Category: Politics

Uvalde + Buffalo + Parkland = Make guns 21+.

Uvalde, Buffalo, Parkland – the common thread in these massacres? All were committed by under-21 boys who purchased their guns legally. In mass shootings, 77% of the murderers obtained their weapons legally! Over 17% of all homicides are committed by those 18-20, and most weapons used in crime are obtained legally or through straw-man purchases from legal sellers [1].

So you’re telling me we could reduce school shootings and potentially stop 4000 deaths per year, just by making kids wait until they are drinking age to buy a gun [1]? It’s not quite that simple – with America awash in guns, eliminating access wouldn’t stop perpetrators entirely. But it’s worth noting that the aforementioned trio of shooters didn’t have criminal records, and didn’t have criminal contacts on whom to rely for illicit weapons. If only 1 in 4 young adults were stopped from obtaining a firearm, this would reduce deaths by over a thousand per year. From a gun-rights perspective, no right has been taken away – just shifted a few years to enable young minds to develop and gain impulse control (brain development actually ends at 25).

Most reasonable gun safety measures are supported by the majority of Americans, but this particular improvement was also enacted by a conservative state – Florida ended gun sales to the under-21 crowd after the Parkland shooting. If Florida can do it, then virtually every state politically to the left of FL should be able to make this change. Narrow Federal legislation in this regard might be possible (though unlikely) in the current moment [2]. As this latest tragedy focuses our attention on the issue, I hope politicians will focus on simple, attainable changes like these.

[1] The FBI data uses slightly different age ranges, but if we add 1/5th of the homicides committed by those 20-24 to homicides committed by older teenagers, we get 1910 homicides in 2019 – this is 17% of all homicides that year (where age of offender is known). When scaled to 2021 homicide levels (using 6.9 per 100k rate and Census 2021 population), this is 3893 homicides per year – 79% of which are estimated to be committed by firearms. That’s 3110 homicides per year. Using CDC data we find another 900 suicides by firearm within the 18-20 age group – for a total of 4000 deaths per year!

[2] Theoretically this should be easy to pass at the federal level, but Congress has become so ossified and reactionary that nothing will pass there.The guns-at-all-costs crowd has grown more extreme, with many calling for ALL weapons to be legal (yep that includes nuclear weapons, according to a former TX state representative).

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Are COVID Deaths Changing The Electorate? Wisconsin Edition

I just wrote about a detailed calculation of COVID deaths and their potential electoral impact in Georgia, my home state. One factor that causes COVID deaths to have little political impact in Georgia: the state has a large black population which is disproportionately impacted by COVID, and this balances out deaths (politically speaking) among the older white population.

What about if we look at a swing state like Wisconsin, which is 87% white per the Census Bureau?

White deaths roughly approximate the white share of total population in Wisconsin.

This ought to mean that COVID would push the Wisconsin electorate leftward, correct?

Here are 2020 exit poll results for white voters in Wisconsin, and 2020 exit poll results for black voters in the Midwest (black Wisconsin voters weren’t available as a subset):

President Biden won Wisconsin precisely because he lost the older white vote by a relatively small margin.

Let’s do some simple math:

8064 deaths * 86.5% white = 6975 deaths

6975 deaths * (10% Trump margin amongst age groups at risk) = 698 net loss in Trump voters

8064 deaths * 7.7% black = 621 deaths

621 deaths * (62% Biden margin among black voters in Midwest) = 385 net loss in Biden voters

The Wisconsin GOP appears to have lost 300-350 net votes due to COVID thus far. It’s possible that this understates the impact, since the white voters that died post vaccine-era are increasingly represented by GOP voters (since they are more likely to refuse vaccination). But 80% of COVID deaths in Wisconsin occurred prior to general vaccine availability (prior to 1/31/21), lowering partisan effects due to vaccine hesitancy. Even if we assume a 20% Trump margin among white voters that died post 1/31, this only increases the GOP’s net vote loss to 500 votes (add 1/5th of the white vote * additional 10% margin).

The impact of a 500 vote swing could be meaningful in states where politics is a game of inches these days – but we can’t overstate it. Voters’ overall reaction to how the pandemic has been handled is by far the larger factor in how COVID impacts American politics.

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Are COVID Deaths Changing the Electorate?

Given that COVID-19 has become intensely politicized, I started wondering – will the death patterns seen to date have an impact on elections in 2022 and beyond? On the one hand, we’ve heard that minorities are dying at higher rates, whether due to poorer medical treatment or more exposure to the virus (a lower rate of work-from-home). On the other hand, the number one factor in terms of COVID mortality risk (other than vaccination status) is age – and the older you go in the US population pyramid, the whiter the demographics become.

I decided to try cross-referencing two data sources in Georgia to see how COVID might have changed the electorate. Given that President Biden won GA by only 12,000 votes, here, even small shifts in the electorate could have meaningful results. The Georgia Department of Public Health breaks COVID deaths down by age and race, and 2020 exit polling data provides a (rough) guide to how different demographics voted.

We can do some simple math to gauge the impacts, weighting the deaths by Biden/Trump voting split to determine the total impact on the Red/Blue dynamic. Here is 2020 exit polling data by age and race from CNN – since black and white were the only racial categories measured, we’ll focus on these (the number of COVID deaths in other groups in GA is dwarfed by these two groups).

From the Georgia Dept. of Public Health, here are COVID deaths by race:

In absolute terms, the number of white deaths greatly exceeds all other groups, principally because the vast majority of Georgians (and Americans) over 70 are white.

Now let’s do the math. We’ll use a simple model – we’re just using the age groups by race, and the voting margins by age and race, to determine how many votes each side has likely lost due to death by COVID. COVID has resulted in substantial excess mortality in the US since March 2020, so most of these people would still be alive and voting. Here’s the spreadsheet.

Results:

GOP candidates are likely to lose 4,661 votes due to COVID deaths.

Democratic candidates are likely to lose 4,895 votes due to COVID deaths.

This leads to a swing of 234 votes in the GOP’s favor. This result is influenced by a few factors:

  • While white deaths do substantially exceed black deaths in total, the black population of Georgia is experiencing substantial excess mortality – total deaths of black Georgians exceed that of white Georgians for ages 18-49, despite being roughly 1/3 of the population in that age group.
  • Biden won Georgia by chipping away at Trump’s margin among white voters – while older black voters favored Biden 94-6, older white voters favored Trump by 72-28. Since COVID mortality is centered on the elderly, the lopsided voting patterns help cushion the GOP’s losses.

My prior assumption, when glancing at the Georgia Dept of Public Health graphs, was that COVID might have a non-trivial impact on GOP support, simply given the large number of deaths among older white voters. This analysis has ignored differential vaccination rates by political leaning – so it’s possible that going forward, this calculus might change, since conservatives appear most vaccine resistant. In Georgia at least, it appears that COVID deaths are not leading to much net change in the electorate. States with a more homogeneous white population might experience a more profound impact, since age would then be the only important variable.

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The Great GOP Stimulus

The 2018 Trump stimulus exceeds the Obama-era stimulus package in size – will it pay off at the top of the economic cycle?

In 2010, when Barack Obama pushed for a stimulus package to help boost the American economy, it was decided by many in the GOP as wasteful spending. While there are more productive (infrastructure) and less productive (tax rebates) ways to stimulate the economy, any form of spending (or tax cut) is a form of economic stimulus – this is a point agreed by both economists and businessmen like Warren Buffet. In fact, any form of budget deficit is a form of stimulus, as the government borrows (or prints) money that it doesn’t have to spend it into the economy.

The past year has seen the GOP enact not one but two stimulus measures – first a budget which ended Obama-era budget caps and boosted spending by roughly $150B per year, and second the tax cut which reduces taxes by another $150B per year. Taken together these measures are adding roughly $300B per year in stimulus to the US economy, potentially adding 1.5% to GDP for each of the next few years. Adding this stimulus to a core GDP growth rate of 2-2.5% might thus make 4% possible in the near term, with the bill due much later. The total federal (non-central bank) stimulus under President Trump’s first will hit at least $1.2 Trillion, exceeding President Obama’s 2010 stimulus package by $350 Billion [1], but this time at the top of the economic cycle!

What does this tell us? A few key takeaways emerge:
  • While most economists agree that it’s better to do fiscal stimulus when the economy is at or near recession, democracies don’t work this way, and there’s little correlation between economic need and actual governance.
  • When either party has complete control of government, they take the opportunity to spend on favored initiatives – in Trump’s case the DoD received most of the benefit, while in Obama’s case a variety of energy efficiency, infrastructure, and other initiatives were funded.
  • Budget deficits haven’t been a major issue over the last decade, but the tax cuts in particular will layer on top of Social Security and healthcare spending trends to drive debt-to-gdp well past 100% [2].
  • The best stabilizers in the US economy (unemployment insurance) are effectively automated – extending this sort of stabilizer to infrastructure spending (spending more on transportation funding etc as unemployment rises) would not just help buffer downturns – it would also get taxpayers a better deal.

Time will tell whether the GOP’s late-cycle spending will extend the business cycle substantially, but in the long run US policy will improve if more of these decisions are put on auto-pilot, removing the uncertainty of the political winds and the desire to spend at the least opportune times.

 

[1] The Obama administration stimulus plan cost around $850B in the end, including only the 2010 Stimulus measure and its implementation. Extension of Bush-era tax cuts and similar are not counted here, as these were extensions of existing measures, rather than new tax cuts or new spending as in the Trump administration’s recent moves.

[2] Many charts and news reports on the debt refer only to the publicly-held portion of the US debt, but when debts to the Social Security trust fund are included as in this data from the Federal Reserve, the US debt-to-gdp ratio already exceeds 100%.

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A Better Estate Tax Reform

Replacing the estate tax with fair (no step-up) capital gains taxation at death could raise revenue for tax reform, and get rid of complex tax avoidance schemes

Among the many changes proposed among the Trump and GOP tax plans is the end of the estate tax – long a cherished Republican goal. Today’s Republicans decry the estate tax as a form of double taxation, while proponents (including Republican President Teddy Roosevelt) view it as a means to prevent an aristocracy formed through inter-generational wealth transfer.

What’s overlooked in the estate tax debate is that there’s a simple solution at hand, if we just look north, to Canada. This may be surprising to many Americans, but in the early 1970s Canada repealed its estate tax, replacing it with a simple application of capital gains taxes.

Canada applies its capital gains tax to an estate by assuming that the assets have been sold on the date of the owner’s death. Instead of taxing an estate in a special way, a consistent application of the existing capital gains tax serves to eliminate loopholes (in particular by eliminating step-up basis) and raise revenue while also substantially lowering the top rate of tax on estates. If transfers of ownership are treated as taxable for capital gains purposes, this eliminates the use of trusts and step-up basis as a multi-generational tax avoidance scheme, since tax would be paid on any change of ownership, including when assets are transferred into the trust.

Instead of exempting substantially all estates (as with current law), a capital gains tax-based approach could simply apply current capital gains brackets. The top rate of 23.8% would represent a reduction of over 50% from current rates. This change could generate substantial revenue to enable other aspects of tax reform – in the year 2000, when the estate tax exemption was $1.3M for a couple, it generated $25B per year in revenue (after substantial exclusions, credits, and deductions). With the economy today 90% larger than in 2000, it’s likely that a similar tax would generate nearly $50B today. Elimination of step-up basis could double this figure by adding another $50B – and $100B per year would pay for a huge chunk of current Republican plans on business tax reform, without penalizing most individuals.

Unfortunately, Republicans are fixated on ending the “death” tax and ramming through their current plan, while Democrats are interested in keeping top estate tax rates in place – when a broader capital-gains based approach would be fairer and would generate more revenue. Hardly the last time a good moderate approach is left to die in our polarized political climate!

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AHCA Update: Let Red States Secede from Universal Healthcare

The House is likely to vote today on an updated version of the AHCA (the GOP’s Obamacare replacement) today. I’ve written previously about the bill, and noted that for a GOP-introduced bill, it was originally quite moderate – it embraced the notion of universal healthcare.

The latest AHCA update is considerably more conservative, as it effectively allows states to eliminate most of the ACA’s universality. By bringing back medical underwriting, states will be able to roll the clock back to 2013 (pre-ACA exchanges), when individuals with pre-existing conditions generally could not obtain health insurance.

But several forces combine to make it highly unlikely that pre-existing conditions coverage will disappear from any American state:

  • Once the bill makes it to the Senate, it will likely have to be made considerably more moderate, as the GOP can only lose two GOP Senate votes, and a number of Senators have expressed reservations about the latest changes.
  • The bill will still have to pass through reconciliation between House and Senate, and might die in that process, or might emerge more moderate in that process. It appears unlikely that it will pass through Congress as currently written, or in more conservative form.
  • Even if the bill does become law as written, the 31 states that expanded Medicaid are unlikely to seek to remove pre-existing conditions coverage. Within the 19 remaining states, it’s unclear that state officials are willing to take the blame for rescinding that coverage.

At this point, assuming the bill does make it through the House, it’s the Senate modifications and reconciliation process that will determine whether the final product is worthwhile. If the Senate is able to preserve universality, while strengthening tax credits for older age groups, a credible final product may emerge.

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AHCA: Insured to Rise by 7M by 2026 – CBO Misses Power of Free Plans

The CBO generally performs careful, in depth analyses – but their approach is susceptible to inaccuracy when policy proposals differ sharply from existing norms. The CBO projects that over 24m individuals will lose insurance coverage as a result of the AHCA, as older individuals and Medicaid recipients lose insurance faster than younger individuals gain it. This projection misses the power of free plans, however. The table below shows how much different age groups might pay for coverage under the AHCA, with prices based on 2017 ACA exchange prices for states with low (Oregon), medium (Ohio), and high (Nebraska) insurance costs [1]. As the table shows, the AHCA tax credits can provide catastrophic coverage to the majority of Americans below age 45.

Monthly Cost after AHCA Tax Credit
(Plan cost as found on healthcare.gov, cheapest available plan)
State Age 20 Age 30 Age 40 Age 50 Age 60 Family Ages 40,10,8 Family Ages 30,30,5,3
Oregon (Low Cost State, Zip 97035 Used) Free ($112) Free ($208) Free ($234) $35 ($327) $160 ($493) Free
($466)		 Free
($648)
Ohio (Medium Cost State, Zip 43004 Used) Free ($121) $12 ($216) Free ($244) $49 ($341) $186 ($519) Free
($487)		 Free
($677)
Nebraska (High Cost State, Zip 68010 Used) Free ($131) $66 ($274) $59 ($309) $139 ($431) $323 ($656) $33 ($616) $105 ($855)

Using the information compiled above, we can estimate the change in uninsured rates for each of the groups in the chart below. For age groups below 40, the uninsured rate is projected to drop close to the same level as that of children below 19, since these groups will have access to free plans paid for by tax credits (and insurance companies will market these subsidized free plans mercilessly). For age groups above 45, the uninsured rate will rise, though not quite to pre-ACA levels, when no support was provided.

Projected Uninsured Rate Under AHCAThe CBO estimates that 14 million Americans will lose Medicaid coverage, and that 9 million more will lose either individual or employer-based coverage.

Using population estimates for 2026, I calculate that the number of insured Americans aged 19-34 rises by 7 million, aged 35-44 rises by roughly 2 million, and aged 45-64 drops by roughly 2 million [2]. While it’s important to note that these plans will be much less generous than ACA-subsidized plans, the total number of insured actually rises by around 7 million under these estimates. The GOP will have installed universal, nearly-free catastrophic plans as the future of American health care – if the AHCA passes, as Mssrs. Trump and Ryan continue their struggle to get it through Congress.

P.S. If you are interested to find out more about how the AHCA might impact you or your clients’ investments, my company HiddenLevers has modeled that in our TrumpCare scenarios. Have a look through one of our free demo accounts.

 

[1] The 2017 ACA prices are a reasonable guide as the Trump administration plans to relax the essential benefits associated with plans, and to widen the max price differential between plans for young and old. The risk pool under the AHCA will also likely be healthier, as young, healthy Americans will be drawn into free AHCA plans – because they are free.

[2] Roughly 23% of the population is aged 19-34, and a 9% point drop in uninsured rate for this group in 2026, translates to a rise of 7m more insured Americans. A similar calculation for the 35-44 group yields another 2m insured Americans, while the 2.5% rise in uninsured among older Americans yields a loss of insurance for 2 million. The CBO appears not to contemplate that many of those losing Medicaid will receive tax credits sufficient to provide them with free catastrophic plans, as shown in the table above. This mitigates the Medicaid cuts to some extent.

[3] The original chart above can be found here at the CommonWealth Fund.

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TrumpCare (AHCA) – Welcome to Universal Catastrophic Health Insurance

The AHCA would move the USA toward universal catastrophic healthcare coverage, by enabling insurance companies to sign up individuals to $0 monthly premium plans with high deductibles and limited coverage.

While healthcare analysts have been in overdrive commenting on the new GOP health plan, it appears that some key points have been lost in the noise. Whether on Medicaid, total enrollment, or tax credits, it seems that many analysts fail to understand the large-scale implications of the bill. As written, the AHCA has the potential to be transformative – it would retain the goal of universal coverage, while shifting tax credits toward universal high deductible insurance. If fully implemented, the AHCA could actually lead to gains in coverage – but the US healthcare market would be transformed by a move toward high deductible catastrophic coverage.

AHCA Key Changes:

  • Covered Benefits: The AHCA does not change the essential benefits list, but Secretary Price is interested in reducing essential benefits to lower costs.
  • Tax Credits: Tax credits will be less generous, but will cover more of the population, potentially leading to a shift toward catastrophic plans.
  • Medicaid: The Medicaid expansion ends after 2019, but tax credits will be available to all lower and middle-income Americans.
  • Employer Coverage: AHCA creates a strong incentive for employers to drop coverage, since most American workers will receive tax credits.
  • Universality: AHCA provides tax credits to virtually all Americans without other coverage, cementing the goal of universal health care in the USA.
Detailed Findings:

Covered Benefits:
With the exception of abortion coverage, the AHCA does not change the essential benefits under the ACA. HHS Secretary Tom Price has indicated that he will reduce regulations that increase costs – he can do this by limiting the definition of essential benefits.

Tom Price has indicated on multiple occasions that HHS will seek to reduce regulations on health insurance markets, and recently both he and President Trump indicated that these changes would be part of “phase 2 & 3” of their healthcare overhaul. In the past Secretary Price has indicated that he will seek to specifically limit the essential benefits requirement while at HHS.

The AHCA is particularly punitive towards abortion, barring the use of tax credits for any plan that covers abortion services (page 72 of bill pdf).

Tax Credits:
The AHCA offers up to $14k in tax credits per family, at 2k-4k per person depending on age (pages 90-92 of pdf). It also enables insurance companies to claim tax credits on behalf of enrollees, enabling them to offer cheap or free plans to the public.

Much has been written on winners and losers with the proposed tax credit changes. Analysts both left and right fear many will lose insurance. But look at page 106 of the bill: “Not later than January 1, 2020, the Secretary … shall establish a program … for making payments to providers of eligible health insurance on behalf of tax payers eligible for the credit under section 36C.”

Consider what this means – insurance companies will be paid between $2000 and $14,000 per year for each enrollment. In a similar situation in the for-profit university industry, tuition essentially matched federal loan programs, creating a no-money-down product for students. With the AHCA, insurers will be strongly incentivized by the market to offer $0 premium plans in order to maximize their signups of younger individuals in particular.

With the change of young-old ratio to 5:1 (page 66), and Tom Price’s expected reduction of essential benefits, new catastrophic plans will likely flood the market, providing a no cost option for many. See Appendix I for specific examples using 2017 exchange pricing.

Medicaid:
The AHCA ends the Medicaid expansion in 2019, but states may have some incentivize to jump in now, because the future funding they receive is based on the number of enrollees at the end of 2019. Beginning in 2020 the Medicaid expansion will be repealed, and only those enrolled under pre-ACA rules (with stricter income and asset tests) can be newly enrolled into Medicaid.

The AHCA does close a gap caused in non-Medicaid expansion states, where many workers make too much to qualify for traditional Medicaid, but too little to qualify for ACA subsidies. These individuals will qualify for the new AHCA tax credits.

Employer Coverage:
The AHCA removes penalties for not providing insurance (page 84 of bill pdf), and could encourage employers to drop coverage as it provides tax credits to a much larger range of working age Americans.

Per the Kaiser Foundation, the average employer contribution to individual employee healthcare is around $4800, with the employee contributing around $1200. At a 25% federal tax rate, this leads to a tax deduction value of $1500, versus a tax credit of $3000 for the median-age American worker. For family coverage, a tax deduction value (25% tax bracket) of roughly $4500 compares to a tax credit of $9000 for a family of four with adults in their 30s. In both cases, both the employer and employee would benefit if the employer dropped coverage, raised wages, and let the employee take advantage of the tax credit.

Appendix II presents a fully worked example for a family of four making $100k per year, and shows that the family would likely benefit under AHCA changes.

Universality:

The AHCA offers tax credits to all Americans without employer-based healthcare (except those with higher incomes), and as a result the AHCA accepts the ACA’s premise of universal health insurance.

The only Americans excluded from the new AHCA tax credits are those already receiving healthcare from a government program (Medicare, Medicaid, VA, etc) or from employer-based coverage (page 97 of bill pdf).

The GOP has produced a plan that implicitly accepts that universal healthcare is here to stay. The end game (relative to the ACA) will look very different, however, with large swaths of the population covered by high-deductible catastrophic plans.

Appendix I: Are $0 premiums for catastrophic plans really possible?

Is $2000 ($166/month) sufficient to offer a “free” plan to a young adult, or $10,000 ($833/month) sufficient to offer a “free” plan to a family of 4?

Using Healthcare.gov, in the Atlanta area the current cheapest plan for age 21 is exactly 1/3 of the $597 charged to a 64 year old, as a result of the ACA 3:1 limit on costs for older Americans. A bronze plan for age 20 is only $126/month in Atlanta, since the 3:1 limit doesn’t apply below age 21 (even in New York City, individual catastrophic plans are available from around $165/month). Since the AHCA raises the ratio limit to 5:1, this shows how $0 plans will fit within the $2000 tax credit.

How about for a family of four ages 31, 31, 4, and 2? This priced out at $713/month in Atlanta, below the $10k AHCA annual tax credit. Since the AHCA allows excess tax credits to be placed into an HSA, the family could bank around $1500 per year toward future medical expenses while paying $0 in premiums. In New York City, the family premium would be around $1050/month, leaving the family bearing around $200/month in premiums – but this is before accounting for the impact of the new 5:1 ratio and curtailment of essential benefits, which would likely bring net costs to $0 even in NYC.

What about older Americans? A $4000 ($333/month) tax credit will not cover a single 64 year-old’s $600/month premium in Atlanta. If HHS substantially reduces essential benefits, that may close the gap, but with a corresponding loss of benefits. Pre-Medicare age older Americans are clearly the biggest losers under the AHCA reform. But if the AHCA is able to substantially increase enrollment by the young and healthy due to $0 premiums, this may enable more affordable plans further up the age spectrum.

Appendix II: Why Employers May Drop Coverage – A Specific Example

Let’s consider again a family of four, ages 31, 31, 4, and 2. Using Kaiser numbers, on average the family and their employer spent a total around $18,000 on health insurance premiums, with the employer contributing roughly $13,000 of that amount. In the 25% tax bracket, the family is receiving $4500 in value from the existing tax deduction. In total, the family is spending about $500 out of pocket on health insurance when employer assistance and tax deductions are considered.

What if the employer were to drop coverage, enabling the family to receive a $9k AHCA tax credit, and to raise the employee’s salary by $13,000 instead? The employee would receive $9750 in new after-tax income (considering only a 25% federal rate) plus $9000 in tax credits, or $18,750 total. Assuming similar premiums, the family would then spend $18,000 on health insurance, leaving $750 unspent. In total the family might come out $1250 ahead versus the existing system, and the employer would be able to offload the risk and expense of managing benefits.
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The GOP Civil War on Taxes

Republicans love tax cuts, and both President Trump and Speaker Ryan have set their sights on lowering both personal and corporate income tax rates. But some Republicans also like controlling the budget deficit, while others favor defense spending or immigration control. How can the GOP cut tax rates, raise defense spending and immigration enforcement, and control the budget deficit? Here’s the heart of the problem: the federal government gets roughly $1.4T from income taxes, $440B from corporate income taxes and capital gains, $1.1T from payroll taxes, and smaller amounts from other sources [1]. The tax plan under consideration will substantially cut the first two sources, without raising the other categories. How can such a tax plan be implemented without blowing up the budget deficit?

The evolving Trump-Ryan plan bridges this gap by introducing a new category: a border adjustment tax on imports. If all 2.7T in US imports were taxed at 20%, this could raise over $500B per year, providing a source for big tax cuts (though still not enough to pay for the tax cuts proposed). But there’s a problem with this idea – will 50 Republican senators vote for it?

The National Retail Federation has come out strongly against the plan, as have the Koch brothers, whose companies participate heavily in international trade. The Kochs are focusing their battle charge in 15 states where they may be able to sway Senate votes. Meanwhile, with retail giant WalMart strongly opposed, will the senators from Wal-Mart… err Arkansas be on board?

Hence we have a GOP civil war, pitting major exporters like Boeing, Oracle, and GE against retailers and other importers, and pitting nationalist Republicans versus traditional free-trade Republicans.

Trump and Ryan can only spare two votes in the Senate – will they be able to keep everyone on board? While the plan could stimulate US growth through tax cuts and favoring US production, it may also trigger a trade war that nullifies much of its benefit. There’s also the essential nature of the import tax – it is effectively introducing a new US consumption tax for the first time. Consumption taxes have been on the GOP radar for some time, as they tend to shift tax burdens down the income scale, and to reduce taxes on the wealthy. But is Trump’s base ready to pay an extra 40 cents at the pump every day, when many of them won’t see a huge tax cut [2]? Let the Republican tax civil war begin.

[1] The CBO provides a detailed breakdown of revenues here. I have combined corporate taxes and capital gains into one category, as both are taxes on capital.

[2] Roughly 50% of oil is still imported into the US, so a border adjustment tax could disproportionately increase oil prices.

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Election 2016 Review: Democrats Score an Own-Goal, Part II

2017 has rolled around, and with Mr. Trump entering the White House, I’d like to close the book on the 2016 election with a review of the certified election results. Shortly after the election, my analysis concluded that Clinton lost the election – Trump performed like a generic Republican, while Clinton underperformed John Kerry (2004) on the way to defeat. With all the votes in and Clinton showing a 3 million vote popular vote lead, is this analysis still valid?

  • Donald Trump received 62,979,636 votes, 27.2% of the 231,556,622 voting eligible people in the United States. This represents a drop of 1.1% in total vote share, relative to Mitt Romney, roughly in line with the recent decline trend seen for GOP candidates (Bush 2004 was the strongest GOP candidate in recent history).
  • Hillary Clinton received 65,844,610 votes, 28.4% of the 231,556,622 voting eligible people in the United States. This represents a drop of 2.2% in total vote share relative to Obama 2012, and was the worst performance by a Democratic candidate since Al Gore in 2000.
  • Given the narrowness of Trump’s victory in the upper Midwest, Clinton could be right that external forces like James Comey  or Wikileaks/Putin did her in. But she (or another Democratic candidate) could have overcome that had they turned out young and minority voters. Clinton didn’t need to perform at Obama-like levels – but she couldn’t hold on to the sliver she needed to win.

So in the final analysis, I still blame Democrats and the Clinton team in particular for this loss far more than I credit Donald Trump. According to the data, he performed in line with a typical GOP candidate, while Clinton greatly under-performed the last three Democratic campaigns. Other analysts concur, and have added depth by identifying exactly how many votes Dems left at home in the upper Midwest. The lesson for 2017 and beyond: Democrats – focus on turning out your base, instead of appealing to voters unlikely to vote for you in the first place.

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