The Great Democracy

by Ganesh Sitaraman

  33. Larry Mishel, Elise Gould & Josh Bivens, “Wage Stagnation in Nine Charts,” Figure 9, Economic Policy Institute, Jan. 6, 2015.

  34. Theodore Roosevelt, Eighth Annual Message, Dec. 8, 1908, in State Papers as Governor and President, 1899–1909 495–496 (Hermann Hagedorn, ed., 1925); Office of US senator Elizabeth Warren, press release: “Warren Introduces Accountable Capitalism Act,” Aug. 15, 2018.

  35. Brishen Rogers & Kate Andrias, “Rebuilding Worker Voice in Today’s Economy,” at 24–25, Roosevelt Institute, Aug. 9, 2018; Joel Rogers & Wolfgang Streeck, eds., Works Councils: Consultation, Representation, and Cooperation in Industrial Relations (1995); 29 U.S.C. 158(a)(2) (2018); Electromation, Inc. 309 N.L.R.B. 990 (1992).

  36. Rogers & Andrias, “Rebuilding Worker Voice,” at 26–33.

  37. For a thorough account of public options, see Ganesh Sitaraman & Anne L. Alstott, The Public Option: How to Expand Freedom, Increase Opportunity, and Promote Equality (2019).

  38. Federal Communications Commission, “2016 Broadband Progress Report,” Jan. 29, 2016, https://www.fcc.gov/reports-research/reports/broadband-progress-reports/2016-broadband-progress-report; Federal Communications Commission, “Internet Access Services: Status as of June 30, 2016,” Apr. 2017, http://transition.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/2017/db0503/DOC-344499A1.pdf. The data on neighborhoods are for developed census blocks.

  39. Executive Office of the President, “Community-Based Broadband Solutions,” Jan. 2015, at 14, https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/sites/default/files/docs/community-based_broadband_report_by_executive_office_of_the_president.pdf; Electric Power Board, Internet, https://epb.com/home-store/internet (offering 1 Gigabyte download speed internet for $67.99); Electric Power Board, Press Release: EPB Fiber Optics Reaches Milestone of Serving 100,000+ Customers, Oct. 19, 2018; Edward Wyatt, “Fast Internet Is Chattanooga’s New Locomotive,” New York Times, Feb. 3, 2014, https://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/04/technology/fast-internet-service-speeds-business-development-in-chattanooga.html?mcubz=0; Dominic Rushe, “Chattanooga’s Gig: How One City’s Super-Fast Internet Is Driving a Tech Boom,” Guardian, Aug. 30, 2014, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/30/chattanooga-gig-high-speed-internet-tech-boom.

  40. Alicia H. Munnell, Wenliang Hou & Geoffrey T. Sanzenbacher, “National Retirement Risk Index Shows Modest Improvement in 2016,” Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, Jan. 2018; CBS News, “Nearly One-Quarter of Americans Say They’ll Never Retire, According to New Poll,” July 8, 2019; Stan Haithcock, “You Just Gave Your Annuity Agent a Great Vacation,” MarketWatch, Aug. 12, 2014; Council of Economic Advisors, “The Effects of Conflicted Investment Advice on Retirement Savings,” White House, Feb. 2015.

  41. Steven R. Weisman, The Great Tax Wars 3 (2002) (quoting Holmes); Tax Policy Center, “Historical Highest Marginal Income Tax Rates, 1913–2017,” https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/statistics/historical-highest-marginal-income-tax-rates.

  42. Tax Policy Center, “Historical Capital Gains and Taxes, 1954–2014,” https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/statistics/historical-capital-gains-and-taxes. The rate increased in the 1970s from 25 percent to 39.9 percent before dropping ultimately to 15 percent during the George W. Bush administration. During the Obama presidency, the rate increased back to 25 percent; Seth Hanlon & Sarah Ayres Steinberg, “Loopholes in the Estate Tax Show Why Revenue Must Be on the Table,” Center for American Progress, Jan. 24, 2013; Tax Policy Center, “Taxable Estate Tax Returns as a Percentage of Adult Deaths, Selected Years of Death, 1934–2011,” Nov. 30, 2011; Thomas L. Hungerford, “Corporate Tax Rates and Economic Growth since 1947,” Economic Policy Institute, June 4, 2013, https://www.epi.org/publication/ib364-corporate-tax-rates-and-economic-growth/.

  43. My mapping here broadly follows Reuven S. Avi-Yonah, “The Three Goals of Taxation,” 60 Tax Law Review 1 (2007).

  44. Reuven S. Avi-Yonah, “Why Tax the Rich? Efficiency, Equity, and Progressive Taxation,” 111 Yale Law Journal 1391, 1412, 1406 (2002) (reviewing Does Atlas Shrug? The Economic Consequences of Taxing the Rich (Joel B. Slemrod, ed., 2000)).

  45. Paul Krugman, “The Economics of Soaking the Rich,” New York Times, Jan. 5, 2019; David Dayen, “Elizabeth Warren Proposes Annual Wealth Tax on Ultra-Millionaires,” Intercept, Jan. 24, 2019.

  46. Jefferson to Adams, Oct. 28, 1813, in The Adams-Jefferson Letters 389 (Lester J. Cappon, ed., 1959); Eric Nelson, The Greek Tradition in Republican Thought 232 (2004).

  47. James Madison, “Parties,” National Gazette, Jan. 23, 1792, in James Madison: Writings 504 (Jack N. Rakove, ed., 1999).

  48. Reuven S. Avi-Yonah, “Corporations, Society, and the State: A Defense of the Corporate Tax,” 90 Virginia Law Review 1193, 1211 1219 (2004).

  49. Gabriel Zucman, The Hidden Wealth of Nations: The Scourge of Tax Havens (2015). For a discussion of the global issues, see Reuven S. Avi-Yonah, Kimberly A. Clausing & Michael C. Durst, “Allocating Business Profits for Tax Purposes: A Proposal to Adopt a Formulary Profit Split,” 9 Florida Tax Review 497 (2009).

  50. This section draws on Tim Meyer & Ganesh Sitaraman, “A Blueprint for a New American Trade Policy,” Great Democracy Initiative, Dec. 2018.

  51. David H. Autor, David Dorn & Gordon H. Hanson, “The China Shock: Learning from Labor-Market Adjustments to Large Changes in Trade,” 8 Annual Review of Economics 205 (2016).

  52. Timothy Meyer & Ganesh Sitaraman, “It’s Economic Strategy, Stupid: The Case for a Department of Economic Growth and Security,” American Affairs, Spring 2019.

  53. Alisa Chang, “A Trade Deal Read in Secret by Only a Few (or Maybe None), NPR, May 14, 2015; Christopher Ingraham, “Interactive: How Companies Wield Off-the-Record Influence on Obama’s Trade Policy,” Washington Post, Feb. 28, 2014.

  54. Robert D. Putnam, Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis (2015); Charles Murray, Coming Apart: The State of White America 1950–2000 (2012); Bill Bishop with Robert G. Cushing, “The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America Is Tearing Us Apart” (2008).

  55. Phillip Longman, “Bloom and Bust,” Washington Monthly, Nov./Dec. 2015.

  56. Peter Ganong & Daniel Shoag, “Why Has Regional Income Convergence in the U.S. Declined?” 2 (Jan. 2015) (unpublished manuscript), http://scholar.harvard.edu/shoag/publications/why-has-regional-income-convergence-usdeclined; Raj Chetty et al., “Where Is the Land of Opportunity? The Geography of Intergenerational Mobility in the United States” 31, 38, 60, National Bureau of Economic Research, Working Paper No. 19, 843, 2014; Anne Case & Angus Deaton, “Mortality and Morbidity in the 21st Century,” Brookings Papers on Economic Activity (Spring 2017); Paul Krugman, “What’s the Matter with Trumpland,” New York Times, Apr. 2, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/02/opinion/trumpland-economy-polarization.html. Wilson’s book was William Julius Wilson, When Work Disappears (1996).

  57. Enrico Moretti, The New Geography of Jobs (2012); David Schleicher, “Stuck! The Law and Economics of Residential Stagnation,” 127 Yale Law Journal 78 (2017).

  58. Benjamin Austin, Edward Glaeser & Lawrence H. Summers, “Saving the Heartland: Place-Based Policies in 21st Century America,” Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, BPEA Conference Drafts, Mar. 8–9, 2018, at 41.

  59. Benjamin Austin, Edward Glaeser & Lawrence H. Summers, “Saving the Heartland: Place-Based Policies in 21st Century America,” Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, BPEA Conference Drafts, Mar. 8–9, 2018, at 19.

  60. The Riegle-Neal Interstate Banking and Branching Efficiency Act of 1994, Pub. L. No. 103-328, 108 Stat. 2338 (1994) opened up the possibility of interstate bank branching, contra the McFadden Act, 4 Stat. 1224, 1228-29 (1927), which had been in place since the 1920s. On the theory behind Robinson-Patman and the broader shift in antitrust ideas, see Matt Stoller, “How Democrats Killed Their Populist Soul,” Atlantic, Oct. 24, 2016.

  61. For a depiction of all the New Deal projects in the country, see The Living New Deal, https://livingnewdeal.org/map/.

  62. Andrew R. Go
etz & Timothy M. Vowles, “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: 30 Years of Airline Deregulation,” 17 Journal of Transport Geography 251, 253 (2009).

  63. Andrew R. Goetz & Christopher J. Sutton, “The Geography of Deregulation in the U.S. Airline Industry,” 87 Annals of the Association of American Geographers 238–263, 239 (1997); Goetz & Vowles, “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly,” at 251–252.

  64. Phillip Longman & Lina Khan, “Terminal Sickness,” Washington Monthly, Mar./Apr. 2012.

  CHAPTER 8: POLITICAL DEMOCRACY

  1. Chapman University Survey of American Fears, America’s Top Fears 2017, Oct. 11, 2017, https://blogs.chapman.edu/wilkinson/2017/10/11/americas-top-fears-2017/.

  2. On gun control, see Steven Shepard, “Gun Control Support Surges in the Polls,” Politico, Feb. 28, 2018, https://www.politico.com/story/2018/02/28/gun-control-polling-parkland-430099; on Social Security, see Lake Research Partners, “Support for Medicare and Social Security,” Feb. 13, 2017, https://www.ncpssm.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/voter-summary-22017-1.pdf; on higher taxes, see Matthew Yglesias, “Taxing the Rich Is Extremely Popular,” Vox, Feb. 4, 2019, https://www.vox.com/2019/2/4/18210370/warren-wealth-tax-poll; on campaign finance reform, Bradley Jones, “Most Americans Want to Limit Campaign Spending, Say Big Donors Have Greater Political Influence,” Pew Research, May 8, 2018, http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/05/08/most-americans-want-to-limit-campaign-spending-say-big-donors-have-greater-political-influence/; on climate change, see Yale Program on Climate Change Communication & George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication, “Climate Change in the American Mind,” Dec. 2018, https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Climate-Change-American-Mind-December-2018.pdf.

  3. Larry Bartels, Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age (2010); Martin Gilens, Affluence and Influence: Economic Inequality and Political Power in America 1 (2012); Martin Gilens & Benjamin I. Page, “Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens,” 12 Perspectives on Politics 564 (2014).

  4. Renae Merle, “Mulvaney Discloses ‘Hierarchy’ for Meeting Lobbyists, Saying Some Would Be Seen Only if They Paid,” Washington Post, Apr. 25, 2018; Ganesh Sitaraman, The Crisis of the Middle-Class Constitution: Why Economic Inequality Threatens Our Republic 242–146, 248 (2017).

  5. Kay Lehman Schlozman, Sidney Verba & Henry E. Brady, The Unheavenly Chorus: Unequal Political Voice and the Broken Promise of American Democracy 328–331 (2013); OpenSecrets.org, Finance, Insurance & Real Estate, Sector Profile, 2017, Center for Responsive Politics; Ben Brody, “Google, Facebook Set 2018 Lobbying Records as Tech Scrutiny Intensifies,” Bloomberg, Jan. 22, 2019; Brian Kelleher Richter, Krislert Samphantharak & Jeffrey F. Timmons, “Lobbying and Taxes,” 53 American Journal of Political Science 893, 907 (2009).

  6. Aaron Lorenzo, “GOP Staffers Who Wrote the Tax Bill Cash in with Lobbying Gigs,” Politico, June 4, 2018. Lee Drutman, The Business of America Is Lobbying (2015), insightfully describes how lobbying opportunities push staff to rely more on lobbyists.

  7. Robert Rubin went to Citigroup after his time in office; Jack Lew was at Citigroup prior to government service and went into private equity afterward; Larry Summers took a position at D.E. Shaw, a hedge fund; and Tim Geithner went to Warburg Pincus, a private equity firm. On the Trump administration, see Ben Matthis-Lilley, “Swamp-Draining Trump Administration Has Hired 187 Lobbyists, New Report Finds,” Mar. 7, 2018, https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/03/trump-administration-has-hired-187-lobbyists-propublic-finds-swamp-much.html; Editorial, “Lobbyists Romp in Trump’s Washington,” New York Times, Jan. 21, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/21/opinion/lobbyists-washington-trump.html.

  8. See, e.g., Jason Webb Yackee & Susan Webb Yackee, “A Bias toward Business? Assessing Interest Group Influence on the U.S. Bureaucracy,” 68 Journal of Politics 128 (2006); Wendy E. Wagner, Katherine Barnes & Lisa Peters, “Rulemaking in the Shade: An Empirical Study of EPA’s Air Toxic Emission Standards,” 63 Administrative Law Review 99 (2011); Susan Webb Yackee, “The Politics of Ex Parte Lobbying: Pre-Proposal Agenda Building and Blocking During Agency Rulemaking,” 22 Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory 373 (2012); Kimberly Krawiec, “Don’t ‘Screw Joe the Plummer’: The Sausage-Making of Financial Reform,” 55 Arizona Law Review 53 (2013); Simon F. Haeder & Susan Webb Yackee, “Influence and Administrative Process: Lobbying the U.S. President’s Office of Management and Budget,” 109 American Political Science Review 507 (2015).

  9. See Elizabeth Warren, “The Corporate Capture of the Federal Courts,” Speech to the American Constitution Society, June 5, 2013; Ellen Eardley & Cyrus Mehri, “Defending Twentieth Century Equal Employment Reforms in the Twenty-First Century,” American Constitution Society for Law and Policy, Jan. 2013; Adam Chandler, “Cert-Stage Amicus ‘All Stars’: Where Are They Now?,” Scotusblog, Apr. 4, 2013; Lee Epstein, William M. Landes & Richard A. Posner, “How Business Fares in the Supreme Court,” 97 Minnesota Law Review 1431, 1449–1451 (2013).

  10. National Vote at Home Institute, About Us, https://www.voteathome.org/about-us; David Roberts, “The Simple Voting Reform That Works Wherever It Is Tried,” Vox, May 24, 2018.

  11. Alberto Chong & Mauricio Olivera, “Does Compulsory Voting Help Equalize Incomes?,” 20 Economics and Politics 391 (2008); Anthony Fowler, “Electoral and Policy Consequences of Voter Turnout: Evidence from Compulsory Voting in Australia,” 8 Quarterly Journal of Political Science 159 (2013).

  12. For an overview of proposals on restricting spending and on leveling up through vouchers, see Ganesh Sitaraman, “The Puzzling Absence of Economic Power in Constitutional Theory,” 101 Cornell Law Review 1445, 1512–1514, 1524–1526 (2016). On geographic restrictions, see Nicholas O. Stephanopoulos, “Elections and Alignment,” 114 Columbia Law Review 283 (2014).

  13. Christopher Uggen, Ryan Larson & Sarah Shannon, “6 Million Lost Voters: State-Level Estimates of Felony Disenfranchisement,” Sentencing Project, Oct. 6, 2016, https://www.sentencingproject.org/publications/6-million-lost-voters-state-level-estimates-felony-disenfranchisement-2016/.

  14. Bruce Bartlett, “Gingrich and the Destruction of Congressional Expertise,” New York Times, Nov. 29, 2011.

  15. S.3357, The Anti-Corruption and Public Integrity Act, 115th Congress (2017–2018).

  16. Rohit Chopra & Julie Margetta Morgan, “Unstacking the Deck: A New Agenda to Tame Corruption in Washington,” Great Democracy Initiative, May 2018, https://greatdemocracyinitiative.org/document/unstacking-the-deck-a-new-agenda-to-tame-corruption-in-washington/.

  17. Daniel Epps & Ganesh Sitaraman, “How to Save the Supreme Court,” Vox, Oct. 10, 2018; Daniel Epps & Ganesh Sitaraman, “How to Save the Supreme Court,” Yale Law Journal (forthcoming 2019); Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, Council 31, 585 U.S. __, 138 S. Ct. 2448 (2018) (Kagan, J., dissenting).

  CHAPTER 9: DEFENDING DEMOCRACY

  1. Jeffrey Goldberg, “Hillary Clinton: ‘Failure’ to Help Syrian Rebels Led to the Rise of ISIS,” Atlantic, Aug. 10, 2014.

  2. Center for American Progress, Election Infrastructure: Vulnerabilities and Solutions 1, Sept. 11, 2017; Danielle Root & Liz Kennedy, “9 Solutions to Secure America’s Elections” 1, Center for American Progress, Aug. 16, 2017; Cynthia McFadden, William M. Arkin & Kevin Monahan, “Russians Penetrated U.S. Voter Systems, Top U.S. Official Says,” NBC News, Feb. 7, 2018.

  3. Kim Zetter, “The Myth of the Hacker-Proof Voting Machine,” New York Times Magazine, Feb. 21, 2018; Lawrence Norden & Andrea Cordova, “Voting Machines at Risk: Where We Stand Today,” Brennan Center for Justice, Mar. 5, 2019; Danielle Root, Liz Kennedy, Michael Sozan & Jerry Parshall, “Election Security in All 50 States: Defending America’s Elections” 5, Center for American Progress, Feb. 2018; Sue Halpern, “America Continues to Ignore the Risks of Election Hacking,” New Yorker, Apr. 18, 2018; Fred Kaplan, “America’s Voting Systems Are Highly Vuln
erable to Hackers,” Slate, Feb. 22, 2018.

  4. Kaplan, “America’s Voting Systems”; Root & Kennedy, “9 Solutions,” at 1.

  5. Taylor Hatmaker, “DHS and FBI Detail How Russia Is Hacking into U.S. Nuclear Facilities and Other Critical Infrastructure,” TechCrunch, Mar. 15, 2018; Halpern, “American Continues.”

  6. For a similar argument, but focusing on a new force within the military, see James Stavridis, “Why the Nation Needs a US Cyber Force,” Boston Globe, Sept. 29, 2013; James Stavridis & David Weinstein, “Time for a U.S. Cyber Force,” Proceedings Magazine (Jan. 2014).

  7. For an overview of “weaponized interdependence,” albeit one that focuses more on international networks and Western power, see Henry Farrell & Abraham L. Newman, “Weaponized Interdependence,” International Security (forthcoming). On the Chinese use of “geoeconomics,” Robert D. Blackwill & Jennifer M. Harris, War by Other Means: Geoeconomics and Statecraft (2016), is excellent.

  8. Kurt M. Campbell & Ely Ratner, “The China Reckoning: How Beijing Defied American Expectations,” Foreign Affairs, Mar./Apr. 2018.

  9. Campbell & Ratner, “The China Reckoning.”

  10. Aaron Friedberg, “Competing with China,” 60 Survival, 7–64, at 40 (June/July 2018); Jordan Robertson & Michael Riley, “The Big Hack: How China Used a Tiny Chip to Infiltrate U.S. Companies,” Bloomberg Businessweek, Oct. 4, 2018, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-10-04/the-big-hack-how-china-used-a-tiny-chip-to-infiltrate-america-s-top-companies; Daniel Shane, “How China Gets What It Wants from American Companies,” CNNMoney, Apr. 5, 2018; Tom Miles, “U.S. and China Clash Over ‘Technology Transfer’ at WTO,” Reuters, May 28, 2018.

  11. Michael McFaul, “Russia as It Is,” Foreign Affairs, July/Aug. 2018.

  12. Office of the US Trade Representative, “The People’s Republic of China: U.S.-China Trade Facts,” https://ustr.gov/countries-regions/china-mongolia-taiwan/peoples-republic-china.