Category Archives: American Society

Rant.

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In terms of GDP the United States has the largest economy in the world: $17 trillion. China’s GDP is $10 trillion, with 2-3 times as many people, so China’s per-capita GDP is pathetic compared to the US.[1]

In terms of after-tax household income, the US just wipes the floor with other countries: the US average is $41,355, while the median for Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries is $27,630. So the US is like 50 percent higher than the median. That means that it drags the median upward by its high household income, so most OECD countries have family incomes even lower than in the US. .

People are quick to point out that American success is all quantitative, rather than qualitative. Americans work way more than do “normal” people: an average of 46.7 hours a week. They get less sleep, have less family time with their ingrate kids, have wives who have let themselves go, and about 35 percent of Americans are obese.[2] American society may be rich, but it is very unequal, which may be a factor in high poverty rates. Also, there are signs of “moral decay”: Americans trail only Mexico and Chile in pregnancy rates among 15-19 year-olds. Then there is all the violence: only Mexico has a higher murder rate per 100,000 people—and Mexico has drug gangs run amok. Only 74 percent of Americans, Serbs, or Egyptians felt safe walking alone at night.

Is there an alternative model? Yes, either Scandinavia or Central America. Panama, Belize, and Costa Rica all out-pace the US in reports of “daily positive experiences such as smiling and laughing, feeling enjoyment, and feeling treated with respect each day.”[3] More concretely, Scandinavians (Danes, Norwegians, Swedes) accept paying much higher taxes generally than do Americans in return for a comprehensive social safety net.[4] Top earners pay 57 percent, but—and this will freak-out Democrats—middle-income earners pay up to 48 percent of their income in taxes.[5] Consequently, the price of consumer goods is higher and the purchases of consumer goods are less. On the other hand, if you’re playing by the rule that “the one with the most toys when he dies wins” or if you listen to economists who argue that the great American demand for consumer goods is what drives the world economy, then you have to hate the European approach.

Regardless of what European leftists insist, the American definition of happiness isn’t just about quantitative measures over qualitative measures. Americans value individual freedom and choice more than do people elsewhere, and this makes them insist on the importance of individual self-reliance and accountability more than do people elsewhere. Americans believe that progress in life, measured in economic terms, validates an open society and a competitive economy. This is why the “recent [economic] unpleasantness” has been such a trial for Americans. It is astonishing that most of the Republican presidential candidates can’t see this.

See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q49NOyJ8fNA

[1] “How America rates,” The Week, 27 November 2015, p. 11.

[2] Only 4 percent of Japanese are obese and that’s including all those sumo wrestlers.

[3] This explains all the reports of Yankees getting caught trying to cross into Mexico. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-N9L3ZXWPA

[4] Actually that term is deceptive. Americans mean that they have to catch and carry the screw-ups. Scandinavians mean a system for enabling each person to live a productive and socially-useful life. These different meanings reflect different beliefs about human character. Jury is out in my view.

[5] So, good-bye “middle class tax cuts” beloved of both parties and the Obama confirmation of 98 percent of the George W. Bush tax cuts looks politically expedient without being fiscally prudent.

No Duty to Retreat.

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“Here’s the thing about rights—they’re not actually supposed to be voted on. That’s why they’re called rights.”–Rachel Maddow, August 2010. Still, people try to justify the “right to keep and bear arms.” One justification is that of self-defense. Is there anything to this justification for individual gun-ownership?[1] It’s controversial. Almost two-thirds (63 percent) of people believe that having a gun in the house will make a person safer. Over half (56 percent) believe that people would be safer if more people carried concealed weapons. Basically, people think that dialing 911 doesn’t save people who are already dead or those who will die between the time you make the call and time the cops make an effective response.[2]

There are a lot of risks involved in keeping a gun in the house. For one thing, the risk of death from suicide is much greater. Although gun-owners are no more likely to attempt suicides than are non-gun-owners, they are much more likely to succeed if they do try it. Guns play a large role in the roughly 20,000 suicides in the US every year. Then, one study calculated that people who keep a gun in the house are 90 percent more likely to die of homicide than are people who do not keep a gun in the house. Another study found that an armed person was 4.5 times more likely to be shot during an assault than are people without a gun.[3] Not having a gun makes one more likely to run away in the face of danger than would be the case if one had a weapon.[4]

Florida State University criminology professor Gary Kleck ran one survey that led him to believe that guns are used in some form of “self-defense” up to 2.5 million times a year. “Nonsense,” say the critics. The FBI reports that there were only 258 “justifiable homicides”[5] in 2012 out of 14,827 total homicides. Another study found that there were fewer than 1,600 self-defense shootings—fatal and non-fatal–in 2014 out of a total of 52,000 shootings.

What if somebody breaks into your house (a “home invasion”)? In theory, your chances of getting killed in such an incident are virtually nil. In practice, between 1980 and 2008, the percentage of homicides that occurred during a felony—a home break-in or a street assault–was higher for elderly homicide victims age 65 or older than for homicide victims of other ages—rising from 30 percent at age 60 to 40 percent at age 85.[6] They died of not shooting back.

Back of the envelope, if there were about 50,000 shootings a year and about 15,000 deaths, then there was a wounding-to-death ratio of about 2 to 1. If that ratio were applied to “justifiable homicides,” then 258 “justifiable homicides:” would yield a figure of non-lethal “justifiable shootings” of maybe 550 shootings in addition to the “justifiable homicides.” That makes for an annual total of about 800 shootings in which the civilian shooter was “justified” in using force. However, the 2014 figure of 1,600 self-defense shooting indicates a much higher share of woundings to deaths.

So, broadly, there isn’t much ground for claiming that guns provide self-defense.

Unless you’re one of the people who saved your life by shooting some son-of-a-bitch.

[1] “Firearms and self-defense,” The Week, 6 November 2015, p. 14.

[2] In only 7 out of a total of 160 “active shooter” incidents catalogue by the FBI between 2000 and 2013, armed people shot the assailants to bring the slaughter to an end. Only one of those cases involved an armed civilian, rather than an off-duty police officer or an armed security guard. Obviously, gun-rights advocates will argue that this small number results from people not being allowed to carry weapons in many public venues.

[3] Those are correlations, not causation. Maybe people who keep guns in the house do so because they know violent people.

[4] This raises all sorts of psycho-cultural issues about “manhood” (and “womanhood”/dealing with abusive males).

[5] “The killing of a felon, during the commission of a felony, by a private citizen.”

[6] See: http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/htus8008.pdf

Gun-ownership in America.

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There are a lot of firearms in the United States. Roughly about one per person. What percentage of Americans own these firearms?

Survey data suggests a range of answers. A study done by a Harvard University team suggested that 38 percent of Americans own guns.[1] A study done by a Columbia University team suggested that about one-third of Americans own at least one firearm.[2] A study done by the University of Chicago’s General Social Survey suggests that the figure is 30 percent.[3] Arguably, there’s a broad convergence of estimates around the one-third figure.

The studies revealed interesting disparities in gun-ownership. There are big differences between states and between regions.

5.2 percent in Delaware.

5.8 percent in Rhode Island.

19.6 percent in Ohio

20.0 percent in California (the lowest rate of Western states).

28.8 percent in Vermont.

47.9 percent in North Dakota.

57.9 percent in Arkansas.

61.7 percent in Alaska. (D’uh.)

An article in Mother Jones[4] elaborated on the findings of the Columbia study.

Almost half (46 percent) reported having received a firearm as a gift.[5]

Only about one-third (34 percent) had taken a formal gun safety class.[6]

A table in the Mother Jones article shows the link between rising levels of gun ownership and rising levels of gun deaths. However, is it possible to have high rates of gun-ownership and low rates of gun violence? Yes. About 45 percent of Hawiians own guns, but it has a rate of gun deaths comparable to Massachusetts, where fewer than 25 percent of people own guns, and lower than New York, where only about 10 percent of people own guns. Is it possible to have low rates of gun-ownership and comparatively high levels of gun deaths? Yes. Only about 5 percent of Delawareans own guns, but it has a rate of guns death comparable to Texas, where 35 percent of people own guns. What explains these divergences from the norm?

Almost half (45 percent) of men own a gun, but only one-ninth (11 percent) of women own a gun. Almost two-thirds (64 percent) of gun-owners own at least a handgun. Almost half (48 percent) of gun-owners have at least four guns.

So, is gun violence at high levels here to stay? Probably not. Gun ownership peaked at 53 percent in the crime-ridden early 1970s, then fell to about 33 percent today. Now the person most likely to own a gun is a married white man over 55 with at least a high school education. Gun-ownership may be like smoking: eventually, it may fall out of fashion in a changing culture.

[1] Lisa Hepburn, Matthew Miller, Deborah Azrael, and David Hemenway, “The US gun stock: Results from the 2004 national firearms survey,”  Injury Prevention. 2007 13:15-19.

[2] Bindu Kalesan, Marcos D. Villarreal, Katherine M. Keyes, and Sandro Galea, “Gun ownership and social gun culture,” Injury Prevention, June 2015.

[3] Reported in “The Blaze.” http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/03/19/how-many-people-own-guns-in-america-and-is-gun-ownership-actually-declining/

[4] See: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/06/gun-owners-study-one-in-three

[5] Requiring back-ground checks for personal transfer weapons is going to meet a lot of open opposition and covert defiance.

[6] No, instead, their fathers taught them. That’s been true for centuries.

Machine minders.

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Employers have always wanted a productive and committed labor force, especially if it didn’t involve paying higher wages. Modern technology is supposed to improve productivity in ways that are well understood. However, technology also allows employers to measure productivity in other ways.[1] Software has been developed to track, measure, and analyze all sorts of employee actions. Today, 66 percent of American companies track employees’ internet use; 45 use key-stroke logging to track productivity; and 43 percent track e-mail. Employer-provided cell phones allow tracking through their GPS chips. In addition, computer systems connected to cash registers can track speed of customer purchase processing. UPS has fitted its trucks with a host of sensors that accomplish the same thing in measuring the delivery drivers. The information measures how hard an employee is working and, thus, their marginal value to the employer.

Beyond that, new software allows companies to engage in “sentiment-analysis” on the part of workers.[2] Companies have been using annual surveys and internal blogs to gain insight into the expressed beliefs of workers. New software purports to be able to measure the emotional content as well. (One study revealed that, in spite of the positive terms used to describe a diversity-enhancement initiative, workers felt threatened and fearful for their own jobs.) Other programs assess the salience of issues in the minds of workers.

People who value a degree of privacy might also be alarmed by the recent development of an employee badge that contains a microphone, location sensor, and accelerometer. For the moment, the company that produced the badge claims not to record conversations, but only to use the data to discover valuable patterns among workers.

All this undoubtedly spurs productivity. For example, after four years using the sensor system, UPS delivered 1.4 million packages using 1,000 fewer drivers. Using another technology, Bank of America call centers found that tightly knit groups of workers were less likely to quit and more productive on the job. The bank introduced common coffee-break times. Turnover fell by 70 percent and productivity increased by 10 percent.

It also violates a certain un-spoken assumptions about work held by many employees. Partly this has to do with how much work one should do for how much pay. “People get intimidated and they work faster,” complained one UPS driver. This isn’t really different from the “speed-up” on an assembly-line in the old days. Similarly, work-life and non-work-life are increasingly interpenetrated. Sometimes people have to take care of personal business while at work, just as they sometimes have to bring work home. They expect the employer to understand this reality. When employers complain about time use, employees resent it.

Partly this has to do with revealing employer attitudes about employees. “Right at the heart of all of this [monitoring] is trust,” confessed one management consultant. Modern human resources management talk about creating a sense of community or teamwork in the work-place is revealed to be so much drivel. Hence, Twitter has explicitly fore-sworn analyzing the e-mail of workers and focused on internal blogs (where workers can have no expectation of privacy). Then, will the information be used to cull employees who have what is seen as a bad attitude?

All this is compounded by the fact that good supervisory help is just as hard to get as is other types of employees. One supervisor told an employee that the GPS chip in her company issued cell phone allowed him to track her location 24/7. This could sound like being stalked.

[1] “The rise of workplace spying,” The Week, 10 July 2015, p. 11.

[2] Rachel King, “Companies Want to Know: How Do workers Feel?” WSJ, 14 October 2015.

Annals of the Great Recession XII.

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Does History teach “lessons”? Amity Schlaes certainly thinks so. Her book on the Great Depression of the 1930s is both history and prophecy.[1]

Standard histories of the Great Depression focus on all those millions of people whose lives were destroyed by the economic collapse of 1929-1932, and who were rescued by the policies of the New Deal of 1933-1940. Schlaes takes a different approach. She focuses on the people who found no solution to their problems in the New Deal or who found themselves stifled by the New Deal. Some of her cases are fascinating, but ridiculous. “Bill W,” the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, and Father Divine, a now-forgotten campaigner against racism, undoubtedly pursued solutions rooted in individual behavior rather than in collectivist action. But the New Deal wasn’t trying to deal with alcoholism or racism.[2] It was trying to deal with a mind-bending economic collapse.

Schlaes is on more solid ground when she deals with political and economic issues. On the one hand, Schlaes is undoubtedly correct that the New Deal utterly failed to revive the American economy. Unemployment remained high throughout the decade, while the stock market—a barometer of activity in the real economy, regardless of what one thinks of brokers—remained low. Only the massive deficit spending for the Second World War and the sequestering of much of the earnings for later consumer spending restored prosperity. Still, the New Deal put a safety net under a collapsing economy.  Both this achievement and the role of deficit spending in long-term prosperity are ignored or under-played by Schlaes.

On the other hand, she brings out the essential pessimism of the New Deal—FDR’s smile aside. Schlaes argues that many New Deal figures had been influenced by foreign authoritarian and collectivist models in the Twenties. Mussolini’s Italy and Bolshevik Russia had impressed intellectuals who went on the shape the debates of the Thirties.[3] These people tended to be repelled by the supposed chaos and injustice of the market economy. The National Recovery Administration tried to regulate prices, wages, hours, and even processes.[4] Schlaes insists upon the New Deal’s emphasis on redistribution over economic growth; its creation of a regulatory state with bureaucrats run-amok; its early commitment to creating a planned economy; its creation of constituencies tied to the government by economic interest; and its attempt to judicially punish the representatives of an alternative vision.[5]

Curiously, the book came out in 2007, before the Great Recession and the election of Barack Obama as President. Since 2008, Americans have witnessed—cheering or hissing—the flight from Keynesianism by both Republicans and Democrats; the President telling Americans that the person who own a business “didn’t make that” business; and the attack on “millionaires and billionaires” who “tanked the economy.” Seems like old times.

[1] Amity Schlaes, The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression (New York: HarperCollins, 2007)

[2] Indeed, the New Deal was founded on racism. Much of its electoral base was in the South, where Democrats both excluded blacks from voting and counted blacks for purposes of representation. Hugo Black, appointed to the Supreme Court by FDR, had been a Klansman. Richard Nixon’s “Southern Strategy,” much decried by all right-thinking progressive people, amounted to catching the Democrats skinny-dipping and running away with their clothes.

[3] Schlaes is hardly alone in doing this. See: Paul Hollander, Political Pilgrims: Travels of Western Intellectuals to the Soviet Union, China, and Cuba 1928-1979 (1981) for many funny or revolting stories.

[4] Like the justices of the Supreme Court at the time, Schlaes has a good deal of fun with the “straight killing” of chickens in the Schechter case.

[5] Examples include the “show trials” of Samuel Insull and Andrew Mellon and the disparaging of Herbert Hoover.

Cautionary tales about gun control.

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About 106,000 people a year get shot in the United States. About 31,000 die of their wounds and 75,000 survive.[1] The sufferings of the survivors is not much noticed in the media. About 58 percent of the gunshot fatalities are suicides. This is not much noticed in the media either. The vast majority of the rest are homicides.

Some gun owners will kill. How many? Well, fourteen thousand gun homicides in a country with 310 million firearms. OK, much more realistically, 14,000 gun homicides in a country with 100 million hand-guns. (Only a few hundred deaths result from “long guns” (rifles and shotguns).) Then, it’s a safe bet that some hand-guns are used in multiple homicides.[2] So, fewer than 14,000 guns from a stock of 100 million hand-guns are responsible for most homicides. I think that means 1.4 percent of hand-guns cause virtually all of the homicides. It is really difficult to build a case for general gun regulation from this evidence.

In the wake of the December 2012 school massacre in Newtown, Connecticut, President Barack Obama made an impassioned plea for stricter gun regulations.[3] That plea brought no result from Congress. However, it did bring a response from gun-owners. Fearing that the government would limit gun-sales and demand registration of new purchases, gun-owners flocked to the stores to buy up all the guns and ammunition they could get their hands on. In the nature of a market economy, manufacturers responded by increasing production to meet demand. In 2009, American firearm manufacturers produced 5.6 million firearms. In 2013, they produced 10.9 million firearms. If one wants to be perverse about this, then it is possible to argue that President Obama’s efforts led to an additional 5 million guns sold.[4]

The “war on drugs” allows us to regard half the murder victims in the United States as criminals killed by other criminals. We can be effectively indifferent about these deaths. However, it is the “war on drugs” that turns all these Americans into “the enemy.” When is the last time you heard of someone killed in a quarrel over alcohol (which happened all the time during Prohibition)? When is the last time you heard about someone who died from a botched “back alley” abortion (which happened all the time before Row v. Wade and Planned parenthood)?

About 50 percent of all American homicide victims are African-Americans. However, 12.2 percent of the population is African-American. That means African-Americans get killed at four times their share of the population. In contrast, while use of the death penalty has dropped off sharply since it was re-instituted in 1977, 77 percent of those executed have been put to death for killing a white victim.[5] So, “Black Lives Matter,” but not to juries.

A majority (more than 50 percent) of mass murders happen when someone—almost always a man—wigs out and kills his estranged spouse or former spouse and her family.[6] The pre-occupation with random mass killings obscure this terrible truth. Getting guns away from people who have a restraining order against them is a necessary first step.

What is striking is that we can’t talk to each other about this complicated and painful subject.

[1] “Noted,” The Week, 15 May 2015, p. 16.

[2] See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulIPnwiFYQU

[3] See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_control_after_the_Sandy_Hook_Elementary_School_shooting

[4] “Noted,” The Week, 16 October 2015, p. 16.

[5] “Noted,” The Week, 16 May 2014, p. 18.

[6] “Noted,” The Week, 25 July 2014, p. 14.

Immigration Politics.

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After the Civil War, the stream of European immigrants to the United States turned into a flood. By 1890, 14.8 percent of the people living in the United States had been born abroad. Many “old-stock” Americans found this deeply disturbing. While the First World War temporarily choked down on emigration from Europe, a powerful movement for immigration restriction had sprung up. In the early Twenties, new laws imposed a system of quotas on future immigrants. Decades later various new laws eased restrictions on legal immigration, while a large number of Mexican and Central American immigrants had entered the country illegally. By 2015, 13.7 percent of the population had been born abroad. Demographers now project that this share of the population will grow. By 2015, 14.9 percent of the population may be foreign-born.[1] Is there some kind of “saturation point”?

Today, Americans aren’t opposed to immigration. OK, I have to qualify that a bit. As recently as 2013, a huge majority of Americans (73 percent) thought that immigration was good for America, while only 24 percent thought that it was bad.[2] However, one recent Pew poll found that only 45 percent of Americans believe that immigrants improve America—over the long run at least.[3] A majority (55 percent) of Democrats and a minority (31 percent) of Republicans believe that immigrants improve America. On the other hand, that means that 45 percent of Democrats either don’t think immigrants make the country better or they’re not sure. In addition, 34 percent of Democrats think that immigrants are making the economy worse. Hilary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and Tommy Carchetti should think about this. (See: Donald Trump in the general election.) On the other hand, the vast majority of Republicans either think that immigrants don’t make the country better or they aren’t sure. This is pretty bizarre within my own notion of what the Republican Party should be: an opportunity society that creams off the best and the brightest from all those sweat-soaked hell-holes around the globe. Of which there are a great many.

In a discombobulating perception, while at most (69 percent) Republicans (100-31=69) think immigrants do not make the country better, 71 percent of Republicans think that immigrants are making the economy worse. Apparently, at least 2 percent of Republicans think that immigrants are making the economy worse and also believe that this is good for the country. Probably some kind of sampling error. As in: Pew interviewed a bunch of idiots. Well, they get to vote so I suppose they deserve to be polled.

Still, there are intricacies to the issue that don’t always receive adequate discussion. For example, one tricky bit appears to be the difference between legal and illegal immigration. In November 2013, 63 percent of Americans favored a “pathway to citizenship” for illegal immigrants. In contrast, 18 percent want all the illegals rounded up and shipped home.[4] In June 2014, the great majority (62 percent) of Americans favored granting full citizenship to illegal immigrants who meet certain requirements; 17 percent favored granting “green cards,” but not full citizenship; and 19 percent wanted them all deported.[5]

Also, the composition of immigration has been changing. In 2010, Mexicans amounted to 45 percent of the immigrants to the US. In 2012 this fell to 14 percent of immigrants. Who picked up the slack? India sent 12 percent, and China 10 percent, while other Asian countries sent 23 percent. That makes Asia, at a total of 45 percent, the current chief source of immigrants to the United States.[6] According to the Census Bureau, in 2013 alone, 147,000 people of Chinese origin migrated to the United States. This puts China in first-place in the list of countries sending migrants to the United States. In 2013, Mexico sent 125,000.[7]

Liberals are counting on Hispanics to vote en mass Democratic. It may not happen. About one-sixth of Hispanics (16 percent) now identify as evangelical Christians (who lean Republican). Another 18 percent express no religious affiliation. Religious Hispanics remain overwhelmingly Catholic (55 percent) but that number is noticeably down from where it was in 2010 (67 percent).[8]

In one sense, Republicans have little to gain from seeking to the Hispanic vote. Only about 16 percent of Congressional districts held by Republicans have at least 20 percent Hispanics in their populations.[9] However, would swinging the Hispanic vote allow Republicans to make further inroads in currently Democratic districts?

Then, if one is to judge by the attacks on Asian shop-keepers during the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles, or the off-hand comments of people I know, African-Americans don’t much like Asians or Hispanics. Much of the traditional Democratic base is concentrated in a handful of major cities and in the South. The Democratic obsession with affirmative action is going to alienate the Asian and Hispanic voters.  In sum, the Democrats have some long-term problems cooking.

[1] “Noted,” The Week, 9 October 2-15, p. 18.

[2] “Poll Watch,” The Week,

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

[4] “Poll Watch,” The Week, 6 December 2013, p. 17,

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

[6] “Noted,” The Week, 25 July 2014, p. 14.

[7] “Noted,” The Week, 15 May 2015, p. 16.

[8] “Noted,” The Week, 23 May 2014, p. 14.

[9] “Noted,” The Week, 19 July 2013, p. 14.

On your own.

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Once upon a time, each individual person in the Americans society and the American economy bore all sorts of risk associated with their life.[1] Then came the Great Depression of the Thirties.[2] Under Democratic auspices in the New Deal and the Great Society, mass-unionized workers got defined-benefit pension systems, “Cadillac” health insurance plans, unemployment insurance, near-full employment, and ever-more generous Social Security. In essence, risk became shared as if in an insurance model.

Then, beginning in the Seventies, international competition eroded the complacency of the post-war decades. Coincidentally, at the same time, the mythic “American work ethic” eroded to the point where, for example, American-manufactured cars ceased to be stolen. OK, somebody might want to buy German cars or Japanese cars, but Americans cars? Who would steal a K-Car or a Gremlin? The car companies and the UAW pressured Washington into imposing quantitative limits on the number of Japanese cars imported into the United States. Again, the assumption of risk fell on the group or community rather than on the individual.

In the Eighties, risk began to be shifted back toward the individual. Both corporations and governments “de-leveraged” by cutting their formal obligations. Defined-benefit pension systems gave way to defined-contribution systems; health insurance slid toward high-deductible plans; a minimum of 5 percent unemployment became the definition of “full employment”[3] Rather than tolerate poor workmanship for high labor costs, companies began to shift their production overseas. American consumers got better products at a lower price.

All the same, those consumers were also producers. The new systems eroded both job-security and labor compensation. Several aspects of contemporary political radicalism (both Bernie Sanders and the Tea Party) may arise from this disorder.[4]

At the core of Hacker’s work is a life-cycle interpretation of political success and failure.[5] The 45 year-old Hacker believes that victory goes to the young, energetic, and imaginative. (People like him or Paul Ryan.) The Democrats were young and vigorous once. Then, over time, they turned into a party of old buffers. Meanwhile, licking their wounds in exile, the Republicans became a party with “that lean and hungry look.” They figured out how to market their ideas and developed an acute understanding of how the political system worked. Democrats fell in droves before the sword of Ronald Reagan. According to this narrative, old-guy Democrats thought that they could get by splitting the difference with fine young conservatives. Alligator Republicans just ate their lunch. Now what was needed, in the mind of Jacob Hacker is a younger, more dynamic Democratic Party.[6]

The possibility that labor costs (wages + benefits) relative to price and quality of the goods produced has gone beyond what is sustainable in a competitive global economy is not something that Democrats desire to discuss. Nor Republicans either.

[1] Jacob Hacker, The Great Risk Shift (New York: Oxford UP, 2006).

[2] The New Deal is what the Left has I n place of a revolution. Polemicists will debate whether it was a new American Revolution or a watered down Russian Revolution.

[3] Unemployment had sunk below 3 percent in the pre-management of the economy Twenties.

[4] Democrats are inclined to regard one—Sandism—as legitimate, if misguided, while they regard the other—what, evangelical Republicanism?—as illegitimate as well as unhinged. I’m not sure I see a real difference.

[5] It isn’t much different from Ibn Khaldun or Ma Joad.

[6] In the world of ideas, this meant people like Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz; in the world of the communication of ideas—or at least of notions and punch lines—it meant people like Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert.

Combative Women.

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“Il y a etait un fois” (“Once upon a time), ambitious women military officers wanted to rise in rank, perhaps all the way to Chair-person of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. However, to get to that level, one had to have had combat experience. The military was not granting the highest ranks to people—male or female–who had only commanded office buildings. So a campaign began to allow women to serve in combat.[1]

Now we have the question directly before us. Should women be allowed to branch combat arms in the U.S. military? Liberals—most, but not all, of whom avoid military service like the plague—say “Yes!” Conservatives—most, but not all, of whom avoid military service like the plague—say “No!” So, it is difficult to see this question in an objective fashion. Isn’t there some kind of objective measure to help us decide?

Well, yes, there is such a measure.[2] Kinda-Sorta. The Marine Corps ran a nine-month study comparing the performance of all-male units with the performance of gender-integrated units. In the study All-male units out-performed gender-integrated units on 93 of 134 specific categories. Gender dimorphism played a big role in this evaluation—as it does in infantry combat. Men are bigger and more heavily muscled than are women.[3] Where women fell short was in the multiple physical tasks of combat infantry. The combat load—weapons, rations, water, and other equipment—is standardized, rather than scaled for body mass. It has to be if soldiers are to fight effectively in the field. Smaller bodies shoulder a proportionately heavier load than do bigger bodies. Smaller bodies have a harder time keeping up on the march or in running an obstacle course. It isn’t that women are less mentally tough than are men.[4] The study found that about 40 percent of female Marines suffered injuries striving to keep up with their unit. That is, they pushed themselves beyond safe limits. In the process, they exerted a drag on their own comrades. Other jar-heads slowed down to help their lagging sisters-in-arms. So, if you rely on the Marine Corps study, women can’t branch combat arms without undermining the essential combat performance of the units in which they serve.

Liberal abuse rained down on the Marines after the study was published. What about the two women who graduated from the Army’s elite Ranger School? Well, what about the many more men whom graduated from the school? Conservatives answered that “the facts are the facts.” So, if all but the exceptional woman[5] cannot become an infantry-person,[6] does that mean that they cannot branch combat arms?

But wait! Marines are the quintessential light infantry.   They are troops with flat noses and flat guts. However, among ground forces, infantry are only one of the combat arms. The others are artillery, armor, and combat aviation. Then there is the Air Force and the Navy. Basically, all of these people ride around in death-dealing vehicles. How many gunners, tankers, Apache pilots, carrier fighter-jocks, let alone guys controlling drones from an air-conditioned trailer in Nevada or practicing Armageddon at a missile silo in Nebraska could match the USMC standards for physical performance? Is it possible to use an extreme case to make a judgement about the whole? The question of women in combat arms remains open.

[1] Doubtless, this movement opened a gap between female career officers and short-term females soldiers.

[2] “Women in combat: flunking a Marine test,” The Week, 25 September 2015, p. 16.

[3] “Testosterone! Hero of song and story, Testosterone!”

[4] Otherwise guys would be signing up to attend their wife’s child-birth like it was fantasy football. Nor should they. It’s like that scene in “Aliens.” Jus sayin’. JMO.

[5] See :G.I. Jane.” (dir. Ridley Scott, ). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ObR1c1Nza4

[6] OK, I admit I’m being a jerk here.

Strategic Leaking.

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Early in life, Jason Chaffetz (R, Utah) had a notion that he could be a Secret Service agent. Or maybe an outfielder for the Yankees. Or maybe Superman. (But I repeat myself.) So, in 2003, he filled out the Secret Service application. (May have worked on his fielding skills or bought a spandex costume for all I know.) Kids often don’t have a sense of their own real talents or inclinations. Chaffetz didn’t make the cut as a Secret Service agent. He got a letter that said that “better qualified applicants existed.”[1] Then they go on and do something better suited to themselves. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkX-TPaodoM For his part, Chaffetz went into politics, ending up—so far—as a Congersman. (See: Pogo). Chaffetz serves on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.[2]

Then the Secret Service (which is mostly charged with protecting the President of the United States), got in the glue. In April 2012, it was alleged that eleven members of the president’s security detail (and some U.S. military personnel) hired prostitutes while protecting the President at an international conference at Cartagena, Colombia. More revelations of frat-boy behavior followed. Worse, there have been several incidents in which White House security has been breached without much difficulty. Then, in early 2015, a couple of senior Secret Service officers went out “for a taste,” as they delicately phrase it in “The Wire.” Upon returning to duty at the White House, they crashed their car into one of the security barriers. The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform investigated the widely-reported incident.

One of the scathing interrogators on that committee was Jason Chaffetz. He issued a bunch of subpoenas for more information. In the wake of that interrogation, a bunch of Secret Service officers began digging for information (i.e.”dirt”) on Chaffetz. Some gained access to Chaffetz’s failed application for the Secret Service. Doubtless, the files contained information explaining the rejection of Chaffetz.[3]

Then Faron Paramore, the head of public affairs for the Secret Service sent the information to Edward Lowery, an assistant director. Lowery replied that “Some information that he might find embarrassing needs to get out. Just to be fair.” Two days later, the story about Chaffetz’s failed application to join the Secret Service appeared in “The Daily Beast.”

This led to an investigation by the Inspector General (IG) for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Paramore stated that he did not reply to Lowery’s e-mail; Lowery stated that he did not order anyone to leak the information to the press. The IG could not determine who among the “likely…hundreds” of Secret Service agents who had received the information leaked it to the press.

Why does this squalid little story matter? It matters, first, because of the misuse of damaging or embarrassing information by the late long-time director of the F.B.I, J. Edgar Hoover. His “Personal and Confidential” files were used to intimidate politicians and government officials. It matters, second, because of Edward Snowden’s initial revelations about the bulk interception of phone and other media communications of Americans by the NSA.[4]

The chilling effect could run from Congressional critics to ordinary citizen activists.

[1] That’s nothing. I got a letter from Harvard that said that “many (my emphasis, although actually it might have been their emphasis) better qualified applicants existed.” My life-course supports their judgment.

[2] Michael Schmidt, “Senior Secret Service Official Proposed Embarrassing a Critic in Congress,” NYT, 1 October 2015.

[3] I have no idea what that information might be. What do you want people to not know about you?

[4] See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Snowden and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution