David Goldstein • Sr. Fellow at Civic Ventures, co-host https://t.co/0mdQ2ltt5z • Economic storyteller • Weirdly, only follow people I've met
Feb 23, 2021 • 17 tweets • 5 min read
1/ A simple heuristic for critically reading @SeaTimesOpinion op-eds is what I call "The Goldy Ratio": the strength of the argument is inversely proportional to the accuracy of the assertions used to support it. For example, this hatchet job on cap gains: seattletimes.com/opinion/a-capi…2/ The inaccuracy starts with the headline: there is in fact zero evidence that a capital gains tax would hurt WA's economy and plenty of evidence that the revenue is needed. But most laughable, nobody calls it a "capital gains income tax." Nobody. The author just made that up.
Feb 10, 2021 • 12 tweets • 4 min read
1/ Thought I'd take a moment to expand on Rep. @RoKhanna's comments questioning the credibility of the new CBO minimum wage forecast. He is correct in that CBO economists have no particular expertise at analyzing the min wage...
2/ But more so, CBO economists don't have a particularly good track record in their actual area of expertise: forecasting federal budget deficits. As Forbes put it, after 2 years, CBO budget projections have been "no better than throwing darts." Ouch. forbes.com/sites/theapoth…
Feb 5, 2021 • 8 tweets • 5 min read
1/ I'm not sure where @KING5Seattle reporter @jwhittenbergK5 gets his news, but it's obviously not from watching KING 5 news. Because if he did, he'd be well familiar with a bunch of studies on Seattle's $15 minimum—mostly concluding that it has been good.
2/ For example, there's this 2018 @KING5Seattle report "economists from the University of Washington found minimum wage increases were either beneficial or had no significant impact on many workers in Seattle."
1/ To add a little texture to @NickHanauer's thread, it's important to recognize that there's a good reason why orthodox economists (& economic cosplayers) so vehemently oppose a $15 min wage:
The min wage is a wedge that threatens to undermine all of orthodox economic theory.
2/ Orthodox economics is grounded in two fundamental models: a systems model that describes the market as a closed equilibrium system, and a behavioral model that describes humans as rational, self-interested utility-maximizers. The modern min wage debate undermines both models.
Nov 13, 2020 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
1/ The "Founders" were a group of remarkably smart, eloquent, well-read, slave-holding white supremacists deeply grounded in societal norms that most would find repugnant today. But if we're going to honor the words and ideas of these slavers, let's go to our founding document:
2/ "Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the CONSENT OF THE GOVERNED, —That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it..."
Oct 20, 2020 • 11 tweets • 5 min read
1/ Caveat: I have less than zero patience for @CassSunstein and the rest of the law & economics crowd, so if this thread comes off a little harsh, apologies.
That said, I sure hope nobody in a Biden administration would be stupid enough to give Sunstein a second chance.
2/ No doubt the Obama administration had many successes. But where it failed, its failures were largely grounded in bad assumptions rather than bad intentions. And @CassSunstein's op-ed opens with a doozy of a bad assumption: that the US is in fact "a well-functioning democracy."
Oct 19, 2020 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
1/ I got a ballot for my daughter, who recently moved to NYC and registered there… and it's NO BIG DEAL.
Tons of people are registered in multiple locations—both vote-by-mail & vote-in-person. But there is ZERO evidence of significant double voting or other voter fraud!
2/ If @AmySwearer & her buddies at @Heritage had evidence of massive voter fraud they'd be trumpeting that. But they don't. As much as Republicans try to uncover it, they can't. Because it just doesn't happen!!!
Oct 19, 2020 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
1/ I know the national political press couldn’t care less about what’s happening on the ground in solid blue states like WA, but I’ve been obsessively analyzing Seattle elections since 2004, and I can tell you that something special is unfolding here.
2/ Typically, ballots trickle in over the first week, slowly ramp up, and then flood in at the end. 65% to 80% of ballots come in the final few days of the election. Seattle voters simply don’t vote early. We just don’t. Only this year we are.
Why?
Oct 18, 2020 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
1/ A lot of smart people are warning that because of COVID and vote-by-mail and fears over voting problems, we shouldn't read much into the massive wave of early voting. But I'm not so sure. Case in point, none of this explains the wave of early voting in Seattle.
2/ We won't know until the first ballot return statistics are released on Monday, but by every indication @kcelections is expecting to crush its previous record for early voting—a record that was only just set during the recent August primary.
Oct 1, 2020 • 16 tweets • 3 min read
1/ With over 1.36 million registered voters, King County Elections (WA) administers the largest all-vote-by-mail elections jurisdiction in the nation. In case you're wondering, here's how it works:
2/ Ballots are mailed out 3 weeks before election, and start arriving back within days. Voters may return ballots via mail (postage paid) or numerous drop boxes. Drop boxes close at 8pm Election Day. Mailed ballots must be postmarked by Election Day, and may arrive 21 days after.
Sep 20, 2020 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
1/ I don’t doubt Inslee. But think about what this means. Let’s say SCOTUS doesn’t just overturn Roe, but rules that life begins at conception—that abortion (and some birth control) is murder. And...
2/ ... let’s say SCOTUS rules that states don’t have legal authority to mandate coverage of preexisting conditions.
What Gov. Inslee is promising is that WA will defy the court. Good! Most blue states will. It is a form of nullification...
Sep 18, 2020 • 7 tweets • 3 min read
1/7 Hey, remember a month ago when @SeaTimesOpinion editorialized that Gov. Inslee just had to call a special session NOW!!! to make billions of $$$ of painful cuts to the state budget, and I said… I dunno, maybe we oughta wait until we know what kinda crisis we're really in?
2/7 Well, I hate to say "I told you so,"* but the latest revenue update just came out, and tax collections are almost a billion dollars HIGHER than previously forecast! erfc.wa.gov/sites/default/…
* (NOTE: I love to say "I told you so.")
Sep 12, 2020 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
1/ How fucking non-ironical can Greenwald get? The whole point of complaining about subsidizing red states is to IRONICALLY emphasize the reality that blue states (specifically blue cities) are subsidizing red states, not the other way around!
2/ Nobody wants to cut off rural/red Americans. At least nobody on the left that I've ever talked to. There's a ton of recognition of the moral, political, economic dangers of growing spatial inequality. In fact...
Aug 25, 2020 • 14 tweets • 3 min read
1/ I'm so old I remember when "work from home" was called "telecommuting," and for the entire 35 years of my adult working life, its promise has always been "just around the corner."
So a few thoughts on why I don't believe this pandemic will leave the traditional office dead…
2/ Yes, a lot of organizations have been relatively successful at transitioning to WFH during the pandemic. But what people miss is that much of this success was made possible by preexisting face-to-face relationships that had already been made at the workplace before COVID hit.
Aug 17, 2020 • 16 tweets • 6 min read
1/ Why anybody would take budget advice from an ed board that speaks for a publisher who has mismanaged his own business to the brink of insolvency, I dunno. But if @SeaTimesOpinion is gonna lecture on budgeting, then I'm gonna have to give them a fisking. seattletimes.com/opinion/editor…2/ Do I personally wish Inslee had called a special session? Sure. In July. To pass a progressive tax reform package. But there likely weren't enough votes—whereas an austerity session (like @SeaTimesOpinion is advocating) would surely have caused more harm than good.
Jul 23, 2020 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
1/ It looks like Trump is attempting a national version of what in WA state politics we call "The Fuck Seattle Strategy." The way it works here is that Republicans run outside of the city on promises to fuck Seattle.
2/ The wager is that voters outside Seattle feel so aggrieved by the relative prosperity of progressive Seattle that they will vote for anything or anybody that promises to fuck us—even if it harms their own interests in the process.
Jul 21, 2020 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
1/ In 2004, with majority of voters voting by mail, WA had a machine recount, then a manual recount of 2.8 million ballots, followed by a 5 month court case adjudicating allegations of fraud. A GOP judge in a GOP county ended up removing 5 ballots from the count (4 GOP, 1 Lib).
2/ Most of the problems reported in WA's incredibly close 2004 election (the Dem won by 133 votes out of 2.8 million cast) occurred AT THE POLLS. In the aftermath, every WA county moved to all vote-by-mail. We've had trouble-free elections and high voter turnout since.
Jun 22, 2020 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
1/ So, with the "President" rage-tweeting about vote-by-mail (again!), it's important to remember that the conventional method of stealing elections is through voter suppression, not through voter or tabulation fraud.
2/ Think about it: in the Jim Crow South, whites didn't maintain racial dominance by stuffing ballot boxes or altering the results; they did it by preventing Blacks from voting through intimidation & suppression. And when Blacks started voting, they started winning elections.
Jun 9, 2020 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
1/ I've had a few conversations today about the the term "defund the police," and I think a good starting point is with the dictionary definition of defund: "to withdraw financial support from, especially as an instrument of legislative control." 2/ The above definition does not specify whether "defund" means withdrawing all financial support, or just some of it, and frankly, I'm okay with either—for my focus is on the second clause: "especially as an instrument of legislative control."
Jun 8, 2020 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
1/ Oy…
“The spot was six miles from the main gate of a shuttered Walt Disney World, the engine of Orlando’s vast tourism economy, which in the best of times HAD STRUGGLED to keep its armies of low-wage workers housed, clothed and fed.”
washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/…2/ I mean, important tragic piece on pandemic & homelessness... but it was DISNEY that "struggled" to house clothe and feed its low-wage workers? Really?!
Jesus. It was Disney that struggled to keep its workers low-wage even in the best of times.
Jun 5, 2020 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
1/ Totally agree with Talton's thesis. In fact, I've been wondering if the pandemic might be establishing work patterns that actually lead to MORE density in downtowns. Counterintuitive? Stick with me...
2/ My starting assumption is that "work from home" doesn't mean NEVER coming into the office. Especially in the high value creative and innovation industries, face to face interaction is crucial. (See Enrico Moretti's "The New Geography of Jobs") spl.overdrive.com/media/1395717
