It's all about the work

I'm going to be in a another short play in early May. It's a two-man, 10 minute new play, and it's pretty funny. My friend and I are doing it. Neither of us are anywhere even close to the onramp that leads to the interstate that leads to the off ramp that takes you to the road that the ballpark of being a real actor is on.


I don't exactly love acting...mostly because i'm not particularly good at it. But, this opportunity came up, and I wanted to do something with my friend, and I get to use a really bad new york/new jersey/boston bastardized tough guy accent (again...i did the same thing in the short play I did last fall), and mainly, it was something to do that wasn't connected at all to politics, government, or statistics.

"why'd you paint that poodle green? I dunno...something to do, I guess."

ON THE OTHER HAND...

Here's the odd thing...theater people creep me out, big time. Ugh...they're always, like, peforming (shudder!!!). Don't get me wrong...I love going to the theater. I love movies and plays and generally like to listen to stories. So, I definitely appreciate that there are people who really enjoy acting, because without them, there would be no movies or plays to watch.

But to the actors of the world: can i please just have a normal conversation with you without you breaking into some kind of character or bursting out with a broadway song? Can you just, like, be slightly less desperate for approval and attention? (Says the guy writing the blog...ha!...hypocrisy tastes like ice cream!)

My creeped-out feeling is probably related to the fact that i have enough of that approval/attention seeker in me to be filled with some subconscious self-loathing when i see it in others. There are a few fundamental laws that I have winnowed from the chaff of platitudes that flood our Disney-fied American culture. One of those is that that yes, when you hate other people, there's probably something in them that reminds you of yourself. And, particularly, it tends to be a problem or a weakness that you feel like you've almost but not quite mastered.

So, I feel like I've almost but not quite mastered by desire for recognition and approval by others...so theater people...yeah...creepy gross.

So, clap for me, readers! Clap for me! Tell me I'm good! Tell me I'm smart and pretty! Clap! Clap! clapclapclapclapclap! (Joe Bows). Worship my brilliance and authenticity! Clap for me! Love me! Love me! (squirt).

more pictures

The Light at the End of the Tunnel

I have about 1 year left of taking classes. 1 year. 1 more year. After this semester, I will have spent 21.5 years of my life enrolled in some form of formal education. That's 21.5 years out of 29.5 years of life. When it's all said and done, that'll be 22.5 years out of 30.5 years of life, or about 74%. Starting this May, here are my tasks over the next year:

Somewhere around 7 more classes.

Three different 8 hour exams.

Teaching 3 courses (never taught before).

If I pass all my classes and exams, I will never, ever, ever, ever, ever have to take another class, or do another exam, or write another term paper, unless I want to, for the rest of my motherfucking life. Instead, I'll be doing my own research and teaching my own classes or doing some other kind of job. But I'll be done...DONE...with school. Forever!!! Weird!!!!!!!!!

This is starting to look frighteningly like adulthood.

Some pictures

Here are some pictures I made.

Predictable Irrationality

Some of the most interesting stuff that I've encountered in social science has to do with the way that people make decisions (this work usually stems from a weird interesection of cognitive psychology, behavioral economics, and organizational theory). I mentioned Herb Simon a while back, with his "bounded rationality" theory. Another really interesting set of theories comes from Kahneman and Tversky (both psychologists) and their work on cognitive biases and utility theory.

What these guys say is that, ok, we all know that people are not always rational. Duh. Sometimes, people make bad decisions. There's often an underlying assumption that people make bad decisions because they don't have enough information. These guys said, no, that's not true. Even with all the relevant information, people still make bad decisions, and what's more, they do it in predictable ways. These are what they called cognitive biases.

I just find this shit totally fascinating. Here's a rough example of what I'm talking about.

So, if you were entering into a raffle, say, or a lottery, the "rational" amount you should be willing to bet would be the expected value of the return. Expected value is the sum of all the outcomes multiplied by their probabilities. So, let's say there's a 30% chance at winning 100 dollars.

100(.3)= $30.00.

So, that means you should be willing to bet up to $30 for a 30% chance at winning $100.

However, most people aren't willing to go that high. That's called "risk aversion." People who would be willing to bet even more than $30 are risk-takers. Most people are biased toward security and away from risk, at least as compared to a purely mathematical assessment of rationality.

This is just one of a ton of cognitive biases that have been identified in the literature. Here's an ironclad source for some others. A few other notable ones include:

Loss aversion: People tend to value a loss at a higher level than a gain of identical face value. In other words, they hate losing 5 bucks more than they like gaining 5 bucks.

Sucking at extreme probabilities (sorry, can't remember the proper name for this): overestimating the danger presenting by events with really small probabilities (think: fears of flying) and underestimating the danger from events with relatively large probabilities of occuring (think: getting into a car wreck).

Anchoring Bias: When, in the face of uncertainty, people use whatever information is presented to produce an answer, even if it's irrational. Like, when charities put a "suggested donation" on their fundraising stuff; that's supposed to plant a little seed that fills in this gap of uncertainty.

Optimism Bias: A tendency to underestimate the danger of doing things we want to do.

Children: A tendency to overestimate dangers to children

Strangers: A tendency to underestimate dangers to strangers and to overestimate it for people we know.

Anyway...once you hear about this stuff, you start seeing it EVERYWHERE!!! Including in policy and politics. I'm more and more convinced that these things are really central to understanding the political process, as strategic politicians try to manipulate these things, either to get more votes, or to pass policies they like.

Tom Friedman Plays Dress Up as a Political Scientist

Yeah, I got nothin.

Healthcare? um....

hmmm....

well, here's a bunch of bullshit from Tom Friedman.

He talks about some of the topics that I've discussed on this blog lately. I pretty much disagree with everything he says, except for the part about instant run-off elections, which would definitely be a good thing. They'd help address this single-member district/no third parties problem.

I mean, there's definitely truth to the idea that most Americans are more moderate than either party. But to conclude that the parties should therefore also be more moderate fails to address the fact that voters need choices, and voters need ideological labels to be able to make halfway rational choices.

He concludes that good governance is the hallmark of a healthy democracy. From whose ass does he pull that platitudinous bullshit? As a normative theory, democracy has always been about the fairness of the process, not the quality of the outcome. The only outcome it strives for is to ensure that policy at any given time is pleasing to 51% of the electorate.

Here's some breaking news for Tom Friedman: it is entirely possible for 51% of the public to like stupid, unhealthy, destructive, immoral shit at any given moment.

If you want good, smart policy, talk to Plato. That's what he wanted too. By all means, start stealing babies and raising philosopher-policy analyst kings and queens. But if you want democracy, don't be too shocked when the public disagrees with the experts from time to time.

So, if good governance is not a particular reliable measure of the health of a democracy, then what is? Here are a few possible measures:

1. The percentage of a population from a particular political party is proportional to the percentage of seats that party holds in the legislature.

2. The behavior of representatives in the legislator correlates with the policy preferences of his or her district.

3. The policy output of government correlates with the policy preferences of the population.

4. CHANGES in the policy preferences of constituencies corresponds to changes in the behavior of legislatures and the policy outputs of governments.

All of these conditions could hold and the government still could end up making shitty, unfair, inefficient policies.

I like democracy. But I also acknowledge that it's an extremely imprecise tool. If you expect precision from an imprecise tool, you're gonna be disappointed.

Once more with feeling...

Just to reiterate...

We fucking won! Hahahahahahahahahah!!!!!!!

win win win win win win win win!!!!!

Hahahahahahahahahaha!

Hey Republicans...you lose!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Elections have consequences. I love winning. Fuck bipartisanship forever. This is democracy, baby. Win and make policy, or lose and cry. That's how the system should work.

Win win win win win win!!!!

Booh-fuckin-yah!

Win!!!!! Motherfucker!

It fuckin passed!!!!

Uh, uh, uh...yeeeeeah...uh...yeeeeeeah....

fuckin winning, motherfucker! Uh!!! Fuck!!!!

To quote Bull Durham,

"I fuckin love winnin! It's, like, better than losin."

Viva Pelosi! Viva Obama!

Uh!!!! yank yank....SQUIRT!!!

I'm talkin bout a MONTAGE!!

Things I should do today:

Practice Crane Kick

Wax 50 cars

Paint a Fence

Sand a huge wooden floor

Suffocate crazy old Okinawan slave driver while he naps

Work on at least one of 20 gazillion chores and school projects I need to do.

Eat a bunch of raw eggs

Jump Rope

Spend time on the speed bags

Chase a chicken

Run up steps of Philadelphia Art Museum

Go to hospital to treat the after-effects of 134 concusssions.

Oh man...it's gonna be a big day! Look out world! Here I come, baby...I'm comin to GETCHA!!

On a different note, I had CRAZY dreams last night. The most vivid scenes were 1. sitting on top of this weird column thing that was attached to a bench, in my underwear, I start folding a paper airplane. Then, the grad program director at my school walks and gives me a disappointed, disapproving look. See, I'm setting a bad example of the undergrads.

Then, in a different scene, I was in my own car, driven by a different grad student, on the way to meet an important professor. We were late, so the dude driving the car sped through a few stop signs and then t-boned this other car really hard.

Weird!!

The Median Voter v Political Options

I really have to stop going to bed at 4 in the morning.

So, there's kind of this interesting paradox regarding political polarization. In some ways, it's bad. It's bad because it makes it harder for members of congress to actually represent the median policy preferences of the median voter in their constituency. And it's bad, because it makes it much harder to compose a supermajoritarian coaltion to pass legislation (as we've seen in the modern Senate).

On the other hand, political polarization also has some palpable democratic benefits. Because when the parties have very clear and very different issue platforms, voters are much more likely to understand what they're voting for. When they go into the voting booth, they see two names; they have only the foggiest notion of who these people are. If it's a state representative instead of national representative, there's a good chance they've never even heard these people's names. BUT!!! They see that these people have a big R or a big D next to their names, and because the two parties have very clear differences, this voter has a pretty good idea which of these candidates is going to be closer to his or her issue preferences. Not only does this make their vote more "rational," it also allows voters to clearly punish particular parties. When congressional voting is polarized, a voter only needs to know how a particular party approached a particular issue, which is a much lower informational bar than trying to track down how their particular representative voted.

There's also an advantage to giving people distinct choices. If the parties were not polarized, which would probably yield representatives is that were more ideologically moderate, how could people choose between them?

Anyway...it's just kind of an interesting paradox. In a nutshell, polarization is bad for representation but good for accountability and choice.

Also, for Vijay's benefit: titties.

Happy

No real comments today. It was warm and sunny. That makes me happy. I'm dating somebody cool. That makes me happy.

The health care might pass this week. That would make me happy, even as watered down and anemic as it is.

I need to take a panel data class, but the one I could take this summer would cost me $2500 bucks. That doesn't make me happy.

But I'm going bowling tonight. That makes me happy.

Saving Yourself

It occurs to me that when a newlywed conservative Christian says "I love being married!", they really mean "I love having sex!"

One niche within academic American politics is studying how party ideology evolves over time. If you look at the parties in, say, 1900, Republicans would have been seen as more racially progressive and more in favor of strong central government than Democrats. One theory (Miller and Schofield 2003) is that this flip-flopping of relative ideology occurs because politicians make "flanking maneuvers" to pick up voters who are clinging to the edge of the other party, ideologically speaking. So, imagine a two dimensional issue space, with one axis labeled "economic liberalism" and another axis labeled "social liberalism, creating something that looks like a cartesian coordinate plane with four quadrants. The two parties have to locate themselves in one of those quadrants (socially liberal-economically liberal, socially conservative-economically liberal, socially liberal-economically conservative, socially conservative-economically conservative). Therefore, there is always some group of voters within a party that is not happy with their own party's stance on one of these issue dimensions. As a consequence, the leaders from the other party have an incentive to moderate some of their ideological positions to try to pick up some of these disaffected voters. This "flanking" creates a perpetual cycle that drives partisan change (again, according to this particular theory).

Oddly enough, after Bill Clinton's move to the right on economic issues, we haven't seen much of this from either party. Instead, we have seen what Carsey and Layman (2002) have deemed "conflict extension." Basically, this theory goes, the ideological consistency of the parties is driven by the primary system and by party activists. That is what keeps the parties from simply adopting the position of the "median voter." These two factors exert a force on politicians that resists their flanking maneuvers. So, according to Carsey and Layman, the really odd thing is that party activists representing the various different issue dimensions (economic/social/race) have become consistent with each other over time. So, over time, the Christian conservatives and the Rockefeller republicans have come to actually agree with each other's issue preferences. So, now, a typical party activist on the right is likely to BOTH favor tax cuts and oppose gay marriage. And on the left, a typical party activist is likely to both favor affirmative action and support abortion rights. The means that it's going to be even harder for politicians to cater to moderate voters, even though policy moderation is generally a good electoral strategy. In order to do that, they have to fight the pull of their own party's base and their activists.

In a nutshell, that's party polarization. Meanwhile, the median voter is still pretty much just as moderate as ever.

Why am I writing about this? Um...I don't really remember. Oh yeah! I remember...religion. Basically, I was just thinking about the fact that there is nothing about Christianity per se that would imply support for laissez faire economics, so it's odd to me that the marriage between religious conservatives and economic conservatives has worked out so well. Carsey and Layman's explanation is a pretty compelling one.

Anniversary Party!!

We are closing in on the four year anniversary of this blog!!! Wow! I think we can all agree that writing an obscure blog for four years is quite a testament... to my ego mania and self-absorption!!

me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me

I want to thank my loyal readers. You two are really great fans. I am working on acquiring grant funding to purchase tote bags for you.

Health Care: Let's Stop Being Assholes

Our health care system sucks. If you don't have health insurance, and sometimes even if you do, getting sick can bankrupt you, or even kill you. Let me think about the number of people who I know personally who at some point had no health insurance coverage. Let's see..me, for one. My mother, for two. I don't think I'll keep counting, because if either of those parties had gotten sick or had an accident at inopportune moments, they could really screwed right now, and I happen to care about both of them a great deal.

It's just fucking immoral. Now, there are plenty of technical problems with our system that certainly compound this fundamental moral failure, and it's certainly not our only moral failure as a country. But it IS a moral failure.

Which is actually a good tie-in to my recent posts about market failure. Even when markets function well, they only guarantee an efficient outcome. And when markets fail from an efficiency standpoint, government can sometimes intervene to improve efficiency (i.e., to create a socially optimal level of supply for a good). But, efficiency is not morality! To be more precise, efficiency is ONE criteria out of a large universe of ethical principles that one can adopt. And it's not a bad one, by any means. Given two identical outcomes, the efficient path to that outcome is certainly preferable to the less efficient one. But markets make no claim to the promotion of equity.

Markets do not make an allowance for the needy or the disadvantaged or the sick. Markets simply say, "well, sorry...you were given fewer resources by chance, and you therefore have less power to achieve your desires within the market system. Sorry bout ya!" That outcome may be perfectly efficient; many people (myself included) do not consider it moral.

So, if we want a system where getting sick (a more or less random phenonmenon) does not carry the danger of utter financial and physical ruin, government needs to be involved. Period. End of story.

There certainly is an argument for health care reform on efficiency and effectiveness grounds, and those are important too. But for me, the heart of the matter has always been about equity and basic decency. Guaranteeing health care for all will not automatically make us a saintly nation, but it's a step in the right direction.

Meatloaf

Somebody once thought of a crazy idea. This person thought, "I like bread. and I like meat....bread....meat...bread, meat...bread comes in a loaf...what if...no, that's crazy...but..what if, in some kind of crazy bizarro world, what if...what if meat was in some kind of bread-like form...what if, instead of a loaf of bread, there was a LOAF OF MEAT?!!!"

Today, I would like to recognize this anonymous genius for providing me with the delicious lunch I just had.

Market Failure Lecture part 2: Externalities and Public Goods

Ok, so continuing the lecture on market failure, I'll turn now to discuss externalities.

Externalities aren't really a separate topic from public goods, but it's useful to focus on them to clarify the problems presented by public goods.

An externality is when a decision by an actor or actors creates benefits or costs for third parties who had no influence over that decision. Usually, that means that the price for the good that is causing the externality is either too low or too high. The market is no longer able to set the socially optimal price for the good.

When a good creates positive externalities, the price for the good will be too high relative to the socially optimal price. The classic example of a good with positive externalities is a vaccination. When someone becomes vaccinated, they not only protect themselves from infection; they also protect those around them. However, the market price for the vaccine will only reflect benefit of the individual immunization. Consequently, the price will be too high, and demand will be too low. Government can correct this problem by subsidizing the price (either on the consumer side or the producer side).

When a good creates negative externalities, the price for the good will be too low. The classic example here is air or water pollution. When a company pollutes, the good it's producing is actually imposing social costs that are not captured in the market price of the good. The price for the good will be too low and demand for the good will be too high relative to the socially optimal level. In that kind of situation, government can impose an tax (on either the producer side or the consumer side) for the good to correct the distorted price.

So, with this concept in mind, we can return to the public goods problem. We can recast these issues in terms of externalities. National defense, the prototypical public good, can also be seen as the prototypical externality problem. If Bill Gates decides to assemble a private army to defend his country from Canada, everybody in the country will benefit. His action would yield a positive externality for everyone in the country. Consequently, the market price for a private army capable of defending the country from invaders is too high, relative to the price that would optimize social welfare.

Professor Joe's Blog Lecture: Market Failure 101

Today, I have to read my stuff for Representation, come up with a term paper proposal for that class, and start my statistics homework on maximum likelihood estimation. I should probably also exercise.

Ok, topic today: market failure, 101.

One useful lens through which to view societies is through a "3 failures" framework. This is just a heuristic. It's sort of like social contract theory; nobody actually believes that there was some primordial time when humans got together and said "ok, we're gonna give up some power in exchange for some security. Ready? Go!" This 3 failures framework is sorta like that.

So, in this framework, each sector (private, public, and nonprofit) has certain types of things that it's good at, and certain types of things that it's bad at. The idea is that each sector sort of plugs the holes where the other two sectors fall short. Conceptually, it's easiest to start with markets.

So, what are markets good for? Lots of things. Economists on the left and the right, from Adam Smith to John Maynard Keynes, generally agree that a perfectly competetive market maximizes the social utility that can be extracted from a given set of resources. Another word for this is "pareto optimality." Nobody could be made better off without making somebody worse off. And, "as if by an invisible hand," this all happens automatically. Simply by humans making self-interested rational decisions, the social utility function is maximized. No central planning necessary (which is good, because with 300 million people, it's virtually impossible for a central planner to predict what everyone's gonna want).

The problem lies in the densely packed phrase, "perfectly competetive." There are a long lists of assumptions that have to hold for this outcome to be guaranteed. They are (if memory serves me correctly):

1. well-defined property rights
2. a predictable legal system to enforce contracts
2. perfect information for all parties on the quality and quantity of goods
3. No barriers to entry or exit from the market

When one or more of these conditions do not hold, the market is no longer guaranteed to reach a pareto efficient outcome. There are a certain subset of these circumstances that are referred to by the buzzword of "market failure." I'm gonna sketch out what those are.

Regarding property rights, there are two characteristics that can classify any kind of good or service. These are its degree of rivalry and its degree of excludability. A prototypical private good (your shoes, for instance) are both rivalrous and excludable. Rivalrous means that, when you use the shoes, it's impossible for anybody else to use them (obviously...two people can't wear the same shoes at the same time). Also, they excludable; even when you're not wearing your shoes, it's easy to keep people from taking them. So, when a good is rivalrous and excludable, the property rights surrounding it are very clearly defined (which is one of the necessary condtions for reaching pareto efficiency).

However, not all goods are rivalrous or excludable. A rivalrous but non-excludable good is often called a "common pool good." A non-rivalrous but excludable good is often called a "toll good." And a non-rivalrous, non-excludable good is often called a "pure public good." Let me see if i can find a good two x two table to post as an illustration...ok, here's one.

For these goods, the market will not automatically produce efficient outcomes. The common pool resource will be overused, because it's not excludable (fisheries, for example). This is often referred to as the "tragedy of the commons." The toll-good...i actually forget what the problem with these are, but I remember there is some distortion in supply and demand. And finally, the public good will just not be provided by the market. Why? Because everyone benefits for it, regardless of whether or not they pay for it. This is known as the "free rider problem," or a "collective action problem."

Elinor Ostrom (who helped found my program) just won the Nobel Prize in economics for her work on common pool resources and the management thereof (she stakes out a middle position between privatization and government takeover of the resource, looking at effective community management strategies). For pure public goods, the government needs to provide the good. That's not to say that government has to PRODUCE the good, but at the very least, government has to at least pay for it. The market will not spontaneously produce a pure public good.

Ok, this is getting pretty long. I'll stop there for now. I'll move onto externalities, information asymmetry, moral hazard, adverse selection, and natural monopolies next time.

Conclusion: markets often work well, but for some kinds of goods, they don't, and sometimes total social utility can be increased if government provides those goods (though this is not guaranteed either).

The Feral and the Tame

You know, if you see a dog roaming the streets, maybe he's gonna be a little freaked out if you come over to pet him. And maybe he's gonna stiffen up and bark a little, maybe run away when you walk toward him, maybe even growl a little bit. But, you know, watch what happens when you turn around to walk away...he might start following you. He probably wants to come inside, but he's been out on the street so long, fending for himself and eating trash, that he just doesn't exactly know what to do. Be patient with him. He might be a good dog. He might just need a little time to get used to being inside, holding his pee and poop until it's walk time, eating out of a bowl, and generally having an owner who is nice and wants to pet him and love him and be nice to him. But he'll get there.

Dissertating and Disciplines

Ugh...I'm not gonna subject you all to any more stats nonsense, but let me say that I just got out of class, and I understood virtually nothing in the lecture today. That's always a great feeling. (Ordinal and Multinomial Probit models!!!!)

So, I seem to be drifting toward a research interest in public policies toward children and families. I'm interested in the question of the dispersion of rights and responsibilities for child rearing between the family and the state. And I'm interested particularly in whether structured programs outside of K-12 yield positive externalities for society, and if so, why government has not invested more in early childhood education and youth development programming (other than head start, the majority of these programs are run by private or nonprofit organizations). If these programs don't do anything, there's no reason to believe government would invest in them, but if we assume that K-12 education has positive externalities, isn't it odd that, as soon as kids step outside the walls of their schools, the state says "hey, whatever happens happens! None of our business!" I find this really odd, but apparently, no other policy analysts, political scientists, or labor economists do, because nobody has written shit about it (except for Head Start). There's a mountain of research on K-12 education, but there's very little on other kinds of youth development programs.

So, right now, I'm trying to figure out how to take what is essentially a policy analysis and political philosophy question and turn it into a political science question. I might be making too big of a deal of that problem, but it concerns me, because I want to work in a political science department teaching public policy and American politics. I feel like my dissertation needs to be recognizable as mainstream political science. That means that I need to shoe horn this question into one about political processes (that's really what the empirical side of the discipline does).

If I were going to market myself to public policy/public administrations schools, it would be perfectly fine to just do a straight policy analysis dissertation looking at youth development program outcomes. You might think of this as me saying "I do public policy analysis, and in doing so, I use economics as my disciplinary lens." But I'm not an economist, I'm not trained as an economist, I'm not smart enough to be an economist, and I don't want to be an economist. Insofar as I have one, my disciplinary home is American political science. It makes no sense for me to spend all this time training to think using the constructs, techniques, and jargon of political science if I'm not going to use them.

So, to make this an American politics and policy analysis question instead of an economics and policy analysis question, I have to think in terms of political variables and political theories. I haven't quite figured out how to do that, and I might just have to give up and find another topic. But I'm not quite there yet.

A brief comparison of OLS and ML estimation procedures and oh my fucking god I suck at math.

Mmm...rye toast and coffee. Good breakfast.

Alrighty, time to post profound shit from my brain. Ok. Here we go.

Ok...let's see...um....yeah...uh..

See, the problem with using Ordinary Least Squares regression with a dichotomous dependent variable (this is known as the Linear Probability Model) is that it yields impossible predictions. We know that Y must be bounded by zero and one, yet the OLS beta estimates can yield predictions for Y that exceed this known boundary.

That is why Maximum Likelihood Estimation is preferable to OLS when the dependent variable is dichotomous. MLE has a much easier time estimating a non-linear model, and in order to properly bound the dependent variable between zero and one, we need to use a non-linear model. So, MLE and OLS are quite different. OLS regression uses a least squares lost function; it seeks to minimize the sum of squared errors (i.e., it seeks a hyperplane that minimizes the distance between the observed values of variables and the hyperplane. For a two variable model, y=a + Bx + e, it seeks the "best fit" line through the data). This is an analytic process; by solving a system of simultaneous equations (one for each coefficient estimate), one can derive a unique solution for the coefficients in the model. (In the bivariate model above, that's the B).

The logic of Maximum Likelihood Estimation is different. MLE starts with the observed values of the data. It then says, ok, given these data, what values of a the population from which they are sampled would make these observed values most likely? This is not an analytic process. Instead, MLE uses numerical optimization to reach a solution. This is an itterative (i.e., trial and error) process that uses an algorithm to produce the beta coefficient values (the B from above) that maximize the likelihood function.

OLS is in a general family of estimation procedures known as General Method of Moments. MLE is another family, of which probit and logit regression are the most famous examples. The other large family is Bayesian estimation, which is a little more rigorous, but I don't know much about it. And I believe there's something called non-parametric estimation, but I don't know anything about it.

The big drawback to MLE is that its properties are all asymptotic. One needs quite large sample sizes for these asymptotic properties to really kick in (i.e., for one's estimates and hypothesis tests to be reliable). It also makes the coefficients much harder to interpret. In logit, for example, the dependent variable is not Y; it's the natural log of the odds that Y=1. So, a Beta coefficient must be interpreted as the change in the log of the odds that y=1 when X increases by 1 unit, holding the other variables constant at their means. So, to calculate a real marginal effect (what happens to y when x increases by 1 unit), one has to "back out" of the likelihood function, which can be kind of tedious. Compare that to the ease of the interpretation with OLS. If B=.5, then when x increases by one unit, y increases by .5. Easy, peezy, japaneezy.

Sigh....

I fuckin suck at statistics. It's goddamn hard and I never understand anything! why can't I just be a math genius and get it?! The more I learn, the less I understand (Henley, Don, 1989). Dear my statistics professor: I DON'T FUCKING GET IT!!!!!!

Why Obstructionism is Good Politics

The republican obstructionism in the senate SHOULD, in an ideal world, be a politically costly maneuver. But it won't be.

If voters were perfectly rational and had perfect information, they would associate the Republican brand in 2010 with the status quo. They would apportion blame appropriately for government's failure to act on several major issues (health care, carbon emissions, defecit management, and financial industry reform), with most of the blame going to the Republicans. Voters would say to themselves "Jesus, the country really sucks right now! Thanks George Bush (jerk)! Boy howdy, we haven't taken any action to really tackle any of our problems! What's up WITH THAT??? Congress can't do anything, and all they do is fight and bluster for the cameras. But if it wasn't for those dang Republcans and their filibustering, we'd at least have gotten something done."

But that's not what's gonna happen.

First of all, voters are myopic. It's been a whole YEAR since George Bush was in office. Can you remember the last nine years? I bet you can, because you, my reader, are probably beautiful and intelligent. You know who can't? The average American voter. Instead, they look around and say, "hey, lots of people I know are unemployed and my kid's teacher just got fired cause the states are all facing huge budget cuts and my 401K is still on life support. Goddamnit! It's the goddamn gub-ment's fault! Who's in power right now? Oh yeah..that Obama guy. I think I might have voted for him. Must be his fault...that fucker." They look around, make an assesment of the general condition of the country, and punish or reward whoever happens to be in power, regardless of how rational or irrational that might be.

(This is a gross oversimplification, but what do you want, this is a fuckin blog, not my dissertation).

This is why the President's party tends to lose seats in off-year elections. The President embodies the brand of the party in power, and people credit the President (usually wrongly) with whatever happens to be good or bad about the country. They also soon realize that all those fancy campaign promises the President made were conditional upon an unspoken but crucial phrase: "I will do X, Y, And Z...if Congress passes my proposals." There is a measure of disappointment when people realize the President is not, contrary to what he claimed in the campaign, a god on earth.

Ok, I'm kind of rambling. Back to obstructionism and why it's good politics.


Because voters tend to blame the party in power for 1. everything that's wrong with the country and 2. failure to accomplish anything in Congress, the Republicans face relatively low political risk in simply saying no to every goddamn bill or nominee that passes through the senate. Voters are not generally going to be well-informed enough to understand precisely how the senate works (I'm a ph.d. student in American politics, and even I have only a vague idea). Instead, they are just going to say "damn congress can't get anything done...throw the bums out!!!"

So, by virtue of being the minority party in Congress and of having a President from the opposite party, Republicans are not going to suffer anything like the kind of blame that they really should suffer from their senatorial obstructionism. They're using the predictable biases of the electorate as a political force field. It's a pretty good electoral strategy, but it's shitty policymaking.