Intra-governmental Dispute on Class Actions Poses Dilemma for Trumpian Populism

In today’s New York Times, Jessica Silver-Greenberg reports on a dispute between two federal agencies that pits Steven Mnuchin’s Treasury Department against the Consumer Financial Regulatory Commission (CFRC), headed by Richard Cordray, an Obama appointee. The controversy centers on a proposed CFRC rule that would prohibit financial institutions from enforcing fine-print clauses that mandate private arbitration and prohibit class-actions in contracts governing credit cards, car loans, and the like.

Class actions play a key role in resolving disputes in which a deep-pocket corporation is alleged to cause small harm to many individuals. Air pollution cases often fit that mold. Similar cases arise in the financial world, for example, when a credit-card issuer unfairly imposes excessive late charges of a few dollars each on thousands of customers.

Libertarians often defend both private arbitration and class actions in principle as desirable features of a free-market system of dispute resolution. For example, in a discussion of air pollution in his 1973 manifesto For a New Liberty, Murray Rothbard wrote,

Obviously, if a factory pollutes the atmosphere of a city where there are tens of thousands of victims, it is impractical for each victim to sue to collect his particular damages from the polluter (although an injunction could be used effectively by one small victim). The common law, therefore, recognizes the validity of "class action" suits, in which one or a few victims can sue the aggressor not only on their own behalf, but on behalf of the entire class of similar victims.

However, in practice, free-market thinkers have sometimes tempered their enthusiasm for class actions with fine-print clauses of their own. In another more technical and detailed article on Law, Property Rights, and Air Pollution, Rothbard piled on procedural limitations, including restrictions on joinder of both plaintiffs and defendants, uniformity of interests, and proof of causation, that would render the actual use of class actions impractical. (See here for more on the role of class actions in pollution cases.)

Evidently, Trumpian populists are caught in the same dilemma Rothbard was when it comes to class actions. In their public rhetoric, they pose as defenders of the little guy, a stance that should, logically, favor broad use of class actions. In behind-the-scenes actions like the Treasury’s attack on the CFRC rule, however, the administration more often comes down firmly on the side of party with the deeper pockets.

The Senate's 'Budget Hoax' is Nothing New (Sad)

The Senate is getting ready to pass a budget resolution, six months behind schedule. On the eve of a final vote, Senator Bob Corker calls the resolution a hoax, but plans to vote for it anyway. As quoted in The Hill, Corker says,

The only thing about this that matters is preparation for the tax reform. Other than that, these amendment votes, everything about this is a hoax. A hoax. It has no impact on anything whatsoever.

He goes on to say,

Unless we create a real budget process, which this is not, our country’s fiscal situation will continue to go down the tube, and we have no mechanism to control real spending, 70 percent of which is mandatory, that’s not even covered by this.

Sadly, this is not a new problem. Decades ago, Herbert Stein, then chairman of President Nixon’s Council of Economic Advisers, wrote, “We have no long-run budget policy—no policy for the size of deficits and for the rate of growth of the public debt over a period of years.” Each year, according to Stein, the president and Congress make short-term budgetary decisions that are wholly inconsistent with their declared long-run goals, hoping “that something will happen or be done before the long-run arises, but not yet.” (Quoted in AEI Economist, Dec. 1984.)

It would be fair to say that our fiscal policy has been “going down the tube,” as Corker puts it, for a long time.

Reposted from Niskanen Notes.

Winners and Losers from the Mortgage Deduction in Latest GOP Tax Plans

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post titled “Time to Repeal the Mortgage Deduction.” One of the big arguments against the deduction is that, far from being a break for the middle class, households earning $125,000 a year and higher get 87 percent of the benefits. Now, according to an analysis by Laura Kusisto of the Wall Street Journal, Congress is floating a tax reform plan that would keep the deduction but make it even more lopsidedly favorable to the rich.

The latest proposal would preserve the mortgage deduction, at least on paper, but narrow the appeal of itemizing by doubling the standard deduction. According to data from Zillow, cited by Kusisto, it now pays to itemize, on average, only for homeowners with houses worth more than $305,000, or 30 percent homes. If the standard deduction were doubled, the breakeven point would rise to $801,000, or about 5 percent of homes.

Who would be the winners and losers from these changes? To answer, we need to consider the effect on home prices as well as the effect on taxes. Kusisto cites a study by PricewaterhouseCoopers that says average home prices would fall by 10 percent without the mortgage deduction, with most of the effect felt by lower-priced homes. In that case, the effects would break out as follows:

• Middle-class homeowners who stay in their current homes would not be greatly affected. What they lost from the mortgage deduction they would gain back from the higher standard deduction.
• Middle-class first-time home buyers would be winners. They would gain both from the higher standard deduction and from lower prices on starter homes.
• Middle-class families who sell their homes without buying another (for example, to move to assisted living) would be the biggest losers. Loss of the mortgage deduction would erode gains from the higher standard deduction, while the sales value of their homes would drop.
• High-earners with expensive homes and enough deductibles to itemize would be little affected one way or the other.
• Realtors and mortgage lenders who earn a percentage on the price of each new home would be losers.

Reposted from NiskanenCenter.org

It's Time to Deregulate Adult Autism Care

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been tracking the prevalence of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) since 2000. As the following chart shows, the identified prevalence of ASD among American children – especially boys – has been rising steadily. No one seems to know how much of the increase is due to greater prevalence of the disorder itself, or greater awareness and better diagnosis. It probably is a little of both. In any case, the number of people who were diagnosed with ASD in childhood and who now are entering adulthood is rising and will continue to increase.

Unfortunately, too many of those now entering adulthood with ASD are running into regulatory barriers that prevent them from getting the kind of care they need. This post explains the nature of those barriers and outlines changes that would help ensure appropriate care for all adults with ASD. 

Origins: Deinstitutionalization

The widespread deinstitutionalization of people with mental illnesses has been one of the most dramatic changes in social policy in the United States since World War II. According to  Dominic Sisti, Ph.D., an assistant professor of medical ethics and human policy at the University of Pennsylvania, the number of patients in state psychiatric facilities decreased from 560,000 in 1955 to just 45,000 in 2014, a 95 percent decrease in the per-capita institutionalization rate. (The linked article by Sisti and colleagues is behind a paywall, but a summary is available here.)

The deinstitutionalization movement was driven, in part, by new therapies that could be delivered outside an institutional setting and also by well-publicized abuse in mental institutions. There is no doubt that many people benefited, but for others, deinstitutionalization brought unintended consequences. For some, it resulted in “transinstitutionalization” to prisons, homeless shelters, and emergency rooms. For others, it has meant living on the street.

Help Save SlideShare! Bring Back Reupload

I, and several other "Power Users" of SlideShare, have continued to pursue this issue. See the latest exchange on the topic with "Jeff" of the SlideShare customer service team that I have added today (10/2118)  at the end of this thread, just before the comments.

SideShare, the popular slideshow hosting service, has 38 million registered users and gets 70 million unique visitors a month. If you are one of those users or visitors, you can help save SlideShare from itself by bringing back REUPLOAD, an essential feature that has recently been removed.

What is Reupload and Why is It So Important?

Reupload is (or was) a feature that allowed users to repost a revised version of a slideshow without changing its URL. Now that it is gone, the only way to revise a slideshow is to delete the original version and repost a new version with an new URL. Why does that matter?

1. Short-term error correction: We are all human. (Well, at least I am). We make mistakes. After you have posted your slideshow, you, or one of your readers, notices a typo, a wrong number in a calculation, or a broken link. You want to fix it, but meanwhile, you or your readers have bookmarked the original version, or Tweeted the link, or posted it on Facebook. When anyone follows those links or bookmarks, they will be taken to the original version with the error, not your corrected version. If you deleted the original when you made the correction, they won't find anything.
2. Long-term revisions: Sometimes I publish a slideshow on a topic of lasting interest, say, the economics of a soda tax. I posted this version of my soda tax slideshow in 2010. Last year, soda taxes were back in the news, so I posted this revised version. At the same time, I added the little yellow box on the front page of the original so that anyone who had the old link could find the new version. This week, I wanted to update it again to include the news of the failure of Chicago's soda tax, but with reupload gone, I can no longer steer anyone who finds one of the old versions to the newest version.
3. Classroom use: College professors and high school teachers use slideshows in their classrooms all the time. They include links to the slideshows in the printed or on-line curriculum materials they give to their students. What if the creator of the slideshow fixes an error or makes an update? Doesn't the teacher want them to find the latest version, not the old one? Without reupload, this won't happen.

What you can do

When I first contacted SlideShare about reupload, I got this non-responsive response:

Hi Ed,

Thank you for your email and I am sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused. We're always looking for ways to improve the SlideShare experience for our members. This sometimes means removing features that aren’t heavily used to invest in others that offer greater value.  Please know we continuously evaluate how features and products are used, and make adjustments accordingly to focus our resources on providing the most value to our members. As a result, we have removed the ability to re-upload documents to SlideShare.

As a workaround, you can upload a new file to SlideShare and delete the current one. Please be aware that this means we will not be able to transfer any views/likes/URL's to the new presentation.   Again, I apologize for the inconvenience and we greatly appreciate your feedback. We have documented the issue in order to track additional reports of the problem and for consideration to be addressed in a future release.

If there's anything else I can help you with, please don't hesitate to let me know. All the best,

Allison LCS Support Specialist - Mobile

This was a boilerplate response that other users have also gotten. It has been posted and reposted several times on discussion boards. I reopened the case and pointed out to "Allison" that it is nonsense. Reupload is not a feature that is "not heavily used." It is an essential feature that people use all the time. It offers great value.

"Allison" sent back this new reply that gave me a tiny bit of hope:

Thanks for your feedback about removing the re-upload feature and I wish I was personally able to do something myself however, please know I've sent your concern to our product team for consideration. Taking member feedback into account, we're always looking for ways to improve the SlideShare experience. When many of our members ask for the same improvement, we try our best to get it done. Though immediate action may not be possible, your feedback will be incorporated into our ongoing discussions about the direction of our design and development.

Again I apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. If you need anything else, please let me know and I will gladly assist. 

So, if one of us complains, nothing happens, but if a lot of us complain, something might happen. Let's see if "Allison" is right. Let's send lots of requests to bring back reupload and see if they bring it back.

How to send a request to bring back reupload

SlideShare makes it pretty easy to ask for help. Here is how you do it:

1.  Go to the SlideShare home page: https://www.slideshare.net/
2. Scroll down to the very bottom and click on "Support" 
3. Type "Reupload" in the search box at the top of the main support page
4. Next, you will get a page that says, "Sorry, we couldn't find any information about 'Reupload' (unless, by the time you do this, they have added some information).
5. Go to the bottom of that page and click on the "Contact us" link
6. That will take you to a page where you can send a message to SlideShare help. Ask them to bring back reupload, and tell them why you care.

Thanks! If we all work together, we can save SlideShare from self-destruction!

Update: Matleena Laasko,a freelance trainer in Finland, is, like myself, a heavy user of SlideShare. She has written an extensive post lamenting the loss of reload and also other features, like the ability to download in ppt and failure of links to work when viewing on line. Her original post is in Finnish, but here is a link to a Google Translate version, which, despite the usual limitations, is good enough to give the general idea.


Further update (10/23): Here are more responses from SlideShare:

With regard to reupload:

"I understand your frustration and we did look at the usage of this feature compared to the usage of other SlideShare features and found that it wasn't as heavily used and we have currently removed the feature due to the support cost.

However, we realize that this is a useful feature for some power users and we are actively working on making foundational improvements to our platform, which will make building and supporting a feature such as re-upload much easier in the near future.

Again I apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused."

So, it looks like a lot of casual users don't bother to update and reupload their posts, but it maybe is sinking in that those of us who are "power users" find it important. So far so good.

With regard to the inability to download ppt versions of the slides:

Thanks for reaching out about not being able to download the original ppt file. What you've encountered is a known issue and I'm very sorry for the inconvenience. Our engineering team is working on it but there's no estimate as to how long that might take. We'll do our best to keep you posted.

Since they used to allow downloads of ppts, it shouldn't take their engineering team all that much effort to put this ability back, you would think.

So, some progress, but I think it is worth keeping the pressure on. Anyone who has not yet sent their comments to SlideShare should still do so, rather than just being satisfied with these answers. We don't want this just to become a stalling tactic.

Further update (10/21/18)

Here is the latest exchange I have had with SlideShare on this issue. It is disappointing, since it still includes several bits of boilerplate from last year's conversations, but I think it is still worthwhile for everyone to write to them again, expressing our continued concern.

My question to SlideShare 10/20/18:

I used to be an enthusiastic user of SlideShare, a "keynote author" with nearly 12k followers. Then it all came crashing down when you took away the "reupload" feature. As I explained in a presentation posted on Slideshare a year ago
(https://www.slideshare.net/dolaneconslide/bring-back-reupload), this feature is essential for my work and that of many other serious users. Nearly 3000 people have viewed that slideshow. 33 of them have commented, and many others have contacted me on Twitter. Please read the presentation and especially the comments to see our concerns. None of us can understand why you made this self-destructive change or why you are reluctant to restore it.
Recently some users have contacted me to indicate there may be some hope of bringing back the reupload feature. Can you give me any updates on this? Can you give me any explanation of why you are reluctant to restore it? Thank you for your attention to this issue.

Response the same day from "Jeff"

Hi Ed,

I understand your frustration, and I sincerely apologize for any inconvenience. Please note that we did look at the usage of this feature compared to the usage of other SlideShare features. Through that investigation, we found that the re-upload feature wasn't as heavily used - this is why the feature was removed.   However, we realize that this is a useful feature for some power users. We are actively working on making foundational improvements to our platform, which will make building and supporting a feature such as re-upload much easier in the near future.   Again I apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. If you need anything else, please let me know and I will gladly assist.

Best Regards, Jeff Customer Advocacy Representative

My rejoinder:

Dear Jeff: You say, "However, we realize that this is a useful feature for some power users. We are actively working on making foundational improvements to our platform, which will make building and supporting a feature such as re-upload much easier in the near future." That sounds very nice, except that it is exactly word for word the same response that I got from someone named "Allison" a full year ago (10/23/17). I wonder if you could spin this out a little for me.

(1) Can you send me some "proof of life" to let me know that you are a human and not a bot. For example, can you tell me the middle initial of the current president of the United States? 

(2) Assuming you can answer Question 1, can you give me some idea in human time of how far off "the near future" is?

(3) Can you explain why "foundational improvements" are needed to restore the reupload feature, since you offered that feature for years? It seems to me that if you turned it off, you could just turn it back on again.Thank you, and I promise I will share your answers with the community of SlideShare "power users" with which I have corresponded on this matter. 

Ed 

Jeff, back to me:

Hi Ed, Thanks for getting back to me. I'll let you know that I actually reviewed your previous case with Allison prior to responding to you earlier. I don't see anywhere in that specific case where the response I sent to you was by Allison in that conversation from a year ago. I was trying to make sure to not send you information you had already received in that previous case, so I apologize if you had previously received that information.   I assure you that I am, in fact, a human. In response to your specific questions:   1) The middle initial of the current president of the United States is 'J'.   2) Unfortunately, we don't have any specific timeframe in place at this time. For this reason, I am unable to provide any kind of range or ballpark figure at this time. I'm very sorry for any frustration this may cause.   3) We are unable to disclose any additional details regarding the decision to remove this feature, as that information is proprietary. All we're able to share is what has previously been provided - we looked at the usage of this feature compared to the usage of other SlideShare features. Through that investigation, we found that the re-upload feature wasn't as heavily used, so we have currently removed the feature due to the support cost.   I'm sorry that I can't provide additional details at this time. We sincerely appreciate your patience and understanding. If anything else happens to come up, please let me know.   Wishing you all the best, Ed!   Jeff

Me, back again to Jeff:

Thank you, Jeff, for your reply. I am sorry if my request for proof of life sounded snarky, but I was genuinely concerned, since not only I, myself, but other "power users" (PUs) have received boilerplate in the past. I am sure you know that some companies, happily not yours, do use AI rather than humans in their customer service divisions. I appreciate your "J" response and the fact that you and Allison are talking to each other.

I am evidently in error about getting the cited message from Allison. I found it in an archive of messages exchanged with SS last October, but the header and footer were cut off, so evidently the cited passage is from a message sent to another PU. In any event, the point stands that I (we, I should say -- the community of PUs who are communicating about this) are concerned that there is no real forward motion despite the teasers. You (and Allison) would probably be interested to read the whole thread from last October, including my initial blog post explaining the reasons why reupload is so important to us and the 30 comments. I plan to add this exchange to that thread. You can find it here: http://dolanecon.blogspot.com/2017/10/help-save-slideshare-bring-back-reupload.html

BTW, as an economist, I appreciate your need to balance the cost and benefit of a feature like reupload. I would hope that you would rethink that balance. You should consider that material from your relatively few PUs is widely disseminated on other social media and becomes one of the ways that new users are attracted to your platform. If you treat us like humans, you may find that you are rewarded for the costs and efforts.

Yours truly,  Ed Dolan 

Who are the Biggest Obamacare Losers?

In a post on Kaiser Health News, Julie Rovner discusses the plight of a forgotten slice of the population who are the biggest losers from the ACA. These are people who buy insurance in the individual market but earn too much to qualify for premium subsidies.

And no, these are not all millionaire lawyers in private practice and billionaire day-traders who work from laptops in their beach-side condos. The upper income limit for ACA subsidies is 400 percent of the poverty line, which comes to just $64,000 for a family of two. That hits ordinary working couples who would like to take early retirement, people working part-time who have outside income, and self-employed professionals. Even Uber drivers can make $64,000 a year if they work hard enough.

Rovner’s post highlights the case of a married couple from Raleigh, N.C., both in their late 50s, who work as private consultants to the energy industry. When their premiums reached $1,600 a month, with $7,500 deductible for each of them, they decided to forego insurance altogether.

Rovner calculates that there are about 7.5 million such people. That is less than 3 percent of the population, but they constitute 43 percent of those who buy insurance in the individual market.

These same 43 million who are the big losers from the ACA would be among the big winners from Universal Catastrophic Coverage. UCC, as I have explained elsewhere, has potential appeal to both conservatives and liberals. As premiums rise ever higher for unsubsidized shoppers in the individual market, the constituency for UCC can only grow.

Reposted from NiskanenCenter.com

National Flood Insurance: Yet Another Program in Need of Market-Based Reform

Looking for yet another costly federal program in need of market-based reform? Put the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) near the top of your list. It is a mess, and time is running out to fix it. As sea levels rise and extreme weather events trigger inland flooding, NFIP offers property owners insurance against flood damage at rates that do not come close to reflecting the true risk of losses. It compounds the problem by insisting that money it pays out in claims can be used only to rebuild in the same flood-prone locations—not for moving to higher ground.

There are lots of ideas for a makeover of NFIP. One obvious one would be to charge property owners full risk-based premiums. However, owners resist that measure because it would crash the value of their properties. Another reform would let owners use claims to rebuild in other, safer, areas. However, local governments where the flood-prone properties are located resist that idea because they would lose part of their tax base. Still another idea is to buy out whole communities at fair, pre-flood prices and rebuild them elsewhere. However, powerful realtor and builder lobbies resist all these reforms.

Congressional committees have been working on promising fixes. Reform proposals have been worked up to the point of being ready for a vote. But—did I mention?—Congress has less than two weeks to do something. NFIP expires at the end of September. The pressure to reauthorize it without substantive changes will be overwhelming. 

Here is some background reading if you want to pursue the cause of building a market-based National Flood Insurance Program:

• SmarterSafer.org is a coalition that promotes risk-based insurance and risk mitigation efforts. Its website is a trove of information and links.
• The National Resources Defense Council has a great, short backgrounder on the need for flood insurance reform.
• An excellent article in The Atlantic by Michelle Cottle outlines the politics of flood insurance reform.

 Reposted from NiskanenCenter.org

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