A fantastic piece covering Justice Stevens in the Sunday Magazine. He's presented as a much more balanced character than some right/left pundits may have you think. The internal politics of the Supreme Court are always interesting. The article highlights, his important role as senior associate justice in assigning opinions (when not agreeing with the Chief).
The author notes the shift in mentality of liberal judges these days:
"Judicial liberalism... has largely become a conservative project: an effort to preserve the legal status quo in the face of efforts by a younger generation of conservatives to uproot the precedents of the past 40 years."
Interestingly, the article mentions the role of his own father's conviction for embezzlement, his own World War II experience, and his experiences clerking in forming his more expansive protections of individual liberty from government interference.
Also includes discussion of Roe v Wade, affirmative action, his role in Bill Clinton's impeachment saga, and finally a mention of his reasoning in Bush v Gore.
For fans of constitutional interpretation, here's his view:
Stevens’s final judicial theme is that the court has an obligation to protect ideals of equality and liberty in light of the nation’s entire history, rather than legalistically parsing the original understanding of the Constitution. As the court moved right during the past 20 years, Stevens increasingly saw it as his role to interpret the Constitution with fidelity to all of American history, rejecting the claim of Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas and Judge Robert Bork that the original understanding of the 18th-century framers is all that matters...“Originalism is perfectly sensible. I always try to figure out what the original intent was, but to say that’s the Bible and nothing else counts seems to me quite wrong.”
Finally, I like this quote:
Though no one has succeeded in reducing his vision to a simple label — “I like to have people think I’m a good lawyer, to tell you the truth,” Stevens said. “I’m not big on labels” — his legal thinking has returned repeatedly over the years to a set of identifiable ideas and themes.
The first is that the government has a duty to behave impartially, rather than favoring one group over another for partisan or sectarian reasons. “It seems to me that one of the overriding principles in running the country is the government ought to be neutral,” Stevens told me. “It has a very strong obligation to be impartial, and not use its power to advance political agendas or personal agendas.”
Sunday, September 23, 2007
NY Times profiles Justice John Paul Stevens
Friday, September 21, 2007
Income Inequality II: Keeping up with the Jones's
I was reminded to write the previous post when I came across this blog entry by Paul Krugman, on his NY Times blog earlier this afternoon.
It has taken up the theme of rising income inequality, and advanced it by charting its historical development over the past 100 years.
In the chart above, Krugman takes us through the progression from the "gilded age", the "great compression", "middle class america", and "the great divergence" (post 1970s).
Krugman attributes the reduction in income inequality in the "great compression" (late 1930s to middle 1940s) to FDR and the New Deal.
If this is correct, this is the first time the true impact of the New Deal to broader society has really sunk in with me. On the other hand, you can't help but note that the "great compression" corresponds with the WW2 years...
Krugman states that:
"We’re no longer a middle-class society, in which the benefits of economic growth are widely shared: between 1979 and 2005 the real income of the median household rose only 13 percent, but the income of the richest 0.1% of Americans rose 296 percent."
I haven't got the tools to assess the validity of the statistics Krugman cites (lies, damned lies etc...) but prima facie it is a powerful argument.
The conclusion is not 100% clear though. Does this signal a bad thing?
If the standard of living - which is normally what matters to the man on the street, isn't it? - has continued to rise as it has during the same period, then does it really matter if the richest among us are getting richer?
Are we more concerned in broader societal outcomes (average standard of living) or keeping up with the Jones's?
P.S. there are some interesting comments to be read after Krugman's post.
Income Inequality: the economic issue of the coming decade?
One political and economic trend that I've been meaning to talk about for quite a while has been the increase in public discussion on the issue of income inequality. The simple argument is that the gap between the wealthy and the middleclass has become increasingly divergent.
I recall that in June 2007 the NY Times Sunday Magazine had an interview with Lawrence Summers, which really struck me over the head and started me thinking.
The interview mentioned the debate between Summers and Robert Reich in the early Clinton administration.
"[Reich] argued for something that he called “industrial policy.” Since the government couldn’t avoid having a big influence on the economy, he said, it should at least do so in a way that promoted fast-growing industries and invested in worthy public projects."
Summers responded, asking:
"How could bureaucrats know which industries and projects to support with tax credits? The better solution, Summers responded, was to get the economy growing fast enough that the problems of the middle class would begin to solve themselves. And the way to do this was to slow government spending and raise taxes on the wealthy, which would bring down the Reagan-era budget deficits and, eventually, interest rates. Once that happened, the American economy would be unleashed."
So, the plan becomes raise the economy, raise up the middle class. But did it turn out that way?
Summers recently noted that that the benefits of our last stretch of economic expansion have not benefitted everyone equally. The question is now how to make globalization work for the majority of the population.
From the article,
"“I think the defining issue of our time is: Does the economic, social and political system work for the middle class?” he told me. “Because the system’s viability, its staying power and its health depend on how well it works for the middle class.”"
So how to fix things? Summers suggests a new 'social contract'.
"... I think now the challenge is, again, to protect a basic market system based on open trade and globalization, to make it one that works for everyone or for almost everyone, at a time when market forces are often producing outcomes that seem increasingly problematic to middle-class families."
And the part that worries me somewhat:
"Despite good growth over the last four years, the pay of most American workers has barely kept pace with inflation. Technology and global trade are conspiring to let highly skilled workers do more — to be more productive and to play on a bigger stage — while at the same time making millions of other workers replaceable."
So, what about the social contract? It is clear that the 10% who are most wealthy in our economy (which for better or worse includes my colleagues in finance and law) are doing very well for ourselves at the moment. But what about the other 90% of the nation. It would be naive (read: stupid) to deny the importance of the other 90% to our good fortune.
Our economy runs on all of us working - properly incentivized of course (you cannot deny the proper role of liberal markets). But what if these incentives are out of whack?
It sounds great, in theory, to leave things to the operation of pure unhindered markets. But perhaps things like a higher tax burden on the wealthiest few, a comprehensive state-managed healthcare system, subsidzed education are not prima facie excessively socialist. Perhaps this things need to be done, not for pure economic policy but in harmony with social policy.
As an amateur in these policy areas, I'd welcome any thoughts on the subject...
