Has Government Grown?

So, I had a little fuss with my good friend, the ever reasonable and painfully earnest Dr. Brendan Nyhan, @brendannyhan

Brendan tweeted: Big government! "the number of govt. jobs has fallen 2.2 percent" since 6/09. never happened in postwar recovery before (LINK)
I responded: Um...right. The number of gov't jobs NEVER falls, always grows. Why is that inconsistent with "big gov"?

Brendan responded: People think Obama had presided over massive government expansion and it's just not true.
I responded: Check gov as % of GDP! Massive spending increase equals bigger gov, no matter how much u love it

Brendan responded: most of that is denominator shrinking due to recession plus automatic spending in recession
I responded: most but not all. Gov has grown; there may be good reasons...

So, here's the question: NOT is bigger government better, that is a matter of ideological taste. The question is: Has government grown? What measure of "government" should we pick?

Employment: Here is total government employment, from 1960 to the most recent available, June 2011, by five year increments until recently (in millions of workers):

1960 8.7 1965 10.2
1970 12.7 1975 14.8
1980 16.4 1985 16.5
1990 18.4 1995 19.4
2000 20.8 2005 21.8
2008 22.509 2009 22.505
2010 22.730 2011 22.064 (June)

(From Census and BLS data)
I should note that the apparent Obama increase 2009-2010 was at least in part due to 225,000 or more temporary census workers. But then the decline in 2010-2011 has the same cause. Thus, the number of government employees, total is basically flat since 2008. Still these are totals; what about federal government employees?

2009: Total gov workers--22.505 Fed gov workers--2.820 State gov workers--5.330
2011: Total gov workers--22.064 Fed gov workers--2.830 State gov workers--5.091

In other words, federal employees have stayed level, and the states have gotten rid of 250,000 workers. The residual, local governments, must have gotten rid of about 200,000 workers.

Growth of Government? Not really. Government employment has been essentially flat since 2005. In spite of the rhetoric about "an army of new IRS agents," and other fears, government employment grew faster under GW Bush than under Obama, at least so far.

Budget: Has government spending increased? I computed the numbers and summarized them in this table.



Wow. If there was a spending increase, it was the last year of Bush, 2008-9. On the other hand, that was supposed to be one time emergency stuff, TARP and Porkulus.

The table shows that the size of federal spending has increased, controlling for inflation, by fully 25% since 2008. And it is not going back down. The "emergency" is permanent, I guess.

Government Growth? Yes, but less than I expected, and much of it in the 2008-2009 budget year, for which only Bush can be blamed. I guess it depends what your baseline is. If spending should have gone back down, and it hasn't, we can blame Pres. Obama. But the war and the recession... Obama didn't start the fire. Not sure why he would claim credit for throwing gas on it, though.

Scope and Intrusiveness of Regulation: This is mostly perception, I suppose. Not sure that the ranting about big business and the health care rules are really worse than the Patriot Act, Gitmo, and National Security Letters.

Deficit: Fuggettaboutit. Huge increase, much of it under Obama.

So, okay Brendan. Pres. Obama is no worse than GW Bush on making government grow. But Bush was the WORST PRESIDENT in 100 years or more. Is that all you've got for a slogan?

BH Obama: He is STILL not GW Bush.

An Interview with B. Nyhan

An interview with my Duke homeslice Brendan Nyhan.

Reflecting as always Brendan's painfully earnest view that better facts will give us better politics.  But to be fair there is also some interesting social science here:

They found that being told the scandal was false had some effect on participants’ belief in the story, but not nearly as much as being given an alternative explanation. “The innuendo significantly increased the perceived likelihood that Swensen was corrupt,” the authors wrote. “Disturbingly, this effect persisted in the denial condition; respondents who were told of Swensen’ s denial were still significantly more likely than controls to believe in the corruption story. However, the causal correction undid this effect.” 

Nyhan and Reifler recommended that alternative explanations be presented with corrections whenever possible. The experiment shows what fact-checkers are up against. When false information is let loose, it is very difficult to refute, especially when it corresponds to a preexisting narrative about a public figure.

Blogging at Duke

For those of you who came to this site because of the Duke Chronicle article this morning, three things.

1. This blog has nothing whatsoever to do with Duke, the Political Science Department at Duke, or for that matter with anything else. It is irrelevant and useless.
2. If you are easy to offend, don't read anything here. Nothing. Go away. We retired professional wrestlers don't need lame candy asses like you cluttering up the servers.
3. But, I would like to compose a list of blogs written by people at Duke. If you are interested in being on the list, please send me an email with the following info.
a. your blog name
b. the category of blog (academic, political, satirical, humorous, sports, informational, whatever)
c. your wish for anonymity. I will absolutely NOT out anyone. But if you want to be identified, or if your blog profile identifies you, I can put your name on the list.

For example, here are three blogs I know of, and this is how my list might look:

Name of Blog // Identity // Type
Brendan-Nyhan.com // Brendan Nyhan // Serious Political
Anticlimacus // Nick Troester // Academic--Personal Journal
Constrained Vision // Anonymous-"Katie" // Academic--Personal



I will maintain this list for a while, as a resource for anyone who wants to look at the range of blogging activity at Duke. PLEASE SEND ME AN EMAIL IF YOU BLOG.

Though, if you just have a pussweiler blog like this, and never post, just go read your new copy of the THE NATION and leave me alone.

Sol-gate: It just gets better!

Anonyman sends this link. It just keeps getting better and better. Robbing Peter and Paul to pay for a pure solar scam.

The problem may not be the bad loans, but rather the fibbing and the covering up, as always.

Brendan Nyhan said it was 'bout time for BHO to have a scandal. Good call, Brendan!

Monday's Child is Full of Links!

1. At LEAST 90% of bike accidents could be prevented if riders simply bought a car like a normal person, instead of this crazy sanctimonious virtue signalling.

2.  I have noticed this problem more and more.  Many people have told me that Prof. MacLean has "refuted" all of the evidence that she just made stuff up. No. In fact, all she did was rebut it, and that only by saying things like, "My critics are bullies."

3.  Third Eye Fine. Or so the beetles say.

4.  Truthiness, 10 years after.

5.  Introduction to emergent order. And then It's a Wonderful Loaf.

6.  Malls with husband pods.  And everybody is a little happier.

7.  This has got to be the Onion.  Though, the guy looks pretty tired, and I can see why.

8. Sam Harris did a podcast with Yale's Nicholas Christakis.  And Prof. Christakis brought up the research of Kevin M. Munger, the "NYU Grad student" mentioned.  The paper discussed in the podcast is here.  Here is some discussion in the Atlantic.

9. LuckyToken Lottery. Da blockchain rulz.

10. Our favorite headlines. Hard to beat that one. Perhaps had been listening to that Shooter Jennings' "Manifesto #1": "Get out of that skirt. But leave them high heels on..."

11. Okay, so YOU guys pretend to be cops, and YOU guys pretend to be drug dealers. It'll be great, because apparently there is not enough REAL crime to keep us busy. In one of the least safe places in the U.S.

12. My Duke colleague Peter Feaver is a voice of reason. First he was a voice of reason at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Then on Trevor Noah's show. (Fixed. thanks, commenter!)

13. GOOGLE should change it's motto to "Do no stupid," and then follow that motto. But, no.

14.  On Ken Burns' "Vietnam."

15.  Williams College and its craven administration are leading the way toward the American Cultural Revolution. Shameful.

16.  "No more research is necessary. We know everything." It was wrong when they said that to Copernicus. It's wrong to say that now to Swedish universities.

17. A discussion of the work and contributions of Gordon Tullock.  Boettke, Levy, Kurrild-Klitgaard, Munger.

18. Why is there corn in our gas tanks?

19. Sweden once again shows that libertarian DIRECTION is the right policy.

20.  But....but.... but, Gorsuch!

21. WalMart Nation?

22. Trump and the "Regulatory State."

23. Pumpkin Spicer not really finding a job.

24/ Brendan Nyhan on informal rules. David Hume through Douglass North.


The grand lagniappe: a (the?) vintage Fluffer-nutter commercial. Why do we even HAVE a government, if stuff like this can happen? With thanks to all those who found it funny that I had not heard of peanut butter and marshmallow fluff sandwiches growing up. But especially to David Pinto, who sent me this damned earworm.

If just saying Barack's middle name is a no-no, what about this??

On the cover of the latest "National Enquirer". Below Patrick Swayze, to the right of Britney and above Starr Jones sits BHO:



Here is a link to the article in the Enquirer and here is a link to Brendan Nyhan's analysis.

Holy Crap people.

By Two of My Main Men...

The Effect of Fact-Checking on Elites: A Field Experiment on U.S. State Legislators 

Brendan Nyhan & Jason Reifler
American Journal of Political Science, forthcoming

Abstract: Does external monitoring improve democratic performance? Fact-checking has come to play an increasingly important role in political coverage in the United States, but some research suggests it may be ineffective at reducing public misperceptions about controversial issues. However, fact-checking might instead help improve political discourse by increasing the reputational costs or risks of spreading misinformation for political elites. To evaluate this deterrent hypothesis, we conducted a field experiment on a diverse group of state legislators from nine U.S. states in the months before the November 2012 election. In the experiment, a randomly assigned subset of state legislators was sent a series of letters about the risks to their reputation and electoral security if they were caught making questionable statements. The legislators who were sent these letters were substantially less likely to receive a negative fact-checking rating or to have their accuracy questioned publicly, suggesting that fact-checking can reduce inaccuracy when it poses a salient threat.

I'll put $100 on that horse, "Hoof Hearted"

This is the sort of thing you only find here on KPC.  NEVER on Brendan Nyhan.  And that's what keeps you coming back!




Nod to Sam Wilson.

Headline Meme: New Mexico Edition

This is a doozy and somewhat NSFW.

I was surprised that Brendan Nyhan featured it so prominently on his blog!

Monday's Child

1.  Not as many happy returns.  For REI, that is.

2.  Poverty porn.  It's an industry, and a lot of rich people are getting richer from it.

3.  Imagine there's no logic.  I wonder if you can.  ACA wipes out wide variety of private insurance plans.  That would be okay, if we were going to single-payer.  But we are not.

4.  Okay, so maybe drones really ARE worthwhile, after all.  Drone buzzes the Queen Bee, in Germany.  Apparently it was a "Pirate Party" stunt, protesting drone observation of citizens.  Me gusta.

5.  Interesting piece by Brendan Nyhan on scandals, scandal coverage, and the effects on voters.

The horror that is Mary Fallin

"For what purpose does the gentlelady from Oklahoma rise?"

"Mr. Speaker, I rise to make an ass of myself"

"The gentlelady is recognized for 5 minutes"

I recently posted about the amazingly ignorant response of many US Representatives about the notion of the dollar being replaced as the major reserve currency in the world. They responded with a resolution calling for a constitutional amendment that would disallow a foreign currency replacing the dollar as LEGAL TENDER in the USA. Oooops!

Anyway Mary Fallin is a co-sponsor of this resolution. It isn't the first weird, nut-jobby deal she's co-sponsored either . Remember Ron Paul's "issue" of how NAFTA was going to create a superhighway across the USA from Mexico to Canada? She co-sponsored the resolution Rep. Virgil Goode introduced against that clear and present danger to the body politic back in 07.

According to ace political blogger Brendan Nyhan, only 12 representatives share the dubious distinction of co-sponsoring both of these gems of legislation and our Mary is one of them. We are so proud!

Here is the full hall of shame:

Michelle Bachmann (R-MN)
Spencer Bachus (R-AL)
Roscoe Bartlett (R-MD)
Paul Broun (R-GA)
John Culberson (R-TX)
Mary Fallin (R-OK)
Virginia Foxx (R-NC)
Trent Franks (R-AZ)
Phil Gingrey (R-GA)
Darrell Issa (R-CA)
Walter Jones (R-NC)
Thaddeus McCotter (R-MI)
Ron Paul (R-TX)
Zach Wamp (R-TN)

People, can this be real?? Zach Wamp?? Thaddeus McCotter??? Roscoe Bartlett?? Is this the US Congress or the Dukes of Hazard??

Monday's Child is Full of Links!

1.  P.F. Chang, Pyeongchang, all those Asian words look alike, right?  I had thought it was a spell-check error, but it was actually a spoof, and they didn't notice when it was time to do a serious story.  Could totally have happened to me, so I'll just shut up and laugh.

2.  There are probably no security cameras in the security area, right? Plus, the dude is a lawyer. He can steal tens of thousands of $ with his pen. Why go for cash?

3. NOT the "Onion." Passenger who passed gas continuously on flight forces emergency landing. Others on same row also forced to deplane.  And there's a thing called "Transavia Airlines."  They probably have a direct slingshot flight to Elbonia.

4.  We're not very good at handling problems of waste generated by electronics.

5.  It costs nothing to tweet, and someone might believe you. So you don't even need to send spam, you can get others to do it for you.

6. As tempting as a "Scooby Doo" ending would be....
It's unlikely.  But wouldn't it be great if, as Trump
 is being led away, the police pull off the mask. It's
 Bill Clinton! He had thought Hillary would still win,
 and he could date porn stars in the meantime.  After
 he won, he cooked up the Russia collusion thing as
 a distraction, so he could date MORE porn stars,
and serve again as President.  He shouts back, "And
 I'd have gotten away with it, too, if it weren't for
 those meddling kids and their FBI!"
(WIth thanks to Brendan Nyhan)

7.  Facebookenstein.

8.  Top5-itis.

9.  Bowling for Fascism.

10.  The wrestler, in real life.

11. Brewing Up Entrepreneurship.

12.  Prison just makes bad people worse, and it's expensive.  We can make bad people worse just by letting them use Twitter, and Twitter is free!

13. Basic Income Guarantee and bad behavior....maybe not so bad?

Grand Lagniappe! Murphy sound asleep, curled in a ball, with his little tongue sticking out. Because....Monday.

I'm sure that Brendan Nyhan already knows this paper. But it's not very good news for those of us who hope political debate can be improved by more accurate political information. The message seems to be "Lie often, and go negative early." Reminds of the Christmas card I saw from Jason Reifler

Belief Echoes: The Persistent Effects of Corrected Misinformation

Emily Thorson 
Political Communication, forthcoming 

Abstract: Across three separate experiments, I find that exposure to negative political information continues to shape attitudes even after the information has been effectively discredited. I call these effects “belief echoes.” Results suggest that belief echoes can be created through an automatic or deliberative process. Belief echoes occur even when the misinformation is corrected immediately, the “gold standard” of journalistic fact-checking. The existence of belief echoes raises ethical concerns about journalists’ and fact-checking organizations’ efforts to publicly correct false claims.

BN Makes People Mad

Brendan Nyhan makes people really, REALLY mad.

Because he is not really on anybody's team, and pomposity makes him mad. He reads things carefully, and remembers what you said last week. Also, he values consistency, logic, and empirical evidence. For example, here.

How infuriating.

Tactical Fallacy

A nice piece by Mr. Sensible, Brendan Nyhan, who is ....sensible.

I had a nice lunch at Tip y Tap in Santiago with John Londregan, in early July, where John made much the same argument.

But there is more to the argument. This is not just a mistake, but a bias. Dem activists are convinced (quite wrongly) that if someone would just come out and SPEAK THE TRUTH, that voters would flock to them. So the failure to speak the truth (capitalism is evil, government should control everything) is only a sign of weakness. Since they only talk to each other, these activists suffer from the "Polled my friends, and we all agree" fallacy.

So it is not just the attribution of good tactics to successful campaigns that is going on, but the belief by activists that the reason Obama is doing poorly is that he is trying to court the center.

Now, the same (mutatis mutandis) is at least as true, and maybe moreso, for Republican activists, I admit. And for Libertarians? It isn't a problem, because we don't have any friends, and don't believe in polls.

Separated at Birth?

I had never noticed this before.

Of course, that's unfair, because Brendan Nyhan worries. Still, a striking resemblance.

Oops they did it again!

The NY Times is nothing if not consistently humorous. Consider this passage from David Leonhart's article on Larry Summers:

since 1979, the share of pretax income going to the top 1 percent of American households has risen by 7 percentage points, to 16 percent. Over the same span, the share of income going to the bottom 80 percent has fallen by 7 percentage points. It’s as if every household in that bottom 80 percent is writing a check for $7,000 every year and sending it to the top 1 percent.


as we pro-immigration types like to say, vamos por partes.

1. The quote considers pretax incomes and the top 1% pay a lot of taxes. For example, in 2004, the top 1 percent of taxpayers (AGI over $328,049) paid 36.9 percent of all federal income taxes (see link). So there is a fair amount of redistribution to consider.

2. The quote deals in shares, not levels. This is not a zero sum game. It it possible for everyone to increase their incomes at the same time, and indeed this is the case. The rich are getting relatively richer but the "poor" (the bottom 80% is pretty broad) are getting richer too. In no way does the cited statistic make a case that the gains of the rich come at the expense of the poor.

3. The $7,000 a year check thing makes absolutely no sense. Where does the number come from? top 1% share rises 7% in 27 years (an average of about .27%/year) and every one in the bottom 80% is correspondingly out $7,000 per year?

Update: the redoubtable Brendan Nyhan sheds some light on the mysterious $7,000 here. I tried to email Leonhart as well, but apparently Dave@Baboso.com is not his correct address.

Maybe This Time

Usually, when I think something is a turning point, it turns out to be a high water mark. Sort of like how Woodstock was not a fundamental step forward in hippie culture, but its never-to-be-repeated apotheosis, after which a lot of boomers starting to go bald (even the women) and get jobs as I-bankers and stockbrokers.

So, with that caveat, let me offer this piece by KPC pal Dave Weigel as a turning point, something we may look back and remember as a start, not an end.

This rant was the start, in some ways, of the organized Tea Party movement. This article by Weigel was basically the end of my campaign, though that wasn't Dave's fault. Beginnings or ends... who can tell, at the time?

Thus it is with the #FuckYouWashington hashtag, and American Elect. The question is whether the idea for a "real" third party (LP is apparently chopped liver?) will catch on. Dave is absolutely right, of course, that electing a President would do very little. Except that it would do a lot. Veto points only work if MCs have the juevos to block stuff. And pretty much none of the MCs have juevos.

(Nod to Brendan Nyhan, or rather @brendannyhan, for the link)

Monday's Child is Full of Links!

1.  Trumpy Bear. Don't miss the video.

2.  Or maybe Trump makes you sad. If so, there are always... Garbage Pantz!  Those make everyone sad.

3.  If you want to excel, you can't use Excel.

4.  It's important to understand the Nazi next door. Or, is it?  The embarrassing thing is that "postcards from flyover country" is being done with such breathless naivete. Or is it?

5. Save the internet, and keep it safe for one, or another, set of powerful interest groups.

6.  This is hilarious in many ways. On this blog, Brendan Nyhan as been identified as being so nice that he has his own label, "Stuff you won't find at BrendanNyhan.com." I have, in fact, called him "painfully earnest." And yet David Frum (another famously earnest guy) blocked him.  Excellent.

7.  Why tell fibs that can be so obviously called out? Have we all just given up?

8.  This story seems silly. The actual story is a bit more nuanced. The "story" of math does emphasize the achievements of white Western thinkers. That may be entirely accurate, but it also may not be. It is true that work of the high Islamic scholars is not often credited. Still, to the extent that the prof's message can even be MISinterpreted as "don't learn math, it's white" there is a problem. I don't think she said that, exactly, but that is what is coming across.

9. Nice piece by KPC friend SR, on the Indian judiciary. The less you use discretion, the more you have.

10. Michael Munger (not me) put this up. It is a pretty good commercial, in terms of weirdness.

11. So proud of Florida. If you are in the position of having to deny fake-humping a female mannequin with an ice-penis, you may already have lost.

12. Invoking a right or committing a crime?

13. Garrison Keillor is scornful of the idea that men should be held responsible for sexual harrassment. And now we know why.

14. Cows and chickens have beef.

15.  Will the music "business" find a new model? It would be ironic if the digital revolution moves the business model back to live performances in excludable settings, where ticket sales are the only way to get paid.

16. Bitcoin 10k.

17. On Venditio...

18. Drunk as a ....possum?

19.  Art Carden and sharing.

20. The great baby bust of 2017.

21. On Gordon Tullock.

The Grand Lagniappe:

BN lays down the smack

I give you Brendan Nyhan.

Word, man. Word.

I reproduce my favorite pic for you....