Property Tax Assessment Bias

In the last few years, researchers have revealed something shocking about the property tax, the mainstay of local governmental finance. In virtually all jurisdictions in the country, expensive homes are undervalued by property tax assessors—and hence under-taxed—while less expensive homes are over-valued and over-taxed. Put another way, one of the major methods of taxation in America is premised on repeated determinations that the rich are less rich than they actually are and that the less well-off are better off than they actually are. To give it name, there is almost universal Property Tax Assessment Regressivity, or PTAR.

This Article explains the consequences of PTAR. It shows that PTAR, while still likely regressive, may be less regressive today than one might imagine. A consistent, long-standing PTAR in jurisdictions would be capitalized into property values and thus have largely benefited property owners many years ago, rather than today’s property owners. PTAR also limits the “insurance” value of property taxes, the way in which property taxes limit the downsides of property value declines (and the upside of increases). However, PTAR may counterintuitively make jurisdictions less scared of allowing much-needed dense housing construction.

So, should PTAR be fixed? 

The answer is a qualified yes. Fixing PTAR would be an efficient form of wealth redistribution, if a somewhat oddly directed one, as it only shares revenue among homeowners in individual local governments. Capturing the insurance benefits of the property tax would have substantial benefits for the many homeowners with undiversified portfolios. However, fixing PTAR should be paired with policies to mitigate its downsides and enhance its upsides. More taxing authority should be given to bigger jurisdictions, as doing so would enhance the insurance and redistributive benefits of fixing PTAR. And states should pair fixes to PTAR with greater oversight of local zoning authority to ensure a better property tax system does not come at the cost of exacerbating the housing crisis.

What the strange case of PTAR reveals is that the property tax is not, as many have argued, the perfect tax for local governments to levy. Instead, the property tax turns out to be the bad local tax we have grown used to. To make it “work,” we have allowed local governments to engage in all sorts of bad policy—taxing the less well-off at higher rates than those richer than them, and restricting housing growth in order to avoid redistribution.

David Schleicher, "Your House Is Worth More than They Think: The Strange Case of Property Tax Assessment Regressivity", 62 Harv. J. on Legis. 1 (2024).

Dreaming About A Better Future: Beliefs, Culture, And Political Economy Edition

It doesn't hurt to image a better future, even if you have no way of getting all of the way there very quickly at the moment. Technologically driven change is more powerful, more inevitable, and more common, but beliefs, culture, and political economies can progress as well.

Wouldn't it be great to live in a world without the beliefs held by flat earthers, creationists, anti-vaxxers, evolution deniers, ancient astronaut believers, believers in lost high technology civilizations, faith healing believers, people who believe that demons are real, people who believe in possession by evil spirits, people who think that dinosaurs and humans co-existed, anti-fluoride activists, human caused climate change deniers, people who deny that men walked on the moon, and the pseudo-scientific beliefs of adherents to other forms of pseudo-science? Wouldn't it be great to live in a world where we didn't have elected officials and politically powerful individuals who took absurd conspiracy theories like government weather manipulation, Jewish space lasers, sex trafficking dens hidden by pizza parlors, 2020 U.S. Presidential election results denial, and Haitian immigrants in Ohio eating cats and dogs seriously? This isn't impossible. There are many parts of the world, and there are large subcultures in other parts of the world, where these beliefs are vanishingly rare and no one of consequence holds them.

Wouldn't it be great to live in a world where the vast majority of people saw the metaphysical worldviews of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism as myths akin to the predominant view held by modern people today about the pagan religions of the pre-Christian Phoenician, Greek, Roman, and Norse people This isn't impossible either. There are parts of the world where this is the predominant worldview, even if there are fairly small minorities of true believers and many people still acknowledge cultural identities with roots in religion.

Wouldn't it be great to have a world where there was no place where women were denied access to more than rudimentary education? This is already true in most of the world. But it is not true yet Afghanistan, in much of sub-Saharan Africa, in tribal societies in parts of Southeast Asia and the Amazon, and in some Islamic countries (or at least parts of them). Historically, women (and for that matter, almost everyone) was denied access to more than rudimentary education. But most of the world has moved beyond that situation and it isn't impossible to change that in the last remaining hold out societies.

Wouldn't it be great to live in a world free of misogyny and bigotry towards foreigners, non-white people, and LGBT people? This is possible too. There are, at a minimum, large subcultures in many places in the world where this is the overwhelming the case among members of that subculture.

Wouldn't it be great to live in a world that is profoundly less corrupt? This isn't impossible either. There are multiple countries, and there are more subcultures within other societies, where this has been accomplished at well.

The way that a world like this arose would matter, of course. I am imagining a path that would primarily involve gradually converting people to new worldviews, not a path with mass slaughter or one secured with fear or harsh repression, although it wouldn't necessary be completely voluntary either.

Once achieved, this cultural change could be stable. There isn't anything inherently wrong, for example, with the people in Red State America. They just have a culture and belief system the remains in place due to cultural inertia, that in the context of a modern, scientific informed, technological culture with a strong state, is dysfunctional and undermines their own well-being (in addition to making the world worse for everyone who shares the flawed democracy that is the United States with them, and everyone who is subjected to American power in its foreign and military affairs).

John Lennon's song "Imagine", however, wasn't right. We wouldn't live without war in peace and harmony even without religion, countries, and possessions. 

Life without religion can work, but isn't a panacea. Life without countries and possessions, where people just share everything and live as a brotherhood of man, doesn't work. Countries and reasonably regulated ownership of possessions are necessary conditions to peace and a decent life for ordinary people. 

Life without countries promptly leads to anarchic warfare, violence, and warlords. It looks like Somalia over the last few decades, not the garden of Eden. Indeed, well run countries, and systems of strong nation-states in the context of a well-organized international community with widely agreed upon borders, tend to suppress military conflicts, which are resolved by politicians, diplomats, and lawyers instead. 

The last time U.S. states were at war was one hundred and sixty years ago, in 1865. The last war in the U.S. with American Indians ended more than a century ago in 1924 and was followed by legislation that gave Native Americans who were parts of Indian tribes full U.S. citizenship. If the part of North America that is now occupied by the U.S. had been made up of many different independent countries, there would almost surely have been more international wars in this territory in this time period. 

We could also have a global system that somehow prevented psychopaths and authoritarian dictators from gaining control of, or holding onto control of, nations. Some of the worst wars and circumstances for people on Earth exist as a result of a handful of authoritarian leaders and their inner circles of advisors. 

We could have international institutions that could discourage wars. We could have global institutions that prevented the injustices, corruption, and incompetence of national leaders and oligarchs from persisting and triggering insurgencies, violent coups, and civil wars.

All past attempts at life without possessions in the Soviet Union, in communist regimes in Asia, and even in large-scale communes, failed. And, their disavowal of property, and of any meaningful level of inequality, was an important cause of their own collapse. It wasn't just that communism wasn't done right in these cases.

The transitions to Communism in Russia, China, and other places like Cambodia, were some of the worse catastrophes and epic scale tragedies of human history.

In the former Soviet Union and former Warsaw Pact, communism just died, producing a variety of successor regimes, none of which significantly disavowed large accumulations of possessions. Communist Asia has kept their Maoist style one party political systems, but they didn't keep its extreme prohibitions on private ownership of property to the point where it has the toxic concentration of extreme wealth associated with "late stage capitalism" despite being nominally communist. Communist regimes in Africa have had a similar fate. Communism is Cuba has been most of the most successful attempts at it, but has been seriously flawed and authoritarian nonetheless, and communism in Venezuela has been an unmitigated disaster. But we could significantly reduce poverty and other failures of capitalism without abolishing possessions and property and market based economic systems entirely.

It is possible to have a world that is peaceful, sane, rational, believes in science, with diverse populations, that is economically fair. The culture and worldview of Star Trek's society (although, of course, not all of its technologies), is not beyond the realm of possibility at a global level in the real world. Proof of the concept exists in multiple places. Expanding this set of beliefs and worldviews, and creating laws and institutions that support these kinds of societies is difficult but not impossible. 

Just because we failed to secure "the end of history" at the historical moment when it had seemed to pundits to be just around the corner, doesn't mean that this objective is fundamentally unattainable. Most great cultural and political revolutions have taken multiple attempts to finally gain hold.

France eventually secured a republic, despite the fact that it reverted to monarchy after the French Revolution and after some subsequent republics. The anti-monarchist uprisings of 1848 mostly failed, but a coupe of generations later, Europe was made up almost entirely of republics and constitutional monarchies in which the remaining monarchs were basically symbolic figureheads. Almost every newly independent country has coups and/or civil wars at some point fairly early on after gaining independence (the U.S. included). Some European countries have experienced coups and civil wars in the 20th century. A united India only lasted a few years before its Muslim territories were partitioned, the Muslim part was split by a civil war within a generation after that, and the Muslim successor states, between them have had multiple coups. A handful of monarchies transitioned peacefully into democratic countries, but these have been the uncommon exceptions and not the rule.

Why should securing the "end of history" be any easier? It isn't. But that doesn't mean that it can't be done.

A Non-Constitutional Revolution

The Founders in their ignorance, made the U.S. Constitution extremely hard to amend. This post is a quick recap of some of the more transformative way our constitutional and political order could be remade without constitutional amendments.

Disposition Of U.S. Territory Outside U.S. States

* Admit the District of Columbia, which has a population of roughly 679,000, as a U.S. state (once this was done, repealing the 23rd amendment to the U.S. Constitution that gives the District of Columbia three electoral votes would be easily passed).

* Require Puerto Rico, which has a population of roughly 3.2 million, to choose between independence and becoming a U.S. state. Deprived of an option to continue its current Commonwealth status, it would choose statehood.

* Grant statehood to the U.S. Virgin Islands, which has a population of approximately 104,000.

* Return the Guantanamo Naval Base to Cuba.

* Admit Guam and the Northern Mariana Island as a single new U.S. state (they are basically contiguous) with a population of approximately 221,000.

* Transfer American Samoa with a population of 44,000 to the adjacent sovereign country of Samoa, if it will accept it. Anyone dissatisfied with this could migrate to the United States and retain their citizenship.

* Collectively, this would mean that there would be 108 seats in the U.S. Senate (excluding the U.S. Vice-President's role as a tie breaker) and that there are no permanently inhabited U.S. territories that are not within U.S. states.

Congress

* Expand the U.S. House from 435 seats plus six non-voting delegates to a fixed 991 seats with no non-voting delegates. This would mean that there would be roughly 340,000 people per average seat in the U.S. House of Representatives (compared to a current average of about 790,000 people per seat), so only the Virgin Islands would have more house seats than the number it would be entitled to without a minimum of one seat per state rule, and even then, only by about a factor of three less than the average. This would also increase the size of the Electoral College to 999 electors (with the four new U.S. states), would greatly reducing the risk of a tie vote in the Electoral College (since it is an odd number), and would roughly cut in half the benefit that small states have relative to large states in the Electoral College. The number of U.S. House seats would not be changed if a state were allowed to split into more than one state or was merged with another state.

* Enact a statute requiring U.S. states with more than one seat in the U.S. House of Representatives to elect those seats in a party list proportional representation system (with each party's list determined in primary elections held in advance of the election). States with 50 seats or more would be required divide themselves into two or more regions with a number of seats proportional to the region's population of at least 20 seats and not more than 50 seats each. Currently, those states would be California (98 seats) with 2 to 4 regions, Texas (90 seats) with 2 to 4 regions, Florida (67 seats) with 2 to 3 regions, and New York (57 seats) with 2 regions. Smaller population states would be "at large". This would end gerrymandering of all kinds and would make the federal government a multi-party democracy. Doing this for Congressional delegations on a state by state level rather than nationally, would eliminate the need for a constitutional amendment, would de facto create a minimum threshold that would be much higher than it would be in a national proportional representation election, and would keep the states in charge of election administration.

* Enact a statute requiring candidates for U.S. House in states with just one representative (probably only the Virgin Islands and Guam), and for U.S. Senate, to win a majority of the vote to be elected in a general election and to hold a runoff election of the two two candidates if no candidate receives a majority of the vote in the first round. This would largely end spoiler effects as the shift in the House to what would become a multi-party system would increase the likelihood non-majority first round results.

* End the filibuster and Senatorial holds in the U.S. Senate.

Presidential Elections and Disability

* Require states to allocate their electoral votes proportionately to each candidate's popular vote, rather than by a winner take all method for a whole state, or by Congressional district.

* Pass a law implementing Section 4 of the 25th Amendment to the United States Constitution (concerning Presidential disability), to create a Presidential disability commission in connection with the language giving "the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers or the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may be law provide" the authority to determine that the President is "unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office" and to keep that determination in force pending a Congressional determination of the question if the President disputes it. This commission might be made up the active judges, collectively, of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia and would have subpoena power in connection with carrying out its duties in this capacity, and would act on the Petition of the Vice President delivered under seal to the clerk of that court.

Qualifications For Public Office

* Enact a law implementing the insurgency disqualification from office in the 14th Amendment (or on any other ground) allowing any court or tribunal with jurisdiction over election administration to determine this by a preponderance of the evidence in a civil action, and allowing states courts and U.S. District Courts from a state where the official was elected to determine this after an election or appointment. For the President and Vice President, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia would have exclusive jurisdiction after they were elected (and even before they were sworn in). For federal appointed officials, the U.S. District Court with jurisdiction over the place where the official's primary office address is located would have exclusive jurisdiction. For state and local appointed officials, the state courts of general jurisdiction and U.S. District Courts with jurisdiction over the place where the official's primary office address is located would have exclusive jurisdiction.

Election Administration 

* Restore the protections of the Voting Rights Act expanding the protections historically applied only in places with a history of discrimination to the entire country.

* Create a right to have a state ID issued free of charge at some government office within their county at least every five years, with replacement costs limited to the actual direct cost of preparing a new ID between times. Automatically register anyone who is a citizens with a state ID or driver's license to vote. 

* Allow citizenship for voting purpose to be proven by means including any record of a previous voter registration, a passport, an expired passport, a birth certificate, a naturalization document, a tribal membership, a Social Security number, a marriage certificate to a U.S. citizen, or an affidavit establishing facts necessary to prove U.S. citizenship.

* Establish a right to an absentee ballot without proof of need for any registered voter, if a mail-in ballot is not otherwise made available to them.

* Encourage states to reduce the voting age in federal elections to sixteen years old.

* Classify people who are incarcerated as residents of their domicile immediately prior to their incarceration for purposes of state and local redistricting and for census purposes.

* Allow U.S. citizens who have no previous domicile in any U.S. state as residents of the U.S. state of their choice for purposes of federal elections.

* Prohibit election administration by elected officials (partisan or not), and also by partisan political appointees for whom one party controls the highest governing body of the election administration agency.

Courts

* Pack the court. Add another seven justices to the U.S. Supreme Court to end the distortions arising from having a 6-3 ultraconservative and hyper-conservative majority there. This should be done before any of the rest of this agenda is enacted.

* Establish criminal penalties that include disqualification from office for ethics violations by U.S. Supreme Court judges and other judges, with special venue provisions.

* Repeal the general federal diversity jurisdiction statute. 28 U.S.C. § 1332. As a result, federal court diversity jurisdiction would be allowed only in very specialized cases like class actions and cases where the parties claim ownership of land under the laws of two different states.

* Repeal the general federal question statute. 28 U.S.C. § 1331. This would end federal court jurisdiction over most lawsuits arising under federal law between private parties outside some very specific circumstances such as civil rights, election laws, intellectual property, and bankruptcy cases. The biggest impact of this would be to limit employment discrimination lawsuits to state court.

* Abolish the federal Article I immigration courts and give the U.S. District Courts exclusive jurisdiction over all immigration cases.

* Create a specialized national U.S. District Court for Indian Country which would have jurisdictions from multiple venues in cases where the U.S. District Courts currently have jurisdiction (i.e. felonies committed in Indian territory) and over other civil matters of Indian law, from which appeals would be taken to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.

* Statutorily end qualified immunity to lawsuits filed under 42 U.S.C. § 1983.

* End a law parallel to 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for violations of civil rights under color of federal law, thus codifying and expanding the scope of Bivens actions.

* Establish vicarious liability for the employers of government officials or contractors held liable under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 or its new federal counterpart.

* Enact a federal law entitling someone to relief in the form of compensatory money damages, injunctive relief, and declaratory relief from governmental entities that deprive someone of a constitutional or federal statutory right, even in the absence of fault or an intent to do so, including any deprivation of liberty arising from pre-conviction or post-conviction incarceration from someone who was wrongfully convicted, either due to procedural violations giving rise to the conviction or due to their innocence of the charges giving rise to their conviction.

* Enact a law creating a private right of action to seek injunctive relief enforcing the Posse Comitatus Act (which prohibits the use of the federal military to enforce laws domestically) in the appropriate U.S. District Court, to any person impacted by it or to any governmental entity within whose territory military personnel are used for this purpose, with expedited proceedings.

* Prohibit the activation and deployment of national guard troops in a state without the permission of its Governor, absent a notice to the Governor that troops will be deployed at least twenty-four hours in advance and a showing that law and order have collapsed to a point where civilian efforts are insufficient, or that an insurgency is in progress, or that the state is defying federal court orders. If a Governor contests this within twenty-four hours in the relevant U.S. District Court, this activation and deployment shall be stayed until an expedited hearing on the merits can be held to determine if the President has the authority to do so.

* Give U.S. District Court judges broad statutory authority to impose national injunctions against the U.S. federal government.

* Establish a judicial process required to claim the state secrets doctrine in an adversarial proceeding with a specially qualified bar of people having national security clearance at the time of their admission.

* Require an adversarial proceeding affording a personal with national security clearance with due process to revoke a national security clearance for more than five weeks (if this is not done, the temporary revocation would automatically expire).

* A U.S. District Court should be granted the authority to place any federal government agency whose senior officer has defied a court order to place that agency under court receivership, and to remove that government official from office, until a replacement who acknowledges the authority of the court and personally commits to obey that court order can be appointed. 

* Prohibit "bounty" laws that allow someone who would otherwise have no standing to bring a civil action to sue someone for a fine that enforces a state law (which are designed to circumvent judicial review of such laws).

Immigration Laws

* Immediately and automatically grant U.S. citizenship to all legal permanent residents of the U.S. (i.e. green card holders) and to all U.S. nationals who are not U.S. citizens. Allow anyone qualified to get a green card now to immediately get U.S. citizenship.

* Immediately and automatically grant U.S. citizenship to the spouse of any U.S. citizen.

* Grant automatic U.S. citizenship to any member of any recognized Native American tribe, regardless of place of birth, in accordance with the membership rules of the tribe.

* Grant citizenship at birth to a child anyone who is a U.S. citizen, or is serving in the U.S. military at the time of conception or birth. Proof of paternity may be established from the DNA records of the U.S. military kept for people serving in the U.S. military for post-humous identification purposes without the consent of the service member alleged to be a parent (or from a comparison to the DNA of all U.S. service members if the identity of the service member is not known).

* Establish a ten year statute of limitations from first entry into the U.S. (even if interrupted by period abroad of less than one year at a time) on deportations, and allow anyone for whom the statute of limitations has passed to apply for U.S. citizenship on that basis without any civics and English language test.

* Make a passport available free of charge a first time and every time it expires to every U.S. citizen.

* Eliminate authority to denaturalize someone for fraud in the immigration process for any reason, and replace that with criminal penalties for doing so that do not deprive someone of their U.S. citizenship.

* Allow a visa to be revoked after clearing an immigration checkpoint upon entry to the U.S. only with a civil action filed by the United States government in a U.S. District Court at which a valid legal basis to do so, that is not unduly vague and does not violate constitutional rights such as the right to free speech, is established by a preponderance of the evidence.

* Allow someone with a valid visa who is denied entry to the U.S. at an immigration checkpoint to obtain an award of money damages and injunctive relief if the denial of entry is without probable cause to do so, and to obtain injunctive relief reinstating the visa with no right of immigration officials to deny entry if entry is denied with probable cause but the articulated probable cause concern is later overcome. A person with a valid visa who is denied entry could elect to litigate the matter either from a temporary detention center near the place of entry, or from a U.S. embassy in another country such as the country from which they arrived.

* Prohibit deportation of someone, even when valid grounds exist to deport them, to a country where the person is not a national without their consent.

* Establish by statute (regardless of any constitutionally permissible alternatives) that probable cause that someone is deportable is requires to detain someone for immigration violations and that no one may be deported for any reason without notice and a hearing in an Article III court.

* State and local elected officials with immigration detention facilities located in their government's territory, and members of Congress from any state, shall have the right to enter and inspect an immigration detention facility and record by any meaning the people there, what the detainees have to say, and the conditions of the facility, and to demand responses from any person employed there to their questions about the facility, the authority for operating the facility, and the status of the people in the facility.

* The location and status of everyone detained for immigration purposes shall be available to the public.

* Immigration officials and any other private or public person working with them or on their behalf on on their authority shall have a duty to immediately release anyone detained for immigration purposes who presents to them proof that they are U.S. citizens or have a valid visa that has not been revoked by a court. 

Health Care

* Expand Medicare to everyone (without requiring any proof of eligibility), financing it with an increased Medicare payroll tax rate and an Obamacare tax on investment income at the same rate as for self-employed persons. Failure to make a required copayment would not be a basis for denying care but would give rise to an unsecured debt that could be discharged in bankruptcy. Convert VA Hospitals to non-profit independent hospitals financed with Medicare. Repeal Medicaid. End private for profit insurance Medicare providers. Reduce all employee health benefits to Medicare supplemental plans. Require Medicare supplemental plan providers to use standardized claim forms with providers and insureds to simplify provider paperwork.

* End lawsuits seeking to recover the costs of medical care paid for by Medicare brought by any party but the Medicare subrogation division in each state, which could bring subrogation lawsuits in state court to recover medical costs caused by tortious conduct when it determined that it was cost effective to do so.

* Expand Medicare to include long term nursing home care with a deductible not to exceed the median rent in the metropolitan area (or outside of metropolitan areas, in the rural area of that state), which can be paid with a federally guaranteed loan at the one year U.S. Treasury bond interest rate with no payments due until death, secured by a junior mortgage on the patient's personal residence, if any, if the patient is unable to pay.

Labor Laws

* Increase the federal minimum wage to $16 per hour ($32,000 per year for a full-time employee which is roughly the federal poverty line outside Alaska and Hawaii), index it to the consumer price index, and extend it to independent contractors who are providing personal services.

* The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 (FMLA) entitles eligible employees to twelve workweeks of leave in a 12-month period for the birth of a child and to care for the newborn child within one year of birth, the placement with the employee of a child for adoption or foster care and to care for the newly placed child within one year of placement,  to care for the employee’s spouse, child, or parent who has a serious health condition (a serious health condition that makes the employee unable to perform the essential functions of his or her job), any qualifying exigency arising out of the fact that the employee’s spouse, son, daughter, or parent is a covered military member on “covered active duty;” or twenty-six work weeks of leave during a single 12-month period to care for a covered service member with a serious injury or illness if the eligible employee is the service member’s spouse, son, daughter, parent, or next of kin (military caregiver leave). Extend FMLA coverage to include being seven months pregnant or more. Expend the duration to up to eight months in a two year period. Create a federal grant equivalent to full-time minimum wage to anyone taking time off under the FMLA.

* Mandate a prorated 80 hours per year of paid time off for employees working 2,000 hours per year (i.e. 1 hour per 25 hours worked).

Controlled Substances

* End the status of marijuana as a federally controlled substance.

Reproductive Rights

* Statutorily clarify that states may not prohibit someone from prescribing and mailing abortion or contraception drugs across state lines or from crossing state lines to obtain an abortion drug or contraception drug obtained from out of state.

* Clarify that federal government health care facilities (e.g. prison medical centers, military hospitals, historically veteran's hospitals) can provide abortions and other reproductive health care notwithstanding state or local law.

* Clarify that the Emergency Medical Treatment Act requires states to allow abortions as part of a medical emergency, pre-empting state law. 

Household Rules

Her: What does he want to do?

Me: My list would include putting hot things on the granite countertop in the kitchen, not cleaning the drain catcher and squeegeeing the titles after every shower, closing the curtains in front of a house plant at night and then not opening them when the sun rises, eating meals after seven p.m., leaving a dirty dish in the sink to clean in the morning, leaving liquor out and visible when contractors come to work at the house, doom scrolling at 3 a.m., moving or breathing heavily after getting into bed, eating out when we have sandwich ingredients in the refrigerator, not replacing the soap in the shower the moment it runs out, leaving on a trip without the radio playing, adopt cats, using the induction range without protective parchment paper over the surface, putting a pizza directly on the oven rack without a baking sheet, leaving clothes that I plan to wear again on the bedroom floor, interrupting meditation time for a smooch, leaving the ice maker bar in the freezer in the wrong position, wasting the day by sleeping until noon on a weekend or a holiday, impulse buying a Pikachu stuffed animal that is three feet tall, displaying art with a partially topless figure in the living room, not charging my phone every night, setting the thermostat too low, not immediately replacing a light bulb in a fixture with five of them when the first one goes out, eating popcorn with movie butter spray on it, ignoring the fruits and vegetables in the kitchen when getting a snack, putting a dishes in the dishwasher instead of hand washing them when there are only a few of them, putting enamel chop sticks in the dishwasher, filling the dish washer with dishwashing stuff all the way to the top of the slot for it, buying instant oatmeal instead of old fashioned oat meal, buying non-organic 2% milk, not taking off my shoes to go back and grab something I left on the kitchen table for ten seconds, leaving books stacked high next to my living room chair, spreading papers for work over the couch and leaving them there until the next day, complaining about having a Christmas tree, listening to music too loudly, closing the front door too hard, throwing out the plastic bag liner for the bathroom trash with the trash, ignoring dog hair on the furniture and reg that I don't notice, moving furniture that hasn't had felt pads put on the bottom of the legs, keeping boxes of newspaper clippings in the house, keeping many work related books in the house, bringing home groceries that weren't on the list, leaving the door open while stepping out for thirty seconds to do something, not shutting the blinds in the bedroom completely closed at night, using more than one pillow, letting bare skin touch the couch, sitting on the ottoman, putting sharp knives in the dishwasher, putting nut butter in the refrigerator, using the nice gel pens, using the fabric scissors, leaving small appliances on the counter after you're done using them, showering while the lawn sprinkler is going, setting the lawn sprinkler so it goes on the pavement so it can be done in one zone instead of two, throwing out the bran because it ruins baked goods, eating fruits and vegetables without rinsing them in vinegar, making hot drinks with unfiltered water, eating away from the table, hiding all the swim suits but the string bikinis, leaving the vacuum cleaner in the wrong room, disposing of food scraps with the grinder in the sink, letting bacon grease go down the sink, using the charcoal side of the grill instead of the gas side, using temperature settings higher than medium on the range, cutting cantalope into slices instead of cubes, buying more books without removing old ones from the house, using fresh paper that hasn't been used for anything else in the printer, making grits in the microwave without a cover, letting tweens watch PG-13 or rate R content, using all the coat hooks, leaving more than one pair of shoes out of the shoe storage box at a time, putting heavy things on the top cabinet shelves, using the gold rimmed water glasses if a member of royalty isn't visiting our home, not using dryer balls, not taking my phone in silent or do not disturb or airplane mode after a movie or airplane flight, eating the last edible before buying more, wear t-shirts from college, use an overhead light instead of a lamp, using a decanter as a flower vase, throwing away perfectly good ziplock bags, etc.

Her: It takes a lot to civilize a man!

Slightly modified from a Facebook post and comment thread. 

Why preserve this in a blog post?

Because it is easy to forget the myriad little rules that are part of daily life in a household, not lofty enough for policymakers, and usually summarized in just a few words. But, this is a reminder of how intricate and decision filled everyday life in a household really is and how many little choices and observations that we're often totally oblivious to, except in the moment, exist.

A Best Case Scenario Future For Russia

This post isn't a prediction. It isn't even a likely possibility. It is just barely within the realm of possibility. But it doesn't hurt to dream big now and then, because progress towards even part of this goal would be great.

What would be a best case scenario for the future of Russia?

Ukrainian Territory Surrendered

* Crimea is returned to Ukraine, demilitarized and granted a high degree autonomy within Ukraine. 

* The historically ethnically Russian eastern provinces which Russia controls or partially controls would receive similar treatment.

* Ukrainians relocated to Russia would be repatriated.

* International peace keeping forces would provide security guarantees for a limited time period in formerly Russian controlled territory.

Demilitarization

* Russia surrenders its nuclear weapons (which are destroyed with the radioactive elements repurposed for nuclear power). It's nuclear power plants are operated under the close supervision of a beefed up International Atomic Energy Agency.

* Russia's long range missiles and military drones are destroyed.

* Russia's long range bomber aircraft are destroyed.

* Russia's remaining air force is scaled back and its most advanced fighters are destroyed.

* Russia's navy is profoundly scaled back to little more than a coast guard.

* Russia's military industry is basically shuttered, closing its tank factories, it artillery shell factories, its naval ship yards, its military aircraft factories, and so on.

* Russian military spending and military forces would be limited in a manner similar to post-WWII Germany and Japan.

International Relations

* Russia is replaced on the U.N. Security Council by India and Pakistan.

* Any Russian foreign military bases are closed and ceded to the county where they are located.

* Any treaties between Russia and former Soviet Republics are dissolved and open to renegotiation on a clean slate.

* The autocrats ruling Belarus are replaced with a democratically elected regime in elections conducted under foreign monitoring.

Balkanization

* Part of the strategy is that reform and democratization is easier for smaller unitary countries than it is for large federal countries. It is also harder to concentrate military might and economic power in many small countries than it is in one big country. Rump Russia would still be the largest successor state but would still be significantly smaller and more decentralized.

* All of Russia's autonomous regions (everything but the red and pink and blue areas on the map below, i.e. all territories in orange, yellow or green) are granted independence and a right of free passage across all territory that was formerly part of Russia. About 25 million people (out of a total of about 144 million people) live in republics and autonomous regions that would gain independence, which also make up a huge share of Russia's territory.

Via Reddit.

* The Asian and Arctic Russian Oblasts and Krai would be allowed to vote (collectively) on whether to become a separate country of "Western Russia" or not.

* Kaliningrad Oblast, with an area of 5,840 square miles (a little bigger than Connecticut or Puerto Rico or Prince Edward Island in Canada), is demilitarized and its one million people (mostly Russian speaking and ethnically Russian) are granted independence. It is offered membership in the European Free Trade Association (but not the European Union) and encouraged to convert military industries to civilian ones. 

* The loss of Kaliningrad together with the independent republics and autonomous regions, this would leave about 118 million people in rump Russia, and even less if Western and Arctic Russia voted to form their own country.

Regime Change

* Putin is deposed and the current political regime is dissolved and its political officials are removed from office with many disqualified from holding public office.

* A new Russian constitution is adopted reflecting its loss of territory and forbidding any future annexation of territory. It has a very weak Presidency and shifts most power over domestic policy, and almost all lower level courts, to oblast and krai and independent city governments from the national government.

Democratization, accountability, and reconciliation:

* A campaign of democratic education for a decade or so would counter propaganda from the authoritarian era, and firmly reestablish democratic freedoms. 

* Russia and all of its successor states become signatories of the European Declaration of Human Rights (administered by the Council of Europe) and the International Criminal Court treaty. 

* War crimes committed by Russians since the fall of the Soviet Union are prosecuted.

* A commission investigates and discloses the true story of abuses during its authoritarian regime with inside information and the behind the scenes stories of its post-Soviet Wars are told (including all abuses and casualties).

Economic Reforms and Reparations

* Heavy taxes are imposed on Russia's oligarchs and strengthened antitrust laws would break up their economic power.

* Russia's oil and gas industry is transferred to an international corporation in which Ukraine and other victims of its aggression receive a 1/3rd share of the profits (further broken out by an international arbitrator) in lieu of other reparations.

Trump Cedes Africa To China

For better or for worse, the Trump administration's policy towards Africa is to completely withdraw from it: closing embassies, withdrawing any military presence there, withdrawing foreign aid, barring immigration, and discouraging trade with new tariffs. It isn't even seriously criticizing human rights violations there.

China is filling the vacuum that the U.S. departure is creating on all fronts.

I could source every point in this post from news stories. But I don't have the time for it right now (it might take a couple of hours), so this time, as an exception to my usual habit, I'm going to have to have you trust me that the points I'm making have solid backup that could be found and linked.

Naval Warfare Beyond Sensor Range

Modern anti-ship missile batteries have ranges far beyond the effective range of their sensor systems. So, forward observer systems and secure, jam proof, real time communications back to forces with these longer range missiles are critical. But, forward observer units can be tiny compared to warships or conventional military aircraft, and aren't necessarily manned.

Visible range from near the surface on a calm sea in perfectly clear conditions is limited to about 26 nautical miles (a.k.a. about 30 ordinary miles which is about 50 kilometers) due to the curvature of the Earth, although it can be longer from higher elevations.

A nautical mile is 1.15 miles which is 1.85 km. 

A knot is 1.15 miles per hour which is 1.85 km/hour. 

The speed of sound (a "Mach") is about 666.7 knots at sea level.

The US military is expanding its inventory of long-range maritime strike missiles such as the Precision Strike Missile (PrSM), Maritime Strike Tomahawk (MST), Standard Missile 6 (SM-6), Long-Range Anti-ship Missile (LRASM), and Naval Strike Missile (NSM). These capable weapons all have ranges well beyond the effective range of the sensor systems organic to their launch platforms – meaning their effective employment relies on third party targeting data.

While these missiles all have terminal seekers for target acquisition and aim point selection, they require target location and identification information from deep-reach external sensor systems for mission planning, missile launch decisions, target location updates to in-flight missiles, and battle damage assessments (BDA).

The threat of long-range (400 km/160 nm), hypersonic, air-to-air missiles such as the PLAAF’s new PL-21 indicate that US conventional reconnaissance and targeting aircraft must now operate within protected airspace limiting their ability to target enemy ships out to the maximum ranges of US anti-ship missiles. As a result, targeting for US long-range anti-ship missiles is increasingly dependent on NRO and Space Force satellite reconnaissance and targeting systems.

A fundamental problem facing the US military is that the services have fielded capable, long-range missile systems, but only possesses limited deep-reach Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance and Targeting (ISRT) capabilities, limiting the effective employment of long-range missile systems. The National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) and Air Force/Space Force are developing satellite ISRT constellations to address the problem, but the services need to use a ‘Maritime Strike System of Systems’ approach to address the true functionality of US maritime strike capability.

From here.

Who Gets Into Ivy League Colleges?

We use anonymized admissions data from several colleges linked to income tax records and SAT and ACT test scores to study the determinants and causal effects of attending Ivy-Plus colleges (Ivy League, Stanford, MIT, Duke, and Chicago). 

Children from families in the top 1% are more than twice as likely to attend an Ivy-Plus college as those from middle-class families with comparable SAT/ACT scores. Two-thirds of this gap is due to higher admissions rates for students with comparable test scores from high-income families; the remaining third is due to differences in rates of application and matriculation. 

In contrast, children from high-income families have no admissions advantage at flagship public colleges. The high-income admissions advantage at Ivy-Plus colleges is driven by three factors: (1) preferences for children of alumni, (2) weight placed on non-academic credentials, and (3) athletic recruitment. 

Using a new research design that isolates idiosyncratic variation in admissions decisions for waitlisted applicants, we show that attending an Ivy-Plus college instead of the average flagship public college increases students’ chances of reaching the top 1% of the earnings distribution by 50%, nearly doubles their chances of attending an elite graduate school, and almost triples their chances of working at a prestigious firm. 

The three factors that give children from high-income families an admissions advantage are uncorrelated or negatively correlated with post-college outcomes, whereas academic credentials such as SAT/ACT scores are highly predictive of post-college success.

That is from a new paper by Raj Chetty, David J. Deming, and John N. Friedman. One immediate conclusion is that standardized test scores help lower-income groups get into the best schools, compared to the alternatives.

From Tyler Cohen at Marginal Revolution. 

It is well known and consistent with experience that graduating from an Ivy-Plus college is a huge advantage over graduating from a flagship public university.

The fact that Ivy-Plus colleges favor legacies is well known. The fact that admissions favoritism for athletes disproportionately favors students from affluent families (often in obscure sports that students from less affluent families don't even encounter) is much less widely known. It is unsurprising, however, that neither of these factors (controlling for academics and Ivy-Plus admission) influence post-graduation outcomes much (or even hurt). 

It is also no surprise that non-academic credential are important for Ivy-Plus admission or that affluence is a plus in this department. But it is somewhat surprising that those non-academic credentials don't influence post-graduation outcomes much (or even hurt).

A few points that the abstract buries, however, are that SAT/ACT scores are moderately strongly correlated with socio-economic class, that SAT/ACT scores are strongly correlated with IQ (and are not ethnically biased), and that test preparation influences SAT/ACT score outcomes much less than most people (even people very familiar with the college application process) usually believe. See also here. As an aside:

ACT English + ACT Math are actually more predictive of college success and retention than the ACT Composite or the other two parts of the ACT that are more content based. In relative terms, here is how predictive each subsection of the ACT is:

Math (significant at p=0.01 level) 26

English (significant at p=0.01 level) 16

Reading (significant at p=0.05 level) 3

Science (not statistically significant) -1.

Race and ethnicity also influence Ivy-Plus admissions, although in ways rather more complicated than commonly assumed, and in a manner that is rapidly in flux at the moment in light of a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision.

None of this is terribly surprising, but it is a nice, compact analysis with a good methodology. It largely corroborates a similar study about two years ago. As a summary of that study explained:

About 7 percent of the country’s very top students come from the top 1 percent of the income distribution. These students tend to have scored at least 1500 on the SAT (or 35 on the ACT), received top marks on Advanced Placement tests, earned almost all A’s in their high school classes, and often excelled in science fairs or other competitions. . . . 

Perhaps the most surprising pattern involves so-called legacy students, those who attend the same college that their parents did. At the elite colleges that the researchers studied, legacy students had stronger academic qualifications on average than nonlegacy students. Similarly, graduates of private high schools had stronger academic records on average than graduates of public high schools or Catholic schools. 

* . . . About half of legacy students at these colleges would not be there without the admissions boost they receive.  

* A similar advantage applies to the graduates of private schools (not including religious schools). Schools like Andover, Brentwood and Dalton do such a good job of selling their students — through teacher recommendations, essay editing and other help — that colleges admit them more often than academic merit would dictate. Many college admissions officers think they can see through this polish, but they don’t.  

* Recruited athletes are admitted with much lower academic standards — and are disproportionately affluent. It’s not just true of the obvious teams, like golf, squash, fencing and sailing. In today’s era of expensive youth sports, most teams skew wealthy. If colleges changed their approach to sports, they could admit more middle-class and poor athletes (or nonathletes) with stronger academic credentials.

Most of these colleges do not admit only the hyper-qualified affluent students; they also admit many other high-income students. As I mentioned above, 7 percent of the country’s very best high school students come from the top 1 percent of the income distribution. But what proportion of students at elite colleges comes from the top 1 percent of the income distribution? Much more: 16 percent.

I didn't emphasize it when I wrote about this two years ago, but it also is worth observing that 84% of Ivy-Plus college students are not from families in the top 1 percent of the income distribution, although very few of them are truly poor (and if they are poor, they tend to have a very high socio-economic class and social capital despite their personal lack of affluence). This is less than the 93% it would be in a purely meritocratic system, but it is still the lion's share of these students.

Indeed, the colleges with the most affluent student bodies are not the Ivy-Plus schools, but slightly less selective elite liberal arts colleges, like Colby College in Maine and Colorado College in Colorado, that have relatively weak grant based financial aid resources.

My Facebook Profile Mottos

Defend Witches!

Democracy is worth fighting for

Fiat justitia ruat caelum cadet

개는 수프입니다

I'll leave the translation of the last two, from Latin and Korean respectively, to the reader.

Drones And Dirt Bikes > Tanks And Armored Personnel Carriers

On August 7, 2025 at about 6 a.m. local time (the link is to an eleven minute video summary of the attack from the Ukrainian military), a Russian column of one hundred and twenty vehicles, including heavily armored 48 ton modern T-90 Russian main battle tanks, and infantry fighting vehicles with heavy 20-30 mm cannons carrying six hundred troops, together with support and supply vehicles with ten days of supplies, advanced along a road from a portion of occupied Ukraine near the Black Sea coast between the Russian border and Crimea advanced north with an objective of establishing a forward operating base further inland which was 120 km away from their base (about a four hour trip for an uninterrupted convoy).

The 3.4 kilometer long Russian convoy was advancing at the slow speed of tracked vehicles (about 28 km per hour), easily visible, noisy, and smelly with 65,000 horsepower of diesel engines running at once. The major advance was promptly identified by Ukrainian surveillance and reconnaissance resources. Ukrainian officers gathered in minutes to devise a counterattack plan.

Within minutes, Ukraine dispatched twenty long range, fixed wing reconnaissance drones with six foot wing spans and high quality visual and thermals sensors transmitted in real time to Ukrainian command centers (which cost about $4,000 each), flying low at about sixteen feet above the ground at 140 km per hour until almost reaching the convoy, to avoid Russian radar, to gain detailed information about the Russian convey, characterizing each vehicle. The Russians failed to notice them.

Within a half an hour, a plan had been formulated and the counterattack force was deployed. 

By air, eighty shorter range quad copter drones, each carrying the 12 kg shaped charge warhead of an anti-armor shell or missile, or an anti-tank mine, flying low to avoid detection. 

By land, two hundred military grade dirt bikes with two riders each - a driver and a gunner, some with assault rifles, and others with a mix of not very sophisticated anti-armor weapons from rocket propelled grenades to a Soviet anti-tank missile similar to the U.S. TOW missile, broken up into three groups targeting the beginning, middle, and rear of the armored column. The dirt bikes advanced off paved roads through forests and hills through narrow tracks, parallel to the paved road upon which the Russian convoy of armored vehicles was advancing. 

Allegedly, the counterattack was devised and directed from a deep heavily fortified Ukrainian bunker not all that far from the front lines. Each drone was monitored and controlled from a computer screens and VR goggles, by a remote operator. The image quality on the FPV drones, which cost about $500 reach, is far inferior to that of the reconnaissance drones.

The Russians tried to strike the incoming drones with cannon fire from the infantry fighting vehicles and machine guns, but didn't have electronic warfare jamming resources that worked against the incoming drones, or dedicated anti-drone weapons, and only took out a few of the incoming drones.

The Ukrainian drones struck carefully chosen targets in the convoys: tanks and armored vehicles at the front and rear of the convoy to bring it to a halt and deny it an opportunity to retreat, the most heavily armored tanks, a lightly armored supply truck carrying a large load of mortar rounds that produced secondary explosions. 

Moments after the simultaneous attacks from the drone swarm hit, the Ukrainian soldiers on dirt bikes, who had been undetected, fired anti-tank weapons at the remaining vehicles and killed the Russian soldiers who abandoned their vehicles.

The main strike takes place half an hour after the Russian advance is detected and lasts less than fifteen minutes, followed by clean up fire by the soldiers on dirt bikes.

There may have been a few Ukrainian casualties, but all of the one hundred and twenty vehicles in the Russian convoy were neutralized, and almost all of the close to a thousand Russian soldiers, between the vehicle operators and the six hundred troops carried in armored vehicles, were killed or grievously wounded.

Ukraine's tactics aren't new. Ukraine has used infantry on dirt bikes with anti-tank weapons to strike Russian armored vehicles traveling in convoys along civilian roads since February 24, 2022 when the latest phase of the Ukraine War began. Warhead carrying quadcopter drones have been the mainstay of the war on both sides for at least a couple of years now. But apparently, the Russian are slow learners sticking to obsolete Russian army tactics that have been discredited for years now.

The Russian convoy had radar, either integrated into its unit or at nearby bases, but the radar couldn't detect small, low flying drones, advancing at more than 140 km per hour from not many kilometers away. And, any air defense systems in the convoy were among the first targets.

The Russian convoy didn't have reconnaissance drones of its own flying overwatch to detect the incoming drone swarm and dirt bikes in time to give them more time to prepare to respond to the attack. Even if it had had those resources, only a few minutes passed from the launch of the Ukrainian drone swarm to its arrival at the convoy. The dirt bikes, likewise, were hidden under tree cover and behind hills until shortly before the drone swarm struck and diverted attention from them.

The Russian convoy didn't appear to have effective electronic warfare resources to jam the remote control signals for the incoming drones, even though other Russian units have been known to use them. The Russian convoy didn't appear to have purpose built anti-drone weapons sufficient to take down the incoming quad copters at a moment's notice and instead relied on infantry fighting vehicle cannons and machine guns for their largely ineffective effort to take down incoming drones before they were hit. Russian "turtle tank" and anti-drone nets, for the vehicles that had them, weren't very effective. If a first strike from a Ukrainian drone failed to neutralize a Russian armored vehicle, a second or third drone strike would.

The Ukrainian response, and its outcome, should have been entirely predictable at this point to Russian army officers. It isn't as if Ukraine's tactics are a closely guarded state secret. Ukrainian forces regularly upload video of its attack on Russian positions to the Internet for all to see. The Russians had plenty of time to plan an attack that would be less vulnerable to this kind of attack.

There may have been some innovations that weren't disclosed. 

For example, maybe the Russian convoy did have electronic jamming in place, but the Ukrainians were using new innovations to keep its radio signals from being effective or used fiber optic cables that can't be jammed to direct its drone swarm. Maybe the Russians thought there was strength in numbers because it didn't believe that Ukraine could mobilize so many drones and dirk bikes on short notice, so that it least some of its forces would survive and decimate the Ukrainian soldiers sent in to finish the job. 

Maybe the Russians just didn't think it through and defaulted to tactics that they were taught in the pre-drone era. Like a large share of American military strategists and planners, they still don't seem to have come to terms with what they are up against, and have failed to make the dramatic changes necessary to respond to the tactics like Ukraine has pioneered. 

Russia's tactics in the Ukraine War resemble the way that military officers on both sides of World War I resorted to huge human wave attacks (and even horse cavalry charges) long after it had become clear that machine guns and artillery had mad it clear that those tactics were obsolete and futile. Indeed, in many places on the front of the Ukraine War, it appears that Russia is still resorting to World War I style human wave attacks with similar results: gaining control of tiny amounts of territory at a staggering cost in the lives of their own soldiers.

Whatever the reason, three and a half years into the war, on very short notice, Ukrainians with a hundred cheap and crude drones loaded with anti-tank warheads, two hundred dirt bikes, and several hundreds soldiers with a decent supply of anti-tank weapons, managed to defeat a large, heavily armored two battalion sized Russian convoy and neutralize it.

Admittedly, this is being recounted in a propaganda video. There are no doubt operations by the Ukrainian forces that aren't nearly so successful that aren't publicized, where Russians inflict heavy casualties on Ukrainian forces and aren't obliterated.

But the big picture statistics in terms of casualties, equipment destroyed, territory gained, and the proportion of the damage done by drones, bear out that while not all Ukrainian strikes are as large scale and flawless, on balance, cheap drones and light infantry with heavy weapons are superior to heavily armored, large, more conventional military forces.

Damage Inflicted By Ukraine According To Ukraine

 

This may be exaggerated. But, Ukraine has consistently been much closer to the truth than Russia. Third-party verified damage assessments admit that they are underestimates and are order of magnitude similar.

Ukraine has also inflicted considerable damage on Russia's oil and gas industry, its defense industry, its railroads, and its bridges.

These numbers, which are three weeks old, are themselves underestimates.

Estimates of how many of these systems Russia has left are harder to come by, however, and are ultimately more important. But still, Russia has had bigger losses than the entire military of many countries. 

The U.S. Should Divest Its Tanks

The best use of the M1 Abrams tanks currently in the U.S. military arsenal would be to give them away to Taiwan, South Korea, and Ukraine. We would not be able to get additional tanks to Taiwan in the event of an invasion by the People's Republic of China, or South Korea in the event of a North Korean invasion, in time to make a difference. Ukraine would welcome anything we can provide it.

Note that Australia is sending its M1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine.

The M1 Abrams tank is also ill-suited for the conflicts we could conceivably fight, as the U.S. Marine Corps has already realized. The U.S. military is an expeditionary one. All of the near peer conflicts it would fight are overseas and it is very challenging to get its 70 ton plus mass to the front. They are too heavy to cross bridges, or to be carried on trains over rail bridges, in much of the world. They destroy roads and leave a clear trail of where they have been. They are noisy. They are the opposite of stealthy. They have poor situational awareness outside of a flat plain or desert.

The Ukraine War has shown how vulnerable they are to FPV drones and other modern anti-tank weapons despite their extremely heavy armor. Thousands upon thousands of tanks and heavy armored vehicles on each side have been defeated. 

Tanks very rarely destroy other tanks in modern warfare, greatly reducing the utility of their main guns. Their main guns have a shorter range than the anti-tank missiles and artillery rounds that can be used against them. 

They are slow at a peak speed on roads of 45 mph or so, and are slower off road (even though they are much more competitive in speed off road), and the experience of other modern wars have shown that off road warfare is very much the exception rather than the rule. They require an immense amount of fuel and mechanical support to keep running, and those support units generally can't go off road and lack the heavy armor of the tanks. 

They are too wide for urban warfare on narrow streets or in mountain passes or dense forests. Their limited angle of fire makes them ineffective against opponents on top of buildings. Drive a heavy tank into a building with a basement and it will fall into it.

It isn't that armored military vehicles are obsolete entirely. 

An armored vehicles is a formidable adversary to a force without anti-tank weapons that has only small arms. It can ignore the small arms with impunity, and if it has appropriate weapons to engage infantry and more lightly armored vehicles than other tanks (which doesn't require a heavy main tank gun), it can very effectively take on these adversaries. But armored vehicles only make sense in an environment where the force using them has air superiority, has taken out all enemy artillery within range, where the enemy doesn't have modern anti-tank weapons and is unable to place effective anti-tank mines or IEDs. 

There is a niche for armored military vehicles in those conditions, but a huge main gun with a couple of light machine guns added as after thoughts doesn't fill that niche. If one needs the power of a tank round now and then, it can be supplied with a missile or large recoilless rifle round, at a fraction of the weight.

If an adversary has anti-tank weapons or the adversary can attack with ground attack fighters or attack helicopters, the solution is not more armor beyond what is necessary to stop small arms, it is to use active defenses instead. This is a lesson which the U.S. Navy has already learned, but which the U.S. Army continues to ignore.