Discussing nation, government, and identity in the modern world.
This is the first article to follow up on the general articles about federal distribution of powers and talk about a specific example. That example is healthcare. Healthcare is a big problem in the United States – the cost is high, access isn’t universal (though it isn’t quite as bad as we sometimes think), and … Read more
In our last article we talked about the importance of a federal division of power. How do we judge the health and degree of such a division? One aspect of this is the formal constitutional division. Many countries have some kind of special-case federal devolution of power that is a political tradition or concession, but … Read more
There are many different ways of organizing a government. In this case I don’t mean the choice about how to structure voting, or whether to have a democracy versus some other form. I mean how power is distributed between different parts of the government. All governments, for example, divide responsibilities for different areas of government … Read more
Over the last 40 years, the cost of college has been increasing by almost twice the rate of inflation. That kind of annual increase for that long has meant that the cost of college is ever more out of reach for ordinary human beings. The average cost of even a state school is now $20,000 … Read more
I support a party-list proportional voting system for the lower houses of the federal and state legislatures. I think that kind of broad approach is a better system than dividing the seats for those bodies into districts that have only a single representative elected from each. But that still leaves the question of how to … Read more
What if there was a voting reform that could end gerrymandering, increase voter turnout, increase the number of parties we can choose from, , fairly represent everyone, decrease polarization, and decrease the impact of money in politics? And what if this reform could easily be supported by all voters? This exists. It’s called a proportional … Read more
Watching an American presidential election involves carefully tracking the candidates’ electoral votes. But why do we have an electoral college in the first place? Is there a reason to keep it? We don’t vote for our governors – or any other official – in this indirect way. The answer is that the college exists for … Read more