The deep nature of the division is illustrated by the suspicious way in which legal opinions and policy preferences are lining up on this issue. Essentially everyone who believes the Affordable Care Act was an important step toward securing social justice also agrees that it would be absurd to construe the statute in a manner that’s plainly inconsistent with congress’ goals. And essentially everyone who believes it’s crucially important to give the crucial sentence the most straightforward possible reading rather than defer to the IRS’ efforts to make sense of the law as a whole, also believes that the law is a scandalous boondoggle.
Pointer from Scott Sumner. I also see mood affiliation in macroeconomics. As I point out in my memoir, in theory one could hold left-wing political views and reject Keynesian economic theory, or conversely. In practice, this is almost never the case.
Of course, Haidt and Kahneman would not be a bit surprised by any of this. They believe that emotional reactions drive “rational” analysis, rather than the other way around.
The legal philosophies of the left and the right do seem to differ on average in a manner that is consistent with the divide on this issue. If that were not the case I would be more persuaded by the mood affiliation explanation.
Right. The mood affiliation increases the hurdle rate price for disagreeing with your side.
My take is that the left played pretty fast and loose and at times in bad faith in pushing through ACA even to the point of the comical “well, if you guys had come to the bargaining table there might not be so many problems.” in addition to the obviously false things like you can keep your insurance policy or that rates would go down (how could those have ever possibly worked?)
So, since it was passed by any means necessary, one should expect a gotcha here and there. So, in this case, a portion of the resistance is an extension to this law in particular. We still don’t know if the subsidy was meant as part of the bad faith tactics in passing the law that helped create the (alleged) bad faith response.
Precisely.
Here is the situation: There exist two populations in the US, those with high C, and those with low C. Those with high C tend to be healthy and rich, those with low C tend to be unhealthy and poor. Due to the educational and geographic sorting of America, the two groups are pulling apart.
The left is comprised of empathizers. Their goal is to take money from the high-C population and spend it on health care for the low-C population.
The ACA, to them, is merely a tool in this fight. It was passed by any means necessary by a legislature they just barely controlled, and they will attempt to utilize it by any means necessary with whatever judges they control. They will justify themselves empathetically by pointing to people who now have health care, rules and precedents be damned.
The right is composed of systematizers. Their goal is to ensure that the system rewards other high-C systematizers, and to ensure the system continues to work in a predictable and fair way that cannot be abused by charismatic individuals.
They opposed ACA systematically, attack the law through the systems of the legislature, and will attempt to force the law to be interpreted systematically by similarly-minded judges. Their goal is to preserve the integrity of the system via rules and precedents, empathy be damned.
To the left, the ACA is part of a broader expression of “intent” and empathy. To the right, it is a system of laws.
There can be no agreement, because the two sides are speaking very different languages.
The funniest thing about Yglesias’ essay is that the Medicaid provisions thrown out in NFIB vs Sibelius did exactly the thing detractors of the DC court’s decision claim Congress couldn’t have possibly meant to do.
The use of ‘Mood Affiliation’ as a kind of genteel, indirect and plausibly deniable way to accuse someone of, “Simple bias, favoritism, and results-oriented abuse or inconsistent application of their purportedly universal principles when necessary to advance their preferred political agenda,” is becoming a bit annoying to me. It has nothing to do with ‘mood’. It’s too bad we can’t call a spade a spade.
And don’t forget that it makes you sound smart n’ stuff.
I’ll grant that you have to be pretty smart to be able to coin these kinds of neologism euphemisms that go on to actually get adopted by one’s audience members even when they complain that they don’t actually understand what is meant by them.
Two cheers for that. But not three.
Once again, Matt Yglesias proves that he is as insightful as he is articulate.
Or, as he himself might observe, “Once again I have once again proved that I can make a remarkably obvious observation that invokes a remarkably hackneyed concept using barely intelligible prose and intellectuals of all stripes will take notice.”
“Essentially everyone who believes the Affordable Care Act was an important step toward securing social justice also agrees that it would be absurd to construe the statute in a manner that’s plainly inconsistent with congress’ goals. ”
But that’s nonsense. Of course, as the Gruber videos demonstrate, the interpretation in question is plainly *consistent* with the goals of those who drafted the law at the time it was passed. The provision was put in place with the idea of punishing states that refused to play ball and set up exchanges — as such, it was clearly intended to *promote* the rollout of Obamacare in the states. And there’s nothing unprecedented or even unusual about passing laws with provisions that withhold funding from states under certain conditions — that’s standard operating procedure for Congress. But in this case, the states called Congress’s bluff and the standard tactic of withholding funds backfired (or would have if the administration hadn’t decided to rewrite the law on the fly).
I’m really kind of dumbfounded that those on the left are so willing to allow the executive to rewrite laws in this way — don’t they think there will ever be another Republican president?
BS
Once you read “social justice” in such a disquisition, it becomes pointless to continue.