Monthly Archives: July 2018

Right-To-Work Prop A: Freedom of Speech, Association and Contract

30 Monday Jul 2018

Posted by in Labor Markets, Right to Work, Unions

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I’d be angry if my employer forced me to contribute to the company’s Political Action Committee (PAC), and that view is shared by many of my colleagues. It would be illegal, of course, at least as a condition of employment. I love my job, but I give nothing to the PAC because I do not trust it to properly represent my political preferences. That goes for political contributions and lobbying activity that might benefit the company and, by extension, my own economic interests. I simply do not believe the company will refrain from corporatist practices, and I do not under any circumstances want my contributions lavished on politicians with whom I have policy differences.

In my home state of Missouri, unions and their political allies insist that union dues payments should be a condition of employment in unionized workplaces. Like PACs, unions are major political contributors, and I’d be surprised if there weren’t a large number of union members who object to the use of their dues for political contributions and activism. Of course, most of that activism is broadly anti-capitalist. This, quite simply, constitutes compelled speech and is a violation of employees’ First Amendment free-speech rights. Forced membership is a violation of the worker’s freedom of association under the Fourteenth Amendment.

Unions are also presumed to represent the interests of workers in negotiating with management, but not everyone wants that representation, especially given the corruption that has often plagued unions over the years and the poor economic performance of unionized industries in general. That last statement applies to public employee unions no less than private sector unions. Prohibiting non-union workers from employment at a unionized firm violates their freedom of contract under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. I agree, however, that an employee refusing to join a union should not automatically be entitled to the wages and benefits negotiated by the union in collective bargaining with the employer. That should be strictly between the non-union employee and the firm.

Missouri Proposition A, which is on the state’s August 7 ballot, is a referendum on a right-to-work (RtW) law already passed by the general assembly and signed by the governor last year. I’ve discussed reasons why some libertarians have expressed disagreement with this kind of legislation—primarily because it denies an employer the right to hire workers exclusively from a unionized pool of labor. As Daniel J. Mitchell has noted, right-to-work laws are a second-best, compensatory solution to other forms of government intervention in labor markets that essentially grant unions monopsony privileges. Furthermore, giving primacy to an employer’s right to deal exclusively with a union ignores the rights of non-union workers and the rights of union members who do not wish to contribute to a union’s political activities. Trampling on the latter stands in contrast to the established protection of my rights against coerced contributions to my employer’s PAC.

The standard economic argument in favor of RtW laws hinges on the favorability of a state’s business environment and its competitiveness with other states. Andrew Wilson explains how and why Prop A will create jobs in Missouri. He notes that over the ten years ending in 2014:

“…average job growth in the 22 states with RTW laws in place for most or all of that time was more than twice as fast (at 9.1 percent) as in the 28 forced-union states. The RTW states also had considerably faster growth in personal income (at 54.7 percent compared to 43.5 percent) and a much stronger economic growth (50.7 percent compared to 38.0 percent).”

Wilson also remarks on a historical phenomenon which pro-union forces refuse to acknowledge: unions have undermined the competitive position of the industries upon which their members rely. It’s a classic principal-agent problem. Workers appoint an agent for representation, but the agent acts independently to maximize its own gains, often at the expense of the workers. RtW applies discipline to the process, reinforcing the union’s incentive to put members’ interests above of its own. After all, nearly all employers have to compete for workers, and private employers have to compete in product markets. Union workers have been exempt from competition only to the extent that their wage demands have not undermined the business’ competitive position, but they frequently have.

The real rub, according to RtW opponents, is that business interests will simply “crush” unions under RtW and impose lower wages and poor work conditions on workers. But as I alluded above, there are employers that prefer to work with a union for a variety of reasons. Second, suppose that new employees of a unionized firm refuse to join the union, or that some union members opt out. That’s a pretty strong indication that union membership is an unattractive proposition. Whose fault is that?

I favor Proposition A because workers should not be forced to accept representation by any third party, firms should not be forced to hire exclusively from those willing to do so, and because workers should not be required to contribute to union political initiatives. But as Steve Spellman writes, unions could do much to enhance their value to both workers and firms, attracting membership and gaining advantages in bargaining with employers:

“If unions focused on providing helpful, outsourced H.R. functions to companies, such as worker recruitment, drug screening and taking care of all that labor-law-compliance paperwork, it would sure change their reputation. As would standing up for its members, while also taking necessary (and fair) disciplinary actions instead of covering up for the occasional bad apple (even if that is only one worker out of 1,000). … If we can dream a little here, unions could also be best positioned to stand up for workers who are discriminated against, for whatever reason, rather than waiting on the law to catch up with our evolving society.”

Science of the Spurious: Global Warming and Suicide

27 Friday Jul 2018

Posted by in Global Warming

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The latest entry in the scare-mongering literature of global warming, published this month in Nature, purports to show that warming will lead to more suicides! I’m not sure whether these researchers deserve an award for naiveté or cynicism, but they should get one or the other. The lead author is listed as Marshall Burke of Stanford University.

The basic finding of their research is that an increase in average monthly temperature of one degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) increases the monthly suicide rate by 0.68% (or 0.42% when accounting for the previous month’s temperature as well). They might have used the preferred verbiage “is associated with”, rather than “increases”, because they surely know that correlation is not the same as causation, but perhaps they wished to impress the news media. Let’s put their result in perspective: the annual U.S. suicide rate per 100,000 persons was 11.64 over the years 1968-2004 in their sample. A 0.68% increase in the suicide rate would have brought that up to roughly 11.72. Of course, the average U.S. surface temperature did NOT increase by 1 degree Celsius over that period — it was about half that, and temperatures have been relatively flat since then.

The real problem here is that most of the variation in temperatures across the sample used by Burke and his co-authors is seasonal and geographical. While they claim to have accounted for such confounding influences using non-parametric controls, they give few specifics, so I am unconvinced. It has long been known that suicides tend to be seasonal and are higher in the warmer months of the year. The reasons cited vary, including a boost provided by warmth in the energy needed to execute a suicide plan, “inflammatory chain reactions” from high pollen counts, seasonal peaks in bipolar disorder, and stress from greater social interactions during warm weather. These are seasonal phenomena that are not even incidental to the question at hand. And let’s face it: if warmer weather gives you the energy to kill yourself, the temperature is probably not the problem.

The authors also report a positive “effect” of temperatures on suicides using annual data, but with a rather large variance. This result probably captures geographical variation in suicide rates, though again, the authors claim to have made adjustments. Southern states tend have high suicide rates, but no one has suggested that warm, southern climates are to blame. Instead, there are other socioeconomic factors that probably account for this regional variation. I suspect that this is another source of the correlation the authors use to project forward as a likely impact of global warming. (While the inter-mountain West tends to have high suicide rates relative to other regions, many of those states are lightly populated, so they would receive low weights in any analysis of the kind discussed here.)

Finally, the trend toward slightly warmer temperatures between 1968 and the late 1990s was spurred largely by a series of strong El Nino events, especially in 1997-98. Suicide rates in the U.S., on the other hand, reached a high in the mid-1970s, ran slightly lower until hitting another peak in the mid-1980s, and then tapered through the late 1990s even as temperatures spiked. Since 1998, suicides have trended up as temperature trends flattened during the so-called “global warming hiatus”, which is ongoing. This sequence not only contradicts the authors narrative; it reinforces the fact that the variation exploited in the samples may well be seasonal and geographical, and not related to climate trends.

An issue over which Burke, et al demonstrate no awareness is the exaggerated statistical significance of meaningless effects in very large samples. This has been called the “p-value problem” because large samples can lead to vanishingly small p-values (which measure statistical significance). In a very large sample, any small difference may appear to be statistically significant. It’s a well-known pitfall in empirical work. A suicide is what’s known in the statistical literature as a “rare event”, given it’s annual incidence of about 0.01% of the population. I submit that the estimated impact of a 1% change in that rate, a change of 0.0001%, is well-nigh meaningless.

But the authors, undaunted, do their very best to make it seem meaningful. First, they pick a sub-sample that yields a somewhat higher estimated effect. Then they apply it to a future climate change scenario that is considered extreme and “extremely unlikely”, by climate researchers. They calculate the cumulative increase in suicides implied by that estimate out to 2050 — 32 years — for the U.S. and Mexico combined: about 22,000 extra suicides (they give a confidence interval of 9,000 to 39,000). That would be a lot, of course, but aggregating over many years using a high-end estimate and an extreme scenario can make an otherwise tiny effect appear large. And remember, their confidence interval is tightened considerably via the use of many observations on essentially irrelevant seasonal and geographic variation.

Burke and his co-authors have succeeded in publishing a piece of research that is not just flimsy, but that they apply in a way that is grossly misleading. They made it as ripe and plump as possible for promotion by the news media, which seems to love a great scare story. I might just as easily claim that as declines in income are associated with higher suicides, efforts at carbon mitigation requiring high taxes and punitive consumer rates for electric power will lead to an increase in suicides. And I could “prove” it with statistics. Then we would have a double-warming whammy! But I have a better idea: let’s expose bad research for what it is, and that includes just about all of the literature that warns of catastrophe from global warming.

Deceits of the Climate Claimants

23 Monday Jul 2018

Posted by in Global Warming

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Well-meaning souls innocently parrot the global warming narrative but generally know little of the controversies surrounding its validation, or lack thereof. That includes much of the mainstream media. Every warm day is evidence of global warming. Every cold day is evidence of extreme volatility brought on by climate change. Every big storm, every forest fire, and every endangered species is attributed to warming. The poles are melting, the sea is rising, the sky is falling, and it is mostly bullshit. But in the meantime, the mythology of global warming has become an all-purpose cudgel for state oversight and “redistributive justice”, primarily to the benefit of the “climate change industrial complex. The myths are repeated so frequently that many accept them as facts. Here, I list a few of these myths along with information that should give pause to anyone tempted to take them too seriously.

The science is settled: There are a number of great scientists who dispute the global warming narrative (and see here). But a few studies have claimed incredibly widespread consensus (97%) among scientists that mankind drives climate change. These studies are generally plagued by biased samples of scientists (sometimes including non-scientists), faulty selection and classification of paper abstracts, and direct involvement of climate activists in the research process. These studies tend to present the “consensus” as one side of a stark dichotomy, with no nuance or middle ground for those subscribing to anything less than the inevitability of a warming catastrophe.

Record high temperatures: The temperatures that are almost always reported are surface temperatures that are subject to extreme bias. The most drastic bias is caused by increasing urbanization. Urban weather instruments are often sited in areas with an increasing amount of impervious ground cover, which absorbs sunlight and heat, leading to the so-called “urban heat-island effect”. This has imparted an upward trend in urban temperature readings. Moreover, urban temperature readings tend to be over-sampled in estimates of global surface temperatures, reinforcing the distortions in measured warming.

Melting poles: Arctic sea ice extent has been in modest retreat since 1980, when satellite measurement began to allow more accurate readings. The Antarctic, however, has shown a trend in the other direction, as shown in this piece by Judith Curry. In the same article, Curry shows that specific Arctic locations had less sea ice 6,000 to 8,000 years ago than today. For more complete information on satellite-era trends in sea ice extent, see this informative reference page (scroll way down for Antarctic information). Looks like Al Gore’s dire prediction that the poles would melt by 2007 was just a little off target.

Polar bear extinction: We are constantly seeing warnings of polar bear extinction on social media. Memes feature desperate-looking bears stranded on ice floes, drifting away from their cubs. Perhaps you aren’t supposed to know that polar bears are extremely strong swimmers. Or that the polar bear population is been thriving, increasing by an estimated 10-20% since 2001. So whether or not the past few decades have seen a decline in sea ice, the bears seem be doing just fine.

Rising sea levels: The rate of increase in sea levels over the past 8,000 years has been vey slow relative to the 10,000 years prior to that, when they rose at rates of up to 5.5 meters per century. That compares to recent rates of about one foot per century. Predictions that islands in the Pacific would be swallowed by the seas have not come to pass. In fact, satellite images show that more of the world’s sandy shorelines accreted than receded between 1984 and 2016, This does not appear to be a crisis by any means.

Increasing storms: No, the frequency and intensity of tropical cyclone activity has decreased since 1900, a trend that has continued unabated over the past 20 years. I know of at least one study suggesting otherwise, but it is based purely on modeled relationships, not hard data, and not tested against data. The frequency and intensity of droughts and floods has been flat to declining as well. And while more weak tornadoes are detected today than in the past, the frequency of moderate to strong tornadoes has decreased over the past 45 years.

Desertification: Increases in carbon concentration have not been associated with desertification, as the media seem to have concluded. As noted above, the frequency of drought has been steady to declining. In fact, precipitation data suggests that patterns of variability in rainfall do not square with the predictions of climate models. In fact, the world has seen an increase in green vegetation since 1985, even in arid regions.

Ocean acidification: The reported declines in ocean pH levels over the past few centuries are actually smaller than the normal seasonal variation in pH levels. The presumed negative impact on sea life appears, after all, to be minimal to nonexistent (see the same link).

Higher alpine tree lines: We’ve been waiting. It hasn’t happened, but that hasn’t stopped some activists from stating it as established fact.

Armadillo northward migration: I’ve heard this cited as “proof” of global warming. The range of armadillos extended as far north as southern Missouri and Kansas in the early 1970s, so this isn’t new. In fact, armadillos began their migration northward into the U.S. before the mid-1800s. Some biologists have attributed the migration to warming but acknowledge many other reasons, including more forested habitat in the north and factors such as movement of cattle by rail. Armadillos burrow and are able to keep warm underground in the winter. Of course, a series of warm winters can bring them further north along with other species, but a few cold winters can take a toll on the population and push them south again.

U.S. carbon criminality: U.S. CO2 emissions have been in almost steady decline on a per capita basis for at least seven decades, long before the carbon freak-out began. The declines have resulted largely from the normal market process of competitive efficiency in production. China leads the world in total annual CO2 emissions by a wide margin, about 80% ahead of the U.S. in 2017. Total U.S. emissions actually declined in 2017 for the third straight year, while emissions in China, the EU, and for the world all increased. In fact, China was actually in compliance with its pledge under the Paris Accord despite the increase, so the pledge was not especially ambitious.

High social cost of carbon: The estimates used by the Environmental Protection Agency are plagued by poor methodology and are subject to great uncertainty. Some studies rely on a series of tenuous causal links, such as CO2 emissions to global temperatures to ice melt to sea level to real dollars of coastal damage many years hence, all without considering variances at each stage, and assuming zero effort to adapt or mitigate damages over long time frames. A shortcut approach relies on historical correlations between temperatures and such measures as heat-related deaths, labor productivity and real output. These estimates extrapolate old relationships to the distant future and ignore the very real human tendency to adapt. The underlying assumptions are undercut by such basic facts as ongoing migration to warmer regions. The estimates also fail to account for the likelihood that warmer weather will improve agricultural productivity.

The public’s interest in climate change has waned, and no wonder: sensible people do not buy hype and demands for sacrifice in the face of contradictory evidence. Revelations of statistical fraud have led to even more skepticism. And when your “proof” is founded on model extrapolation, often theoretically-based rather than empirically-based, you’re skating on thin scientific ice. At this link, Steven Hayward has an interesting take on the public’s increasingly jaundiced view of global warming activism:

“Scientists who are genuinely worried about the potential for catastrophic climate change ought to be the most outraged at how the left politicized the issue and how the international policy community narrowed the range of acceptable responses. Treating climate change as a planet-scale problem that could be solved only by an international regulatory scheme transformed the issue into a political creed for committed believers. Causes that live by politics, die by politics.”

Pruitt Out At EPA; So Is Eco-Absolutism

13 Friday Jul 2018

Posted by in Environment, Regulation

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Green munchkins celebrated the fall of a house of cronyism earlier this month when it crashed right on top of EPA chief Scott Pruitt. Not that the Environmental Protection Agency has ever been free of cronyism and wicked warlocks, but Pruitt stumbled into an awkward appearance of coziness with industry representatives and was seemingly too fond of his expense account. The munchkins, however, will be sorely disappointed to learn that Andrew Wheeler, Pruitt’s replacement on at least an interim basis, will press forward with the same deregulatory agenda. They might imagine Wheeler as the surviving Warlock of the West, but the munchkins are incapable of understanding the deeper nature of wickedness at the EPA.

The agency took an expansive role during the Obama Administration (see this note on “environmental justice”, and this on the use of the “social cost of carbon” in rulemaking, and this on water regulation). Aggressive action was directed at emissions of carbon, a trace greenhouse gas (four parts per 10,000), but one that is necessary for life. In 2009, the EPA reached its “endangerment finding” that greenhouse gases, including carbon, pose a threat to humanity that must be addressed under the powers conferred upon the agency by the Clean Air Act. The Obama Administration viewed this finding as a regulatory carte blanche, ushering in a series of draconian, high-cost measures to reduce U.S. carbon emissions. Unfortunately, the environmental lobby is notorious for its inability to see beyond first-order effects. It cannot come to grips with the fact that green policies often waste more resources than they save, undermine the economy, infringe on liberty, and have their greatest negative impact on the poor.

President Obama also pushed for American participation in the Paris Climate Accord, which would have required transfers of billions of dollars of wealth to the often-corrupt governments of less developed countries for alternative energy projects. Beyond green energy objectives, this was presumably restitution for our past carbon sins. Whatever shortcomings Pruitt might have had, I valued his leadership in opposition to the Paris Accord and his role in dismantling the EPA’s overzealous regulatory model.

Pruitt might have earned praise from the green lobby in at least one area. He placed particular emphasis on streamlining Superfund site remediation, including a radioactive waste site in the St. Louis area. It is one of the so-called “top-10” sites that have been given high priority by the EPA. But there are 1,300 Superfund sites across the country, so Andrew Wheeler will have to be creative to succeed with more than just a few of these cleanups.

Ledyard King discusses the likely course of Scott Pruitt’s legacy under Wheeler, including continued opposition to the Paris Accord, reversing or deemphasizing renewable power mandates, reduced staffing and fewer enforcement actions. The Clean Power Plan is slated for replacement with rules that are not prohibitive to coal-fired power. Emissions from coal-burning are already heavily regulated, and CO2 and its unproven harms do not offer a valid pretext for a wholesale shutdown of the coal industry. Actions under the endangerment finding, if there are any, are likely to be more circumspect going forward. However, there are disconcerting reports that the Trump Administration may seek to subsidize or protect coal interests from more cost-effective alternatives, like natural gas.

According to King, Wheeler will continue Pruitt’s effort to balance representation on EPA advisory boards between academicians and business and state interests, include more geographic diversity on these boards, and end grant awards to members. Wheeler will continue to push for EPA rule-making based on fully-transparent science, rather than studies relying on private data. There are also likely to be efforts to stop “sue-and-settle” actions used by partisans to gain court-ordered consent decrees, which subvert public participation in the regulatory process.

The endangerment finding combined with the dubious and notoriously uncertain “social cost of carbon” gave EPA regulators almost unbridled power to control private activity. This ranged from questionable efficiency standards, uneconomic mandates on energy sources, and prohibitive emissions standards. The EPA also promulgated an expansive definition of “navigable waters” as an excuse to regulate virtually any puddle, or sometimes puddle, as wetland under the Clean Water Act. This overzealousness is a consequence of over-application of the precautionary principle, under which any prospective risk to humanity or the environment provides a rationale for regulation, taxation, or prohibition of an activity. It is also a consequence of refusing to recognize that government regulation, when it offers any benefit, has diminishing returns. The compliance costs of EPA regulations have been estimated to exceed $350 billion annually, a substantial impediment to economic growth that imposes cruel penalties on business, workers, and consumers. It is all the worse that these effects are strongly regressive in their impacts across income levels. Scott Pruitt may have been his own worst enemy, but his departure at this point might well advance the much-needed deregulatory agenda, as it is now that it is in the competent hands of Andrew Wheeler.

Monstrous Mathematics: Selling Abortion As Fiscal Austerity

06 Friday Jul 2018

Posted by in Uncategorized

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Sacred Cow Chips

The pro-choice Left says, “Massive welfare benefits will be necessary to support the babies you’d force women to carry to term.” The remark is viewed as an argument clincher among pro-choicers, but it’s not a persuasive defense of abortion rights. In fact, it’s quite beside the point: human lives are at stake. The “welfare defense” suggests that there must be a valid tradeoff between public aid and lives that can otherwise be saved. Or indeed, between publicly-funded abortions and future public aid. By that logic, perhaps EMS service should be suspended in impoverished neighborhoods so that welfare payments might be reduced. These kinds of monstrous tradeoffs are not remotely on the table.

(The commentary that follows does not pertain to abortions that might be necessary to preserve a woman’s life or health, or in the case of pregnancies caused by rape.)

An operative assumption underlying the left’s suggestion is that additional…

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