“VA for All.  Why shouldn’t your parents get the same care that Walter Reed Hospital offers to wounded warriors?”

“Single-payer media.  Think about it.”

“Just how much am I supposed to pay Jussie Smollett in reparations?”

“Did the Russians write the Steele dossier?  Durham investigation ponders the question.”

“China buckles–will reform trade rules AND massively cut carbon emissions.  Trump chortles; Environmentalists dismayed.”

“Iran buckles–will return to NPT and reduce support for Hezbollah.  Bolton tap dances the “Putting on the Ritz” segment from “Young Frankenstein”.”

“EU  buckles–will finally raise defense spending to long-agreed levels.  Poles eager to fight; Germans and French not so much.”

“Victory!  We’ve established a prohibition on abortion–just as with alcohol in the Twenties and drugs since the Seventies!  But gun-control will never work!”

“The EU blocked undesired immigration by paying Turkey, Niger, and Libya.  Now Trump has done the same with Mexico and Guatemala at a lower cost.  The “Squad” denounces agreements as “racist.”

“Illegal immigration de-criminalized!  120 million Chinese buy cruise-ship reservations for China-Hawaii-West Coast jaunts.”

“Oddly, the State Department appears to function just as before but with professional diplomats in most jobs, and without a bunch of courtiers from think-tanks.  Experts puzzled and Congress vows to subpoena the late George Kennan.”

“Congress approves Hudson River flood-gates to counter-climate change.  Mayor DiBlasio will reject federal funds: “New Yorkers would rather drown that accept money from a government that denies the reality of climate change!”

Back in the 1990s many of the Asian economies were riding high.  People were talking about the “Asian tiger” economies, if that gives you some idea.  Japan, Taiwan, South Korea were all enjoying remarkable success at manufacturing and selling things.  In particular, they seemed to have mastered the industrial production of actual things that people all over the world would want to own: cars, computer hardware, televisions, and the music systems of the day.  Moreover, the other Asian economies all seemed to be taking off on remarkably similar and promising flight paths to prosperity.  Since all of these places had been late to adopt the Western economic model and because they had been leveled in the Second World War, this performance amounted to an extraordinary achievement that called out for explanation.  Moreover, the “Asian tigers” were generally out-performing the Western economies.  The Soviet Union had fallen flat on its face in 1989, so it was discredited.  Neither the United States nor Western Europe, however, showed a comparable dynamism.  The European economies were all growing slowly, thanks to what would later come to be labeled “Euro-sclerosis.”  The United States had already begun the habit of living beyond its means that continues to plague it to this day.

Under these conditions the Asian countries took a justifiable pride in their performance.  In discussions of the differences between Western and Asian economic performance, attention naturally turned to asking whether cultural differences might not make as much difference as did specific economic policies.  Ultimately, various people began to suggest that “Asian values” offered the best explanation.

What were the “values” which purportedly gave the Asian economies the bulge over the Western ones?  According to the proponents of the idea the Asian societies were the product of unique historical circumstances.  Confucian values had become deeply entrenched in the culture and could not be rooted out by any transient or imported political regime.  The key Confucian values were subordination of the desires of the individual to the welfare of the community (conformity); a preference for strong leadership over political competition; a commitment to excellence in academic and scientific pursuits; hard work; and thrift.

In essence, this doctrine is a denial of the ideal of universal human equality and universal human rights. (“We hold these truths to be self evident: that all men are created equal…”)  The West had argued that “free markets and free people” were the twin keys to human progress.  Lots of people in Asian countries had been attracted by this doctrine because it promised to improve their situation.  Others had reacted against what they saw as just another face of Western imperialism or which unsettled their own lives.  (Thus, kids having rights is fine if you’re a kid; it is more problematic if you’re a parent.)  In any event, the rising relative power of the Asian economies seemed to justify an assertion of cultural independence.  Hence, the 1990s witnessed much discussion of “Asian values.”

Then the Asian financial crisis of July 1997 put a stop to all the big talk.  The bugs scuttled back into the woodwork.  But does that mean that there are no distinct Asian values?  Are universal values more credible?  Watch “To Live” and decide.

For more on the financial crisis, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian_financial_crisis

For criticism of the Asian values movement, see: http://www.brainsnchips.org/hr/sen.htm and http://academic2.american.edu/~dfagel/Markets&democracyfukuyama.html

In 1940 there were 251,000 African-Americans living in Philadelphia, out of a total population of 1,931,000 or 13 percent of the population.  In 1970, there were 655,000 African-Americans living in Philadelphia out of a total population of 1,948,000 or 33.6 percent of the population. [1] Thus, Philadelphia’s African-American population almost tripled in both numbers and as a share of the population.  Much of the growth in the African-American population is explained by the “Great Migration.”[2]

The African-American immigrants in search of better lives received a frosty welcome in the City of Brotherly Love.  First, the white city had strong local ethnic identities: South Philadelphia was Italian; Pennsport, Gray’s Ferry, Kensington, Fishtown, and much of Northeast Philadelphia were Irish; Port Richmond was Polish.  During the Sixties and Seventies, these people felt themselves in crisis.  Many of them worked blue-collar manufacturing jobs.  In 1951, 46 percent of Philadelphia workers earned a living from manufacturing.  After the war, Philadelphia began to lose many of these jobs: by 1977, only 24 percent still worked in manufacturing.  During the Seventies, Philadelphia lost 100,000 manufacturing jobs.

Second, the cost of government rose dramatically, from over $100 million (1947) to over $500 million (1970).  Hence, from 1961 on, budget shortfalls led to repeated increases in both the real estate and wage taxes.[3]

Third, the national murder rate went up from the late 1950s through 1974.  In 1955 it stood at 4.5/100,000 people; in 1974 it stood at 10.2/100,000.[4]   This trend and other increases in violence, hit Philadelphia as hard as anywhere else.  Since the Forties, “the complexion of urban crime had changed…as big cities turned blacker, so did big city homicides.”[5]

Fourth, racism was a real force.  The early post-war out-migration by whites opened up housing for African-Americans in formerly all-white neighborhoods.  “Throughout the city and its suburbs, wherever blacks sought to move freely in the housing market there was community tension and frequently vandalism, intimidation, street riots, and evacuation of whole neighborhoods by whites.”[6]  For example, South Philadelphia and Kensington lost from 15 to 30 percent of their populations in the Seventies.  Also, African-American migration into previously white-dominated areas changed the composition of the public schools.  In 1961 there were 250,000 students in the public schools, about equally divided between whites and black.  In 1970 there were 291,000 students in the system, 63 percent non-white and 37 percent white.

Philadelphia’s white population hardly formed a single block.  To over-simplify, however, the blue-collar and lower middle-class “ethnics” wanted a campaign of resistance, while upper middle-class “elites” wanted change.  The former had the votes.  They twice elected Frank Rizzo, the tough former police commissioner, as mayor (1971, 1975).  Thus, majority opinion on integration in one Democrat-governed city in the Seventies.  A time of troubles.

[1] Timothy Lombardo, Blue-Collar Conservatism: Frank Rizzo’s Philadelphia and Populist Politics (2019).

[2] Nicholas Lemann, The Promised Land : The Great Black Migration and How It Changed America (1991); Isabel Wilkerson, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010).

[3] Russell Weigley, Philadelphia, pp. 664-665.

[4] Roger Lane, Murder in America, p. 303.

[5] Lane, Murder, p. 273.

[6] Weigley, Philadelphia, p. 669.

China’s strengths and ambitions have been eye-catching.  What of its weaknesses and fears?  These, too, are striking.[1]

China’s economic progress rests on three pillars.  First, a rapid industrialization that required moving hundreds of millions of peasants out of low-productivity rural agriculture into higher-productivity urban factory work.  Second, engagement with the global capitalist economy to draw upon Western investment and expertise while selling China’s products abroad.  Third, the move from a centrally-planned economy to something more like a market economy.

This approach produced significant benefits for China.  China joined the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001.  This opened many markets to Chinese goods on advantageous terms.  Moreover, China pursued neo-mercantilist policies aimed to boost exports while restricting imports.  These included manipulating exchange rates for currency, subsidizing Chinese producers to lower their prices on world markets, and raising all sorts of non-tariff barriers to Western imports.  By 2010, China’s exports amounted to almost 25 percent of the world’s trade.

Then, in 2008, the Great Recession began.  World economic growth—and trade—slowed down.  China’s problem: how to keep everyone working so that political dissent did not arise?  China’s solution: invest in the domestic economy by providing a lot of credit.  This meant cheap loans to businesses to build things.  Trouble is, there’s investment and then there’s “investment.”  The Chinese government poured money into all sorts of make-work projects: construction and infrastructure (roads and bridges, high-speed rail) were favored targets for government largesse.

What are the results?  China over-built, over-invested, and over-borrowed.  Chinese debt has ballooned, about half of it is in real-estate.  Many industries suffer from excess capacity, while much of the building spree has produced empty buildings.  China’s economy isn’t growing at the fantastic rates of the first decade of the century; profit margins have fallen to low levels compared to Western economies; many companies can’t earn enough to service their debts and about 20 percent of it is non-performing.

Other problems are policy-driven, but not specifically financial in nature.  First, the one-child policy launched in the 1970s is now beginning to produce a demographic trap.  The labor force will start to shrink while the number of retirees will grow.  When America faces this problem, one solution is immigration.  Can China find immigrants?  How would the Chinese respond to immigrants from Southeast Asia?  From South Asia?  From Africa?  Can the Chinese substitute robots and artificial intelligence for human labor?

Second, Xi Jinping’s instinct is to clamp down on all forms of freedom as disruptive.  His “Belt and Road” plan is fascinating, but it is essentially a top-down government plan that is insulated from market considerations.  His pursuit of a “surveillance state” and his insistence on joint party-enterprise decision-making for the state-owned enterprises is likely to be “stifling in terms of creativity and disruption.”

Combine a gigantic asset bubble with a global economic slowdown and a not-agile government and what do you get?  Trouble for all, and not just for the Chinese.

[1] George Magnus, Red Flags: Why Xi’s China Is in Jeopardy (2018).

Why does any of this historical background matter?  It matters, first, because—in these contested times—I have to insist that Belief Systems evolve in response to changing conditions.  For two centuries and more now, Liberalism, Conservatism, and Socialism have all had to make their peace with Reality.[1]  It matters, second, because I’m getting fed-up with people who spout off their “smarmy, silly, half-baked opinions”[2] without any historical context.

Nineteenth-Century Liberals didn’t like Democracy.  In their minds, the “common man” wasn’t capable of dealing with the complexities of modern life.  If all men got the vote, then a horde of ignorant, selfish, short-sighted, and grasping voters would be led around by a ring through their nose.  They would vote for stupid people and stupid things in hopes of making their own lives materially better over the short-run.[3]  To a historian, this amounts to the Leninist criticism of labor unions: dumb-ass working people will prefer higher pay and shorter hours to Revolution.[4]  (Historical events have demonstrated that Lenin foresaw things accurately.)

Scholarly investigations by psychologists recently have added to our understanding of democratic choice.  One of the most important of these observers has been Cass Sunstein.[5]  His book Nudge[6] argued that people suffer from cognitive biases and mis-perceptions that inhibit the “rational choice” beloved of economists.  As a result, individuals often make choices that re not in their material best interests.  Moreover, people are effort-economizers.  They will choose the easiest thing at any given moment.[7]  Sunstein and Thaler proposed requiring people to “opt-out,” rather than “opt-in” to things like retirement savings plans, and that people who failed to choose a health plan should be assigned to the best available.  It’s easy to see how such an approach might be generalized.

What if the duty of the liberal state today is to liberate people from making errors?  People often do stupid things, either out of a lack of information, or bias, or lacking the time to study complex issues, or stupidity (d’uh).  Should the liberal state seek to “guide” choices in critical areas?

If the answer is yes, then who determines the “best” choice?  Bureaucratic and academic experts?  Once upon a time, eugenics had wide support upon educated people.  Today, the majority of Alabama voters oppose abortion on virtually any grounds.  Today the New York State legislature has approved a plan to oppose climate change.  All are examples of experts going nuts.  Then, what happens if people defy the approved “best” choice?

If the answer is yes, then where do we draw the line?   Donald Trump is, to my mind, plainly unfit to be president of the United States.  However, he won enough votes in the Electoral College to become president.  Should expert opinion over-ride the constitutional system?  If so, who controls entry into ranks of “expert opinion”?

[1] Whereas, Soviet Communism did not.  RIP.  Well, actually, Roast in Hell.

[2] See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9hkhKVq5rM&t=10s

[3] See: anything at all in the NYT since November 2016.

[4] See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_5bH-MLblE

[5] On Sunstein, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cass_Sunstein  See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Kahneman on the underlying research in psychology.

[6] Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler, Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness (2008).

[7] For example, racial prejudice is what might be called a “heuristic device.”  Saves time and thought.  Alas.

What “gave” first was Nineteenth Century Liberalism.  First, the sudden advance of modern science and medicine after 1850 explained a host of public health problems in a new way.  These discoveries compelled liberals to accept a huge—for them—expansion in the role of government to address the problems of cities: sewers, clean water supplies, public baths, street cleaning, streetlights, mass transportation, and a police force.  Then came interference in the labor market through the regulation of hours and working conditions.  Then they accepted democracy in the form of votes for adult males.  Then they accepted universal, compulsory, and free primary education.  Then came higher taxes, focused at first on the very wealthy to pay for these new services and functions—and for the public employees who made them work.  The goal here lay not in expanding government power for its own sake, but in using government in a positive way to create environments in which the Individual could fully achieve his/her potential.[1]  This wasn’t just a Liberalism that broke down previous barriers to Individual achievement.  It was an adaptive Liberalism that broke down the established barriers to Individual achievement created by the effects of previous Liberal reforms and difficult social changes.[2]

Then came the immense crisis of the first half of the Twentieth Century: two world wars and the Great Depression.  The First World War introduced economic planning, conscription both for the military and for industrial work, an end to free trade, the beginning of “managing” the money supply, and passports to control the movements of individuals.  The Twenties saw capitalist experiments with a managed and planned economy.  The Great Depression made governmental control of macro-economic processes a “normal” thing.[3]  How to maintain full employment amidst price stability?  Keynesian “demand management,” that’s how.  Government spends to take up the slack in business-cycle capitalism.[4]  The Second World War’s financing showed how to do this in peacetime as well.

It didn’t stop there.  Liberalism shifted it gaze to breaking down the barriers—Beliefs and Behaviors–that stopped Individuals in marginalized groups from reaching their potential.  The “Warren Court” attacked the oppression of Individuals by government at all levels and in all forms: racial discrimination and “Jim Crow” laws; sexism and “privacy” (contraception); censorship; policing (Miranda, etc.); housing conventions that barred property sales to African-Americans and Jews; and abortion.

Did “Liberalism” over-reach?  Perhaps.  Only time will tell and all political prognostications (i.e. consulting the gizzards of dead animals) are without value.  (Sad day for the op-ed writers, No?)  The current anti-liberal argument would be that modern Liberalism has embraced “identity politics” (i.e. privilege), “statism” (i.e. executive branch decrees and rule making), and the suppression of free speech (i.e. “name and shame” campaigns).  “Ah dunno.”

[1] For English Liberalism, one key author here is T.H. Green (1836-1882).  I read one of his books in Matt Temmel’s class on English history at the University of Washington.  Didn’t understand a word of it.  Rediscovered Green later.

[2] OK, “a fighting priest who can talk to the young.”

[3] See: Alan Brinkley, The End of Reform: New Deal Liberalism in Recession and War (1995).  Really good book.

[4] Great idea in a large sense, but—JMO—does that mean that capitalism loses some of the purgative effects that come with normal business slumps?  Do wages stay too high, do marginal businesses survive, do over-investment and poor choices go un-punished?