fabio guillermo rojas wrote:
> Ok, how about the 94 congressional election? Seems that voter
> preferences shifted little or not at all, but a bunch of
> conservatives got voted into office. Of course, they moderated
> after they got in, so maybe knee jerk MVT wins again but only
> in the long run.
There is much to say here.
1. It was an off-year election, and conservative voters were especially
well-mobilized. So noticeably more conservative victors are what you
should expect.
2. How is that the long-run? The radical changes did not happen. It's
not like they happened and then got reversed. The main thing the 94
elections did was kill the unpopular liberal changes Clinton was hoping
for.
3. Even in '94, I believe turnover was only about 10%. The media
exaggerated the size of the landslide for dramatic effect.
> > Sure, there is a little of this. But again, I doubt this matters much.
> > The Supreme Court held off New Deal legislation a little bit for a
> > couple of years, but after 4 years it caved in completely.
>
> Is that a good example? The nation was in a depression and the New
> Deal was urgent. But also consider this: if you had polled people
> in 1931, would they have demanded all the alphabet agencies?
> I doubt New Deal was a response to the median voter, other than a
> vague "do something!"
Asking "what should be done?" is too general a question for most people
to articulately answer. That doesn't mean they don't have policy
preferences. It just takes more work to elicit them. I'm confident
that if you asked 1931 voters "Should there be more/less/about the same
amount of stock market regulation" you would have gotten a majority
saying "more." The same goes for most of the other famous New Deal
policies: helping labor unions, stopping deflation, helping farmers,
regulating more, federal jobs programs, etc.
> > politician match the median preference." Also true. In other words,
> > you seem to be giving the MVT an extra line of defense.
>
> As this thread has evolved, I've come to realize that my beef
> is not with MVT, but with applications.
>
> > My point, again, is that there are few such discrepancies! It's NOT
> > easy to make a list of issues and find deviations.
>
> Ok - I'll take some guesses:
>
> Affirmative action
Maybe. I think what most voters want is slightly milder AA with a
different name. But even that may be too strong. Maybe voters want the
impossible combination of no AA and no change in minority
representation. The quasi-AA programs in CA and FL (guaranteeing
admission to the best students in *each* high school) seem very popular.
> Adoption policies (compliments of B.C.)
Yes, I agree.
> Pre-1996 Welfare policy
Maybe. But don't forget that there had been some restraint under Reagan
and Bush. And it's not like the 1996 change was radical.
> The Somalia intervention (did any voters want that one?)
Yes, I suspect. Voters wouldn't have wanted it if no one told them
about it, but that doesn't mean they didn't want it to happen after it
was underway.
> Any increase ever in personal income taxes
Uh, how about the first income tax ever passed? It had super-majority
support in amendment form! But more seriously, this is one of the cases
where the public wants the impossible: more spending, less taxes, no
deficit. When income taxes rose, would the median voter have preferred
the spending cuts or deficits that the absence of the tax increase would
have required? I say no. Voters only want to cut small, symbolically
unappealing budget lines, like foreign aid. They don't want to cut any
big programs.
> In New Jersey:
>
> The long time prohibition on self-serve gas stations
As a former Jersey guy, albeit a counter-stereotypical one, I agree.
Same goes for the Jersey toll roads. (Yes, non-NJ tax-payers have to
pay to use them, but I doubt NJ voters adjust for that).
> > Knee jerk use is appropriate in this case. The theoretical objections
> > are weak, and the empirical evidence in favor is strong.
>
> Well, I'm not going to say the gov't passes policies left and right
> without voter approval, but I'm not sure the "knee jerk" MVT allows for
> lags in policies, or the many idiosyncrasies we observe.
The MVT has one simple way to explain lags: Politicians share the
preference of the median voter who *elected* them, not the *current*
median preference.
Of course, if they want to be re-elected, they need to appeal to the
median voter of the *next* election too. And one factor that might
influence future voters is responsiveness to current voters. Both of
these factors mitigate the effect of lags. I'll grant that some lag
remains, but no one has convinced me its a big effect.
As for the idiocyncracies, I admit they exist. But they are much rarer
than usually thought.
> Fabio
--
Prof. Bryan Caplan
Department of Economics George Mason University
http://www.bcaplan.com [EMAIL PROTECTED]
"He wrote a letter, but did not post it because he felt that no one
would have understood what he wanted to say, and besides it was not
necessary that anyone but himself should understand it."
Leo Tolstoy, *The Cossacks*
