Author Archives: jsh54

Annals of Counter Terrorism 1.

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Emanuel L. Lutchman lived in Rochester, New York.[1] He was born about 1990. His mother died soon afterward and he was raised by his grand-mother in Florida. He was diagnosed with mental problems early on. When he was 13 he returned to Rochester to live with his mother’s side of the family. He never graduated from high school. By 2006, at the latest, he was having “contact” with the police. In part, this stemmed from his unsteady mental health. In part, this stemmed from crimes. He did a five year bit for robbery. He became a Muslim while in prison. Prison doctors also loaded him up on meds for his mental problems. At some point he got married and the couple had a son, but Lutchman found the responsibilities of marriage and fatherhood a burden. He had a felony conviction, but no high school diploma. Who would hire him? After he got out of prison, he began to follow radical Islamist web-sites and complained on Facebook about the injustices of “the system.” He soon came to the attention of the authorities, who sprang into action. His grandmother said that he was visited by FBI agents in early Fall 2015. They asked him to work as an informant. He declined.[2]

Then he contacted a member of the Islamic State abroad. The government became aware of this and sicked on him several informants. The informants soon won Lutchman’s confidence. He told them of his desire to stage an attack in the near future. The informants told Lutchman that they would help him. His first thought was to imitate the Tsarnaev brothers by building a pressure-cooker bomb. However, he didn’t have enough money to buy a pressure cooker.[3] He thought about a stabbing attack in a restaurant on New Year’s Eve. His wife had a knife and he could get a ski-mask for $5. So, this was more in his price-range.

When Lutchman pledged his allegiance to ISIS, the internet contact urged him to kill many “kuffar” (Unbelievers). Lutchman then made an audio recording of himself pledging allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the self-proclaimed leader of the self-proclaimed Islamic State. He sent the recording to one of the informants. The informant gave the recording to his government superiors. Soon afterward, the superiors told the informant to pull out of the operation. This left Lutchman down-cast. He texted the informant that he “was thinking about stopping the operation.” The other informant quickly bolstered Lutchman’s resolve. He also took him to a Rochester Walmart. They scored ski masks, knives, a machete, and some other stuff. The bill came to $40. Lutchman didn’t have any money, so the informer paid the bill. The FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force then arrested Lutchman the next day.

William J. Hochul, Jr., the United States Attorney in Buffalo declared that “this New Year’s Eve prosecution underscores the threat of ISIL even in upstate New York, but demonstrates our determination to immediately stop anyone who would cause harm in its name.”

The ISIS member with whom Lutchman was in contact has not been publicly identified.

[1] Benjamin Mueller, “Rochester Man Charged With Planning a Machete Attack on Behalf of ISIS,” NYT, 1 January 2016.

[2] See: https://www.google.com/search?q=Walmart+pressure+cookers+price&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8#q=Walmart+pressure+cookers+price&tbm=shop

[3] They range in price between $20 and $120. See: https://www.google.com/search?q=Walmart+pressure+cookers+price&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8#q=Walmart+pressure+cookers+price&tbm=shop

The Gracchi.

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According to the guiding theory of the Democratic Party, a big government that robs the rich to give to the poor should be a permanent winner in electoral politics.[1] It isn’t, in spite of continual Democratic efforts to paint the Republicans as Rich Swells and the mere creatures of Big Business. Eduardo Porter conjectures that working-class whites assign greater importance to “racial, ethnic, and cultural identity,” than to “economic status.”[2]

In December 2015, one poll reported that Hillary Clinton would beat Donald Trump in a general election—if only college-educated people voted. On the other hand, Trump would beat Clinton if only people without a college education voted.

Porter is at pains to argue that, while Trump also polls ahead of his Republican rivals with women and upper-income voters, his main base is “less-educated, lower-income white men.”[3] He argues that white, working-class voters (especially men) are “nostalgic for the county they lived in 50 years ago.”[4] These people—he doesn’t quite say “those people”—“would rather not have a robust government if it largely seems to serve people who do not look like them.” While 62 percent of white Americans would prefer a smaller, less providential government[5], only 32 percent of blacks and 26 percent of Hispanics desire that end.   As a result, America could experience “an outright political war along racial and ethnic lines over the distribution of resources and opportunities.” Actually, it isn’t that clear. Whites account for 62 percent of the population, while African-Americans account for 13.2 percent and Hispanics account for 17.1 percent. Taken together, the supporters of a smaller government total better than 46 percent of the population. That’s a big constituency that spans racial lines.

Porter confuses other issues as well. He approvingly quotes one scholarly paper that argues that “racial animosity in the U.S. makes redistribution to the poor, who are disproportionately black, unappealing to many voters.” For one thing, Trump has not attacked blacks to the best of my knowledge. Indeed, he has sought the support of traditional leadership figures in black communities. Trump’s white, working-class base agrees with the candidate’s policies on building a wall along the border with Mexico; deporting illegal immigrants, virtually all of whom are Hispanic-Mexicans; and registering Muslims as potential terrorists. All these can be read as expressions of concern about the loss of jobs to foreign competition, the open flouting of the rule of law, and security in an age of terrorism. For another thing, while Porter accepts that people can have predominant non-economic concerns, he ignores the chance that people are ideologically opposed to welfare dependency. Something else must be driving them. That “something” appears to be race, as in “racism.” Again, however, Porter turns a blind eye to long-standing traditions of self-reliance as an American virtue.

America’s economy, society, and place in the world have all changed in ways that most people do not like. Democrats and Republicans are both nostalgic and they offer policies aiming at “restoration.” We need something better.

[1] “Tax, spend, elect” is one version of a motto attributed to President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s advisor Harry Hopkins. The authenticity of the phrase is disputed. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_and_spend

[2] Eduardo Porter, “Racial Identity Returns to American Politics,” NYT, 6 January 2016.   This is a variant of what Marxists term “false consciousness.” People think that that they belong to a different social class than they actually do, so they behave in the wrong fashion. In this case, people assign less importance to “economic status” than liberals think that they should.

[3] That is, the foundation of the New Deal coalition and of its successors until the Seventies. Now much despised.

[4] President Obama and other Democrats have been talking about restoring the middle class to its former prosperity. Why isn’t that “nostalgia”?

[5] This group spills well outside of the Republican constituency, let alone the Trump constituency.

The heat is on.

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Diplomatic historians will be familiar with the idea of “two table games.” That is, governments deal with both other states and with domestic constituencies. This analytical approach arose in part as a result of the domestic problems that led Wilhelmine Germany to court the danger of war in 1914. By the early Twentieth Century, the fake-parliamentary government of the Second Reich faced a serious challenge from the rapidly expanding Social Democratic Party, with the powerful labor unions at its back. Middle-class parties were also growing restive with a government dominated by big business and the reactionary “Junker” land-owners of Prussia. To rally support for the established order, Germany pursued an aggressive foreign policy. Either Germany would achieve some diplomatic triumph that would redound to the credit of conservative leadership or the country would face a diplomatic crisis that led all parties to rally ‘round the flag. In the end, however, this policy brought on the First World War.[1]

According to one well-informed analysis, something like the same thing is contributing to the current Iran-Saudi conflict.[2] On the one hand, supporting the spread of the Wahhabist message of conservative Islam has been one way for the Saudis to fend off unrest. Such conservatives have seen Iran as a revolutionary and anti-Saudi force since the Iranian Revolution began (1979). They have quietly criticized the Saudi government for inertia in the early stages of the Sunni-Shi’ite civil war. That criticism may have helped spark the Saudi intervention in Yemen—and Saudi non-intervention in the struggle against ISIS.

On the other hand, handing out free stuff has been another way of fending off discontent.[3] The slump in world oil prices brought about by the American “fracking” revolution forced Saudi Arabia to choose between reducing production to push earnings back up or accepting lower earnings to maintain their share of the market. Saudi Arabia opted for the latter course because they recognized that if they lost customers, they would never get them back. However, lower income meant that the Saudi public budget had to be cut. Recently, Saudi Arabia announced a 14 percent cut in its budget, leading to reduced subsidies for all sorts of things.

For their part, Iranian conservatives are unhappy with the deal over Iran’s nuclear program and the suspected openness to “liberalization” on the part of younger people. New elections loom in February 2016. What to do? Anything that revived revolutionary fervor and rallied people to the defense of the Islamic Republic would be welcome.

Adding to the grounds for complaint by Saudis about various aspects of government policy is the problem of radical Sunnis. What to do? In October 2014, a Saudi court convicted a Shi’ite cleric named Nemer al-Nemer of sedition and sentenced him to death.[4] On 2 January 2016, Saudi Arabia executed him—along with 47 Sunnis linked to al Qaeda. In Iran, crowds stormed and burned down the Saudi embassy.[5] Saudi Arabia broke diplomatic ties with Iran. Other Sunni-ruled Arab states followed suit.

In 1914 German leaders misjudged where their policy could lead them. People had great confidence in rationality. There isn’t much rationality in “playing chicken.”

[1] See, for example, Volker Berghahn, Germany and the Approach of War in 1914 (New York: St. Martin’s, 1977).

[2] Jaroslav Trofimov, “Mideast Internal Politics Fuel Rift,” WSJ, 5 January 2016.

[3] It’s the mirror-image of “taxation without representation is tyranny.” No taxes = no right to representation.

[4] In both Iraq and in Saudi Arabia, Iran has long used Shi’ites as instruments of Tehran’s policy.

[5] It is difficult to believe that the government of Iran did not understand the implications of one more embassy invasion, especially since the seizure of the American embassy figures as the Iranian “Boston Tea Party.” Perhaps that’s why the police failed to prevent it.

Affirmative Action.

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Between 1940 and 1965 the Democratic Party slowly shifted from relying on anti-black racism to a forthright advocacy of “equality as a fact and as a result.”[1] Since the end of the Civil War, opportunities for African-Americans within the modest federal government had bounced around, with the appalling Woodrow Wilson doing much to roll-back advances made under his Republican predecessors. However, after 1932 the dramatic expansion of the size of the federal government and the turn to employing private contractors to execute its will created new conditions. In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson signed an executive order that required government contractors to identify and eliminate obstacles to the employment of minorities (by which Johnson meant African-Americans). This basic commitment to justice swiftly became the consensus in American politics. In 1969, President Richard Nixon issued his own executive order that required contractors to hire so as to reflect the racial composition of their area. Many states followed the lead given by the federal government. Ten years of expanding affirmative action initiatives followed.

For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.[2] For one thing, there were people who saw “affirmative action” as “reverse discrimination.” If one kind of discrimination is wrong, then all kinds are wrong. So, there was a principled opposition to affirmative action. For another thing, affirmative action disrupted and devalued a well-established system of apportioning opportunity.[3] At all levels of American society, some people get things because of patronage or connections. That’s true of “legacy” admissions to Ivy League universities; it’s true of family firms; and it’s true of union hiring halls. Increasing minority representation gored somebody’s ox in many of these cases. For yet another thing, some people are racists. They assumed that African-Americans were innately less capable than were whites. For liberals of this stripe, inferiority meant that African-Americans needed to be protected and guided by an expanded state, rather than left to their own devices. For conservatives of this stripe, inferiority meant that nothing achieved by any African-American came by way of merit, but only by manipulation.

In 1975 Allan Bakke, denied admission to medical school at the University of California at Davis, sued. In 1978 the US Supreme Court found for Bakke, rejecting the use of quotas to apportion opportunity. The case touched a nerve among conservatives in particular. In 1980, former California governor Ronald Reagan won the presidential election. He issued his own executive order ending the affirmative action requirement for federal contractors.

The American system of federalism means that the policy of the federal government is not necessarily the policy of the individual states. Hence, a sustained effort has been made to persuade the Supreme Court that affirmative action is un-constitutional. In 2003, without much enthusiasm, the Supreme Court upheld the basic constitutionality of affirmative action. It’s easy to find people who feel wronged by affirmative action. So, it’s still on the docket.

[1] “The origins of affirmative action,” The Week, 28 June 2013, p. 9. Between 1865 and 1965 much of the Democratic voter base consisted of Southern whites, who upheld the system of “Jim Crow.” Indeed, it seems likely that at various points in its history, every single member of the Ku Klux Klan was a Democrat. Dis-franchised Southern blacks were nevertheless counted for the purposes of apportioning representatives just as if they had the right to vote. This inflated Democratic numbers in the House of Representatives and in the Electoral College.

[2] Isaac Newton, Third Law of Motion. But maybe not, at least not in politics, society, and the economy. Otherwise we’d be stuck in the same place for millennia. This shows the perils of applying the lessons of physics to the less reliable world of human activity. So does the Reign of Terror in the French Revolution. But I digress.

[3] Indeed, that was the idea.

American opinion on gun control.

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Americans are divided on the utility of stricter gun laws to stop shootings. In September 2015, 46 percent of Americans thought that stricter gun-laws were the best way to reduce the number of shootings, while 36 percent thought that the best way would be for more Americans to carry guns for their own protection, and 18 percent weren’t sure.[1] By late-October/early-November 2015, about one-third (35 percent) thought that tighter laws would reduce all forms of shootings, while another third (35 percent) thought that tighter laws would have no effect, and almost a third (30 percent) weren’t sure. On the subject of “mass shootings, however, Americans were clearer in their mind. Almost half (48 percent) thought that mass shootings can be stopped, while one-third (35 percent) think that these events are “just a fact of life in America today.” That means that only one-sixth (17 percent) weren’t sure.[2] However, that was before the San Bernardino shootings[3] and President Obama’s ill-received speech seeking to reassure Americans. By mid-December 2015, 71 percent of Americans believed that both mass shootings and terrorist attacks have become a permanent part of American life.[4]

That is, the share of Americans who believe that mass shootings are just a fact of life more than doubled and moved from a minority to a majority position in about a month. It’s easy to se why they think so. About twice a day for the last twenty years somebody gets killed in an act of workplace violence. More specifically, 14,770 people between 1992 and 2012. Mostly, they were shot.[5] Between 2007 and the end of 2015, 29 people legally entitled to carry a concealed weapon committed “mass shootings.”[6] In the wake of the shooting incident at the Planned Parenthood site in Colorado Springs, CO, people started doing the math for the umpteenth time. Using the expansive definition of “mass shootings” (at least four people including the gunman are killed or wounded), there were 351 mass shootings from 1 January to 30 November 2015.[7] However, this isn’t what most people mean by “mass shootings.” Most people mean “somebody goes postal.” The expansive definition includes criminals who shot up everyone inside of or in front of a row-house in Bal’mer.[8]

Similarly, in Fall 2015, almost half of Americans (46-48 percent) thought that stricter regulation of who could own a gun would reduce shootings by some uncertain amount, while just over a third (35-36 percent) thought that such restrictions wouldn’t be effective. The size of the uncertain group bounced around from 18 to 30 percent. However, the number of the uncertain rose as the issue was discussed in public. The increased size of the uncertain group came at the expense of the supporters of stricter gun laws.

In contrast, the numbers for those who favor carrying personal weapons for protection, who doubt the effectiveness of stricter gun control laws, and who believe mass shootings are just a fact of life are all the same at 35 percent. This matches up with the one-third of Americans who are estimated to own guns.

Gun control advocates are losing the debate. The more they talk, the more they lose. Is it time to re-think strategy and discourse?

[1] “Poll Watch,” The Week, 11 September 2015, p. 19.

[2] “Poll Watch,” The Week, 6 November 2015, p. 21.

[3] So far as I can tell, the NYT never referred to the recent attack in Paris as a “mass shooting.”

[4] “Poll Watch,” The Week, 25 December 2015, p. 21.

[5] “Noted,” The Week, 11 September 2015, p. 18.

[6] “Noted,” The Week, 6 November 2015, p. 20.

[7] “Noted,” The Week, 11 December 2015, p. 16.

[8] See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7DhFhzkjcA

Sell Order.

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The American public schools are in trouble by several measures. (See: “Edjumication.”) One measure is public confidence in the public schools. Only 37 percent of Americans say that public school students get a “good or excellent education.” In contrast, 60 percent say that children who are home-schooled get a “good or excellent education”; 69 percent say that children who attend a parochial school get a “good or excellent education”; and 78 percent say that children who attend a private school get a “good or excellent education.”[1] On Wall Street this would be called a “sell order” for public schools.

How can we interpret these figures?[2] Well, curriculum for all schools are pretty much the same because they are mandated by state Departments of Education. So, that isn’t the key. Public school teachers and parochial school teachers are drawn from pretty much the same pool of job candidates. So the “quality” of the teachers isn’t the key. So, why do 37 percent of people believe that students get a “good or excellent education” while 69 percent believe that students in parochial schools get such an education?   I conjecture that there are two factors/beliefs that play a role. On the one hand, public schools have to take anyone who comes along, then try to get them through. It’s difficult in the present environment to permanently expel or fail a troublesome or weak student. They just disrupt or slow-down the progress of whatever classroom they happen to inhabit. In contrast, the parochial schools can either reject or shed problematic students. What constitutes “problematic” is up to the schools themselves.

On the other hand, parochial school really means “Catholic school” in almost every instance. In 2014, 48 percent of Americans believed that government should “promote more traditional values,” while 48 percent thought that government should not “favor any values,” and 4 percent didn’t know. In 2015, 43 percent thought that government should “promote more traditional values,” while 51 percent think that government should not “favor any values,” and 6 percent didn’t know.[3] “Spotlight” aside, the Catholic church stands for “traditional values,” while—in the mind of many people—the public schools stand for no values or corrosive values.[4]

What explains the high regard for home-schooling? I conjecture that it is motivation. Home-schoolers may be deranged or fanatical, but they’re also committed to doing the best they can for their students because they are also their children. This may reflect a judgement by home-schooling parents that public school teachers are under-motivated and under-prepared, but also that the environment in both the public schools and the Catholic schools are toxic. On the one hand, many home-schooling parents are evangelical Christians to whom a secular or Catholic environment is obnoxious. On the other hand, many are secularists who think the current obsession with testing and preparation for being a “productive member of society,” rather than an independent thinker, is obnoxious.

Finally, what explains the very high regard for private schools? That’s simple. They are the most selective institutions other than home-schooling. They are rigorously academically-oriented. The teachers usually are not products of mud-sill teacher preparation programs. Rather they are people with real BAs in academic subjects from real places. They get paid a lot less than do public school teachers, but have much heavier demands on their time. The trouble is that they are few in number, really picky about who they let in, and they cost an arm and a leg.

So, there are several possible lessons here. One is that the public schools are the victims, rather than the perpetrators, of larger social forces. A second is that picking on public school teachers isn’t going to solve the problems. A third is that the public schools bleed public support for the schools in parallel with their loss of students. A fourth is that trying to coerce students back into the public schools isn’t going to work unless and until the schools address the issues that caused so many people to despise the public schools.

[1] “Poll Watch,” The Week, 14 September 2012, p. 19.

[2] My own perspective is shaped by the following factors. I went through the Seattle public schools from K through 12. I teach at a little Catholic college, where I serve on the Teacher Education Committee. As a result, I meet a lot of Education students. Some of the students in the program go on to teach at public schools and some go on to teach at parochial schools. I don’t see a dime’s worth of difference between the two sets of teachers. One of our sons went through the public schools from K through 12; the other spent his last four years at an “elite” private school. Public school teachers today don’t seem to me to be much worse than when I was in school.

[3] “Poll Watch,” The Week, 16 October 2015, p. 17.

[4] There’s this Gahan Wilson cartoon from a ways back that shows some balding guy in a tweed jacket and horn-rimmed glasses getting sworn in as a witness. The clerk holds out the Bible and says “Do you swear to tell the Truth, the whole Truth, and nothing but the Truth—and not in some sneaky, relativistic way?”

Captives.

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“Millions for defense, but not one penny for tribute!” So said Congressman Robert Goodloe Harper in 1798 in response to an attempt by French foreign minister Talleyrand to extort a bribe in return for negotiating a treaty with the new United States. Then came the whole Barbary pirates engouement, where Americans got bent out of shape over North African corsairs capturing American sailors and holding them for ransom or selling them into slavery.[1] So, the Americans decided to burn the place down.[2] Not the last time that Americans have felt that way. Sometimes they act on it. Certainly it has become something of a cultural trope. “The Searchers” (dir. John Ford, 1956) tells the story of a revenge-mad man hunting the Comanche band that had killed most of his family and kidnapped his nieces. In theory, he wants the niece back; in reality, he’s out for blood. So a basic American history class would probably be a good idea for radical Islamists. JMO. You do what you want. It’s a free country. Well, ours is.

Anyway, as the twig is bent, so grows the tree. These days, terrorists often finance their operations by kidnapping Westerners (including Japanese) and holding them for ransom.[3] For a while, Somali fishermen-turned-pirates captured cargo ships and held both ship and crew for ransom.[4] Most countries just pay the ransom and get their people back as soon as possible. Not the US. The US opposes paying ransom, arguing—reasonably enough—that this just encourages the terrorists and pirates. Generally, the American public supports this policy.[5] In September 2014, almost two-thirds (62 percent) agreed that the government should not pay ransom, while 21 percent thought that the government should pay.

Theory versus Practice. Back in 2009, Army sergeant Bowe Bergdahl wandered away from his post in Afghanistan. The Taliban snapped him up. In June 2014, the US traded five Taliban prisoners for Bergdahl. That’s “tribute.” Many Americans—43 percent according to a Pew poll—disapproved of the deal. The division followed the usual partisan lines of the Obama administration: 71 percent of Republicans and 24 percent of Democrats opposed the deal; while 55 percent of Democrats and 16 percent of Republicans approved the deal.[6] That means that 13 percent of Republicans and 21 percent of Democrats “don’t know.”

It is interesting to compare this with Israel’s response to similar situations. Since about 1985, Israel has traded Palestinian prisoners for captured Israeli soldiers, civilians, and war-dead. The customary tariff seems to be about 100 Palestinians for each Israeli: 86 Israelis released in exchange for 8,000 Palestinians.[7] It appears to be a widely shared axiom among Israelis that you get your people back, even at a high price.

[1] Previously, “Americans” had been “British.” This meant that Barbary corsairs capturing British-flagged vessels would vex the British government, which would send some hard-case from the Royal Navy to negotiate. “How ‘bout you give me some money and I give you the captives?” versus “How ‘bout you give me the captives and I let you go on living—until the next time our paths cross?”

[2] See: “To the Shores of Tripoli” (1942) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SeTMTN7KtUg and “Tripoli” (1950) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XZZnWMP4CU Oddly, both star John Payne.

[3] On the other hand, there’s this apocryphal story you still hear once in a while. Some Middle Eastern terrorists purportedly snatched a KGB officer and demanded ransom. Next thing you know they got a shoe-box delivered to their hide-out. Inside were the hands of one of the kidnappers who had gone out for falafel or something. Russkies got their guy back in a hurry.

[4] See: “Captain Phillips” (dir. Paul Greengrass, 2013).

[5] “Poll Watch,” The Week, 5 September 2014, p. 17.

[6] “Poll Watch,” The Week, 20 June 2014, p. 17.

[7] “Noted,” The Week, 20 June 2014, p. 16.

The Golden Years.

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Can “social progress” have negative consequences? The social security systems established after the Second World War rested on the assumption that many workers would pay a small tax to support a few retirees for a few years.[1] In Western countries the ratio between active, tax-paying workers and inactive, benefit-receiving retirees has shifted from 14 retirees/100 people to 29 retirees/100 people. This has shifted the balance between the number of workers whose taxes support retirees and the number of retirees. Furthermore, people are living longer. Just since 1970, the average period which people spend in retirement has increased by seven years. This has increased the costs of retirement born by advanced societies. Between 1990 and 2011, public spending in this area increased from 6.2 percent of GDP to 7.9 percent. An aging population has more and more retirees and fewer and fewer workers to support them.

There’s Social Security and then there are your personal savings. These are the two chief components of retirement income for most American workers. Social Security originally was not meant to be a national pension system. It was meant to insure the aged against a steady diet of cat-food noodle casseroles. Today, Social Security pays out 39 percent of the career-average earnings of middle income workers and 54 percent of the career-average earnings of a low-wage worker. If projected personal savings are added to projected Social Security benefits, then a low wage worker could anticipate receiving 90 percent of his/her average lifetime wage. However, most low-wage workers don’t manage to save much. One study estimated that less than ten percent of the bottom 20 percent of retirees has any personal savings. Social Security only pays about 54 percent of these peoples average lifetime wage. Old age means a big fall in income.

The problems will get worse. Nominally, Social Security recipients are buffered by the Social Security “trust fund.” Even if we accept this fiction, then the trust fund will eventually be exhausted. By 2035, Social Security will be paying only 27.5 percent of average career wages.

The slow-growth American economy will not make it easier to resolve these problems. It isn’t generating higher wages for most workers. The retirement of the “Baby Boom” generation is likely to create labor shortages that will drag on economic growth. While it seems to be accepted that many Americans who are doing some kind of physical labor will have a hard time adding more years to their careers, it is also likely that many people doing some kind of office work will see their intellectual abilities degrade in the same way.

So, what is to be done? One solution—popular among liberals, but poison among conservatives—is to raise the cap on Social Security withholding for higher income groups in order to re-distribute the income (and reduce the savings) of the well-paid and the provident. Another solution—popular among the “serious people” often derided by Paul Krugman—is to raise the retirement age in order to reduce spending while raising contributions. The discussion of these options is likely to be messy. Both sides are likely to frame the debate in moral, rather than practical, terms. The well-off will be portrayed as “greedy,” as “selfish,” and as not “needing” all that they have. The needy will be portrayed as “takers,” as “slackers” and as people wanting to manipulate the political system to escape the consequences of their own bad choices.

Less than a year out from a presidential election, it would be nice if the issue came up in a debate.

[1] Eduardo Porter, “An Aging Society Changes the Story About a Decline of Poverty for Retirees,” NYT, 23 December 2015.

Edjumication.

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Is college worth the price? Oh absolutely! In the late 1970s, a college degree earned you about 25 percent more than did just a high-school diploma. In the late 1980s, a college degree earned you about 50 percent more than did just a high-school diploma. In 2000, a college degree earned you 70 percent more than did just a high-school diploma.[1]

On the other hand, if a student attends a college or university that is ranked in the bottom 25 percent of all colleges and universities, then they are likely—on average—to earn less than a high-school graduate who did not attend a college or university. But which are these schools? Google “ranking of colleges and universities” and the next thing you know, you’re in a morass. What I’m—defensively—guessing is that the list includes a lot of for-profit schools which the Federal government is intermittently dragging down a dirt road chained behind a pick-up truck.  Still, if you think about it, there are a bunch of schools where a BA earns you just as much as not having gone to college, and a bunch more schools where a BA earns you somewhat more than not having gone to college in the first place. All of this costs students and/or parents money.

Not everyone is a loser in this stupid game, but the success of some disguises the relative failure of many. Currently, the average annual income for college graduates ten years after crossing the stage to the cheers of family members is $35,000.[2] On the other hand, after the same span of time, Ivy League graduates average $70,000.[3] So, all you’ve got to do is work real hard in high-school, get into one of the Ivies, and you’re on Easy Street, right? Well, it turns out that “no, man, there’s games beyond the game,” as “Stringer” Bell advised Avon Barksdale on “The Wire.” For the top ten percent of Ivy League graduates, the average income ten years out is $200,000 a year. We’re talking about 31-32 year-olds here.

Why did the gap between a high school diploma and a BA open? Did the economy develop in a way that created an increased demand for whatever higher order intellectual skills and contextual knowledge one acquires in college? Did the economy develop in a way that eliminated well-paying jobs that did not require a college education? Did the high-schools decline as institutions of foundational learning, shifting the burden to colleges?

Well, yes. Back in April 2008, American high-schools trailed many other countries in their graduation rate. Norway (100 percent), Germany (99 percent), South Korea (96 percent), Russia (87 percent), and Italy (81), among others, all out-performed the United States (75 percent).[4] In June 2015, many young Americans graduated from high-school. Their average composite SAT score was 1490 out of a possible 2400. That is the lowest level since 2005. The country has been pursuing essentially the same educational reform policy under different names (No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top) all those years. It has achieved nothing. Furthermore, the commonly-accepted bar for college readiness is 1550. OK, not everyone needs to go to college (regardless of what President Obama once hoped for) and it’s only an average. So, how many high-school graduates were ready for college? Of all students, 42 percent scored at least 1550. However, only 16 percent of African-Americans scored at least 1550.[5]

The problems are with the schools and with parenting. Sad—and rare–to say. Read to your kids. Let them see you reading.   Praise hard work. You know, Puritanism.

[1] “Noted,” The Week, 14 January 2005, p. 14.

[2] When welders are making $100K a year.

[3] “Noted,” The Week, 25 September 2015, p. 16.

[4] “Noted,” The Week, 4 April 2008, p. 16.

[5] “Noted,” The Week, 18 September 2015, p. 16.

Who lost Saudi Arabia?

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Diplomatic historians[1] commonly try to examine both sides of any international relationship, whether of conflict or co-operation. The United States has long had a close relationship with Saudi Arabia. There are signs that the relationship is beginning to fray. The Obama administration’s effort to straddle the divide in the Sunni-Shi’ite civil war has alarmed the Saudis. The administration’s (laudable) desire to avoid a major new war in the Middle East over the Iranian nuclear weapons program particularly alarmed the Saudis. When the United States suspended aid to Egypt after the coup that overthrew the Morsi government, Saudi Arabia more than made up the lost money. Saudi Arabia has refused to provide ground troops to oppose ISIS in neighboring Shi’ite ruled Iraq. Then Russia’s desire to reassert itself as a factor in the Middle East offered the Saudis an opportunity. In early Summer 2015, Saudi Arabia signed deals with France and Russia to build 16 nuclear reactors by 2032. Like the nuclear program of Iran, these reactors in an oil-rich nation are intended only for peaceful purposes.[2] Right.

After the dramatic expansion of the “caliphate” in Summer 2014, ISIS appears to have slammed up against its limits on territorial expansion. It has not been able to capture additional ground in the predominantly Shi’ite areas of Iraq; it has not invaded Jordan or Saudi Arabia, or Turkey; and itr has lost 40 percent of the ground it once controlled.

This raises several important questions. First, is ISIS molting under pressure from an insurgent army into a conventional terrorist force?[3] Recently, the suicide bombing of a political rally in Ankara, Turkey, the bombing of a Russian airliner over the Sinai peninsula in Egypt, the suicide bombings in a Shi’ite quarter of Beirut; and the terrorist attacks in Paris all appear to be ISIS-directed attacks.[4] Some people[5] are inclined to believe that the terrorist attacks are acts of propaganda. According to this view, the various slaughters are intended to sow division in other societies by pitting secular and Christian Westerners against Muslims, Shi’ites against Sunnis. This view seems far-fetched.

Second, if ISIS is now contained as a conventional force, how is it to be defeated? Who is going to do it? Both in the West and in the Sunni Middle East there is an assumption that the job falls to the United States, possibly backed by other Western states. One Saudi Arabian columnist recently complained that only “boots on the ground,” and not merely air strikes. can defeat ISIS. If the Western countries are afraid to suffer casualties in a ground war, then ISIS will survive. No mention was made of sending Saudi Arabian troops into a country on its own border. Yet Saudi Arabia has the third largest defense budget in the world and is waging war on a Shi’ite group in Yemen.

Occasionally, some people can escape the general Sunni refusal to face responsibilities. One columnist has argued that “Only moderate Sunni forces can defeat radical Sunni extremists.” Will Saudis Arabia send troops to fight ISIS? It seems unlikely. Will Turkey send troops to fight ISIS? It seems unlikely. Will Iran or Russia send troops to fight ISIS? It seems unlikely. Soooo…. Either the US sends troops or we let ISIS exist inside its cauldron.

[1] Except historians of American foreign policy.

[2] “How they see us: Saudis lean toward nukes, Russia,” The Week, 10 July 2015, p. 15.

[3] “Middle East: How to stop ISIS?” The Week, 27 November 2015, p. 15.

[4] In contrast, the January 2015 attack in Paris; the murders at a Tunisian beach resort, at a mosque in Kuwait, and at a French chemical plant in Summer 2015; and the terrorist attack in San Bernardino in December 2015 appear to be ISIS “inspired” attacks. If you accept my distinction. Not everoner will.

[5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1wg1DNHbNU