Tom's Musings

I think we all have them, though they are most difficult to discern in some folk. The ‘them’ in this instance is a system of beliefs, a moral center, an ethical compass, or whatever you want to call what you rely upon to determine what you believe, or at least want to believe, and thus accept as true and decent and right. I would conjecture that most of us, too many really, go through life without thinking about this most central aspect of our personhood … the what, how, and why of what makes each of us who we are. As some sage once said … ‘a life unexamined is a life not worth living.‘ This was clearly a sage with too much time on ther hands, much like me.

I sense that most people think they know what they believe and value … America, Capitalism, the Republican party or the Green party, Jesus as their savior or Mohammed as their Prophet, the Packers or (god forbid) the Chicago Bears, guns or peace, and the list can go on. When pressed, however, articulating a set of core beliefs, our embedded moral sentiments, is harder than it looks. Then again, seeking anything wothwhile is harder than it looks.

Jordon Klepper, a comedian on the Daily Show, would interview Trump true believers at the former President’s rallies. Each respondent started out totally sure of what they believe, at least until Jordon starts picking at the inconsistencies and absurdities within their positions, which he manages to do with considerable skill and ease. Within seconds, you see these people struggling to defend their iron clad world view. While I laugh at them, sometimes uproariously, I know I am subject to the same faults. Consistancy and coherence can be very difficult to maintain, or even locate in the first instance. I’m not sure I would do any better than these befuddled clowns.

I think of myself as a pacifist. Back in my youth, I probably would have tried the ‘conscientious objector’ route with respect to the military draft though that avenue probably was not open to me. In a recent book of mine, Oblique Journeys, I narrate a fictitious account of a young man of conviction who flees to Canada during the height of the Vietnam War and protests.

His personal hegira is as much a flight from his convictions (and his colleagues) as it is his unwillingness to kill others in what he sees as an ill-considered war. He could not face war nor could he accept the path toward violent protest toward which his beliefs were drawing him. Escape was his solution but, as detailed in the book, it took a long life which encompassed much nominal success to sort out his beliefs, his emotions, and his fractured relationships. To butcher one of Bill Clinton’s favorite mantras, if figuring out who we were easily done, we all would do it early in life.

I managed to slither and slide past the draft back in the late 60s and early 70s. But there were moments, too many, when I thought I might have to make one of those life-altering, or would it have been a belief-affirming, choices. Would I go to jail, or Canada, if there were no exit left? After all this time, and writing a whole freaking novel on this theme, I still have no idea.

I just finished a book titled Ahead of Her Time. It is the story of Abbey Kelley (Foster), an early abolitionist and then suffraget who sacrificed so much and worked so hard for what she believed. Starting out in the early 1830s, she worked tirelessly to end slavery and integrate Blacks into American society. She travelled constantly throughout New England, then New York, before moving through Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan tirelessly preaching the cause, raising money, convening meetings and conferences, and publishing tracts and articles. Her devotion first demanded that she renounce her Quaker religious roots, which she thought too concerned with frivolous rules and not committed enough to core principles. In place of her formal religion, she instituted a core affirmation in abolition and embraced the universal rights of all men and women. Around those convictions she organized the rest of her life, never failing until her body gave out many decades in the future.

There was an extended period of time when she had no home of her own, existing off the good graces of those who admired her and her labors. And yet, in reading about her exemplary life of commitment and sacrifice, I was struck with her own internal battles. She preached the lessons of love and of embracing those who had been shunned by society and/or assigned to some form of marginal or second-class existence. Yet, her strong beliefs led her to reject so many around her, slave holders and slave apologists for sure, but also her own colleagues with whom she disputed with about either ends or tactics or both. That is an affliction common to many of those with strong beliefs … they strive for purity of belief and reject those who fall short by their strict standards.

And that insight brought me to another set of examples embedded in a movie about the trial of the Chicago Seven. You remember them, the sacrificial lambs placed on trial after the riots at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. President Johnson’s outgoing Attorney General Ramsey Clark had refused to indict anyone after his internal investigation concluded that the police were responsible for the violence on the streets. Nixon’s Attorney General went ahead with these indictments presumably, if you believe the movie, because he felt disrespected by the outgong AG. Or perhaps it was just good political theater.

In the end, the trial was a fiasco and none of the defendents spent any material time in jail, except for contempt of court decisions handed down by the clownish and incompetent judge overseeing the proceedings. Well, the defendent’s lawyer, Willian Kunstler, did do some real time. Apparently, defending unpopular people has its risks … the bromide that everyone deserves a vigorous defense not being accepted by all.

In the end, though, the movie was much less about the riots, those charged with crimes, and the trial’s outcomes. It was far more about the character of the defendents, their differences with each other and how their callous mistreatment by the judicial system brought them closer together through their court ordeal. The defendents, in effect, were a microcosm of ‘the left’ at least as it emerged in the 1960s. Here is a quick review of the lineup:

The New Left … This was represented by Tom Hayden and Rennie Davis who were leaders of SDS (Students for a Democratic Society). The anthem for this movement was the Port Huron statement, a call to arms for college students written by Hayden in 1960 in (guess where) Port Huron Michigan (many attendees at this gathering were from the U. of Michigan). My take is that these activists were the traditional types reacting against what they see as societal failings and moral wrongs. They started out looking for a more meaningful role for their generation, soon got caught up in the anti-war movement and other causes. Their frustrations increased (with the body count in Nam) and they eventually splintered into a few even more radical groups with the Weathermen in particular sinking into a self-destructive nihilism. But Hayden remained true to the original meaning of the organization eventually becoming a long serving politician in California and the husband of Jane Fonda.

The Cultural Left … The Yippees were the brainchild of Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin. In some ways, they moved beyond traditional politics to operate on cultural change. They were the more political Hippies who felt that real change came from altering how people saw and felt things on a more primal or cultural level, focusing on the absurdities of conventional society. Of course, that was way too abstract and nuanced for most and the movement became more one of outlandish theater than anything substantive. But it had its moments before fading from the scene. While Rubin eventually became a stock broker, Hoffman remained an activist until committing suicide in 1989. I marginally remember Abbie from my youth. He also was from Worcester and had managed a movie theater as a young man. He gave a talk at Clark (my alma mater) early in the war where he gave a devastating and brilliant attack on U.S. tactics and aims. At that time, he wore a suit and tie.

The Moral Left … I’m not sure this thread in the protest movement had a single name but it was represented by David Dellinger in the movie. David was older, a family man, and wore a suit. He had been a conscientious objector during World War II and had devoted his life to non-violence. Even before Martin Luther King, he had been a practitioner of non-violence, civil disobedience, and a believer in a strong moral code. Of all, he reminded me of the ante-bellum abolishionists like William Garrison and Stephen Foster (Abbey Kelley’s non-resister husband). In a moment in movie that touched me deeply, the viciousness of Judge Hoffman and the total lack of justice in the proceedings got to David and he struck a bailiff who was restraining him. The immediate pain on his face for what he had done spoke volumes. In a moment of anger, he had violated his core principle.

The Angry Left … this was represented by the Black Panthers and Bobby Seale. If the non-violence of Martin Luther King Jr. evolved from the precepts of Mahatma Gandhi and the moral left, the Black Panthers drew inspiration from the more forceful revolutionaries of the past, Nat Turner and John Brown. The force of oppression had to be met with equal force. That, unfortunately, would never be an equal fight and was doomed to fail from the start. Bobby’s good friend and Panther leader Fred Hampton, was killed in a police raid during this period. Virtually everyone believes he was assassinated by the Chicago police. There was a lot to be angry about.

The Others …. There were two other defendents but all figured that they were thrown in by the government to give the jury someone to acquit and thus feel good that they had done an objective job in finding the others guilty. In point of fact, they were acquitted of all charges. You would think the government would have had the decency to pay them for services rendered.

What struck me is that these very different defendents, and the trajectories they took, were so different despite purportedly common ends. They wanted to stop what they saw as an unjust war and to form a more inclusive and equitable society. Yet, they took very different paths toward their goals and, if the movie is to believed, didn’t necessarily understand nor like one another, at least in the beginning. It was only a common enemy, the so-called Justice system, that brought them together.

There were so many fine moments in the movie but one has stayed with me. It is an exchange between Hayden and Hoffman as they finally verbalize the simmering conflict between the two of them. It goes something like this (not the scripted words but the sentiments):

Hoffman … to really change things you have transform how people see the world, their culture.

Hayden … the problem with that is that you need political power to really do what we want, not political theater or being amusing.

Hoffman … in all your political maneuvering and posturing, aren’t you forgetting what we are all about, that kids are dying today while you go about playing political games.

Hayden … but remember this, as we go about seeking political control do what is right, voters will only remember your antics, not your good intentions, and vote the other way for decades to come.

They don’t come to an accord in that moment. However, at one point in the exchange, Hoffman admits that he read Hayden’s Port Huron Statement. ‘You read that,’ Hayden is surprised. Hoffman smiles, ‘I’ve read everything you have written. You are a really smart guy.’ And the ice begins to thaw.

Even today, I remember the first time I read the Port Huron Statement. I was in college at Clark, working 11-7 in a hospital to pay my way through school. On a slow night, I recall reading that founding document of the new left. I’m a bit of a skeptic and even a cynic, but it got to me … a young working-class kid shedding his Catholic roots and looking for a larger purpose.

And that, above all, is what made the 1960s special, for some of us at least. We experienced the shock of having all of our given precepts challenged and then being forced to arrive at, even articulate, a new understanding of things and a more coherent ethical center and world view. Just like for the defendents in the Chicago Seven, that was not an easy process. Figuring out what you should believe, how to arrive at those beliefs and, once there, how to live them in real life is more than a challenge. Calculus is a challenge. This is really hard shit.

But it is worth it. At this point, I will repeat one of my favorite vignettes, one that I have shared before. It deserves repeating. Decades ago, I read an article by a New York State Supreme Court Justice. He wrote about his youth growing up in New York City during the 1930s. Like a number of smart college kids of that era, he was taken with the sufferings brought about by the depression and the failure of society to respond. Like many of his friends, he dabbled in socialism and even communism as possible responses to what he saw about him.

He did not stay in these political places all that long but he realized one thing … it was the journey that counted. The economic catastrophe about him demanded that he look at things afresh and not with old eyes and tired scripts. He felt he had to question all that he knew and build up a new way of looking at things. In this piece, he said it made him, and many of his peers at the time, deeper thinkers and better people. He concluded that the crucible of doubt and questioning thrust upon him proved a blessing in the end. I totally agree with this man whose name is now long lost to my memory. But his experience stuck with me … it was also my experience but in a different decade and prompted by a different crisis.

We did not have a depression in the 60s, far from it, though my neighborhood was lower income working class at best. The war, the ‘rights’ movements, the broader cultural shifts all pressured us to think through our beliefs and our lives. I don’t know what college kids today talk about but we spent hours upon hours dialoguing about the issues of our day. We fought and argued and debated endlessly. Like the Chicago Seven, we disputed ends and means and then went back through them again. Nothing was easy. But at the end, if there was an end, a funny thing happened. We also felt we had become deeper, more nuanced thinkers (I did at keast). Perhaps we became even better people as adults (though I still doubt there is any reward awaiting me in the afterlife).

I can remember attending an anti-war rally in Milwaukee after returning from two years in India … my time out of time. The speakers struck me as spouting slogans, scripted words the meaning of which was beyond them. I wandered off disillusioned. They were born just a bit too late to go through the transformational experiences where authentic epiphanies and sentiments are born. I guess I was just lucky, and I suppose doomed at the same time.

Well that was a long introduction. perhaps in the near future I’ll take a stab at expressing my beliefs, if I can. Before signing off, let me add this. We had a big ‘political sort’ a half century ago. Conservative Democrats switched to the Republican Party while younger conservatives routinely identified as being Republicans. Moderate Republicans were driven out of that party. Rather quickly, the parties became more homogeneous and bi-partisanship diminished greatly. Now, we see a second ‘sort’ happening as we speak (or write). People are relocating to states where they feel more comfortable with the dominant political culture. That is, people are moving to be with others who share their values.

I see these lists of best places to live for retirees and other such groups. They inevitably discuss tax burdens and weather and living costs etc. They never talk about culture and compatible beliefs. But that is the new draw. I wintered in Florida for a number of years. But when my wife became ill, it was back to Madison for me, cold winters or no. Why? I want to be with people who share my values. So do most of my neighbors. They all could afford to live wherever they wish. But they don’t leave. And I fully understand why. Real estate folk who deal with families relocating out of state say this has become the new deal breaker in acceptable destinations. Belief systems and normative values are that important.

They are becoming everything as we sink deeper into our cultural divide.

I have a longer, more thoughtful, blog in the making but some other items have caught my attention on this gorgeous morning.

First, it will be a beautiful day here in Madison. But though the weather is wonderful locally (dry and comfortable for the past few days), never be fooled by simply looking out the window. There is a huge difference between weather, what you see when you look out your window, and climate, longer term and/or global trends.

Agencies in the U.S. and Europe have been monitoring the climate globally since sometime in the the mid-20th century. It turns out that June was the hottest June on record. Then, on this past Thursday, the global temp hit 63 degrees F. That set a daily record for single day and the week has a good chance of setting a record that many specialist believe could go back 100,000 years. The waters of the North Atlantic have been recording temps some 9 degrees F above normal this summer. Climate specialists now give 2023 better than a 50-50 chance of being the hottest year on record, breaking the existing record set in 2016. As they say, records are meant to be broken but not this quickly.

Scientists are not surprised. This is what they have been predicting for years now. The usual carbon emission issue is coupled with an El Nino effect (hotter oceans than usual) to break records. The problem is that the impacts now tend to be cumulative rather than cyclical. Hot begets more hot! Even staid experts are now using words like ‘extraordinary,’ ‘terrifying,’ and ‘uncharted teritory.’ Yup, time to buy my lakefront home way up in Hudson Bay.

But let’s focus on that spot of ‘coke’ found in the WH. That’s what is important.

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Here’s another trend to make your day. Being MIA from class is way up in American schools after the pandemic.

The education experts say that missing 10 percent of classes during the school years puts a child at great risk of falling behind (unless they are a bored genius but there aren’t many of those). Exceeding this threshold is called ‘chronic absenteeism.’ Before the pandemic, close to 30 percent of kids were in this category. Recently, the rate has been approaching one in two kids, with some school districts being particularly hard hit. This is a sleeper effect from COVID.

Now, let is face a harsh truth. We were getting our fannies whipped on the education front by many countries … Finland, Norway, Poland, Japan, Hong Kong, China, and the list goes on. In global assessments of educational performance we typically are far down the list. I noticed the transformation in the composition of graduate programs at the University of Wisconsin during my career. The doctoral program in economics was taken over by foreign students in the 1980s as I recall, never mind engineering and the computer sciences where they have long dominated. Even in the Social Welfare (Social Work) doctoral program, Asian students had become a dominant presence. I often wondered, where have all the American kids gone?

Now, with teachers being chronically underpaid, with these poor bastards being attacked on all sides, including for all sorts of non-educational partisan and ideological reasons, who would want this crummy job any more. Teaching in most of the States is not like teaching in Scandinavia where you are paid well and appreciated as a skilled professional, or in France where school kids are fed nutritious meels since that is critical to learning (as opposed to here where ketchup once was classified as a vegetable to save a few pennies.) Not to worry, if the kids no longer come to school, we won’t need as many teachers. That will save a few tax dollars, surely a win-win outcome for Republicans.

If we continue to starve our research universities (as the Republican legislature is doing in Wisconsin), foreign students will turn to their own universities, which are improving as we speak. Then the dumbing down of America will be complete.

Let me repeat my favorite mantra one more time. I am sooo damn glad I’m an old fart and on my way out!

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One final thought for today … this one on an historical note. It is around the 100 year anniversary of Mussolini’s ‘march on Rome’ that established the first major Fascist regime in Europe. This got me thinking (lots of weird things get me thinking apparently). We actually have Communism to thank for the rise of European Fascism in the 1920s through the 40’s, a force that led to horrific conflicts and mass deaths. Thank you Marx, Lenin, and Trotsky (sarcasm intended).

Lenin and Trotsky, in particular, were convinced internationalists. They were convinced that the Red tide would quickly sweep out of Russia to the west and take over Europe, and do so quickly. After all, based on the theoretical writings of Karl Marx, Russia was the least likely candidate for revolution … too backward and agricultural. It had not gone through the pre-revolutionalry stages predicted by Marx and Engels. But places like Germany were perfect. In the early 1920’s the advancing Red Scare rushed through a number of countries. In America, for example, the scare led to the Palmer (U.S. AG) raids where hundreds of left-wingers were arrested out of paranoia and base fear. Immigration subsequently was curtailed severely. This paranoia was later resurrected in the McCarthyism of the 1950s.

Back to my main point. In 1923, Mussolini was able to walk into Rome and take power with a relatively small contingent of his ‘Blackshirts.’ The key moment came when Luigi Facta, head of the Italian Council of Ministers presented King Vittorio Emanuele III with a ‘Ratification of a State of Seige.’ Had Vittorio signed the document, the Italian Army would have been called upon to disperse the marchers and throw Benito’s ass in jail (though, like his admirer Hitler after the Beer Hall putsch, Benito may have also have made a comeback).

Now, here’s the big quesiton. Why didn’t Vittorio sign it? He was too afraid of the Communists and thought Benito a safer bet. Oooops, his mistake!

A decade later, President Paul Von Hindenburg also faced a growing threat from the left as the global depression wracked the German economy. The left and right fought pitched battles in the streets as the central government seemed increasingly impotent. After several meetings with Industrialists, former Chancellor Von Papen and other mainstream politicians convinced Hindenburg to appoint Hitler as Chancellor, though the President despised the future Fuhrer personally. By this time, Hndenburg was becoming senile and would pass away in a few months. But what persuaded him to act against his instincts was assurances from Papen and others that Hitler could be controlled. After all, the Nazi’s would have a minority of ministerial positions in the new government. In any case, Hitler’s backers (the Brownshirts) were essential to keeping the Commies from seizing power. It might have seemed like a good idea at the time. It wasn’t.

Not long after this German disaster, the ‘left’ was legally voted into power in Spain. It was a loose coalition of reformers, Socialists, and Communists who frightened the pants off the established aristocracy, the military elite, and the Church. General Francisco Franco was a leader of the Nationalist forces that initiated a Civil war in 1936 against the Republican (or elected) forces. For 3 years, a brutal conflict ensued with atrocities on both sides. While many foreigners (including Americans in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade) joined the Republican side to defend what they saw as an imperiled democracy, they could not compete with the planes and tanks supplied by Hitler.

In the end, the Repubic was defeated, as much by internal divisions within the Republican coalition as by Franco’s army … the far left could never get along with the moderate reformers. Still, the Republic had considerable support among the people and held out for a long time. It was that nagging fear that the Communists would eventually rise to a dominant position that eroded this support. And so, Franco prevailed in 1939 and created the Dictaduro Franquista, his dictatorship, that would last until his death in 1975. I can still remember when we were told he was ‘on his deathbed.’ He was on it for a long, long time it seemed … a really long time. When he did finally ‘buy the farm,’ he left a bitterly divided country that had been savaged by hate and bitter divisions, a nation that did not begin to heal for another generation at least. Some have never forgotten.

There you have it … Lenin died before his anticipated world revolution could happen. Trotsky, the other big internationalist, was driven into exile by Stalin and murdered by his agents in Mexico in the mid 1930s. Aside from the eastern European countries occupied by Russian forces at the end of WWII, China, the North of the Korean peninsula, and briefly in south Asia, there was no international revolution. Communism was doomed to self destruct (in any pure form) based on its internal contadictions. But there was the rise of Fascism in Europe (and a hard-right movement in the U.S.) in response to its largely imagined threat. The suffering attendant to this has been incalculable. The number of deaths alone runs into the tens of millions.

And so it goes.

I am anticipating with dread the next Presidential election, always an opportunity for excessive delusional thinking and hyperbolic claims. On the other hand, perhaps I will be rescued from the coming insanity by an aneurysm which will take me away to my eternal reward. Then again, thinking on how I have led my life to date, perhaps I can endure a bit of political nonsense just a bit longer. My personal afterlife may leave something to be desired.

What I fear most is the mind-numbingly stupid debate we will endure on why our fiscal house is in disorder. It is mind-numbing in that the script is so old, the Republican talking points were first written down on papyrus paper or, as some have claimed, were chiseled in hieroglyphics on stone tablets. Our conservative bretheren will pound away on excess spending. ‘‘We have to cut our public budget, run our government like the family budget.‘ they will say repeatedly. ‘You pay your bills on time, that’s what real Americans do despite all the taxes the typcal family must fork over to a voracious spending machine known as Uncle Sam.‘ Of course, for them cutting spending does not include expenditures aimed at killing people. There must always be more money for weapons of destruction which is God’s will (NOTE: That bit about beating your swords into plowshares was a Biblical missprint). And by the way, your typical American family is in debt, with at least a mortgage or two, and possibly student loans and credit card debt and HELOCs. Private debt also runs into the trillions.

The Dems will retort with something about taxing the rich more to raise additional revenue. However, they never seem to push this theme with as much vigor as the other side when conservatives scream about bloated government, excessive spending, and general waste. My guess is that most Dems loathe saying anything that might scare off wealthy politcal donors, even those who realize they have been getting away with murder for years.

If you are as unfortunate as I am, you are getting scores of messages daily (even now with no immediate election) asking for donations from all sides of the political spectrum. Politics has become 98 percent about raising money these days and the other 2 percent about scaring the shit out of you. Reading these pleas is something out of the Twilight Zone. I don’t blck them all though, while irritating, many are entertaining (eg. Western civilization will collapse if you don’t send my $5 bucks by midnght for an election some 17 or 18 months away).

This morning, for some reason, my febrile mind wandered back three decades to the moment when Bill Clinton, during a brief Democratic trifecta, passed a budget Bill that (among other things) raised the top marginal tax rate from 31 percent to 39.6 percent. It was a brave act. His predecessor, George H. W. Bush had raised the top rate from 28 pervent to 31 percent, which cost him dearly among the Republican base and likely resulted in his losing the 1992 election. Americans have always hated paying for the public good, a disposition that goes back Colonial days (see my recent blog). Clinton’s move to improve our budgetary situation, along with the audacity to suggest we join the rest of the world in offering our citizens an expanded public health system, likely resulted in the success of the Gingrich revolution in the 1994 Congressional elections.

What I remember most about that year (I was in Washington at the time) is how desperately the Republicans howled that the ‘sky would fall’ if Clinton raised the the top tax rate. Unemployment would explode, productivity would crator, and our public debt would not decline but increase exponentially. There was no end to the horrible outcomes they laid before the American public. Their stand? If you want to reduce our debt, cut spending on anything and everything that benefits average and lower-income folk. But for heaven sakes, don’t tamper with things like tax rates for the ‘producers’ in society, or write-offs for private jets and three-martini lunches. Those things lubricate our economy and keep us growing. Does all this strike anyone else as transparently self-serving?

In any case, reality turned out quite different from the nightmarish scenarios described by the ‘right.’ The economy boomed during Clinton’s administration. The stock market soared. And most amazingly, annual deficits fell and, mirabili dictu, we ran budget surpluses, something not seen since the 60s. A colleague of mine at UW had spent time at Treasury around this time. He and his economist colleagues were stunned at how quickly annual deficts fell. They were in disbelief when budget surpluses were generated several years ahead of even their more optimistic projections. Soon, the hard right moved on to other issues. Obviously with fiscal armageddon delayed, could the culture wars be substituted as the au courant national nightmare. The damn liberal are attacking Christmas. (What!)

All this got me thinking about fiscal basics or budget essentials 101. In the last fiscal year, the feds collected about $5 trillion in revenues, or some $15,000 per person. A little more than half came from income taxes, about 30 percent from payroll taxes, and the rest from corporate and sales taxes along from custom duties. On the other hand, they spent some $6.5 trillion. Most of that went to big ticket items like Social Security, Defense, Health care financing, debt servicing, and distribution of recources to the States, things that are hard to cut. All other government programs and operations represent a pretty small portion of the budget.

The gap between revenue and spending is the annual deficit, $1.5 trillion in the last fiscal year. The deficits, when considered over time, constitute the aggregate public debt. That has grown to $31 trillion at the current time, a fact that led to the recent kerfuffle about raising the debt limit. Of course, the old stone tablets on which Republican talking points are to be found were dragged out one more time. The conservatives threatened national insolvency unless spending on working folks and lower income families were slashed. In truth, you would have to end virtually all such programs to achieve budget neutral figures. Cooler heads prevailed (this time), but the issue has not disappeared, not by a long shot.

What is worrisome is that our public debt has risen from about a one-quarter of our GDP (Gross Domestic Product) in late 1970s (at the onset of the Reagan revolution) to just about 100 percent of GDP today. Those are figures that even alarm a socialist like myself. Sure, we owe most of this money to ourselves but perhaps 25 to 30 percent is owned by foreign countries. What if they were all to call in what we owe them, like if we defaulted on our debts?

We had seen our national debt fall for decades after World War II, when a world conflict generated spending had pushed what we owed to 106 percent of our GDP in 1946 (remember war bonds). Many feared a post war economic collapse but government was then guided by Keynesian principles and remained in the hands of Democrats and rather liberal Republicans (Eisenhower would be considered leftist today and Nixon said ‘we are all Keynesians now.’ Throughout this period, the top marginal tax rates remained high (70 to 91 percent). Also, we invested in things like national health (e.g., Medicare and Medicaid), and in our infrastructure (the National Highway Bill), and education (the G.I. Bill and post-Sputnick investments in science.) All the while, the middle class boomed, inequality and poverty fell, and opportunity abounded (even for a schmuck like me). I do not exaggerate when I say that if a no- talent like me could make it, anyone can … you just need the right opportunity set.

Then we had the great U-turn in 1980. I’ve talked elsewhere about how progress against poverty then stalled and how inequality began to increase in virtually tectonic terms. But let us keep our focus on the debt issue. The public debt, which had fallen to about one-quarter of GDP in the 1970s, started rising again. Reagan slashed the top marginal rate from 70 percent to 28 percent along with other tax breaks for the wealthy, all under the dubious theory of supply side economics. At the same time, the darling of the right was not very good at slashing spending. He raised the defense budget dramatically. Then, when his budget director, John Stockman, tried to get his boss to indicate which programs should be slashed or eliminated, he found Ronald to be a softy. When faced with cutting help to struggling folk, Reagan could not do it despite his tough rhetoric. Out exploding debt was off and running.

Still, by the end of the Clinton administration, Bill had whittled the debt down to about $10 trillion. He both cut spending and increased revenue, raising the top rate to 39.6 percent as mentioned above. So, how did the aggrregate rate jump from $10 trillion to over $30 trillion in a couple of decades or so? For one thing, the Republicans regained their mo-jo about catering to the uber wealthy. To make a long strory manageable, Bush (the junior) enacted major tax cuts that slashed revenues (from what they would have been). At the same time, he initiated a series of costly wars and then, through negligence, permitted the housing crash to occur in 2008, a disaster which came close to cratering the global economy.

Obama managed to drag us back to prosperity but with considerable, though necessary, spending. Trump, however, then followed with more tax cuts in 2017 that greatly favored the wealthy and helped redistribute more of the economic pie to the top. That, coupled with the pandemic, and its consequences on both revenues and spending, pushed our deficits (and debt) into the stratosphere. Yet, when the debt ceiling kerfuffle erupted, the call from the right came directly from the ancient papyrus script … too much Democratic spending. And while the Republicans called for a general reduction in non-defense discretionary spending (not a big portion of the pie to begin with), they were surprisingly mute about specific cuts. They would let Biden make those choices and take the blame of course. Nice try!

To get real for a moment, anyone living on planet earth knows that deficits (and then debt) result from two factors … spending AND debt. Ideally, you would deal with both. By the way, you would not do well in my policy class if you could not figure this one out, a common sense and not an ideologocal fact. Clinton did this very thing in the nineties and Biden has started to do the same recently (NOTE: our current deficits are falling measurably at the current moment). Dealing with things ONLY on the spending side is unbalanced and counterproductive.

Now consider this, there is no evidence that we are an overtaxed nation, as the right continuously asserts. A study of 38 nations in the OECD (generally the better run countries) has the U.S. ranked 32nd out of the 38 in tax burden. Oddly enough, countries like Denmark and Finland, those often at the very top of global hedonic scales measuring the happiness of citizens, also are at the top of the tax-burden scale. They tax way more than us BUT also provide services that their citizens value and which significanty reduce the anxieties that plague Americans in their more winner-take-all culture.

Here’s the thing. At the end of the day, the tax cuts introduced over the past two-plus decades account for the preponderance of the debt growth since the turn of the century. Reasonable analyses suggest that some 57 percent of the additional debt over this period is due to the Bush (Jr.) and Trump tax cuts. However, when you factor out the temporary blips associated with the 2008 crash and the Pandemic, the poportion of the blame on our recent tax cuts (and revenue losses) jump to about 90 percent. Those two factors surely added much to short-term deficits but nothiing to longer term trajectories. The bottom line, our way back to fiscal sanity is through returning our tax burden to past levels and in line with our peer nations. If we do, the sky will not fall. If past history s any guide, we will do very well indeed (assuming we deal with other small challenges like climate change).

Now boys and girls, there was a time when some sanity prevailed in our governing institutions. There was a time when sound analysis and research played a role in policy making. No, I’m not making that up. I was alive during those times. And Republicans even made sense. They were the ones cautioning us on the behalf of fiscal prudence. They even struck me a sensible and I have been known to vote for a few over the years, though not recently. Not many. mind you, but there were some really good ones.

Sigh, they are gone now. Hopefully, their replacements will not drag us into the abyss. I’m not hopeful though, unless someone surrepticiously adds a common sense drug into their kool-aide. As I keep saying. I’m damn glad I’m old.

I can relate to this first one:

A group of professors were invited on a plane. When the door closed and the plane was about to take off, all the eggheads were informed that the plane had been made by their students. The profs immediately rushed toward the plane door to escape with one exception. This one remained calm and confident.

He was asked why he wasn’t trying to escape.

“Simple”, he replied, “they are our students.”

“And you are that sure you taught them that well”

“Hell no,” he smiled, “I’m just sure the damn thing won’t fly.”

This joke spoke to me, had to share.

…………………………………………………………

How about a few more then:

An English teacher wrote these words on the whiteboard: “Women without her man is nothing.” She then asked the students to punctuate the sentence correctly.

The boys wrote: “Women, without her man, is nothing.”

The girls wrote: “Women! Without her, man is nothing.”

And there you have it.

…………………………………………..

In the beginning, God created the earth and rested. Then, He created man and rested. Next, God created women.

Since then, neither God nor man has gotten a damn bit of rest.

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For those men who say, “why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free”, here’s an update for you.

Nowadays, some 80 percent of women are against marriage. Why? Because women now realize it’s not worth buying an entire pig just get get a little sausage.

…………………………………………….

Q. How are men and parking lots alike?

A. The good ones are already taken and the ones that are left are handicapped.

……………………………………………

Q. Why are men like banking machines?

A. Once they withdraw they lose interest.

………………………………………………….

Two friends meet each other on the street.

“Hello! Where are you coming from, Tom.” Asked Bill.

“I’m coming from the cenetary. I just burried my mother-in-law.

“I’m so sorry,” Bill said. “But why is your face scratched all over?

“It wasn’t easy,” Tom sighed. “She put up one hell of a fight.”

…………………………………….

8 year old sally brought her report card home. Her marks were generally good though her teacher had written the following across the bottom.

“Sally is a smart girl, but she has one fault. She talks way too much during class. However, I have an idea I’ll try to break her of this habit.

Sally’s dad signed the card and added the following. “Please tell me your idea. I’d like to try it on Sally’s mother.”

…………………………………………………………….

Mildred, the town gossip, loved to dish dirt on everyone. Most of her neighbors were too afraid of her to complain. But she made a mistake when she attacked Tom, a new neighbor.

“You are a drunk,” she said in front of everyone. “I saw your truck parked in front of the the bar for a long time yesterday.”

Tom said nothing and just walked away.

That evening, Tom parked his truck in front of Midred’s house and walked home. He left it parked there all night.

……………………………………………..

What do a clitoris, an anniversary, and a toilet have in common?

Men always miss them!

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An Irish Priest and a Rabbi get into a car accident. They both get out of their cars and stumble to the side of the road.

The Rabbi says, “Oy vey! What a wreck!”

The Priest asks the Rabbi if he’s all right.

“Just shaken up a bit.”

The Priest pulls a flask from his coat and says, “drink some of this. It will calm your nerves.”

The Rabbi takes a couple of good belts and says, “well, what are we going to tell the police.”

The Priest smiles. “I don’t know what your aft’ to be tellin’ them, but I’ll be tellin’ them that I wasn’t the one drinking.”

…………………………………………………………….

Paddy was tooling down the road a bit when the local cop, a friend of his, pulled him over.

“What’s wrong, Seamus?” Paddy asked.

“Well, didn’t ya know, Paddy, that your good wife fell out of the car about a mile or so back there?”

“Ah, praise the Lord,” Paddy replied with relief. “I thought I’d been struck deaf.”

……………………………………………

A blonde calls her mom … “Mom, mom, I’m a genius.”

“Really dear, how’s that possible?”

The blonde replies. I finished a puzzle I’ve been working on for the past year and just read the box. It says ‘for 2 to 5’ years.”

……………………………………………

Q. Why did the blonde put lipstick on her forehead?

A. She was trying to make up her mind.

………………………………………………..

A gang of robbers broke into private club for lawyers. the old legal lions gave them one hell of a fight for their lives and money. The gang was happy to escape.

“What a mistake!” the boss of the gang said.

“It wasn’t so bad,” another of the gang said. “We made off with a hundred bucks.”

“Yeah,” the boss replied, “but we had $400 when we went in to rob the place.”

…………………………………………..

The owner of a golf course in Georgia was confused about paying an invoice so he decided to ask his attractive female secretary for some help. “You graduated from the University of Georgia and I need some mathematical help.”

“Of course,” she replied.

“If I was to give you $20,000 minus 14%, how much would you take off?”

She thought for a moment before replying. “Everthing but my earrings.”

…………………………………………….

And on that note, I will make my apologies and wish all a good day.

As I watch the sun set over a lake on a hot summer day just before the 4th, my restless brain turns to what the upcoming holiday is all about. A new country was created.

Well, not exactly I suppose. If I recall correctly, the vote to separate from the mother country was done two days before the 4th, the day that many of the Founding Father’s assumed would be celebrated in the future. The event that stuck, however, was the date the Declaration was signed by a bunch of very wealthy white men. Go figure!

Those signing the document were taking a huge gamble. It was, after all, a treasonous act and easily could have found them hanging at the end of a rope. As one of the signers said, ‘we will either hang together or hang separately.’

They had no way of knowing whether their brave words could be backed up with effective actions. Yet, they went ahead, some with considerable bravo. As John Hancock wrote his signature with calligraphic elegance, he murmured something to the effect that George III would have no problem reading his signature. Of course, perhaps they were only catching up with the times. By the seminal vote on July 2nd, some 90 local jurisdictions had already voted for some type of separation.

When all was said and done, however, the declaration was merely words. There were other steps essential to the birth of this new nation, or any such rash peoples breaking away from colonial rule. A conflict of arms had to be waged even as the colonists were utterly divided respecting their feelings toward the Crown. The colonists were far from united on the question of separation. In fact, my late wife can trace her father’s lineage back to revolutionary times. I found it intriguing that her ancestors left the Boston area and headed west right after independence was secured. I always figured they had chosen the wrong side and had been forced to migrate.

It would not be until 1781 that Cornwallis was trapped between American/French troops and the French Navy at Yorktown. The timely arrival of the French fleet closed the trap and assured a positive outcome. The Treaty by which Britain formally recognized the new state was not signed until 1783. A functioning constitution would not come for another several years. Even then, some say the birth was not real until John Adams voluntarily relinquished power to his political enemy Thomas Jefferson after the Electoral votes were counted. That proved the Constitution worked, at least until Trump came along. There are many dates to celebrate.

In looking back, those advocating celebration sometimes came across as spoiled children. The various taxes imposed on colonists after the end of the French and Indian wars were necessary to offset the costs to the Crown for securing the Western borders of the colonies. Rather than help defray the military costs, the colonists (some at least) bitched and moaned about paying for the help they had received. The British foreign office was perplexed by such selfishness. Not surprisingly, Americans still moan about paying for the common good…being a peculiarly selfish lot 🙄.

The start of the whole affair seemed inevitable and yet accidental. The British forayed out of Boston toward Concord Massachusetts one day to round up arms the rabble rousers had allegedly stored there. Most credit Paul Revere for spreading the alarm, but he was a bust being caught by a British patrol before carrying out his mission. His partner, a man named Dawes, fell from his horse and hurt himself. It was a young doctor who had been visiting his fiance and whom Revere and Dawes happened to run across before their mishaps who saved the day. He raced through the countryside while raising the alarm.

Even as the locals and British regulars faced off at Lexington, war was not a guarantee. The two sides stared at one another until a single shot, most likely an accident, started everything off. The outnumbered colonists scattered. By the time the Regulars reached Concord, however, many more minutemen had gathered. They fought Native American style, staying hidden and hitting the British in hit and run attacks as the Redcoats beat a hasty retreat. That victory, plus another at Bunkers Hill, Breeds Hill actually, drove the Brits out of Boston. It was a promising start.

After George Washington was appointed commander as a political move to cement Southern participation, more Brits were sent over to quash the rebellion, much like America escalating in Vietnam in 1965-67. The first few contests found the Colonial forces suffering humiliating defeats as they were routed out of New York all the way into Pennsylvania. Extinction of the Continental Army was a close run thing at the very begin, very close indeed.

All seemed lost in December, 1776. The remaining troops under Washington were dispirited. Most had enlistments that would expire at the end of the year, Washington was desperate, the rebellion on the brink of collapse. So, he rolled the dice, crossing the Delaware on Christmas night to attack the Hessians in Camden. It really was a desperate move 😕.

That gamble also proved close run thing. A Tory farmer, becoming aware of the sneak attack, raced to warn the Hessian mercenaries. A lower officer brought a note to their commanding General who was enjoying a yuletime card game, revelry, and many drinks. Rather than read the note, the commander merely stuffed it into his pocket. On such small acts, great things are determined.

Instead of preparing for the approaching Rebels, the Hessians continued their revelry far into the night. Washington’s troops arrived early the next morning to be greeted by sleepy, drunk, hung over, and totally unprepared defenders. The Hessian Commander was one of the first to fall and the rout was on. This victory boosted morale and saved the army to fight another day.

The fighting would go on for another five years or so with many additional dark moments. In many respects, though, Britain’s fortunes were sealed a year later in the Fall of 1777. General Burgoyne marched South through the Hudson River Valley hoping to split the Rebellian and cut the New England states off from the remainder of those rebellious miscreants. But the American General Gates, over a series of battles, defeated Burgoyne completely and sent his forces back into Canada. Gates became so popular as a result that many proposed him to replace Washington as head of the Continental Army.

One outcome was that France decided that the ragtag Colonial forces had a chance after all. Ben Franklin and John Adams had been in Paris for some time pleading the case for support. The two ambassadors were very different and disliked each other. Ben’s informal and lecherous approach (with the fashionable ladies) proved perfect for the French Court, unlike Adams’s more professional approach. Louis soon agreed and now the Colonies did have a chance, a good chance, especially as French troops began to arrive in 1778. Much like America some 190 years later, Britain found fighting an unwinnable war on the other side of the ocean too expensive, especially now that the Rebels had a rich ally.

But the real costs fell on the King of France whose decision to bankroll the upstart colonists drove him into debt … that and his lavish lifestyle that is. He eventually had to call the Estates-Generale to raise revenue which, in turn, started a series of events that led to the French Revolution. But I assume Louis thought supporting the American uprising to be a good bet at the time.

Washingtons end game, however, was admirable. He fooled the Brits into thinking he would keep his combined American-French force outside New York (the Brit headquarters). Secretly, he marched south to join the Rebels Southern forces outside Yorktown. When he arrived, he prayed the French fleet would beat the British ships to the Chesapeake Bay, thus trapping Cornwallis. They did and the Brits were doomed.

After trying to hold out, Cornwallis accepted realty and surrendered. His aide (the Commander was too depressed to participate in the formal surrender) tried to give his sword to the ranking French officer, rather than Washington who was considered little above the status of a barbarian. The French commander insisted it be given to Washington, who was in charge. As I recall, the band played a tune titled ‘The World Turned Upside Down.’

And so, a new nation was on the way to being born. When the original Articles of Confederation proved a bust, a new Constitution was developed (with considerable difficulty). When a woman asked Franklin what kind of government they had proposed, he purportedly said … ‘a Republic, if you can keep it.’ Now, some 230 odd years later, we might yet focus on his prescient caveat…if you can keep it.

Nothing was certain at the beginning. Many yet favored a limited Monarchy, their ire not against all strong leaders but against George III, who suffered from health and mental issues that raised questions about his fitness to rule. Even beyond the new Constitution, the example of Washington as first President set the tone for the new nation. This was his finest hour. His popularity could have permitted him to accrue great powers. But he resisted, and a limited democracy came into being.

It would be tested in the future. In the 1840s, the first push for disunion arose. It came not from Southern slaveholders but from northern abolitionists who believed the Constitution a blighted document that supported slavery and oligarchic rule. In many states, only property holding white males could vote even at this time. They wanted a mature democracy that included all adults. Of course, our greatest test came in 1861.

Perhaps the 2024 election will give us an answer to whether we can keep the nation that was born way back then, and which slowly evolved into a mature Democracy. There are still those who would sweep the Constitution aside and recreate a monarchy or oligarchic dictatorship. There always have been upstarts like Trump. The difference now is that so many support his objectionable and vile vision.

Tests for this experiment in government never end!

The paperback version of my latest book finally is available on Amazon.

In my humble opionion, it is both thoughtful, yet a riveting read. Some who have read it tell me that the narrative was suspensful and they were driven to find out how it ended.

A reminder of the more recent works of yours truley.

GO TO: http://www.booksbytomcorbett.com

A few more awful jokes.

And here is Albert laughing at my jokes.

Don’t panic if I’m missing for a few days

Even genius has to relax and recharge every once in a while, though that excuse really has nothing to do with me.

This series will be a rather random array of odd stuff that caught my attention. Again, I vouch for the authenticity of nothing, so caveate emptor.

…………………………………………

Josef Schulz was just an ordinary German soldier drafted in the Wehrmacht during WWII and stationed in the Balkans. One day he was ordered to serve on a firing squad to shoot 16 Ukrainian civilians. He considered this order immoral. He took off his helmet and joined the poor men about to be killed.

Josef was shot along with the others for disobeying an order.

………………………….

Edward Everett Hale was a prodigy who was admitted to Harvard at age 13 and became a minister and historian in life. In 1903, he became the minister to the U.S. Senate. One day he was asked if he ever prayed for the Senators. He responded as follows:

“I look at the Senators and I pray for the country.”

…………………………………………

Donald Trump, as we know, is a pathological narcissist, perhaps patterning himself after Josef Stalin. Everyone knew it was easy to get on Uncle Joe’s bad side which was a quick way to the Gulag or to one’s heavenly reward (I pity us if the Donald is reelected).

One story about Joe involves a talk he have at a mill factory. When he finished, the assembled crowd clapped for 5 minutes, then 10. At the 12 minute mark, the foreman of the mill stopped which the others took as their cue that they were also permitted to stop.

Bad move! The foreman was arrested and sent to a gulag for not being enthusiastic enough.

…………………………………..

Charles King is an ex-President of Liberia. He holds a dubious record for election fraud. In the 1927 election, he received 234,000 votes. Nothing shocking there except …

there were only 15,000 registered voters in the country.

………………………………………….

When Albert Einstein met Charlie Chaplin in 1931, they allegedly had this historic exchange.

Einstein to Chaplin: “I admire you because you do not say a word yet the world undertands you.”

Chaplin back to Albert: “And I you since the world so admires you though no one understands a thing you say.”

…………………………………………………

A really drunk guy approached author Truman Capote in a Key West bar once. The man was irate since his wife had asked Truman for his autograph. Upon confronting the author, the drunk pulled out his manhood and barked, “You like to autograph things, autograph this.”

Capote’s response was priceless. “I doubt there is room there for my autograph but perhaps I can initial it.”

………………………………………………..

Over a century ago, many females were diagnosed by male doctors as having an affliction known as ‘female hysteria.’ This was a condition associated with such symptoms as anxiety, depression, mood swings, and the like. One treatment for this affliction involved stimulating the patient’s private parts (clitoris) until what was termed a ‘pelvic paroxysm’ had been achieved. We know this outcome as an orgasm. Sometimes special intruments were employed (precursors to vibrators) or manual stimulation (no comment).

It never occured to anyone that the female patient simply was horny since women were not supposed to have such a weakness.

…………………………………………………..

Astronaut and U.S. Senator John Glenn actually flew missions in Korea with baseball great Ted Williams, the last Major League player to hit over .400 in a season. The so-called ‘splendid splinter’ (Williams was very skinny in his youth) lost some 4 or 5 seasons while serving as a fighter pilot in WWII and Korea. Glenn once told the story of Ted’s plane being hit and making it back with flames coming out of his engine, no radio, and disabled landing gear. He skidded down the run way and jumped from his plane before it could explode. Glenn oft said that he thought more of Williams as a pilot than a ballplayer, and he considered Ted one hell of a ballplayer.

And Ted’s impression of John Glenn. “Oh… could he fly a plane … absolutely fearless. The best I ever saw. It was an honor to fly with him.”

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There you have it … all the nonsense fit to print on the 1st of July, 2023.

There are many things that confuse me. Let’s face it, I am a guy who is easily confounded by all sorts of things like my smart watch which is way smarter than me. Often, my troublesome issue lies with how and why other folk see the world so differently than I do. The culprit here is either me or something amiss with all these other good people. Occam’s razor would suggest the problem lies with yours truley. Sigh!

Let me start with a common conundrum. Over time, I have heard many working class people assert that Republicans, or even more absurdly Trump, represent their interests with more fidelity than that other nefarious political party. I simply find that mind-numbingly absurd, simply beyond comprehension with my limited brain. Really, how could a party, and a group of politicians, whose transparent and sole purpose is to serve the interests of the filthy rich be seen to represent the average Joe. That simply beggers the imagination.

Okay, I get that some people in rural areas see their quality of life being diminished as towns and small cities decline, as farming increasingly becomes the domain of agri-business corporations, and as younger folk leave home in search of better, or any, attractive opportunities. If Wisconsin is any kind of bellweather state, the urban-rural split reflects our political landscape writ large. The state as a whole is seen as purple … it can go one way or the other by relatively small margins in statewide races.

At the same time, extreme gerrymandering has cemented Republican control of the state Senate and Assembly despite Democrats getting a small majority of all statewide votes cast. The bottom line … the Badger State is a microcosm for the nation where the Dems typically win the overall vote but, with the Electoral Vote favoring more rural and red states, Presidential elections are in doubt while control of Congress is typically hotly contested.

In our state petri dish, most rural Cheesehead counties are overwhelmingly Republican and conservative, which was not the case for most of my tenure in this state. I personally knew a number of liberal democrats who won elections in mostly rural western and northern counties, areas now solidly Republican. Still, I do understand the growing angst in such places. When you drive through small towns amidst the bucolic rolling hills of what is called the ‘driftless area,’ a terrain long ago carved out by past glacial movements, you can see and feel the economic and social decay. Businesses are boarded up and those yet open often look as is they could use a new coat of paint. It is sad in many cases.

Then you look at Madison, home of the State Capitol and the flagship campus of the University of Wisconsin system. It is booming, with new businesses and residential buildings sprouting up all over the place. Increasingly, it is the home of many high-tech oriented firms and increasingly is seen as the region’s health care and financial center. It is a place where professionals want to live and work. The oft-used example of the Madison boom is Epic Systems, the premier developer of computerized medical record keeping. It was started in 1979 by a UW grad with a couple of helpers and a stake of about $250,000 (in today’s dollars). Judy Falkner, the founder, is now worth billions.

Epic has a stunning campus just outside Madison (Verona Wisconsin). It employs about 12,000 mostly high tech workers with plans to expand their futuristic campus (a visit there rivals Disneyland) by adding another ancillary campus with 1,700 more workers this year alone. These are younger, well educated, professionals who tend to be liberal. Madison (and Dane County) now votes overwhelmingly Democratic … 82 percent for the liberal candidate in the latest election. It is tipping the state in a bluish direction. (Note, with gerrymandering, control of the state senate and assembly will remain firmly in Republican hands at least until after I pass from the scene.)

Many believe that the so-called outstate, those mostly rural counties located away from the big cities, are motivated in their political beliefs by a growing resentment what they see as effete, urban elites … those pampered and over educated prima-donnas who look down upon their country cousins with disdain as slow-witted bubbas. Thus insulted, at least in their imaginations, they vote for hard conservatives who sate their anger with histrionic rheoric about radical socialists and sometimes with confounding votes.

In the recent budget, the Republican controlled Senate and Assembly hacked out $32 million from the University budget to punish administrators for attempting to enhance diversity and inclusion in higher education. It is hard not to see this as ill-disguised racial animus … why are we helping those unworthy kids when my worthy kid is struggling.

But Republicans also refused to green light a new engineering complex on the Madison campus, a project that would mostly be financed with private donations. With everyone screaming that we need more STEM educated workers in this state as well as the country at large, this decision is simply nuts. Just watch China pull away from us laughing all the way to being the number 1 economic and technological power. Why not put up a sign at the state border or our national ports of entry saying ‘educated people go away.’

Now, I get the anger. I really do. I also make much fun at the expense of my former academic colleagues. They give me so much ammunition. Yet, I feel the conservative anger from average folk (not the filthy rich) misses the mark, by a lot. Hard working stiffs who vote Republican see these so-called elites doing well while they are struggling. They often believe that some traditionally disenfranchised groups are being helped disproportionately … with the recent SCOTUS ruling scaling back the use of affirmative action in higher education perhaps reflecting a mild backlash in the face of such sentiments. In fact, a recent poll in liberal California found a majority of respondents saying we might be going too far in redressing inequality of opportunity. Our melting pot has never adequately dealt with tribal competition and tensions.

However, and here is my incredulous amazement, why in God’s good name would you vote for a party and for politicians who have NEVER supported policies that favor people like you, other than attacking the same people you are likely to despise. And I mean NEVER, and I seldom employ absolutes except when vexed. While I know well that old saw about the enemy of your enemy being your friend, voting Republican in the belief they will help you economically is a bridge too far for me. There simply is no evidence to support this belief.

Why am I so perplexed this morning? Let’s just look at a few trends. As I’ve mentioned in the past, the golden era of America’s economy occured in the three decades following WWII when the tax system was very progressive and public spending on things like infrastructure, education, health, and social opportunities was rising. That ended in 1980 with the onset of the Reagan revolution. Since then, Republicans have held either the Presidency or Congress for all but a few years.

There have been momentary bright spots. Clinton had a couple of unfettered years where he started us toward budget surpluses and spurred several years of robust economic growth before Gingrich and crowd opposed him at every turn, eventually shutting down our government. The two years at the beginning of Obama’a administration also was an exception in which Obamacare was passed and we made our way out of the housing financial crisis. The same was true on Biden’s first two years which saw an impressive array of investments in technology, infrastructure, and middle-class well-being while he dug us out of the pandemic-induced economic reversal.

That being said, the last four decades have mostly seen the reign of top-down economics. Provide optimal economic incentives to the wealthiest Americans, and remove all impediments on them to act prudently, and we will all benefit. Be patient and the crumbs will fall off the tables of the uber rich to those waiting below. At every turn and for every problem, the solution was more tax cuts for the wealthy even as the national debt held by the public soared to almost $25 trillion in May, 2023. Though much of this debt growth was due to additional tax cuts favoring the wealthy under Trump, Republicans blamed it on spending for programs targeting ordinary folks.

The ‘trickle down’ con game has ruled our policy debates for decades now with some very questionable outcomes:

First, the distribution of the pie in America has become embarrassingly unfair. In 1970, the middle of the income distribution (the middle class) obtained 62 percent of aggregate income. That fell to 43 percent in 2018, while the share going to the more wealthy group rose from 29 percent to 48 percent (the poorest remained comparatively unchanged). However, the richest of the rich did very well. The top 1 percent saw their share go from less than 10 percent in the late 1970s to almost a quarter of the pie in recent years.

While there are several reasons for this, our tax system remains a big one. The top marginal tax rate was 91 percent during the Eisenhower years as we paid down our war debt and invested in a growing middle class. Kennedy knocked the top rate down to 70 percent but it was not until Reagan came along that the uber wealthy began smiling all the way to the bank. The top rate was dropped to 28 percent. While we have retreated from that low point somewhat, the really rich still do very well. There are special breaks for certain types of income available only to the richest of the rich (e.g., hedge fund managers).

All this leads to atrocious inequities. For example, Big Oil made $200 billion last year and still got a $30 billion dollar tax break. Many billionaires, like hedge fund managers just mentioned, pay something like 8 percent in income taxes on average, a rate well below what your typical working stiff pays. This was a point made repeatedly by Warren Buffet who did not understand why he paid proportionately less in taxes than his secretary. Can anyone answer his question besides the obvious response that the wealthy can buy off too many of our politicians?

Such trends, or outcomes, lead to … guess what … more inequality. A study of G-7 nations (the U.S., the U.K., Italy, Japan, Canada, Germany, and France) found that we had the most distorted economic outcomes among these rich nations. The most commonly used measure of inequality is the GINI coefficient with 0 being perfect equality and 1 being perfect inequality. We were at 0.434 (quite high inequality) while France was the most equal of the group at 0.326. If the Scandinavian countries had been included, the U.S. would be way down the list … looking relatively worse that is.

Extremes of inequality lead to bad outcomes for vulnerable groups. Take children for example. Kids in America are much more likely to be poor when compared to ther peers in other wealthy countries. Poverty gets measured in different ways but most studies put about one-in-five American kids below the poverty line in recent years. Again, other wealthy countries see rates almost half as much. Several Scandinavian countries have rates at 5 percent or lower with the Danes coming in at 3 percent. As the old maxim goes, the moral worth of any country is measured by how it treats its most vulnerable citizens. Need I say more.

These extremes also tend to get systemized over time. Higher inequality gives the uber rich more leverage in tilting the rules in their favor. It is not rocket science that they can then fund candidates they like and policies that favor them. They want to preserve their favored situation in the future. Duh!

A study of global social mobility bears this out. An index has been created that assesses the prospects of moving up (or down) in society. A measure of 100 indicates the greatest social mobility possibilities while lower scores indicate lesser mobility or less of a chance of moving up the economic and social ladder. Robust social mobility used to be thought of as the American dream, where hard work could realize anyone’s dreams. Denmark came out #1 (a score of 85.2) while the U.S. ranked 27th (a score of 70.4), just below Lithuania but one spot above Spain. In truth, the old American Dream is now found in those socialist northern European countries which, not surprisingly, have the happiest citizens according to global hedonic studies (the U.S. has ranked about 17th in happiness recently).

It is not that all Americans have their heads buried in the sand. Some 61 percent of all Americans feel there is too much inequality here, though only 41 percent of Republicans feel this way. Similarly, some 70 percent have indicated in recent survays that the economic and political system is unfair. Perhaps that discontent is reflected in our widespread disillusinment with the federal government. Slightly less than one-quarter of respondents now express trust in our national government to do the right thing, down from over 70 percent in the early 1960s. Even insiders now despair. Liz Cheney, a conservative Republican who also happens to have principles and brains, said recently, “what we’ve done in our politics is create a situation where we are electing idiots.” Wow!

See my confusion. By most, if not all metrics, Republican leadership is leading us into 3rd world status. Why aren’t more folks outraged? Why do so many continue to support those who act contrary to their basic interests and against our national survival as a country of promise where all might prosper?

Can anyone help me out here? I do remain confused.

The question is … are things at home (the U.S.) or around the world better or worse than when my generation came of age in the post WWII era. I have waffled hopelessly on this issue since first raising the question several posts ago. Why the dithering?

Partly because the answer is conditional. I would give a different response is I were responding from my personal situation, or that of people like me or close to me, or from viewpoint of some larger perspective (e.g., society). It is the old ‘where you sit determines where you stand’ conundrum. But there are so many other factors that might condition my response. Are we talking about creature comforts, or the strength of society (assuming we knew how to measure such), or our prospects (valid or presumed) of the future. And there lies the rub in all such vague queries … so much depends upon the character of the initial question posed. This was a point I sressed with my policy students. If you don’t get the policy question right in the first instance, solutions will elude you.

In part, my confusion lies in the fact the question is unanswerable as posed. All comparative assessments, like this one, are inherently subjective. Sure, we can drum up a set of quantitative measures and hope we have decent, or at least comparable, data across time. But, as suggested in a prior post, these thrusts at some empirical answer are far less rigorous than one might imagine. That’s why we can get an outcome in Wisconsin where Green Bay is rated as a more desireable place to live than Madison. Other than a few die hard Packer fans, I cannot imagine too many real people agreeing with this ranking.

One thing I do know. When I chat with my neighbors and acquaintances, there is an overwhelming feeling that things are worse off now than when they were young, and we are all old farts. Now, these are a group of highly educated, professional folk (retired doctors, lawyers, engineers, academics, and such). They are all financially well off and most have enjoyed long and successful marriages with children who are, on balance, doing well. These are our success stories, folk who should be optimistic and hopeful. That said, our regular discussions on this matter suggest they are not optimistic in the least. They are deeply pessimistic about the future.

So, let me start there. Why do these more successful senior citizens evince such dark opinions on the state of society and the future we have before us. Time and again, I hear the refrain that they are glad they are old and that they are desperately fearful of what their children, and particularly their grandchildren, face. Given this, I have pushed myself to think back to my youth. The people in my long-ago world were far removed from those who now surround me, at least in terms of status and economic success.

Back then, my family (and our neighbors) had no luxuries. In my early years, I lived in a cold water flat, my mother washed clothes by hand, we took buses everywhere, and there was no central heating. I can recall seeing my breath in winter since my bedroom was far removed from the space heater we employed to keep us from freezing. But there’s the thing. That seemed normal to me. I didn’t feel put upon or disadvantaged. Everyone around me was in the same boat, or leaking raft if you will.

If I had cast my attention upon the broader world then, I would have seen war, felt the real fear of imminent nucear annihilation, saw extreme racial divisions, sensed oppression and exploitation of all kinds of groups including members of the LGBTQ community. I would have heard stories such as the fate of Alan Turing, the British mathemetician and logician some call the father of the computer age and the breaker of the Enigmal Code during WWII which saved untold allied lives. He was driven to suicide by the hateful manner he was treated for his sexual preference, including being jailed. I also would have known that we incarcerated thousands of Japanese Americans in concentration camls during the recent War for no greater sin than their heritage, a fate spared those of German and Italian descent. If I had cared, I would have been aware rather widespread poverty in many parts of America where people still lived without indoor plumbing and electricity, a reality that shocked Senator John F. Kennedy as he toured rural West Virginia seeking the Democratic nomination for the presidency.

But here’s the thing, and there is aways a thing, underlying all the bad news, and there was plenty of that, was an undercurrent of hope and optimism. Fascism, which recently had seemed unstoppable, had been smashed, at least in the places that counted. The other totolitarian form of governance remained a menace, but by the 1960s had attained the zenith of its reach, though would hang on for another generation before collapsing from its own internal contradictions. For three decades after the end of WWII, the American economy grew and, because of progressive policies remaining after the New Deal, was shared by all Americans. Every quintile of the economic pie had doubled its income in real terms, after inflation. Inequality had fallen to historically low terms so that, by 1979, the top 1 percent of Americans had less than 10 percent of the pie, an historically low figure. Beyond that, a host of ‘rights movements’ were confronted, and then rolled back to eliminate the legal impediments to full participation in society. And America stood alone as the most powerful country in the world.

None of this was accomplished easily or without trauma. The traditional elite never forgave FDR for leveling the playing field, for introducing regulations and limits on what had previously been a largely laissez faire approach to the economy. Slowly, and tentatively at first, they began a counterattack that would continue into contemporary times. Those who clung to a feudal notion of white nationalism were not about to give up their privileges easily, attacking and bombing and lynching those whom they saw as threats. And the left, enraged by what they saw as American overeach in its military adventures, struck out with their own form of nihilistic violence. By the 1960s, no one could put a pretty face on what was happening in America. I can yet recall sitting in my remote site in rural India in the late 1960s while thinking … the bloody country is falling apart.

And yet, despite all that, there was a sense of optimism amongst my generation, and even the generation before us. I can recall my father-in-law saying many times that things had gotten better for working men like him over his lifetime. I can recall the lives of my own parents improving demonstably as they could afford more creature comforts over time. There was a sense of movement and hope and progress despite all the pain and temporary anguish that inevitable accompanies dislocation and change.

My father was a damn smart man. Yet, schooling beyond high school was never an option. I never showed much promise as a youngster. In fact, I was lumped with the slow kids one year in grammar school. Still, going to college was always a given to me, even though my parents could not contribute much at all to financing my education. It was doable and, if you wanted it, you could go get it. Yet, we did not emerge from our self-directed path to success as adults with any sense that we were better than others, at least not the guys and gals with whom I associated. No, we focused on ways that we might reach back and bring others less fortunate along with us. We instinctivley realized that we were not special. There were many smart and talented kids just like us who faced additional barriers or were not as fortunate. There were many ‘diamonds in the rough’ who needed just a little push or perhaps a helping hand to get going.

As I mentioned elsewhere, cognitive biases can distort history, or at least how we see the past. Change happens slowly and reluctantly, hope can be illusory in the short run. The Grimke sisters, who were raised in the ante-bellum South in a slave holding culture rejected slavery passionately. As adults, they moved to the North to fight against what they considered an abomination. Abby Kelley, who grew up in Worcester and environs, my home town, joined the Grimke sisters in speaking and organizing to promote both the abolitionist cause and, simultaneously, the rights of women. When they started their campaigns in the 1830s, they were reviled for both their liberal views on race and their wilingness to challenge traditional gender roles.

It was not an easy path. It would take another four decades to end slavery and another century to smash apartheid in parts of America. It would take almost nine more decades to get women’s suffrage and some seven score decades before restrictions on women began to seriously fall. Yup, change doesn’t come easy, nor absent patience.

Yet, these early abolitionist females persisted despite the dangers and personal sacrifices. Why? Perhaps they were batshit crazy. OR, they had this core of optimism and hope that was not easily extinguished. Most of these pioneers continued, and there were scores of them, even when they realized their goals would not be achieved in their lifetimes, or when it became apaprent that success would only come at a horendous cost. The number of deaths attributable to our civil war cannot be known for sure but some plausible estimates put the total at over 700,000 from battle and disease.

As I think back to my early years, I was not some cock-eyed optimist by any stretch. As I’ve oft repeated, I was burdened with the Irish black cloud. Despite that innate disposition, I came around to this belief that things would get better. Our generation, my generation, was better than those that came before. We saw the possibility of a more inclusive and better world, one that would reach out to all irrespective of accidental attributes such as color or ethnicity or sexual preference. We even saw a world where some dimensions of the good life might be assured … like access to health care and education and adequate nutrition. This would not be accomplished at the expense of personal responsibility, not by a long shot. It was more like giving all in our national community a relatively equal chance at doing well in life. The unfairness of the birth lottery, where privileges are inequitably distributed and not earned, would be muted. That was the dream that drove us … the vsion of a more equal and fairer world.

Obviously, that did not happen. Many things are better, immeasurably so. But at least two things frighten us to our core. One reality is that the sense of inevitable progress is gone. Our dream of a bright future stalled, and then gradually faded. Let me touch briefly on this theme now (more in the future). The explicit counter revolution against the spirit of the New Deal can be traced back to the 1950s, William Buckley’s National Review and the Virginia School of Economics, a conservative think tank based on Jeffersonian principles and public choice theory launched by James Buchanan. Its tenets slowly picked up steam resulting in the Reagan evolution of 1980 after the two parties had sorted themselves out into distinct liberal and conservative camps. Yet, even then, Reagan could reach across the aisle to work with Democratic speaker ‘Tip’ Oneill. The culture war was simmering but had not ignited.

That era of sound and rational government came to a bitter end with the Gingrich Revolution of the early 1990s, a period to which I was close enough to witness. Now, Republicans were ordered to oppose the opposition at every point (there were some exceptions like NAFTA). Compromise was deleted from the political lexicon as a dirty word. More than that, Republicans now were expected to demonized the opposition in vicious and personal ways. They were given colorful words to use when referring to Democrats and anything the so-called radical socialists proposed. A good Republican friend of mine told me how the systems of Party fines and penalties for those collaborating with the other side worked. Those refusing to go along were labeled RINOs and driven from the party.

A whole new communication world emerged, starting with Rush Limbaugh in 1988. But it gained steam with the Drudge report in 1995, Fox News in 1996, and Newsmax in 1998. Talk radio exploded from 2 stations in 1960 to 1,130 in 1995, with 70 percent pushing a conservative viewpoint. With big bucks to be made, Limbaugh was followed by Beck, O’Reilly, Hannity, Carlson, Coulter and other stars of the hard right. Evangelicals like Ralph Reed and Pat Robertson had no trouble convincing gullible Christians that they and their beliefs and especially their culture were under attack.

Suddenly, rather than coalescing around a common vision and national narrative, we were being torn apart culturally with personal or ad-hominem attacks. Cooperation and bipartisanship across parties became virtually non existent, a harsh reality not seen since the equally volatile period just before our Civil War. The parties, which had seen much cooperation in my youth, had divided categorically into a hard conservative and a more liberalish camp.

This cultural divide, or chasm, is best represented by what are called ‘trifecta’ states where the three branches of governemt are held by the same party. There are 17 such Democratic and 22 such Republican states. These two camps are racing away from one another … one toward and inclusive society focusing on oppotunity for all and the other on a more feudal vision of society where the goodies go to the strongest and leadership is concentrated at the top. That’s overly simplified for now but represents a burgeoning reality.

The second reality confronting us is that our newer challenges seem particularly catastrophic. Okay, nuclear annihilation would have been catastrophic but that was within our control. We had to do something pro-active to incinerate ourselves. On the other hand, it is hard to imagine how a civil society can survive a climate catastrophe which will happen unless we do something to stop it. It also is easy to imagine the social stresses emerging from the AI revolution, or the nightmare scenario where humanity is threatened by its own technological wonders. And there are the conventional dangers like hyper-inequality. How can society reverse course when more and more of the goodies are accumulated into the hands of a very few. Is there a point where hyper-inequality increases exponentially according to some inherent dynamic laws. If so, the end of a civil society may be in reach.

And there is the rub. My peers see an evaporating hope. They see a governing system incapable of responding to the harsh realities before us. We are too divided by a cultural war that must appear frivolous to outsiders. Oddly enough, only war, the kind with bullets, has brought us together in the past. Might we come together again in the name of a positive vision … like combatting clmate change and saving the globe. Perhaps!

Unfortunately, our record does not suggest much optimism is warranted.