One Person, One Vote?

The Supreme Court just heard a case on Tuesday, Evenwel v. Abbott, over whether state legislative districts must equalize the number of voters or the number of people.  The particular state in this case is Texas, where districts are apportioned by number of people and where the number of voters per district then differs greatly in some cases.

One person, one vote sounds nice -- until you give it some thought.  Of course children are persons, but we exclude them from voting.  Non-citizens are also not supposed to vote, though many do in some districts, especially those controlled by the Democratic Party.  Many people though eligible to become voters do not register to vote.  Many people who are registered to vote skip many or some elections.  There simply is no sense in which one person gets one vote and one share of representation.  There is no feasible way to achieve any such outcome in the future.

The Constitution originally handled the problem this way:

Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective numbers, which shall be determined by adding the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and Excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.

Consequently, districts for the House of Representatives were equalized for the total number of people, excluding untaxed Indians and two-fifths of slaves.  The free Persons included non-citizens.  The idea at the time was that those men eligible to vote would represent all men with insufficient property to vote, children, women, non-citizens, those bound to service for a term of years, and all slaves.

The 14th Amendment changed the apportionment for the House Districts by only excluding Indians not taxed.  It went on to punish states that denied the right to vote to male citizens of 21 years of age or older by reducing the House representation in proportion to their numbers in ratio to the total number of male citizens 21 years of age and older.  The idea was still clearly that male citizens of 21 years or older would represent all women and all non-citizens.

But how should the House Districts properly be set up?  By extension, how should state legislative districts be set up?  Is it reasonable to assume that those who vote are trying and able to represent the good of those who cannot or will not vote when they cast their vote?  These are substantive questions.  It is not unreasonable for fairly reasonable people to disagree on the answers.

At the time the 14th Amendment was written, it was considered that House Districts should be apportioned in accordance with the number of voters or eligible voters.  That idea was shot down immediately when Representative James Blaine, Republican of Maine, examined the census data and found that since the ratio of men to women was much higher in Western states than in the Eastern states, the Eastern states would lose massive representation if it were based on the number of voters or eligible voters.  Women could not vote, but they were valuable for inflating the numbers of persons for representation, much as slaves had been in the South in the past.

It is now easy for all citizens of age to vote.  Despite this, in many areas very low fractions of the citizens chose to vote.  They are either not sufficiently interested or they are so infused with a sense of futility that they see no point in voting.  Should uninterested people or those so infused with a sense of doom and futility be given representation that they will not use? 

In most cases, such uninterested or futility-bound voters especially occupy highly Democrat districts.  So many Progressive Elitist Democrats believe such non-participating voters or potential voters should be represented because they, the Progressive Elitists, will cast their votes in the interest of the apathetic or doomed-in-futility persons.  Yet these same Progressive Elitists have long claimed to be doing this, especially to minimize economic inequality.  Nonetheless, the Congressional Districts with the worst economic inequality are almost exclusively Democratic and have been for decades.  Clearly, the Progressive Elitist voters, who do vote in high percentages, either do not actually vote to reduce economic inequality or they do so with a complete misunderstanding of the consequences of their votes.  They are clearly horrible at representing the interests of the less educated and less inclined to vote people in their districts.

In general, people who vote either vote their own interest or they vote for the interests of others without actually understanding their interests.  Let us be realists and recognize the facts and human nature.  People barely able to motivate themselves to vote rarely have any understanding of the legitimate role of government, the important political issues of the time, the principles of the candidates, and the manner in which new laws and regulations will affect our futures.  In the era of
Big Government these issues are often much more complex than they were in the past in America.

We should also note that it is clear that people are not good at representing the interests of children.  We see this in the miserable public education system we have, in the huge national debt, in the terrible future liabilities of Social Security and Medicare, and the complete disregard for the effect of compounded economic growth rates on the standard of living of Americans 30 or 40 years from now.  Few voters weigh the future enough to look to future outcomes.  Consequently, they are nearly worthless as representatives of the interests of today's children.

House districts, both federal and state, should simply be apportioned on the basis of the number of voters in the last several elections, assuming they do not exceed the number of eligible voters as they do in some Democrat districts.  This apportions representation according to the numbers of citizens of age to vote who actually have an interest in government.  Yes, many of them will not understand the issues and the consequences of their votes either, but this is the one form in which One Person, One Vote is actually achievable in the form of One Voter, One Vote.

Adding to the weight on political outcomes of those districts with higher voter turn-out is likely to raise the quality of the People's Voice about as high as one can accomplish by any means except an improved education system or other educational efforts.  If the reward in political outcomes is greater for those who already care enough to vote, perhaps they will make a greater effort in the future to think about their votes.  These more thoughtful voters then may even realize a bit greater responsibility not to do harm to others, including those others who do not care to vote.  But realistically, one will be giving a greater voting weight to those who are voting for the interests of those they know best, themselves and perhaps their immediate family and friends.  That is not a bad thing.  Most great wrongs are done when people vote or act for others they do not even know, or when they pretend to do so.

How might one determine the number of voters for these district apportionment purposes?  How about the last four elections in the previous decade with re-apportionment occurring once a decade?  It would be nice if one could just make this the last four elections, but the re-districting effort and battles would be too much.  As for why four elections, the fluctuations in voter turn-out are great, especially the differences between Presidential elections and those when voting on the President does not occur.  The last four elections will include two presidential and two non-presidential elections.  It will include elections when no vote was up in the state for Senator in Congress.  It is a good number to average out, though it may slightly lag overall population shifts.  I would gladly live with that population shift lag for the many benefits of One Voter, One Vote, One Share of Representation.

As for state legislative districts, a variety of formulas are fairly reasonable and determining what formula to use should be left up to the states.  Only very unreasonable state decisions should be corrected by the Supreme Court.  Among the unreasonable apportionments would be those that count non-citizens.  Perhaps counting citizen children should also be considered unreasonable, though I am less adamant about this than about the non-citizen count.

Which brings up the need to also tackle the problem of ineligible voters casting ballots as another aspect of the voter representation problem.

Employment Growth or Contraction By State Since December 2007

It is very interesting that if one plots the number of jobs created in Texas since 2008 against the change in the number of jobs in all other states combined, one gets an astounding story of job creation in one state that does little to prevent the creation of jobs:

There is no contest.  Texas added jobs without ever dropping below the number of jobs in December 2007 despite the Great Recession.  It has now added 1.44 million jobs, while the remainder of the nation has yet to recover all the jobs lost since December 2007!

[The oil and gas industry in Texas, which Obama has fought and tried to suppress, is responsible for a large part of the Texas jobs creation success.]  

But some of those other states did add jobs and some lost a particularly large fraction of the jobs they had in December 2007.  Let us see which states are relative winners and which are relative losers.  I will use BLS seasonally adjusted Establishment Data on non-farm payrolls which excludes public administration.  I am going to break the states into three groups.  The first group is the one that created more jobs over the 7 year period than would be needed to keep up with the average population growth of the country over the 10-year period of the last census.  That population growth rate was about 0.9%, so 7 x 0.9% = 6.3%.  The next group of states managed some kind of job growth, though as we will see that job growth was most commonly pathetic.  The final group of states are those which still have fewer jobs now than they had in December 2007.  I have simply taken the non-farm non-public administration jobs in December 2014 and divided by the number of such jobs in December 2007.  Thus, North Dakota had 32.24% more such jobs in 2014 than in 2007.

The heroic states with more created jobs than average population growth from Dec 2007 to Dec 2014:

North Dakota, Texas, and Oklahoma certainly benefited from both business-friendly state governments and the shale oil boom.  Alaska benefited from high oil prices.  Obama did nothing but hurt the jobs creation in these states.  The District of Columbia benefited from the inexorable growth of the federal government and the many well-paid lobbyists located there.  Gov. Rick Parry of Texas has some real bragging rights in his bid for the Republican presidential nomination due to the record of Texas during his long term as governor.  Of the five states and DC which created jobs in excess of population growth, only those jobs in DC were created by Obama and his socialist cronies.

The states that could not keep up with population growth, but at least did not actually lose jobs:

Massachusetts, New York, and California on this list certainly benefited from the huge out-pouring of Federal Reserve money propping up the largest financial institutions largely located in these states.  Note that the bottom 12 states in this group did not even manage a 1% growth of jobs in 7 years!  Both Virginia and Maryland, despite being benefited by the growth of the federal government by their proximity to DC, managed virtually zero private job growth at 0.6% and 0.15%, respectively.  Six of the bottom 9 states in this group voted for Obama twice, so they deserved no better.  Scott Walker, Republican governor of Wisconsin has little to brag about in terms of job creation in his state in his presidential bid.  Democrat Gov. Martin O'Malley of Maryland has still less to brag about.

Finally, we have the states that actually lost such jobs in the 7-year period of the Great Recession and its supposed recovery:

Of these 17 job losing states, 11 of them voted for Obama twice.  That is certainly a fair indicator of an anti-business mentality in those states.  Only Idaho, Florida, Arizona, and Nevada on this list appear in many lists of business-friendly states.  Republican Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey has only a 3.06% job loss in seven years to talk about.

It is very clear that the federal government and very many of the state and local governments need very badly to become more business-friendly if Americans are ever going to be able to enjoy plentiful and good jobs again.  This does not mean doing things to favor businesses.  It just means they need to get out of the way and let free Americans in the private sector create jobs and provide great products and services.

Revised State Real GDP Changes in 2013

According to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, the percentage change of real GDP in 2013 was:

Now recall that real GDP is under-corrected for inflation due to the government insistence in leaving such volatile, but clearly more rapidly increasing cost, items such as food and energy are not included in the cost of living index.  Then also recall that one should really be looking at real per capita GDP since that tells us whether our standard of living is actually increasing.  If the GDP increases by less than the rate of growth of the population, then our standard of living actually falls.  The average US population growth rate was 0.9% from 2001 to 2010, so real GDP increases of 0.9% provides a stagnant standard of living.

New York state which is running ads nationally claiming to be the second best job creator state in the nation clearly underperformed in 2013 with a state GDP that grew by a mere 0.7%.  The state of Maryland, whose Governor O'Malley believes himself ready to run for the presidency, had a 0.0% growth rate.  Yes, preventing the growth of one's own state's GDP now qualifies a politician well for the Democrat Party nomination for the presidency!

Most of the high growth states in the US are in the center of the nation.  The Dakotas, the Rocky Mountain states, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Texas, and West Virginia are the heroic states for those who wish to earn a living.

Corpus Christi, TX School Provides a Dubious Education

Kara Sands, a Texas mother recently became upset that her son, who attends Flour Bluff Intermediate School in the 5th grade, was receiving a sub-standard education.  She especially seems to think that the Corpus Christi area school puts the United States of America in a bad light and that it does an injustice to Christianity as well.

I attended 2nd grade at Flour Bluff Elementary School in 1954 when my Dad was flying out of the Corpus Christi Naval Air Station.  When we moved to Brigantine, NJ in 1955, my 3rd grade teacher, Mrs. Leeds, spent a good part of the year threatening to make me repeat 3rd grade.  In due time, my mother figured out that few of my math problems were copied correctly from the board, but as copied the math was always correct.  I got my first pair of eyeglasses and everything changed in math.  However, I had no reading skills.  None.  Dick and Jane running after Spot was of no interest to me at all.  Learning the rudiments of reading was very painful, but my mother survived the crash course of making me read.  In the early 4th grade, I discovered books about John Paul Jones, Chief Black Hawk of the Sauk-Fox Indian wars, and Kit Carson.  There was no stopping me from reading after that.

So, while I have fond memories of living as something of a wildcat on Rod Field, an old abandoned naval air station of WWII, Flour Bluff Elementary School is a bad memory.  I really hated the sauerkraut they seemed to feed us every day at lunch.  So, hearing about the present-day Flour Bluff Intermediate School was of special interest to me.  Let us look at some test fragments that Kara Sands has made available from that school.

Kara Sands was right to be concerned about the offered answers to Question 3 and the fact that the "right" answer was considered to be B.  Well, yes some decisions made in the US have had negative effects upon someone outside the US, but many of the actions of Americans have helped to make the world more peaceful and to allow widespread trade that has raised the standard of living of billions of people around the world.  Our scientific and medical advances have improved lives widely and our production methods have made many fantastic products available at an affordable cost.  The "correct" answer B displays a huge failure to convey context.  Of course, this context-dropping is all too common among the Progressive Elitists and the unskilled laborers of the teachers unions who follow their directions.

I have another problem with this.  Look at Question 1.  These are kids who probably do not know who Nathaniel Greene, George Mason, Robert Morris, and Gouvenor Morris are.  But they sure are taught the name of a rescue dog.  This is as bad as the now commonly known victim of the Boston Massacre, Crispus Attucks.  Mind you, I do not actually mind kids knowing who Attucks or Nero were, provided they know who Greene, Mason, R. and G. Morris were.

Kara Sands has also provided us with a vocabulary test:

Kara was unhappy with the description of the swastika.  The description is a natural one, but it is also true that many Christians are sick of slights directed at Christianity by the Progressive Elitists who dominate the government-run education systems.  Tolerance is taught toward other religions, but not so much for Christianity.  I will not judge this one without more context on how the school generally treats religious issues and sensitivities.  Governments have many conflicts of interest when it comes to their controlling education and one really sticky area is how can they address religion without violating freedom of conscience, or that sub-field of freedom of religion.

However, she also pointed out that Nazi was improperly said to be simply "member of the German Party."  Of course, other German parties co-existed with the Nazis, preceded them, and followed them.  One suspects that the proper choice of member of the National Socialist Workers Party was not offered because it really rankles the Progressive Elitist Socialists that the Nazis were a socialist party.

Note also that Halt is spelled Halte.  No, that is not the German word for halt either.  Nor the Danish, since the Kroner is mentioned.  Halte does appear in French.  But it appears simply to be a misspelling of the English halt.

Then there is the carelessness of not actually having provided the correct answer for Occupation.

It seems that education in the government-run schools of Flour Bluff still leaves a lot to be desired!

The 2011 State Business Tax Climate Index from the Tax Foundation

Kail M. Padgitt, of the Tax Foundation produced the 2011 State Business Tax Climate Index in October.  The report evaluates the effects of state taxes of the following types with the relative weighting following as a percentage:

• Individual Income Tax, 29.64%
• Sales Tax, 25.16%
• Corporate Tax, 19.35%
• Property Tax, 14.57%
• Unemployment Tax, 11.28%

The results of the evaluation are shown in the map below by rank:

In the scoring, the average was set at 5.00 on a scale of 10.00.  I have made up two tables giving the score of each state assigned by the Tax Foundation Study and its rank for 2011 and the rank for 2010.  To this I have added my calculated growth in the state's Gross State Product from 2005 to 2008.  I have also indicated the party in control of the governor's office, the State House, and the State Senate in 2010.

The highest ranked three states, South Dakota, Alaska, and Wyoming, stand out from the other states with their high scores.  The second set of three states, Nevada, Florida, and Montana, also enjoys some significant separation from the other states.  Then New Hampshire and Delaware stand out a bit also.  Beyond that, very small differences in state scores can mean changes of several rank positions, until you get to the bottom 7 positions beginning with Maryland.

Do high taxes discourage the growth of the state Gross State Product (GSP)?  The top 10 ranked states grew by an average of 17.59% from 2005 to 2008, while the bottom ten states grew by 13.36%.  Low taxes provided a 4.23% growth rate advantage to the low tax states in that three year period.  Let us do the math to find the effect this difference in growth would have over 5 three year periods:  1.1759 to the fifth power is 2.248, while 1.1336 to the fifth power is 1.8720.  The difference is that the low tax state economies become 2.25 times larger, while the high tax economies become 1.87 times larger.  Such growth differences matter to the quality of the People's lives.

Let us examine if there is any difference in tax ranking that correlates with the party holding power in the states.  Of course, the 2010 powers that be were not likely to have instantly changed many state taxation traditions, so the duration of control by a given party is also important.  But to keep things simple, we will just consider the party in power in 2010.  Besides, according to Judge Napolitano on Fox Business on Sunday, there is only one party, the Big Government Party, so we should find equality in this tabulation if he is right.  For the top 10 states in the business tax ranking, counting 1 for each case of control of a governorship, house, or senate, the Republicans score 17 and the Democrats score 11.   For the bottom 10 states, those with the worst business taxes, the score is Republicans 6, Democrats 24.  Sorry Judge Napolitano, but on the matter of the business tax climate, it appears that it matters quite a bit which party controls a state.

Of course, there are exceptions.  For instance, Arizona was controlled in all three state government components by Republicans and yet it was in the 34th position and had actually fallen from the 28th position in 2010.  Bad Republicans in Arizona!  I will also chide Oklahoma, where much of my family lives and where I graduated from high school.  Oklahoma has generally been a Republican state for a couple of decades now, but it ranked only 30th among the states.  With Texas (13), Colorado (15), and Missouri (16) on its borders, it is surely losing many businesses to those nearby states with much higher rankings.  In rankings that consider the regulatory environment as well, Oklahoma does better in the ranking, but still there is a clear need for improvement here.

Speaking of the border effect, the state of Maryland is pursuing an insane high tax strategy as well.  It is ranked 44, but Delaware (8), Virginia (12), and Pennsylvania (26), and even West Virginia (37) are all on its borders and offer better business tax climates.  This is why Northrop Grumman, with large operations in Maryland, just moved its headquarters to Virginia which just improved its ranking by three positions.  Virginia was chosen as the #2 best state for business by CNBC, who picked Texas #1.  Virginia's governor says Virginia is coming after Texas and will take over the #1 spot.  Maryland is not in the race and couldn't give a fig.  Maryland's expertise is in suckling at the teats of the federal pig and living off the taxpayers from across the entire country.

Looking at the map above, it is very noticeable that New Hampshire, Delaware, Virginia, Florida, Texas, and Indiana are each states that have much better business tax climates than any of the states on their borders.  They are each sucking in businesses from the nearby states and helping their homegrown businesses to succeed in the most effective manner: by not putting burdens on them with high taxes.  States using limited time tax incentives or offering training to the employees of industries the state has picked as winners are not as effective in growing businesses and jobs as those who leave all this to the private sector.  Dell Computer had a four-year special tax break from the state of North Carolina for a facility, for instance, and has now announced that it is leaving the state when the four years are up.  This is not surprising.  North Carolina is ranked #41, so it makes sense for Dell to go back to Texas at a #13 ranking or maybe move that facility to Florida with its #5 ranking.

Texas Rewards Success, California Taxes It

California and Texas are 1 and 2 in Gross State Product (GSP), the state equivalent of the GNP. The 2008 GSP of California was $1.847 trillion and that for Texas was $1.224 trillion, with New York not too far behind Texas. From 2005 to 2008, the states with the fastest growth in GSP and their ranking on the personal and economic freedom index of Ruger and Sorens published by the Mercatus Center of George Mason University (dated February 2009) are:

Wyoming, 33.56%, 20
North Dakota, 28.52%, 4
Texas, 24.59%, 7
Utah, 23.17%, 14
Alaska, 21.72%, 47
Louisiana, 21.42%, 28
Oklahoma, 21.14%, 17
Montana, 20.48, 21
South Dakota, 20.34, 1

The corresponding results for California are:

California, 13.40%, 48

An article in the Investor's Business Daily called A Trenchant Tale of Two States points out further contrasts between these two states.  California had lost 1.46 million jobs due to this socialist recession we are in as of August when comparing to the jobs of December 2007.  But, Texas had replaced the jobs that were lost there earlier in the recession.  As of August, California alone accounted for 22.74% of the jobs lost in the nation since December 2007!

The magazine Chief Executive polls CEOs about the business environment in the states and California was ranked 50th of the states each of the last five years.  Texas was ranked #1.  The CEOs blame California's high taxes, its over-regulation, and bias against the profit motive.  On the other hand, Texas is appreciated for not having a personal income tax, not taxing capital gains, and having a more reasonable regulatory burden.  California's capital gains tax is as high as 10.55%.  Its regulations raise labor costs, promote litigation, and put building projects into suspended animation.  The state and local governments make a habit of preying on businesses and property owners with fees and mandates.

As the IBD article graphics above show, Texas over a ten-year period, had a lower personal tax burden, its gross state product growth was higher, personal income growth was higher, its population growth was much higher, and its non-farm payroll employment growth was much higher when compared to California.  Texas also bettered the national averages in all of these categories.  In addition, there was a strong net domestic migration out of California and a strong migration into Texas.  People vote with their feet.

The issue of a state personal income tax is worth looking at more closely.  Texas and the eight other states with no state personal income tax grew their nonfarm payroll by 11.76% from 1999 to 2009.  California and the other eight states with the highest upper personal income tax brackets, grew the nonfarm payroll by only 2.48%.

Some states, such as California, are very highly biased against the profit motive, business, and property owners.  It makes doing business in those states very unpleasant.  Some companies move out of the state, while others simply choose to do their future expansion in other areas.  Sometimes the other area is Texas and sometimes it is in another country.

The IBD article concludes with an interesting anecdote:  California governments love alternative energy.  The City Manager of Brisbane, CA pretends to be enthusiastic about solar power, but this does not stop him from charging $13,510 for a permit to install a 131 kilowatt system.  He claimed it made no sense to allow a commercial firm a break on that fee, since they only wanted a profit.  The bias against profit might as well be a bias against jobs and income growth.  This bias is a characteristic of the more socialist states such as California and they pay a steep price for that bias.

Galveston - The Hurricane Damaged City We Do Not Hear About

Hurricane Ike struck Galveston, Texas on 13 September 2008 in the waning days of the Bush presidency with a Democrat Congress.  Tens of thousands of people evacuated Galveston, which is on a coastal island.  Dozens of people died.  Parts of Houston, which is not far away, went without power for weeks.

Before the storm, Galveston had a population of 57,000 people.  It now has a population of about 48,000, putting it below the important federal threshold for many benefits at 50,000.  For the next ten years, the Census will proclaim Galveston a city of fewer than 50,000 people.  Yes, the equal individual rights of Americans living in towns and cities with populations of less than 50,000 people are less equal than those of people living in the larger cities exceeding that threshold.

The people of Galveston have long been waiting for promised federal aid.  The aid is aimed at rehabilitation of the heavily damaged areas rather than compensation.  The resulting barrier of paperwork between the state government and the federal government has created long delays.  A first round of $1.3 billion of federal money is partially still held in state coffers.  In November 2009, the Department of Housing and Urban Development said it was holding up disbursing a second round of $1.7 billion requested by Texas because the state had not solicited enough community input and had not updated its fair-housing practices.

After the Katrina and Rita Hurricanes in 2005, the city of Galveston set up an emergency hurricane fund of $14 million and built caches of food and fuel.  The local banks made short-term, low-interest loans totaling $65 million to local businesses to help them reopen.  The city and the city's private sector pulled together to work on rebuilding Galveston.

Can you imagine the blame game Washington would be playing now if a Republican were President?  But, with a leftist-favored Obama presidency, the delays are completely without interest.

This post is based upon a story in The Economist of 17-23 April 2010.