The Economist

20 United States The EconomistJuly 21st 2018

1

2 labour union with 1.7m members. In the

run-up to the Janus decision unions asked

their members to pledge “I’m sticking with

my union” no matter what the court decid-

ed. Of the AFT’s 800000 members in

states affected by Janus  530000 had

signed such a commitment before the deci-

sion was released according to Ms Wein-

garten. Heavily Democratic states like

New York and California are also passing

laws to soften the blow by insisting that

unions are given contact information for

ne w workers and strictly limiting the time

period in which employees could revoke

their membership.

The Piketty line

Economistshave long debated the merit of

unions. Classical economists tend to see

them as localised monopolies on labour

which impose deadweight losses. A recent

interpretation of their effec t is more neu-

tral: unions may be a countervailing force

to monopsony or the market power that

firms have over wages and competition for

workers. For example until recently seven

large American fast-food chains held “no-

poach agreements” preventing their work-

er s from switching franchises. They were

dropped when state attorneys-general

threatened to sue. Across the OECD club of

mostly rich countries unionisation rates in

the private sector have steadily fallen. Pub-

lic-sector workers have been insulated

from this in part because governments are

not profit-maximising and in part because

teaching cannot be outsourced to China.

One unintended consequence of the

slow demise of American unions could be

worsening income inequality. Labour-

market researchers note that when union-

isation was at its zenith income inequality

was at it s nadir. A recent working paper by

Henry Farber Daniel Herbst Ilyana Ku-

ziemko and Suresh Naidu used a new data

set spanning the last 80 years to show that

this inverse correlation remains robust in

the face of attempts to control for changes

wrought by globalisation and technology.

Their research suggests a simple mecha-

nism for this association. Union members

have earned up to 20% more than similarly

qualified workers throughout this period.

During the halcyon days of unionisation

unskilled workers were more likely to be

members so this earnings boost helped to

hoist them into higher tax brackets and re-

duce inequality. As unions have shrunk

they have also shed low-skilled workers.

Smaller unions will spend less money

on politicking as they use their dwindling

resources to hold on to members and

stanch the flow of free-riders. That could

make school reform which teachers’ un-

ions have often blocked easier to pursue.

During the 2016 election cycle organised

labour spent $217m—88% of it going to

Democrats according to the Centre for Re-

sponsive Politics which keeps score. There

will also be fewer members to go out and

knock on doors. A clever study published

in January 2018 by James Feigenbaum

Alexander Hertel-Fernandez and Vanessa

Williamson measured the political conse-

quences of declining unionisation by look-

ing at counties bordering states that adopt-

ed right-to-work laws. The researchers

found that such laws not only reduced un-

ion contributions and get-out-the-vote ef-

forts as expected but they also depressed

the vote for Democratic presidential candi-

dates by 3.5 percentage points.

Electoral benefits help explain the zeal

for diminishing union clout. Unions al-

ready fear that th e expansive Janus opin-

ion could invite future legal challenges to

private-sector agency fees as well. When

pushing right-to-work laws Grover Nor-

quistan anti-tax activ istpredicted that if a

dozen more states adopted Wisconsin’s

model “the modern Democratic party will

cease to be a competitive power in Ameri-

can politics”. That is wishful thinking: par-

ties adapt; Democrats have already spent

decades reckoning with declining union

power. Yet unions have often had a moder-

ating influence on the Democratic Party

pulling it back to a focus on the economic

interests of workers when activists might

prefer to concentrate on guns abortion or

th e environment. The withering of unions

will remove that counterbalance. 7

I

N THE run-up to the attacks of September

11th 2001 said George Tenet the former

director of the CIA America’s intelligence

system was “blinking red”. On July 13th

Dan Coats the current director of national

intelligence invoked Mr Tenet’s language

to convey the magnitude of the threat

posed by foreign hackers. “The digital in-

frastructure that serves this country is liter-

ally under attack” he said. “The warning

lights are blinking red again.” Although Mr

Coats expressed concern about infiltration

from numerous countries he called Russia

“the most aggressive foreign actor”. Mean-

while the president seems indifferent

when it comes to the risk of Russian med-

dling with the mid-terms in November.

How vulnerable are American elections?

If Vladimir Putin’s hackers did seek to

intervene in the congressional elections in

November they would have two avenues.

One familiar after 2016 is to use social me-

dia and pretend news sites to spread disin-

formation or propaganda. It seems likely

that Russian intelligence agencieswill con-

tinue trying to bolster the Kremlin’s pre-

ferred candidates and hinder their rivals in

the court of online public opinion. In May

a Russian news agency with close ties to

Mr Putin’s government launched a “news”

website called USA Really which publish-

es a regular stream of articles favourable to

Mr Trump. The impact of such campaigns

is hard to measure: recent research on their

effec t in 2016 found that most people read-

ing such stuff already supported Mr Trump

(see Lexington). But the races for control of

both chambers of Congress now look close

enough that propaganda could prove deci-

sive even if it only sways a tiny sliver of the

electorate.

The second more insidious method is

to complement that tactic with a more di-

rect cyber-attack on voting records or ma-

chines. Fortunately the spectre of hackers

in Moscow doctoring actual election re-

sults appears remote. Just before leaving

the White House Barack Obama designat-

ed election systems as critical infrastruc-

ture. That decision granted election offi-

cials access to federal cyber-security

experts and to an information-sharing net-

work. The federal government ha s since

provided billions of dollars for securing

the administration of elections.

All voting machines are supposed to be

“air-gapped” (not connected to the inter-

net) making them much harder to infil-

trate from afar. Attackers could try to alter

voting results by loading malware onto

USB sticks that get plugged into the ma-

chines or embedding it in the code run on

them (the government’s own hackers used

this technique to sabotage Iran’s air-gap-

ped nuclear centrifuges). But even if Russia

did manage to sneak a virus onto some of

these machines it would need to remain

hidden during routine logic and accuracy

tests conducted before the election which

ensure that the devices’ tabulated totals

equal the sum of the individual votes en-

tered on them. Rigorous reviews of soft-

ware and vote tabulations have revealed

no evidence of any electronic ballot-stuff-

Election interference

GRU II

Voting machines are reassuringly hard

to hack; voter rolls are not

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