Everything is Unpopular
The other day, Chris Bowers linked to a very interesting 2007 Harris poll showing massive public opposition to basically everything. There was, for example, overwhelming opposition to raising taxes in order to close the budget deficit:
But there’s also overwhelming opposition to the sort of spending cuts that could possible close the deficit:
People want to cut . . . the space program. Unfortunately, if you make a chart of what the federal government spends money on space doesn’t show up, because it’s $17.6 billion budget is tiny relative to the size of the federal government. And note that space is the only line item to secure majority support for cuts primarily because Democrats apparently hate outer space. Democrats hate space and are lukewarm on defense. Republicans don’t want to cut anything! And in particular, Republicans overwhelming oppose cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security which account for by far the majority of domestic spending.
On tax specifics, the public actually does a bit better and is willing to support exactly two kinds of tax increases—hikes on booze and on cigarettes:
Cigarette taxes are already a good deal higher than they were back when this poll was taken, since that’s how congress elected to pay for SCHIP expansion. Consequently, the booze tax hikes I’ve been talking about may well be in the works. That said, the larger moral of the story is that public opinion is pathologically delusional everywhere and not just in California. What you want are institutions that result in politicians being held accountable for results—you tend to lose your seat if your governance leads to disaster—rather than accountable for adherence to public views on particular issues.
50 Responses to “Everything is Unpopular”
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May 23rd, 2009 at 10:12 am
What about default? Is default is ever an option in these polls?
We could save alot of money just by not paying interest on Treasuries for several years.
If someone put an initiative on the California ballot banning the state from paying back principal or interest on its bonds, you really think it wouldn’t pass?
Or maybe I’m crediting the public with too much capacity for logical thinking.
May 23rd, 2009 at 10:15 am
What about default? Is default is ever an option in these polls?
I suspect that the kind of institutions that pay for polls generally have a fairly strong vested interest in making sure that a partial default on US Government debt is beyond the pale.
May 23rd, 2009 at 10:20 am
Years of deficit spending have deluded people into thinking that at the margin government is free. Why pay taxes when you can just borrow from China, or (more recently) have Boom Boom Bernanke print the money?
May 23rd, 2009 at 10:20 am
Re “What you want are institutions that result in politicians being held accountable for results—you tend to lose your seat if your governance leads to disaster ”
————-
So how is that Financial bailout going, Matthew? Gold moving on up –which suggests the dollar is starting to slide down.
I hear wheelbarrows are looking good as an investment.
May 23rd, 2009 at 10:26 am
space is the only line item to secure majority support for cuts primarily because when you give someone 11 options and ask them to choose two of them, the options are going to average at most 18% support. And if one of the items is really unimportant, a lot of people will choose that.
I mean, I agree with the main point, but that poll question doesn’t seem to show anything.
May 23rd, 2009 at 10:32 am
Well the space program should be cut. There is just so little return on investment. Yeah, it’s cool, but it’s no longer cool enough to get the kids excited about it, which was the main benefit. I thought it was so cool when I was a kid that I studied science and became an engineer. But then again, Star Wars (the movie, not the defense program) probably did more to push me that way.
What’s striking though is that more Republicans want farm subsidies cut than Democrats. I thought the whole purpose of farm subsidies was to give money to people who voted Republican. I guess I was wrong. But if that’s the case, let’s eliminate them completely and set up private insurance plans to deal with the uncertainties of agriculture. Like the old farmer’s insurance plans of the pre-Depression era. Given that the farmers who already vote Republican are for it apparetly, let’s give them what they want. And at least we could avoid the irony of these people bitching about how government sucks while collecting their farm welfare checks. If they think it sucks, then they should be perfectly happy to not be subsidized by the government. And it finally appears that they are. So that’s a perfect place to cut spending.
Defense spending is another great place for spending cuts. Why Americans are such wimps that we need to spend so much is beyond me. Nobody’s going to invade us, so what’s the worry? Maybe we could spend less than the rest of the entire world. Maybe we shouldn’t be such paranoid freaks.
The Estate Tax is really weird because it’s down now, and about to go up simply by the way it was planned. So if you have to die, die now. But hardly anyone really pays it. The solution here is to tell people we’ll cut it, and not actually cut it. It’s a huge deal to rednecks who can only dream of having enough money to get caught up in it. So let’s lower the estate tax for those who can’t qualify from zero to zero. But we can sell it as a tax cut, and nobody will notice because they aren’t paying it anyway.
May 23rd, 2009 at 10:38 am
I’m with Matt Weiner–the spending poll doesn’t show what Matt Yglesias seems to be suggesting. That said, I suspect Matt Yglesias’s basic point is correct, meaning if you added up spending cuts a majority would support and tax increases a majority would support, you would come nowhere near balancing the budget.
May 23rd, 2009 at 10:38 am
Mostly, this shows how delusional it is to rely on polls. I hate hearing pundits and others say “people think X” and rely on some poll. Groups of people don’t think, individuals do. There are many cases where an “average” response represents the response of very few individuals.
The problem also stems from the typical piecemeal nature of polling, asking about 1 item at a time rather than a composite, and trying to deduce a composite snapshot. If you go individuals and ask, “OK, what would you prefer in the US budget; There are x dollars in income, and here is the current list of expenditures. How would you handle the budget?”. This is actually how people talk to each other. And rational people will approach this type of question more realistically than the condescending, checkbox approach of many pollsters.
May 23rd, 2009 at 10:46 am
These poll data, as Matt notes, indicate a general, and irrational, desire for a big expensive government that no one has to pay for. It seems to me, though, that part of the cause of this irrationality is due to the way both sides of the political divide discuss tax increases. Any discussion of tax increases seems to be founded upon either a need for everyone to pay more or to tax the rich, merely because they are rich. Neither of these reasons appeal to the general population. The first is disliked because these folks are already paying a great deal in taxes for very limited benefit, the second is unpopular because taking money from people simply because they have it rankles their sense of morals. What is rarely pointed out in any detail by the left, is that for the vast majority of wealthy folks (if not, in fact all wealthy folks) their wealth is critically dependent upon federal services. The most valuable business unit for Disney Corporation (not to mention other studios, the record labels, etc.) are the folks in the FBI, justice department and federal penal system who give weight to the warnings against copyright infringement. Change those labels to remove references to federal prosecution and instead some corporate executive will be really cross, I think the value of these corporations would decrease. This is only one of many examples, Rush Limbaugh’s wealth is dependent upon the FCC keeping everyone else off “Rush’s” airwaves, incorporation itself is a valuable service, etc. etc.
Charging people money in order to supply them a service they use to earn money is not broadly considered to be a moral violation. I suspect that we could get much more support for tax increases on the wealthy if we would point out the perfectly true fact that it is in return for valuable services provided, not just because we want money. Does anyone know why progressives don’t do this then?
May 23rd, 2009 at 11:04 am
Because the means by which such a message could be spread are largely in the hands of people who believe as a matter of gospel that the the government cannot provide any valuable services? Perfectly true facts, while perfectly true, are not self-popularizing, and certainly not self-popularizing against the osmotic pressure of billions of dollars of highly diverting lies.
May 23rd, 2009 at 11:21 am
The most valuable business unit for Disney Corporation (not to mention other studios, the record labels, etc.)are the folks in the FBI, justice department and federal penal system who give weight to the warnings against copyright infringement.
Really? How many people actually get criminally prosecuted for copyright violation? My sense is that nearly all copyright violation gets dealt with by civil suits. Is the DOJ really wasting money prosecuting people for violating Disney’s copyrights?
Now, the fact that we have a system of civil law which protects Disney’s copyrights is also a function of government. But it’s not the same thing as federal prosecutions.
May 23rd, 2009 at 11:22 am
Change those labels to remove references to federal prosecution and instead some corporate executive will be really cross, I think the value of these corporations would decrease.
Yes, because angry corporate executive can’t accomplish anything unless they have federal prosecutors working with them.
May 23rd, 2009 at 11:40 am
This is why we need a balanced budget amendment.
May 23rd, 2009 at 12:04 pm
@4 Don Williams “I hear wheelbarrows are looking good as an investment.”
Too funny.
But, on the other hand, not so funny.
May 23rd, 2009 at 12:26 pm
And note that space is the only line item to secure majority support for cuts primarily because Democrats apparently hate outer space. Democrats hate space and are lukewarm on defense. Republicans don’t want to cut anything!
It’s always seems so bizarre because D’s are supposed to support ‘Science!’, but the phenomena goes back a long way. I suppose because it isn’t labeled ‘Science!’… but then, things labeled ‘Science!’ don’t get so much support either. Which again, is really odd, since the D’s are supposed to be the party that supports ‘Science!’.
Anyways, I expect the notion is similar to the perennial favorite idea of cutting aid for furrners, even though that would save, like, a coupla billion at most.
And in particular, Republicans overwhelming oppose cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security which account for by far the majority of domestic spending.
Sure. Old, reasonably well-off people who live in suburbs want old age support and low taxes, plus some furrner killin’, and maybe not so much money for farmers. Unless you need it to get votes for old age support.
Bush’s drug payment scheme was playing to his base.
Well the space program should be cut. There is just so little return on investment.
There’s so little return on those kinds of investments because we started out spending so little on all kinds of Science! crap and then we cut even that, which is why the Chinese invent shit and we don’t.
max
['{waves to Weiner}']
May 23rd, 2009 at 12:47 pm
Oh, come on, Max. The space program is a huge boondoggle. Sending people into space accomplishes nothing other than sending people into space. It’s an absurd waste of money.
May 23rd, 2009 at 12:52 pm
At some point- very soon I think- Americans are going to have a very serious and very urgent conversation about whether it’s more important to have low taxes or a strong safety net.
May 23rd, 2009 at 12:58 pm
“Because the means by which such a message could be spread are largely in the hands of people who believe as a matter of gospel that the the government cannot provide any valuable services?”
And such people are aided hugely by a “progressive” Obama administration that carts $ billions of our tax dollars off to wealthy Wall Street banksters, AIG executives, Fannie & Freddie, argibiz, endless pork bullshit, the BushCo m.e. wars, etc.
If “progessives” want people to take a more positive attitude toward government “services” then “progressives” are going to have to confront Obama on this shit instead of just rolling over for him all the time.
May 23rd, 2009 at 1:01 pm
Some mouth-breather named Don subjected us to this snarky little “gem:”
“So how is that Financial bailout going, Matthew? Gold moving on up –which suggests the dollar is starting to slide down.
I hear wheelbarrows are looking good as an investment.”
Actually, as a link from Matt’s nightly roundupclearly indicates, the Financial bailout, while sub-optimal in many respects, is performing its intended function of freeing-up access to credit with aplomb. Just because this hasn’t led to an immediate rebound in employment is no indication that it’s not working. Repeat after me (and every econ professor on the planet), “jobs are a lagging indicator.” That’s free lesson #1.
As for your second point, your problem isn’t one of economics, but rather of fundamental logic–you’re confusing correlation with causation. Since FDR successfully took us off the gold-standard to combat the depression, there is no causal link between the price of gold and the value of the dollar, at least not in the manner which you imply. Sure, a weak dollar can lead to elevated gold prices in US markets as the purchasing power of each individual dollar is decreased, but that doesn’t seem to be what you’re arguing. More importantly, it’s not what is objectively occurring in the economy, where the dollar has actually increased slightly in value as, in these troubled times, more foreigners are turning to the good-old green-back as the most stable reserve currency available.
No, the price of gold has increased because it’s the world’s classic hedge, and in uncertain times, people who fear a further collapse in the equities markets and/or a future dilution of the dollar’s purchasing power are hedging their bets. In other words, the rise in gold is not an indicator of inflation, but of a lack of consumer confidence. This isn’t good, but it’s not the same thing as saying “gold is going up, so the dollar must be going down.” That’s free lesson #2, and I’ll stop there, ’cause any more and I’ll have to start charging you, Don.
May 23rd, 2009 at 1:01 pm
“Republicans don’t want to cut anything! And in particular, Republicans overwhelming oppose cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security which account for by far the majority of domestic spending.”
You do realize the poll asked people to pick only their two best programs to cut, and the numbers for each column add up to roughly 200%… To say anyone doesn’t want a cut in one program because it was overwhelmingly their third choice is a bit contrived. If we added 12 more choices to the list I’m willing to bet not a single category would break 25%.
A more accurate assessment of this data could conclude Republicans more broadly understand that the Space program won’t affect spending significantly and rank it lower, and that that there is support within the party to cut many programs, not just defense and space as it seems with the democrats.
Sadly, the lens with which you look at things has become exceptionally distorted lately.
May 23rd, 2009 at 1:12 pm
Sahu, get a grip man.
Econ lesson 55:
When the major investment banks had to deleverage their bankrupt assets, the money supply contracted. Dollars were only up %5 in this period.
Now that the deleveraging is over, the true value of the dollar is taking shape. Gold is up ~4% this week which is absurd for such a basic commodity whose stock is virtually unaffected by mining operations. Next week is likely similar.
May 23rd, 2009 at 1:23 pm
Nathan,
Yes, that deleveraging had an effect, but was it greater than the expansion of the money-supply caused by the unprecedented Fed actions of the last several months? We shall see. The fact remains that world-wide investment in dollars has increased as the world-wide economy has slowed. As you yourself said, the dollar was up 5% during the peak of the crisis.
And looking at week-to-week rates of anything is counter-productive, especially during a time of such market volatility. Only longer-term analysis (which will require time to gather and correlate the data) can provide meaningful insight into the overall effects of this crisis and the policy reactions to it.
Any shorter time-span and you’re just trying to find a tip to what the crowd is thinking before the crowd realizes that it’s thinking that way, a la Matt’s favorite chapter from Keynes’ General Theory. In other words, it’s useful if you’re gambling on commodities prices, but not if you’re trying to make, or assess the efficacy of, serious public policy decisions.
May 23rd, 2009 at 2:25 pm
This is kind of silly. The fact that the very lucrative trade of generating pirated copies of films is not going on in the US, as it is going on quite vigorously in Asia and Eastern Europe, is evidence that the FBI is ineffective in keeping up the value of copyrighted properties. Were it not for the credible threat of federal action, people would be generating and selling pirated materials at a m;uch higher rate. The fact that the FBI is not actively investigating and prosecuting such activities is evidence that the FBI threat is very effective. Now, it might be that some other unit of the federal government is more critical to securing copyrights than the ones I listed, although I think that unlikely, but certainly it is the federal governmnet that adds huge value to these properties via statute and law enforcement.
May 23rd, 2009 at 2:29 pm
Davis X Machina #10
Well, yes you’ve got a point there. Getting these arguments out would be a challenge. However, it still seems odd to me that I’ve heard these ideas as little as I have. There are a variey of eccentric progressives and marginal political candidates who could use these arguments and get some attention, if only among the blogs, yet I’ve come across it not at all. Perhaps, I’m looking in the wrong places and have not found such folks. If you know of any such folks, I would be very interested
May 23rd, 2009 at 2:31 pm
John #12
Well without some backing of the federal or state government, no a corporate executive is not going to be able to accomplish much.
May 23rd, 2009 at 2:41 pm
Davis X. Machina #10
Oops, I had another comment to this. I would somewhat modify your claim that the people who control the means of getting the message out “believe as a matter of gospel that the the government cannot provide any valuable services”. They do believe this, but they also simultaneously believe the contradiction, namely that government provides services that are essential to their business. The owners of copyright certainly believe that this is a useful service and Rush Limbaugh is on record as to how vital it is to right wing radio that the government guarantee sole use of the frequencies they have and that the guarantee take a particular form (namely that this guarantee be provided 24/7).
May 23rd, 2009 at 5:05 pm
“There’s so little return on those kinds of investments because we started out spending so little on all kinds of Science! ”
Hold on there Max, I didn’t say we should cut science funding, I’d really like to increase it. Ans big time. I just think space travel is wasteful. And I have no special desire against space travel, I just think that money would be better used elsewhere. How about a malaria vaccine? That would be money well spent. How about more money to science education? And not in the US, but in third world countries. How about Dengue Fever? How about flood control in hurricane prone regions? How about the random worms that crawl under my skin that nobody can diagnose? They’re really annoying, and everyone says “you’re a freak, lay off the meth.” And I don’t do meth, I really do have worms crawling around under my skin. How about a program to pay doctors to actually fucking listen for once? How about a program to deal with the pine beetle problem in the Mountain West? How about a program to understand dung beetles? I’m all for science, and I want more of it. But NASA takes away from what little money anyone is willing to give to science. So let’s just eliminate that program and study some real science. Given the backass anti-science attitude in this country, we have very little resources to study real projects. And space isn’t an important project, so cut it. Use that money to study important things. We have a long way to go in figuring out our own environment, we should really study that. Space is fun and cool, but it’s not relevant. We should really spend that money on the many projects on Earth that are just begging for it. Why should we take away from legitimate projects to spend it on someone’s bullshit fantasy? NASA was relevant in the Cold War because we had to prove we had a bigger dick than the Soviets. We’ve proven that now, so let’s do some real science.
May 23rd, 2009 at 5:19 pm
@ fostert (6, 27):
Check out http://www.thespaceplace.com/nasa/spinoffs.html.
You may find that the space program waste is not as big as you think.
Also, when the next dinosaur-killing asteroid hits earth, the only human survivors may be those in space (hopefully on other planets). There are lots of other potential disasters that may result in our extinction if we do not colonize other solar systems.
May 23rd, 2009 at 6:33 pm
I think Chris Bowers is way off base if he thinks these results are indicative of some kind of a general ideological consensus. Matt is closer to the mark when he labels the public “delusional”, but that isn’t quite right either. It’s not that the public lives in some fantasy land where they think it is possible to cut taxes to nothing and simultaneously have great government programs; most people just genuinely do not grasp that there is even a connection between the two.
A political scientist named Philip Converse figured this out about fifty years ago. In his paper The nature of belief systems in mass publics Converse showed that most people pretty much have no idea what is going on and don’t have any kind of coherent worldview through which they analyze current events. There is a tiny sliver of the public that formulates their opinions in a logical and coherent manner; the rest not so much.
May 23rd, 2009 at 7:35 pm
“Also, when the next dinosaur-killing asteroid hits earth, the only human survivors may be those in space”
Umm, that’s a long way off. We track this kind of stuff, and for good reason. And I’m all for this research. But it’s still ground based research. But if you want to call it a space mission, whatever. Either way, I will fund it.
As for the other stuff, yes we do get spinoff technology, and it’s not just Tang. But we could get most of those spinoffs from doing research on Earth. We won’t get them all, for sure. But doing other research also gives us spinoffs. So cutting funding for other projects to make room for NASA cuts off those possibilities. And let’s face it, these are always unexpected technologies that are purely accidental. They happen because we do research. But the research that randomly creates such things might happen anywhere. It doesn’t need to happen in space. So it’s not a question of whether space travel spins off technology, it’s whether it spins off more than other research would. And given that there’s no experimentation more expensive than space technology, we should not believe that space travel provides better benefits than ground based research. Until we can really demonstrate that space travel offers a special advantage, what would we do with it? And let’s say we develop a vaccine for malaria that can only exist in zero gravity, then what good does it do us here where there is gravity? Are we really ready to ship all of Africa up on shuttles just to get the vaccine? That’s just not possible. Fundamentally, we live on the Earth. Anything we develop for space travel is not likely to have a gravity based version on Earth. And if it does need gravity, then why are we spending so much money to do experiments that don’t have gravity? Whatever we do up there, the only practical purpose is down here. So why not just research it here? Here’s the real problem: if you want to do research on something that matters down here, how do you simulate the gravity that would be normal on Earth? And if that’s the point, why not just do it on Earth where its easy? The point of doing experiments in orbit is exactly why we do it. We want to do experiments up there specifically because it’s not Earth. But anything that’s relevant would need to work on Earth, not space. This is silly, but if we really needed Tang, why not develop Tang on Earth? And guess what? we really did develop Tang on Earth. So if Tang was the goal, what was the need to shoot a rocket into space? We already developed it before we left the Earth. And why did this need to be a NASA project? Why couldn’t the Department of Agriculture just develop Tang? Granted, that’s an obviously silly example, but it holds for any project useful to life on Earth. In order to get it up there, we had to build it here. So why not build it here and not fire the rocket? What is the point of firing a rocket if not to be in an environment that isn’t where we live? If it is something that’s only useful up there, then what’s the point? If it’s already useful down here, then why shoot the rocket?
My favorite way to understand the program was the pen they made. It can write upside down! Cool, but you know what? I can’t write that way, so why do I need a pen that can do it? The Russians were smart, they used pencils. And how many millions of dollars did we waste because we didn’t want to just use a fucking pencil?
The space program is just a bunch of fun. And it really is fun, I love it. But I’d still love to see a malaria vaccine. Show me that, and I really will be dancing in the rain. Tell my why this space program is more important than that. And tell the families of those that die from malaria how much more important this program is than their lives.
May 23rd, 2009 at 8:14 pm
You do realize that space technology is very much “use it or lose it”, don’t you? Hell, we can’t even make Saturn V rockets anymore, because we stopped making them back in the 1970s, all the tools and equipment for making them have gone to hell, and we’re left with nothing but the plans.
Suppose an asteroid does show up on track to Earth, but not for the next ten years – do you think that, without the infrastructure necessary to support a space effort (left to deteriorate because of lack of interest from people like you), they’re actually going to be able to do anything about it? They could barely do something about it today, and that’s with an active and massively underfunded space program.
Not necessarily. What about research done for the purpose of developing space colonies?
No, it’s not. The true reason why we ought to keep the manned space program, and expand it, is because it is crucial towards the long-term survival of humanity. Sooner or later, something will come – whether an asteroid (and they do get those), something like the Deccan Traps eruption, or something else. Having a viable space program, and more importantly permanent space colonies, ensures that we don’t get wiped out for having all of our eggs in one particularly frail basket.
To put it bluntly, either humanity expands into space, or humanity doesn’t have a long-term future.
May 23rd, 2009 at 8:18 pm
A malaria vaccine would save the lives of thousands of people in the here and now. But a manned space program (and space colonization) may save humanity itself, and almost certainly our technological civilization, in the long-run.
It’s like someone saying, “Hey, look how this thing called a “wheel” rolls! Maybe we could build something and use it to pull our stuff around”, and his friends saying, “Why are you wasting time inventing something so selfish and useless, when you could be working to bring water to the tribe?”
May 23rd, 2009 at 8:45 pm
Individuals do not buy and sell government, they buy and sell Congressmen and Senators. Even given that, they only do it every two years or so. Even that, they only have multiple choices in the primary. So you are asking people to answer questions based on what they do in very small amounts and very indirectly. There will mostly be noise.
Somehow the pollsters need to rework these surveys. Perhaps one should poll the great variety of lobbyists, NGOs, and the like in Washington.
May 23rd, 2009 at 9:47 pm
[...] Matthew Ylgesias, los resultados de una encuesta de hace un par de años sobre política fiscal. Primero le [...]
May 23rd, 2009 at 10:04 pm
Nothing new. For decades Americans have had the same preferences; cut taxes and raise spending. It is only that for the last 8 they had a Republican government feckless enough to give the people what they want. Of course point this out to Republicans and the cognitive dissonance goes into overdrive.
May 23rd, 2009 at 11:02 pm
Oh, my goodness. You people who are claiming that the return on investment from the space program is small need to check yourselves. It only generates the biggest return on investment the federal government makes. From the communication and weather satellites that allow us to talk on cell phones and prepare for hurricanes to the Speedo swimsuit that Michael Phelps wore while winning his gold medals in Beijing, the technology spinoffs go much much farther than Tang. Ever heard of an MRI? Yeah, it was developed by NASA. From computers to medicine to water purifiers to recreation equipment, NASA is working hard to make your life better through science.
For those who want to claim that this research could be done here on Earth, I would ask what good a satellite does sitting on the ground? The reason that pacemakers and MRI were developed was because we were sending men into space. R&D is not generally conducted for no good reason. Therefore, without manned space missions, there would be no need for the private sector to do any research on the human body’s response to weightlessness.
It’s too bad that such a small investment which has produced so many obvious commercial spinoffs that have changed our lives so dramatically, would be selected as the first program on the chopping block. And even worse, that so many Democrats would be completely ignorant about it’s benefits.
Defense spending and Welfare would be my two choices.
May 23rd, 2009 at 11:17 pm
Having a viable space program, and more importantly permanent space colonies, ensures that we don’t get wiped out for having all of our eggs in one particularly frail basket.
Frailer than space colonies? Surely there a thousand times more ways for space colonies to get wiped out than for the Earth. If the only survivors of an asteroid strike are in space, they won’t be survivors for long.
May 23rd, 2009 at 11:19 pm
We could fund a large percentage of NASAs budget simply by repealing the House and Senate Members Representational Allowance which runs between 1.2 to 1.4 million per House member and 2 to 4 million per Senator per year. I think we should take away their “walking around money” until those assholes balance the budget. I wonder what public opinion polls would say about that idea.
May 24th, 2009 at 12:16 am
Brett and Just Karl make excellent points. I wish that a healthy amount of R&D would certainly be done “for no good reason.” I wish that sort of generalized science funding and support for it were in place. It should be. But, as Just Karl says, it isn’t. The difficult space efforts are like the extremely difficult fusion effort (another easy business to mock): they provide reasons. They require investigation of extremely difficult physical areas and technologies in order to find ways to go forward, and that work is what generates “spinoff”, generates generally applicable science and technology.
A general proposition: If you complain that space funding eats up too much of science funding, and therefore you argue that space funding should be cut, you are not arguing for increasing science funding, although it may feel like it; you are arguing for reducing science funding. Instead, for God’s sake focus on increasing the particular sort of funding you want, specifically. The entire sliver is too small. (Please keep this in mind when considering any other sort of fratricidal attention to research funding that isn’t what you’re focused on.)
An even more general proposition: In considering an idea, the best thing is to consider it on its merits, which is to say its merits in their best possible form, the strongest arguments for it. I usually expect people on the Democratic side to be on average a little more prone to doing this well… but my confidence there is shaken when I see people dismissing space topics with little reference to anything but their own lack of interest. There is a best form of the topic here. The development of more options isn’t a silly question. Brett surely isn’t talking nothingness when he refers to the difference between a developed space infrastructure and the lack of one when faced with an incoming comet or asteroid. And the security for the human race in developing more than one place to live isn’t complete nonsense either. (Robert Zubrin would be a good person to read to investigate.) I also, in general, expect Democrats to be more interested in, and think more in terms of, the long term. I think that that concern is needed. But my confidence there isn’t shored up by easy dismissals here either.
May 24th, 2009 at 1:56 am
I know what you are up to Matt. A little tax here, a little tax there, and the American people will hardly take notice, hardly feel the excruciating pain of paying itsy bitsy penny ante taxes.
Your transparent plan would allow revenue to more closely align with expenditure. If we allow this, the United States will no longer be the largest debtor nation in the history of the known universe.
The American people cannot be bamboozled! We demand our right to deficit spend our country right into national oblivion.
May 24th, 2009 at 11:11 am
As far as investments go, it strikes me that a pure research and exploration program is worth substantially more than another round of pointless military expenditures.
The profusion of satellites that provide us with a six hundred television channel universe, telecommunications, weather monitoring, satellite imaging, GPS, and about a thousand other applications definitely pays for itself and represents the vast bulk of current space expenditures.
Beyond that? We’ve got a handful of robot probes floating out through the solar system that revolutionizes our understanding of the solar system, and some passive deep space systems like the hubble.
Beyond that, we’ve got a few manned programs.
Sure, a malaria vaccine would be nice. On the other hand, cut the space program, and would that result in a malaria vaccine. I doubt it. More likely it would be swallowed up by weapons systems.
I dunno, what these polls seem to show is that Americans are lazy, selfish and irrational. They want everything, but they want to pay for nothing, and they’re more concerned with moralizing than reason.
Nothing new.
May 24th, 2009 at 2:56 pm
First, there are specific benefits to science being conducted in space. Look up zeolite crystal growth in microgravity, and the work of Sacco. Here, I’ll even give you the first Google result for free: Rocks in you Gas Tank (disclaimer: I have special affinity for Sacco’s work, having been working on my own hydrogen-separation membrane thesis project across the hall from his lab as they were preparing to put their experiments in space). Zeolites have dramatic promise for future isolation of things like pure hydrogen to power the next-next generation of cars. They can be made in space in large quantities and shipped back down to earth for use.
Second, one main draw of the space program is that it is a wide-spectrum science program. There are a billion problems out there which are waiting to be solved, in all areas of science. Because of that, you end up with a large number of accidental discoveries and high parallelism in research. Put the same amount of money into a narrow-spectrum research project like Malaria eradication and you end up with a huge amount of waste, simply because you cant have a thousand different teams working on different things without all of them going down the same dark and unfruitful alleys.
Finally, space travel *does* still entrance and intrigue young minds, which is itself quite valuable. This gets people interested in science far more than stories of blind drug trials and even genome mapping do.
May 24th, 2009 at 4:30 pm
The objection to the space program, at its heart, seems based in a puritanical streak. Science, unless it has a clear and immediate practical application, is a waste of time and resources.
This is probably as far from the truth as you can get. All practical science or technological applications is derived from pure research in situations where those ultimate applications are not necessarily visible.
May 24th, 2009 at 5:57 pm
It is important to see clearly the causes of this admitted ineffectiveness of parliaments when it comes to the a detailed administration of the economic affairs of a nation. The fault is neither with the individual representatives nor with parliamentary institution as such but with the contradictions inherent in the task with which they are charged. They are not asked to act where they can agree, but to produce agreement on everything–the whole direction of the resources of the nation. For such a task the system of majority decision is, however, not suited. Majorities will be found where it is a choice between limited alternatives; but it is a superstition to believe that there must be a majority view on everything. There is no reason why there should be a majority in favor of any one of the different possible courses of action if their number is legion.
May 25th, 2009 at 3:07 am
When I say “space colonies”, I mean everything from orbital colonies to colonies on the surfaces of moons and planets (like a Mars surface colony). It doesn’t prevent the risk of civilization death, but it does make it much less likely that any one particularly bad event in any area (like a catastrophe on Earth) will wipe out humanity.
Thanks. I think one of the reasons why it doesn’t get the attention it deserves is because it is an issue of planning on the decades-to-centuries-to-even-millenia scale, and even the most far-sighted organizations in the US government don’t plan that far ahead (even the military generally only plans certain weapons and strategies on the basis of decades ahead).
Plus, of course, there are lots of misconceptions about the space program. Much of the population seems to grossly over-estimate how much funding it actually gets.
May 25th, 2009 at 3:08 am
EDIT: “It doesn’t eliminate the threat of civilization death”, not “prevent”.
May 25th, 2009 at 10:58 am
Brett, I would ask you to rethink your argument.
While it’s nice, in theory, to have a sort of existential guarantee that the human race will continue to exist, most of us and most of our children are not going to be going up there.
In the event of a mass catastrophe that threatens our civilisation, the death toll will be in the hundreds of millions or billions, and neither they nor the survivors will be giving a rats ass about a few thousand people watching the show from a moon base.
Subliminally, the notion of spending billions or trillions to create a tiny pampered survivor class to blithely continue humanity while you and me and everyone else dies in flaming agony is a pretty hard sell, particularly if you haven’t grown up on Analog style sci fi. And of course, the notion of spending billions or trillions to create this little island elsewhere based on the hypothetical which may never happen is an even harder sell.
Colonization has different eras. The ‘modern era’ of colonization – the opening of the American and Canadian Wests and of Australia, and the transfer of millions upon millions of immigrants – Irish, Italian, East European from Europe to North America is not representative of the current era of space exploration. We are not currently looking at any significant numbers going into space on a long term basis.
What we’re actually looking at is closer to the 16th century effort. Small efforts at hideous expense, desperately attempting to justify its costs back to the home country and existing on narrow margins of survival.
Frankly, North American colonization would probably not have gone anywhere, but for tobacco and similar products, and these were economics dictated by the home country. It was an uphill battle, there are records of entire ventures failing and literally starving to death (such as the French in Halifax).
Frankly, I just don’t go there, except in the most abstract terms.
The real truth is that the space program needs no justification. You want to track Arctic and Antarctic sea ice, measure holes in the ozone layer, monitor ocean currents and thermal patterns… well, you need satellites and you need a sophisticated space program to design them, build them, put them up there, communicate with them and run them.
If we’re going to cope with global warming, our civilisation is going to desperately need the data that only those satellites can provide. Nuff said.
As for the rest of it: You want hurricane tracking? Satellites. You want state of the art telecommunications? Satellites. GPS? Satellites. Global peace, avoiding surprise enemy attacks, military buildups, etc? Satellites.
The value of these things is inherent. All you need is to count the cost of satellites against the consequences of their absence –
One rogue untracked hurricane for instance. Supposing that we didn’t have satellites to track Katrina. We wouldn’t necessarily have had a good understanding of the strength of the storm, nor an accurate read of its path, we might not have seen it coming. Instead of a flooded city and 1500 dead, we might have ended with complete wreckage and 15,000 or 150,000 dead. Even assuming ‘old style’ methods could have done some lesser job of tracking Katrina, I’m still betting that there’d be a difference of tens or hundreds of billions of dollars in damages. That alone justifies a lot of the satellites we put up.
Hell, just consider the value to the economy of satellite based telecommunications. More billions upon billions.
Or the value to our couch potato existence of the internet or 600 cable channels. More billions upon billions.
Or the lifesaving potential of gps systems.
Or the direct research potential of deep space telescopes and astronomy, or zero g laboratories.
May 25th, 2009 at 6:24 pm
So? Our children’s children, and their children might, and in any case the point is for humanity to have a permanent presence in space – not for everyone now on Earth to be able to go into space.
Remember what I said about it being an issue of survival on the decades-to-centuries scale? You’re showing the type of shortsightedness that I’m criticizing here.
Who cares? The point is that humanity and technological civilization will survive that catastrophe, and they can always share that knowledge with the people left over (assuming there are any). But without that colony (or colonies), then it’s POOF! And possibly humanity is dead, and gone as if it never existed. Considering how quiet the universe seems to be, that’s a tragedy waiting to happen.
Not to me. Again, it’s an issue of survival on the centuries-scale, and most human beings don’t think of that.
Moreover, it’s not as if it would require some crippling budget amount (particularly once you get to the point where the colonies themselves can propagate more colonies, and have some degree of self-sufficiency). Even NASA’s highest ever budget in 1966 (5.5% of the Federal Budget, or about $164 billion in current dollars) is not that large in the scale of things – and that amount of money would be hugely influential in getting manned space flight and colonization off the ground. Hell, that’s more than the entire expected cost of the ISS once it’s constructed.
That’s a pretty small price for ensuring the long-term survival of humanity.
Go look up the statistics on average time elapsed between serious asteroid strikes, or certain natural disasters like supervolcanoes and the like.
So? That may not be the case in the long-term, and in any case the main point is species survival, which doesn’t necessarily require large people transfers from Earth – just enough to get self-sufficient colonies going.
Apparently it does to you. As I said, you seem to have a hard time actually grasping the importance of long-term species survival, and the role that off-planet colonies could play in that. Your entire response in the first half of your post could be summed up as “since neither me nor my children will ever go into space, or live on a space colony, why should I care?”
It’s not just natural disasters, either; there’s always the chance that somebody could unleash the wrong type of biological warfare, and fuck everything up. That’s even easier now than it used to be, and with increasing medical knowledge, it’s going to become yet even more easier.
May 25th, 2009 at 8:15 pm
Bret, Bret, Bret, I agree with you. I agree with everything you say.
But I’m only saying is that human nature being what it is, ie, selfish, blind, narrowminded and petty, that most people are not going to care enough to make the investment.
Do you think the Spaniards or the English thought to themselves, ‘we’ll establish colonies in another continent so the future of our civilisation will be assured no matter what happens at home.’ Nope.
People just aren’t going to buy the whole ‘investment in the future of the human race shtick’ because they don’t see themselves or their direct circle and their offspring as the direct beneficiaries of that investment.
Instead, the future of the human race will be guaranteed by a bunch of people that they don’t know and have no connection to, except that they’re going to have to fund them with tax dollars, all the while being reminded that their own destiny may have a big red FU at the end.
All I’m saying kid, is know your audience, sell what they’re going to want to buy, not what you think is virtuous or important for them to buy.
You want a robust space program. I want a robust space program. It’s damned expensive. Show how its worth it.
May 25th, 2009 at 10:02 pm
This reasoning really is pretty sloppy — sloppier than I’ve come to expect. I hope Matt is resting up this weekend.