Yeah, that’s just who I want helping me out with my legal problems. A guy who technically isn’t even a lawyer yet and has absolutely no experience. Experts believe there has been a huge disconnect between the learnings in the classroom and what goes on after passing the bar.

Isn’t that what an internship is for? Is the legal profession the only one that doesn’t build internships into their graduation requirements? Both the Sheconomist and myself were saved from careers we would have hated thanks to internships. I personally learned a lot and it was still helpful in my eventual field so the benefits of internships are huge. Have law schools not figured this out yet? I find that truly hard to believe.

New York could really do something better than requiring 50 hours from someone that is not technically a lawyer. How about requiring 50 in their first year, but after they pass the bar? If you really want to ingrain the idea of helping others, require hours every year for the first five years.

But really, does the state actually think that forced labor before taking the bar is the best way to go? Will that make more lawyers want to volunteer time later in their careers? Unlikely. How about instead of forced servitude offering a trade of services? Wave the application or exam fee for anyone that puts in 50 hours of pro bono. It’s hardly worth their time mathematically but a well designed program would make the pro bono work also beneficial to a young attorney’s career.

Lawyers are already having a tough enough time finding work because there just aren’t enough jobs out there. A hungry law school grad might take advantage of the program to get a free shot at being accepted to the NY state bar.

One has to admire the state for trying something new that furthers education and helps the underprivileged get access to some level of legal expertise. But this might be the worst way they could have actually done it.

Read: New York State’s Pro Bono Requirement a Step In the Right Direction

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In just a few weeks the presidential campaigns will kick into a higher gear and we’ll have more media coverage than anyone cares to actually be exposed to. Already the ads have started. Obama is all over my Pandora stations and anti-Obama PACs are on the TV. But things are only going to get worse.

And the only thing anyone will be talking about is the economy. I’ve already talked about why that shouldn’t matter at all and what kind of economic situation we’d need to be in for the campaigns to even matter. Though those conversations will undoubtedly dominate headlines (along with unimportant things about Romney’s past and misrepresented statements from Obama’s 2008 campaign), there are some real issues that no one is ever going to talk about.

There are certainly more than three, but these are the concerns I have the most:

Campaign reform and term limits

Politics took a few steps back in progress when PACs were suddenly allowed to collect unlimited amounts of money from anyone, including corporations. We will see in the presidential campaign that tons of money will be spent with likely no measurable improvement in either candidate’s odds of winning. But local elections, and Congressional ones can be heavily influenced now by one individual’s checkbook. Worse though is the continued pandering to donors that our Congressional representatives continue to do. Planet Money has a good profile of how much time is wasted on this process. Part of the problem could be fixed with reforms to the campaigning process but what is really needed are term limits. If our elected officials didn’t spend all their time worrying about getting reelected, they might for once represent the interest of their population.

Odds of this becoming a real issue: 1/100

Education

At the macro level our education system looks to be in good shape. We have some of the best schools in the world. People come from all over the world the study in the US not only due to our economic strength, but because of the quality of education that can be obtained here. Things aren’t so great everywhere though. We’ve got schools being dishonest about graduation rates and salaries. They’re saddling students with a huge debt burden and the schools carry none of the risk of their students being able to pay it off. Public schools are facing huge cuts in the midst of state budget crises. And all the while we’re graduating fewer scientists and engineers than we should be for a nation teetering on the peak of its prosperity. For now, a college degree is still worth the time if you’re smart about where and what you study. But how long will that be? The education system from K-PhD is in need of an overhaul on an Obamacare scale. But who will touch it?

Odds of this becoming a real issue: 1/80

Foreign policy

We like to say Romney has no foreign policy experience. But that’s as far as the conversation goes. When the media starts talking about foreign policy all they really mean is Israel and the wars. Campaigners just shift the conversation from there to defense spending and everyone forgets that will are still playing world police. Not only are we still engaged in two conflicts, but our friends in Israel want to use the multi-billions we’re giving them to pick a fight with Iranians (who are kind of asking for it to make things worse). All the while our president is slowly shifting our military resources to Asia instead of truly scaling it down. Why is it that no politician will stand up and say, “the reason the most of the developing world hates us is because we keep meddling in their business?” We don’t have to be isolationists, but we’re viewed in many parts of the world as war mongers. Foreign policy isn’t just about conflict, but because this has only ever been a superficial issue even in non-election years no one knows anything about it.

Odds of this becoming a real issue: 1/50

Based on the odds, none of these issues will be actual points of contention in presidential campaigns or even your local representative’s elections. But they should be. The media plays a crucial role in making sure we talk about these issues and others like tax reform (not tax increases, real reform) and what role government should play in the economy. We aren’t framing conversations this way though. Why? Because even our very own populous doesn’t care about them. But if we could show them how these issue do affect the individual citizen, you would probably see them start to care a lot more.

Don’t get your hopes up though.  Instead, expect an economic pissing match, stupid stories about how much someone’s shirt cost (she ain’t alone people), and some kind of lousy story about how both of them went Harvard Law.  You know, things that matter.

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Fuel consumption is falling not only thanks to vehicle efficiency, but also thanks to consumers driving less too. Below is a chart showing the average amount of miles we travel each year per person. Not only has this been falling per capita, but it’s also been falling on a gross scale too.

This is all great news for our wallets, technology, and the environment. But there’s no such thing is a perfect outcome, and better fuel economy is no different.

Think about what you do when you’re in your car. You drive, mess with your phone, flip bad drivers off ignoring your own bad driving, curse the radio for too many commercials, and sit at lights. But you’re also wearing down the roads, and clogging them up. Even with a reduction in driving, we still need new roads and existing ones have to be repaired. A lot of the funding from those roads comes from taxes on gasoline sales. And if we’re buying less gas for a number of reasons, we’re paying less into the fund that pays for the roads.

So we’re left with a couple of options. The easiest one is to just increase the tax on gasoline. But unless the cost of making roads has dropped considerably, consumers are going to lose the savings from better fuel economy to higher taxes.

There may be better ways. We could charge taxes based on your miles driven. Gas taxes attempt to do this at the pump, but that’s really a tax on how long your motor is running. And that’s different than how many miles you drive.

Whatever way we raise money is up for debate. But that is a debate that needs to occur soon before our roads start to become a problem.

Read: New CAFE rules and a stagnant gas tax mean big deficits for infrastructure

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Financial regulation in 2010 sought to make this process a little easier if there was a next time. Agencies were given new powers they’re now getting around to figuring out how to use them.

One of the most powerful agencies is the FDIC, which insures the deposits of banks. If a bank runs out of cash to pay depositors, the FDIC comes in with fresh cash and takes over the bank. Their new system is a bit of corporate trickery, but I’m pretty sure you can keep up.

Most banks operate as holding companies. So a corporate entity owns a collective of businesses that look like one company to the customer. It’s the corporate entity the FDIC will take over. The individual businesses that aren’t broken will be allowed to continue to operate. This keeps the financial system intact. If those businesses need money, the FDIC is allowed to borrow funds from the Treasury.

Stockholders in the parent company will be given nothing. As per corporate law anyway, they should lose their money. Anyone that lent the bank money will exchange the debt for equity (ownership) in a new private company. Presumably, the new private company will include the functioning businesses, the sick businesses will be bankrupted.

This sounds relatively easy on paper, but in practice it could be a nightmare. In fact, some don’t think the FDIC could pull it off. Many expect it would be too hard and they’d just do another bailout. In the old style bailout the government will just lend the company the money directly and help them work through the issues. Stockholders will get hurt, but they may not be wiped out.

It is very complicated though. Stockholders in the failing company may fail themselves if the value of their stock goes to zero. A panic may still occur. But the goal of the new process is to keep the functional units functioning, therefore preserving the banking system. While the plan might not work, it’s better than not having a plan in place at all.

What regulators will have to keep in mind is that nothing ever goes to plan. The unexpected will occur and so they must be prepared to be flexible and adaptable. Hopefully, we’ll never need it.

Read: Avoiding the Next Big Bailout

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This is the line drawn in the sand. If the American economy averages about 175,000 news jobs a month then Obama should win the election. If it’s below 100,000 jobs a month then Romney is moving in. Anything else in between then we have a fight.

That is at least according to some analysis by the NY Times:

“Historically, nothing — not social issues, campaign advertisements or gaffes — has influenced voters more heavily than the direction of the economy in an election year. In only three races since World War II has the outcome been different from what the economy’s direction would have suggested: 1952 (when the popular Dwight D. Eisenhower was running), 1968 (when the Vietnam War hobbled the Democrats) and 1976 (when Watergate hobbled the Republicans).”

In the absence any kind of scandal against a party, this looks like a race that comes down to jobs. And last month the economy added only 115,000 jobs. But the 6 months prior averaged almost 200,000.

This should be interesting then.

But it’s also sad. I’ve talked before about how candidates play games with economics. When it suits them, they will take credit for something in the economy. When it doesn’t, they won’t or their opponent will use it as an attack point. The reality is the role of the president in the economy is marginal at best. Even if a president put in different policies, there is no guarantee they would have been more effective.

No one really knows what the magic button is for jobs. But any candidate with a good smile (and both do) can convince you their policies did or would work.

The fact that the economy plays such a role in our elections is disappointing. Who was president really doesn’t matter. But in an election where the media is more focused on alleged high school bullying than a campaigner’s actual stance on issues tell us all we need to know about how rational voters will be come November anyway.

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Europe has been trying to get to some level of stability for some time now. This has included more centralized control and massive budget cuts. The hope is to cut spending and get debt under control. But such measures involve great pain.

The lack of centralized control has also lead to many patchwork compromises. Many would say that they are “kicking the can down the road”. This implies they put off an important decision today because no one can really agree on long term solutions. Well, we’ve caught up to the can again and now the Eurozone must decide if to kick again, and where to kick the can. The problem is, they may be out of road.

Weakonomics doesn’t spend much time on the Europe issue because nothing ever seems to change. But for today let’s check in on the major stories playing out there this May:

Greece: After two bailouts, things are still not looking good for Greece. In order to get the bailouts Greece had to agree to huge cuts in spending. This has ruined the economy as it still sits in recession and suffers from an unemployment rate over 20%. Recent elections made everything worse. The Greek people don’t like all the austerity, so they’ve elected some new politicians that represent the far right and left. Some are actually Neo Nazis. Many of those elected are ready for action. This is stirring up fears of defaults again or perhaps Greece leaving the Euro currency. Whatever happens, the relative stability of the past few months is gone.

France: These guys also just had an election. The head hauncho Nicolas Sarkozy actually lost. The new guy, Francois Hollande, is also anti-austerity. Greece isn’t the only country that isn’t happy with its economy. The entire continent basically embraced the idea of cutting government spending to get debt levels back in check. Those cuts have hurt the economy though. Now Hollande has to go eye to eye with Germany, the arguably most powerful state in the EU, which still has a government in place that supports austerity. Once again, a lack of stability comes in to play.

Spain: When Greece got its first few bailouts, everyone thought there could be another domino to fall. Ireland and Portugal are going through similar crises but Spain’s economy is much larger than the others. Spain’s stress could be a tipping point between weaker outlier countries and the stronger countries at the core. In addition to high unemployment, Spain is also dealing with a real estate collapse. Whereas other countries are dealing with bad government debt, Spain also has the housing thing to deal with.

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But sometimes those relationship crack. Perhaps a country is breaking some fundamental human right, or maybe they’re lying about what their plans are with a mountain of plutonium. For whatever reason, the US and other major world powers don’t want to just send the military in to fix the problem. So we instead use a tool that only recently has started to have some value.

Back in the 1960s the US got in a big fight with Cuba. Perhaps rightfully so, we cut Cuba off. The hope was that by refusing to have an economic relationship with Cuba the country would be forced to see their erred ways and come to work with the US again. It didn’t happen. The embargo is still in place.

In the 1960s trade relationships weren’t nearly is significant as they are today. The dollar was the king of currencies, but countries were largely self-sufficient. Even the US imported a fraction of oil compared to domestic production.

Nowadays we’re all totally reliant on each other. We need China for cheap goods and loans, and they need us to keep buying the stuff they make. We need the Middle East to supply us with oil, and they need us and Europe for places to spend their money. And smaller, less developed countries, rely on aid from 1st world countries to provide the stability needed to grow and modernize.

When one of those countries gets on our nerves, we bring out the sanctions. We’ve been especially hard on Iran because of their push towards having nuclear power. Many believe they are trying to make a bomb. One would have to assume that for us and the EU to be so tough on Iran the intelligence community knows something the rest of us don’t. The sanctions include not doing business with their central bank, and boycotting their oil exports.

The hope would be that this would cause enough economic chaos that the country would fix the issue to stabilize. If no one is buying their oil, then the country starts to run out of money real fast. Angry citizens could demand their government fix it. The suffering of innocents could lead to a similar solution. This is the ultimate goal of sanctions. The hope would be that just the threat of sanctions would be enough.

Think of it this way. You run a company with 100 employees. Most of your profits come from one customer. That customer doesn’t like what you’re doing and threatens to cut you off if you don’t fix the issue. If you don’t you’re employees will suffer, and so will your business. What do you do?

The argument seems simple. But it isn’t. In many of the countries we sanction, the leader won’t feel the effects of the sanctions. As the leader of your business, you can watch your employees slowly get laid off, and die of starvation. But if you have your own stockpile of cash you can afford to wait it out. Assuming the leaders of these countries don’t care about their people, sanctions won’t matter to them so long as they can keep paying the body guards.

This is the fundamental problem with economic sanctions as a policy. The wrong people suffer. The decision makers causing all the problems aren’t going to feel the affects of the sanctions. Certainly not immediately. And the sanctions hurt the punisher too. If the punished can afford to wait it out, they will.

That doesn’t say sanctions, don’t work. In many cases they do. But does that make them good policy? Are there other options? I don’t know.

Image: Nouhailler

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In Washington the only currency is political capital. It benefits a politician’s career more to get in the way of legislation than it does to actually work towards getting something passed. I’m not a huge fan of student loans, and only consider them a last resort option. Nowadays they’re the only option for many. That’s because schools continue to jack up tuition and they don’t bear any the risk if their students can’t afford to pay back those loans.

Perhaps they should be responsible in some way for students being able to pay their bills. Colleges don’t have to compete on price because each one offers such a different experience. They’re able to charge what they want because the people borrowing the money aren’t thinking about a return on the investment. Economists might see this as a broken market. I agree. So here a few ways to pay for college that could help balance this out a bit more:

• Equity Stakes: This is a brilliant idea that encourages entrepreneurship. Clarkson University is holding competitions among potential students to pitch business ideas. The best ideas get full rides to the school and in return Clarkson gets a 10% stake in the company. If Harvard had done this with students like Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates they’d have an endowment so big half their students could go to school for free. This is a bit risky, but it’s a great way to align incentives. Everyone wants these kids to succeed. And universities have the resources to incubate ideas.

• School Financed: If schools think their product (education) is so valuable, perhaps they’re willing to provide the loans for you. Given the appropriate interest rate they could recover a few losses and even make a profit. You’ve seen this with vehicles; GM and Honda both have/had in house financial services companies that provide the lending for their products. The parent company bears the risk. There’s no reason a school couldn’t do this too.

• Income Based: Like the equity stakes, this option forces the school to make sure their students are successful. Instead of taking a stake in a company, you get a cut of that student’s future income. Maybe it’s 5% of pre-tax income for 20 years, or 10% for 10 years. The student could be given options just like they have for student loans. The school would do everything to get the student into a good paying job. Perhaps alums could cut their obligation short by hiring new grads from their school too.

Every one of these options puts some of the risk on the school itself. Right now they don’t have any risk. Successful schools will thrive in this environment. Crappy ones won’t. There’s no reason why the school shouldn’t have skin in the game. And there’s really no reason for the government to have so much in it either.

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Dan Ariely of Predictably Irrational fame reminisces:

“When I first moved to the U.S. for graduate school (which was a long time ago), I was very intrigued by and excited about the tax system and tax day. I envisioned it as a matter of civic engagement, a yearly ritual where citizens reflected on their contribution to the common pool of resources—for better and for worse. I imagined that people would consider the benefits of taxes—being able to fund schools, build roads and bridges, care for the poorest members of the community, and fund the defense of the U.S.—while at the same time watching for wastefulness and protesting against it”

Like most people, Dan Ariely understands the purpose of taxes and respects them at a high level. Most people appreciate all the benefits that taxes bring us. Economists agree that the best benefits of taxes are public goods. Public goods are items where there isn’t a market large enough for one group to pay for it themselves. Roads are always the best example. We all need roads, but none of us, not even large corporations, can build a highway system for their personal use.

With public goods there will always be free riders, those that use the goods but don’t have to pay for it. If you drive through a state without stopping to buy something then you are a free rider on that state’s roads. That’s okay though because there are enough taxes collected to pay for the few free riders that can’t be stopped anyway. Public goods benefit everyone and this is why taxes are needed to pay for them.

But when taxes become a part of policy discussion they are publicly loathed for being a drag on the economy or too high or unfair. This is due to fundamental disagreements on what those tax dollars should be spent on. Anyone with a hatred for taxes of a certain kind always has a good story about a rich guy dodging his bill or some poorly managed government investment.

What this has done though is helped create a culture where we feel like all taxes are bad. We forget all the good taxes do for us. When the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act money was being spent we saw signs all over the country near construction sites attributing that project to the stimulus money spending. This likely helped a bit with appreciation for the spending. Imagine a Tea Partier that is at least happy they finally widened the road for their commute.

Do we need more reminders of what our tax dollars are actually doing for us? Here’s just a few publicly funded services that I think would help quite a bit with this problem:

• Outside prisons: These guys are here instead of in your neighborhood thanks to tax dollars
• Bridges: You’re able to cross a gap that previously took 2 days thanks to tax dollars
• Airports: Tourists are able to come here and you’re able to travel thanks to tax dollars
• That new employer in town: You got your job thanks to tax dollars
• Random locations: This area not patrolled by Nazis or Soviets thanks to tax dollars
• Defense contractors: We employ hundreds of thousands of people thanks to tax dollars
• Public transportation: You don’t have to sit in traffic and are using less fossil fuels thanks to tax dollars
• After a wreck involving a guardrail: This person didn’t fall off a cliff and die thanks to tax dollars
• When Grandma comes home from the hospital: She’s still kicking thanks to tax dollars

Those are just a few that came to me in a couple of minutes. If you have more you can throw them in the comments.

It seems though that we’ve collectively forgotten everything our tax dollars do buy.  We only focus on the things our tax dollars are seemingly wasted on. But we’re all connected. The funding for someone’s welfare check may mean the difference between that person robbing your store today or not. A few years ago it was considered unpatriotic to not support our wars, even if you were like me and still very much supported our troops. So let’s get more reminders of all the good stuff our tax dollars do provide. Perhaps then we can be more civilized about what we don’t want our dollars spent on.

Image: Eric Kilby

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“With Barack Obama and John McCain in the White House, 2009 was a pivotal year in American politics. Democrats and Republicans worked together to pass a jobs bill, close Guantanamo and end the recession. Obama rallied liberals behind a version of McCain’s health-care voucher program, providing insurance to everyone, while McCain found enough GOP votes to push the DREAM Act through Congress.”

The idea is pretty simple: instead of one president have two. Each party puts forth their best candidate. They have equal power and work as a team to get things done. They have an incentive to get things done because as the author says, they want to leave a legacy. No president wants to be remembered as the guy that didn’t accomplish anything.

Ignoring some of the obvious differences such as what to do in Iraq and Afghanistan, this idea of a co-presidency is at least interesting and deserves a few moments of thought. The intrinsic incentive to want to get stuff done would exist, but the idea falls apart the more the guy who thought of it explains it.

David Orentlicher explains this idea came to him while working as a state representative in Indiana. He believed that bipartisan nature of our political system was flawed at a structural level. He’s absolutely right, but his solution is so wrong.

While in a perfect world a co-presidency could work as the paragraph at the top lays out. But we know that isn’t going to happen when the presidents meet with Russian officials, or decide on sanctions for Iran. Worse though, Orentlicher identifies the problem (structural issues with our political system) but proposes a radical solution that isn’t likely to fix the problem. The problem exists within Congress. As Orentlicher said, people want to leave a legacy. But without term limits Congress has no incentive to cooperate.

If the system is broken putting two guys in charge isn’t going to fix it. Just ask RIM, maker of the Blackberry. To truly fix the system you need to go to the root of the problem, and that’s ineptitude at the presidential level.

That comes down solely on Congress. The White House doesn’t matter. Congress doesn’t need party leadership, they need a reason to get stuff done. In order for that to happen we need to change the way they raise money, and put in term limits. Only then will Congress care, as Orentlicher points out for the president, about leaving a legacy.

Image: Chesi – Fotos CC

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