In Climate Science, Predictions Are Hard, Especially About The Future

You probably think that the classical reference in the title is to a saying originating from baseball humorist Yogi Berra.  But Quote Investigator traces the origin of the saying back to an unnamed wag in the Danish parliament in the 1930s.  Early users of the phrase included Danish atomic physicist Nils Bohr and movie mogul Samuel Goldwyn.

As hard as they may be to get right, predictions about the future are the core of the field that goes by the name of "climate science."  Because of predictions about the future by climate scientists, everybody knows that human burning of fossil fuels will cause world temperatures to increase by multiple degrees over the coming century, leading to a series of calamities ranging from sea level rise to droughts to floods to hurricane and tornadoes.  After all, the climate scientists have sophisticated computer models!  If you don't believe the predictions of the models, you must be a "science denier."  The predictions of significantly rising temperatures are so certain that you are to be required by government coercion (unless President Trump can head it off) to dramatically reduce your use of fossil fuels and restrict your lifestyle.

You and I are not going to be around in 2100 to see if any of these predictions about the future have come true.  But meanwhile the climate alarm crowd obliges us with shorter term predictions to help us get some handle on how reliable they are.  Unfortunately, nobody seems to be doing a very good job of keeping track of these predictions and seeing how they are turning out.  So once again it falls to the Manhattan Contrarian to do some leg work.  On this subject, I am assisted today by some very useful work from my friend Benny Peiser and the Global Warming Policy Foundation in the UK.

For example, there was the prediction that our national weather bureaucracy (NOAA) came out with back in October as to the severity of the upcoming winter.  How do they come up with that prediction?  Eric Niler at Wired wrote a post on the prediction on October 29 that revealed that the seasonal predictions rely on models using the same theories of "heat trapping" greenhouse gases as they use for the longer-term models:

NOAA climate scientists incorporate heat-trapping carbon dioxide levels when they run the models that produce their seasonal climate predictions.

So what was the prediction?

Warmer-than-normal conditions are most likely across the southern two-thirds of the continental U.S., along the East Coast, across Hawaii and in western and northern Alaska.

Oops!  For those who haven't checked up on the weather on the East Coast of the U.S. lately, it's been record-breaking deep freeze around here for the last week, and expected to go even lower over the approaching weekend.  It has snowed as far south as the Florida panhandle.  Well, fortunately, the NOAA guys were ready with plenty of hedging language when Niler asked about their official prediction:

Mike Halpert, deputy director of NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center [said], “There is a lot of natural climate variability in the system that can trump any kind of background signal.” 

Or in other words, predictions are hard, especially about the future.  At least when the predictions are for a short enough term that anybody might check up on them.

And here's a related question:  Have you heard much lately about how the polar bears are about to go extinct due to global warming?  No?  Better check up on that prediction and how it has turned out.

Susan Crockford is a scientist specializing in polar bears, who writes scholarly articles on the subject, and also has a blog called Polar Bear Science.  She has been making a thing lately about taunting the alarm community for their failed polar bear predictions.  For example, Crockford points to this report in Canada's National Post in May 2007 of a presentation by Al Gore:

[Gore pointed to] an iconic photograph that was distributed worldwide last month by Canada's Environment Ministry, . . .  The photo, taken in the summer, shows two polar bears on a melting ice floe in the Beaufort Sea, north of Barrow, Alaska.  "Their habitat is melting -- beautiful animals, literally being forced off the planet," Mr. Gore said, with the photo on the screen behind him.  "They're in trouble, got nowhere else to go."  Audience members let out gasps of sympathy . . . .

Crockford also points to scholarly articles, particularly by a guy named Steven Amstrup, predicting rapid decline of polar bear populations if sea ice levels reach . . . levels that they actually did reach in years including 2012.  But unfortunately, from Crockford's blog on December 21:

This is the truth the world needs to hear: the experts were wrong. Polar bears have not been driven to the brink of extinction by climate change, they are thriving. This is the message of each of my two new books.

 And from Crockford's blog on January 4:

Polar bear experts who falsely predicted that roughly 17,300 polar bears would be dead by now (given sea ice conditions since 2007) have realized their failure has not only kicked their own credibility to the curb, it has taken with it the reputations of their climate change colleagues. This has left many folks unhappy about the toppling of this important global warming icon but ironically, consensus polar bear experts and climate scientists (and their supporters) were the ones who set up the polar bear as a proxy for AGW in the first place.

So now, how much faith are we to put in the predictions of climate armageddon by 2100?  Enough to shut down the fossil fuel industry? 

Surprise: When The Government Goes To War Against The Economy, The Economy Fails To Grow

You probably were rubbing your eyes thinking you were having a hallucination yesterday when you saw the headline on the front page of the New York Times, "The Trump Effect: Business, Anticipating Less Regulation, Loosens Purse Strings."   Here's the lede:

A wave of optimism has swept over American business leaders, and it is beginning to translate into the sort of investment in new plants, equipment and factory upgrades that bolsters economic growth, spurs job creation — and may finally raise wages significantly.  While business leaders are eager for the tax cuts that take effect this year, the newfound confidence was initially inspired by the Trump administration’s regulatory pullback, not so much because deregulation is saving companies money but because the administration has instilled a faith in business executives that new regulations are not coming.

Huh?  Has the Times suddenly decided to end a full year of Trump bashing and give him credit for accelerating economic growth?  Given the depth of Trump hatred up there on Eighth Avenue, that hardly seems plausible.  The alternative hypothesis is that there is a wave of exceptional economic news about to come out, and Times wants to put the best possible spin on it before things get out of hand.  

As to the economic news that is anticipated but not yet out, my favorite source is the New York Fed's "Nowcast" that provides a day-by-day read on the status of certain indicators used to predict GDP growth in the current quarter.  The guys over at Pravda are well aware of the Nowcast.  For the just-ended fourth quarter of 2017, the latest Nowcast as of December 29 anticipates GDP growth for the quarter of 3.87%.  If that proves out in the final numbers due in several weeks, after growth of 3.1% in the second quarter and 3.2% in the third, it will mean that GDP growth could approach or even break the 3% barrier for 2017 (a level never achieved for a full year in eight years of Obama), and with an acceleration of growth heading into 2018.  You will recall that the official Times/Krugman line to justify eight years of sluggish growth and stagnation under Obama was that this had nothing to do with government attacks against the economy and entrepreneurs, but rather reflected a "new normal" of "secular stagnation" in the post-modern economy.  (From Krugman, November 2013:  "[T]he evidence suggests that we have become an economy whose normal state is one of mild depression, whose brief episodes of prosperity occur only thanks to bubbles and unsustainable borrowing.") 

And is the Times trying to spin the currently-accelerating Trump growth as having little to do with the President's actions?  Of course.  From the linked article, consider this:

The evidence is weak that regulation actually reduces economic activity or that deregulation stimulates it.     

And this:

“The notion that deregulation unleashes growth is virtually impossible to find in the data,” said Jared Bernstein, a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities who served as the chief economic adviser to Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.

Those two lines focus specifically on "regulation" and "deregulation."  But how about the more general proposition that government attacks against businesses and entrepreneurs (of which regulations are one example), making their lives difficult or impossible, cause economic growth to slow or stop?  Is there any evidence that government attacks on business and entrepreneurs correlate with economic growth or lack thereof?

Actually, there is enormous evidence for that proposition.  Probably, if you have studied economic history a little, you haven't been taught about this at all, because instead you learned nothing but Keynesian fallacies.  But let's just take some of the most obvious examples:

• When Roosevelt and the New Deal came in in January 1933, you would think that the depressed economy would have been poised to take off.  But one of the first things they did in the "100 days" of the New Deal was pass the National Industrial Recovery Act, providing for each industry in the country to impose a "code of fair conduct" on all participants in the industry.  Those codes quickly became a parody of micro-managing regulation, fashioned by industry leaders to make life difficult or impossible for upstarts.  The NIRA was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in the 1935 Schechter Poultry case, often called the "Sick Chicken" case.  The Sick Chicken case involved the "Live Poultry Code," that had been adopted by the poultry industry.  Read the case to get an idea of the endless deadening, micromanaging regulations that just this one industry had so quickly managed to impose to tie little guys like Schecter up in knots.  The regulations in the Code were enforceable by criminal penalties, and Schechter was an appeal of a criminal conviction.  The particular piece of the Code that was the focus of the Schechter case was a requirement that a buyer of live poultry "accept the run of any half coop, coop or coops" -- in other words, they purported to make it so that buyers could not select the better animals and reject the sick ones.  The case provides a little window into what happened in just one industry, but this is what the New Deal did on an economy-wide basis.  The economy did grow in 1933-36, but way below its potential.  At the end of Roosevelt's first term, the unemployment rate was still 16.9%.
• After the Sick Chicken case in 1935 got rid of the NIRA and its Codes, you would think that the economy again would have been poised to take off.  Oh, but that's the year they enacted the National Labor Relations Act, sometimes known as the Wagner Act, that created the NLRB and put the government firmly on the side of unions in organizing workplaces.  1936 through 1938 were the glory years of union organizing, including the famous "sit-down" strikes at GM and Chrysler in 1936 and 1937, and the violent battles at Ford in 1938 and beyond.  The minimum wage began in 1938.  The 1936 campaign is when Roosevelt took to bashing what he called the "malefactors of great wealth."  In 1937-38 the weak Roosevelt economic recovery turned into another sharp downturn, sometimes referred to as the "recession within the depression."    
• And then there are the Obama years.  Obamacare.  Dodd-Frank.  (I used to keep a copy of the 1000+ page Dodd-Frank Act on my desk to remind me of what crazy over-regulation looks like.)  Environmental zealotry run rampant.  Labor relations zealotry run rampant.  Tax increases.  Seemingly it never occurred to anyone in government or the media that any of this might have an impact on economic performance.  In this 2013 post I called the overall approach of the Obama administration the "War Against the Economy."  Is it any wonder why many entrepreneurs (and potential entrepreneurs) would choose to sit on their hands and wait for a better climate?

Anyway, I can't wait to read all the attempts to explain away the robust economic growth that is about to come our way.  Do you think that Paul Krugman is going to be issuing an apology for all of his "new normal" and "secular stagnation" nonsense?                  

The Total Futility Of The Climate Campaign

If there is one idea that defines progressive orthodoxy today more than any other, it is the idea that the planet can and must be saved from the climate "crisis" by means of drastic cuts to human carbon dioxide emissions.  Or, at least, by drastic cuts to your carbon dioxide emissions.  Surely you will recall President Barack Obama saying (in 2014) that "no challenge poses a greater threat to our children, our planet, and future generations than climate change."   To address the dire threat, Obama then led the nation into the Paris Climate Agreement, pledging to cut U.S. carbon dioxide emissions by some 26-28% below 1990 levels by 2025.  And that was just the downpayment.  

President Trump of course is now in the process of withdrawing the U.S. from the Paris Agreement.  But no other country (of the 172 that have ratified the Paris Agreement) has announced a similar intention to withdraw.  And here in the U.S., our progressive political leaders, where they have power, march forward with the official plan.  In New York, our Governor Andrew Cuomo has pledged to reduce "greenhouse gas" emissions by 30% by 2030, and by 80% by 2050.  Here is Cuomo making the pledge in 2015, during the run-up to the Paris Agreement:

“Climate change is an issue of society’s sustainability – and to deny that climate change is real is to deny reason,” Governor Cuomo said. “Today, New York is stepping up. We are demonstrating the leadership and focus that this issue demands. We are joining together and committing ourselves to tackling climate change and showing the nation what is possible. Now it is up to world leaders to follow suit.”

Cuomo was joined in his announcement by none other than Al Gore:

"The leadership shown by Governor Cuomo and New York State to make bold emissions reductions commitments is vital to solving the climate crisis,” said Former Vice President Al Gore.

Not to be outdone, Governor Brown of California in the same year, by means of an Executive Order, issued even more ambitious emissions reduction targets:  40% by 2030, followed by 80% by 2050.   According to the prelude to that Executive Order, Brown has also launched his own foreign policy on the subject, by "sign[ing] accords to fight climate change" with leaders from countries including Mexico, China, Peru, Canada and Israel.

And don't forget the 388 (and counting) mayors of U.S. cities and towns who have "commit[ted] to adopt, honor and uphold the Paris Climate Agreement goals."   

So surely then, world greenhouse gas emissions must have turned onto a steep downward trajectory?  Don't be ridiculous.  In fact the sacrifices being asked from the citizens of some of the U.S. states are being offset by a factor of five or ten or more by increasing emissions from elsewhere in the world.  But, you ask, didn't those countries sign the Paris Agreement?  Of course they did!  It's just that their signatures did not come with any promises to cut emissions.

The facts of current and future world energy consumption are laid out in a little-heralded Report from the U.S. Energy Information Agency that came out back in September.  Larry Hamlin at Watts Up With That calls attention to the Report in a post that appeared Saturday December 30.

Here's the bottom line:  Despite widely-trumpeted plans in certain places to achieve dramatic reductions in fossil fuel usage, in reality overall fossil fuel consumption is set to increase substantially over the next several decades.  Any reductions in emissions in places like California or New York or some European countries will be swamped by dramatically increasing emissions from the developing world, particularly China, India and Africa.  The EIA breaks down the numbers by type of fossil fuel -- oil, natural gas, and coal.  First oil:

In the Reference [most likely] case, world consumption of liquid fuels rises from 95 million barrels per day (b/d) in 2015 to 113 million b/d in 2040. Non-OECD nations account for most of the increase, with demand rising by 1.3%/year compared with a slight decrease in the OECD. 

I like that part about all the efforts of certain states and countries to achieve 80% reductions leading to a "slight decrease" in usage in the OECD as a whole.  Meanwhile the non-OECD (developing) world increases its consumption by about 40%.  Whatever reductions occur in some places are barely enough to register in the overall picture.  Next, natural gas:

Natural gas consumption grows in both the OECD and non-OECD from 2015 to 2040, but growth is greatest in non-OECD countries which have expanding industrial sectors and electricity demand.  Consumption in non-OECD countries is projected to grow an average of 1.9%/year from 2015 to 2040 in contrast to 0.9%/year in OECD countries. 

The increases in natural gas consumption over 25 years are so large that EIA won't even put the totals into words.  But a chart on page 49 conveys the bad news:  annual world natural gas consumption goes from about 130 quadrillion Btus in 2015 to about 185 quadrillion Btus in 2040 -- an increase of over 43%.  Even the OECD countries see a projected consumption increase of about 25%.

And finally, how about coal?

Worldwide coal consumption remains roughly the same between 2015 and 2040 (about 160 quadrillion Btu), with decreasing consumption in China and the United States offsetting growth in India.  China remains the largest single consumer of coal in 2040 (about 73 quadrillion Btu), despite a steady decline in the country’s consumption over time.  India’s coal consumption continues to grow by an average 2.6%/year from 2015 to 2040, with the country surpassing the United States as the second-largest coal consumer before 2020. 

So, what then about the so-called "renewables," like wind and solar?  Aren't they supposed to rise up and overtake the evil fossil fuels during this time period?  The EIA Report does project substantial increases in production and consumption of energy from the "renewables"  between now and 2040.  But somehow, none of it is nearly enough to replace any of the existing energy obtained from the fossil fuels, let alone to avoid further increases in fossil fuel usage.  

So as your electricity bill, and mine, triple over the next several years as we attempt to replace fossil fuels with production from wind and solar, should we ask ourselves:  Is this anything other than an exercise in total futility?   

Not So Fast With That Trillion For Infrastructure

With the tax reform law under their belt, all the talk is that President Trump and the Republicans in Congress are now going to pivot to "infrastructure."  This is the ultimate proposal that could get truly universal popular support.  After all, everyone knows that our infrastructure is "crumbling."  Trump campaigned on a promise to fix that with a trillion dollar program.  Infrastructure spending "creates jobs" (it must -- you can see the people working!), and, when completed, the projects are tangible and surely seem to be adding something to the economy.  This is a win, win!  Who could possibly be against it?

Well, that's why we have contrarians around here.  Government dispensing the infinite pile of free money at these levels creates irresistible incentives for graft and corruption on a gargantuan scale.  In the world of infrastructure spending, it's one thing when the government first identifies a project believed likely to enhance the welfare of the people, and then funds it gradually as money becomes available.  Infrastructure funded on this model could well become a net enhancer of the people's welfare.  The Interstate Highway System would be an example of this model.  But that's not what we're talking about here.  What we're currently talking about is the government first deciding, with no specific projects in mind, that the trillion dollars is going to be spent; and then soliciting ideas from people who want to get in on the largesse.  The prospects that most of the money will be well spent are very slim.  

Even in the best of circumstances, involving desirable and even badly needed projects, the incentives of government processes can lead to tremendously negative results.  Let's consider today what is going on in subway and tunnel construction in New York.

First, there is a legitimate need for additional subway and tunnel construction in New York.  On the East Side of Manhattan, there once was an elevated train line that stretched the length of the island along Third Avenue.  In 1955 they tore it down, with the promise that it would shortly be replaced with a new subway running along roughly the same route one block East, under Second Avenue.  Sixty-three years later, only about a mile and a half of the Second Avenue line has been built.  The other subway on Manhattan's East Side, the Lexington Avenue line, is crowded much of the time to the point of being unusable.  Build-out of the Second Avenue line would greatly ease congestion and improve mobility.  As a second example, there is only one tunnel under the Hudson River to carry all of the Amtrak trains plus all of the New Jersey Transit commuter trains.  That tunnel is used at capacity (at least on weekdays) and needs major repairs, which cannot be done while scores of trains are running through the tunnel every day.  So a new trans-Hudson tunnel is widely agreed to be a priority infrastructure project for the region.  

But if these projects are so necessary and important, why haven't they already been built?  The answer is that, with coercive government assistance, a small number of labor unions have gotten themselves into a monopoly position where they can demand enormous sums for themselves and their members, absent which they have the ability to block these projects.  As a result, prospective costs of construction of these and similar projects are wildly, wildly out of line.  Every time somebody puts a number on how much one of these things will cost to build, it's good enough to kill the project for another few years.

Note that the issue is not that it is inherently too expensive to construct subway and railroad tunnels.  Rather, the issue is that our costs are not twenty or fifty percent too high, but five to ten times international norms.  With costs that wildly out of line, nothing gets built.

I first covered this subject three years ago, in November 2014.  At that time, one of those gubernatorial "blue ribbon panels," the MTA Reinvention Commission, had just come out with a big report on how to solve the MTA's problems.  My take was that they had (as usual) missed "the elephant in the room" -- the elephant being the wildly out-of-control construction costs.  The "Reinvention Commission" devoted all of its time and energy to finding "new funding streams" to pay for projects (in opaque and unaccountable ways), without ever considering whether something needed to be done about the out-of-control costs:

[E]very time some project gets proposed, a price tag gets attached to it that is so enormous that next to nothing can or does get built.           

My post built on the invaluable work of Alon Levy of Pedestrian Observations, who has single-handedly compiled international cost comparisons, for example between New York and places like London, Paris and Milan.  Levy's work has shown that tunneling for trains and subways that can be done for $300 - 400 million per mile in those cities somehow costs $1.5 billion to $3 billion per mile in New York.  Wow!

And now, three years late to the game (but we'll take it) the New York Times finally weighs in yesterday with a big front page article by Brian Rosenthal headlined "The Most Expensive Mile of Subway Track on Earth."  I spend enough time bashing the Times that this time I should give them some real credit for putting in the effort to identify the reasons that New York's costs are so crazily out-of-line.

Some excerpts from the Times article:

Trade unions, which have closely aligned themselves with Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and other politicians, have secured deals requiring underground construction work to be staffed by as many as four times more laborers than elsewhere in the world, documents show. . . .  

The reasons for the M.T.A.’s high costs start with the sheer number of people employed.  Mike Roach noticed it immediately upon entering the No. 7 line work site a few years ago. Mr. Roach, a California-based tunneling contractor, was not involved in the project but was invited to see it. He was stunned by how many people were operating the machine churning through soil to create the tunnel.  “I actually started counting because I was so surprised, and I counted 25 or 26 people,” he said. “That’s three times what I’m used to.”

The unions and vendors declined to release the labor deals, but The Times obtained them. Along with interviews with contractors, the documents reveal a dizzying maze of jobs, many of which do not exist on projects elsewhere. . . .  

There are “nippers” to watch material being moved around and “hog house tenders” to supervise the break room. Each crane must have an “oiler,” a relic of a time when they needed frequent lubrication. Standby electricians and plumbers are to be on hand at all times, as is at least one “master mechanic.” Generators and elevators must have their own operators, even though they are automatic. An extra person is required to be present for all concrete pumping, steam fitting, sheet metal work and other tasks.

In New York, “underground construction employs approximately four times the number of personnel as in similar jobs in Asia, Australia, or Europe,” according to an internal report by Arup, a consulting firm that worked on the Second Avenue subway and many similar projects around the world.

Now we're going to have a fresh trillion dollars to pay for such projects.  So what if the Hudson River tunnel will cost $20 billion instead of the $3 - 4 billion that it might cost in another city?  So what if the Second Avenue subway build-out will cost $20 billion instead of $3 - 4 billion that it might cost somewhere else?  Shouldn't we just go for it?

Actually, this is important.  The fact that these union practices are government-sanctioned does not mean that they are not an extreme form of graft and corruption.  No matter how badly needed, these projects cannot and should not be built until either the unions bring the costs under control or a way is found around the union blockade. 

A trillion dollars of infrastructure spending?  It will all disappear with almost nothing to show for it if we are not careful.                

At The Times, Making Up Facts To Fit The Narrative

No, I'm not talking about the RUSSIA!!!! narrative.  For now, I'm keeping my powder dry on that one.  My current working assumption is that Trump and Sessions are holding the most explosive revelations for maximum effect in the run-up to the 2018 mid-term elections.  It's going to be a lot of fun when everything comes out; but meanwhile, we wait.

For today's subject we turn away from the endless Trump obsession and towards one of the many pieces of the official progressive narrative supporting the notion that all problems of the world are your fault and you must therefore feel deep and extreme guilt.  Readers here know that recently the decades-long official narrative of evil affluent people "abandoning" the poor in the inner cities has now been replaced by a new official narrative where the same evil affluent people are "pushing the poor out" of wealthy inner Manhattan and Brooklyn and into the inconvenient far reaches of the outer boroughs.  See my post of November 30, "They Don't Give Any Advance Notice When They Change The Narrative."   

That November 30 post discussed a New York Times article of the prior day that presented the stories of a total of two sympathetic low-wage workers with long commutes between different points in the outer boroughs surrounding Manhattan.  The commutes were indeed difficult, involving multiple legs of the subway, buses, and, in one case, the Staten Island Ferry.  But a mere two instances is not a lot of evidence to support the new official narrative of progressive guilt.  So apparently someone at Pravda felt the need to beef up the new narrative by sending a reporter out to find an additional example or two to keep the drumbeat going.  And thus we have the next article in the series appearing in today's edition, headline "Living Far Between or Beyond Subway Stops, and Feeling Left Behind."

Unfortunately for the Times, getting around the outer boroughs of New York on the mass transportation system is something completely beyond the experience of any of their employees in the editorial departments.  To compound the problem, they have given the current assignment to one Sarah Maslin Nir, easily one of the most incompetent writers on the staff -- and that's saying a lot.  (Nir was previously best known for writing a multi-part series in the Times in 2015 on the nail salon industry that I called a "scam" and "journalistic drivel."  The series was completely eviscerated upon re-reporting by Jim Epstein of Reason.  After her fiasco with the nail salon story, it's quite incredible that Nir is still employed as a journalist, let alone at the Times; but there you go.)  Nir suffers from the problem -- not a small one for someone trying to be a journalist -- of not bothering to check what she writes to see if it makes any sense whatsoever.  And thus we have a total howler of a story.  Not that anyone at the Times could tell, or course.

So let's start out with a serious dose of guilt for you:

Few physical structures embody the divisions in the city as plainly as the subway system, where the haves and have-nots frequently correlate with which neighborhood has or does not have stops. Subway deserts stretch along the easternmost reaches of Queens, the North Bronx and across coastal Brooklyn to name a few places. The dearth of subways disproportionately affects residents of high-density, low-income neighborhoods, but also blue-collar bedroom communities in Queens. . . .  

Are you feeling guilty yet?  And now for our victim of the day, one Nazir Zahid.  Mr. Zahid lives in the Kingsbridge section of the Bronx and commutes to a store that he manages in another neighborhood of the Bronx called West Farms:

It takes four buses to ferry Mr. Zahid from his home in the Kingsbridge neighborhood in the Bronx to the women’s clothing boutique he manages in West Farms, another neighborhood in the same borough where the strands of the subway fray to nothing. It is a three-and-a-half-mile commute that takes Mr. Zahid one hour and 45 minutes — and that is only if all four buses show up on time. 

It's difficult to conceive of how someone could have made so many obvious factual errors in such a short paragraph.  I'll give you a few:

• Is West Farms a "neighborhood . . . where the strands of the subway fray to nothing"?  Huh?  West Farms is right on the main trunk line of the subway through the middle of the Bronx, served by two express lines, one of which (#2) goes down the West Side of Manhattan, and the other of which (#5) goes down the East Side.  You can check the subway map here.  If you have ever been to West Farms Square, it would be impossible not to know of the access by the subway, which arrives at that point on a very high and dramatic elevated structure.
• And how about Kingsbridge?  Yes, that is also served by the subway (#1 train).
• Admittedly, the trip from Kingsbridge to West Farms by the #1 and #2 trains -- which involves going into Manhattan and then reversing directions -- is not terribly convenient, although it would take well less than the hour and 45 minutes reported by Mr. Zahid for his bus journey.  But doesn't the more direct alternative by bus take four buses, as Nir reports?  Completely wrong again.  New York's MTA actually runs a bus line, the Bx9, that directly connects the Kingsbridge and West Farms neighborhoods.  Here is the Bronx bus map.  
• According to the schedule of the Bx9 bus, the time to get from Kingsbridge (Broadway and 225th Street) to West Farms Square is a little over half an hour, depending some on the time of day -- barely more than one-quarter of the hour forty-five that Ms. Nir claims on behalf of Mr. Zahid.  And this Bx9 bus has a schedule that would make any bus rider in the United States outside of New York City green with envy.  This is one of those 24 hour a day, 7 day a week buses that we have only in New York.  At rush hours it runs about every 5 minutes; during the day, never less than once every 10 minutes; and in the evenings, every 12 minutes all the way to midnight.

The fact is that the commute between Kingsbridge and West Farms in the Bronx is about as good as it is possible to make it with a mass transportation system of buses and subways.  A big improvement may be on the way with the coming of driverless cars that could be cost-competitive with the buses.  Meanwhile, it seems to me that the taxpayers of New York could use some gratitude for their generosity in providing a fabulously extensive transportation system.  Certainly, they have no reason to feel guilty.

UPDATE December 29:  I thought readers might like to see a picture of the West Farms Square subway station.  As you can see, if you have been there, you could not help but know that the subway is a major presence.

Tax Reform And The Blue State Model

It was not long before I started this blog in 2012 that Walter Russell Mead of the American Interest began writing about what he dubbed the "blue model" of government, and his prediction that that model was "on the way out."   When applied to the states, the term "blue model" referred to the combination of relatively high taxes, high state spending, and extensive regulation typical of Democrat-leaning states like California, Illinois, New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.  Mead's prediction was that the combination of the information revolution and competition from lower-tax and lower-regulation "red" states would put the blue model under increasing pressure and force reform.

Almost six years later, the "blue" states have only doubled down on their policy model.  None of those states have seen any significant cutbacks on state programs.  During this period California and Connecticut have actually raised their income tax rates on top earners.  In the competition against other states, California appears to be doing relatively well, although its population explosion has slowed substantially.  In New York, Connecticut and New Jersey the population has been almost completely flat in recent years.  Illinois has actually experienced a population decline since 2010, but only a slight one.   Meanwhile, the big "red" states, like Texas and Florida, have grown rapidly.  But the very slow and gradual relative decline of the big blue states so far has not created any significant motivation to do anything different. 

Could that be about to change?  As of January 1, the state and local income tax deduction will mostly be gone.  Suddenly there will be a significant shift in the competitiveness between the high-tax "blue states" and the lower-tax "red states."  Will this lead to any serious rethinking of the "blue state model"?

I'm betting against it.  The basic nature of the blue state model is to put in place various government handouts and favors to specified groups, who thereupon become dependent on the handouts and favors and will fight to the death to keep them as is.  Given the overall disinterest of most of the electorate, the recipients of the handouts and favors come to exercise effective control over the political process.  

Consider a couple of examples.  Generous pensions for state and local government workers are a hallmark of the blue state model.  Not that the red states are pure on this issue.  But if you look at lists of states ranked by amount of aggregate unfunded pension debt, or by amount of unfunded pension debt per capita, or by percentage of pension obligations that are unfunded, the big blue states consistently appear at or near the bottom of the list.  A December 2017 Report just out from the American Legislative Exchange Council contains rankings of the states on all of those measures.  In funding percentage at the risk-free rate, Connecticut ranks dead last among the states at 19.7%; Illinois 48th at 23.3%; and New Jersey 46th at 25.7%.  California and New York do better on that measure, but they are kingpins of aggregate unfunded pension debt:  50th place and $987 billion in the case of California (hey, it's less than a trillion!); and New York at 46th place and $345 billion.  (To its credit, New York has been relatively honest in funding the pension obligations it has taken on.  However, it has taken on ridiculously generous obligations, particularly as they concern early retirement ages for workers in many areas.  The result is that pension contributions constitute a high and ever-increasing percentage of government budgets at both state and local levels.)

Are the blue states going to do anything soon to right their pension ships?  New York and Illinois have provisions in their state constitutions that make revisions of pension accruals for existing employees difficult or impossible.  (See my discussion of that issue here.)  In California, there is no comparable constitutional provision, but the courts have imposed a rule of law that may amount to the same thing as a practical matter.  Former San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed has led an effort to enact a ballot initiative that would overrule the court-made restrictions; but after getting off to a slow start, that initiative was pulled in 2016, and its backers are talking about another try in 2018.  They will face major opposition from the public employee unions.

As a second example, consider obligations that blue states have taken on in union contracts.  Again, the red states are far from pure; but generosity to public employee unions is one of the hallmarks of the blue model.  Some insights into the nature of the problem can be found in a big New York Times spread today in the New York section, headline "What Would It Take To Fix New York Subway?"    The impetus for the article is that a recent series of things like derailments and fires has brought calls for an emergency program to "fix" the subways.  Mayor de Blasio, of course, has called for a new "millionaire's tax" to raise the funds.  (Funny how he seems to have the exact same idea for how to "fix" every problem we encounter.)  So, can we free up some money to "fix" things by bringing down the costs of operating the subway through automating the function of running the trains?  They are well on the way to doing that in London and Paris:

London is upgrading its fleet to become automated in the mid-2020s.  In Paris, driverless trains are in operation on two lines.

So how about in New York?

In New York, the L train [one of some 26 lines] is the only line where the new traffic control system has been fully implemented and where trains could, in theory, be automated.  But after a brief experiment using only one train operator in 2005, the M.T.A. had to bring back two-person crews to the L after losing a labor dispute.

Yes, we have at least some trains fully equipped for automated operation, but we use not one person, but two to run them.  The union insists!  Oh, and our costs of building new extensions of the subway system run five to ten times international norms.  So, sorry, no money is available for the emergency "fix."

Basically, what the "blue model" comes down to is spending far more money to get the same or worse results.  We spend far more than national norms on healthcare, for no better health outcomes; and far more (more than double) national norms per student on K-12 education for no better outcomes.  But the costs are all locked in place and nearly impossible to control or reduce.

So what will be the result of the tax reform?  My prediction:  the process of relative decline will be somewhat accelerated -- from very, very slow, to merely very slow.  Likely, new "millionaire's taxes," like the one de Blasio has been proposing, will go off the table.  But don't look for any immediate declines in the existing tax structure, unless there are a large number of departures of the wealthy suddenly announced.

UPDATE, December 27:  Turns out that the Daily Caller had a post yesterday on the amount of outmigration from the big blue states, headline "Nearly 450,000 People Fled These Three Deep Blue States In 2017."  The three states in question are California, Illinois and New York.  The post is sourced from Census data that came out on December 20.  Key quote:

Three Democratic-leaning states hemorrhaged hundreds of thousands of people in 2016 and 2017 as crime, high taxes and, in some cases, crummy weather had residents seeking greener pastures elsewhere.  The exodus of residents was most pronounced in New York, which saw about 190,000 people leave the state between July 1, 2016 and July 1, 2017, according to U.S. Census Bureau data released last week.

The outmigration from California was 138,000, and from Illinois 115,000.  In the case of California and New York, they were able to replace the departures with immigrants from abroad.