Saudi Arabia and 9/11.

Posted on June 18, 2016 by jsh54

In the 9/11 attacks, 15 of the 19 hijackers came from Saudi Arabia.[1] Osama bin Laden was a Saudi who had begun his career in “jihad” by raising money and recruiting men for the war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. This came to be called the “Golden Chain.” It is now a commonplace to note that Saudi Arabia has promoted the Puritanical form of Islam known as Wahhabism and that there is a striking similarity between Wahhabism and the ideology of ISIS. Immediately after 9/11, the Saudi Arabian government flew 160+ Saudi Arabians out of the US on chartered jets, while the rest of America was grounded.[2] So, inquiring minds want to know, did Saudi Arabia have anything to do with the 9/11 attacks?

Conspiracy theorists aren’t the only ones to ask the question.[3] In 2002, a Joint Congressional Inquiry investigated intelligence failures on the road to 9/11. President George W. Bush felt it necessary to bar release of 28 pages of the report which dealt with Saudi Arabian involvement. (The Congress People[4] are allowed to read the pages under supervision, but they are barred from talking about what they have read.)

Did ObL’s “Golden Chain” continue to operate after the war in Afghanistan? Did Saudi donors finance the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon? Did Saudi government officials facilitate the work of the terrorists? In response to these questions, equivocation is rife. The Saudi government emphatically denies having anything to do with 9/11. The 9/11 Commission declared that there was “no evidence” of Saudi government involvement at the upper levels. What about at the lower levels? What about rich guys not in government?

People who are privy to the various investigations dissent from the qualified answers offered by the government. John Lehman, a member of the 9/11 Commission, said that “there was an awful lot of participation by Saudi individuals in supporting the hijackers, and some of these people worked in the Saudi government.” Bob Graham, a co-chair of the group investigating intelligence failures, said that the question of financing of 9/11 “points a very strong finger at Saudi Arabia.”

At what do people look specifically? First, at Omar al-Bayoumi, who is suspected of being a Saudi intelligence officer posted in Southern California with a watching brief on Saudi dissidents living in America. In January 2000, two of the future hijackers (who had slipped through the many cracks in American intelligence before 9/11) arrived in Los Angeles. Neither spoke any English, yet they managed to disappear for two weeks. Then they met Bayoumi. He drove them down I-5 to San Diego, found them an apartment (co-signing the lease) and fronted them the rent, and put them in touch with a local imam, Anwar al Awlaki. (See “Just like Imam used to make.”) Second, at Fahad al-Thumairy, a Saudi consul and imam in Southern California.[5] He had contact with Bayoumi; he was deported in 2003; and he was interviewed by the EffaBeeEye several times in 2004. Thumairy denies everything.

On the one hand, one of the implicated Saudi officials says “Saudi Arabia has nothing to hide.” On the other hand, Saudi Arabia recently said that it will sell $750 billion of its American assets (mostly US Treasury bonds) if the secret 28 pages are de-classified. That seems likely a testy response if there’s “nothing to hide.” Still, American officials cringe before the threat.

[1] “Noted,” The Week, 15 July 2005, p. 18.

[2] There were 84,436 Saudis in the United States that year. Why fly out only 160 or so of them?

[3] “Saudi Arabia and 9/11,” The Week, 24 June 2016, p. 13.

[4] See their hit song “White-House-C-A.”

[5] Mark Mazetti and Scott Shane, “28 Pages May Not Unlock Mystery of Saudis and 9/11,” NYT, 18 June 2016.

The Rise and Decline of Nations.

Posted on June 18, 2016 by jsh54

Back in the day–as young people used to say before they moved on to some other expression up with which I have not caught—I was going to be an economic historian. I came across a book by Mancur (Man-Kur or Man-Sur, depending on who your listening to) Olson.[1] It’s a remarkable book, although—like many another remarkable book—long forgotten.

At the core of the book is a puzzle. Germany and Japan lost the Second World War big time, while the United States won big time. So how come the post-war German and Japanese economies were so dynamic, while the American economy slowed down?

Olson’s answer is one that will be obvious to sailors.[2] You leave the boat in salt-water and it will pick up barnacles. It also will be obvious to heart surgeons. You have too many double bacon cheeseburgers with the twisty fries covered in BBQ sauce and your arteries will get clogged with sludge. In either metaphor, the system gets loaded with stuff that slows down its operation.

What, in economic terms, are these barnacles/sludge? They are the various interest groups that grow up around an established way of doing things: unions, government regulators, tax collectors, and business monopolies and cartels. They grow up with—well, slightly behind– any new industry. They figure out how the system works. They figure out how to work the system. They’re opposed to change because they know how to work the existing system.[3] They fight over shares of the existing pie, rather than over how to expand the pie. Eventually, the contending groups reach agreement on how to divvy-up the pie. These agreements Olson labels “distributional coalitions.” They are the “masters of the crossroads.”[4]

The thing is that the Second World War destroyed all these “distributional coalitions”—the barnacles, the sludge, the interest groups, the barriers to new technology and new relationships–in Germany and Japan. War “emergencies” caused the German and Japanese governments to break down established relationships from the pre-war era. Then the American and British occupations banned many regime-associated groups. In contrast, the victor nations institutionalized their own “distributional coalitions.” American and British unions foreswore strikes, while lots of leading businessmen took “dollar-a-year” jobs with the government.[5] Subsequently, many interest groups dug-in to established positions. So, Germany and Japan were able to achieve rapid economic growth, while the United States merely chugged along and Britain soon fell behind the countries against which it had fought from the first day of the Second World War to the last.

In a sense, then, catastrophic defeat in war serves as a kind of social and economic angioplasty.[6] Obviously, Olson was talking only about already advanced industrial economies. I doubt that anyone expects Iraq to be the next “economic miracle.”

Trite observation though it is, the same analysis might be applied to any organization. For example, colleges facing severe competition either ruthlessly adapt or wither.

[1] Mancur Olson, The Rise and Fall of Nations: Economic Growth, Stagflation, and Social Rigidities (Yale UP, 1984).

[2] Nevertheless, will all the non-sailors please spare me the abusive remarks about me wearing pink—“salmon” in the imagination of my brother-in-law—pants, blue Polo shirts, and Topsiders? Please?

[3] Big Carbon—coal and oil—has a lot more drag with the gummint than does Not-So-Big Renewables.

[4] See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papa_Legba See also: Madison Smartt Bell, All Souls’ Rising (1995); Master of the Crossroads (2000); and The Stone That the Builder Refused (2004).

[5] See, for example, Alan Brinkley, The End of Reform: New Deal Liberalism in Recession and War (1995).

[6] Curiously, this is how mainstream economists saw a business-cycle recession before the Great Depression.

Watch List.

Posted on June 17, 2016 by jsh54

The federal gummint’s terrorist watch list has crested at about 800,000 names.[1] The vast majority of these people are foreigners. Many are candidates for drone strikes. Most never seek entry to the United States. That would just end in a flight to Guantanamo. The “no-fly” list contains the names of about 64,000 people who will not be allowed to board airplanes bound for the United States. “Only” about 25,000-40,000 of the people on the list are Americans. People on the terrorism watch list who try to buy guns are automatically flagged for further FBI investigation. In 2015, the names of 244 people who were on the watch list were sent to the FBI when they tried to buy guns. Apparently, that further check really amounts to applying the normal standards for buying a gun: no history of involuntary commitment for mental illness and/or no criminal record. (So, how does someone with no interest in buying guns get on the watch list? If I went around denouncing the US Government in scurrilous terms, I’d want to have guns for when they got pissed off.[2])

In December 2015, the Senate Democrats offered a bill to give the Attorney General the power to deny the sale of a firearm or an explosive “to a known or suspected terrorist.” Critics of the whole watch list thing point out that inclusion on the list is an administrative decision, while there is virtually no way to appeal against the decision. The Republicans countered with a bill to delay sale for 72 hours to enable the FBI to investigate the purchaser. Neither bill mustered a majority.

Had the Democrats’ bill passed, Omar Mateen would still have been able to purchase the weapons that he used in the Orlando massacre. On the one hand, “suspects” are investigated by the FBI. If the FBI concludes that they are not a current threat, then they are removed from the list of people banned from purchasing firearms or explosives. On the other hand, there is a more or less “black market” for guns to be had on the internet from private dealers.

Perhaps long experience with the ineffectiveness of government regulation explains why Republican support for tighter gun laws fell from 55 percent in March 2000 to 26 percent in July 2015. In any case, in states with Republican majorities in the legislature, mass shootings actually are followed by a loosening of gun laws.[3] Conservatives throw up a smokescreen of rationalizations when their real concern is that liberals will try to disarm the country.[4]

One of the sources of the bitter partisanship that has disabled American democracy is revealed in a comment in a New York Times article. “The “legislation does not specifically require that someone be named on a particular watch list to be considered a known terrorist or a suspect, so it is possible that Mr. Mateen could have been flagged under other procedures implemented by the attorney general.” Yes, yes, yes, the Justice Department says that this means that people once on a watch list and subsequently removed could still be banned. However, what springs to mind in this post-Patriot Act/post-Snowden age is that an endlessly expanding list of people not allowed to buy guns will be created by presidential ukase. Like work permits for illegal immigrants. Like the assertion that the War Powers Act does not apply in Libya.

[1] Alicia Parlapiano, “How Terror Suspects Buy Guns—and How They Still Could, Even With a Ban,” NYT, 16 June 2016.

[2] See an over the top account in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Hampton

[3] Neil Irwin, “After Mass Shootings, It’s Often Easier to Buy a Gun,” NYT, 16 June 2016.

[4] Yet national disarmament—as in Britain or Australia—is the only real means to reduce gun deaths. The president needs to speak the truth, rather than run from it. Same goes for drugs, taxes in the middle classes, and a carbon tax.

The Islamic Brigades III.

Posted on June 17, 2016 by jsh54

Omar Mateen, the Orlando Islamist homophobe mass murderer is beginning to appear as deranged from youth. Different groups have sought to interpret the massacre to serve their own ends.[1] Republicans harp on the danger from “radical Islam.” President Obama excoriates American gun laws. Gay rights groups trace the line from Stonewall to Orlando. All this is great for an “Inside Baseball” approach to politics. Does it solve any of our problems? No.

Currently, it is all the rage to remark that ISIS exerts a global influence through both its propaganda and the reality of its military threat to Syria and Iraq. This leads to “lone wolf” attacks. However, the “shoe bomber,” the “underwear bomber,” the London transit bombers, and the Madrid train bombers all struck before ISIS was so much as a twinkle in the eye of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Stamp out ISIS and some new source of inspiration will arise.

Both traditional diplomats and modern military intelligence analysts have always sought to understand the “capabilities” of other states, rather than their “intent.” “Intent” can change pretty rapidly, so understanding “capability” is much more useful in interpreting the strategic environment. Peter Bergen, the author of United States of Jihad: Investigating America’s Homegrown Terrorists (2016), describes FBI behavioral analysts as doing something similar. They analyze where a subject appears to be on a “pathway to violence.” Neither of the two earlier FBI investigations of Omar Mateen had given any reason to believe that he had advanced far down the “pathway.”[2] Suddenly, a few weeks ago, Mateen began to shift from all talk toward action. He purchased guns; he tried to purchase body armor and ammunition in bulk; he began visiting a number of public sites suitable for targeting large numbers of people. What caused the apparently sudden acceleration down the “pathway”? We don’t know yet.

Terrorism scholars have concluded that the reason that terrorists attack are complex, but highly personal, rather than standardized. Indeed, the “soldiers” of ISIS may be “little more than disturbed individuals grasping for justification.”[3] Thus, Peter Bergen rejects simple answers. In only 10 percent of 300 cases he examined did the “terrorist” have any kind of identifiable mental problem.[4] The share of them who had ever done time in prison was only slightly higher than the American national average.[5] Radical Islam just pulls some people. Why?

Instead of simple explanations, Bergen finds a pattern of complex factors. There is likely to be hostility to America’s Middle Eastern policy (our mindless support for Israel, our wrecking Iraq and Libya). At the core, however, he finds people who have suffered some kind of acute “personal disappointment” or rupture like the death of a parent. To take two examples, Nidal Hassan had few friends, no wife, and both his parents had died; while Tamerlan Tsarnaev had missed his punch in an effort to become an Olympic boxer. Omar Mateen kept getting tossed out of school, losing jobs, and failing at marriage. This, in turn, sends them in search of something that will give their life meaning. That can mean radical Islam. So, are terrorists “failed sons”?

[1] Max Fisher, “Trying to Know The Unknowable: Why Attackers Strike,” NYT, 15 June 2016.

[2] Obviously, this has nothing to do with the important questions, first, of whether someone with such a troubled life history should have been able to buy a firearm; and, second, whether anyone should be able to buy something like an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle.

[3] Fisher, “Trying to Know The Unknowable.”

[4] Peter Bergen, “Why Do Terrorists Commit Terrorism?” NYT, 15 June 2016.

[5] Terrorists: 12 percent versus American average: 11 percent. However, extraordinarily large numbers of Americans have done time as a result of the War on Drugs, so this figure might look different if set in the context of incarceration rates in other advanced nations.

Millennial Falcons.

Posted on June 9, 2016 by jsh54

“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).

The Perils of Seafaring 2.

Posted on June 1, 2016 by jsh54

Sir Humphrey Gilbert (1539-1583) had a lot of hard bark on him. He was what is called in Britain a “West Countryman.” That is, he came from the jagged bit of southwestern England that juts out toward the Atlantic. It’s a poor country. The farmland isn’t very good, the sea is all around, and boys—noble or common–often went to sea. The better-off often went into politics as well. His half-brother was Sir Walter Raleigh and his cousin was Sir Richard Grenville. All three ended up dead as the result of “mishaps” at sea. (But not before they had done stuff to make their names ring out on street-corners.) He got the usual upper-class education, including—comically, given his behavior—a time studying law. Being “choleric” (i.e. he ran hot), he soon abandoned the law for war in France and Ireland.

While young, he got a taste for overseas empire-building at the expense of the locals. Essentially, his plan was to seize lands abroad; then to conquer, drive off, or kill the local inhabitants; and then to bring in English settlers. First he pursued his project in Ireland in the 1560s. The results were bloody in an extreme. His ruthless success in Ireland brought him a knighthood, election as a Member of Parliament, and a wide range of important contacts in science, trade, and government.

At the same time as he pursued empire in Ireland, dreams entered his head of even bigger projects in America. He had become one of the believers in the existence of a Northwest Passage across the top of America to China. He planned to capture the key point of entry into that passage for Britain. In practice, this meant establishing a colony on Newfoundland. The colony would command the entrance to Davis Strait between Greenland and the Canadian mainland, and to whatever lay beyond.[1] No one really knew. Over-seas expeditions required ships, supplies, crews: in short a lot of money before they even left port. Queen Elizabeth I did not oppose such efforts, so long as somebody else paid for them. Gilbert invested much of his own wealth in the effort, then got some of his family-members to invest as well.[2]

His first expedition sailed into the North Atlantic in November 1578. Storms kept it from reaching America. Years passed before Gilbert could raise the money for another expedition. Irish troubles continually demanded his attention. He proposed a plan to settle English Catholics in America so that they could practice their faith in freedom, but it failed to win approval.

His second expedition sailed in June 1583, although short of supplies, and reached Newfoundland in August. He took possession of the territory for England. Sailing down the coast, Gilbert’s usual bad luck at sea returned. His largest ship, with most of the supplies, went aground and sank. Gilbert headed the two surviving ships for home, hoping to return before the winter storms. In early September, they were caught in a huge, multi-day storm. Gilbert sat in a chair on the stern of his ship reading a book. When the other ship approached, Gilbert called out “we are as near to Heaven by sea as by land.” That night his ship sank with all hands.

Today Gilbert’s dream of an American colony to control the Northwest Passage seems ridiculous. It was a speculation founded on hope and ignorance. However, the dream of a Northwest Passage wasn’t any more ridiculous than the beliefs that inspired Columbus to sail west for China. Gilbert lacked Columbus’s skill as a sailor and his incredible good luck. Therefore, his dreams and projects ruined him.

Still, the application of “Irish” methods to America, British control of the seas to give it control of world trade, and colonies for religious dissidents all came to pass by-and-by.

[1] See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newfoundland_%28island%29#/media/File:Newfoundland_map.png

[2] Family and friend investing may seem strange today, but it once was common. Families rose (or fell) together.

The 1400.

Posted on May 30, 2016 by jsh54

Chicago has a population of about 2.7 million people. In the first quarter of 2016, it had more than 1,000 people shot—of whom 141 died. That makes the “City of Big Shoulders” the murder capital—sorry, tired phrase—of the United States.[1] Most of the violence appears to spring from wars between drug gangs.

“Da Cops” think that 1,400 young, black men did most of the shooting.[2] It appears that most of those young men belong to a group of “social networks.”[3] In an interesting experiment that smacks of Philip K. Dick,[4] the police have been analyzing 10 variables[5] to assign a likely-to-be-involved-in-violence score to people on its “Strategic Subject List” (SSL).[6] It may not be perfect, but it’s not inaccurate: 70 percent of those who were shot so far in 2016 were in the list.

One question is how to respond. A “public health” response takes the form of visits to the homes of people on the SSL by teams of police officers, social workers, and community organizers. The purpose is to warn them that they have come to the attention of the authorities, and to offer them what meager support a bankrupt city can afford if they want to go down another road.[7] Any life redeemed is a win. One official says that 21 percent of the SSL figures “they had succeeded in talking to”[8] had accepted the offer of help and only 9 percent had been shot since a visit.[9]

Another question is about civil liberties. People who care about civil liberties (practically an endangered species in America, they’re going to end up being released into the wild in Yellowstone or something like that) might be concerned about the fact that 80 percent of those arrested for involvement in shootings, and 117 of the 140 people arrested in a spate of drug and gang raids also were on the SSL. Do the police have any evidence or do they just “round up the usual suspects” based on the SSL? That approach is more cost-effective and emotionally satisfying in a country in love with “getting tough” with everyone except ourselves.

What do the variables themselves tell us? Take “having been shot.” If somebody shot me, then I would certainly want to shoot that person. Fair’s fair. However, I’d settle for the police arresting that person and the courts trying that person, and the judge assigning some inadequate sentence. Walk away grinding my teeth. None of that is true for the shooters and the shot in Chicago. They don’t accept the court system. They don’t delegate “justice.” They don’t walk away. Probably, that would undermine what little personal dignity they possess.

[1] “Chicago in crisis,” The Week, 13 May 2016, p. 11.

[2] They’re mostly terrible shots. If you take 14.1 percent lethality as a measurement, the ROI is low. Still, what if the thrill of the experience is what people are after, rather than actually killing somebody? Also, it’s not like there are lots of places to practice one’s aim and receive expert instruction. I suppose the cops could subpoena the records of gun ranges. Find out who is buying time on the range, renting muffs and safety glasses, buying 9-mm ammo.

[3] See Andrew Papachristos, http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/11/18/can-predictive-policing-be-ethical-and-effective/use-of-data-can-stop-crime-by-helping-potential-victms

[4] See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minority_Report_%28film%29

[5] The variables include things like “trend lines” of previous arrests, arrest for possession or use of a weapon, and having been shot. They exclude race, gender, age, and geography. Why include things that can be taken as a given, but which will end up in a lawsuit over profiling?

[6] Monica Davey, “Chicago Police Try to Predict Who May Shoot or Be Shot,” NYT, 24 May 2016.

[7] That aid includes drug treatment, housing assistance, and job-training. To put the worst possible spin on it, become a minimum-wage food-service worker, so you can go to bed early and can get up before dawn to take public transit, and be a complete pussy in the eyes of everyone except your grandmother.

[8] That is, most weren’t at home because they were “at work” or laying up with a girl or just told them to go away.

[9] They visited 1,300 people. So, 9 percent would be 117 people. Out of 470 killed and perhaps 3,300 shot. Murky.

The Pornography Industrial Complex 1.

Posted on May 27, 2016 by jsh54

Intellectuals “theorize” what ordinary people need no theory to explain or justify.[1]

Both Christianity and bourgeois capitalism deprecated sex.[2] They built a great civilization on impulse-repression. Arguably, though, that civilization left people psychologically maimed. Sexual repression produced “moodiness” in men. The solution? Widespread resort to brothels. Sexual repression produced “hysteria” in women. The solution? Manual manipulation of the afflicted area by gynecologists. Later, the electric-powered vibrator became a favored household appliance.[3]

Not everyone cared to play along. If enough specialist history books are consulted, it soon becomes apparent that lots of men and women liked sex. They also didn’t care what “high” culture said on the subject.[4] The written evidence for this is patchy. One has to imagine the milk-maids and swineherds in Meissen going for a roll in the porcelain hay. Surely some of them did. In the 18^th Century, the English “Hell Fire Club” engaged in all sorts of depravity. Late in the 18^th Century, a “quack sexologist” named James Graham[5] created an electrified “celestial bed” that was supposed to facilitate conception. In the 19^th Century, sexual dissidence went hand in hand with political radicalism. “Owenites,” “Fourierists,” and the myths of Brook Farm all spread stories of “free love” early in the 19^th Century, while Havelock Ellis and Edward Carpenter provided a scientific rationale at the end of the century.

One of the dissidents was Wilhelm Reich. Soon after the end of the First World War, Reich got the idea that what we are most ashamed of—sex in all its variety–might actually be the thing that could heal our psychic wounds.[6] Later Reich used the term “sexual revolution” to express a causational link between sexual emancipation and political change. (Subsequently, the German Communist Party expelled Reich for his sexual militancy and the International Psychoanalytical Association expelled Reich for his political militancy.)

The slow percolation into a broader society of Reich’s ideas helped set off the “sexual revolution” of the post-war period.[7] Blindly, Alex Comfort’s The Joy of Sex (1972) ratified a belief that sexual liberation began in the Sixties.

In fact, “sexual revolution” did not bring political revolution. Probably this is an example of “sensualism” (the satisfaction of short-term physical desire) diverting people from revolutionary activity, just as Bolsheviks feared that “economism” (the satisfaction of short-term material wants through union bargaining) would divert the working class from revolution.[8]

Again and again, change-agents are appalled by what they have wrought. Reich ended his days as a Republican.

[1] Ariel Levy, “Novelty Acts,” The New Yorker, 19 September 2011.

[2] For an illustration of this, see Brian Moore, Black Robe (1985). The Stone Age hunting and gathering Indians are sexually promiscuous, while the Iron Age French colonists are materially secure and frustrated.

[3] See Rachel Maines, The Technology of Orgasm (2010).

[4] Inevitably, historians have fastened on the more talky and twisted among them. People like Richard Burton (the explorer). Algernon Swinburne, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti tend to hog the limelight.

[5] Graham was a one-time resident of Philadelphia, but I find no statues to his memory.

[6] You got a bad back? That’s a different story. And for God’s sake, never try to do it in the driver’s seat of a Camaro.

[7] Yes, yes, everyone wants to believe that the sexual revolution began in the Sixties (or—for Catholics—in the Seventies and Eighties). However, it actually began much earlier and is related to post-war housing construction and the urban job market as much as to “the Pill.” All of these things empowered women to define their own lives. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_m67JbGjWnc

[8] For an example of this with contemporary applications, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4y_mXLYh_PA

Nostalgia.

Posted on May 26, 2016 by jsh54

“Compared with 50 years ago [i.e. 1966], life for people like you in America is worse.” Agree or Disagree.[1]

Almost half (46 percent) of voters agreed with this statement. The distribution was pretty much balanced between men (45 percent) and women (46 percent). Fifty years into Women’s Lib and almost half of women think that life for people like them is worse? Maybe the half of guys who think that life is not worse are married to the women who think life is worse, while the half of women who think life is not worse are married to the guys who think that life is worse. Or perhaps gender isn’t the salient identity for men and women. Maybe race or social class is more important.

Thereafter, the distribution breaks down in interesting ways.

While a majority of whites (54 percent) think that life is worse, only 17 percent of blacks think that life is worse. Despite all our failings and short-comings, the Civil Rights movement and the government policies which it compelled is a huge success. Do whites feel worse off because blacks don’t feel worse off? Not likely: too few people lost anything from the formal end of white supremacy. America remains largely segregated; and black people remain at a lower income than do whites.

Better than half of people who actually were alive 50 years ago think that their condition is worse: 55 percent of people aged 65 or older and 53 percent of people aged 50 to 64. Presumably they know what they’re talking about. The first group was born before 1952; the second group between 1952 and 1966. Then the sense that things are worse is higher for those with only some college (49 percent) and high school or less (51 percent) than for those with a BA (39 percent) or post-graduate education (37 percent).[2]

The sense of decline is much stronger among Republicans than among Democrats. Some 70 percent of self-identified Conservative Republicans and 58 percent of Liberal/Moderate Republicans think that life is worse. In contrast, only 20 percent of self-identified Liberal Democrats and 35 percent of Conservative/Moderate Democrats think that life is worse.

American real incomes, life span, and medical care are much better than 50 years ago, so it is likely to be something else that gives them the sense of decline. It is more than likely that the discontent among older people/white people/Republicans springs from factors like the impact of economic globalization and the advance of information technology, but also from the long string of domestic and international reverses.[3] Perhaps this is an artifact of the Republican Party having progressively captured the heart of the old New Deal coalition (Southerners, the Northern working class) over the last 50 years.

Is it possible that the next election(s) will be a struggle between those who have lost from the big changes that have overtaken America and those who have at least survived them unscathed? Will it be a struggle between Nostalgia for a by-gone age and Complacency about the new age? That seems a poor basis for deciding the fate of young people in the face of what looks to be several decades of grave challenges at home and abroad.

[1] Charles M. Blow, “A Trump-Sanders Coalition? Nah,” NYT, 2 May 2016. OK, it’s Charles Blow. Still…

[2] Still, better than a third of people with a post-graduate degree think that life is worse? They can’t all be college professors.

[3] I just finished Gregg Herken, The Georgetown Set, and now I’m listening to Thomas Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum, That Used to Be Us. So, those books probably are shaping my interpretation.

The Social Trampoline.

Posted on May 26, 2016 by jsh54

In 2012, 46 percent of the US Government’s non-interest spending went to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid; by 2030 it was projected to rise to 61 percent. That is, these safety-net programs either will crowd out spending on other things or force a substantial increase in in government spending over-all.[1]

One driver here is the retirement of the “Baby Boom.” In 2012 there were 49 million people on Medicare (and presumably s slightly smaller number receiving Social Security). By 2030, that number is projected to grow to 80 million.

Another driver is high medical costs. In 2011, Medicare spent $560 billion. By 2022, Medicare spending is projected to rise to $1.1 trillion.

“Reforming” entitlements really means cutting someone’s income. Whose ox is going to get gored?

Hoping to avoid this ugly reality, people grasp at straws. Medicare is already “means-tested” (that is, individuals/couples making more than $85,000/$170,000 a year pay higher premiums). Raising the Medicare eligibility age from 65 to 67 would cut costs by about 5 percent over the long run because those people are basically still healthy. Raising the Social Security retirement age to 70 would cut spending by 13 percent by 2060.

Cutting medical costs would involve reducing the incomes of medical personnel, hospitals, and drug manufacturers.[2] Democrats want to do this through government regulation by bureaucracies subject to pressure from elected representatives. Yea, right. Republicans want to do it “through the market:” by giving everyone some miserly sum and making individuals bargain with big corporations. Yea, right.

Avoiding these fights by just raising taxes on the wealthy could have a certain broad appeal.[3] However, rich people are adept at defending themselves. Even if they had to put up with higher taxes for a while, they would eventually get them over-turned. Democrats are always going on about how high taxes on the rich were commonly accepted for a long time after the Second World War. Where do they think that the Reagan and Bush II tax cuts came from if not from simmering resentment of high income earners?

The simplest fix for Social Security would be to raise or remove the cap on payroll taxes on incomes over $110,000 a year. That would solve the problem for 75 years at least. Additionally, reducing inflation-indexing of Social Security could save a lot of money. Depending on how far it was pushed, this could save $100 billion over ten years. Probably one would have to do both to limit the political reaction by high-income earners.

One argument against raising the retirement age is that it would disproportionately penalize lower class and middle class people. They generally don’t live quite so long as do rich people. So, it would cut into their retirement “golden years.” Doctors and nurses aren’t going to want to give up a big chunk of their income. Rich people aren’t going to want to pay an even more disproportionate share of taxes. “Baby Boomers” have a notion that they have a bargain with America and that America needs to honor its “promises” to them. However, the truth is that they promised themselves these benefits and that they promised that a younger generation—which had no voice in the bargain—would pay the costs. The simple human truth here is that people are selfish. Not much sign of civic solidarity.

[1] “Fixing the safety net,” The Week, 21 December 2012, p. 9.

[2] See: “Single Payer.” https://waroftheworldblog.com/2016/05/17/single-payer/

[3] “A poor man with a ballot box can rob you as easily as a rich man with a pen.”—Woody Guthrie.