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I wish I had posted this.

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Back in summer and early Fall 2016, I began assembling reading notes for a piece on the election.  Then work-blind-sided me.  See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpNzlh5ALRA  So, here’s what the evidence showed then.  Could have made me look like a prophet.

 

“Well behaved women seldom make history.”—Laurel Thatcher Ulrich.  Does the same thing go for men?  Perhaps this is one way on understanding Donald Trump’s candidacy.

While fellow Republican primary candidates and Democrats are gleefully beating the stuffing out of “the Donald” for his comments on the “Department of Environmental,” it’s worth reflecting on a comment by Albert Einstein: “Imagination is more important than knowledge.”

 

While, in the 2008 Democratic primary, the white working class generally supported Hillary Clinton, in late July 2016, this group overwhelmingly favored Donald Trump.[1]  Six different public opinion polls in July 2016 showed Trump holding a 58 to 30 percent lead over Clinton among whites without a BA.  This average is on the low end of some polls.  It’s difficult to tell which polls are the most accurate.

For at least the last decade, the general line among Democratic strategists has been that the country is changing in ways that mean the white working class can be disregarded.  It should be possible to build a majority coalition from highly-educated whites, African-Americans, Hispanic-Americans, and Hispanic-Mexicans.[2]  However, whatever America may be in the future, the American future doesn’t get to vote in November 2016.  Today gets to vote and today, almost half of voters are whites without a college BA.

President Obama and Democratic leaders opted not to seek an adequate stimulus bill in the first two years of his administration.  Those were years when the Democrats controlled the House and Senate as well as the White House.  They pushed through Congress both the Affordable Care Act and a modest stimulus bill.  They could have fought for more stimulus than they did.  All of the president’s subsequent “job-creation” proposals were “revenue neutral.”  That is, he rejected Keynesian deficit spending in favor of trying to favor Democratic constituencies.  Democratic indifference to the interests of the white working class isn’t new.  Democrats lost both the South and the working class to Republicans over cultural issues (rather than race).  Gun control, government administrative regulation of the economy, secular sharia’s opposition to public religion, and—most recently—gay rights have all estranged many traditionally Democratic voters from the Democratic Party.

 

Of people who are known to have committed journalism and who also have donated to presidential campaigns this year, 96 percent donated to the campaign of Hillary Clinton.[3]  As a result, the sustained and bitter campaign by mainstream newspapers like the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal (my chief sources of information in addition to the British Broadcasting Corporation) against Trump can heat up hostility to him among people who already have decided to vote against him.  However, the people most inclined to vote for Trump probably don’t read either the NYT or the WSJ.  Editorial lightning bolts launched against the Orange-American candidate aren’t likely to make much of a dent.  Similarly, between June and late October 2016, about 80 percent of the television ads in support of a presidential candidate supported Hilary Clinton.  A mere 18 percent supported Trump.[4]

 

The American middle class is much reduced in recent years.[5]  Today (2016) the middle class accounts for almost a third (32 percent) of the population and just over a quarter (25.8 percent) of the national income.  Why is that?  Partly because a lot of Americans climbed out of the “middle” middle class into the “upper middle class.”  What is “upper middle class”?  Today, the middle class accounts for almost one-third (32 percent) of the population and 25.8 percent of the nation’s income.  Well, part of it got richer over the last 40 years.  In 1979, 13 percent of the population earned between $100K and $350K; in 2014, 30 percent of the population earned between $100K and $350K.[6]

What about those who did not climb?  According to a now-popular narrative, the white elite—Republican and Democrat alike–have abandoned the white working class.[7]  They have done so by embracing free trade abroad and tariffs (affirmative action) at home.  Five million American manufacturing jobs have gone down the drain in the last fifteen years, and the growth of GDP has averaged 3 percent for the last ten years.[8]  Republican leaders, says NobelPrize-winning economist Krugman, just don’t want to admit that their simplified view of free-market capitalism doesn’t match with reality.  So, the white working class isn’t the only one engaged in self-destructive behavior.  The resentment of the white working class is what is driving the rise of Donald Trump.  (One might almost see “Trumpism” as AA barging into politics.)  This is an interpretation that is widely accepted.

However, commentators weren’t willing to leave well enough alone.  Substance abuse (what used to be called boozing and baking your head) and suicide have contributed to a falling life expectancy for the white working class.  What has happened to black Americans for decades is now happening to the white working class, according to Paul Krugman in the New York Times.  Moreover, these voters have provided much of the electoral support for the Republican Party in recent decades.  Kevin Williamson wrote a scalding “pull up your socks” piece in The National Review.  Economic change is normal; you need to adapt to it; when the white working class got tossed on the scrap heap of the “Rust Belt,” they should have both moved and re-tooled; but they settled for self-destruction through drugs and self-pity.  There’s something to be said for this view.  It’s not like we’ve been watching scenes from “The Grapes of Wrath” (dir. John Ford, 1939) on the devil-box for the last few decades.

 

Then there’s immigration.  Better than one in eight (13 percent) of the people living in the United States is an immigrant.  Almost one in six (16 percent) of the people in the work force is an immigrant.  That should be good for the /democrats, right?  However, more than one in four (28 percent) of the small business owners are immigrants.[9]  Immigrants started over half of the U.S. “start-ups” that are now valued at a billion dollars or more.  The top 44 immigrant “start-ups” created more than 750 jobs per company.[10]  Lots of those immigrants are not Hispanic-Mexicans.  That’s probably bad news for the Democratic Party, with its anti-business, pro-regulation stance.  Back in 2013, almost two-thirds (63 percent) of Americans favored giving illegal immigrants a path to citizenship.  Only 15 percent favored deporting all illegal immigrants.[11]  Something changed.

[1] So, does that mean that HRC was the Donald Trump of 2008?

[2] If only the approximately 12 million of the latter can be provided with a way to vote.  Aye, there’s the rub.

[3] “Noted,” The Week, 28 October 2016, p. 18.

[4] “Noted,” The Week, 4 November 2016, p. 16.

[5] “The bottom line,” The Week, 1-8 July 2016, p.36.

[6] “The bottom line,” The Week, 1-8 July 2016, p. 36.

[7] “The white working class: who’s to blame for its misery?” The Week, 1 April 2016, p. 16.

[8] One definition for a recession is growth of 3 percent.

[9] “The bottom line,” The Week, 30 January 2015, p. 34.

[10] “Noted,” The Week, 1 April 2016, p. 16.

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

Pomme Duterte.

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The Philippines were plagued by problems under Spanish rule; those problems didn’t go away under American rule; and they continued to plague the archipelago after independence.  Most eye-catching for Americans was a Muslim insurgency in the southern islands: the Moro Rebellion.  (Purportedly, this led to the adoption of the Colt .45 semi-automatic pistol.)  Since 9/11, American Special Forces have been supporting operations against Islamists (Abu Sayaf) in the southern islands of the archipelago.

A second problem, much ignored by Americans, is that the Philippines are ruled by a corrupt oligarchy.[1] In the 1980s and 1990s, after the end of the Vietnam War and the Cold War in Asia, those leaders (and perhaps ordinary Filipinos as well) decided that they would prefer that the American military left its naval and air bases in the Philippines.  By 1992 this hope came true.

A third problem, more recent in appearance, is drugs and drug-dealers.  Methamphetamines, usually associated with rural America, appeared as a major problem for the Philippines.  Poor neighborhoods in Filipino cities showed all sorts of “disfunction.”  Moreover, evidence appeared that the Mexican Sinaloa drug cartel had invaded the Philippines.

Americans often talk about a “war on drugs,” without reaching the logical conclusion that a “war” is a war.[2]  Not so with Rodrigo Duterte (1945- ).  Duterte first came to public notice as the mayor of Davao, a city on the southern island of Mindanao.  He ran the city for better than 20 years.  Here, too, drugs and drug-dealers were a grave problem.  Filipino drug dealers, like those elsewhere, have flipped-off the law.  “Fine,” said Duterte.  During his tenure as mayor, “death squads” massacred drug dealers in Davao.  Curiously, the local police failed to solve most of the homicides.  All the same, the crime rate plummeted, what with there being fewer and fewer criminals still up and walking around.

Then Duterte and three other candidates then ran for president against Manuel Roxas, the pet candidate of oligarch Benigno Aquino.  In a five-way race, Dutere pulled 40 percent of the vote; Roxas pulled 23 percent of the vote, and the three other candidates pulled 37 percent of the vote between them.  Duterte became president.  Also, according to the displaced ruling elites in the Philippines, Duterte has shown “tyrannical” qualities by firing several thousand government employees.  He has replaced their clients with his own followers.

What happened in Davao is now happening elsewhere in the Philippines. Since Duterte’s election, 1,900 drug-dealers or “suspected” drug-dealers have been killed.  Some were killed by the police, some by vigilantes.  Half a million drug-users have surrendered to the police.  The massacres of meth dealers and users have been hard to swallow for humanitarians abroad.

Moreover, Duterte is anti-American at a moment when the United States is trying to shore up its position against a self-confident China.  The United States had hoped to patch up relations with the Philippines to help contain China and the Philippines had hoped to patch up relations with the United States to help contain China.  The United States has a defense agreement with the Philippines that is clearly directed against China.  As in the Middle East, the “client states” have their own agendas.  Hence, Duterte’s anti-Americanism has been even harder for American diplomats to swallow.  Duterte has brushed aside all American criticism by pointing out some of the many flaws in America society.  He has pursued contact with China.  Now the security relationship is endangered.   You can smell the coup coming.

[1] “The Philippines’ populist strongman,” The Week, 16 September 2016, p. 11.

[2] But see: Tom Clancy, Clear and Present Danger (1989 ).

Guns Again.

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Americans buy a bunch of firearms.[1]  In 1994, 25 percent of American households owned at least one firearm; and 44 million people owned 192 million firearms.  That is an average of 4.36 firearms per firearm-owning household.  In 2015, 22 percent of households owned at least one firearm; and 55 million people owned 265 million firearms.  That is an average of 4.81 firearms per firearm-owning household.  However, this apparent increase in firearms per owner may be deceptive.  About half of all firearms are in the hands—well the extensive gun-safes—of only 3 percent of owners.  That means—I think that 19 percent of the population owns the other 50 percent.  Roughly—watch my math, never my best thing—3/22 of Americans own 50 percent of 262 million guns.  So, 3 percent own 131 million firearms.  On the other hand, 19/22 own 50 percent of the firearms.  So, 19 percent own 131 million guns.  So, of 55 million owners, 1/7 or 7.8 million owned 131 million firearms for an average of about 16 weapons each.  Therefore, of 55 million owners, 6/7 or 46.8 million, owned 131 million firearms, for an average of about 2.8 weapons each.  If, 42 percent of these are hand-guns, 33 percent are rifles, and 20 percent are shot guns, then that suggests that the typical forearm-owner has a rifle, and either a couple of hand-guns or a hand-gun and a shot gun.

Americans started buying guns in increasing numbers during the 1960s, with the numbers rising from about 75 million total firearms in private hands in 1965 to almost 200 million by 1995.  Soaring rates of violent crime and civil disorder appear to have driven the boom in firearms sales.  Violent crime and homicide rates have been dropping for almost a quarter century.  All the same, some Americans felt safer in 1994 than they do today.  In 1994, 46 percent of gun-owners who responded to a national survey cited self-defense as a major reason for owning a firearm; in 2015 63 percent cited self-defense.  While total homicides are down, highly-publicized mass shootings are up.  The expansive definition of mass shootings used by the EffaBeeEye and gun control groups have helped overstate the danger to ordinary citizens.[2]

This shift in motivation is reflected in the composition of the stock of firearms in private hands.  In 1994, 34 percent of firearms were hand-guns (revolvers and semi-automatic pistols); in 2015 42 percent of firearms are hand-guns.

The composition of ownership also is interesting.  Women firearms owners are almost twice (42 percent) as likely as men (22 percent) to own a hand-gun.  African-American firearms owners are almost three times as likely (57 percent) to own a hand-gun as are white firearms owners (20 percent).

Media coverage adds more heat than light.  While the New York Times article cited above conjectured that a “24-hour news cycle has made the world feel more dangerous,” the only human being in their article is a woman who bought her first pistol after a man with a gun invaded her daughter’s middle school and took five girls hostage.  Recently, some members of the media reported the discovery of a previously unsuspected “gun culture” of people who like shooting, know something about it, and talk about target shooting and hunting the way golfers talk about golf.  Now their attention has shifted to a “concealed carry culture.”

These numbers suggest that the contentious debate over firearms and gun-control is likely to continue for some time.  Worse, Americans are talking past one another on this issue.

[1] Julie Turkewitz and Troy Griggs, “Looking for Security, More in U.S. Pick Up a Handgun,” NYT, 15 October 2016.

[2] As best I recall, the current standard has become four or more people shot in a single event.  However, this allows many crime-related gang shootings to be assimilated to events like Newtown and Orlando.

“It Must Be a Peach of a Hand.”

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In spite of the confident assertions on the right and the left, violence in America is full of puzzles and contradictions.  First, murder rates have fluctuated.  In 1980, America had a murder rate of 10.2 per 100,000 people.  The rate drifted downward for the next ten years, then began to fall sharply from about 1990.  By 2014 it had fallen to 4.5 murders per 100,000 people.[1]  Then, in 2015, the national murder rate increased to 10.8 percent.  However, the sharp increase can be attributed to selected cities (Baltimore, Houston, and especially Chicago).  There murder rates jumped to highs not seen in half a decade.  For example, by about 22 November 2015, Baltimore’s homicide tally hit 300 deaths.  This is 42 percent higher than the total for 2014 and we still had the holidays to go.  Most of the rise seems to have come since the rioting that followed the arresting-to-death of Freddy Gray.[2]  That’s scary because the last time the US had an increase like this came in 1971, at the dawn of several violent decades.[3]

One question to ask is if these changes reflected government action or some other influences.  A second question to ask is, if it did reflect government action, then did it reflect federal, state, or local action?  A third question to ask is, if it reflected some other influences, what were those influences?

Second, superficially at least, declining murder rates were tracked by declining support for the death penalty.  In 1994, fully 80 percent of Americans supported the death penalty for murder, while 16 percent opposed it and 4 percent were unsure.  By March 2015, 56 percent supported it.  By October 2016, 49 percent supported the death penalty.[4]  Similarly, the use of capital punishment continues to decline in the United States.  It fell from 98 in 1999 to 35 in 2014 to 20 in the first two-thirds of 2015.  Extrapolating from that latter figure, there would be 30 in all of 2015.  Even in Texas, the state most prone to impose the death sentence, no one has been sentenced to death so far in 2015.[5]

Third, just over half (55 percent) of Americans think that gun ownership can be restricted without violating the constitution (and the Second Amendment be Damned!) and slightly more (57 percent) want a ban on assault weapons.  Conversely, 43 percent of Americans believe that gun ownership cannot be restricted without violating the constitution and 25 percent oppose banning even assault weapons.  All the same, almost three-quarters (73 percent) of Americans support universal background checks.[6]

Fourth gun control is bad for gun control.  After the liberal characterization of the San Bernardino terrorist attack as a “mass shooting,” gun sales zoomed upward.  In December 2015, Americans bought 3.3 million guns.  All of these sales have been from licensed gun-dealers because the government background check system has been swamped.  Attorney General Loretta Lynch has asked for the hiring of 430 additional people just to process the background checks of Americans complying with the existing gun laws.[7]

In spite of the obvious violation of individual civil rights, most (80 percent) of Americans favor banning people on terrorist watch-lists from buying guns.  A small minority (17 percent) suspect that the ban would not be very effective.[8]  There are 25,000 to 40,000 Americans on terror watch-lists.  Of these people, 244 of them tried to buy firearms in 2015.[9]  That is, about one tenth of one percent sought to buy weapons.  People on terrorist watch lists buy guns at lower rates than do “ordinary” Americans.

Fifth, what is a “mass shooting?”  Orlando or Newtown, right?  Actually, the EffaBeeEye’s definition is a little more expansive: a single event in which four or more people get shot.[10]  So, criminals probably commit the bulk of the mass-shootings as a by-product of their business or personal lives.  By the EffaBeeEye’s standard, there have been 133 mass shootings in 2016.  Florida has suffered 15 (or 11.2 percent) of them.

Americans are sharply divided over how to interpret Omar Mateen’s massacre in the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, FL.  Most (60 percent) Democrats see it as an example of “domestic gun violence,” while most (79 percent) Republicans see it as an example of “Islamic terrorism.”[11]  The trouble is that the partisan filter on the vision of observers inhibits both understanding and civil discourse.  The further trouble is that both are right.

America is becoming a less violent place in comparison to the past, if not in comparison to Denmark.  Murder rates are generally trending downward; support for the death penalty is trending downward; and support for gun-control seems to be rising.  However, the politics of gun-control may well be hampering further progress.  It is common to blame the National Rifle Association for this problem.  It is common to use “terrorism” and “mass shootings” as labels that justify pushing ahead rapidly with strict gun-controls.  All that this does is to put the backs up on gun-owners.

Instead of shaming campaigns (satisfying though they are to many liberals), perhaps the best answer to a violent America is education campaigns.  Between 1964 and 2004, the number of Americans who smoked fell every year.  But in 2004, the decline bottomed out at 20.8 percent.  It stayed there through the end of 2007.[12]

Still, in these regards, America is a better, safer place to live than when I was a child.  Unless, of course, you are living in one of the broken cities where the War on Drugs spawns the “war for corners”; and where the “war for corners” spawns a confrontational style among young men with no better future.

This doesn’t end up exactly where I wanted to go when I began writing.  It just ends up where some random facts led me.

[1] “Noted,” The Week, 29 July 2016, p. 16.

[2] “Noted,” The Week, 27 November 2015, p. 16.

[3] “Noted,” The Week, 7 October 2016, p. 16.

[4] “Poll Watch,” The Week, 14 October 2016, p. 17.

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

[6] “Poll Watch,” The Week, 5 August 2016, p. 17.

[7] “Noted,” The Week, 5 February 2016, p.8.

[8] “Poll Watch,” The Week, 1 July 2016, p.7

[9] “Noted,” The Week, 1 July 2016, p. 16.

[10] “Noted,” The Week, 24 June 2016, p. 20.  By this standard, the “Gunfight at the OK Corral” was a mass-shooting.  Especially if you were one of the Earp brothers.  If you were a Clanton or a McLaury, then it was a mass getting-shot.

[11] “Poll Watch,” The Week, 1 July 2016, p.7.

[12] “Noted,” The Week, 23 November 2007, p. 16.  Why did the decline stop?  What has it done since then?  Who are the remaining smokers?    I don’t know.  Perhaps they constitute a libertarian revolt against the intrusive nanny-state of liberal fascism.  Perhaps the people who rush to buy guns and ammo (as opposed to buying Guns and Ammo) are operating under the same star.

A Fork in the Road.

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“All I know is just what I read in the papers, and that’s an alibi for my ignorance.”—Will Rogers.

One sign of our political paralysis/polarization shows up in the reliance on special bi-partisan commissions to deal with troubling issues.  The 9/11 Commission did an excellent (if imperfect) job.  The Simpson-Bowles Commission[1] also did an excellent, if imperfect, job.  The work of the 9/11 Commission requires no explanation.

The Simpson-Bowles Commission sought to address the growing problems with federal spending, taxation, and deficits.  Basically, Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid, and Defense each consume about 22 percent on federal spending.  So, two-thirds of the budget goes to old people and to psychological Viagra.  Even though reforms in 1983 cut benefits by 25 percent, the dynamics remain unsupportable.  Simpson-Bowles made a series of recommendations to address the rising cost of entitlements.  The Commission recommended a combination of tax reforms to enhance revenue with spending cuts.[2]  These recommendations went nowhere, for reasons that are equally disgraceful to both parties.   President Obama returned to the need for cuts in his failed effort to strike a budget deal with the Republicans.

Currently, the trust fund for Social Security is projected to run dry in 2034.[3]  After that the system will have to rely on only withholding taxes from current workers.  That, in turn, will mean that payments will fall to 79 percent of the promised level.  One alternative would be to increase withholding taxes by something like 25 percent.  Another alternative would be to reduce benefits by limiting the cost-of-living adjustments.  A third would be to increase benefits.  Some argue for a 10 percent raise for recipients, others for 100 percent of their own benefit plus 75 percent of their deceased partner’s benefits.  A fourth alternative would be to give care-givers and widows who left the work force an equivalent pay for their loss of Social Security income (although they paid no withholding tax during that period).

The current presidential campaign has shifted the debate on this issue.  The white populist revolts led by Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders have racked the Republican and Democratic parties alike.  Established party positions have had to shift in response.  According to Nancy Altman, “the real question is whether you expand Social Security across the board, so middle-class workers get an increase,…Then you can argue about how big to make the increase.”

Democrats have endorsed expanding and “modernizing” Social Security.  Three years ago “Progressives” began looking for a new issue to galvanize the Democratic electorate after the end of Barack Obama’s presidency.  [NB: So, the Democratic agenda is driven by the search for new ways to extend the role of government?  Rather than,…?]  First, Bernie Sanders took up the cause; then Hillary Clinton joined in.  Characteristically, realizing that she would have to veer to the center after winning the nomination, she took the low road: expanded benefits for widows and widowers and for those who lost benefits because they served as caregivers.

Still, how to pay for the expanded benefits?  One answer would be to raise the cap on taxable income above the current $118,000.  Another answer advanced by Democrats would be to “privatize” Social Security funds by investing them in equities.  The Bush II administration tried this on without success.  Now it may become a Democratic policy.

What can we afford?

[1] See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Commission_on_Fiscal_Responsibility_and_Reform

[2] See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Commission_on_Fiscal_Responsibility_and_Reform#Final_plan

[3] Mark Miller, “Social Security Expansion Gains Support in Washington,” NYT, 16 July 2016.

Millennial Falcons.

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“Gen X” are the people born between 1965 and 1980.  “Millennials”—often thought of as “Gen Z”[1]–are the 75 million Americans born between 1980 and 2000.[2]  They out-number the famous “Baby Boomers.”[3]  Stereotypes regarding “Millennials” abound: they have a sense of entitlement; they are self-indulgent; they are work-shy[4]; and they are rule-breakers.  Their presence and interests demand a response.[5]  Colleges and businesses are obsessed with the market power of this “demographic.”

Farhad Manjoo[6] begs to differ.  First, “Macroscale demographic trends rarely govern most individuals’ life and work decisions.”  That means that any “generation” is actually just a big collection to individuals.  You can’t really tell anything about the particular individual in front of you from their birth year or “cohort.”

Second, generational succession is always accompanied by a sense of unease among the older generation and a sense of suppressed ridicule of their elders by the younger generation.  The “Greatest Generation” undoubtedly had grave reservations about the “Baby Boomers.”  That unpleasant truth gets lost in the narrow focus on the right-now.

Still, there are common (if not universal) characteristics of “Millennials”: they are socially liberal (they get married later after cohabitating, they are more than OK with marriage equality, white people claim to know black people (and may even do so in a work-related context); they are 420-neutral-to-friendly; they are post-Snowden and post-“Searchlight” suspicious of institutions.  Even so, Republican “Millennials” are more socially conservative than are Democratic “Millennials.”

All this makes sense on a certain level.  However, as the critics of “macrodemographic” thinking say, the categories are just containers for many individuals or sub-categories.  For example, none of this explores the beliefs of the Republican “Millennials.” Similarly, polling data seems to suggest that Donald Trump pulls a certain segment of young people, even while the national media portrays his voters as—well, those tattooed guys with grey pony-tails on Harley-Davidsons that you see on Sunday drives in the far suburbs.

One particularly fascinating figure here is Victor Lazlo Bock[7], the head of human resources at Google.  The company runs all sorts of empirical data on its employees, who range in age from sweaty recent college graduates to geezers bored with retirement.  Bock claims that there isn’t any significant difference in personality types across the generations, just between personality types across the generations.  “Every single human being wants the same thing…” says Bock.  “We want to be treated with respect, we want to have a sense of meaning and agency and impact, and we want our boss to leave us alone so we can get our work done.”  How do we accomplish this in a small college?

[1] See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqQ8Y9Sjp7o

[2] Farhad Manjoo, “Companies In Pursuit Of a Mythical Millennial,” NYT, 26 May 2016.

[3] On the other hand, the “Boomers” have a lot more money.

[4] Or what the Nazis would have called “asocials.”  See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBn3FVWkuWM

[5] “And so say all of us.”

[6] I know, sounds like an ISIS recruiter or that kid played by Dev Patel in “Marigold Hotel.”  In reality, he’s a media correspondent for the New York Times.

[7] HA!  Is joke.  His name is Lazlo Bock.  Paul Henreid played the Resistance leader “Victor Lazlo” in “Casablanca” (dir. Michael Curtiz, 1942).

Really? Really?

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Security lines at American airports have grown longer, delays have increased[1], and it looks to get worse as the summer travel season occurs.[2]  Why did things get worse?  Is there anything that can be done about the problem?  Are there any larger lessons to be derived from this unpleasant experience?

Since 2011, the number of air travelers has increased by 12 percent, while the number of screeners has declined by 12 percent (5,702).  More travelers x fewer screeners = longer lines at airports.  OK, that’s simple.              Congress hastily appropriated $34 million to hire 768 new screeners.[3]  Part of the decrease in the number of screeners comes from the “promotion” of the cream of screeners into a behavior detection unit.  Loosely modeled on Israeli airline security, the group has been of doubtful utility.  More importantly, people don’t like working as TSA screeners: they lose about 35 percent of their workforce every year because they quit.[4]  You think it’s boring standing in lines, taking off your belt, shoes, under-wire bra to pander to the latest case of the vapors?  Try sitting for eight hours staring at a little screen at something not produced for X-tube.

Recently, the Inspector General of the TSA humiliated the agency by releasing a report that showed that TSA screeners had missed a bunch of potential security threats.  The TSA responded by enforcing strict fulfillment of regulations.[5]  These same regulations apply to private screeners employed in many airports, so going private will not solver anything.

Senators Edward Markey and Richard Blumenthal, Democrats both, have suggested that the problem created by the publicly-owned federal bureaucracy could be partially addressed by penalizing the privately-owned airlines.  They want the airlines to end the charge for checked baggage to speed up processing of carry-on baggage.

Jeh Johnson, the head of the Department of Homeless Security, announced that the Department would increase the hours of overtime that it would pay,[6]  hire more screeners, and increase the use of bomb-sniffing dogs.[7]  Even so, airline travel in Summer 2016 is going to be even more awful than usual.

This “minor”—I’m not flying anywhere this summer, so it’s minor—catastrophe engages several issues.  First, private industry failed on 9/11, so the government substituted a federal agency that isn’t any better.  The TSA doesn’t track industry trends or communicate with the airlines in order to facilitate travel?  If Yes, why didn’t they respond in a timely fashion?  If No, why is that?  Second, labor unions employ “work to rule” as a non-strike slow-down technique in bargaining.  Here it is being employed by a federal agency against its critics. Without anyone being fired.  Third, this is how Bernie Sanders wants the whole American economy to run.

[1] At Chicago’s O’Hare airport, 6,800 Eastern Airlines passengers missed their flights in March 2016, including 450 passengers in one day.

[2] Ron Nixon, “Behind the Backups at Airport Security,” NYT, 19 May 2016, .

[3] That averages out to a unit cost of $44,200 each.  Presumably, this includes federal benefits.  So, what do you think, about $33-35,000 in base pay, plus about a quarter in benefits?  Sounds about right for former high school custodians.

[4] “Anger mounts at TSA over airport security chaos,” The Week, 27 May 2016, p. 5.

[5] So travelers are being punished for the failings of the TSA?

[6] So the number of tired, bored people looking for threats on your flight will increase.

[7] You ever wonder if terrorist scientists are working on dog-sniffing bombs?  “He, King, whadda ya smell?  BOOM!”  Anyway, the Brussels airport bombing shows that bombs in the lobby can also be highly effective.  What caused the greater uproar, the Brussels bombings or the loss of the Egyptian airliner?

The Trump Narrative.

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The standard liberal interpretation of supporters of Donald Trump is that they are angry, poorly-educated, older, working-class white men.[1]  How true is this stereotype?  A recent chart in the Wall Street Journal may offer some insight.[2]

So far in the primaries, Trump has won an average of 39.1 percent of the Republican vote.  If the various munchkins who were running for the Republican nomination had gotten out of the way early-on in favor of one candidate, then the “The Donald” might refer to a specialty deli sandwich[3] right now.

The demography of the Trump vote.

There is no polling data on “angry.”  Just channel Robin Williams.[4]

Education.

High school or less:     46.1 percent.

Some college:              42.5 percent.

BA                              34.6 percent.

Post-grad.                    27.0 percent.

Income.

<$50K                         44.0 percent.

$50K–$100K              36.6 percent.

>$100K                       35.4 percent.

Gender.

65+                              39.8 percent.

45-64                           39.6 percent.

30-44                           35.1 percent.

17-29                           30.2 percent.

Gender.

Male                            42.0 percent.

Female                         33.5 percent.

Location.

Rural.                                      40.9 percent.

Suburban.                    37.9 percent.

Urban.                         32.7 percent.

How Conservative?

Somewhat.                  40.0 percent.

Mod./Liberal.              37.3 percent.

Independent.               35.2 percent.

Very.                           35.1 percent.

In sum, Donald Trump does draw many votes from just the group described in liberal media.  However, he also draws a lot of support from the antithesis of the stereotype.  It would appear that Trump is also the candidate of a significant share of the well-educated, the well-off, the younger, and the female among Republicans.  Apparently, lots of them are angry too.[5]

[1] Or “rednecks” as my sister-in-law phrased it.

[2] Aaron Zimmer, “Inside the Trump Coalition,” WSJ, 25 March 2016.

[3] I’ll let you figure out the ingredients.  Probably a lot of ham on an onion loaf to begin with.

[4] See, for example, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qM-gZintWDc

[5] See  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=we_D3X1Jliw

More Young People.

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If we look at the history of the last quarter century, we see two dominant and inter-related trends.  Radical Islam isn’t one of them.  First, the collapse of Soviet Communism inspired other followers to abandon the controlled economy for participation in the world market.  Second, information technology destroyed many old barriers.  Upheaval and opportunity resulted.   Currently, about a quarter of all the people in the world are aged 10 to 24.[1]  That is, they were born between 1992 and 2006.  The world in which they have grown up is that same world that older people have often found so disorienting.   Now young people face their own problems.

Those billions of young people are not equally distributed around the world.  They account for only 17 percent of the population in economically developed countries; for 29 percent in less-developed countries, and 32 percent in the least developed countries.  In the United States, the median age is 37; in Russia, 39; in Germany, 46.  In Nigeria, the most populous nation in Africa, the median age is 18.  China offers a particularly interesting case of a transition.  Faced with a swiftly rising population, China declared a one-child policy for married couples.  It worked so well that the youth base of the population narrowed to a frightening degree.  A shortage of workers to replace those who are approaching retirement loomed.  At the same time, young couples found themselves providing care for up to four aging parents, while trying to work and raise their own child.  Recently, the government ended to one-child policy.

A disproportionate share of young people lives in the countries least well able to provide them with either an adequate education or a decent standard of living.  Take the example of India.  There are more than 420 million Indians between the ages of 15 and 34.  The median age is 27.  Desperate measures to expand primary education have had mixed results.  Although almost all Indian children now attend primary school, half of fifth graders can neither read at a second grade level nor do subtraction.[2]

Then, India needs to create 12-17 million new jobs every year to absorb the population growth.  In India and in other countries in similar dire straits, young people are forced into spotty, badly-paid just to get any jobs at all.  India’s reluctance to end the carbon-burning that drives economic growth in that country is easier to understand in light of that imperative.  The here and now weighs more heavily in the balance of decision-makers than does the future.[3]

Migration from “young” countries to “aging” countries might offer a solution.  However, there are several big barriers here.  First, even in the developed countries there is a problem of youth unemployment: in the United States, almost 17 percent of people between 16 and 29 are not in school and not working; in the European Union the youth unemployment rate averages 25 percent.[4]  It will be difficult to make the case for expanded immigration of young people when a country cannot even provide work for its own young people.  Second, the poor quality of education in many developing countries means that only some people will be viable migrants.

Even so, migration from the Lands of Inopportunity to the Lands of Opportunity may be inevitable.  There are 11 million illegal immigrants in the United States.  The current refugee crisis in Europe shows just how difficult it can be to keep out hordes of determined people.

[1] Somini Sengupta, “The World’s Big Problem: Young People,” NYT, 6 March 2016.

[2] The wretched state of education can be glimpsed in Aravind Adiga, The White Tiger (2008), and Mohsin Hamid, How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia (2013).

[3] A third problem is anti-female sex selection.  There are 17 million more Indian males than females aged 10 to 24.

[4] Sengupta argues that the high European rate results from a combination of a slow economy and the absence of economically valuable skills.  The same may be true in the United States, although some economists would argue that the skills-deficit argument is false.

A Geographer Reads the Newspaper 4.

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Africa was one of the battlefields in the Cold War. The United States supported—to a degree— the Congolese dictatorship of Mobutu Sese Seko (aka Joseph Mobutu) while the Cold War went on. It’s not like they had much choice, regardless of what spy novels tell us about the supposed powers of the CIA world-hydra. Once the Cold War ended, all bets were off. In the late 1990s, Mobutu was staggering after 30 years of tyranny and plunder. Rebels waged war against the government from remote sanctuaries in the vast country. All sorts of tribal quarrels were barely held in check. Then, in 1994, the Rwandan genocide on Congo’s eastern border killed 800,000 Tutsis and led to the flight of a million Hutu “genocidaires” and their kin to the Congo. While the Ugandan-backed Tutsis took power in Rwanda, the Hutus took effective control of the refugee camps that were supposedly run by international agencies. Not content to leave bad enough alone, the Hutus transformed these into bases for guerrilla raids into Rwanda. In 1996, the Rwandan Tutsis joined forces with some of the local Congolese rebels (some of them Congolese Tutsis) to wage their own war in Eastern Congo against the Hutus. Massacres of Hutus—not just of soldiers—attended every Tutsi incursion, then and later.

This triggered the final collapse of the Mobutu dictatorship. Supported at first by Rwanda, a former-rebel-turned-schemer-in-exile named Laurent Kabila took over as president. Rather than replacing one strong-man with another, this created a vacuum of power. Civil war broke out with multiple participants. Kabila disappointed the Rwandans just as much as he disappointed many others. In 1998, Rwanda again invaded the Congo. Kabila saved himself from overthrow by drawing in help from neighboring Angola and Zimbabwe. This stalled the Rwandans at the price of expanding the number of interested participants in an already gory war. Then Kabila was assassinated and replaced by his even more ineffectual son. Again civil war broke out. Again, Rwanda intervened.[1] Often these interventions seem to have been driven by the quest to control the mines of eastern Congo: gold, diamonds, uranium, nickel, copper. Over the years, huge amounts of precious minerals have been transferred to Rwanda.[2]

The war continues in fits and starts much as it has done for twenty years now. It has been a particularly brutal war. Small bands of armed men, rather than great armies, do battle far from Western eyes. Massacres of civilians abound, and millions haven driven into hiding in the bush. Starvation and disease are as much killers as are the gun men. By 2009, the best estimates held that 4-5 million people had died. Then things began to calm down. Uganda and Rwanda, long partners in crime, fell out with one another over the division of the spoils. Rwanda sought to patch-up relations with Congo. This brought a period of relative peace to eastern Congo.

You might think that this catastrophe would attract a lot of attention. It hasn’t. There are a couple of excellent histories.[3] There is one novel that focuses narrowly, but effectively, on the corrupt relationship between business and government in what amounts to a profit free-fire zone.[4] Told through the voice of an Anglo-Congolese translator, the story boils down to a plot by a well-connected American businessman to launch a fake coup in eastern Congo so that his mercenaries can scoop up a vast store of precious metals. “The horror. The horror.”

[1] Paul Kagame, the Rwandan “president,” is a much caressed pet of the United States.

[2] This may be one explanation for the apparent modernity of government offices in what is still a poor country.

[3] Gerard Prunier, Africa’s World War: Congo, the Rwanda Genocide, and the Making of a Continental Catastrophe (Oxford University Press, 2009); Jason K. Stearns, Dancing in the Glory of Monsters: The Collapse of the Congo and the Great War of Africa (Public Affairs, 2011).

[4] John le Carre, The Mission Song (Little, Brown and Co., 2006).