Memorial
Hospital?” As you may have inferred, this particular children’s hospital is in the
Fifth Congressional District, about 300 yards from where we were sitting. The
answers to the follow-up question were less emphatic than the original assault on
earmarks and included comments like, “Of course, a hospital is different” and
“That particular earmark involves children” and “I will do everything I can as a
congressman to support Children’s Memorial Hospital” and so on. No one
suggested that politicians who support an earmark for the hospital should go to
prison.
Everyone despises earmarks, except for their own. A member of Congress
who secures special funding to expand Children’s Memorial Hospital is a
success. A ribbon-cutting ceremony will celebrate the project, with cupcakes and
juice and speeches lauding this politician’s hard work in Congress. How did the
funding come to pass? Not because this one politician gave a speech on the floor
of the House that was so emotional and inspiring that the other 534 members
decided to lavish funds on a children’s hospital in Illinois. He did it by
supporting a bill with nine thousand earmarks, one of which was his. Such is the
political reality in a democratic system: We love our congressman who finds
funding for the hospital; what we hate are politicians who support earmarks.
Would campaign finance reform change anything? At the margins, if that.
Money is certainly one tool for grabbing a politician’s attention, but there are
others. If the dairy farmers (who benefit from federal price supports) can’t give

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money, they will hire lobbyists, ring doorbells, hold meetings, write letters,
threaten hunger strikes, and vote as a bloc. Campaign finance reform does not
change the fact that the dairy farmers care deeply about their subsidy while the
people who pay for it don’t care much at all. The democratic process will always
favor small, well-organized groups at the expense of large, diffuse groups. It’s
not just how many people care one way or the other; it’s how much they care.
Two percent who care deeply about something are a more potent political force
than the 98 percent who feel the opposite but aren’t motivated enough to do
anything about it.
Bob Kerrey, former Democratic senator from Nebraska, has said that he
doesn’t think campaign finance reform would lead to much change at all. “The
most important corruption that happens in politics doesn’t go away even if you
had full public financing of campaigns,” he told The New Yorker. “And that is: I
don’t want to tell you something that’s going to make you not like me. If I had a
choice between getting a round of applause by delivering a twenty-six-second
applause line and getting a round of boos by telling you the truth, I’d rather get
the round of applause.”
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So, if I were asked again why our growing knowledge of public policy does not
always translate into a perfect world, this chapter would be my more complete
answer.

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