Category Archives: News commentary

Today happens to be the Antiplanner’s birthday, and I’ve always appreciated Congress for changing the first day of the fiscal year to my birthday back in 1977. This year, Congress appears poised to give me an extra-special present: a smaller government, even if only temporarily.

If the federal government shuts down, transportation and land-use will be among the major bones of contention in the debate. In August, Republicans worked hard to successfully prevent the Senate from passing the Democrat’s $54 billion transportation and housing budget (S. 1243). This bill would have spent at least $10 billion more than Republicans think is responsible, partly by funding a number of smart-growth programs.

One of those programs is called the “Choice Neighborhoods Initiative,” which provides $250 million for turning low-income neighborhoods into “sustainable mixed income neighborhoods with appropriate services, schools, public assets, transportation and access to jobs”–in other words, a smart-growth urban renewal program. The Democrat’s bill also provides more money for Amtrak, rail transit, and other questionable programs.

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The debate over American intervention in Syria has the media even more confused than usual. Republicans such as Senator John McCain, Robert Corker, and Representative John Boehner support intervention as do Democrats such as Senators Harry Reid, Robert Menendez, and Richard Durbin. Meanwhile, Republicans such as Senators Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, and Tom Cole oppose intervention, as do Democrats such as Senators Mark Udall, Joe Manchin, and Chris Murphy.

How can it be that the issue doesn’t divide along party lines, or at least on “liberal-conservative” lines? One writer goes so far as to argue that there are 22 different political views being expressed on the issue.

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Today is the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I have a dream” speech, and some people see lots of progress for black Americans since then. But that progress is only partial, and one of America’s shames is that the descendants of people who were slaves still don’t get a fair break today.

The main progress has been political. One of King’s dreams was that “even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.” Today, more than a quarter of the Mississippi legislature is black, up from approximately zero in 1963. Nationwide, the number of black elected officials has grown from less than 1,500 in 1963 to more than 10,500 today.

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An economist named Robert Gordon thinks that the rapid growth the United States experienced from about 1870 to 1970 was just a blip resulting from the discovery of new inventions that will never be repeated again. As a result, he predicts that our future economic growth will never come close to the growth we experienced during most of the twentieth century. His prediction may be right, but not for the reasons he thinks.

Gordon’s argument, presented in detail in this 2012 paper, is that the inventions produced after 1870–electricity, telecommunications, powered flight, and automobility–were so profound that their effects will not be repeated again. They had far more of an impact on the economy than the previous, steam-driven industrial revolution because they affected more segments of that economy. And they had more of an impact than the later, computer-driven revolution, because people of 1870 were far less wealthy than we are today and so it didn’t take as much to add to their wealth.

Gordon is expressing a technology theory of economic growth that many, if not most, economists today do not support. If the technology theory were true, then the same technical innovations that made American wealthy should have made South Americans and Africans and Indians and Chinese and Russians wealthy at the same time. After all, there are really no secrets behind electric motors, internal combustion engines, and the shape of airplane wings that enable flight.

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