Tyler Cowen asks Should we stop worrying about this election so much? Separately, he speculates that Suburbs will Soar on the Wings of Tech.
I have my own test for How We Will Be Affected by X. That is, how will X affect my folk dancing?
The Internet definitely affected my folk dancing. The dances have gotten harder, because dance session leaders know that you can watch YouTube videos to figure out steps that you miss at the sessions. So even though at first I could barely followthis dance watching the teacher, by now I can do it without copying someone (I still sometimes mess up).
Also, good dances spread much faster. And when I travel, I can easily look up dance sessions, and using GPS makes it easier to get to those sessions.
I don’t think that the outcome of election will affect my folk dancing, so I don’t think that the election is so important.
I also don’t think that self-driving cars or drones will affect my folk dancing. They will not make dance sessions less plentiful in the Maryland suburbs or more plentiful in other parts of the country.
My deeper point is that the reasons people have for choosing where they live these days have a large idiosyncratic component. Therefore, I would be reluctant to make sweeping generalizations about how self-driving cars will affect location choice.
And as much as people are emotionally worked up over the election, its effect on your day-to-day life may not be all that great. I’m much more worried about my favorite dancers leaving the area (for idiosyncratic reasons) than I am about who will win the election.
Yes there is a lot of this election that does not effect things and my guess the next administration is mired political gridlock. (In reality, our domestic programs are very centrist and hard to move the needle either way while the President impact on social issues is limited.) I will state two reasons why the election will matter:
1) Unforutnately we have hawkish D and what appears to be a quick trigger R. (He sounds like Bush 2000 running as dove but lots hints of striking first.) And it appears there will be foreign crisises outside of the Middle East between Valenzuela collapsing and the Phillipines run by a loon with China having lots of interest in both nations. I don’t want Trump in charge here.
2) Domestically, this election has really accelerated the Party movements which is the Democrats are winning minorities/college educated voters and the Republicans winning working class voters. Yes this trend started in 1980 but becomes very apparent in 2000. However with Trump and HRC we really moved the needle. The two most apparent states are Iowa Red & Vigina Blue. Minority voters in California REALLY hate Trump and I do think this election is their chance to voice their opinion on this in Florida, Nevada, Colorado and North Carolina. (Although Trump probably wins AZ, GA, TX & SC Republicans have to be long term voting impact in those states. Also Trump’s Republican nomination HAS killed the Republican Party in California for awhile.)
The Republican Party in California was dead long before Trump came along. Schwarzenegger was probably the stake through the heart (and I can, if I squint, see some parallels to the rise of Trump there).
Let’s be clear. When we say college educated people are voting D, we mostly mean college educated *women*. College educated men are going for Trump still.
What’s going on is that the split between college educated men and women has shot up. In 2012 the split between college educated men and women was 12 points. In 2016 its 38 points.
Professional white women are an identity police group, just like any other. A lot of them have jobs that are intimately tied in with government (how many social workers, teachers, etc do you know). When they are in the private sector, they tend to work for large institutions that are tied up in government subsidy.
More important then that though, there is just a difference in cultural temperament. Women conform. Women that have been through a few extra years of conformity training (education) do so even more. And women with the incomes to isolate themselves form the negative effects of progressive narrative failure have less incentive to question their conformity.
We talk about whites as being the victims of identity politics, but the numbers aren’t there yet to go after all white people. The bottom half of whites of either sex can be written off, their interest conflict too much with minorities that you need (they have lower voter participation anyway). College educated males are where the money is at to distribute to others, so your not going to win them on a political program of looting them. You still need to siphon off some white votes though, and young single women in the city are a good target to pick off.
In the long run I’m not sure the government can afford all those teachers pensions, nor constant increases in medical subsidies to pay those nurses, but nobody really plans for the long run in politics.
Let’s be clear. When we say college educated people are voting D, we mostly mean college educated *women*. College educated men are going for Trump still.
A lot true (but a little stereotypical), However:
1) College men are higher D than Romney so there seems to something different.
2) We don’t know if college women is mostly Trump being a pig. (the latest tape is nothing new here.) I suspect the M/W divide to normalize next cycle.
To me the most interesting poll was for white voters, if they live within 2 hours (150 miles) of their hometown they support Trump by 24% more while the ones that move more than 2 hours away support HRC 6% more. (I lived in three states and support HRC.)
Yikes, international folk dancing has come a long way since Zemer Atik. And it sounds like your dance friends may be like mine, progressive axis on steroids. Any speculation as to why folk dance communities turn out this way?
We can hope it doesn’t while fearing it might. Where we go from here may be interesting, even if the answer is nowhere.
Your last two sentences:
And as much as people are emotionally worked up over the election, its effect on your day-to-day life may not be all that great. I’m much more worried about my favorite dancers leaving the area (for idiosyncratic reasons) than I am about who will win the election.
actually made me smile. It’s a fine observation, and a hopeful one.
Yeah, self-driving cars won’t change the fact that our horses need plenty of grass to eat.
That said, the changes because of Obamacare changed my daily life a lot, as I seem constantly to be hassled with changes to my family’s health insurance. The ten years before that I never had to mess with it or have it messed with.
Think you are wrong about self-driving cars.
In a world of fully-autonomous cars, your interest in Folk Dancing will be affected in various ways:
1) The dollar price of transport (over urban distances) will be lower, leading to more people participating in recreational activities which involve moderate travel (as niche activities tend to do)
2) The total cost of transport will be much lower- your time can be spent productively (reading, wathcing video, chatting on phone, etc) leading to greater willingness to travel for entertainment
3) Peak-time congestion may be lower and average transport speeds faster. This depends a lot of how you think transport grid will adopt, and gov’t policies. As a baseline, self-driving cars are somewhere between 20-50% more efficient on the roads. Self-driving cars also make mass transit much more convenient (though adoption depends on proper congestion pricing).
3) Given the above, I’d expect niche activities to prosper. It’ll be easier to attract fellow travelers from greater distances. The niche may become more specialized (beginner vs advanced, etc) as more people participate. I’d also expect your personal participation to increase due to lower travel cost
What happened to commenter Andrew’? Notwithstanding his tactlessness, he was usually entertaining and often insightful. I hope he’s okay.
My form of resignation is a little different. Barring the really low probability case of Johnson winning New Mexico and throwing the election into the house, the result is going to really bad regardless of which of the two candidates prevails. And it may indeed affect my life for the worse, but I can’t do anything more about it than I can about bad weather — the only option is to wait until it’s over. I am trying to preserve my equanimity, though, by avoiding anything and everything I can that has to do with the election. I will not willingly watch or listen to any debates, interviews, campaign ads, or talking heads pontificating about politics. Tuning out seems like the best approach — I strongly recommend it.
You could ask this question: “How would it affect my folk dancing if the low and high today were two or three degrees warmer, especially if you had decades to adjust?” So, instead of today’s 64/53, it was instead 67/56.
It seems to me that one could make very analogous arguments in either direction, like so:
1. It wouldn’t make anything but a completely negligible difference to a typical city dweller, averaged over a year. Most people or economic sectors just aren’t that climate sensitive. It would be the equivalent of the whole city and everyone you know being picked up and relocated at a slightly more southern latitude. For example, I see Seattle today is 66/55 and Portland is 71/58. That kind of difference, i.e. nothing special.
2. Think of the most hysterical or alarmist climate change cases you’ve come across. They would have to overcome the logic of 1 with all kind of explanations of aggregate effects causing major disruptions, sensitive vicious cycles, and subtle but dramatic and long-term influences on the overall economy and the standard of living. And of course plenty of experts do make exactly these sorts of claims.
My point is that if one buys a type-2 argument for climate, one will probably also buy it for presidential politics.
Maybe best blog post I’ve read this year. Great wisdom FR kling. Happy dancing.
How many market indicators of looming catastrophe were there in May 1914?