A Permanent Truce

Let me begin by saying that I am a strong proponent of the death penalty. Not as a deterrent for potential murderers necessarily, though if that is indeed the case so much the better. No, I’m of the opinion that if people are willing to run that far afoul of the rules of our society, they no longer belong in any part of our society, including the prison system. Kill ‘em all, I say. And do it much quicker than we are doing it right now. So let that be the frame of reference for you throughout this essay.

I am about to propose a radical idea for the new presidential administration to consider. I will attempt to illustrate that this proposal is in the best interests of our society as a whole, notwithstanding the rights of, or crimes committed by, any inmate on death row. This is merely the stance that makes the most sense.

Pass a Constitutional amendment declaring the death penalty to be cruel and unusual punishment, effectively outlawing the death penalty in all 50 states.

The primary reason that advocates cite in favor of keeping and/or expanding the death penalty is that it is a deterrent for potential murderers. Let’s set aside the statistical fact that most murderers do not have the intellectual capacity to weigh the costs and benefits of capital punishment versus life in prison without parole. And we should also set aside the statistical fact that a substantial number of these murders are gang- and/or drug-related, where the alternative to committing a given murder is to be murdered themselves. The cost/benefit analysis is for a different set of costs and benefits: living versus dying in the next 1.5 seconds.

Let us also set aside the fact that the evidence supporting the deterrence assertion has been systemically and thoroughly eviscerated by noted economists and statisticians. One of the two primary studies isolated a six year period out of the 66 the authors claimed to study, and based its assertions exclusively on that narrowed time frame, albeit citing the opposite correlation — a logical fallacy. The second and more recent study conducted only theoretical research basing its results on such far-reaching factors as the number of votes for Republican candidates cast in given districts over varying time periods. A regression study conducted over the same time period actually found that the increase in death penalty executions resulted in an increase in the murder rate, but further described the data as too “noisy” to draw conclusions. The deterrence assertion is flimsy at best, and downright wrong at worst.

Let’s ignore those factors for a moment. Assume that a given criminal could be deterred by the possibility of a death sentence, and that he has the mental capacity and time to properly assess the costs and benefits. We are now faced with our own cost/benefit analysis: is the cost of executing one convicted murderer worth the lives that are saved?

There are other factors to be considered here as well. In recent years the emergence and increasing accuracy of DNA evidence shows that wrongful convictions of murder suspects who wrongly land on death row are not just possible, they are frequent. In Illinois for instance, former Governor George Ryan issued a blanket commutation of existing death row inmates’ sentences and placed a moratorium on all capital punishments. This was done after it was found that ten of the inmates currently awaiting execution were found to be innocent of the crimes of which they were convicted. This is, coincidentally, the same number that the state had executed since the death penalty was re-instated. So alongside the question of cost per life saved, we need to weigh the cost of innocent men and women being executed at the hands of the state for crimes they did not commit.

And finally, with all 50 states expressing different stances on the matter, what cost is incurred by allowing the debate to continue over whether or not to continue executing convicted murderers?

It may seem unnatural for us to put a dollar figure on a human life. Our gut instinct is to declare that no cost is too great to save even one innocent life. Given this assertion, that would mean exhausting every possible means of exonerating each (potentially innocent) death row inmate — regardless of cost or time needed — but still executing as many of the condemned as possible to increase the deterrent effect and save more innocent lives. These two positions are diametrically opposed.

Furthermore, it is plain that we as a society indirectly place dollar values on human lives on almost a daily basis. For example, there is a stretch of road near our house that winds in a swooping double-S curve through a small river valley. The speed limit on the road was (and remains) 50mph. There had been numerous deaths from head-on crashes on this two-lane road, especially during wet or cold weather. At a certain point it was decided to widen the road, and consideration was given to installing a guardrail between oncoming lanes. Installing the guardrail would cost X dollars, and save Y lives per year. It was eventually voted down, thus assigning a dollar figure to a human life using the equation X dollars divided by Y. This type of decision is made by city councils and state governments nearly every day of the year.

As a society we incur a huge monetary cost by retaining capital punishment. When compared to life imprisonment without parole, even the most conservative estimates show that the added cost of each inmate going through the appeals process associated with the death penalty is a minimum of $1 million. Multiply that by the 3340 inmates awaiting execution as of 2004, and we have or will spend at least $3.3 billion on death penalty inmates during their remaining lives. More condemned inmates come into the system every year.

Assuming a generous deterrence rate of one life saved for one executed inmate, and further assuming a 50% wrongful execution rate (Illinois being a recent and relevant example), the marginal loss per execution including all factors is a half-million dollars. That’s .5 innocent lives lost per execution, at a cost of one million dollars each. So we see a genuine dollar amount lost for every executed inmate, as long as we buy into the assessment of a value on human life.

But again, let’s call that a wash and set it aside. What is the remaining non-monetary toll this takes on the country? The courts are clogged with lengthy trials and endless appeals that take more than a decade to fully resolve. That not only costs money, it diverts the court’s resources from other cases whose results are then delayed. The resolution of a case and its resulting punishment are delayed for over a decade, which can be an agonizing process for the families of the victims.

Finally, and most importantly, the debate over whether to continue executing our convicted murderers is a source of heated and costly debate in the courts, in our legislative bodies, and among our citizens. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent, and will continue to be spent on both sides of the debate to try to advance or defeat death penalty legislation. 50 battles raging endlessly, taking up valuable time and resources from governing bodies that are supposed to be paving roads and improving schools and providing needed social services. These other societal benefits necessarily suffer at the hands of the 50 protracted skirmishes over capital punishment.

It’s time to call a permanent truce.

A Constitutional amendment declaring capital punishment to be cruel and unusual brings all of this to an end. No more executions of wrongly convicted innocent parties. No more clogging the courts with decades-long appeals, saving billions of dollars in the process. And no more time, energy, and money spent trying to decide whether or not the death penalty is a good idea.

That’s not to say that passing a Constitutional amendment wouldn’t take some doing. A 2/3 majority of both the House and Senate probably wouldn’t be the biggest challenge: getting 38 states to consent to it will. Fourteen states have no death penalty, so it’s a safe bet that those states will support it. Getting anyone south of the Mason-Dixon line (as far west as Texas) to agree will not be worth the effort. That’s 14 in, 10 out, leaving 26 — from which you can only lose two. Convincing the good folks of Kentucky, Missouri, and Montana may be too daunting a task to overcome.

Ultimately, putting an end to the death penalty once and for all is the best thing to do. Not for any moral or altruistic reason, but simply for the social cost we will no longer incur by putting an end to the practice. We can go back and forth ad infinitum about the pros and cons of the death penalty with respect to monetary cost and deterrence, with no conclusive evidence existing on either side. But in the end, the non-monetary costs are undeniable, and tip the scales in favor of abolishing capital punishment.

I am a strong proponent of the death penalty. Kill ‘em all, I say. But in the final analysis, I’m on the wrong side of this debate. I’m calling on the administration that takes control in January to give the Constitutional amendment serious consideration. It won’t be easy, and it won’t be fun, but it will eventually be a substantial net benefit to everyone in society. This is an idea whose time has come.

A Good Idea

Lo these many years ago, the boats set sail from Europe carrying thousands of excited young men headed for a new life in America. But it’s not what you think: this was 1945, and the excited young men I am referring to were G.I.’s returning from World War II. The Allies had defeated the Nazis and the Japanese, and wave after wave of pilots, sailors, and infantrymen were heading home to celebrate, get married, and start a family.

But apart from seeing (or finding) their one-and-only back in the States, another issue lingered in their minds. Most of these guys were really just kids. 18, 19, 20 years old, high school education, and little or no work experience. They were headed back to a country with nearly no unemployment, and what was about to be a flooded job market. What were they going to do?

The remedy to that problem came in the form of the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944, ready and waiting for them when they jumped off the gangway. Known commonly as the “G.I. Bill,” it provided college tuition reimbursement, unemployment insurance, and first-home and small-business loans for returning WWII servicemen. Hundreds of thousands of veterans took advantage of the bill, and the U.S. saw heretofore unseen levels of education and economic expansion in the post-war years.

The bill was so successful that a similar measure, the Veterans Readjustment Act of 1952, was passed to assist Korean War veterans in the same way. Subsequently the concept was applied to peace-time veterans as well, with the Veterans Readjustment Benefits Act of 1966. This bill had to be stuffed down the throat of President Johnson, but a near-unanimous Congress convinced him that to oppose the bill was political suicide.

Time has passed, and inflation has taken its toll. Military service-men and -women today receive a little more than $4000 in education benefits from the remaining G.I. Bill. That barely covers tuition, books, and expenses for one year of community college, and doesn’t come close to covering costs for even one semester at an accredited 4-year state institution.

As you’ve noticed, we have a sizable military force overseas at the present time. At some point those people are going to be returning home. Some are young, some are not as young; some have careers (that they were yanked out of to go serve), some do not; some have post-secondary educations, most do not; and every one of them will be returning to an economy that (for lack of a more illustrative metaphor) sucks.

It’s difficult to find a person who, regardless of their stance on the war, disagrees with the concept of providing the best possible benefits to our fighting forces in the field. You may or may not be in favor of the reasons for the war or support the Bush administration, but nearly everybody believes in taking care of those who have sacrificed to preserve our freedom. In short, “supporting our troops” isn’t a partisan issue, it’s something the entire country can get behind.

And in fact, we did get behind it. And thanks to us, and the tireless efforts of freshman Senator Jim Webb of Virginia, the New G.I. Bill will become law in the next few weeks.

Jim Webb made headlines by campaigning with his son’s army boots in his hands every step of the way. His list of credentials includes a tour in Vietnam, service as Secretary of the Navy under Reagan, book author, screen writer, and he holds a law degree from some university or other… now which one was it… oh yeah — Georgetown. He pledged on his first day in office to write and pass a New G.I. Bill, providing complete and meaningful benefits to post-9/11 active-duty troops and Reservists. Thanks to a groundswell of effort at the grass-roots level, including chain e-mails, videos on Youtube, petition signatures, phone calls to Capitol Hill, and letters to the editor, the bill passed with more-than-super-majority numbers in both the House and Senate.

Senator John McCain offered alternative legislation, cutting benefits to active-duty personnel and eliminating benefits to Reservists altogether. But that went over like a lead balloon, and the original version of the bill passed without his support.

President George W. Bush had pledged all along to veto the legislation. That is, until he saw it pass the Senate with over 80 votes — including nearly 30 Republicans and well beyond the number needed to override his veto. He has since (quietly) indicated that he will sign it into law when it reaches his desk.

This is an inspiring victory in so many ways, but two are the most important. First, it is a victory for the men and women in uniform that will now have a future to look forward to when they get back home. It is tragic to think that we didn’t have this kind of thing in place before now, but a relief to know that it will be there. These troops deserve it as much as their forefathers did, and now, thankfully, they will get it.

And secondly, it is a victory for democracy. It shows that Americans know a good idea when they see one, and are willing to fight for it. It shows that when the country unites behind a good idea, it doesn’t matter which party is in the White House, or which party controls the House and Senate. It shows that a good idea can overcome those political obstacles and get enacted into law. It shows that we as a nation *can* come together on some things, and even on some pretty important things. It shows that we don’t always line up behind our party’s rhetoric. It shows that some ideas aren’t Democratic or Republican, they’re American. And that may just be the biggest political news of this election year.

Solutions

It is hard to find a voice among today’s economists advocating anything other than market-led solutions to problems. “The market can solve problems better than government can,” they will say with a conviction as stalwart as if they were decrying racism, or proclaiming the world is round, or stating a preference for either David Lee Roth or Sammy Hagar as the lead singer for Van Halen.

The issue becomes, when the market realizes profits by *not* solving a problem, and the problem needs to be solved, who does the responsibility fall to? The answer is government, and the specific problem in question is something that every human being ever to walk the earth has suffered from at one time or another.

The common cold.

Pharmaceutical companies sell billions of dollars of cold medicine and other sniffling, sneezing, coughing, aching, stuffy-head, fever necessities per year. The common cold virus is a cash cow the likes of which mankind has never seen: unlimited and unending demand, almost no cost of production, cheap and universal distribution, and high profit margin. For the market, i.e. the businesses that profit from this, they would be stupid to even consider finding a cure.

But it is in the interest of every person and business (other than the drug companies) to find a cure. American businesses lose billions of dollars per year in worker productivity and absenteeism due to the common cold. And the public is the unwitting accomplice in a massive scheme to funnel wealth from our pockets into the bank accounts of drug companies. We have to put an end to it.

Because the pharmaceutical industry, who has the power to find a cure, profits from *not* finding a cure, they will never attempt to find one. The market has failed at solving this problem, and without intervention it will never succeed.

So why doesn’t industry band together and pool their resources to fund research? It costs them incalculable losses every year, it would seem logical that they invest in finding a means to avoid such losses. Industry will never band together because of the cheater effect. If there was a way to ensure that *every* business contributed in a manner consistent with their resources, that would be great. But greed turns people into cheaters, and many businesses will refuse to participate, figuring that others will pick up the slack, and allowing them to reap the benefits while incurring none of the costs. That, in turn, causes businesses that were originally on board to back out, not willing to make up the difference for the cheaters. In the end, nobody contributes, and the problem persists.

But there is a way to ensure that everybody contributes in a way consistent with their resources: it’s called ‘taxes’. The government collects taxes from every business in the country. It can collect a special add-on tax in the amount of (for instance) one dollar per employee. Even for the largest employers in the country this is a paltry sum. Add on a fifty-cent tax on individuals for each member of their family. Again, even for the lowest wage-earners, this is nothing. But in total the government would now have close to $250 million dollars each year to put towards funding a cure.

The question then becomes, how do you do it? How do you motivate researchers to develop a safe, effective, and low-cost cold vaccine? Offer the whole sum as a bounty. Collect the tax every year, the pot keeps growing until somebody puts a vaccine into human trials. If it turns out to get FDA approval, the whole pot goes to the winner.

This concept has been used in the private sector already, with great success. The X Prize Foundation offered the sum of $10 million to the first group to develop their own “space shuttle”. The rules were a little more detailed of course, but what is curious is the winner ended up spending almost ten times the amount of the prize on R&D. That alone should show that motivation exists to solve these types of problems regardless of the financial reward. There’s a new contest just underway as a matter of fact: put a rover on the moon, move it 500 feet, and return data, photos, and e-mail to the earth. The contest was just announced, and there are 13 teams already registered. That’s how to motivate people. Make it a race, turn it into something that the winner can boast about, and you’ll find you have many more contestants than you ever thought could exist. It’s the maverick American spirit: bigger, faster, better than the next guy.

The same thing needs to be done here. Savings to the consumer (from not buying $100 in cold medicine each year) and to the business community (in having more workers on the job more often) will run into the billions per year in perpetuity. You know as well as I do that the drug companies will scream bloody murder, but hey: they probably have the best chance of anybody of finding a vaccine. They can take a shot at winning the prize just like anybody. It’s about time we held their feet to the fire and got them moving on a solution to this problem.