Recent American Public Opinion.

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Iran. In March 2015, 68 percent of Americans approved of negotiating with Iran over its nuclear program. Broadly, we can see the effects of the Iraq war on the public mind. Most people favored negotiations over the risk of war. What is remarkable is the degree to which the words and actions of leaders have had a disruptive effect in spite of this broad consensus.

First, Americans seem to have arrived at an “a plague on both your houses” attitude to the Obama-Netanyahu conflict. In March 2015, only 38 percent had a favorable view of Netanyahu, while 27 had an unfavorable view of the Israeli prime minister. In April 2015, only 37 percent approved of the Prime Minister’s handling of relations with the United States. However, only 38 percent approved of President Obama’s handling of relations with Israel.[1] In many eyes, it has begun to look like a personal dispute, rather than an affair of state.

Second, a sharp partisan division had begun to manifest itself in attitudes toward Netanyahu. In the March 2015 poll, 53 percent of Republicans had a favorable view of Netanyahu, while only 28 percent of Democrats had a favorable view. Doubtless, this division of views reflected the invitation to Netanyahu to address Congress that had been schemed-up by the Republican leadership and the Israeli ambassador, the former-American and former- Republican activist Ron Dermer. That isn’t the same as saying that American attitudes toward Israel itself have shifted dramatically. Yet.

Third, in March 2015, the Republicans pushed their luck by meddling with the negotiations with Iran.[2] Forty-seven Republican Senators sent a letter to the Iranians warning that an agreement that was only an “executive agreement” could be undone by a subsequent administration. Almost half of Americans (49 percent) disapproved of this action. The hyperventilation on the left about “treason” (cue Ricky Perry) was silly. However, a lot of Americans seem to take the same view as did Napoleon: “It was worse than a crime. It was a mistake.”

Energy. In March 2015, Pew Research surveyed Americans on their attitude toward energy and climate issues.[3] At this point, 81 percent favored government-imposed higher fuel-efficiency standards for vehicles and 64 percent favored tighter emissions limits on power plants. However, 59 percent favored building the Keystone XL pipeline. On the other hand, 31 percent opposed building the pipeline and 31 percent opposed tighter controls on emissions from power plants. On the subject of ranking the means to develop America’s energy resources, 60 percent assigned priority to alternative energy sources (wind, solar, hydrogen) and 30 percent assigned priority to exploring for and developing carbon sources (coal, oil, natural gas). At the same time, 56 percent favored more off-shore drilling for gas and oil, while 40 percent opposed it.

There is a lot of incoherence here. How to sort it out?

First, the opponents of the Keystone XL pipeline and the opponents of controls on power plant emissions represent the very large numbers of crazy people in American politics. Together they total 62 percent. Either the middle ground learns how to make deals or we’ve got problems.

Second, more carbon energy means more oil and gas, not more coal. The “war on coal” has already been won. Mitch McConnell just doesn’t know it.

Third, the President is pandering to his base in vetoing the Keystone pipeline.

[1] “Poll Watch,” The Week, 13 March 2015, p. 17; “Poll Watch,” The Week, 10 April 2015, p. 15. In the March poll a lucky 23 percent had never heard of the Israeli leader.

[2] “Poll Watch,” The Week, 27 March 2015, p. 17.

[3] “Voice of the People,” WSJ, 31 March 2015.

Long Term Trends 3.

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In 2010 and 2011, New York Times correspondent David Leonhardt turned to the problem of the long-term deficit.[1] In his analysis, that deficit arises from “the world’s highest health costs (by far), the world’s largest military (by far), a Social Security program built when most people died by 70—and to pay for it all, the lowest tax rates in decades.” By Leonhardt’s estimate, we will need about $500 billion a year in annual deficit reduction for the next decade. The money will have to come out of the three big spending categories and from more revenue.

The Medicare budget is the “linchpin of deficit reduction.”  Leonhardt recommended introducing incentives for people to choose cost-effective health-care. In practice, that will mean taxing employer-provided health-care benefits like the income they really are. The cost has risen massively since 1975. This encourages spending on health-care, rather than using the market to restrain price increases. Also, it is a benefit available only to people with employer-provided health-care. So, Americans get taxed differently for no good reason. This cost the government $264 billion in revenue in 2010. The federal tax subsidy created by sheltering them from taxes benefits drug makers, hospitals, and insurers.[2] He also wanted Medicare to refuse to pay for health care that cannot demonstrate that it makes people healthier.

Test social programs for actual effectiveness. Lots of them just exist, rather than achieving anything. Doubtless, many Republicans would say the same thing about the encrustations of regulations on business and industry that have grown up over the decades without ever being sunsetted.

Last, cut military spending by $100 billion a year to reverse the post-9/11 expansion.

Some leading conservatives—Mitch Daniels, Glen Hubbard, Gregory Mankiw–have endorsed means-testing Social Security and Medicare benefits. That is, shove more of the cost of their own care and retirement off on people who can afford to pay it.

Leonhardt also favored higher taxes on the middle and upper classes. The mortgage-interest deduction chiefly benefits people in the higher income brackets. Tax breaks for investors (IRA exclusion, $12.6 billion; lower tax rate for dividends, $31.1 billion; lower tax rate for capital gains, $36.3 billion; not taxing capital gains on items left to people in wills, $39.5 billion; and the 401(k) exclusion, $52.2 billion) total $171.70 billion in ‘lost” revenue.

Social Security and Medicare are essentially about paying for the past. (Often an improvident past.) Spending on education, research, and infrastructure are about paying for the future we desire. Leonhardt argues that we should actually be spending more on the future.

However, it isn’t clear that American democracy has the ability to confront powerful and well-entrenched interest groups. Reforming Medicare would involve taking money away from doctors, insurance companies, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies.  Stabilizing Social Security will involve raising the cap on withholding, so that upper income groups get gored and means-testing benefits at the cost of upper-income groups. Raising the taxes on the upper income groups to sustain benefits for lower income groups invited push-back in the past and will do so again. Cutting defense spending has never been as easy as increasing it, especially in the midst of dangers. The refusal of Democrats to define “fair share” makes rational discussion difficult.

Still, laying out the problems and some possible solutions makes it possible to think about the implications.

[1] David Leonhardt, “The Deficit: Real vs. Imagined,” NYT, 22 June 2011.

[2] David Leonhardt, “Health care’s obstacle: no will to cut,” by NYT, 10 March 2010; David Leonhardt, “The 3 Biggest Tax Breaks—and What They Cost Us,” NYT Magazine, 17 April 2011.

Annals of the Great Recession VI.

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The “Great Recession” led to much head-scratching. How could this disaster have come about? Who or what was responsible? How should we proceed going forward. Many books have poured forth in an attempt to answer these questions. Four of them take a critical look at the the materialism that drives modern life. The books raise more questions than they answer. The questions are worth some thought.

People used to live with scarcity we can’t imagine.  They had to work very hard just to have enough to survive on.  Then industrialization and the agricultural revolution created abundance.  People had to work very hard to have enough, then later to have a lot of stuff.  Now people ask what to do with this abundance.  Consideration of this question can lead people into areas that will be unfamiliar to most people.

The philosopher Michael Sandel argues that people start to think of money as the solution to everything, instead of just as a situationally-appropriate tool.[1]  Moreover, “the more things that money can buy, the more the lack of it hurts.”  Economic inequality leads to experiential inequality.

The writers Robert and Edward Skidelsky identify certain “basic goods”: health, security, respect, “personality,” harmony with nature, and leisure.[2]  How much is “enough”?  Should people continue to produce and consume ever more?  What do people get out of having more stuff or more activities?  Should they make do with less to have more time?  What would they do with more time?   Among their solutions: tax consumption, not income; tax spending on advertising.  What if the prescription for the good life offered by the Skidelskys conflicts with what most people want?

Luigi Zingales argues that Americans used to think that capitalism was a “fair enough” system, even if it wasn’t perfectly fair.[3]  The economist Alan Meltzer argues that Capitalism is the only system that produces freedom and prosperity.[4]  It makes no claim to produce virtue or stability.  This means that freedom and prosperity have an ugly reverse face.  However, “corruption, fraud, and greed” are common in all other systems, and less likely to be corrected than under capitalism.  What concerns Meltzer and Zingales is the government response.

American government tends to provide benefits to selected businesses without thinking about actually helping society as a whole.  For example, the mortgage interest deduction helps the construction industry, but amounts to a tax on renting that makes it less reasonable. Similarly, subsidies for ethanol amount to a tax on regular gasoline.  Zingales thinks that both education and health-care are “protected” industries.  They need to be exposed to competition.

It also tries to control the flaws.  Very often these efforts at “reform” miscarry.  For example, government seeks to correct for inequality of result by means of paying benefits funded by debt (the obligation of future generations to pay for benefits enjoyed by the present generation) or by regulatory systems that favor present established interests over newcomers.

Similarly, people who behave immorally need to be publically shamed even when they cannot be prosecuted. Bankers have taken their share of this, but someone needs to go after the “jingle-mail” borrowers.  They decided “enough is enough” and abandoned their obligations and assets. Probably not the answer the Skidelskys and Sandel had in mind.

[1] Michael Sandel, What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets (2012).

[2] Robert Skidelsky and Edward Skidelsky, How Much Is Enough?  Money and the Good Life (2012).

[3] Luigi Zingales, A Capitalism for the People: Recapturing the Lost Genius of American Prosperity (2012).

[4] Alan Meltzer, Why Capitalism?  (2012). A

Turkey.

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After the former general Mustapha Kemal “Ataturk” established the Turkish Republic, the Army became the guardian of his secular and modernizing vision of Turkey’s future. On four occasions since 1960 the Army has overthrown civilian governments that diverged from its vision of Turkey’s proper course.

Recip Tayyip Erdogan forged an alliance between his own Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP) and Fethullah Gulen, an imam with a wide network of supporters in the bureaucracy, business, and media. In 2002 Erdogan led the AKP to power in free elections. The position of the Army with regard to a religious party worried Erdogan.[1] Those worries increased in advance of the 2007 elections when the Army publically affirmed its role as guarantor of Turkey’s secular identity and that Islamism was incompatible with that identity.

In 2010 prosecutors charged 236 senior serving or retired Army officers with planning a coup against the government. Government prosecutors based their case largely on computer files regarding “Operation Sledgehammer,” an alleged army plot dating back to 2003 to overthrow the Erdogan government. They won convictions after the court refused to allow the defendants to introduce evidence that the computer files were fraudulent.[2] Most of the defendants got long prison terms.

By 2012 Erdogan had begun to fall out with Gulen. Erdogan and the AKP had worn out their welcome with many Turks. Having been in power for over a decade, they had lost their strict sense of right and wrong. Critics accused the government of corrupt alliances with business interests under the guise of modernizing Turkey. In Summer 2013, massive demonstrations took place in Istanbul over plans to convert a public park into a shopping mall. In December 2013 prosecutors—apparently part of Gulen’s network of supporters–charged several government ministers with graft. Erdogan lashed out at Gulen’s “parallel state,” which he accused of plotting its own coup. Thousands of members of the police and judiciary were summarily removed as Erdogan sought to purge the administration. Erdogan now found himself in an awkward position. He had allied with the Gulen network to tame the Army, but now he had fallen out with the Gulen network.

To make matters worse, in Summer 2014, ISIS suddenly exploded as a regional danger in neighboring Iraq and Syria. Like Al Shabab in Somalia, the Houthis rebels in Yeman, and Boko Haram in Nigeria, ISIS is made up of irregular fighters who cannot stand up to a real army backed by an effective government. ISIS posed no danger to Turkey so long as the Army would fight and the government could act. Aye, there’s the rub. Would the Army back Erdogan against both the Gulen network and ISIS, or would it devise its own solution?[3]

In 2014 the convictions were over-turned by the constitutional court, which ordered a re-trial. In Spring 2015, the government appointed a new prosecutor to handle the case. In March 2015, Erdogan announced to a gathering of senior Army officers that “starting with myself, the whole country was misled, tricked. We were subjected to a conspiracy, a coup attempt, to seize control of Turkey.” The prosecutor asked the court to dismiss the charges because he was shocked, shocked to discover that there was gambling going on. No, wait, he discovered that the computer files on which the conviction had been based were fraudulent.

[1] Emre Peker, “Turkish Court Acquits Officers in Coup Plot,” WSJ, 1 April 2015 (although I believe the report to be true).

[2] For example, documents dated in 2003 could be shown to have been produced using Microsoft Word 2007.

[3] The latter might involve shooting Erdogan and tossing his body on a garbage heap.

Trudy Rubin on an Iran Deal.

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Trudy Rubin has been covering the Middle East for more than thirty years, first for the Christian Science Monitor and then for the Philadelphia Inquirer. A few years ago she was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Her views have to be taken seriously. Recently, she gave a basic guideline for evaluating a deal with Iran on its nuclear program.[1]

The goal of the negotiations is to create the conditions under which it would take Iran at least a year to “break out” to having at least one nuclear weapon. A highly-intrusive inspections regime will have to replace the sanctions regime: free access for I.A.E.A. inspectors to any suspicious site, snap inspections, and a full explanation of suspected previous work on weapons design. Without the inspections regime, the deal isn’t worth making.

Neither a deal nor the failure to reach a deal will have any effect on Iranian policy in the Middle East.[2] Iran is a strong state surrounded by weak Sunni states that are in upheaval.[3] It will seek to expand its influence in the region. There is going to continue to be turmoil in the region, rather than some kind of “grand bargain” that calms the stormy seas.

If a deal in March 2015 is impossible, then keep sanctions in place and keep talking until the final deadline in July. Iran may blink.

What if there is no deal?

Iran will resume development of nuclear weapons, probably at an accelerated pace. It will seek to “break out” as soon as possible. Moreover, “if talks collapse, the international sanctions regime is likely to crack sooner rather than later, especially if the United States is blamed.”[4] This seems also to be the position of the Obama administration. That is, it will become easier for Iran to reach its goal with the passage of time.

To head off this danger, Saudi Arabia and Israel will press for an American attack on the Iranian nuclear sites. Rubin believes that an attack would delay Iranian progress for “a couple of years, but it wouldn’t destroy it.”

If the Iraq war didn’t work out quite the way American leaders had anticipated, why would an Iranian war have limited and easily-predicted consequences?

Some unknowns.

If the sanctions regime inevitably will crumble if there is no deal, why would the Iranians make any significant concessions to reach a deal? Is announcing that sanctions will not long survive the failure to reach a deal equivalent to announcing a dead-line for withdrawing American forces from Afghanistan?

Why would Saudi Arabia and Israel follow the American line? Why wouldn’t they strike before Iran “breaks out,” then hope for the election of a Republican president in 2016?

If air strikes would delay, but not end, Iran’s drive for nuclear weapons, why would air strikes be limited to a one-time attack? Why wouldn’t they become a continuing form of “sanctions”?

What if there is a deal and the Iranians cheat on it? All Rubin’s arguments against action still apply. Sanction will be hard to restore; war may be a disaster. That’s not too encouraging.

[1] Trudy Rubin, “4 rules to judge any Iran deal,” Philadelphia Inquirer, 26 March 2015.

[2] That is, Rubin isn’t taken in by the “transformational” hopes of the Obama administration. See: The Iran Dilemma.

[3] Here Rubin blames a combination of American invasions and the dry-rot caused by decades of corrupt, autocratic, and incompetent governments. See: The Muslim Civil War.

[4] Rubin doesn’t explain why this is so, although one could conjecture that Putin might engage in pay-back for the Americans sticking their fingers in his eye over Ukraine.

Peenemunde.

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Usedom is an island of the shore of Germany in the Baltic. Peenemunde is a little town on Usedom. In 1936 the Luftwaffe bought a big chunk of the island to use as a weapons development and testing facility; in 1937 the German Army took over most of the site for the same purpose; and by the end of 1938 the Germans were engaged in rocket development projects at Peenemunde.[1] The V-1 and V-2 long-range weapons and the “Waterfall” air-defense systems were meant to be war-winning devices. Britain’s “Operation Crossbow” attacked these efforts.

By June 1943 a combination of Polish resistance reports and aerial photographic interpretation had persuaded the British that the Germans were conducting important rocket development at Peenemunde. Prime Minister Winston Churchill ordered an attack.

The attack faced formidable difficulties. For one thing, the British intended to destroy the knowledge base of the program. That is, they meant to kill scientists, engineers, and technicians. Destroying the material base—machine shops, assembled rockets—formed a distinctly secondary object. Therefore, the bombing would be done from 8,000 feet, instead of the customary 19,000 feet. For another thing, the power of German air defenses had long since forced the Royal Air Force (RAF) to bomb at night. The RAF had developed radio guidance beams (Gee) to direct the bombers, but Peenemunde fell beyond the range. Therefore, the precision bombing require to destroy the German base would have to be done by moonlight. This meant that German night-fighters would have favorable conditions. Recognizing the dangers, the RAF committed all of Bomber Command to the attack. To improve the chances of the bombers, the RAF planned to launch a simultaneous mock diversionary attack on Berlin by “Pathfinder” units and fighter attacks on German airfields.

The attack—“Operation Hydra”–stepped off on the night of 17-18 August 1943. The 596 RAF bombers dropped 1,800 tons of bombs on a geographically limited area. Navigational, target-marking, and human errors cropped up. They killed 2 German scientists and 730 others, most of whom were Polish slave-laborers. (The RAF lost 40 planes and 215 aircrew killed.)

The attack did a lot of damage to the material base (machine shops, rocket components), but not a lot of damage to the intellectual base. However, the Germans could not afford to risk a second attack that might succeed. By the end of August 1943, the Germans began evacuating the Peenemunde operations to more secure locations. This delayed the German weapons programs by six to eight weeks.[2] V-1—“flying bomb” attacks on Britain began on 13 June 1944. V-2 rocket attacks began in September 1944. So, perhaps the V-1s might have begun flying in mid-April 1944 and the V-2s in July 1944.

How should we think about this historical event?

First, the British had a short time period in which to act. They had to stave-off some catastrophic event for a couple of years at the outside. After that, Germany would be defeated by other means. They did not have to resolve the problem of a long-term threat.

Second, in a short time-frame, attacking the intellectual base can work because it will take a while to get the successors up to speed. An educated nation, can fill holes eventually.

Third, attacking the physical weapons infrastructure didn’t do much good because it was viewed as secondary. Making it primary wouldn’t have changed much.

Fourth, the movie “Operation Crossbow” (1965) has Sophia Loren. Jus sayin’.

[1] Thereafter, all the guards made it difficult to for ordinary Germans to vacation on the “Sunny Isle,” sylph around in the nude as part of that weird German cult of the sun thing.

[2] Nevertheless, the Germans continued to test rockets at Peenemunde until February 1945.

The Muslim Civil War.

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With the “Arab Spring” of 2011, the “corrupt and dysfunctional Arab autocracies that had stood for half a century in places like Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Libya lost credibility because they had failed to meet the needs of the citizens.”[1]

Well, no. The “Arab Spring” counted not at all compared to American interventions. The corrupt and dysfunctional autocracies of Iraq and Libya were overthrown only by American attack. The corrupt and dysfunctional autocracy in Egypt quickly reasserted itself after a moment of panic induced by an American moment of panic. The corrupt and dysfunctional autocracy in Syria has retained the loyalty of many of its citizens and the Obama administration has tacitly abandoned its intemperate demand that Bashar al-Assad leave power.

Now, “an array of local players and regional powers are fighting skirmishes across the region as they vie to shape the new order, or at least enlarge their share of it.”

Well, no. We’re witnessing the outbreak of a Muslim civil war.[2] Sunni Saudi Arabia never got around to sending air or ground forces to battle the radical Sunnis fighting against the Shi’ite-dominated government of Iraq, but it has now intervened in the fighting against the Shi’ite Houthi rebels in Yemen. Shi’ite Iran is the principal supporter of the Shi’ite governments in Baghdad and Yemen and of the Alawite government in Damascus.

The Obama administration has claimed that there are “moderate” forces with which it can work to create stable states, if only people will get with the program.

Well, no. The Shi’ite-dominated government of Iraq began persecuting the Sunnis the minute the Americans were out the door. The Syrian “moderates” were virtually non-existent and unwilling to fight. Yemen is a primitive tribal society which a thin shellac of Western government titles could not disguise. Now Iranian forces have been introduced into Iraq’s fight against ISIS.

The administration claims to discern a difference between “moderate” and “hard line” forces in Iran. It hopes to strike a deal with the moderates over Iran’s nuclear program. The American drive to get a deal with Iran has most publically angered Israel’s prime minister Benyamin Netanyahu. However, Saudi Arabia and Egypt are just as concerned as is Israel that the United States has started to tilt back toward Tehran as its chief partner in the Middle East.

Iran is trying to obtain nuclear weapons to shift the balance of power in the Persian Gulf region. Saudi Arabia doesn’t want Iran to get nuclear weapons. Israel doesn’t want Iran to get nuclear weapons. Neither country places much trust in the fair words and promises of a distant United States. Both have modern American supplied air forces and airborne control systems. Aside from American objections, the chief impediments to an Israeli pre-emptive strike against Iranian nuclear facilities have been that the Israelis don’t have enough planes and they would have to over-fly Saudi Arabia. You do the math. (While you’re at it, Israel has nuclear weapons.)

If a “Muslim Civil War” does break out in flames, what course should the United States pursue? Intervene or stay neutral? Intervene against the country that already hates us (Iran)? Intervene on the side of those most likely to win in the short run (Saudi Arabia if backed by Israel)? Do a lot of off-shore drilling and tell the Middle East to solve its own problems? Head it off?  There’s no clear guide here, but there is the need to choose.

[1] Mark Mazzetti and David D. Kirkpatrick, “Policy Puzzle in the Middle East,” NYT, 27 March 2015.

[2] Or perhaps just a renewal of the long wars between the Shi’ite Safavid Empire of Persia and the Sunni Ottoman Empire.

Which Sides Are You On?

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Americans are ambivalent about public unions.  In early industrial capitalism, all the power lay with employers. There were always more people seeking work than there were jobs, while state and local governments were there for the buying. As a result, wages were low, hours were long, working conditions were abominable, and job security was non-existent. Only unions offered any chance at improving the lives of workers. Union-organizing, however, proved to be hard and dangerous work. Employers resisted with every means possible and often did not stop at the edge of legality. Moreover, the very idea of a union clashed with the individualistic values upheld by most Americans. Only with the Depression and the New Deal did mass unionization sweep over heavy industry.

Public-sector unionization did not amount to much for a very long time. For one thing, the large American state is a fairly recent creation. More importantly, most people distinguished between public and private unions. On the one hand, public employment seemed far more secure than did private sector work and often seemed subject to various kinds of patronage. On the other hand, government provided services for which there was no alternative. While breaking a police strike in Boston, Calvin Coolidge declared that “there is no right to strike against the public safety.” Most people agreed with the sentiment for half a century. However, in 1962 President John Kennedy issued an executive order allowing many federal employees to unionize. The movement then spread to the state and local levels. Membership in public-sector unions now outnumbers membership in private-sector unions. Because the courts have upheld the right of unions to collect dues from all members, unions have deep pockets for political action.[1]

Amity Shlaes argues that there is an important emotional component to public attitudes toward unions. People have a positive view of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Roosevelt’s New Deal promoted mass unionization. Most people wouldn’t run into a burning building, or pull over a car on a dark night, or try to wrangle a room full of 14 year-olds, so they admire those who will do those things. So, public sector unions are approved on an emotional level. [2]

While the national media are interested in labor’s role in national politics, the unions actually focus most of their efforts lower down the food-chain. Local government elections often run in the “off” years between national elections. Turn-out is about a third lower in the local elections. When unions can turn out voters and supply campaign funds, they can have a disproportionate impact on the governments with which unions will then negotiate contracts.

Since they depend on union support in elections, Democrats tend to fold up under pressure. Since Americans don’t want to pay more taxes, local governments find their way out of the immediate dilemma by granting generous pension benefits that someone else in the years ahead with have to figure out how to pay. We can see the consequences in the balance sheets of some American cities. Dallas, a non-union town if ever I saw one, pays $74 a ton for garbage collection and disposal. Chicago, the union-city par excellence now that Detroit has cratered, pays $231 a ton. Speaking of Detroit, in 2013 the city sank under more than $18 billion in long-term debt. Half of that debt was for pension and health-care benefits for employees that could not be supported from the shrinking tax base.

Exasperated Republicans just want to cut government services to get rid of the burden of the unions. It’s difficult to see this as anything except a different kind of “strike against the public safety.” As with many things in contemporary America, some fresh thinking is needed.

[1] Daniel DiSalvo, Government Against Itself: Public Union Power and Its Consequences (2015).

[2] Her own sentimental attachments lie elsewhere. See: Amity Schlaes, Coolidge (2013).

Tales of the South Atlantic 1.

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While a great deal of attention has focused on the “Mayflower Compact” as a foundational text in American government, historians have paid much less attention to the many pirate compacts.[1] In the first half of the 18th Century, there were an estimated 2,500 pirates at work in the Atlantic and Caribbean at any given time. Most were single men in their twenties who had “run” from a conventional merchant ship or the Royal Navy.[2] At the beginning of any voyage, the pirates drew up agreed terms of service. These defined who had what authority, how the profits of a voyage would be divided, and how discipline would be enforced. As piracy became more dangerous and less profitable as the 18th Century wore on, it seems likely that many men drifted back into the conventional merchant marine. The seaports of British North America—Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Charleston—were filled with sailors who resented hierarchy and hated the “press gangs” of the Royal Navy. Did the experience of some of these men with drafting agreements for an egalitarian management of a “wooden world”[3] filter into the rhetoric of shore-bound pamphleteers and tavern table-pounders?

People trying to escape oppression are easy to understand. It’s a little more difficult to comprehend those who find themselves hunted by liberty. Nevertheless, such people do exist. His beliefs made Zephaniah Kingsley, Sr. an outcast in his adopted land, America.[4] A merchant who had migrated from England to Charleston, South Carolina, Kingsley was both a Quaker and a Tory. When the American Revolution ended in British defeat, Kingsley and his family rebuilt their lives in Canada. Eventually, his son, Zephaniah Kingsley, Jr. (1765-1843) took command of the family merchant ship trading to the Caribbean. In 1802 the experienced merchant captain embarked on the slave trade. This turned out to be a very dodgy decision. In addition to the perils of disease to be encountered on the African coast, Europe was at war. French or Spanish navy ships or privateers savaged the British merchant navy. Slaves were a precious cargo, for they might be sold as readily in Haiti or Cuba as in Jamaica. Once the Napoleonic Wars had ended, British reformers began to press for an end to the slave trade. Kingsley took refuge in Spanish Florida, where both slavery and the slave trade remained legal.

Along the way, Kingsley bought an attractive Senegalese slave named Anna Jai, freed her, and made her his common-law wife. Kingsley recognized her intelligence and ability, so she became his business partner as well as life partner. They added plantations to their other trade and prospered.

However, in 1821 Spain transferred Florida to the United States. As a Tory refugee turned Spanish Catholic, Kingsley didn’t like his prospects. American laws would not recognize his children’s rights of inheritance. Moreover, Kingsley, while a slave trader and slave owner, was not a racist. He criticized segregation laws for imposing “degradation on account of complexion.” In the 1830s he founded a colony in Haiti, the only free black country in the Americas and a source of terror to American slave-owners. He sent manumitted slaves to start the colony and employed indentured free workers.

Like many another thing in Haitian history, Kingsley’s colony came to a bad end. He died before it had taken root. His son died at sea. The Civil War ended slavery.

[1] Marcus Rediker, Outlaws of the Atlantic: Slaves, Pirates, and Motley Crews in the Age of Sail (2014).

[2] See B.R. Burg, Sodomy and the Perception of Evil in the 17th Century Caribbean (1983).

[3] I stole the phrase from N.A.M. Rodger, The Wooden World: An Anatomy of the Georgian Navy (1986).

[4] Daniel L. Schafer, Zephaniah Kingsley Jr. and the Atlantic World: Slave Trader, Plantation Owner, Emancipator (2014).

Inequality 4.

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By and large, in recent years the upper income groups have collected most of the profits from economic growth while everyone else has lived with stagnant incomes. How much effect in monetary terms has that monopolization of growth had? According to one calculation, if the top one-percent still received the same share of income that they received in 1979, then every other family could have received a cheque for $7,105.[1]

However, compare this with another form of inequality. If incomes have stagnated for most people, so has educational attainment.          In 1900, about 11 percent of Americans aged 14 to 17 attended high school. By 1950, 75 percent of that age group attended high school. That was about double the European rate. The G.I. Bill (1944) carried the American lead forward into college education by financing college education for veterans (among other things). Then something started to go wrong in the 1970s. Male graduation rates for four-year colleges began to decline. Essentially, women have taken up the slack in educational attainment. Unfortunately, this coincided with the decline in heavy industry that paid good wages for people without a college education.

The educational differential both is and isn’t generational. Of Americans born between 1950 and 1959, 42 percent have a college degree. Of Americans born between 1980 and 1989, 44 percent have a college degree. However, only 30 percent of Americans reach a higher level of education than did their parents. Among 25-34 year-olds, 20 percent of men and 27 percent of women have made the big jump from parents who didn’t finish high school to having a college degree.

The differential is linked to social class. From the mid-1970s and the mid-1990s, college graduation rates for those in the top 25 percent of income groups rose from 36 percent to 54 percent; rates for those in the bottom 25 percent rose only from 5 percent to 9 percent. Between the early 1980s and the early 2000s, college attendance rates for people from the top 25 percent of income groups rose to be 15 to 25 percent higher than for those in the bottom 25 percent.

Why do these figures matter? They matter because, on average, Americans with a college degree are paid 74 percent more than those with only a high school degree. Between 1979 and 2012, the difference between the incomes of families headed by college graduates and families headed by high-school graduates grew by $30,000.

Education isn’t working as a vehicle for social mobility. It is starting to do the opposite.

The causes of this stagnation are complex. For one thing, middle class students go to much better schools than do lower class students. The middle class students come out less unprepared for college than do lower class students, usually markedly less unprepared. For another thing, college costs more in the United States than it does most places, and cuts in already inadequate support for public colleges have thrown even more of a burden on families.

If you think that a BA or more makes for a highly skilled work force, then expanding the percentage of Americans who are college graduates is vital for improving the quality of the American work force. If you think that international competitiveness in a globalized economy is vital for American prosperity, then improving the quality of the American labor force is essential.

Which of these two forms of inequality is worse for the country? This isn’t an attempt to divert attention from one form of inequality on behalf of the “one-percent.” It is an effort to get people to pay attention to complex fundamental problems.

[1] Eduardo Porter, “”Equation Is Simple: Education = Income,” NYT, 11 September 2014.