Between Hell and High Water

Let’s Minimize Parking Minimums

By Mike Koetting May 23, 2023

Most of the concern about automobiles in America centers on their carbon emissions. Today’s blog, however, focuses on a different aspect of the impact of America’s car culture–how parking spaces can become a bad use of society’s resources. It also reminds us that the fabric of our lives is shaped by an invisible, even if in plain sight, network of rules and laws that we rarely think about but that we could change.

Central Cities

I got started thinking about this issue after reading a blog by the son of a friend on the impact of laws in Chicago creating minimums for the number of parking places required as part of construction. (As a complete aside, I note there is something simultaneously disquieting and reassuring when you start seeing cogent articles from people you knew as a baby.) He argued that mandating parking space minimums imposes a meaningful drag on the real estate markets because, in many circumstances, it is leading to more spaces than necessary. Excess spaces drive up construction costs which increase rents in order to cover the excess spaces. Research in Chicago shows that in the central city, about one-third of all parking spaces in large residential buildings are empty at 4 AM, the expected point of maximum use. This is consistent with the excess rate found in several other cities. These excess spaces are estimated to add 17% to the rental costs in these buildings.

Knee-capping the IRS Is Apparently a Core Republican Value

By Mike Koetting May 9, 2023

The bill that Republicans (by themselves) passed to increase the debt ceiling limit is a basket of pernicious ideas, including cancelling incentives for alternative fuels that was part of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), creating incentives to actually increase use of fossil fuel, cancelling student debt relief, and adding “work” requirements for Medicaid. But, even within this legislative rogues’ gallery, there is one that, more than any other, illustrates the disconnect between Republican rhetoric and their true motives. That is the provision to reduce the IRS budget by $71 billion. This is most of the amount of new funding that was included in the IRA to fix recognized problems in that agency.

Not Many of Us Can Worry about the Environment without Hypocrisy

By Mike Koetting April 25, 2023

Earth Day was Saturday and, as always, it’s an occasion for considering the state of the world. Literally, not figuratively.

The most recent UN report shows it’s getting worse. I’ll bet few of us are surprised.

We all know the trajectory is more or less exactly what scientists have been predicting for years and we assume not a whole lot has happened that would change that. Which, when you think about it, is kind of weird. There’s this thing happening that the best scientists tell us has a high likelihood of causing material damage and we pretty much take it for granted that there is no response remotely commensurate with the problem. Why should that be?

I submit it is because we have become habituated to—indeed secretly demand—a mega-level of hypocrisy on environmental issues.

Chicago Mayoral: The Choices Weren’t Good

By Mike Koetting April 11, 2023

Maybe it’s an exaggeration to say the Chicago mayoral election run-off was one of the worst political choices I have ever faced. But this is only the second time in my life that I went to the poll to cast a blank ballot.

The national news story of progressive Brandon Johnson against moderate Paul Vallas isn’t wrong, but it doesn’t convey the choice with sufficient texture.

The Future Requires Maintenance

By Mike Koetting March 14, 2023

A couple weeks ago, one of the twenty-year old elevators in our building began stopping at random floors unbidden. The maintenance company addressed it. Two days later, it started again. They replaced the entire control panel. That worked—for three days. They replaced the entire panel once more and that seems to have done the trick. For now.

It’s certainly fair to question the overall condition of our elevators or the competence of the maintenance company. But I wonder if there are bigger issues lurking.

The Cultural Conundrum

By Mike Koetting February 28, 2923

In 2002, Ruy Teixeira, along with John Judis, wrote The Emerging Democratic Majority in which they forecast the dawn of a new progressive era—something to rival the 40-year run of neoliberal hegemony.

These days neither sees circumstances the same way. In a recent Washington Post article, Teixeira expressed concern that the Democrats are losing ground among the entire working-class, not just the White working class. He ascribes this to the Democratic party’s insensitivity on cultural issues, which are how voters assess who is really on their side and who isn’t.

While Democrats still maintain a very large percentage of the non-White working class, there is abundant evidence that a material portion of the population is alienated by what they see as excessive “wokeness” from Democrats.

I think this evidence is sufficient that we can’t flick it away as more MAGA-foolishness. There are voters who broadly agree with most policies of the Democrats, but who just feel unsympathetic to what they see as “extreme” viewpoints. Some of this, of course, is more a reaction to the way Republicans have exaggerated and twisted what was in fact said. But, either way, it’s a real problem for Democrats.

Revised Income Tax

By Mike Koetting February 14, 2023

In my last post, I suggested that a substantial revision of America’s tax code might be a meaningful step towards bridging our national divides. Today’s post proposes one specific change in the federal income tax. There are several other critical tax issues that need to be considered, but those are for another day.

The essence of today’s proposal is to materially expand the use of the Alternative Minimum Tax against a different definition of income than is currently the case. The resulting tax laws should be able to be clearly explained and understood by most people as actually collecting higher taxes from those who are better off. More concretely, the goal is to increase the total income tax collections, with all of the additional revenue coming from people who earn more than 250% of the median income and use all the proceeds to reduce the deficit. (In 2022 a family income of $200,000 or above is roughly 250% of the median income, approximately the top 10% of incomes.)

Can We Find Healing Power in Income Taxes?

By Mike Koetting January 31, 2023

A couple posts back, I wrote that it was hard to imagine what could bridge the divisions in our country. The issues are only occasionally, and usually incidentally, about policies. Tom Nichols, in The Atlantic, opines that there is no principle dividing the country. He contends that although people will say the issue is “liberty” or “freedom, ” those are merely smokescreens for racial and class resentments, personal grudges and a generalized paranoia that dark forces are manipulating their lives. These, I believe, have come to play such an outsized role in our politics because there has been a profound loss of societal coherence.

I don’t want to idealize a past that never was. Our society has always had warts a plenty. And some of them were generated by the foundational principle of individualist striving. The emphasis on individual freedom and the ability of people to have mastery of their own destiny made America both a unique place in the world and uniquely successful as a country. But, for individualism to work its magic, it needs to be balanced by strong local ties and a generalized sense of social solidarity. Without those guardrails, the logic of individualist striving corrodes any larger scale sense of well-being. And without that, society disintegrates. We turn into a nation of Marlboro cowboys riding the range by ourselves—carrying guns and chasing dreams that can never be realized.

Wither Inflation?

By Mike Koetting January 17, 2023

Having neither a degree in economics nor a crystal ball, I lack the proper credentials to post a blog on inflation and the Federal Reserve Board. But the issue is very important to the well-being of the society—probably more than most of us acknowledge–so I will take my chances.

The Issue

The Federal Reserve Board has evolved the responsibility of steering the national economy between two potential disasters, runaway inflation and recession, another hell or high water situation.

The Rail Strike That Didn’t Happen

By Mike Koetting December 18,2022

Today’s post goes deep into the reaches of the American Political Way-Back Machine. Yup, more than two weeks ago! Back then there was widespread panic about the consequences of a rail strike. Then, poof, all gone, like a very early snow.

Before it drifts completely out of our consciousness, it is worth reminding ourselves how we got to that pass and the implications therefrom.

The Clear but Inchoate Culprit

I believe this event was a nearly perfect microcosm of what is wrong with the way America organizes, to use the term somewhat loosely, its economy.