Category: Government

The search for purpose: Nature and Nurture – Genes and culture

Every healthy boy and girl searches for the meaning and purpose of their lives. We ask why we are here and what we should do with our lives.  Where do we want to go and be in the future? How do we think we can best get there?  What should we strive for or should we strive at all?  The search for meaning can be agonizing but it is part of human nature to ask, “Who am I?”.

But we do not search in a vacuum.  That we search at all can be attributed to our genetic inheritance. Over the millennia our ancestors who pondered this question and chose and worked toward goals of mutual help and cooperation, prospered and multiplied relative to those who didn’t.  While personal and family survival and wellbeing come first, working together with others enhanced the wellbeing of both. In a fascinating presentation at the Cato Institution, Nicholas Christakis, Sterling Professor of Social and Natural Science, Yale University, discussed his new book “Blueprint: evolutionary origins of a good society”  He argued that the evolutionary survival of the fittest also favored (selected) those disposed to love, friendship, cooperation, and teaching. Homo sapiens with those qualities formed more successful and durable groups.

This happy genetic predisposition, however, was just the start, the foundation from which the search for the meaning of our lives was launched. The rest of the answer is the product of the values taught to us by, or absorbed from, our parents, family, and community and its religious and other institutions, and filtered by our reason, which is another capacity favored by evolution. The cultural values from which we learn what our peers value and respect in us can contribute to successful and prosperous societies (and their economies) or not. Children growing up in poor neighborhoods dominated by gangs are more likely to see success in terms of the demands of their gang. The esteem of their gang peers will be earned by very different behavior than in neighborhoods in which honesty and respect for the law are valued.  Gang culture does not contribute to safer, more prosperous neighborhoods or societies.

Cultures that reward cooperation, honesty, and trust enjoy more successful economies as well. Financial wealth is only one source of esteem, however, and after being well feed and well clothed, the respect of our communities probably tops the list of aspirations for our lives. The cultural values in which we map out our goals profoundly influence the choices we make.  Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” guiding our actions for our self-enrichment serves us individually and the society we live in best when functioning in a culture of mutual respect, honesty, and cooperation.  In free market, capitalist economies, individual workers and entrepreneurs profit by satisfying the wants of others. Thus, competitive capitalism encourages a culture of serving others and such a culture encourages successful economies.  These are win – win societies.

“The overwhelming weight of evidence supports the conviction that when human beings, created in the image of God as free, rational, social, and moral animals, are allowed to creatively serve each other’s needs and responsibly plan their own lives, they flourish. And when a nation’s citizens flourish, the nation as a whole flourishes as well.”  “Dylan Pahman: Why-economic-nationalism-fails-conservatism”

So where should today’s Generation Z and Millennials look to find meaning and purpose for their lives? Most of us want to “do good” for our community, country and the world as well as for ourselves and our families. Will today’s youth see this marriage of public and personal good in the world of personal freedom and responsibility described by Adam Smith, or in the world of greater central government assistance (control) advocated by Bernie Sanders?

Sanders says he is a socialist, but I doubt that he means government ownership and direction of the means of production, which is the traditional meaning of socialism.  Rather he seems to mean government provision of important goods in our lives (heath care, education, jobs, etc.)  But the provider also determines what and how to provide.  Are the key decisions in our lives to be made by each of us within the legal and cooperative framework of norms and support provided by our culture and government of limited scope, or to be determined centrally for our benefit by a larger more dominant government and its employees? Government employees no doubt feel good when they help others, but capitalism provides a financial reward for doing so as well. Human greed is more likely to be tempered by the requirements of success in free markets than in government bureaucracies.

Though the average family, and especially the poor, have never before had such wealth broadly defined, today’s world suffers many shortcomings. The social safety net of a properly limited government is not always effective or well designed.  Each person in our newest generation in seeking the esteem of its family and community will ask how best to fix these shortcomings and to address and reduce the barriers to their’s and their neighbor’s fulfillment of their potential for a rich and fulfilling life. Will they turn to the “socialism” of Bernie Sanders or the individual/family-based free market model of Adam Smith?

So called “socialism” is enjoying a resurgence of popularity among American youth today. Even before Trump’s election a majority of 18-29 year old’s viewed socialism favorably. “Why-so-many-millennials-are-socialists”  Why is this, given the strong theoretical and empirical case against it?  For one they were not alive to see its greatest failures (though we now have Venezuela and North Korea).  They seem to think of countries like Sweden as socialist. While the free market capitalist country of Sweden has a larger government than the U.S., it ranks only a bit below the U.S. on the Frasier Institute Index of Economic Freedom (8.07 versus 7.83 in 2015).  For example, Sweden adopted a nationwide universal voucher program (school choice) in 1992, well ahead of the U.S.  https://www.fraserinstitute.org/studies/economic-freedom

Like every generation before it, today’s youth wants to “do good.” They want to contribute to making the world better than it already is. Those of us who highly value our personal freedom as the basis of how we live and who have studied the weaknesses of government provided and guided economic resources [e.g., https://wcoats.blog/2020/01/25/crony-capitalism/] must take up the challenge of explaining the superiority of a family based social structure and honest, law abiding, mutual respecting, cooperative culture. While free market capitalism has produced incredible riches for almost everyone, its primary virtue, and potential appeal to Generation Z, is its promotion of caring for and serving our fellow man.

Crony Capitalism

The standard of living of the median income family in the United States has risen to heights that could not have been imagined just a hundred years ago ($73,891 in 2017). All other industrial countries have had similar experiences.  “As measured in 2011 U.S. dollars, the global income per person per day in the first year of the Common Era stood at $2. That’s also where it stood when William the Conqueror set sail in 1066 to claim the crown of England…. In 1800, the average income was $2.80. In the 18 centuries that separated the emperorship of Caesar Augustus and the presidency of Thomas Jefferson, per capita income rose by less than 40 percent….

“Then industrialization changed everything. Between 1800 and 1900, GDP per person per day doubled. In other words, income grew over twice as much in one century as it had over the preceding 18 combined. By 2016, the number…in the United States… stood at $145…. In other words, global and American standards of living rose twelve-fold and 24-fold respectively over the course of the last two centuries….  These and other fascinating data are presented by Marian Tupy in: https://humanprogress.org/article.php?p=1906

How was this miracle possible? It resulted from each worker on average becoming dramatically more productive and being able to trade his or her products for the other goods and services he or she wanted. But what was the source of such an amazing increase in productivity?  Workers developed and or were provided with tools and equipment (capital) that made it possible.  These machines, cooperative production structures and worker skills (so called “human capital”) were developed because “capitalists” creating and investing in them had protected property rights in them and shared in the profits from their use. In short, it was because people had an incentive to invent and learn that was lacking in feudal or earlier social structures.  Bill Gates, for example, became a billionaire from selling us the computer products and services that Microsoft invented and produced. We happily paid Microsoft these billions for its tools that greatly enhanced our own productivity in both production, household management, and play. In the win-win world of private property and trade, we gained from Microsoft as much or more than Bill Gates did.

Interestingly, there is more to this story. As industrialization took hold, and the incomes of the lower and middle classes rose, income inequality declined. The monopolies of feudal Lords were eroded.  More recently “global inequality is declining as developing countries catch up with the developed world. Between 1990 and 2017, argues Branko Milanovic from City University of New York, the global Gini coefficient, which measures income inequality among all of the world’s inhabitants, decreased from 0.7 to 0.63” i.e., became more equal (zero equals perfect equality). [Tupy]

In the U.S. after years of gradual decline, the Gini coefficient rose from 0.35 in 1979 to 0.49 in 2018, slightly less than China’s (0.47). What is going on? Though still more equal than the world on average, why is income distribution widening modestly over the last forty years in the U.S.?

A widely held explanation is that industries have become more concentrated and have exploited their quasi monopolistic market power to extract noncompetitive, i.e. monopoly, rents. Two hundred forty-four years ago, Adam Smith wrote that, “People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.” [Wealth of Nations Book I, Chapter X.] What prevents such conspiracies from succeeding is the competition from other firms seeking to exploit these attractive prices. When faced with competition, a person or firm can only profit by satisfying customers better than the competition.

But why have American firms, and those of many other industrial countries, become more concentrated and protected from competition?  Largely via state capture. As he reluctantly increased U.S. military spending as the “Cold War” heated up, President Dwight D. Eisenhower worried that it would be hard to avoid a mutually self-serving relationship between the government paying the bills and the defense industry supplying the goods. In his famous Farewell Address on January 16, 1961, Eisenhower warned that: “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes.”

When government becomes involved or increases its involvement with private firms, the door (and the revolving door) is opened for firms to exploit the relationship to their advantage. It is not just the military-industrial complex (or the military-industrial-congressional complex as Eisenhower stated it in the first draft of his Farewell Address) that enjoys government favor and protection. President Trump’s tariffs on imported steel and aluminum are not for the benefit of American’s generally but are protectionist favors to America’s uncompetitive steel and aluminum firms. Protectionism is just another word for corruption.

Some products and industries need to be regulated to protect consumers and insure honesty and transparency. But larger firms increasingly accept, if not welcome, overly burdensome regulations because they are better able to devote resources to complying with them and thus absorbing their cost than are smaller firms. Such regulations protect them from competition from new, smaller firms. Professional licensing has increasingly been used to protect professionals from hairdressers to real estate agents to lawyers from competitors thus enjoying higher fees than would result in a more competitive market for their services.

The quasi monopoly rents firms are able to extract as the result of government protection against competition grow with the size of government involvement with the economy. The increase in income inequality (a reflection of shrinking competition) of recent decades (the increase in America’s Gini coefficient) have followed the large increases in the size of government, whether measured by expenditures, employment, or regulations.  https://wcoats.blog/2008/09/06/how-to-measure-the-size-of-government/

“• In 1900 the federal government consumed less than 5 percent of total output.

  • In 1950 the federal government consumed roughly 15 percent of total output.
  • In 1992 the federal government consumed almost 25 percent of total output.”

https://fee.org/articles/the-growth-of-government-in-america/

Bernie Sanders, a self-proclaimed Socialist, and Elizabeth Warren, a self-proclaimed defender of capitalism (I am not joking), argue that to fix industrial concentration, to prevent or unwind monopolies, the government needs to be bigger and more active in the economy. This is backward in terms of logic and experience. I don’t question that overwhelmingly most public servants work for the government out of the desire to serve the public. However, the interface between government and the private sector creates opportunities and incentives (resisted by most I am sure) for corruption. By corruption I mean the exploitation of government regulations and contracts to reduce market competition for (i.e. to protect) established firms.

Political lobbying by firms and trade organizations can provide useful industry input to congressional legislation or executive rule making but it is generally the prospective of established firms rather than of potential competitors or the general public. “Since the 1970s, there has been explosive growth in the lobbying industry, particularly in Washington DC.  By 2011, one estimate of overall lobbying spending nationally was $30+ billion dollars. An estimate of lobbying expenses in the federal arena was $3.5 billion in 2010, while it had been only $1.4 billion in 1998.” “Lobbying_in_the_United_States – A_growing_billion_dollar_business”

In 2010 the Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, “that the free speech clause of the First Amendment prohibits the government from restricting independent expenditures for political communications by corporations, including nonprofit corporations, unions and other associations.” “Citizens_United_v._FEC – Super_PACs”  This opened the door to direct corporate and union “donations” to political candidates and parties, providing a powerful tool in achieving government cooperation with what these groups consider their special interest.

The competitiveness, and whatever the lack of it contributes to income inequality, of American businesses will not be served by expanding the government’s role in the economy, quite the opposite. Competition is rarely stifled by natural market phenomena. Rather it is much more often blocked or restrained by government regulations that favor the established, dominant firms, who are able to gain the government’s favor. The political forces of expanding government regulation and interference in the economy promote every increasing state capture by dominant firms.  Crony capitalism will be the death of the real thing if it is not continuously resisted. As we should all well know, the price of liberty is eternal vigilance.

The Basis of American World Leadership

Since the end of World War II, the United States has played a disproportionately large role in guiding world affairs. It has unquestionably been the most powerful nation on earth. Its dominance reflects a number of factors including economic and military strength. But in addition to these, most countries have been happy, or at least willing, to accept American leadership because it was largely seen as guided by broad principles of fair play and the rule of law.  American leadership was the least of evils. The United States has benefited a great deal from this good will.

But as the old saying goes: power tends to corrupt, etc.  Being able often to bend other countries to our will (as long as others still saw us as driven by widely shared principles of fair play), the U.S. increasingly exploited this influence to encompass policies or actions others were not so happy to comply with.  To take a fairly recent example, the wisdom of President Trump’s withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA or the Iran Deal) to stop Iran’s development of its nuclear capabilities for at least ten years was not shared by the other parties to the agreement (the P5+1–the permanent members of the UN Security Council: the United States, the United Kingdom, Russia, France, and China, plus Germany–and the European Union).  All signers of the agreement except the United States continued to abide by it. But the U.S. dollar is the primary currency used for international payments and the U.S. threatened to punish (cut off from the use of the dollar and trade with the U.S.) any country that did not observe its unilateral trade sanctions on Iran. The non-U.S. signers attempted to set up alternative ways for paying for trade with Iran that did not use the dollar but found the reach of American threats hard to avoid. On January 5, 2020 Iran announced that it would stop complying with the agreement and resume its nuclear development program. It is not clear why Trump considers this better for American security than the (at least) ten-year suspension in the Iran Deal he tore up.  See: Economic-Sanction

President Trump has also used up a lot of “good will capital” with his Trade wars. He began by withdrawing the U.S. from the 12-member Trans-Pacific Partnership or TPP (Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, Vietnam, and the United States). The TPP further reduced tariff and non-tariff restrictions on trade, while expanding and modernizing coverage for the digital world. As, or perhaps more, importantly, the TPP provided a model and positive encouragement to China to adopt Western trading rules as a condition of joining the TPP in the future.  The remaining signatories went forward with a Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, which went into effect a year ago with the U.S.

But Trump’s counterproductive trade strategies didn’t stop there by a long shot. In addition to economically harmful tariff protection of inefficient American industries (e.g. steel, washing machines, etc.), Trump has angered many of our friends in Europe, Japan and elsewhere by threatening tariffs in situations that do not seem to be justified by the World Trade Organization’s rules. In the process he is ignoring and weakening the WTO, which has played such an important role in the gradual trade liberalization that has dramatically lifted living standards around the world following WWII. He even tore up the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and replaced with a new agreement that is not unambiguously better.  See: The-shriveling-of-US-influence

But once bullies taste their power, their appetites tend to grow. While elected with promises to end our forever wars and reduce our military commitments around the world, Trump has done neither.  This is not the occasion for exploring why (I don’t doubt Trump’s sincere desire to achieve both of those goals, but his ignorance of history seems to have made him vulnerable to flipflopping in the face of pressure from the neocons, such as Secretary of State Pompeo, he has surrounded himself with). Rather it is to review his rapid descent into a major bully, to the detriment of American influence and security.

On January 3, President Trump ordered the assassination of Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the leader of Iran’s paramilitary Quds Force in retaliation for an attack a week earlier on an Iraqi air base in Kirkuk that killed a U.S. civilian contractor and injured four U.S. soldiers and two Iraqis.

The drone that launched two missiles that killed Gen. Soleimani at the Baghdad International Airport also killed the Iraqi leader of the PMU, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, a close Soleimani associate, and eight other Iraqis.  According to the Pentagon, “General Soleimani was actively developing plans to attack American diplomats and service members in Iraq and throughout the region,”  According to Adil Abdul-Mahdi, Prime Minister of Iraq, Soleimani was on his way to see the PM in order to discuss moves being made to ease the confrontation between Shia Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia.

The White House stressed that Soleimani’s planned attack was “imminent” thus justifying it without having to first inform Congress. Bruce Ackerman argues that Trump’s failure to obtain Congressional authorization for the attack justifies a third article of impeachment.  See: Trump-war-against-Iran-impeachable-offense  Iraqi PM Mahdi claimed that the attack on Iraqi soil was a violation of Iraqi sovereignty and a violation of the agreement between the U.S. and Iraq for stationing American forces in Iraq. Though Congress was not informed in advance, the Israeli government was told of the planned attack, according to some reports. In these circumstances, it is very difficult to know which reports are authentic and which are deliberate (or sometimes inadvertent) fake news.

In order to assess the likely impact of all this on our standing and support in the rest of the world, I like to evaluate American actions from how they might seem standing in someone else’s shoes. How would Americans react, for example, if our government had invited, say, French troops for training in the U.S., and the French Army blew up a Russian general on his way to meetings at the UN (or reverse the roles between the French and the Russians) without our permission?

But this note is not about whether this assassination was legal or good policy. For that see the following article from The Economist: Was-Americas-assassination-of-Qassem-Suleimani-justified?  It’s about the rise of American bullying in the world and its impact on our standing and ability to influence friends and enemies in ways that serve our national interest. What followed in the days after Soleimani’s assassination is mind boggling.

Keep in mind that following America’s invasion of Iraq that started on March 20, 2003, the U.S. and its coalition partners returned sovereignty to the Iraqi government at the end of June 2004. I was there as part of the Coalition Provisional Authority (I was the Senior Monetary Policy Advisor to the Central Bank of Iraq reporting to the U.S. Treasury). As we boarded helicopters to waiting planes at the Baghdad International Airport (of recent fame) many of us recalled images of the last American helicopter lifting off the roof of the American Embassy in Saigon when the U.S. ended its participation in the Vietnam War. Over the next seven years American and coalition troops remained in Iraq under terms agreed to in a Status of Forces agreement with the Iraqi government.  Following the ups and downs of troop surges and draw downs American forces were kicked out after Blackwater security contractors killed 17 Iraqis in Nisour Square in 2010.

With the rise of the Islamic State (ISIS) American troops were invited back under new, less formal terms. “Instead, the current military presence is based on an arrangement dating from 2014 that’s less formal and ultimately based on the consent of the Iraqi government, which asked the parliament on Sunday to pass urgent measures to usher out foreign troops…. ‘If the prime minister rescinds the invitation, the U.S. military must leave, unless it wants to maintain what would be an illegal occupation in a hostile environment,’” said Ramzy Mardini, an Iraq scholar at the U.S. Institute of Peace.  Getting-us-troops-out-of-iraq-might-not-be-that-hard-say-experts

And how did POTUS, the great negotiator, respond to the Iraqi Parliament’s vote: “President Donald Trump threatened to impose deep sanctions on Iraq if it moves to expel U.S. troops…. ‘We’ve spent a lot of money in Iraq,’ Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One as he returned to Washington after spending the holidays at his Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago. ‘We have a very extraordinarily expensive air base that’s there. It cost billions of dollars to build. … We’re not leaving unless they pay us back for it.’” Trump-threatens-iraq-sanctions-expel-us-troops

However, the Pentagon promptly announced that it was repositioning its troops in preparation for withdrawing them. Reuters released a copy of a letter on US Department of Defense letterhead addressed to the Iraqi Defense Ministry by US Marine Corps Brigadier General William H. Seely III, the commanding general of Task Force Iraq, which read in relevant part: “In deference to the sovereignty of the Republic of Iraq, and as requested by the Iraqi Parliament and the Prime Minister, CITF-OIR will be repositioning forces over the course of the coming days and weeks to prepare for onward movement…. We respect your sovereign decision to order our departure.”  reuters.com/article/

Within hours, the Pentagon stated that no decisions had been taken and that the letter had been sent by mistake. “U.S. Army General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on Monday that a leaked letter from the U.S. military to Iraq that created impressions of an imminent U.S. withdrawal was a poorly worded draft document meant only to underscore an increased movement of forces.”  Iraq-security-pm  Or maybe they forgot to consult POTUS or maybe he changed his mind.  Are you confused yet? See: Amid-confusion-and-contradictions-Trump-white-house-stumbles-in-initial-public-response-to-Soleimanis-killing

In response to Iran’s threat to retaliate for killing General Soleimani “Trump tweeted on Saturday that the United States has targeted 52 sites for possible retaliation, including “some at a very high level & important to Iran & the Iranian culture.” The outcry over this clear war crime was immediate. “Secretary of Defense Mark Esper… put himself at odds with President Trump on Monday night by definitively telling reporters that the U.S. military will not target cultural sites inside Iran on his watch, even if hostilities continue to escalate in the wake of the U.S. drone strike that killed Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani at the Baghdad airport last week. ‘We will follow the laws of armed conflict….’” See: Esper’s-split-with-trump-over-targeting-iranian-cultural-sites-is-a-nod-to-the-laws-of-armed-conflict  Trump quickly backed down. Perhaps discussing these decisions with his staff before twitting them would be a good idea.

These are but a few examples of a bully on the loose. “Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif told NPR that he was scheduled to deliver an address when the U.N. Security Council meets Thursday [Jan 9] but that he was told the State Department had informed the U.N. that there was not enough time to process his request for a visa, which he said he first submitted 25 days ago.” Iran-foreign-minster-javad-zarif-denied-visa   Under the 1947 U.N. headquarters agreement, “the United States is generally required to allow access to the United Nations for foreign diplomats.”  Once again, we are violating our commitments. Iran is demanding that all future meetings of international bodies be held outside the US.  The IMF and World Bank are also headquartered in the U.S.

The American and coalition partners now in Iraq are there to support its fight against ISIS. This benefits us, our partners, and Iraq. The traditional tools of diplomacy (persuasion), rather than the threats of a bully, would ultimately be more effective.  The respectful consideration traditionally given to the views and positions of the United States in international bodies –such as global satellite spectrum allocation–global warming agreements–security agreements–or any other multilateral agreement in which we have an interest, is rapidly vanishing.  Assuming that the Trump administration can de-escalate the current tensions with Iran, something quite possible with sufficient diplomatic skill–see: The-soleimani-killing-could-draw-the-us-deeper-into-the-mideast-but-it-doesnt-have-to–our general loss of good will is the real cost of excessive bullying and it will hurt us considerably.

 

A Letter to the Republican Party

As a no doubt futile outlet for my frustration with the Republican Party, I have been enclosing the following letter in the return envelops they keep sending me with the request for financial support.

Dear Members of the Republican National Committee,

The Trump administration has had some positive achievements domestically (tax reform, regulatory reforms and court appointments). However, its continued increase in government spending (annual deficits of one trillion or more when the economy is at a cyclical peak) is wrong and unthinkable for Republicans. President Trump’s weakening of America’s support for and role in international organizations, abandonment of the Iran Deal and anti-nuclear proliferation treatises, and war on trade, are bad for America and the world we live in.  President Trump’s divisive language is unbecoming of the leader of a great nation, a nation of immigrants. The Republican Party has failed to stand up for these principles and to criticize the President for these offenses.

Even more concerning is your acquiescence to President Trump’s lying, immorality, and corruption. His clearly documented attempted bribery of the President of Ukraine for personal gain is damaging American security interests. His obstruction of Congress’s execution of its constitutional duties is very concerning. These and other acts cross the sadly low bar of acceptable behavior.

For the sake of our deeply divided country, the Senate owes us all an impeachment trial that any honest person will consider fair. President Trump must have every opportunity to explain and defend his behavior and those challenging it must have every opportunity to make their case. President Trump obstructed the House’s efforts to obtain firsthand evidence of the President’s attempt to use his executive authority for personal gain. It is essential that the Senate permit the testimony of those blocked in the House by the President (Bolton, Mulvaney, Mike Duffey).

With your silence you have abandoned me and my continued commitment to limited and sound government.  I cannot continue to support the party until you stand up and again defend our principles.

Sincerely,

Warren Coats

New tools require new rules?

A hammer can hit a nail on the head, or it can hit you (or your enemy) on the head. Most, if not all, tools have multiple uses, some good and some bad.  Societies adopt rules to promote the beneficial uses of technologies and discourage harmful uses. New tools/technologies necessitate a discussion of what the rules for their proper uses should be. We are now having that discussion for the uses of social media to promote and propagate ideas and information (some true and some false).

Free speech is revered in America for good reason. Like many other aspects of our preference for self-reliance (personal freedom), it requires that we take responsibility for sorting out what is true from what is false rather than giving over that task to government (and whoever leads it at the time). This can be a challenging task.  We must sort out who we trust to help us. Those of you my age will appreciate that we no longer have Walter Cronkite, and Huntley and Brinkley to help us filter real from fake news.

Our commitment to free speech is so fundamental to the character of America that I have written about it a number of times. https://wcoats.blog/2012/09/14/american-values-and-foreign-policy/    https://wcoats.blog/2012/09/15/further-thoughts-on-free-speech/ https://wcoats.blog/2012/09/29/freedom-of-speech-final-thoughts-for-a-while-at-least/

Various social media platforms present us with another new tool and the need to sort out how best to use it. The answer(s) will take the form of social conventions and government regulations. It is important to get the balance right.

Facebook, Twitter, Google, YouTube, Instagram, Tiktok and other platforms do not generate or provide content. They provided a very convenient and powerful means for you and me to share the content we produce. What responsibility should Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, etc. have for regulating the content we post to their own platforms, which are after all private. As you saw in my earlier blogs on this subject, publishing and broadcasting our words are limited when they endanger or slander others. But these limits do not and should not limit our advocacies for policies and political beliefs as I am doing now.

The big issue today is fake news (out right lies). If you create or repeat lies, you must be responsible for what you do (but we don’t generally punish lying unless under oath). You are allowed, for example, to state on Twitter or Facebook that you believe Obama was born in Kenya despite thorough documentation that he was born in Hawaii. Perhaps you are gullible enough to actually believe it though it is false. But should Facebook and other platforms have a responsibility to block clearly fake news? What if their own biases lead them to block more Democratic Party “fake news”, or vice versa?

As a private company Facebook can more or less do what it wants but it has a strong business/financial incentive to build a reputation of fairness and to provide a platform that attracts as many users as possible. Here are their rules from their website:

“To see the full list and learn more about our policies, please review the Facebook Community Standards.  Here are a few of the things that aren’t allowed on Facebook:

  • Nudity or other sexually suggestive content.
  • Hate speech, credible threats or direct attacks on an individual or group.
  • Content that contains self-harm or excessive violence.
  • Fake or impostor profiles.
  • Spam.”

The debate at the moment is focused on political ads. Facebook has said that it will not fact check political ads and Tweeter has said that it will not run them at all.  A Washington Post editorial stated the issue this way: “Politicians should, for the most part, be able to lie on Facebook, just as anyone else is, and the public should be able to hold leaders to account. But that’s a different question from whether politicians should be able to pay to have their lies spread, based on unprecedentedly precise behavioral data, to the voters who are most likely to believe their lies.”  “Google’s reply has been more nuanced. The company will limit the criteria campaigns can use to “microtarget” ads to narrow audiences based on party affiliation or voter record. The aim is to increase accountability by letting more people see ads….”  “Tech-firms-under-fire-on-political-ads”

No one, thank heavens, wants the government to vet ads for truthfulness. Some facts are obvious and some are less so. The potential danger to free speech is illustrated by Singapore’s “fake news” law.  Singapore claimed that a post by fringe news site States Times Review (STR) contained ‘scurrilous accusations’.  Giving in to the law, Facebook attached a note to the STR post that said it “is legally required to tell you that the Singapore government says this post has false information”.  “Facebook’s addition was embedded at the bottom of the original post, which was not altered. It was only visible to social media users in Singapore.” https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-50613341

However, the government should provide the broad framework of a platforms responsibilities.  For example, the U.S. government requires transparency of who pays for ads in print and TV ads. The same requirement should be imposed on Internet political ads. To qualify for Facebook’s say whatever you want in a political ad policy, the candidate being supported should be required to attach his/her name as approving the ad. Limiting the use of micro targeted ads broadens the exposure and thus discipline on truth telling.  According to The Economist: “To the extent that these moves make it harder for politicians to say contradictory things to different groups of voters without anybody noticing, they are welcome. “Big-tech-changes-the-rules-for-political-adverts”

Knowing what sources of news to trust is no trivial matter. Knowing the source is helpful. Rather than fact checking the content of posts, Facebook attaches an easily viewed statement of the source.  Establishing standards for and establishing boundaries between categories of posts sound easier than they really are, but insuring transparency of who has posted something should play an important role. Flagging questionable sources, without changing the content of a post, as Facebook does, is also helpful. I hope that the discussion of the best balance (and not every platform needs to adopt the same approach) will be constructive.

Should we subsidize college educations?

“According to a national report by the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association (sheeo.org), high school graduates earn an average of almost $30,000 per year. Bachelor’s graduates earn an average of just over $50,000 a year. And those with a higher level degree (master’s, doctorate or professional) average nearly $70,000 per year. This translates to a significant earnings gap over the course of one’s life.” https://www.educationcorner.com/benefit-of-earning-a-college-degree.html “According to the SSA, the average wage in 2017 was $48,251.57.” https://wallethacks.com/average-median-income-in-america/  Moreover, college graduates generally have more interesting and secure jobs.

Who should pay for those advantages? The students themselves, or their families, have often borrowed the money to cover their educational expenses. Currently they owe $1.6 trillion  “Here’s-what-trillion-student-loan-debt-is-doing-US-economy”. Democratic party presidential candidate Bernie Sanders proposes to cancel all of it. He would also make all public colleges and community colleges tuition free.

Is that a good idea? Is it fair and does it encourage or enable a better use of our human resources? A proper evaluation requires indicating who would pay for it if not the students themselves. From the above data we see that college graduates make a lot more than everyone else on average—almost double the income of high school graduates.

If the $1.6 trillion in education debt is cancelled, the burden of repaying it (most of it was lent by banks, often guaranteed by the government) will be shifted from the better off (students who will receive higher incomes in the future because of their college educations) to tax payers. Total tax collections by the federal government in 2018 were $3.3 trillion, half of which was income tax, 35% was payroll tax (social security) and only 6% was corporate income tax.  https://www.pgpf.org/budget-basics/who-pays-taxes

Senator Sanders says he will cancel all student debt within six months. Does he plan to cut spending on other programs by $1.6 trillion, a 36% cut, or to increase taxes by $1.6 trillion (the deficit for FY 2019 is already forecast to be $0.9 trillion), or some mix of these?  According to Charles Lane: “Sanders and other left-leaning Democrats promise to pay for tuition-free college and Medicare-for-all with higher taxes on the top 1 percent of earners. Most Nordic countries, by contrast, have zero estate tax. They fund generous programs with the help of value-added taxes that heavily affect middle-class consumers…. The Nordic countries tried direct wealth taxes such as the one that figures prominently in the plans of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.); all but Norway abandoned them because of widespread implementation problems.”   “Democrats-use-Nordic-nations-as-models-of-socialism”

The Tax Policy Center “estimates that 69 percent of taxes collected for 2019 will come from those in the top quintile, or those earning an income above $157,900 annually. Within this group, the top one percent of income earners — those earning more than $783,300 in income per year — will contribute over a quarter of all federal revenues collected.”  Can we and should we try to squeeze even more out of them?

The effective federal tax rate for the top 1% income earners in 2018 was 29.6%, compared to 12.1% for the middle quartile of income earners and 2.9% for the bottom quartile (almost none of which was income tax). It is not obvious where the burden of this gift to the prospectively better off college grads will fall. But it seems to involve a lot of income transfers, which seem to sound nice to our new “socialists.”

 

Oslo: the Play

IMG_2150Yessar Arafat and Warren Coats in the PLO office in Gaza in February 1996.

Last night I saw the Round House Theater’s magnificent production of Oslo, the story of the secret meetings in Norway that led to the establishment of the Palestinian Authority.  It was a moving (heart wrenching) and balanced recounting of how these meetings achieved agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization on “land for peace” as it was called at the time after many years of failed official negotiations. I urge you to see it.

We heard the PLO negotiators lay out the Israeli theft of their homes and killings of their people and we heard the Israeli negotiators lay out the Palestinian attacks on Israelis and on the efforts of Jews to establish and secure an Israeli homeland.  For perspective, since the second intifada (between September 29, 2000 and January 31, 2018) at least 9,560 Palestinians have been killed by Israelis and 1,248 Israelis have been killed by Palestinians.  “The View from the West Bank”

The play focused on the unusual approach of these negotiations, which built on the development of trust and respect between the opposing negotiators and the agreement on achievable steps one step at a time. Between their long negotiating sessions in an isolated room near Oslo, they dinned, drank and bonded together. Unfortunately, the play fails to provide us with an overview of the resulting agreement, which applied the same step by step confidence building approach to the incremental establishment of a Palestinian government (the Palestinian Authority) and withdrawal of Israeli troops from the West Bank and Gaza. The PA was given governance authority for a limited number of functions in order—step by step—to build both institutional capacity and trust.

One of those functions was the establishment of the monetary authority (central bank). I led the IMF team that helped establish the Palestinian Monetary Authority and have many stories to tell of my many visits to Israel and the West Bank and Gaza in 1995-6 plus a number of visits in later years (most recently in December, 2011).

The PMA has developed into a well-run organization of which Palestinians (and those Israelis who see a successful Palestine government as important and necessary for their own security) can be proud.  It helped a great deal that the Bank of Israel and PMA developed good relations. Stanley Fischer was the governor of the BoI from 2005-13 and George Abed was governor of the PMA from 2005-7. They had both previously been colleagues at the IMF. “Jerusalem in August 2006”

It is with a broken heart that I watch Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, with help from American President Donald Trump, increasingly abandon the two state solution of the Oslo Agreement for an apartheid single state regime in which “democratic” Jewish control is preserved by denying what would become the majority Palestinian residents their right to vote. “The Future of Israel and Palestine”

 

Attorney General Barr’s News Conference

I, and everyone I know, want to know the facts of any collusion between Trump and his associates and Russia. I am confident that the Mueller investigation provides them as well as we could expect. Attorney General Barr’s news conference this morning summarizing that report was clear and transparent. He did an exemplary and impressive job. The complaints from some Democrats on the Hill that Barr should not have held this press conference until after they had read Mueller’s report were unfounded and frankly embarrassing. Please let’s move on.

My assessment of Trump’s administration today, which is what we should be debating, is very mixed. Adjusting and lightening the regulatory burdens that have been holding our economy back is largely good in my view (though each must be judged individually) as are the tax reforms making the system simpler and fairer. While the tax reforms did not go far enough, they were a big improvement over the existing tax law.

Trump’s attitude toward trade and the protection of inefficient American firms is ill informed and damaging to American’s economy as a whole (as opposed to coal and steel producers). His bullying and unilateral approach is clumsy, amateurish, and counterproductive. The EU, Canada, Japan and others would be happy to join us in confronting China’s bad trade behavior, if Trump were willing to work together and not busy attacking them as well.

I supported Trump’s campaign promises of restraint in deploying American troops around the world, but he has not delivered. His message to the Senate accompanying his veto of the bill passed by both houses of Congress (54-46 in the Senate and 247-175 in the House) a few weeks ago invoking the War Powers Resolution to end U.S. support of Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen reflects a truly shocking affront to our Constitution: “This resolution is an unnecessary, dangerous attempt to weaken my constitutional authorities, endangering the lives of American citizens and brave service members, both today and in the future.”  The truth is just the opposite. The constitution gives the power to declare war to Congress and the almost blank check congress gave Presidents following 9/11 cannot meaningfully be stretched to include what we are doing in Yemen.

Trump continues to undercut and weaken American leadership in the international organizations and agreements that have contributed so much to post WWII peace and prosperity. This will be increasingly harmful to our and the world’s legitimate interests.

In his spare time, the President thoughtfully advised the French on fighting the fire in Notre Dame. What an embarrassment and fire experts say that his advice was wrong.

Please, let’s fight the real battles and stop wasting time on the phony ones.

The College Admissions Scandals

A few weeks ago, Ito and I went to “Admissions,” the very well performed and thought provoking play by Joshua Harmon about affirmative action, at Studio Theater. Several friends had independently attended the play and suggested that we get together for one of Ito’s superb dinners and discuss it.  So we enjoyed an evening discussing the pros and cons of “affirmative action,” the “temporary” suspension of nondiscrimination legislation meant to repair and make up for discrimination against blacks that made them less prepared for college. It is a complex issue without obvious solutions. The play did an excellent job of fairly presenting all perspectives on this issue.

My opinion is that suspending, even temporarily, equal treatment (merit-based college admissions) of applicants to universities and colleges, as is done with affirmative action, is not the best approach to achieving equal treatment of all. It attempts to treat the symptoms of racial discrimination rather than the disease. First of all, private universities (unlike state schools using tax payers’ money) should be free to establish whatever admission policy they want.  Any school I would want to attend will want to include an element of diversity in its student body as an important element of the education they offer and will build that into its admission policy in whatever way it considered sensible.

And now we are confronted with the revelation that some of the rich and famous paid bribes to get their underperforming children into top schools. As stated in the Washington Post: “the scope and sheer shamelessness of an elaborate scheme in which some of the country’s richest people allegedly paid bribes to get their children into top U.S. universities is truly mind-boggling.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-college-admissions-scandal-should-prompt-broader-soul-searching/2019/03/13/f67aa986-45b5-11e9-aaf8-4512a6fe3439_story.html

This is shocking and unacceptable for the same reason I oppose affirmative action. It violates the principle and standard of merit in hiring people or admitting them to college. Our country is one of the wealthiest and most respected in the world because firms and organizations allocate jobs, positions, and resources in general on their merits (i.e. qualifications for the job, etc.). In short, people and other resources are put to their most productive use.  Obviously, this is not always the case. But firms that fall short of this standard suffer lower profits than if they had adhered to it. In short, in the private sector there is an economic incentive to employ the resources (including people) that best fit the needs being filled. Companies that employ their under-qualified relatives suffer lower profits as a result. Hiring or admitting people on the basis of merit is also our standard of fairness that is widely admired throughout the world.

Affirmative action is a deliberate departure from this standard as are the recently revealed bribes and test score cheating for college admission. In the first case it is an effort to overcome the damage of earlier discrimination against a once enslaved people. In the second case it is an effort to overcome the deficiencies of intelligence or character in our own children. A world in which we acquiesce to standards other than merit will always favor the already well off. We will never fully achieve the high standards of merit based appointments we have set, but we should never stop trying. A powerful strength of the private sector in a competitive free market economy is that the economic incentives are in the right direction.

American universities may never achieve a perfect admissions system completely based on merit and devoid of personal bias, but we should encourage them aim for it. The world outside of the academic environment is unfair enough when it comes to race, gender, sexual orientation and religion to name a few. Let us try to instill in the younger generation the understanding that hard work and smarts are what gets you ahead– not money, influence and certainly not the color one’s skin. And let’s promote attitudes and policies that encourage and reward such a reality.

Brett Michael Kavanaugh

The mash up between Christine Blasey Ford and Brett Kavanaugh has produced very strong opinions for and against the claims of each. Our views on the veracity of each are based on our emotional assessments of the testimony of each. Unless the FBI interviews contain new facts, there is no evidence to confirm Prof. Ford’s claim that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her nor evidence to confirm his claim that he didn’t. This is the horrible fact for acts, or alleged acts, with no witnesses (Ford claims Mark Judge witnessed the events she describes but he denies it).

This is the sad situation of “She said—he said” for which there seems no easy remedy. Actual rape generally produces evidence (semen) if promptly reported. But we have come to understand why many women do not promptly report their assaults. Memories and evidence fade with time. The sworn statements of Prof. Ford and Judge Kavanaugh have holes and inconsistencies and you will believe the one you choose, for whatever reasons, to believe. Prof. Ford can’t remember where or when her assault occurred or how as a 15 year old girl she got there or returned home. Her fear of flying didn’t prevent her from doing a lot of it, etc. Judge Kavanaugh’s choirboy depiction of his youth doesn’t square with the police report of a bar brawl he started in college and testimony of roommates and classmates of his hot temper when drunk, etc.

“Democrats, the left, and various other anti-Kavanaugh persons can thank attorney Michael Avenatti for this outcome, at least in part.

“The spotlight-stealing lawyer, who also represented Stormy Daniels, is responsible for drawing the media’s attention to Julie Swetnick, an alleged victim of Kavanaugh who told an inconsistent and unpersuasive story. Swetnick’s wild accusation provided cover for fence-sitting senators to overlook the more plausible allegation leveled by psychology professor Christine Blasey Ford, and to declare that Kavanaugh was being subjected to false smears.” “Brett Kavanaugh-Michael Avenatti Collins”

The sad consequences for the reputations of Ford and Kavanaugh, tragic as they are, are compounded by the despicable behavior of both the Republican and Democrat parties. The refusal of the Republican controlled Senate to confirm President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland, was a shocking breach of protocol. “Even before Obama had named Garland, and in fact only hours after Scalia’s death was announced, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell declared any appointment by the sitting president to be null and void. He said the next Supreme Court justice should be chosen by the next president — to be elected [eight months] later that year.” “What-happened-with-merrick-garland-in-2016”-NPR

The Democrats have behaved as badly: “Sen. Bob Casey and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer also announced that they opposed Trump’s pick without knowing whom the president had selected.” “Democrats-race-to-oppose-trumps-scotus-nominee-even-before-name-announced” Senator Feinstein’s withholding of Prof. Ford’s letter accusing Kavanaugh until the last minute was either stupid or malicious.

Sadly we didn’t have much of the debate we should have had about Kavanaugh’s judicial qualifications and judicial philosophy. He is clearly highly qualified as was Judge Garland who as Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit headed the same court on which Kavanaugh has sat for the last 12 years. His job, he says, is to fairly interpret and enforce the law, not make it. Is he an originalist or texturalist and what do those mean?

Since 9/11 and The Patriot Act we have lived in a semi surveillance state that violates our constitutional rights to privacy and due process. As an official in the W Bush White House, Kavanaugh helped write the Patriot Act and later as a Federal judge he ruled to uphold parts of it that many of us consider unconstitutional:

“In a ruling in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, Kavanaugh ruled that ‘the Government’s metadata collection program is entirely consistent with the Fourth Amendment.’ He also later stated ‘that critical national security need outweighs the impact on privacy occasioned by this program.’ Again, a rather odd conclusion for a staunch ‘constitutionalist’ to support.” https://fee.org/articles/the-constitutional-reasons-to-oppose-kavanaugh-for-the-supreme-court/?utm_campaign=FEE%20Weekly&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=66477479&_hsenc=p2ANqtz–ZykcA0d1RgLgdKULIW6mqsBca_Mo6JDsC32-QU_CuMj4Tjcd7zNZA3lLuA0j1VucrH83ejT1Zrte2fKpGKnJS7qGN6w&_hsmi=66477479

But in most areas of protecting constitutionally protected rights or constitutionally mandated restraints on government, Judge Kavanaugh has been on the side of strict constitutionalism. While constitutional scholars are divided over just what a proper adherence to the constitution in the twenty first century should means, there is almost universal agreement that former justice Antonin Scalia helped sharpen the debate around that question.

The left wing historian and activist Howard Zinn puts the issue of judicial philosophy of SC judges in perspective in the following article. https://progressive.org/op-eds/howard-zinn-despair-supreme-court/

I assumed that he was writing about Judge Kavanaugh. After reading it I was surprise to realize that it had been written thirteen years ago. Mr. Zinn died in 2010.

Britt Kavanaugh’s scrutiny by the Senate has been ugly and painful. The Senate’s abandonment of traditional procedures, with their checks and balances, first by the Democrats and now by the Republicans is shortsighted and regrettable. The lack of deference to the President when consenting to his or her choices for her government is recent and regrettable. But most regrettable of all is the divisive lack of commitment to service to the nation as a whole rather than narrow partisan interests by our congressional representatives and our tweeting President.