Illinois isn’t just in the news about taxes and abortion liberalization. The Chicago Tribune reports that Illinois will become the 11th state to legalize recreational marijuana usage:

Marking a historic moment in an expanding national movement, Illinois lawmakers Friday approved recreational marijuana legalization.

After a contentious debate in Springfield — during which one lawmaker even cracked eggs into a frying pan to depict the “brain on drugs” — the House of Representatives voted 66-47 to allow possession and sales beginning Jan. 1, 2020. The Senate had approved the measure earlier in the week.

Gov. J.B. Pritzker plans to sign the bill into law, which would make Illinois the 11th state to legalize cannabis and the first state in which a legislature approved commercial sales. Vermont lawmakers legalized possession, but not yet commercial sales. Approval in other states came via referendum.

I’m going to put down a marker. I do not think that the Illinois legislature has the restraint necessary to realize the revenue that the governor has been predicting from the sales of legal marijuana. If there’s one thing of which we can be confident it’s that if the cost of legal marijuana becomes too high a black market will quickly emerge. I also think that the notion that sales can be limited to those over 21 is laughable.

I don’t think this move is either a tragedy or a great stride in human rights. I also think that the rewards have been greatly exaggerated while the risks have been unduly minimized. I have reluctantly supported marijuana legalization for some time, as much through fatalism as anything else.

I actually liked Chicago Tribune reporter Eric Zorn’s retort to complaints about Illinois’s taxing and spending more than I expected to:

“It’s time to stop the madness and cut spending,” tweeted state Rep. David McSweeney, R-Barrington Hills, Friday morning, renewing his objection to the Democratic proposal to generate an estimated $3.4 billion a year by raising state income tax rates on the highest earners.

If only it were that easy! If only Illinois were a profligate outlier, levying obscenely high taxes and wasting it on fluffy, do-nothing, easy-to-slash programs, we could surgically tame the budget beast.

Adjusted for population size, Illinois ranks 34th in the nation in public welfare spending, 19th in spending on housing and community development, 15th in spending on elementary and secondary education and 13th in spending on highways, according to the COGFA report.

We rank a bit higher in state and local spending on jails and prisons (12th), police (sixth) and parks and recreation (fifth), but as former Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner discovered when he attempted to take the scalpel to state spending, much of the fat has already been trimmed.

Comparing state spending in fiscal year 2000 with state spending in fiscal year 2019 adjusted for inflation, higher education is down 52%, human services and public safety are down 26%, health care is down 23% and net discretionary spending is down 20%, according to an analysis by the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability, a liberal Chicago think tank.

The Kaiser Family Foundation found that Illinois ranked 37th in state-only spending per capita in 2017 and 43rd in Medicaid spending per enrollee in 2014, the most recent year available.

Neither Rep. McSweeney’s comments nor Mr. Zorn’s responses fairly represent Illinois’s problem. My gripe is not just that taxes or spending are too high but that we’re not getting what we’re paying for, our situation is bad and getting worse, and there is no remediation possible without cutting spending, something that is apparently beyond the pale.

Illinois’s schools rank 21st in the nation, its highways 28th, and crime 28th. In each of those cases higher is worse.

I think there’s a pattern emerging here. Illinoisans are willing to pay for what they’re actually getting but the state is paying for a lot more.

Illinois’s tax system is very regressive but I would be more enthusiastic about amending the state’s constitution to allow a graduated income tax if at the same time the state’s constitution were amended to allow the legislature to control the state’s spending on public pensions.

Illinois pays more than any other state to borrow. A graduated income tax alone or conjoined with a tax on legalized marijuana will not change that. It is losing net population rapidly. That means that a smaller population will be saddled with the spending obligations undertaken by a larger population. Increasing taxes only aggravates that problem. Illinois needs to attract businesses and workers not drive them away.

As the editors of the Wall Street Journal point out with a certain amount of unbecoming glee, when details of just how a single-payer system would work in the United States are fleshed out opposition to the plan mounts, at times from unexpected sectors, in this case public employees’ unions:

“We have been successful at negotiating good quality health care for many of our members and many don’t pay for health care right now,” explained a Civil Service Employees Association organizer. “This plan would impose a cost they are not used to paying.”

Progressives say the wealthy will bear most of the higher tax burden, but union leaders were skeptical. “What is the cost?” asked the chair of the New York State Public Employee Conference. “I cannot sell an estimate to my members.”

The New York State United Teachers also worried about retirees who have left the state and continue to receive subsidized union-run health benefits. Unions “don’t want to give up what they fought so hard for and suddenly see their members either lose their coverage, or lose it because their pensions aren’t enough to stay here in this state,” said state Senator Diane Savino, a former labor organizer.

Several thoughts occur to me. The first is that however structured any conceivable single-payer plan will result in those who are presently subsidized paying more than they do now. That includes not just public employees but all workers with company-sponsored health care plans and the companies as well, insurance companies, physicians, hospitals, and other providers. No wonder the safest strategy for enacting health care reform legislation is to enact it before reading it.

The other is that the source of much present distortion is in the tax code which taxes income rather than compensation and picks and chooses which health care plans it will subject to tax.

I agree with these paragraphs of David B. Rivkin Jr. and Elizabeth Price Foley’s Wall Street Journal op-ed:

America’s experience with special prosecutors, independent counsels and special counsels has left a trail of partisan-fueled destruction. These investigations are inherently harmful to national unity and a stain on the constitutional fabric. The only way to restore the separation of powers and prevent further damage is to ensure that Congress cannot outsource any aspect of its impeachment powers.

Existing opinions from the Office of Legal Counsel already hold that no sitting president should be indicted or criminally prosecuted, because such actions would debilitate the presidency. The same is true of criminal or counterintelligence investigations. Thus the OLC logic should extend those opinions and conclude formally that a sitting president cannot be investigated by the executive branch.

I understand the House’s motivations in seeking to delegate its responsibilities to someone, anyone else. Its members want sinecures. Once elected to safe seats they want to serve for life, becoming rich through corrupt but legal arrangements, and the surest way to accomplish that is to do nothing for which anyone can blame them which is to say do nothing.

Appearances notwithstanding that is not our form of government and with a responsible press and engaged electorate such plans would be unworkable. But what we have now reflects the present press and a chronically disengaged electorate.

What do you think of President Trump’s threat of last night to impose tariffs on products from Mexico? So far I haven’t found anyone who thinks it’s a good idea and the most common reaction seems to be that it’s “mindbogglingly stupid”.

I think there’s a lot of moving parts here. I think there is, indeed, an obvious crisis at our southern border. It isn’t being created by Mexicans trying to get into this country illegally but Guatemalans, Hondurans, and Salvadorans making their way through Mexico to the United States to file largely fraudulent asylum claims.

The tariff threat smacks to me of Maslow’s Hammer: when the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem begins to look like a nail. There are plenty of other strategies that President Trump could use other than tariffs and sweeping tariffs could undermine all sort of other initiatives we have going with Mexico.

I’ve already given my proposal for reducing immigration from Mexico and Central America. I understand the frustration but I don’t think this is a productive way of venting it.

What do you think?

I would have found this article at The Economist funnier if it weren’t so tragic. The gist of it is that workers are ingrates and should be satisfied with what they’re getting, damamit:

Everyone says work is miserable. Today’s workers, if they are lucky enough to escape the gig economy and have a real job, have lost control over their lives. They are underpaid and exploited by unscrupulous bosses. And they face a precarious future, as machines threaten to make them unemployable.

There is just one problem with this bleak picture: it is at odds with reality. As we report this week (see Briefing), most of the rich world is enjoying a jobs boom of unprecedented scope. Not only is work plentiful, but it is also, on average, getting better. Capitalism is improving workers’ lot faster than it has in years, as tight labour markets enhance their bargaining power. The zeitgeist has lost touch with the data.

In America the unemployment rate is only 3.6%, the lowest in half a century. Less appreciated is the abundance of jobs across most of the rich world.

I’ll restrict my comments to the United States. I don’t know enough about England or Germany or Japan to comment on their situations. I’ll leave that to an English, German, or Japanese blogger.

It is not difficult to discern the reasons for the dissatisfaction if you’re willing to look for it. You need go no farther than the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics Employment Situation report:

Professional and business services added 76,000 jobs in April. Within the industry, employment gains occurred in administrative and support services (+53,000) and in computer systems design and related services (+14,000). Over the past 12 months, professional and business services has added 535,000 jobs.

In April, construction employment rose by 33,000, with gains in nonresidential specialty trade contractors (+22,000) and in heavy and civil engineering construction (+10,000). Construction has added 256,000 jobs over the past 12 months.

Employment in health care grew by 27,000 in April and 404,000 over the past 12 months. In April, job growth occurred in ambulatory health care services (+17,000), hospitals (+8,000), and community care facilities for the elderly (+7,000).

If we turn to the BLS’s definition of “administrative and support services”, two-thirds of the gains in that segment, are mostly janitors, laborers, and groundskeeping workers. The average hourly wage in the segment provides a lower than median annual income.

Month after month over the period of the last decade the health care sector has accounted for substantial growth in employment but that doesn’t mean that the number of physicians, physician’s assistants, registered nurses, and top-level technicians has been exploding. The jobs being added are overwhelmingly at the low end—PNs, home health care workers, and so on, jobs that typically pay at or near minimum wage.

There is fierce competition for all of those low-skill, low-wage jobs, driven by legal and illegal immigration, and that keeps the wages down.

When you take a view from an altitude lower than the 50,000 feet The Economist is cruising at, the situation doesn’t look nearly as rosy.

Here’s a fascinating observation from Alexis Madrigal at The Atlantic. The adoption of cellphones during the 1990s may have been responsible for the drop in crime:

It’s practically an American pastime to blame cellphones for all sorts of societal problems, from distracted parents to faltering democracies. But the devices might have also delivered a social silver lining: a de-escalation of the gang turf wars that tore up cities in the 1980s.

The intriguing new theory suggests that the arrival of mobile phones made holding territory less important, which reduced intergang conflict and lowered profits from drug sales.

Is it also possible that criminal gangs have now learned to use smartphones in their activities and that’s the reason that crime is rising again. What’s the relative role between technology and demographics?

Just as a reminder all executive branch departments derive the entirety of their authority and power from the president. They are in no way independent of the president and do not derive their authority directly from the Congress independent of the president. They do not constitute a separate branch of government.

It is true of the Department of Justice. It is true of the Department of State. It is true of all executive branch departments.

If you don’t like the president, impeach him. If you don’t like that arrangement, amend the Constitution.

There’s an interesting piece by Joe Pinsker at The Atlantic on divorce:

Lange seems to have avoided repeating his parents’ relationship history. But divorce, as a thorough body of research has demonstrated, often perpetuates itself across generations—“children of divorce,” as they’re called, are more likely to get divorced themselves than are people from “intact families.” A parental split, it turns out, can shape the next generation from childhood on.

Researchers have been aware of the connection between a parent’s divorce and a child’s divorce for nearly a century, says Nicholas Wolfinger, a sociologist at the University of Utah. Further, as Wolfinger found after he started studying the subject in the 1990s, people with divorced parents are disproportionately likely to marry other people with divorced parents—and couples in which both partners are children of divorce are more likely to get divorced than couples in which just one person is.

Wolfinger says that researchers have some ideas about why divorce would be heritable. One theory is that many children of divorce don’t learn important lessons about commitment. “All couples fight,” Wolfinger explains. “If your parents stay together, they fight and then you realize these things aren’t fatal to a marriage. If you’re from a divorced family, you don’t learn that message, and [after fights] it seems like things are untenable. And so you bounce.”

One other (albeit minor) factor is genetics. By way of explanation, Wolfinger talked through a hypothetical generation-spanning chain of assholery: “Some people are jerks, and there is some component of being a jerk that appears to be purely genetic. So: You’re a jerk, you get married, you have a kid, you don’t stay married—because you’re a dick—your kid inherits some of the genetic propensity to be a jerk. And so they get divorced.”

I was tremendously fortunate that my parents’ joint response to their awful childhoods was to create the most stable, loving idyllic childhood for me and my siblings that they possibly could.

There’s a considerable body of scholarship suggesting that children do best when reared by their biological parents as well.

Commitment, marriage, stable parental relationships, happy, secure children, secure old ages. These things are all interrelated. That’s how systems work. Traditional values are a system.

If we are to reject traditional values as inadequate to modern needs, we might consider coming up with alternatives that achieve the same or better outcomes. Something to the left of “whoopee”, as Murray in the play A Thousand Clowns put it, is probably inadequate.