I’ve got to admit that I’m confused by Fareed Zakaria’s most recent Washington Post column. I don’t like President Trump’s foreign policy any more than he does but I don’t think the key asset that prevented the use of nuclear weapons or nuclear proliferation was trust. The slug is “For decades, global trust in Washington kept nuclear weapons in check. Now that restraint is fading.” Here’s the meat of the column:

After World War II, the United States pulled off something close to a geopolitical miracle. Japan and Germany became the second- and third-most-powerful economies on earth, yet neither sought nuclear weapons or the ability to defend itself alone. They aligned their security policy with Washington and entrusted their ultimate defense to American soldiers and American nuclear weapons.

Think how strange that arrangement was. Great powers throughout history have acquired armies to counter the top dog. Yet America’s allies agreed to depend on it for their survival. They did so not because America was invariably wise or generous but because the entire international system thus created benefited the U.S., too. American power was formidable but trust in America was priceless.

Nowhere in the column does he mention global strategic superiority, unsurpassed industrial capabilities, or mutually-assured destruction. IMO what stayed the Soviets’ hand from using nuclear weapons was their belief that the United States would retaliate overwhelmingly with nuclear weapons. Those were the same forces that prevented other countries from developing their own nuclear weapons.

The perfect counter-example is North Korea. North Korea did not develop nuclear weapons because they did not trust us. They developed nuclear weapons because the Chinese allowed them to and the Chinese had a nuclear deterrent of their own.

To me the more important question is why did the Chinese allow the North Koreans to develop nuclear weapons? Certainly they didn’t trust the North Koreans. My best guess is that the Chinese trust the North Koreans more than they do us and believe their own nuclear weapons deter the U. S. sufficiently. China did not have to trust North Korea with nuclear weapons. It merely had to be unwilling to accept the consequences of preventing North Korea from acquiring them.

I wanted to call your attention to the post at the Uncharted Territories Substack analyzing the riots presently going on in France. Here’s a snippet:

How did we get there? Initially, students were complaining about their terrible conditions: There’s not enough money for schools and teachers. They said it’s because there’s too much austerity. Is it?
Others say it’s the immigrants—especially Muslims—who wreck everything.
Or the opportunities of non-Whites.
Others say it’s the islamo-leftist alliance.
Or the police, because they’re too violent.
Or the justice system, which doesn’t imprison agitators enough.

I didn’t know, but I wanted to find out, especially as a veteran of French education (I did all my primary and secondary schooling in the French system and got one of my undergrad degrees from a Parisian university). So I did. The following is a detailed account of what has happened, and why I think it happened, based on plenty of videos and data.

In the author’s characteristic manner he goes on to review the matter in a dispassionate, highly factual, supported manner. The TL;DR version is

What did not cause the riots

• Not enough spending on education
• Too many immigrants

What did cause the riots

• The French are spending too much on pensions
• The French are not screening their immigrants properly
• The French are not enforcing their own laws sufficiently

I have my own views but I’ll keep my opinions to myself. The United States has problems of its own and, honestly, I’d rather have our problems than France’s.

Former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s recent Wall Street Journal op-ed saddens me a bit, as most of his op-eds do. In the op-ed he urges Democrats to use their putative new Congressional majority to become more moderate:

There is little question that President Trump and the GOP will lose this election. With Mr. Trump’s approval rating hitting a historic low for an incumbent president before the midterms, Republicans will cede control of the House and likely the Senate. What is still far from clear is whether Democrats will win. That question won’t be answered on Nov. 3 but over the next two years.

The top story from the 2026 cycle will be the electoral opening Democrats seized—and will have to maintain. Most important, the McCain-Romney Republicans, who are politically homeless, need to be welcomed into Democrats’ governing and electoral coalition. More than 25% of self-described “non-MAGA Republicans” would prefer Democratic control of the next Congress. That is crucial because as in 1991 and 2007—the years before Bill Clinton and Barack Obama won the White House—how Democrats govern in 2027 will determine what happens in 2028 and beyond.

and

Millions of McCain-Romney voters are redefining their political identities, and they will be most responsible for Democratic gains in November. These voters don’t want to be associated with MAGA, and they see themselves as free agents. The question for Democrats is whether we’re willing to give them a permanent home.

Here’s his advice:

First, ban stock trading for elected and appointed officials in all three branches. Second, prohibit their participation in prediction markets. Third, require government officials who have a net worth of more than $1 million to put their assets in a blind trust while serving. Finally, to prevent the foreign interference the Founding Fathers worried about, ban all foreign gifts and investments to public officials while serving and for two years after they leave office. This would have precluded a firm linked to the United Arab Emirates from investing $500 million in the Trump family’s crypto enterprise.

Democrats should also address the cost of living. We should immediately raise the federal minimum wage, the first hike in nearly two decades. Next, we should reduce the tariffs that have proved so counterproductive. By making government deliver again, we’ll come out ahead politically and, more important, substantively.

The reason it saddens me is that I fear Mr. Emanuel is engaging in nostalgia. I think he’s nostalgic for the midterm victory of which he was the principal architect in 2006. His success in 2006 depended on recruiting candidates whose views sometimes differed substantially from those of the Democratic Party’s leadership and activist base. Would today’s Democratic Party tolerate such candidates?

I can agree with his proposals with some quibbles (for example, a $12/hour minimum wage is different than a $25/hour wage and the candidate likely to be our next senator is arguing for a $25/hour minimum wage). His proposals might not being as strongly supported among his presumed audience as he thinks. In December 2021, House Speaker Pelosi explicitly defended lawmakers’ right to trade stocks.

For me the question is less whether from a policy standpoint, historic standpoint, or strategic standpoint the Democratic Party should take those steps but whether today’s Democratic Party can take those steps from a political standpoint? I see this op-ed as yet another salvo in Mr. Emanuel’s bid to be the Democratic candidate for president in 2028. Would he be a viable candidate in today’s Democratic Party?

I don’t know that there has ever been an editorial with whose opening passages I agreed with less than this one from the Washington Post:

Health care keeps growing more expensive because the American system is less and less a free market. Fewer people pay directly for medical care, and government heavily subsidizes demand without increasing supply, a sure route to higher prices. The Biden administration worsened these dynamics by making it too easy to sign up for zero-premium insurance plans under the Affordable Care Act — which invited rampant fraud — and by extending unnecessary Medicare Part D subsidies.

but with whose conclusions I agreed with so strongly:

The Trump administration took reasonable and modest steps to address both problems. Democratic leaders characterized them as draconian cuts. Now the numbers are in, and the sky didn’t fall.

These are the “numbers” that I found startling:

Officials at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services tell us that just 51 of the 760,000 removed enrollees have requested reinstatement. Those 51 accounts have yet to be verified “due to suspicious agent and broker activity, possible impersonations and other red flags warranting further scrutiny,” according to a CMS official.

51 is roughly .001% of the total removed. Less than one ten-thousandth. Not bad for government work. And even that number may be an overstatement.

What’s wrong with doing something that saves more than $2 billion and hurts no one? Youth wants to know.

What I disagree with most is the opening sentence. We haven’t had a “free market” in healthcare for more than a century and there is no longer a path to one that most Americans would accept. I’ve already proposed my solution and it isn’t a free market. You cahn’t get the-ah from he-ah.

The old friend I mentioned in a previous post made Variety.

I continue to take note of the sharp difference between the editorial policies of the Washington Post prior to its acquisition by Jeff Bezos and its present editorial policy. At times I’m not sure whether I’m reading a Washington Post editorial or a post at Reason.com (a libertarian organization/journal). The most recent example is this editorial on President Trump’s offer to bail out farmers:

President Donald Trump is trying to rescue vulnerable Republicans in the Midwest by promising an $8 billion bailout for farmers two weeks before the midterms. That would bring direct federal payments to farmers this fiscal year to about $55 billion. The amount is about a quarter of what farms add annually to U.S. gross domestic product and nearly five times the level of direct payments in 2017.

I don’t support either President Trump or farm subsidies. As should be no surprise IMO the Trump Administration’s most recent offer is feckless. Here’s the part I found interesting:

Farmers face real hardships. Diesel prices per gallon have risen about 75 percent and trade disruptions from the Iran war have boosted fertilizer prices. Pointless trade wars and tariffs have reduced foreign markets where American farmers can sell their crops and have raised prices for equipment. Ranchers have also voiced frustration at the chilling effect immigration raids have had on the meatpacking workforce.

That’s the sole mention of migrant workers, immigrants, immigration, or immigration enforcement in the piece. That’s interesting considering that, if the Trump Administration has a key focus, I would think it was immigration enforcement.

I think it would be interesting if the editors quantified the effects of those on farmers. I would genuinely like to know their relative impacts. I don’t know what their relative importance to farmers might be. Maybe their significance is cumulative.

Here’s something I haven’t done before. It’s a picture of me hard at work on a post for this blog.

I wanted to take note of this Wall Street Journal op-ed by Joel Zinberg. Here’s the opening passage:

Sen. Bernie Sanders first introduced his Medicare for All legislation in 2017. Despite multiple reintroductions, the proposal has never received a floor vote in either congressional chamber. Medicare for All has become a rallying cry for progressives this election season, and recent polling suggests public support has surged. Voters should be careful what they wish for.

Two-thirds of Americans favor Medicare for All, according to a new KFF poll—a substantial increase from 2020, when roughly half of respondents were in favor. But most Americans don’t understand the proposal or its likely effects. Medicare for All would eliminate competition and choice in medical care, limit access, and inevitably lead to tax increases.

but the passage I found most telling was this:

When respondents in the KFF poll were told the effects of Medicare for All, support plunged. Only 52% were in favor when told that private insurance would be eliminated, 38% when learning Medicare for All could threaten the current Medicare program, 35% once they considered that Medicare for All could require most Americans to pay higher taxes, and 24% after learning it could lead to delays for medical tests and treatments.

It has been said that Sanders’s bill isn’t a bill that has been enacted by Congress and that’s true enough. My question is what is an incoming Democratic Congress likely to do? Given that 84% of Democrats support “Medicare for All” I think it’s a measure very likely to be enacted by the hypothetical incoming Democratic Congress even though the actual bill might have considerably less support.

IMO the likely outcome of such a single-payer system in the United States is likely to be considerably worse than Dr. Zinberg suggests. If public payment rates make private practice sufficiently attractive, some physicians could withdraw, serve smaller affluent patient panels, and reduce the capacity available to everyone relying on the public program. I think that unless the restrictions on practicing medicine outside the national systems are considerably more strict than the bill presently establishes the actual outcome will be concierge healthcare for the well-to-do, unfettered by the price restrictions of “Medicare for All”, and less healthcare for the balance of the population.

Today Mary Anastasia O’Grady’s column in the Wall Street Journal is “Latin America’s Coming Population Bust”. Here’s a snippet:

When the Biden administration opened the southern border, it seemed there was no end to the millions of hungry working-age migrants who wanted to enter the U.S. Western Europe experienced something similar in 2015-16, when German Chancellor Angela Merkel welcomed a flood of refugees, mostly from war-torn Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq.

But the days of an endless supply of labor eager to serve the needs of the developed world may be drawing to a close. Not tomorrow, but soon enough. Countries accustomed to receiving great numbers of aspiring young people from beyond their borders may have to learn to do with fewer.

Here’s the population pyramid for Latin America and the Caribbean:

The short version is that in Latin America and the Caribbean Generation Alpha (the one after Gen Z) is smaller than Millennials and about the same as Generation X. And at this point it is unlikely to get larger (since Gen Beta is hot on its heels).

There are a number of comments that come to mind about that but I’ll limit myself to just one. That’s likely to result in political turbulence and possible upheaval. After decades of convincing people that aggregate consumption is the way to measure economic wellbeing, changing course to convince them that it might not be that important after all will be darned hard.