Sunday, March 17, 2024

"A Few Short, Random Thoughts"


 

Sydney M. Williams

swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

March 17, 2024

“A Few Short, Random Thoughts”

 

“Listen to your hunches, pay attention to your intuition, do not dismiss your random

thoughts, inspirations or ideas…They could be giving you the best advice you ever had.”

                                                                                                                Neale Donald Walsch (1943-)

                                                                                                                Conversations with God, Book 3, 1998

 

American values, which have been denigrated, evolved over two hundred years. It has become common to debase history and belittle capitalism, Certainly, one can find faults in both. One thing that is often forgotten is how rare have been revolutions that produced positive change. The French Revolution of 1789 eliminated a king and produced an Emperor. The Haiti slave rebellion of 1791 got rid of the French and eliminated slavery, but the nation has never had an honest and fair government. The Russian Revolution of 1917 exchanged autocratic Tsars for totalitarian Communists. Other examples: China in 1949, Cuba in 1959, and Iran in 1979. But the American revolution produced a government that evolved into the world’s fairest representative democracy. Capitalism, which creates winners and losers, is antithetical to today’s devotees of DEI, with its focus on equal outcomes. Yet, it is capitalism that encourages competition and offers choices to consumers. Free market capitalism has done more to lift people out of poverty than any other economic system. It provides people opportunities, to strive to do their best in whatever field they choose. 

 

A few other thoughts: 

 

  • Democracy – a form of government close to the center of a spectrum that stretches from anarchy to autocracy. It is not perfect, as Churchill said in a speech before the House of Commons on November 11, 1947: “…the worse form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.” Our democracy is, as Abraham Lincoln said at Gettysburg on November 19, 1863, a “government of the people, by the people, for the people.” It is rare. Despite its visible success, according to ourworldindata.org, twice as many people live in “closed autocracies” as live in “liberal democracies.” Yet, we cannot forget that while our government is beneficent, dependency on government, unless it is absolutely necessary, leads to a loss of freedom. 

 

  • Capitalism/Climate/Environment – It was free-market capitalism that produced the Industrial Revolution, a revolution that defoliated forests, polluted rivers, and eroded the landscape. But it also raised living standards, gave people access to healthier diets, better housing and medicines, and cheaper goods. It did increase wealth for merchants and bankers, but while we complain today about income and wealth disparities, those differences are less than they were at the end of the 19th Century and substantially below what they were when the world was composed of a few kings and aristocrats and millions of serfs and slaves – and those wealth disparities are far less in capitalist societies than in totalitarian regimes like China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. And it was capitalism that gave us the means to clean up the environment – our forests, rivers, and landscapes.

 

As for climate, there is little doubt that man affects its change. But the planet’s climate has been changing long before man arrived on the scene. During the Mesozoic Era, when dinosaurs roamed the earth 100 million years ago, the planet’s average temperature is estimated to have been forty-five degrees warmer than it is today. A few million years later, during the Pleistocene Era with its Ice Age, the earth’s temperature averaged fifty-three degrees colder than today. About ten thousand years ago, the climate became warm enough to begin to melt the Ice Age’s glaciers. 

 

When one cleanses the environment, one positively affects climate. Confronting climate change and improving the environment began to be addressed long before the advent of the EPA and John Kerry. As Bjorn Lomborg wrote recently in The Wall Street Journal: “The data show that climate-related deaths from droughts, storms, floods, and fires have declined by more than 97% over the past century.” We need to calculate costs – both societal and economic of climate-change measures – against expected benefits. While there is more we can do, we have come a long way. But governments should not use climate as an excuse to pick winners and losers. Adam Smith’s “invisible hand is fairer and better suited. In the meantime, governments, agencies, and the media should drop the hysteria.

 

  • Immigration – Common sense tells us that when a country’s birth rates fall below replacement and economic growth is still the goal it must raise birth rates or increase migration. When people are admitted legally, authorities know who has entered. When migrants enter illegally, they arrive unknown. In my opinion, we should increase the number of legal immigrants, simplify immigration laws, allow for more seasonal workers, and, at the same time, tighten the border against illegal and unwanted migration. The country needs new workers and consumers. 

 

  • Education – Thomas Jefferson believed that only educated citizens would allow the American experiment in self-government to succeed. We all know that women and blacks, despite education, were denied the right to vote in 1789. Nevertheless, his ideas were radical for the time. His founding of the University of Virginia in 1819 partially achieved his goal. Youth today should have an understanding and appreciation of what the founders accomplished: limited government of the people, consisting of three separate but equal branches – legislative, executive, and judicial, based on the rule of law. They should read the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. They should be taught how rights have evolved, and they should know history, to understand how the nation’s values have also evolved over time. Youth needs a clear understanding of geography, math/economics, philosophy, science, and religion; they should develop a sense of decorum and personal responsibility, and they need to be able to articulately express themselves.

 

These short takes are not definitive or all-inclusive. I have neither the time nor the ability to make them so, and you do not have the time (or desire) to read what may be obvious and repetitive. But I worry that we have lost a sense of what it means to be an American, that our differences rather than our commonalities define who we are. To live in this country, with all its faults, is to live among the world’s most fortunate people. We must not be arrogant about our luck. We need to recognize that there may come a time, as it did for past generations, when it will be necessary to defend what we have. We should never forget the blessings of individual freedom, and the benefits of living in a free and democratic republic, amid free-market capitalism – all of which we inherited and which it is our duty to pass on to those who follow.


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Monday, March 11, 2024

"Are Things as Bad as They Seem?"

 


Sydney M. Williams

 

Thought of the Day

“Are Things as Bad as They Seem?”

March 11, 2024

 

“Just when you thought that things couldn’t get any worse, you find out that they’ve

always been a lot worse than you thought they were. And then they get worse.”

                                                                                                                                Philip Kerr (1956-2018)

                                                                                                                                The Pale Criminal, 1990

 

Debt, including unfunded liabilities, threatens to bankrupt us. The southern border has become a porous venue for a record number of illegals and the drugs many bring into this country. An epidemic of crime has transformed our cities. Democrats have weaponized the criminal justice department to go after political opponents. Republicans, in a rush to isolationism, have abandoned global responsibilities – underestimating threats to democratic institutions posed by Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, Kim Jong Un, and Iran’s Mullahs. Color-blind meritocracy and biological sex have given way to harmful fantasies, with preferential treatment for some groups and favored pronouns for others. A desire for clean energy is countered by demand for clean-technology factories and electricity-hungry data centers, “leaving,” as Evan Halper wrote last week in The Washington Post, “utilities and regulators grasping for credible plans to expand the nation’s creaking power grid.” Biden’s mandate that two thirds of all new cars be electric by 2032 will increase the demand for electricity. One asks: is the country witnessing the death of common sense and entering a death spiral? 

 

I suspect everyone, no matter their political preferences, agrees that we live in contentious times – politically, technologically, and culturally. Of the two Presidential candidates, one is visibly senescent and the other is “the crudest trash-talker in politics,” as Barton Swaim wrote in a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed. AI threatens to disrupt our lives in unknown ways. DEI, CRT, gender neutral bathrooms and gendered-altered athletes have turned high schools and universities into places alien to parents and alumni.

 

Perhaps we should step back. “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes” is an aphorism usually attributed to Mark Twain. It suggests that while each era is different, there are recurring themes. And as George Santayana observed, we are disadvantaged regarding the present and the future when we ignore the past. And, while our current situation is unique, the United States has survived bigger schisms – the biggest being the Civil War when eleven southern states seceded from the Union to form the Confederate States of America. That Lincoln was able to prevent England and France from recognizing the Confederacy and keep the Union intact, while abolishing slavery, is something for which every American should be grateful. 

 

While the Civil War created chaos, the two-and-a-half decades leading up to it were unsettled, and not just because of slavery. In the twenty-four years before Abraham Lincoln was elected in a four-way race in 1860, eight men served as President. The three decades leading to the Civil War saw the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution, an event that raised living standards, but that also created winners and losers: Railroads and steamships disrupted traditional means of travel, and the telegraph radicalized the way people communicated. The McCormack reaper increased the value of large Pennsylvania and Ohio farms, while lowering the value of smaller New England farms. The Singer sewing machine revolutionized the clothing industry. All were examples of Joseph Schumpeter’s “creative disruption.” More than a third of the nation’s population increase over the thirty years prior to the Civil War was due to immigrants, mostly from Ireland and Germany. Growth spurts are usually accompanied by hiccups. 

 

Turbulent times continued: Lincoln was assassinated in 1865, and over the next thirty-six years two more Presidents would be assassinated – James Garfield in 1861 and William McKinley in 1901. Native Americans continued to be attacked, captured, and placed on reservations. Black Americans continued to experience bigotry and segregation, and the late 19th Century saw the birth of the Ku Klux Klan. The Industrial Revolution continued, with electricity, autos, and telephones being introduced, creating dislocations for carriage makers and purveyors of gas lamps, but positively affecting living standards.

 

Once again, we live in politically rancorous times, with cultural appropriation in schools, universities, and businesses and disruptive technologies like social media and artificial intelligence. Democrats have what they want in Donald Trump as the presumptive Republican nominee, and Republicans have what they want with Democrats sticking with Joe Biden. Both parties are more interested in attacking their opponent than in promoting their candidate. Neither candidate shows any interest in reconciliation. Trump, in a statement that showed how unhinged he is from reality, claimed to have no need of Nikki Haley’s supporters, Independents, or disgruntled Democrats. In his State of the Union, Biden made no effort to appease Republicans unhappy with Trump. Instead, the speech was, as Ben Domenech wrote in The Spectator, “unhinged…spewing invective at half the country.” – the campaign speech of an angry old man, which served as a preview of the road to November.

 

Unless, unless something changes. Last Friday, No Labels held a virtual 800-delegate meeting, and the members voted, “near unanimously” as NBC put it, to move forward with the process of forming a presidential ticket to run in the 2024 election against Joe Biden and Donald Trump. An official ticket was not put forward, but one is expected. Regardless, given the ages of Biden and Trump and should Robert Kennedy, Jr. and Harvard professor and civil rights activist Cornel West persist in their presidential bids, conventions this summer may be wide-open affairs. 

 

And yet, are things as bad as they seem? No one can see into the future. Classicists remind us that empires end, and so might the United States, a nation that has stood as a defender of freedom for the world’s democracies, and a country that provides hope for the world’s oppressed. But is now that moment? I recall the late 1960s and ‘70s when society was frayed and politics were in disarray, yet we survived. It is possible that the last stanza of Edgar Guest’s (1881-1959) poem published in the March 4, 1921 issue of the Detroit Free Press will prove prescient for today’s over-whelmed American voter:

 

“And you never can tell how close you are,

It may be near when it seems so far,

So stick to the fight when you’re hardest hit – 

It’s when things seem worst that you must not quit.”

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Monday, March 4, 2024

"Demographics is Destiny?"

 As a fan of Anthony Trollope, I got a smile yesterday in reading a review of The History of England’s Cathedrals in The Wall Street Journal by Benjamin Riley. The book’s author, Nicholas Orme, quotes the diarist Henry Channon who, with a few friends, sat down with Francis Underhill, bishop of Bath and Wells, in the early 1940s. Underhill, a devotee of Victorian literature, quipped: “There is nothing I like better than to lie in my bed with my favorite Trollope.”

 

With an abundance of negative news I thought re-telling the story might, too, produce a smile.

 

As for this essay, the subject is one widely discussed in think-tanks, books, academia, and the media, but it is an issue that politicians, in a commendable bi-partisan coming-together, have chosen to ignore, as addressing its consequences might affect their re-election chances.

 

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

Demographics is Destiny?

March 4, 2024

 

“If global population stops expanding and then contracts, capitalism – a system implicitly predicated

on ever burgeoning numbers of people – will likely not be able to survive in its current form.” 

                                                                                Zachary Karabell (1967-)

                                                                                Founder, Progress Network at New America

                                                                                Reviewing The Human Tide (Paul Morland) in Foreign Affairs

                                                                                September/October 2019

 

Apart from Israel, which has a TFR (Total Fertility Rate) of 2.9, no Western nation (including Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan) has a birthrate above replacement rate, which implies – barring immigration – a West that faces aging and, ultimately, declining populations. (It is only fair to point out that China, Russia, and North Korea also have declining birthrates.) 

 

As Mr. Karabell wrote in the review quoted above: “Governments worldwide have evolved to meet the challenge of managing more people, not fewer and older.” Yet the opposite is in the offing. The effect on living standards could be startling. Economic growth depends on many factors: free markets, rule of law, global and fair trade, the right to property ownership, innovation, entrepreneurship, secure borders, but also on an expanding working-age populations.

 

Or, at least, a growing population has always been a key driver for economic growth. However, in a 2019 review of Paul Morland’s The Human Tide, Jason Willick wrote: “New technology such as cloning, space travel and artificial intelligence could mean the current demographic slowdown is not an endpoint but an interregnum before another era of radical political change sweeps all before it.” That is possible, and it is also possible that artificial intelligence will forego the need for additional white-collar jobs. But there is no way to avoid an aging population, along with ever-higher costs of healthcare for the elderly. Robots and computers do not pay taxes; people do.

 

The United States is better situated than most Western nations, as it attracts migrants to offset declining birthrates, though our population continues to age. Europe, as well, attracts migrants from the Middle East and North Africa, but at a lesser rate, and with less assimilation. While birthrates have declined in developing countries, many are still positive. Nigeria, for example, with a population of 226 million and a TFR of 5.3, is projected to have a population of 550 million by 2100. According to projections both Pakistan and Nigeria will surpass the United States in terms of population by 2100. China’s population will shrink to about one half that of India, the only country predicted to have a population over one billion in 2100. 

 

The study of demographics – the statistical study of human populations, how they change through fertility, deaths and migration – has been around for a long time. The economist and Anglican cleric Thomas Malthus is famous for the prediction in his 1798 book, An Essay on the Principle of Population – that an increase in the world’s food production would lead to more births and declining living standards. What he failed to anticipate was the Industrial Revolution. While the world’s population grew eight-fold over the past two hundred years, the percentage of people living in extreme poverty shrunk from roughly 90% to about 10%.

 

The problem facing much of the planet is the opposite of the one that concerned Malthus. Population declines, at this stage, have been masked by increasing life expectancy and, in some countries, by immigration. Nevertheless, over the past three years Japan’s population has declined by 1.4 million, China’s by 700 thousand, Russia’s by 600 thousand, and Italy’s by 400 thousand. Germany has shown a small decline, while France and the UK have had modest increases, largely due to immigration. A United Nations’ study in 2022 predicted that by 2050 population declines of greater than 15% will be experienced by two Baltic nations, Lithuania and Latvia and seven eastern European countries – Bulgaria, Ukraine, Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Moldova, Hungary, and Croatia. Portugal and Italy are expected to have population declines of more than ten percent. Declining birth rates are affecting the United States as well. Here, in 2013, with a population of 316 million, there were 3.9 million births. In 2023, with a population of 334 million, there were 3.7 million births. While the number of births exceeded the estimated 3.3 million deaths in 2023, the ratio is shrinking.

 

In the recent issue of The Spectator, Paul Wood wrote of the situation in Italy, in an essay titled “Empty World.” In it he noted that Italy’s TFR is 1.24. Deaths, he pointed out, have out-numbered births “for more than thirty years.” His analysis suggests that one cause has been an increase in childless couples, that if “a couple does start a family, it is likely to be as big as in decades past.”  But couples who delay the start of a family often wait too long.  London’s left-wing The Guardian suggested that right-wing policies might be, in part, to blame, as families have had to assume some of the costs of the care for their elderly, as the State has become financially strapped. Wood quoted Giulio Meotti, a columnist for Il Foglio: “We are in serious trouble…waiting for the inevitable. It’s a slow suicide.” 

 

The immediate problem for the United States is the one of aging – the increase of those in retirement years and their increased health-related expenses, and the decrease of those of working age.  In 1960, life expectancy (70) was almost ten years less than it is today (79), while the number of working-age people per retiree (6) was twice as many as today (3). For decades politicians have successfully avoided the unpleasant task of reforming Social Security and Medicare. They won’t be able to do so much longer. According to the Social Security and Medicare Board of Trustees’ 2023 annual reports, Medicare and Social Security unfunded long-term liabilities now exceed $78 trillion, over $600,000 for every U.S. household. 

 

The question of demographics raises issues. Why does marriage seem a rite easy to postpone and why are couples having fewer children? Will retirement ages be raised? Will life expectancy continue to increase? What are the economic and social consequences of fewer children, a shrinking workforce,[1]and an increase in retirees? On the other hand, is it possible that today’s demographic Cassandra’s fail to foresee political, social, or technological changes that could alter what otherwise looks to be a bleak and costly future?

 

Is our destiny predicated on trends in demography? Certainly, at least partially. But our future well-being also depends on a vibrant democracy, sensible and legal immigration, individual innovation, education, and culture. The most harmful consequences of birthrates below replacement may not be felt for several years, but it is an issue that should be debated and addressed now.

 

 

 



[1] In fact, and as noted by University of Amsterdam sociology professor Hein de Haas in last weekend’s edition of The Wall Street Journal, a need for lower-cost labor in industries such as hospitality, healthcare, restaurants, cleaning, and agriculture is a major reason for the migration surge at our borders.

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