"The Taxman Cometh"

 Calvin Coolidge was a great, though unsung, President. He presided over a roaring economy in the decade following the Great War. He signed the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924. He wisely chose not to run again in 1928. And, unlike recent Presidents, he practiced fiscal restraint when it cam to both his and the public’s purse. Thus, he is the ideal person from whom to draw a quote for the epigraph that heads this essay.

 

Taxes are due two weeks from Monday, a date that arrives with assuredness and regularity, as Benjamin Franklin reminded us. 

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

More Essays from Essex

“The Taxman Cometh”

March 30, 2024

 

“The collection of any taxes which are not absolutely required, which do not beyond

reasonable doubt contribute to the public welfare, is only a species of legalized larceny.”

                                                                                                                                Calvin Coolidge (1872-1933)

                                                                                                                                Inaugural Address, March 4, 1925

 

Life, as a child, was simple. There were toys to play with, and a bed for sleeping. Like magic, food arrived on the table. There were woods and fields in which to run and play, and horses on which to gallop away. There were disadvantages of course, like having to go to school, be pleasant to visitors, and say howdy to strangers. And we weren’t supposed to swear or to tease younger siblings. Nevertheless, life was good, devoid of responsibilities, like worrying about taxes.

 

It was only as I got older and went to work that I realized that all things in life are not free. Like rent, clothes and food, schools, roads, police and the military cost money, so taxes must be paid. As a child I never worried about costs and certainly not the taxman. As I got older, he appeared in my imagination, looking like Bela Lugosi, dressed in black broadcloth, sprouting a goatee, hands extended.

 

At this time of year he makes his presence known. Intimidating envelopes, from the IRS, the State of Connecticut, and our accountant, appear in our mailbox. We have sung and we have danced; now the piper must be paid. The envelopes sit unopened for a few days, as I try let the senders know by telepathy that they are unwanted and have incurred my displeasure. Still, I know they must be answered, but my mind wanders: I dive into my cocooned memory. Oh! To be a child again where dreams of ice cream and swimming in the lake kept the future at bay. How nice to disappear down Alice’s rabbit hole and watch the White Queen dispatch the Red Queen. And read again of Dorothy throwing a bucket of water on the Wicked Witch of the West, whose face reminds me of my imagined taxman. Where is that bucket when I need it?

 

It is the complexity of the tax code – somewhere between seven and nine thousand pages – that is not only intimidating but unfathomable. Of course, accountants and tax lawyers thrive on its intricacies. It is, as Laura Saunders wrote recently in The Wall Street Journal, “…a mish-mash of competing policy interests that shift over time and often interact in unexpected ways.” According to Taxpayer Advocate Service, a typical individual spends thirteen hours preparing and filing their federal tax returns. The comparable number for a small business is eighty-two hours. The National Taxpayers Union suggests that the Code’s complexity consumes 6.5 billion hours and costs $260 billion each year. Money well spent?

 

But then reality sets in, and I emerge from my fantasizing. I realize my fate is to deal with things as they are, not as I would like them to be. With a scowl on my face, I put pen to check and pay my fair share, trusting that they have asked only for what was “absolutely required.” And then I smile; for all the troubles we have, living in the United States is worth the cost. I just wish they made it simpler.

"The Education of Henry Adams," Henry Adams

 

Reading an autobiography of a man largely forgotten today and who has been dead for over a hundred years may seem odd, but if you enjoy history, skillfully writing with a goodly share of bon mots you will enjoy this book. The copy I read was a paperback published in 1999, with an introduction by the historian Edmund Morris whose trilogy on Theodore Roosevelt garnered a Pulitzer.  

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

Burrowing into Books

The Education of Henry Adams, Henry Adams

March 29, 2024

 

“…why should anybody today want to read The Education of Henry Adams? One reason is obvious.

Adams is a bewitching writer. In terms of style, only the young Henry James could match him,

And even James the Master never attained Adams’ unique blend of elegance and erudition.”

                                                                                                                Edmund Morris

Introduction to the 1999 edition

The Education of Henry Adams

Originally published privately 1907

 

Henry Adams was fascinated with the way the Industrial Revolution had altered history. He was born in 1838, twenty years after the Savannah became the first steamship to cross the Atlantic, ten years after the first gas streetlights were installed in Boston, and eight years after the South Carolina Canal and Railroad Company operated the first passenger train. In 1839 the first photograph was taken, and Adams was six-years-old when Samuel Morse sent the message “What hath God wrought?” “…he had seen,” he wrote near the end of his autobiography, “the number of minds, engaged in pursuing force – the truest measure of its attraction – increase from a few score or hundreds in 1838, to many thousands in 1905…The railways alone approached the carnage of war; automobiles and fire-arms ravaged society, until an earthquake became almost a nervous relaxation.” What would he think of the internet and Artificial Intelligence?

 

The grandson and great grandson of U.S. presidents, he was born in Boston where he, following generations of Adamses and other ancestors, attended Harvard College, graduating in 1858: “Any other education would have required a serious effort, but no one took Harvard College seriously.” Two years later Lincoln was elected President, and the Civil War broke out. “Not one man wanted the Civil War, or expected or intended it. A small minority wanted secession. The vast majority wanted to go on with their occupations in peace.” Adams’ father Charles Francis Adams was appointed minister to the United Kingdom in 1861. Henry accompanied him as his secretary. The father’s main purpose was to ensure that the England (and France) did not recognize the Confederacy, despite their mills relying on southern U.S. cotton: “British society had begun with violent social prejudice against Lincoln, Seward, and all the Republican leaders except Sumner.”  For the next seven years London would be Adams’ home, where “…he was, like all Bostonians, instinctively English.”

 

While politics had been in the family’s blood for generations, Henry Adams distained politics, preferring the role of observer: historian, journalist, and, to a lesser extent, teacher: “Politics, as a practice, whatever its professions, had always been the systematic organization of hatred.” He saw himself as a seeker of truth. He writes of his ignorance of mathematics, “…but this never stood in his way.” As for economics: “By rights, he should also have been a Marxist, but some narrow trait of the New England nature seemed to blight socialism, and he tried in vain to make himself a convert.”

 

While his story is notable for missing twenty years – 1872-1892, years in which he was married – his is a fascinating history of the second half of the 19^th Century by a brilliant, observant man who was equally at home in London, Rome, and Paris, as he was in Quincy, Boston, and Washington. He knew political leaders in Washington and London, and he had met many of the era’s scientists, authors, and artists, like Darwin, Dickens, John LaFarge, and Whistler. His writing of them and of the unfolding industrial revolution, as the historian Edmund Morris wrote in the epigraph, is lively and witty. You won’t be disappointed.   

 

"War - Israel versus Hamas"

                                                                     Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“War – Israel versus Hamas”

March 25, 2024

 

“But Oct. 7 denial is spreading. A small but growing group denies the basic facts of the attack,

pushing a spectrum of falsehoods and misleading narratives that minimize the violence or dispute its origins.”

                                                                                                                                Elizabeth Dwoskin

                                                                                                                                The Washington Post, January 21, 2024

 

War is messy. It is cruel. It cannot be refined. It cannot be sanitized. Wars were once fought on battle fields. No longer. Civil War historian James McPherson has estimated that about 50,000 civilians died during that conflict, still less than 10% of all military deaths. That changed in the 20^th Century. About half of all deaths in World War I were civilians. In World War II, twice as many civilians died as military personnel. Innocent people get hurt in modern wars, as residents of London, Dresden, Hiroshima, and Naples learned during World War II, and as residents of My Lai and Hué learned during the Vietnam War. And as people today in the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, in Gaza City, Jabalia, and Rafah understand, and in the border villages of Israel’s north where residents have evacuated due to threats from Iran’s other proxy, Hezbollah.  

 

When the fight is between good and evil, a “proportional” response, as attractive as the concept sounds, is not an alternative. “The moral thing to do,” the columnist Moshe Phillips wrote recently in Israel National News, “is to destroy evil when it poses a ‘clear and present danger’ or likely will again.” Hamas presents to Israel such a threat. In September 1864, on the cusp of taking Atlanta, General William Tecumseh Sherman sent a telegram to President Lincoln: “War is the remedy our enemies have chosen. Other simple remedies were within their choice. You know it and they know it, but they wanted war, and I say let us give them all they want; not a word of argument, not a sign of let up, no cave in until we are whipped or they are.” When Hamas attacked the Kibbutz Nir Oz, during the Tribe of Nova music festival, on October 7, raping women, slaughtering babies and children, mutilating those they had killed and kidnapping those they had not, war was the choice they made. Now, the only way to end the war is for Israel to totally destroy Hamas.  

 

The battle in Gaza, like the American Civil War and World War II, is a fight between forces of good and evil. (In one sense, this is a civil war, as both Israelis and Palestinians descend from Abraham.) This is not to suggest that all Israelis are paragons of virtue and that all Palestinians are devils incarnate. But Israel, according to the Economist Groups Democracy Index, is the only democracy in the Middle East, while Hamas is designated a terrorist organization by the United States, the European Union, and Britain. The people of Gaza bear some responsibility, as Hamas was elected in 2006 with 75% of the vote. Citizens of Gaza know that terrorists hide and store arms in tunnels beneath schools and hospitals. On September 11, 2001 there was dancing in the streets of Gaza. Ismail Haniyeh, former Gaza Prime Minister and Chairman of the Hamas Political Bureau (and who now lives in Qatar), explained in 2020 why Hamas rejects ceasefire agreements: “We cannot, in exchange for money or projects, give up Palestine and our weapons. We will not give up the resistance. We will not recognize Israel. Palestine must stretch from the [Jordan] River to the [Mediterranean] Sea.” Commenting on the loss of civilian deaths in Gaza on October 26, 2023, Mr. Haniyeh said: The blood of the women, children and elderly […] we are the ones who need this blood, so it awakens within us the revolutionary spirit.”

 

Anti-Israeli demonstrations and pro-Palestinian marches are pressuring the Biden Administration to introduce more daylight between Israel and the United States. As Saturday’s Wall Street Journal editorialized: last week’s final draft to the United Nations’ Security Council called for an immediate and sustained cease fire, “to protect civilians and facilitate more aid, but not necessarily to free Israeli hostages. That direct linkage was dropped from a prior draft.”  Civilian deaths in Gaza – an Orwellian number provided by Hamas that the press accepts without reservation – are being used to call for a ceasefire or truce. But history offers lessons. In 1918, an armistice ended World War I. After two decades, which included hyper-inflation and a world-wide depression, a second – and more deadly – war broke out, a World War that cost 80 million lives. In contrast to the First World War, World War II ended with the Allies demanding – and getting – unconditional surrender. The consequence: almost eighty years of economic prosperity, with the Allies main antagonists, Germany and Japan, in the forefront of that growth. Wars must be won decisively, or they will reignite, as the world learned in 1938, and as Israel knows full well. 

 

Ironically, the massacre in Israel led to an increase in antisemitism in the U.S. The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) reported that in the two months following the October 7 attack 2,031 incidents of antisemitism were reported in the U.S., versus 465 in the corresponding period a year earlier. Pro-Palestinian rallies showcased a surge in antisemitism. On December 5, 2023, the presidents of Harvard, M.I.T., and the University of Pennsylvania testified before Congress that calling for the genocide of the Jewish people – as pro-Hamas college demonstrators were then doing – would not necessarily violate their schools’ codes of conduct. At the same time, Palestinian propagandizing – the war they are winning – has influenced a gullible media and infested politicians from both Parties, reminding one of George Orwell’s 1984: “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears.” It was refreshing, therefore, to read Elizabeth Dwoskin’s piece in The Washington Post, from which I borrowed the epigraph that heads this essay.   

 

War is never pretty, and the best way to prevent one is to maintain a strong defense, something we and Europe have neglected since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Wars erupt because evil exists. It stems from ideological differences and disputes over land. Evil resides within some cultures, religions, and individuals, which many in the West find difficult to accept. Accusations of evil, therefore, make evil seem banal and thus less immediate and less harmful. Israel, in contrast, having existed under such threats for three-quarters of a century, understands the prevalence of evil, and, as her enemies know, are ready for it...except when restrained by her allies. 

 

Because of its unique position as a democracy in an otherwise autocratic Middle East, and because its people pray to a different God, Israel is singled out for destruction. She is a nation of 9.4 million, bordered by four countries with combined populations of 147 million, plus 5 million Palestinians, many of whom see her as an interloper, and some of whom vow to destroy her. She must rely on her allies, especially the United States. As a democracy, her leaders change with elections and so are not always the ones her friends and allies prefer. But it is the Country and the concept of liberty, not a political party or leader, we defend. The United States, as freedom’s and democracy’s most fervent advocate, must not equivocate in its defense of justice, democracy, and individual freedom. Israel must totally destroy Hamas and bring its leaders to justice, and the West must support her. As long as those terrorists exist and govern Gaza, there can be no talk of a two-state solution.

"The Age of the Scammer"

 Spring arrived last evening on the eastern seaboard around 11:30pm, but whoever is in charge forgot to tell the one who controls the thermostat. It was thirty-six degrees this morning, and turtles and peepers are squawking. And, for the next two days, forecasts for the weather are for the low 20s. Nevertheless, spring is on its way, and scammers are in full bloom. 

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

More Essays from Essex

“The Age of the Scammer”

March 20, 2024

 

“Internet scamming is the safest crime in the world.”

                                                                                                                                Answer on Quora, July 22, 2023

 

AARP estimates that Americans lost $8.8 billion in 2022 to scammers versus $3.5 billion in 2020, a revenue increase that must be the envy of most New York Stock Exchange-listed companies. But perhaps we should consider ourselves fortunate (and maybe U.S.-based scammers less so). The Delhi-based and English language daily Hindustan Times estimated that, world-wide, people lost about $1.02 trillion between August 2022 and August 2023. Scammers mostly target older and younger consumers – both vulnerable because of a sense of loneliness or isolation. As octogenarians, my wife and I, while often acting like the latter, fit the profile of the former. Most calls on our house phone do not come from those wishing us well.

 

Despite recent notoriety – reflecting aging populations, media interest, new technologies, and a surfeit of scammers – the profession of fraudster vies with prostitution for the title: “world’s oldest profession.” In the Book of Proverbs it is written: “Bread gained by deceit is sweet to a man, but afterwards his mouth will be filled with gravel.” If only…! Among more famous con artists and swindlers were Charles Ponzi (1882-1949) who brought down six banks and cost investors $20 million between January and November of 1920; Ivar Kreuger (1880-1932), the “Swedish match king” who committed suicide in 1932, forged securities worth about $700 million (and among whose victims was my maternal grandfather); and Bernie Madoff (1938-2021) who cost investors approximately $17 billion when he was finally defrocked in 2008. While the individual stealing my credit card is a small fish, he is a member of the same guild.

 

Most scams come via phone or e-mail. The perpetrators are aided by technology: In Connecticut, there are four area codes for 3.6 million people and 1.4 million households. However, there are over nine million combinations of a seven-digit number, meaning that those four area codes could produce over thirty-six million different phone numbers. While most of us, at least those of us with caller-ID, will not answer the phone unless we recognize the name or the number, phone scammers have the capability of calling you from your area code, using made-up names. If you answer the phone you may find that the voice does not fit the name. In a recent op-ed on scammers in The Wall Street Journal, Joseph Epstein wrote that he takes amusement in their false names, writing that his favorite is ‘Shawn Parker’ delivered in a heavy South Asian accent. More alarming is that Artificial Intelligence (AI) will soon allow scammers to produce individual avatars that provide the image and voice of a child, grandchild, or friend. 

 

E-mail scams are often not subtle. A message will be received from a friend or relative’s hacked account asking for money, because he or she has become ill, involved in an accident, or is in jail. While I am tempted to answer humorously, the best thing to do is delete the e-mail and notify your relative or friend.

 

Scams appear on internet accounts. One is asked to click on a link, as I once did, forcing me to change my credit card number. The worst are those intent on stealing your identity, generally by getting hold of your Social Security card number. Be skeptical. If you have a question or are in doubt shut down your computer, and call the Social Security office, bank, credit card company, or merchant. Caveat Emptor does not apply just to the real estate industry. It is a motto we should all obey, especially in this age of the scammer.

"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 19^th 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.

"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 19^th 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.”

"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.

 

 

 

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[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.

"A Tree Grows in Brooklyn," by Betty Smith

 It is easy to grow despondent when thinking of the large number of great books I will never read. In a typical year, I read about 30 books, which is less than many of my friends read. But I am not a speed reader and often make notes of passages that I like. Of course, reading books is in addition to newspapers, magazine articles, and reports. But when I think of the number of books out there and of the fact that perhaps 200,000 books get published each year just in the U.S. it is easy to become discouraged – so many books and so little time.

 

Nevertheless, this novel is special. The poverty Betty Smith wrote of was beyond my comprehension, but there was, apparently, little complaining. And it was fascinating to realize this book, written by a woman of a time thirty years earlier, was one of the most popular stories read by American soldiers during the Second World War, one of whom was my father. Many American soldiers, I am sure, could identify with tenements like those in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, and as she was writing of a time that, to them, was not that distant.

 

Perhaps this short essay (under 600 words) will entice you. 

 

Sydney

 

Sydney M. Williams

30 Bokum Road – Apartment 314

Essex, CT 06426

 

Burrowing into Books

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Betty Smith

March 2, 2024

 

“Look at that tree growing up there out of that grating. It gets no sun, and

water only when it rains. It’s growing out of sour earth. And it’s strong because

its hard struggle to live is making it strong. My children will be strong that way.”

                                                                                                A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1943)

                                                                                                Betty Smith (1896-1972)

 

It was the Ailanthus tree, known as the tree of heaven in its native China and which became invasive in North America, that Ms. Smith used as a symbol of hope and perseverance for her heroine Francie Nolan in this coming-of-age story, in the poverty-stricken Williamsburg section of Brooklyn during the first two decades of the Twentieth Century: “No matter where its seed fell, it made a tree that struggled to reach the sky…it was the only tree that grew out of cement. It grew lushly, but only in the tenements districts.” 

 

While the story is fictional, Ms. Smith used her own life as inspiration. On August 22, 1943 Meyer Berger wrote of the book in The New York Times: “…a stringing together of memory beads...” In an interview for the magazine This Week, Ms. Smith was quoted: “To live, to struggle, to be in love with life…is fulfillment.”

 

While the story takes place thirty years earlier, the book was published in 1943, as World War II devastated the planet. The book became immensely popular. Shortly after publication, it was released in a paperback Armed Services Edition[1]. Within two years it had sold nearly three million copies. 

 

It is Francie Nolan’s story of growing up, with her brother Neely, in (unimaginable to us) urban poverty. Williamsburg at the time was home to first-and-second generation immigrants from Ireland, Germany, and Italy. As well, there were streets primarily inhabited by Jewish immigrants and African-Americans. Assimilation was just beginning, as Francie’s mother was German and her father Irish.

 

Despite the poverty that enshrouds their lives in Brooklyn, Katie’s mother Mary Rommely speaks of their reason for emigrating: “In the old country, a man is given to the past. Here he belongs to the future. In this land he may be what he will…” She tells her daughter there are two great books, Shakespeare and the Bible. So Francie and Neely grow up, having a page from each read to them every evening.

 

Francie’s father was loving, but an alcoholic who died young. Her mother was the breadwinner, cleaning apartments. Francie was bright, a good student. At age ten, confused between truth and fancy, she recalls the best advice she ever got from a teacher: “Write the story. Tell the truth. Then you won’t get mixed up.” And she realized the answer to poverty: “Education would pull them out of the grime and dirt.”

 

The story ends with another tree, a cherished Christmas tree that had sickened, burnt and died, but from which seedlings grew: “It lived!” Francine reminisces.  “And nothing could destroy it.” 

 

 

 

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[1] In a letter to my mother on September 23, 1944, my father wrote of reading the book when at Camp Swift in Bastrop County, Texas: “I’ve almost finished it. I think it’s really good. I get quite wrapped up in it.” So did I.