Tax Idiocy on Capitol Hill

Why it only seems like yesterday that a Republican presidential nominee was lecturing us that it would be inappropriate to pay even a penny more in taxes than the government requires him to pay - that doing so would demonstrate that he was unqualified for the job of President. (And a little bit more recently, after he deliberately overpaid his taxes to avoid contradicting a prior claim about the percentage of his income he pays in federal income tax, that the electorate seemingly agreed with him.)

Now, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations is concerned that Apple is paying only the taxes it's legally required to take, and is taking full advantage of the massive loopholes that... yes... Congress wrote into the tax code, or at best has deliberately failed to close, to benefit companies like Apple (and individuals like Mitt Romney).

You know what Congress should do if it's concerned that corporations aren't paying enough tax? I'll give you a hint: It's not "Hold hearings to hear CEOs explain why their companies are not voluntarily paying more tax than the law requires....

Mickey Mouse, He Isn't....

I think it's reasonable to infer that the baby isn't actually crying because of the Tusken Raider, but....

Trends in Mass Shootings

Right-wing ideologue S.E. Cupp recently challenged left-wing ideologue Michael Moore,

Mass shootings are also down... yes they are! It is true! Mass shootings are... It is fact! They are down, as is gun crime. That's a fact.... Look it up, I'm not the first person who said it.

Well, facts are important, but they're not something I find to strongly correlate with Cupp's arguments. So let's take a look. If you apply a narrow definition that excludes "things like armed robbery or gang violence", as did Mother Jones, you find an increase in casualties and that "24 of the last 62 worst mass shootings have taken place in the past seven years alone". If you apply a broad definition, Fox News found that mass shootings are holding steady.

Why the difference? Fox is looking at all mass shootings involving four or more victims — that’s the standard FBI definition. Mother Jones, by contrast, had a much more restrictive definition, excluding things like armed robbery or gang violence. They were trying to focus on spree killings that were similar in style to Virginia Tech or Aurora or Newtown. The definitions make a big difference: On Fox’s criteria, there’s no uptick. On Mother Jones’, there’s a clear increase.

Meanwhile, by either criteria, there does seem to be a surge in mass shootings in 2012. But it’s unclear whether that’s a one-year blip or not.

I would wonder what Cupp was looking at, but she seems like the type who believes that anything she says magically becomes true if she argues forcefully or claims "It's a fact!"

When Moore challenged her, specifically in relation to school shootings, Cupp added to (or is it amended) her claim,

There have been fewer mass shootings over the past thirty years. That's just a fact.

It's certainly not a fact in relation to school shootings. I have not yet found data predating 1976, but it's also not true in relation to homicides with multiple victims going back to 1976. Perhaps she's alluding to lynchings and prohibition-era violence associated with organized crime? One can only guess - but when you're addressing a relatively rare type of crime (homicide with multiple victims) such factors can easily skew the trend.

At this point, I'm comfortable concluding that Cupp was either making stuff up or was cherry-picking a source in order to present what she knows to be a distorted, fundamentally untrue statement of "fact". I'm prepared to be proved wrong. Anybody?

Fools, Frauds and the Budget Deficit

It's probably not worth paying attention to Robert Samuelson on the budget deficit as he has little to no regard for consistency between his columns, and either has little to no interest in how government spending works or has little to know interest in presenting an honest argument. Nonetheless....

Samuelson is in a tizzy because the 2013 budget deficit is projected to be $642 billion, down from an earlier projection of $845 billion and well below "2012’s deficit of $1.1 trillion". Samuelson imagines that the government has now been overtaken by Dick "deficits don't matter" Cheney-types, and that the government is going to now stop focusing on deficit reduction and budgeting. Samuelson, it would seem, isn't spending much time following events in Washington. He's also continuing his mantra of, "We need to cut 'entitlement spending' so we can afford unlimited war spending", but has little to no regard for whether today's budget policies depress the economy and thus slow economic growth for years and decades to come.

You would think that Samuelson would look at the numbers and think, "We didn't anticipate a 24% drop in the deficit until almost half-way through the year, we're really bad at these projections." Even if you assume he hasn't looked at how projections of healthcare inflation have been incorrect. Or has forgotten his history, such as Alan "the genius" Greenspan fretting that if we didn't cut taxes for the rich, we would pay down the national debt too quickly. Funny, I don't recall the Robert Samuelson of that era criticizing Greenspan, "We can't pay down the nation's debt quickly enough." Did I miss something?) Samuelson then carries on for a while about stimulus spending, conflating any deficit spending with stimulus spending. Seriously?

The funny thing is, I'm prepared to agree with Samuelson. Our nation should have a responsible discussion of deficits and debt, albeit preferably with a significantly stronger factual context than one finds in a typical Samuelson column. We should be discussing priorities and, rather than engaging in demagoguery or attempting to gut Medicare without telling the public what we're doing, attempt to set actual priorities.

It seems to me that people like Samuelson don't like that idea, though, because the nation's priorities may turn out to be different from their own. Let's recall Samuelson's own words when his own priorities for government spending might end up on the chopping block:

But I am certain -- now as then -- that budget consequences should occupy a minor spot in our debates. It's not that the costs are unimportant; it's simply that they're overshadowed by other considerations that are so much more important. We can pay for whatever's necessary.

If a $2 trillion war of choice isn't even worthy of discussion, then the size of any particular budget deficit is even less worthy of discussion. What should matter are future costs and revenues, and the accuracy of our projections. By the same token that Samuelson can shrug,

Nothing of consequence has changed. A few numbers have shifted slightly. That’s all. They moved in a favorable direction. Next time, they might go the other way.

he should be prepared to concede that his emphasis of "We need to cut Social Security and Medicare this second or we'll face catastrophe in a quarter century" is misguided. After all, if being off by roughly 25% within a single year represents an inconsequential shift in the numbers that should be shrugged off, how can you justify setting policy based upon one or two percentage points of projected over twenty-five, fifty, or one hundred years?

Given the reality that our projections tend to be flawed - the future is full of surprises - and the present Congress cannot dictate spending priorities for future sessions of Congress, the proper focus for any given session of Congress is their actual, current, spending. By that measure, the present projections are good news, and the focus needs to be less on "what might happen twenty years from now" and more, "That's a good start, now let's talk about next year". In terms of long-term spending and spending priorities, we should be having the discussion that Samuelson seems intent on avoiding - if we can't afford everything, what do we cut first?

If You Want to Reduce Suicide, Focus on the Economy

Ross Douthat is concerned that "loneliness" may be behind an increase in the suicide rate among middle aged men... a classic case of missing the forest for the trees. You would think this part would clue Douthat in:

This trend is striking without necessarily being surprising. As the University of Virginia sociologist Brad Wilcox pointed out recently, there’s a strong link between suicide and weakened social ties: people — and especially men — become more likely to kill themselves “when they get disconnected from society’s core institutions (e.g., marriage, religion) or when their economic prospects take a dive (e.g., unemployment).” That’s exactly what we’ve seen happen lately among the middle-aged male population, whose suicide rates have climbed the fastest: a retreat from family obligations, from civic and religious participation, and from full-time paying work.

But you can see he's already on the wrong track by the end of the paragraph. That is, the problem is not about a retreat from family, community and work. It's about the carpet being pulled out from under you.

You would think it was a state secret that the group at highest risk of suicide was middle class men (particularly white men), and that risk of suicide is strongly associated with three stressors: job loss, loss of family and poor health. Contrary to Douthat's assumption, there's not a higher suicide risk if you're single versus married - but divorce is a risk factor.

In our culture, our identity is wrapped up in the work we do. One of the first questions you're likely to be asked when you meet somebody is "Where do you work" or "What kind of work do you do". The factors also tend to go hand-in-hand. Poor health can lead to the loss of employment, financial stress resulting from loss of employment (or from poor health) can lead to divorce. When somebody's self image is built around job and family and he feels that he's irretrievably lost his economic future and his family, that's a huge psychological blow.

Douthat builds his argument in part on a fiction, that we're dealing with "structural unemployment". I've taken some issue with those who argue that there's nothing structural about our unemployment situation, but the type of thing they're talking about (the ability to return to full employment) and the type of thing I'm talking about (the ability of somebody who has lost employment to get back onto a similar income and career path) are two different things. If Douthat believes that there's something new about the problems men have if they're displaced from the workplace during or after their late forties, he hasn't been paying attention. Not even to the content of the newspaper for which he writes:

Unemployment is almost always a traumatic event, especially for older workers. A paper by the economists Daniel Sullivan and Till von Wachter estimates a 50 to 100 percent increase in death rates for older male workers in the years immediately following a job loss, if they previously had been consistently employed. This higher mortality rate implies that a male worker displaced in midcareer can expect to live about one and a half years less than a worker who keeps his job.

There are various reasons for this rise in mortality. One is suicide. A recent study found that a 10 percent increase in the unemployment rate (say from 8 to 8.8 percent) would increase the suicide rate for males by 1.47 percent. This is not a small effect. Assuming a link of that scale, the increase in unemployment would lead to an additional 128 suicides per month in the United States. The picture for the long-term unemployed is especially disturbing. The duration of unemployment is the dominant force in the relationship between joblessness and the risk of suicide.

Joblessness is also associated with some serious illnesses, although the causal links are poorly understood.

More academically,

Suicide rates among both men and women aged 35–64 years increased substantially from 1999 and 2010. This finding is consistent with a previous study that showed a notable increase in the overall suicide rate among middle-aged adults relative to a small increase in suicide rates among younger persons and a small decline in older persons during a similar period. The increases were geographically widespread and occurred in states with high, as well as average and low suicide rates. By race/ethnicity, the increases were highest and statistically significant only among whites and American Indian/Alaska Natives, widening the racial/ethnic gap in suicide rates....

Possible contributing factors for the rise in suicide rates among middle-aged adults include the recent economic downturn (historically, suicide rates tend to correlate with business cycles, with higher rates observed during times of economic hardship); a cohort effect, based on evidence that the "baby boomer" generation had unusually high suicide rates during their adolescent years; and a rise in intentional overdoses associated with the increase in availability of prescription opioids.

In a loosey-goosey sort of sense, one court argue that Douthat has a point. That if people who were suicidal could break out of their mindset, reconnect with their communities, and find peace and joy in their lives, they would no longer be suicidal. But that would be to assume that depression and suicide are the results of a rational thought process rather than cognitive distortion, and that somebody who is suicidally depressed is well-positioned to make significant life changes. Sometimes in response to a suicide you hear, "I don't understand, he seemed so happy that day" - the result of a confusion of the immense relief that can come from the decision to commit suicide with an emergence from depression. When severely depressed individuals receive treatment, you have to be very careful during their early recovery because in some cases the only thing holding them back from suicide is lacking the cognitive energy to carry out their plan. This cartoon series, I think, does a pretty good job of illustrating depression - but that freedom depicted at the end can be (and in the author's case, was) dangerous.

Douthat shares a non-suicidal author's account of how he reconnected with his small hometown due to his sister's terminal illness, and extrapolates,

Too often, and probably increasingly, not enough Americans will have what the Lemings had — a place that knew them intimately, a community to lean on, a strong network in a time of trial.

And absent such blessings, it’s all too understandable that some people enduring suffering and loneliness would end up looking not for help or support, but for a way to end it all.

It seems that Douthat is looking for a simple solution to the issue of suicide that ties into his conceit that a simple, small town lifestyle is somehow superior to... the way he lives his own life. As if anybody can find peace, contentment and community simply by moving to small town, rural America. As if small town, rural America would be unchanged if we all moved there. As if that's even possible. As if you can't find community in a city. As if suicide rates weren't higher in the less urbanized parts of the nation.

If you care about reducing suicide, you should be calling for government policies to help restore full employment. You should be advocating programs to help people deal with job loss and regain decent employment. You should be concerned about the quality and availability of mental health care. Pretending that all will be well if people return to the type of community seen in states with above-average suicide rates? Probably not helpful.

Lines are for the Little People

Leave it to the wealthy of Manhattan....

Lawyers, Don't Hire Spammers to Promote Your Law Firms

I understand that some lawyers, probably many or most, simply don't know any better - somebody calls them up promising to generate more traffic to their website. The well-practiced sales pitch makes it sound like a good deal, and then... stuff like this starts getting posted around the Internet under the name of the lawyer or the law firm:

John_P****s_law

It sounds as if you could possibly have a case but it may be a close one. I think it would be worth your time to go and talk to a professional lawyer in Washington State. Be sure to bring all important documents including your medical papers and perhaps an over view from your current doctor that did find the tumor explaining the situation. Hope this helped and good luck.
_________________
Do you think you have a case? The Law Offices of John P****s may be able to help you!

That wasn't the worst example I've seen - just the latest to hit one of my forums. The trick that particular spammer used was to try to paraphrase prior comments (which may be from non-lawyers) in order to try to create something that sounds reasonable.

Usually, the company you hired is either based in or subcontracts with another company in the Philippines, India, Bangladesh, or elsewhere in the developing world and pays somebody in that nation with middling English skills to push your link out to forums and blogs. (That particular spammer was working out of the United States, so the lawyer probably paid a premium for the website promotion services.) I'm sure they will subsequently hand you a nice list, perhaps with pretty charts, showing how many links they generated for your site. What they won't tell you is that most of those links will have little to no value for your website and, in some cases, the rapid volume of new, similar links on sites that allow user-generated conduct will trigger a penalty for your site.

But it's worse than that. You're a lawyer. You have ethical duties that govern your advertising - and make no mistake about it, this is advertising. No, you weren't told that a worker in an overseas phone bank would be posting messages that appear to be from you or from your law firm, but that doesn't mean you're not responsible for their actions. You didn't exercise due diligence when hiring your website promotion firm, you didn't adequately supervise their work, and they could be out there posting wildly incorrect information or giving wildly incorrect advice under your name.

Recall also, you probably have a duty to maintain a copy of all of those posts in your records for a specific period of time in order to comply with the advertising rules for your state.

Wealth is Not Proof of Better Genes and Values

In response to an essay about rich kids doing well in school, McArdle questions whether the answer truly lies in enriched environments,

But is that really the right explanation? The rich pulling away from the middle class is also exactly what we would see if test-taking ability has a substantial inherited component, and the American economy is increasingly selecting for people who are very, very good at taking tests. The latter is undoubtedly true, and there's some fairly strong evidence for the former, in the form of studies of adopted kids. Such studies tend to show that adopted kids bear a much stronger resemblance to their biological parents in terms of lots of things, from weight to income to test scores, than they do to their adoptive parents. Once you've hit a fairly basic parenting threshhold--food, health care, touching and talking to your kid, and not physically or sexually abusing them--the incremental benefits of more intensive parenting seem at best small, at worst unclear.

McArdle appears to be confused on a number of fronts. First, the manner in which people in our society meet, form family units and reproduce is not scientific. If this were scientific, not only would we be looking at and testing for specific criteria before approving reproduction, we would see weaker stock that we would need to exclude from contributing its genes to the next generation. We would see a marked difference between the children of the power couple, where both parents had high education and high income, versus couples where only one partner had the "power job", versus couples where one partner stayed at home, versus couples who were wealthy simply by virtue of inheritance.

McArdle presents the example of the marriage of Laura Ingalls Wilder (Little House on the Prairie), who she sees as intelligent and bookish, and Almanzo Wilder, who sees as being significantly less intelligent - intelligence apparently defined by academic interest and achievement. McArdle suggests that in the modern era, the couple would have had nothing in common and thus would likely not have met and married.

Laura Ingalls would quite likely have gone to an elite school, and probably graduate school, then moved to a coastal city, and eventually married another bookworm. Almanzo Wilder would be married to someone like him, a hard worker who nonetheless found school tedious and left as quickly as possible. And when their two sets of children showed up at school, their test scores would be very different.

Instead they had one child, Rose Wilder Lane, who became a very talented short-story writer (her collection, Old Home Town, is a very fine and somewhat brutal study of the Missouri town where she grew up.) They could just as easily have had a child like Almanzo, whose talents lay in other directions.

It apparently did not occur to McArdle that the outcome is not binary - that genetics are far more complex than the "Brown Eyes vs. Blue Eyes" diagrams she made in fifth grade. She could as easily argue that her example proves that bookishness is a dominant trait, and that if we pair off intelligent, bookish people with those who are not "nearly as smart as" as them, we'll have a nation full of smart people within a generation.

Second, you cannot effect significant genetic change across a culture over the course of two or three generations. If the argument is that tests became important in the mid-20th century, and that good test-takers have subsequently congregated, married, and as a result have produced a population of exceptionally good test-takers, it's fair to ask, what are the genetic components behind test-taking, and how do we measure them? When an individual takes a test prep course and sees a 10% increase in his score, is that because his genes have changed? Also, if test-taking prowess is hereditable and leads to wealth, why does the U.S. have a long history of economically outperforming nations that consistently outperform the U.S. on tests such as PISA?

Third, the fact that some aspects of personality are hereditable does not render environment irrelevant. As a group, children raised in an unsafe, tumultuous home predictably suffer long-term effects from their childhood experiences that are less prevalent in children raised in safe, stable households. When you see significant changes in a population across a generation (e.g., the rise in IQ in Irish children since 1970, or disparity in IQ between children of East and West Germany with the differences dissipating after reunification, it's not only inadequate to say, "What can we do - it's genes" - its obviously wrong and it's a cop-out. People tend to marry within their social class, and they tend to follow a career path modeled for them within their social class and family, with a potentially profound impact on their future earnings.

Fourth, the wealthy remain at an advantage even when you control for personality and intellect. When the economic outcomes for the lowest-performing children of the wealthy meet or exceed the economic outcomes for the highest-performing children of the poor, you can't deny the role of wealth. Winning the lottery doesn't change your genome, but it sure can open up opportunities that were not previously available.

I don't disagree so much with McArdle's conclusion as I do with how she reaches it,

Maybe the answer is not a quixotic attempt to somehow replicate the experience of being raised by two professionals with advanced degrees. Maybe it's to question the great educational sorting, and the barriers it has erected. Of course, I am not suggesting that we should give up on educating our kids, or that education is irrelevant to preparing people for the workforce. But we should ask whether incremental requirements are actually adding value. Because every additional year of schooling we require makes it harder and harder for those who don't enjoy school to compete in the wider world.

McArdle's argument does not support either the notion that the wealthy perform better academically because the typical wealthy child enjoys "the experience of being raised by two professionals with advanced degrees", as there are plenty of wealthy people where one or both partners lack advanced degrees, and plenty of middle class families where both parents have advanced degrees. Few impoverished families with two advanced-degree holding parents, and fewer still when you recognize that their transitory period in student family housing or at the very start of their careers isn't representative? Certainly. But none of that directly supports the genetic argument.

It would be helpful, I think, if McArdle explained what she means by "incremental articles". If I interpret that as, "Adding another round of standardized testing," or "Trying to concoct some sort of formula for rating teachers and trying to purge the lowest-performing teachers", then she's right. That sort of reform can make it "look like we're doing something", and may also be very expensive, but is not likely to materially affect outcomes - and we should examine the data, costs and benefits before expending hundreds of millions or billions on experimentation. Similarly she's correct that insisting that people get additional years of education, without any associated effort to ensure that they're getting something of value in exchange for their additional investment of time and money, is not likely to produce meaningful results. But if you look at the German or Irish experiences (or Polish, or certain American immigrant communities, etc.), you can see why its inappropriate to point to an impoverished community and say, "It's their genes" - and can find many examples of that argument being used to deny equal treatment to a population on grounds that, in retrospect, seem absurd.

Rich Kids are Doing Fine... And its News?

A few days ago, Sean Reardon shared an observation which he suggested may not surprise you, "the children of the rich perform better in school, on average, than children from middle-class or poor families."

So let me see... kids who on the whole have the most educated parents, the most affluent homes and best home environments, safe neighborhoods, good schools, and ready access to additional resources if they start to flounder, do better on the whole than the kids who do not have those advantages? Let me guess - the next thing that may not surprise me is that kids who have the least educated parents, the poorest homes and home environments, unsafe neighborhoods, schools that struggle to maintain order and perhaps even to maintain their basic facilities, and who have trouble accessing additional resources even if their parents attempt to find and utilize those resources, bring up the bottom?

The author notes that this is a phenomenon associated with wealth, not gaps in racial achievement or a decline in school performance. He argues that school quality is a small part of the difference.

The most potent development over the past three decades is that the test scores of children from high-income families have increased very rapidly. Before 1980, affluent students had little advantage over middle-class students in academic performance; most of the socioeconomic disparity in academics was between the middle class and the poor. But the rich now outperform the middle class by as much as the middle class outperform the poor. Just as the incomes of the affluent have grown much more rapidly than those of the middle class over the last few decades, so, too, have most of the gains in educational success accrued to the children of the rich....

The academic gap is widening because rich students are increasingly entering kindergarten much better prepared to succeed in school than middle-class students. This difference in preparation persists through elementary and high school.

The author paints an idyllic picture of a typical wealthy family,

Money helps families provide cognitively stimulating experiences for their young children because it provides more stable home environments, more time for parents to read to their children, access to higher-quality child care and preschool and — in places like New York City, where 4-year-old children take tests to determine entry into gifted and talented programs — access to preschool test preparation tutors or the time to serve as tutors themselves.

I doubt, however, that the phenomenon is explained by the small percentage of wealthy families who employ tutors to prepare their children for kindergarten admission tests. Also, let's note, being tutored for a test can make you perform better on that test, and that can be particularly true of aptitude tests, but what you end up with is not evidence that one group is outperforming another by any measure other than the test. Instead, you end up with an invalid measure. We can talk of, "support[ing] working families so that they can read to their children more often", but in some of those wealthy families the reading is done by the nanny, and I suspect that modeling remains a significant factor - if the only books (real or virtual) you have in your home are the ones you read to your kids, that may indicate both motivation and the possibility that your kids will engage with books in a way you do not; if you have a home full of books and spend a lot of time reading, the odds go way up that your kids will follow your lead.

That said, we already know that giving children an enriched preschool environment can significantly improve a child's performance as they enter school. Despite the anti-Head Start demagoguery (that after the child starts school and you end the enrichment, you see a reversion to the mean over the next few years), we know how to boost a child's academic performance. As various experiments have shown, both in public school and charter school settings, kids from impoverished community perform better in school when they spend more hours in the classroom and receive tutoring. Shocking, isn't it?

Rich people care about education, they can vote with their feet if they don't like the performance of their child's preschool or public school, and they can and largely will avail themselves of resources when their kids struggle. They are also positioned to help their kids pursue their interests, whether academic, artistic or athletic. Basically, if you're wealthy you're much more likely to care about education. "But middle class families value education," you protest? Sure, but our society largely cares about education in the abstract. Education matters, but teachers get paid too much, kids don't really need art or music, and a B is good enough - particularly if you're good at sports.

Although anybody's best laid plans can gang aft agley, there's a difference between hoping your child goes to college and gets a degree, and expecting that your child to attend a top university and proceed to graduate school. It's easy to find public schools that bring kids in several weeks in advance of the start of school for sports, and put significant resources into sports equipment, facilities and coaching. It's easy to find schools where past sports victories are trumpeted, and sports trophies and banners prominently displayed. You rarely find the same sort of priority being placed on academics. Its not an either or - you can push both sports and academics - but our society's choices reflect its actual values.

Let's remember also, the lowest performing children of the wealthy tend to earn more money than the highest performing children from poor families. Wealth has advantages, and those advantages affect motivation and outcome.

A Tablet as a Replacement for, Not Addition to, a Car Display

Apparently Apple is in talks to do... something in along that line. It has had some niche successes with having auto makers use tablets instead of a proprietary in-car entertainment system. In past years the profit margins for entertainment and navigation systems would have made it difficult to convince auto makers to fully integrate with a third party device, but now... if you pay $2500 for in-car entertainment or navigation, or even $1,500, even if you don't feel like a chump it's difficult to imagine that you've viewed in any other manner by the car dealership.

So why not become, in essence, a large tablet retailer? Have the device fully integrate into the vehicle, seamlessly controlling navigation, entertainment, climate control, and the like? Sure, you have to somehow control for people watching movies while they drive....

A "Bush v. Gore" What If....

Courtesy of Sandra Day O'Connor, Scott Lemiuex shares his memories of a horrible series of Supreme Court decisions.

And, again, it’s not just that justices notably unsympathetic to broad equal protection claims claimed to accept an innovative equal protection argument. Where Bush v. Gore immediately falls apart and becomes a historic disgrace is that the completely lawless remedy left an election count with all of the alleged equal protection defects of the court-ordered recount (and the “mess up” job of the Florida authorities) in place.

Here's a thought experiment: What if, rather than tampering in a poorly conducted state election the Supreme Court had let the result stand. Even in the worst of circumstances the Constitution provides a remedy, specifically that the House of Representatives would elect the President.

The Electors shall meet in their respective States, and vote by Ballot for two Persons, of whom one at least shall not be an Inhabitant of the same State with themselves. And they shall make a List of all the Persons voted for, and of the Number of Votes for each; which List they shall sign and certify, and transmit sealed to the Seat of the Government of the United States, directed to the President of the Senate. The President of the Senate shall, in the Presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the Certificates, and the Votes shall then be counted. The Person having the greatest Number of Votes shall be the President, if such Number be a Majority of the whole Number of Electors appointed; and if there be more than one who have such Majority, and have an equal Number of Votes, then the House of Representatives shall immediately chuse by Ballot one of them for President; and if no Person have a Majority, then from the five highest on the List the said House shall in like Manner chuse the President. But in chusing the President, the Votes shall be taken by States, the Representation from each State having one Vote; A quorum for this purpose shall consist of a Member or Members from two thirds of the States, and a Majority of all the States shall be necessary to a Choice. In every Case, after the Choice of the President, the Person having the greatest Number of Votes of the Electors shall be the Vice President. But if there should remain two or more who have equal Votes, the Senate shall chuse from them by Ballot the Vice President.

Had the election come down to that, we might as a nation have taken a hard look at how elections are conducted, inconsistent approaches to taking and tallying votes, and similar flaws and set about fixing them. Instead the Supreme Court allowed the nation to bypass that type of difficult work, and subsequent concerns about election technology, fairness and potential for actual fraud have largely been either ignored or have gained attention based not on the genuine flaws reveled by Florida, but based upon demagoguery about largely imaginary allegations of voter fraud. Rather than having remedies directed at improving elections, legislatures have largely focused on making it difficult for certain classes of voter to reach the polls and vote.

Maybe it wouldn't have made a difference. But....