The Tao of George Best.

Posted on April 13, 2023 by jsh54

The great—and highly-paid–soccer-player George Best explained his post-career bankruptcy: “I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I just squandered.”

The final years to the 1990s were good years for American public finance: four consecutive annual budget surpluses and a total debt of about $5.7 trillion. Over the course of the next two decades, the debt rose above the $25 trillion mark. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that the debt will rise by more than $20 trillion in the next decade. The longer-run projections show things getting much worse.[1]

One of the drivers in debt expansion in the first decades of this century came in low interest rates. Keeping rates low formed a response to repeated major economic problems. It also meant that the interest that the government has to pay to much of the debt is cheap. That policy came to an end when the Federal Reserve Bank began raising interest rates to fight inflation. The smart money once expected low interest rates to go on forever; now the smart money seems to think that high interest rates are here to stay for the foreseeable future.

More troubling is the change in the ability of the United States to pay the debt, which consists of both principal and interest). During the expansion so far, from c. 2000 to c. 2020, the ratio of debt to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) tripled to 98 percent. Over the next decade that ratio is projected to rise to 118 percent. That is, the debt will expand at a faster rate than will the economy. “The longer-term projections show a near-complete loss of control over fiscal policy [i.e. taxing and spending choices].”

Americans and foreigners will go on buying American government debt (Treasury bonds, IOUs) so long as they think that they will get paid back. If people start to think that they will not get paid back, then they will become reluctant to buy debt. The price offered by the government will have to rise. Other forms of spending will have to be sacrificed to stave off even the shadow of bankruptcy.

The obvious solution is to stop the problem from getting worse immediately while we figure out a long-run solution. That would suggest both tax increases and spending cuts.

The Republican Party has made a fetish out of tax cuts. It turns out that Democrats aren’t willing to roll-back most of those tax cuts when they get in office. Democrats have built their “brand” on new and expanded-old government programs to address social problems. In many cases, the benefits promised by the exponents of both sides have failed to materialize. Reversing course is going to be painful—if it happens. Democracy has been pretty good at distributing benefits. It has seldom been good at distributing sacrifice.[2] The Constitution may not be a “suicide pact,” but our current politics may well be such a pact.

Obviously, the debt resembles climate change. They are “primary” problems without painless solutions. Transgender athletes, Donald Trump, and even guns are “secondary” issues.

The questions are:

Can we focus on the essentials?
Can we solve these problems without breaking democracy itself?

[1] William Galston, “Ballooning National Debt Is a Rotten Legacy,” WSJ, 12 April 2023. On Galston, see: William Galston – Wikipedia It’s not like he is some kind of no-account.

[2] The experiences of Britain and the United States during the Second World War are notable exceptions.

My Weekly Reader 11 April 2023.

Posted on April 11, 2023 by jsh54

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) argues that there exists a long-running and “behind-the-scenes manipulation of our political and justice systems to capture our courts—especially the Supreme Court—as a way to control the future of our democracy.”[1]

According to Senator Whitehouse, the manipulation began with a private memo written for the Education Committee of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, in August 1971. The author was Lewis F. Powell, then a lawyer in private practice, but soon to become an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS). Powell described American business and the free enterprise system as under heavy attack from a wide range of critics. Business, Powell urged, had to defend itself and the larger system in which it operated against these attacks.[2] Powell himself formed part of the majorities in two important decisions: Buckley v. Valeo (1976) and First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti (1978). The first decision relieved organizations that were independent of any particular candidate from the campaign finance rules. The second decision granted corporations First Amendment speech rights. These decisions allowed individuals and companies could join the political debate as if they were ordinary voters.

It took a while, but by the late 1970s, people began to take Powell’s advice. William Simon, Sr. had served as Treasury Secretary under Nixon and Ford. “The experience of [Nixon’s] impeachment convinced him […] not that partisanship was necessarily poisonous, but that his opponents were far better at partisanship than his side was. […] Simon would spend the remainder of his life helping to redress the balance.” In 1978, Simon and Irving Kristol founded The Institute For Education Affairs (IfEA).[3] In 1979, IfEA funded the start of the Collegiate Network; in 1982, IfEA funded he initial conference of the Federalist Society.[4] The former supports conservative alternative voices to mainstream college newspapers. The latter seeks to develop a robust cadre of conservative lawyers and judges. The Federalist Society’s goal has been described as “checking federal power, protecting individual liberty and interpreting the Constitution according to its original meaning.”[5] The Federalist Society has come to be seen as an enormously influential shaper of legal thought in the United States and as a gate-keeper for Republican appointees to the federal bureaucracy and judiciary.

The Federalist Society has been remarkably successful at placing its members in influential positions. Currently, Federalist Society members Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch, and Amy Coney Barrett serve as Associate Justices of the Supreme Court. To belabor the obvious, that’s five of nine. In the Citizens United decision (2010), the Supreme Court removed all restrictions on campaign spending for media by corporations, unions, and other associations.

This, then, is the “behind-the-scenes manipulation.” Actually, it’s been out in the open all along and it represents a legitimate political position. Fifty years on, it marks William Simon’s success in making Republicans better at partisanship than Democrats.

[1] Quoted in Leslie Lenkowsky, “Yet Another Conspiracy Theory,” WSJ, 6 December 2022.

[2] You can read the memo at The Memo (wlu.edu)

[3] On Simon, see William E. Simon – Wikipedia; on Kristol, see Irving Kristol – Wikipedia

[4] See: Collegiate Network – Wikipedia and Federalist Society – Wikipedia.

[5] Federalist Society – Wikipedia

Waiting.

Posted on April 10, 2023 by jsh54

Victory in the Cold War left the United States as the sole remaining superpower. The Western-led open world economy spread into much of the rest of the world. Western countries claimed their peace dividend by reducing defense spending. Yet not all were happy with the outcome. Expanded international economic integration disrupted established industries in Western countries, even as they raised hundreds of millions of people elsewhere out of abject poverty. Social division strained democratic politics, especially in the United States. China, Russia, and Islamic radicals declined to be chained to the chariot of American-led “progress.” They and others sought to increase their own power.

Until recently, in these efforts they mostly had to contend with the rhetorical disdain of the West. The leader of the pack, the United States, began to play a less influential role. In large measure, this change in role can be blamed on the disastrous invasion of Iraq. The decision to proceed with a “coalition of the willing,” rather than paying attention to what important international partners said by their refusal to participate; the gruesome civil war that the American invasion made possible; and the repercussions throughout the Middle East of the flunked war both diverted American attention from real issues and left the American people disgusted with international relations. President Donald Trump’s then well-founded disdain for the Continental European allies, his hostility to Iranian adventurism, and his determination to coerce China alarmed both America’s foreign policy elite and many foreign leaders. From both these adventures, the United States ended up in a very different place than had been the case at the end of the Cold War.

Now many in the West are truly alarmed. In the absence of reliable American leadership, some of the traditional allies are “tightening their relations with the U.S., increasing their defense spending, and intensifying efforts to strengthen the network of alliances that underpin the world order.”[1] What they are doing, really, is waiting to see if the Americans are going to shake it off and come back to the center of the ring for the next round.

What if the Americans don’t shake it off? What if other countries value the American-created and American-led world order more highly than do the Americans themselves? In that case, many countries will find themselves confronting a loose and temporary, but momentarily potent, coalition of predators.[2] What then? The Serpent Prince of Saudi Arabia seems to think that the question already has been answered. President Joe Biden has failed to come up with any suitable response to Iran, so Saudi Arabia has been open to Xi Jinping mediating a truce for the moment in the Iran-Saudi Arabia conflict, while also exerting pressure on the world oil market.[3] He’s an early adopter of the post-American world. Lots of people are not yet ready to make that jump, and don’t want that jump to become necessary. Nevertheless, they are watching to see how it shakes out.

At the heart of this dilemma is a more fundamental question. Is American weakness on the international scene only perceived or is it real? Only Americans can answer that question.

[1] Walter Russell Mead, “America Shrugs, and the World Makes Plans,” WSJ, 28 March 2023.

[2] For a historian, there are inescapable questions about parallels to the period between the two World Wars. Analogical thinking can be dangerous. You have to pick the right analogy, not just the one at hand.

[3] Which doesn’t do any good for any democratic politician in any country.

Franco Still Dead.

Posted on April 6, 2023 by jsh54

Back in the day, “Saturday Night Live” had a long-running gag about a news anchor reporting that “Spanish dictator Francisco Franco is still dead.” Wasn’t funny then (unless you were high) and it’s meaningless now. The reference offers the chance to think about an important issue. Is the chief objective of American foreign policy to defend American democracy or to create a democratic world?

In a straight fight between two countries, allies don’t matter. The wars of the 20^th Century spread far outside such boundaries. They were most commonly wars of coalitions: the First World War (1914-1918), the Second World War (1939-1945), and the Cold War (1945-1990). An entire century convulsed over issues of national independence, representative government, and human rights. In the end, the champions of democracy triumphed over the champions of authoritarianism.

Yet it wasn’t that simple. In the First World War, the parliamentary governments of France and Britain made common cause with Russian autocracy and the Italian and Japanese monarchies. In the Second World War, the United States and Britain joined with the Soviet Union and Kuomintang China to form a “Grand Alliance.” During the Cold War, America’s allies included some very undemocratic countries: Greece under occasional dictatorships, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Iran for a time, South Vietnam, and many African and Latin American countries. The reasons for these alliances were pragmatic: America needed allies, but many countries were not democratic.[1]

Now the Biden Administration is being criticized for taking a more puritanical view.[2] President Joe Biden talks a lot about a global struggle between democracy and authoritarianism. Well, the democracy is all on one side in the twilight struggles with China and Russia, but there’s authoritarianism on both sides. The catalogue of authoritarian states not aligned with Russia or China is long: in Africa there are Angola, Nigeria, and Ethiopia; in Southeast Asia there are Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, and Myanmar; in South Asia there are India, Indonesia, Malaya, and Sri Lanka; and in Central Asia and the Middle East there are a host of unfree countries.

Is democratic government a natural and inevitable stage of social, political, and economic development? If it is, then it can be held back for a time by a dictator or monarch, but it also can be swiftly brought into being by toppling the dictator, provided the country is sufficiently “developed.”[3] Or is each country or civilization the unique product of historical developments in government and culture? If it is, then democratic countries will have to tolerate diversity and practice inclusiveness while seeking common ground in shared real interests. Failing that, a country could wall off sin by aligning with and trading with only real democracies.

Conservative “realist” critics of the Biden foreign policy see it pushing an advanced and extended one-size-fits-all view of Democracy. This alarms or alienates potential allies whose real interest lies in countering the rise of Russian and Chinese power. Many observers can’t help but notice current American weakness. So, the old plan may be the best plan.

[1] “If Hitler invaded Hell, I would at least find a few kind words to say about the Devil.”—Winston Churchill.

[2] Walter Russell Mead, “The Cost of Biden’s ‘Democracy’ Fixation,” WSJ, 4 April 2023.

[3] As in Iraq in 2003.

Jury Shopping?

Posted on March 29, 2023 by jsh54

Upon taking office on 1 January 2022, New York County (i.e. Manhattan) District Attorney Alvin Bragg inherited several investigations of Donald Trump that had been launched by his predecessor, Cyrus Vance, Jr. One, into the Trump Organization, rather than Trump himself, he let go forward to a successful conclusion. Another centered on money paid to the adult performer who used the stage-name “Stormy Daniels.” Vance’s prosecutors had been trying to figure out that case for a long time. Bragg suspended it. Then he revived it.

The case is complicated.[1] According to the New York Times, “falsifying business records can be a crime.” (Emphasis added.) That “can” implies that it also may not be a crime. Trump is said to have violated New York State law by falsifying business records. Specifically, the Trump Organization reimbursed Trump’s personal attorney, Michael Cohen, for the $130,000 in “hush money” that Cohen paid to Daniels on behalf of Trump. The money was listed as a legal expense.

However, simply falsifying business records with an “intent to defraud” is a misdemeanor. To elevate the crime to a felony, Bragg’s prosecutors need to demonstrate that Trump intended to “commit or conceal a second crime,” again in the words of the New York Times. Current speculation holds that the “second crime” could be entering the money paid to Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen, as a “legal expense”[2] when it was actually an unreported campaign donation.

According to the Times, “Whether hush money can amount to a campaign donation is not settled law.” Either it is very common and undiscovered or no one but the occasional sexually incontinent politician engages in it. One of Trump’s lawyers has argued that he paid the money purely to spare his family from a sordid story that he has long denied. “He had to pay the money because there was going to be an allegation that was going to be publicly embarrassing for him, regardless of the campaign.”

Making an unreported campaign donation violates both Federal and New York State law. However, the Federal prosecutors are not pursuing this case. Can a state official prosecute someone for violating a federal law? Probably not. So, that leaves prosecuting Trump for violating state election law as the “second crime.” However, federal election law preempts state election law. So the unsettled legal status of “hush money” at the federal level raises questions about the viability of this approach. Still, there are legal loopholes that might serve.

Perhaps more to the point, the problem is how an elected district attorney is to get Donald Trump in front of what the New York Times calls a “jury in deep-blue Manhattan.” For that matter, in Fulton county, Georgia, a District Attorney convened a grand jury to examine Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election results in the Peach State.[3] In the November 2020 presidential election voting in Fulton county, Joe Biden won 72.65 percent of the vote. Is this jury shopping? Still, it may turn out that sometimes ham sandwiches are safe.

[1] Ben Protess, Jonah E. Bromwich, William K. Rashbaum, and Kate Christobek, “Possible Case Against Trump Would Hinge on Untested Theory,” NYT, 22 March 2023.

[2] The money went to a lawyer. What else is it? There’s a legal form for reporting “hush money”? If there is, would anyone believe that someone in the Federal bureaucracy wouldn’t leak that information?

[3] Glenn Thrush and Adam Goldman, “Trump Inquiries Pose Stress Test For Justice System,” NYT, 24 March 2023.

Why Iraq 2.

Posted on March 21, 2023 by jsh54

During the run-up to the attack on Iraq, the Bush Administration insinuated that Saddam Hussein had covert ties to al Qaeda and that Iraq had been involved in the 9/11 attacks. The administration more forthrightly claimed that Iraq’s stockpile of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) had to be put out of potential action. So either retribution or pretribution. Later on, both of these justifications were proved false.[1] Deputy Secretary for Defense Paul Wolfowitz is the villain in many accounts. He felt confident–without any hard evidence–that Iraq bore guilt for the 9/11 attacks. Early on, Wolfowitz seems to have talked President Bush into sharing this belief. The inability of the intelligence agencies to find significant evidence to support this belief then led to a manipulation of the intelligence that did exist. Then the WMD justification surged forward. Most of all, group-think and hierarchy led to a spreading certainty that Iraq posed a danger. Later in his time as president, George W. Bush, battered and enlightened by experience, might well have stopped this “log roll.” In the first years of his crisis-ridden presidency, however, he lacked the maturity and the experience needed to do his job.

One striking element in the movement toward war came in the lack of push-back from responsible quarters. In the House, 81 Democrats voted for the 2002 Authorization for the Use of Military Force, while only 6 Republicans voted against it; in the Senate, 29 Democrats voted for it, while only one Republican voted against it. When the war went wrong, many people weaseled. Furthermore, the claims about Iraq-al Qaeda contacts and Iraq’s possession of WMD went largely unchallenged by the media. Later, feeling twice deceived by “lies and the lying liars who tell them,”[2] journalists and academics rejected out of hand the war-for-democracy claims. They went in search of other motives for war. They suggested an attempt to dominate the world oil industry,[3] faulty or manipulated intelligence gathering and analysis, and the effect of “victory culture.”[4] What they didn’t do was to look at the history.

After the first two justifications collapsed (along with the careers of some of the people who had offered the justifications), the Bush Administration began to claim that the war’s purpose had always and only been to replace tyranny with democracy in Iraq. From there it would spread to the rest of that benighted region.[5] Why hadn’t they led with this argument, since it was so close to what they actually believed?

Perhaps the “neo-cons” believed that Americans would not support a war for democratization, while they would support a war for vengeance. If so, they were ignoring the arguments of an eminent predecessor, both scholar and presidential adviser, Robert E. Osgood. Osgood had believed that Idealism and Self-Interest could be reconciled in foreign policy.[6]

[1] The former had been incredible from the start. Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was a secular state and equal-opportunity oppressor. Al Qaeda was a movement of Sunni zealots. When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and threatened Saudi Arabia, Osama bin Laden had offered to lead an Islamist foreign legion against him in defense of Islam’s holy places. Nor could the intelligence community offer much in the way of evidence supporting tales of contact between the two enemies of the United States. The second justification seemed to have more substance. The United Nations weapons inspectors for Iraq believed that Hussein’s government had concealed large stockpiles of WMD. However, that is true of many anti-American countries (China, Russia, Pakistan, Israel). Why attack only Iraq?

[2] The title of Al Franken’s 2003 “fair and balanced look at the Right.”

[3] A bunch of this material is displayed at Rationale for the Iraq War – Wikipedia

[4] On the latter, see Tom Engelhardt, The End of Victory Culture: Cold War America and the Disillusioning of a Generation (2007).

[5] Max Fisher, “Two Decades Later, a Question Remains: Why Did the U.S. Invade?” NYT, 19 March 2023.

[6] Robert E. Osgood, Ideals and Self Interest in America’s Foreign Relations (1953). Got a copy on my shelf.

Why Iraq 1.

Posted on March 21, 2023 by jsh54

Why did the United States invade Iraq in March 2003?

Taking a historical view, the roots of the invasion might be found in the first decade after Western victory over the Soviet Union.[1] Debating the question of what to do with victory in that struggle, most people wanted a “peace dividend.”[2] Reduce defense spending and focus on domestic issues. However, a small coterie of “neo-conservatives”[3] wanted to use America’s position as the sole super-power to push reforms abroad. Poverty and tyranny held a tight grip in many parts of the world.[4] It need not remain so.

For example, the neo-cons seem to have made a correct diagnosis of the problems of the Middle East. Those problems stemmed not from the existence of Israel, nor from being caught up in post-World War II international rivalries, but from 500 years of Turkish misrule. Great landowners, rich merchants, and ambitious soldiers—all of them as crooked as a dog’s hind-leg—were deeply entrenched in Middle Eastern countries. The “neo-cons” moved from a correct diagnosis to a spectacularly wrong cure. Essentially, “people everywhere just want to be free.”[5] Knock over a dictator, declare democracy, put up some big box stores, and stand back.

They had a particular concern with Iraq. President George H. W. Bush had led the United States and an international coalition in the First Gulf War. Much of Iraq’s military forces were destroyed in this war, but the President had stopped the allied advance stopped close to the Kuwait-Iraq border. He had not pursued regime change. The President’s modesty and self-restraint left a savage dictator in power.[6] In retrospect, the “neo-cons” wanted to correct this error. They had lobbied President Bill Clinton “to aim above all, at the removal of Saddam Hussein from power.” In 1998, Congress passed and President Clinton signed into law the “Iraq Liberation Act.”[7] Still, he didn’t pay them no never-mind.[8] Hussein remained in power. Then came President George W. Bush; then came 9/11.

[1] The Soviet Union abandoned Communism, abandoned its empire in Eastern Europe, disintegrated into many states, and ceased to oppose the United States around the globe. If that isn’t victory, I don’t know what is. At the same time, it may have given then Senator and now President Joe Biden the wrong template for understanding “victory” in the Ukraine War. He’s affable as all get-out, but not an original or independent thinker.

[2] They got what they wanted. U.S. military spending | National Priorities Project (archive.org) However, the “black budget” of the American intelligence community is linked to that of the Defense Department. Cutting defense spending cut intelligence spending at the same time that expensive information technology systems were becoming vital. This compounded the cuts in human intelligence expertise during the rise of Osama bin Laden. Alas.

[3] See: Neoconservatism – Wikipedia

[4] Indeed, the United States had supported and co-operated with many such regimes. As Franklin D. Roosevelt reflected on the Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista, “He may be a son-of-a-bitch, but he’s our son-of-a-bitch.” It isn’t beyond imagining that the philosophically-inclined “neo-cons” concluded that we had got our hands dirty winning the Cold War, but now we should seek to undo that harm as best possible. Of course, something “not beyond imagining” isn’t necessarily what happened.

[5] See: The Rascals – People Got To Be Free – YouTube To be fair, every decade has a lot to answer for.

[6] The UN had authorized using force to evict the Iraqis from Kuwait, not to change the regime. Other major powers, like Russia and China, would take umbrage if the United States changed the rules of the game unilaterally. Iraqi society was a sectarian landmine whose explosion would lead to violence, suffering, and—in all likelihood–increased influence for Iran. So, yes, modesty and self-restraint. Where can we get some?

[7] On which, see: Iraq Liberation Act – Wikipedia

[8] He also didn’t pay any attention to the Rwanda genocide. Americans, he thought, didn’t want another war.

The Old Days.

Posted on March 14, 2023 by jsh54

Among the thoughtful members of America’s elite[1] the predominant mood seems to be nostalgia. Leslie Lenkowski, a professor emeritus of Public Policy at Indiana University, used a book review to describe and add to some of the recent thought on the decline over time of social solidarity in the United States.[2] The stakes in this game are high. Since Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, that social solidarity has been seen as the foundation of democracy.

The one-time “nation of joiners” has become a “nation of spectators.”[3] All sorts of political, social, and economic changes wrought this transformation. Some of the changes were divisive in themselves. Income inequality has grown and people have moved toward socio-economically homogenous communities, with intellectual homogeneity as an effect. Some of the changes reversed the instilling of a civic religion. Common, though far from universal, military service ended after Vietnam. Movies and other forms of mass entertainment have moved from celebrating American democracy to portraying it a device serving powerful occult interests.[4]

Haass and Lenkowski both assign a primary role in this American crisis to the elites. For Haass, it is up to them to encourage their constituencies in all the major institutions and areas of national life to “embrace obligations,” not just rights. For Lenkowski, the problem lies, first and foremost, with the critics “from across the political spectrum, that bring into question American history and ideals, the fairness of American society and institutions, and the ability of individuals to make a difference in the face of supposedly hidden forces.” Elites must act differently if America is to be restored.

But maybe the rot isn’t in the elites, or not only in the elites. Maybe it is in the common man as well. In a democracy, politicians try to give both the “interests” and the “public” what they want. As Haass says: “We get the government and the country we deserve. Getting the one we want is up to us.” What have we wanted? Low taxes, high spending, big deficits; one percent of Americans willing to do military service; low voter turnout and difficulty filling jury pools; and Not In My Back Yard coupled with a sense of grievance-as-identity.

We’ve been here before. At the start of the New Deal, opinion high and low turned against the culture of the Twenties. Franklin D. Roosevelt spoke for many when he dismissed the before-time as “a decade of debauch.”[5] The Thirties were to be a decade of collective, practical action for the common good. The desires of the individual would come a distant second. They ended in an un-wanted war that demanded national solidarity. A year after Pearl Harbor, a line from “Casablanca” (1942) summed-up the change: “I’m no good at being noble, but it doesn’t take much to see that the problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.”

Is it going to take some national economic or military disaster to change our minds?

[1] It says something about our country that a person can get into the elite without being thoughtful.

[2] Leslie Lenkowski, “We’re All In This Together,” WSJ, 2 March 2023. He reviewed Richard Haass, The Bill of Obligations: The Habits of Good Citizens (2023). On Richard Haass, see: Richard N. Haass – Wikipedia

[3] While Lenkowski cites earlier assessments of this shift, his argument is supported by the work of Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (2000).

[4] See, for a few examples among many: “The Pelican Brief,” (dir. Alan J. Pakula, 1993); “Enemy of the State” (dir. Tony Scott, 1998); “Shooter” (dir. Antoine Fuqua, 2007).

[5] Quoted in William E. Leuchtenberg, Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal, 1932-1940 (1963), p. 343.

Sequence.

Posted on March 7, 2023 by jsh54

In Fall 1938, in the aftermath of Munich, President Franklin D. Roosevelt called for the expansion of the American Army Air Force (AAF) from 1,200 airplanes to a force of 15,000 planes. Army Assistant Chief of Staff George C. Marshall then tried to talk some sense into his boss. Sequence, he insisted: first one thing, then the next thing. What the AAF needed first was the construction of lots of airfields and the establishment of mass training programs for pilots, navigators, bombardiers, air-gunners, aircraft mechanics, and all the other people who would service and fly the planes. Only after an adequate infrastructure had been created would it be desirable to build the planes.[1] There are lessons in this little anecdote.

Wind and solar power provide “clean” energy, while carbon-burning electricity generation create about 25 percent of the country’s “greenhouse gases.” Clean energy suffers from constraints related to location. They take up a lot of space and they work best where there is a lot of sun and wind. So they are most easily constructed in areas remote from the urban areas of mass energy consumption. Transmission of the energy from point of generation to point of use is handled by the nation-wide network of power lines and transformers.[2]

Aye, there’s the rub. The “nation’s antiquated systems to connect new sources of electricity to homes and businesses” is grievously delaying the transition from dirty to clean energy.[3] What does “antiquated systems” mean exactly? Power companies have squeezed out obscene profits by skimping on maintenance and modernization, right? Apparently not. Rather, there are other long-existing barriers not addressed by the climate legislation of the Biden Administration.

The American electricity distribution grid took a long time to construct, beginning in the 1920s. Eventually it reached a stable state, with only a handful of new power plants being added every year. After spectacular “blackouts” in the 1960s, attention turned to improving reliability. Stable transmission systems led to the creation of a stable body of human capital. In this case, it was power engineers who could understand the complex systems. In short, there are two related bottlenecks in any rapid shift from one form of electricity generation to another.

This is evident in current experience. New projects seeking access to the grid system apply to the power authority in their region for permission to connect. The current system is badly clogged because there are only a limited number of power engineers to assess the projects. In 2012, it took two years for projects to gain approval; in 2022 it took four years. Once the limited and over-loaded pool of power engineers completes an assessment, the applicant is often told that they must foot the bill for new transmission lines. Long waits and unanticipated high costs have already derailed many “green” energy projects. The large subsidies for clean energy generation, rather than transmission, offered by the Biden Administration are likely to make matters much worse.

So, sequence: first one thing, then the next thing. Which we’re not doing.

[1] Robert Dallek, Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1933-1945 (1979), pp. 172-174. The Thirties and Forties witnessed rapid technological innovation in aircraft. Building the planes before you had the infrastructure would guarantee that those aircraft were obsolete by the time you had the people to fly them.

[2] See: North American power transmission grid – Wikipedia

[3] Brad Plumer, “U.S. Solar Goal Stalled by Wait on Creaky Grid,” NYT, 24 February 2023.

The Biden Economy.

Posted on February 23, 2023 by jsh54

President Joe Biden will soon announce that he will run for a second term. Here’s the Democratic best-case interpretation of the performance of the Biden Administration during its first two years in power.[1]

In the view of Brian Deese, the chief economic official in the White House, the Biden Administration has performed very well, if not flawlessly. The Administration’s 2021 stimulus bill promoted a “strong and equitable economic recovery.” The Biden Administration also has “invested” in a wide range of industrial and infrastructure initiatives. Many of these initiatives can be designated as climate-related. Furthermore, the administration also has launched a hodge-podge of other policies which have not yet born fruit, either sweet or bitter. Chief among these have been an attack on corporate concentration and talking-up the value of labor unions.

There have been failures as well. Running for office during the Covid emergency, Candidate Joe Biden promised his voters all sorts of new government benefits.[2] President Joe Biden could not entirely deliver on his promises. He did deliver a big temporary increase in the child-tax credit.

Much more important has been the problem of inflation. In Democratic reasoning, the American economy has turned in a feeble performance for much of the Twenty-first Century. Therefore the 2021 stimulus bill erred on the side of optimism. The Biden Administration did and could not anticipate the large and sustained rise in prices. However, in the Democratic interpretation, the primary drivers of the inflation were the disruptions of the supply-chain and the spike in energy prices. The former sprang from the Covid pandemic; the latter from Russia’s attack on Ukraine. Neither of these could have been anticipated. In any event, the error had only “somewhat limited consequences.” Unless you were buying groceries or gassing-up the car.

Take a longer view. The Clinton Administration (1992-2000) held office during—and claimed credit for—a boom/bubble in the tech economy. Then that bubble burst just after the Bush II (2000-2008) took office. Hot on the heels came 9/11. The government poured in money and encouraged Americans to consume, rather than sacrifice for the war effort. Then the long-ignored housing bubble collapsed. First the Bush Administration, then the Obama Administration (2008-2016) poured in money to cushion the blow. Apparently not enough money, because the “Long Recession” dragged on. Then the Trump Administration (2016-2020) applied big tax cuts and deregulation. Democrats ridiculed the resulting boom as a ”sugar high.”[3] Then came Covid and more heavy government spending, first under the Trump Administration and then under the Biden Administration (2020- ).

So, in what kind of shape is the long-term private economy? It looks like many of the spikes in economic activity spring from government stimulus in one guise or another. If so, then the performance of the underlying “real” economy may not be too solid. Economists offer complex analyses of this issue. In layman’s terms, however, the stimuli seem like nostalgia for a bygone age of American economic prowess as much as emergency economic policies.

[1] David Leonhardt, “Assessing the Biden Record as His Economic Team Transitions,” NYT, 23 February 2023.

[2] Universal pre-K, paid family leave, expansion of the child tax-credit, and increased elder care. At the same time, Biden endorsed many government programs to counter climate change.

[3] Although it isn’t clear why deficit-expanding tax cuts create that “high,” while deficit-expanding spending doesn’t.

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