Election 2012

On November 6th, 2012, the world will not change. However, on January 20th, 2013, it might begin to change drastically because, let’s be honest, in the 75 days between Election Day and inauguration day, there’s only so much a president-elect (or president, perhaps) can do. It has been a fascinating several months to say the very least and has left many, many Americans (including myself) conflicted over what to do on that fateful Tuesday. There is an absurd amount of numbers that I could throw at you in this post to try and make you think one thing or another but if this election cycle has proven one thing once and for all, it’s that statistics can truly be spun to make or break almost any argument. Unfortunately, this post will not be completely devoid of statistics but I will try to present them in an objective light and let you make the decision for yourself. I came into this election cycle almost entirely sure (maybe 95%) of who I was going to vote for but after hearing more and more, I wavered. I’m as close to 100% as I’ll be before I walk into the voting booth on November 6th and what follows is some of the major pieces that came together to help me make my decision.

THIRD PARTIES

Very quickly, I narrowed my field to the Republican and Democratic parties. I’ve heard many good things about politicians from other parties this year (especially Gary Johnson) but I can’t bring myself to vote for one of them. The fact of the matter is that this year, it is a wasted vote. There are many legitimate reasons for voting for a third party but I don’t believe that “I’m too fed up with Republicans and Democrats” should be one of them. I am way too fed up with Republicans and Democrats right now but the fact of the matter is that they will govern this country for the foreseeable future. Go ahead, disagree with me… I dare you.

Some systems can be changed from the outside and unfortunately, I don’t believe Congress and the White House are included in that group. Therefore, the only alternative is to attempt to change it from the inside, finding the candidates that you believe are good for the party and for the country and doing everything you can to get them elected. Granted, this is becoming more and more difficult but I still believe that it is easier to get an unconventional Democrat or Republican elected than it is to get a Green Party candidate elected.

Say whatever you want about being more informed or more thorough for looking at all the candidates and not just the top two. Your vote accompanies no risk whatsoever. No matter what, on November 7th your candidate will wake up unemployed. You don’t have to worry about voting for the winning party and having to defend your candidate through successes and failures for the next four years. You get to lob shots from complete safety, saying that your candidate could have done better in the White House despite the fact that your candidate will receive exactly as many electoral votes and you and I do. I’m sorry if this sounds overly harsh, I truly am. Not everyone who votes for a third party is like this and in fact, very few are. Just don’t you dare look down on me for choosing between the two main parties. Besides, if you read the rest of this post, I will hopefully prove to you that I am indeed making an informed decision.

REPUBLICAN VS DEMOCRAT

I’ve voted in two presidential elections before now but never has there been this large of a partisan divide. The insults being thrown from one side of the aisle to the other are uglier than many of the things I heard in locker rooms growing up. Much of this can be attributed to the anonymity of the internet. The most shocking part is that the people who are involved in politics for a living, politicians, political pundits, and political reporters, are also guilty of the horrible tone of politics today. According to popular opinion, Barack Obama is going to turn the United States into a socialist country and Mitt Romney will outsource it to China and India and soon the only jobs available in the US will be in the military. Politics has always had an ugly side but in the past four years, ugly has become mainstream and civility has been marginalized. This has caused the average voter to become seriously disenfranchised with potentially disastrous repercussions. The rest are so adamant in their conviction that they are right and that the other guy is wrong that they have become fanatical with one purpose in mind; beat the other guy. Not “win”, but “beat the other guy.” It sounds like the same thing but it definitely is not.

With their supporters becoming more fanatical, it seems that the parties are following suit. Perhaps it’s the other way around but one way or another, the main political parties that have the burden of representing over 300 million people have moved farther and farther from the center of the road. On the political spectrum, I firmly believe that Americans roughly fit a bell curve. For those of you who don’t know, a bell curve is an even distribution around the middle and the key points are you move farther away are measured in standard deviations. If you go one standard deviation from the middle (only looking at half of the graph), you’ve covered 34.1% of the population. The second standard deviation covers an additional 13.6% and the third covers another 2.1%.

This would imply that 68.2% of Americans are within a reasonable distance of the middle of the road and if you include the more liberal and conservative, that number goes up to 95.6%. The fringes are occupied by only 4.4% of people (accepting my theory). The main problem is that the Democratic and Republican parties aren’t representing the inner 34.1% in their platforms. They’re representing the 13.6% or the 2.1% and then they’re waging an all-out war for the first standard deviation.

I know this isn’t a perfect analogy but I firmly believe that’s what politics are about these days. The graph might be skewed slightly to the left or the right depending on the issue or the year or the candidate but overall, most people are somewhere in the middle. To add some clarity to this decision, now is the time to delve into the issues that face our nation over the next four years.

ECONOMY (REVENUE)

This is really all the Republicans want to talk about in this election cycle so we might as well start there. We stand today at a very interesting crossroads where we are still a dominant economic force around the world but our status as such is in some jeopardy. From 2002-2011, the federal government spent $6.49 trillion more than it took in in the form of taxes and a deficit of over $1 trillion is projected for 2012. The fact that we have a ludicrous budget situation is not a partisan issue; both parties are at least partially to blame for our current situation and I’m not going to get into the semantics of who is more to blame. Blaming other people does not help move us towards a solution and I’m not about to do it here.

Why is this a big deal? Simply take a look a Europe. They are finding out what happens when borrowing to fund your nation’s economy no longer becomes an option. At that point, huge fiscal and monetary reforms are usually necessary and they will almost certainly come along with a severe recession or a depression. So how can we avoid this future and what steps are the candidates taking to assure our nation’s prosperity?

In short, Mitt Romney’s plan relies on an expectation and Barack Obama’s plan is more realistic. Both candidates favor a reform of the tax code and frankly, who can blame them? Both say that loopholes and deductions need to be limited and considering that these disproportionately favor wealthier Americans, it seems logical and prudent.

Where they differ is where they go from there. Governor Romney wants to reduce tax rates by 20% from that point. Much has been made of Romney’s $5 trillion tax cut that nobody knows how he’s going to pay for because he’s been a bit short on specifics. It’s possible that closing loopholes and deductions would be able to pay for the decrease in rates and then some (estimates are that all deductions and loopholes account for $1 trillion annually, double the lost revenue of Romney’s proposed tax cuts). Interestingly, if we take Governor Romney at his word, it is possible for him to lower tax rates on everybody, widen the tax base (specifically on wealthier Americans) and have the whole thing be revenue neutral. If this is indeed the case, it would be a good plan for our economy.

Now for a little economics background. Our nation’s saving rate is roughly 4% (and has fluctuated from less than 1% in the booming times of the 2000’s to 14.6% in May of 1975). That means that of people’s disposable income, they save 4% and spend 96%. From this we can develop the “simple tax multiplier” which is simply the inverse of the marginal propensity to consume (-0.96) divided by the marginal propensity to save (0.04) and this gives us a result of -24 exactly. This means that if you were to reduce the income tax rate on consumers by $1, aggregate production of the economy will increase by $24. This is an astounding number and begs for serious tax reform.

President Obama wants to limit deductions and loopholes as well but without the serious cut in tax rates that Governor Romney proposes. In my opinion, his tax plan is more of a combination of increasing growth while reducing the deficit all at once. Since these loophole closures will disproportionately affect wealthier Americans, it is possible that Obama’s plan will reduce the tax burden on the middle class (which is most important to our economy) while bringing in additional revenue from the wealthy, thus reducing the deficit in two ways.

This is where Romney’s “expectation” comes in. He expects that with his tax reforms, the economy will grow more and thus will create more tax revenue for the government to reduce the deficit. Obama’s approach is hoping for the same thing but it taking a more proactive approach to deficit reduction on the revenue side.

ECONOMY (SPENDING)

The flip side of the deficit coin is government spending which accounts for nearly 25% of the nation’s economy (as measured by GDP). Both candidates agree that spending restraint is needed but they would go about it in different ways. Truth be told, I’m not sure what federal spending Governor Romney wants to cut; every plan from the Republican ticket that I’ve come across is shockingly low on specifics. In general though, Romney would increase defense spending by about $200 billion per year (on average over the next ten years) while cutting about 20-25% from every other federal agency.

During the Republican primaries, candidates made a big deal of which executive departments they were going to cut and they were lauded for their bold plans. The only problem is they were suggesting the elimination of the Departments of Education, Energy, and others that make up an incredibly low portion of federal spending. The fact of the matter is that the only places that you can cut $1 trillion of federal spending are welfare programs, entitlement reform, and defense spending. Romney wants to actually increase one of those three so if he was serious about balancing the budget, the other two programs would have to take serious hits.

President Obama seems to have a more balanced approach to cutting federal spending (as part of the Budget Control Act which he incorporated into his budget plan for 2013 and beyond). The big difference is that he would cut significant spending from defense.

The biggest issue on the spending side of the ledger isn’t in the next one or even four years. It’s ten years down the road when programs like Medicare and Social Security will be accounting for an enormous chuck on the federal spending pie. Serious reform is needed and unfortunately, there isn’t a political will amongst the people to get that done. Young voters aren’t worried about Social Security because they’re still 20-40 years away from eligibility and so they don’t vote with that in mind and they don’t pressure their representatives to get things done. People who are receiving Social Security benefits have a vested interest to make sure their benefits don’t ever go down. Therefore, you have a huge block of voters that only want Social Security spending increased and another huge block of voters that aren’t thinking about Social Security. This has helped shape the budget conundrum we’re currently mired in; people don’t think ten or twenty years down the road and this is one of the great failings of our nation.

SOCIAL ISSUES

This is a section where I cannot be completely objective but I also don’t believe I need to be. When it comes to the key issues, I don’t need to tell you where Republicans and Democrats stand. I do see a difference between the two parties and before you send me hate mail, realize that this is simply my observation and my opinion.

Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan are very secure in their faith; I think that’s obvious. The part of their social agenda I do not agree with is the part where they think that everyone should life the same sort of lifestyle that they do. I believe that the Republican Party, specifically their leaders in Congress and the Party’s de facto leader Mitt Romney, seek to impose their religious beliefs about lifestyle on the rest of the American people.

The Republican Party is against gay marriage and abortion largely for religious reasons and because of that, they believe that nobody should be able to have an abortion or should be able to marry a member of their own gender. Simply put, this is not an example of a free society. This is a government telling its citizens who they can and cannot marry or what they can do with their own bodies*.

*At this point, I’m not going to get into a debate about when life begins. According to the laws of our land, abortions are legal under the right to privacy and this implies to me that the Supreme Court views an abortion as a decision made by the mother alone without regard for the fetus.

The government puts laws into place to restrict what we can and cannot do with our lives. Many Republicans believe this is the opposite of freedom and yet they seek to enact laws that would impose their religious beliefs upon people who do not believe the same things and I believe that telling someone else how they should live their life is just plain wrong.

The interesting flip side of that coin is the government’s role in the economy but in this case, the roles are reversed. Democrats believe in more regulation from the government when it comes to the economy but less when it comes to social issues. Here’s the big difference between the two stances. Regulations on businesses or the economy are often put in place because something a company is doing is harming society at large. The Clear Water Act, Clean Air Act, and numerous restrictions put in place by the EPA protect us every day even though we might never set foot in an industrial plant. These are good laws to have in place because it prevents a plant from having a negative effect on another person. A ban on gay marriage is ludicrous because two gay people getting married has no effect on anyone else.

It’s a very broad sweeping generalization but my view of what Democrats and Republicans think government should do is essentially this; Democrats want government to help provide a certain standard of living for its citizens (through a social safety net, regulations on business, Social Security, etc.) while Republicans feel government should defend the nation and make sure everyone leads good Christian lives.

THE VOTE

Neither candidate has run a particularly good campaign. Governor Romney has made several missteps and I believe one in particular (47%) will eventually cost him the election. It’s very difficult to hear him say that and then hear him say he cares about 100% of Americans in a debate and take him seriously… especially when it’s common knowledge that his personal worth is estimated to be about $250 million. When he says he cares about all Americans, he sounds like a member of a royal family saying he cares about all his subjects and then can’t wait to get away from them.

Having said that, I do believe that Governor Romney and the true rising star of this election cycle, Representative Paul Ryan, are the best ticket to tackle the economic problems of the next four years. I’ve read Ryan’s economic plan and if you’re able to get past the partisan rhetoric, it’s a brilliantly written document with many good ideas and good points. Frankly, the only thing I disagree with is his stance on military spending (he says increase, I say no). The Republican Party would prefer I stop my analysis right then and there. After all, “it’s all about the economy.”

Except it isn’t.

One of the things that make the United States the envy of many parts of the world is our economy and our wealth but another large part is our society and the freedoms we enjoy. In this nation as a woman, you won’t get shot in the head by your own countrymen for pursuing an education. In this nation you are free to write or say whatever you want about even one of the most powerful men in the world. In this nation I can say or write whatever I want about a deity and do not have to fear any repercussion from my government.

In the end, my decision in 2012 is simple. I’m not sure where we’ll be in four years economically with either Romney or Obama as president but I think that Romney’s economic policies are better for where our country is and what our country needs. However, Republican social policies and agendas, as set by leaders in Congress and their nominees for the highest offices in the country, Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan, make me feel ashamed to call myself an American.