In reaction to President Trump’s proposal that Americans receive a $5,000 “dividend” I think an actual dividend is the last thing we should want. In general in a company dividends are paid from profits, i.e. revenue – expenses. The U. S. government is presently running at a loss, i.e. we are “borrowing” to pay our bills.

In the instances in which companies running at losses (expenses exceed revenues) pay dividends it is generally borrowed and believed to be a temporary move. Over the last century the federal government has operated at a surplus in 17 nonconsecutive of those years. Five of those were in the 1920s so that’s hardly a temporary condition.

But the bad news gets worse. For decades the government’s commonly cited consolidated deficit included Social Security’s cash flow. That mattered particularly after the 1983 reforms, when Social Security accumulated substantial surpluses: those surpluses made the government’s overall fiscal position look better even while the rest of the federal government continued to run deficits. Look instead at the government’s on-budget balance excluding Social Security and the record is considerably worse. The federal government has been financing its ordinary operations with borrowing for almost the entire modern history of Social Security.

The irony is that a $5,000 “affordability dividend” could actually make the affordability problem worse. Borrowing more than a trillion dollars and distributing it as cash does not produce another trillion dollars’ worth of houses, food, automobiles, medical care, or other goods and services. It increases the number of dollars available to bid for the same supply of them. To the extent that additional demand outruns additional production, the result is higher prices. And to the extent that the additional federal borrowing raises interest rates, financed purchases become more expensive as well.

I wanted to take note of a single sentence in Walter Russell Mead’s latest Wall Street Journal column:

The alleged Russian sabotage attempt on Germany’s Leipzig/Halle airport failed to trigger a rush of Euro-patriotism.

because it reflects a widespread misconception.

There has never been “Euro-patriotism”. There have been France, Germany, Italy, etc. pursuing their own parochial interests. France has pursued subsidies for French farmers. Germany has pursued the profits of German banks and manufacturers. Other less developed economies e.g. Greece have pursued the increased consumption that unlimited borrowing enabled. And so on.

There has never been “Euro-patriotism” and I see little reason to expect it to emerge now that establishment political parties are fighting for their political lives against “far right-wing” upstarts. Don’t infer European solidarity from coincident national interests. European unity exists when countries continue acting together after their national interests diverge and doing so becomes costly.

The first stop in our cruise was in Ketchikan, Alaska, a small town of 8,000 people at the southernmost tip of the Inside Passage coastal route for ships and boats. Historically, it was a fishing community but today it is largely devoted to tourism and government services.

We weren’t interested in the very tourist-y downtown area and immediately made our way to the “fish ladder”, the rapids used by salmon to jump their way upstream to spawn, pictured below.

We must have seen a dozen salmon leaping the rapids in the few minutes we spent watching the fish ladder. We then made our way from the fish ladder to the beginning of our guided nature walk in the Tongass National Forest, the largest intact temperate rainforest in the world. The walk was one of the highlights of our trip.

Our very well-informed trail guide introduced us to the flora and fauna of the rainforest in the course of a roughly two mile walk. Sitka Spruce. Western Hemlock. Various berries. Devil’s Club, a spiny bush. Much to our delight we encountered four black bears along the trail maintaining a safe distance. We were told that we may have seen more bears on our nature walk than those who took the bear walk.

It rains quite a bit in Ketchikan—to the extent that they measure rainfall in feet per year not inches. 12 or more feet of rain per year is typical. Apparently, we brought good weather with us. The temperature varied from the 50s to the 70s in the course of the morning and it was one of Ketchikan’s few rainfree days.

Our visit to Ketchikan was quite brief, just the morning. After our nature walk we caught a bus at the Totem Heritage Center (Ketchikan has the largest collection of standing totem poles) and returned to the ship which departed around noon for Juneau.

Can anyone envision an end condition for the war in Iran other than the end of President Trump’s term? I can’t. I think that the war in Iran is likely to continue as long as anyone in Iran has drones or missiles and as long as there are targets within striking range which may be a very long time, indeed. Is there one person with the practical authority to say, “The war is over; cease firing,” and have every organization and commander capable of launching a missile or drone actually stop? I don’t believe there is.

Iran in 2026 is not Japan in August 1945.

A little more than a week ago my wife and I flew to Vancouver and overnighted there. We spent the day wandering around town, took the SkyTrain to the harbor, took the ferry to Granville Island, wandered around the island, returned to the hotel, and went to bed so we would be up in plenty of time to board our ship.

It had been 60 years since I had been in Vancouver. I was astonished by several things. First, it has grown substantially. When I was last there it was a slightly grungy factory town. Now it’s heavily built up and mostly new.

Second, it was very clean and neat. Even the SkyTrain was neat and tidy, more so by far then the El in Chicago.

Third, it was demographically very different from the Vancouver I remember or, indeed, from any city I had ever been in. By my casual observation, a remarkable number of the people are of East Asian extraction.

We boarded our ship early the next morning. It was the Coral Princess, pictured above. Our stateroom had a balcony. You can see the balconies along the side of the ship in the picture.

Next stop, Ketchikan.

My wife and I were on a cruise to Alaska for a week and then stayed with friends in Wasilla for several days. I thought it prudent not to disclose where we were but it did cut into my posting pretty severely. But now we’re back and I have a lot to say about our trip, about Alaska, and about what’s been going on.

I’ll try to get back to posting at my usual pace soon but right now I’m tired. As G. K. Chesterton put it, no man is so in need of a vacation as one who has just returned from one.

There has been considerable fulmination in the media outlets about the increase in measles cases in the United States, What follows is a table documenting the reported cases of measles this year for OECD countries in 2026

Recent Reported Measles Incidence — Selected OECD Countries

Most recent 2026 figures available from national or international public-health authorities. Reporting dates differ by country, so the figures should be regarded as an indication of relative scale rather than a precise ranking.

Country	Reported cases	Reporting period	Approx. population	Cases per million
Mexico	12,479	Jan. 1–Aug. 8, 2026	~130 million	~96.0
Canada	1,114	Jan. 1–Aug. 8, 2026	~41 million	~27.2
England*	970	Jan. 1–Aug. 17, 2026	~58 million	~16.7
United States	2,465	Jan. 1–Aug. 6, 2026	~342 million	~7.2
Japan	498	Jan. 1–May 20, 2026	~124 million	~4.0

*The most recent UK government figures available on a directly comparable calendar-year basis cover England rather than the entire United Kingdom.

Sources: Pan American Health Organization/WHO for Mexico, Canada and the United States; UK Health Security Agency for England; Japan Institute for Health Security for Japan. Figures are provisional and reporting dates differ. Population figures are rounded, so per-capita rates are approximate.

Quite a number of explanations have been suggested for the increase in cases including delays in vaccination produced by the COVID-19 pandemic, “vaccination hesitancy”, and others.

Considering the large numbers in developed countries other than the U. S., I see little reason to blame the increase on conditions specific to the U. S. Officials should strive to reduce the numbers but I don’t believe there is any need for brow-beating.

We’re still in the dog days of summer, a slack period for opinion pieces, so I’ll use the opportunity to take stock of what I see as the four big stories whose significance extends well beyond local concerns. As I see it they are:

• The war with Iran
• The Russo-Ukrainian War
• “Trade war” with Canada
• Data centers

The war with Iran

I articulated my opposition to the war with Iran on the first day of the war, largely on just war grounds. That hasn’t changed. I think it is incumbent on President Trump to explain how we will achieve victory in this war. Not what his objectives are—how we will achieve victory. At this point that seems to be some combination of economic pressure and military force. Why will this be successful now when it has not in the past?

The Russo-Ukrainian War

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy has rejected the notion of a wartime election, despite calls for it from his opposition. NBC News reports:

Echoing his ?previous comments on ?the matter, Zelenskiy said a wartime election might be possible if Kyiv’s partners could guarantee security, but that no one ?has proposed such a plan.

“Elections right now are a ?tsunami for ?the state, which will split Ukraine,” he said.

“That’s why my strategy is to steer the country toward an ending of the war and to preserve an ?independent ?and sovereign state.”

Fedorov, a longtime Zelenskyy ally who ?has been seen as a top political challenger, did not explicitly say whether he would stand ?in any future election.

Since the outset of hostilities I have argued that we should provide military and humanitarian aid for Ukraine. That, however, should not be construed as unqualified support for the Ukrainian government and everything it does. Russia was wrong in attacking Ukraine. We should continue to support Ukraine. We should use whatever leverage our support provides to nudge Ukraine in the direction of being more democratic, more liberal, less corrupt, and less ethno-nationalist.

“Trade war” with Canada

Cristina Roca reports at the Wall Street Journal:

After weeks of marathon talks between U.S. and Canadian trade officials, an agreement was almost in sight. Then, late on Friday, the talks collapsed at the 11th hour. Tariffs of 50% on $20 billion worth of Canadian goods went into effect, and Ottawa said it will respond with dollar-for-dollar levies on Sept. 8.

My general view is that we should engage in trade reciprocity with other countries. In the past I have been critical of the U. S.-Mexico-Canada Trade Agreement (USMCA) on the grounds that it wasn’t strictly reciprocal and that Canada and Mexico were each exploiting different aspects of the agreement to their own advantage and our disadvantage. That remains my view.

In the particular cases of Mexico and Canada I believe the long-term ideal objective is moving in the direction of a single, trans-continental economy. These aggressive moves and Canada’s reaction are not steps in the right direction.

Data centers

In general my view is that Congress has largely ceded what is inherently a national policy problem to the executive branch, states, local zoning authorities, utilities, and individual companies. The construction of data centers presents a classic collective-action problem. And historically that’s exactly the sort of problem for which Congress exists. Individual communities have every reason to consider the local costs of data centers but little reason to consider the national costs of not building them.

Unfortunately, Republicans have largely outsourced national data-center policy to President Trump while Democrats haven’t decided what national data-center policy should be. There’s something between “build anything anywhere” and “stop building data centers” that is the better policy strategy and Congress should establish a national framework for what that is.

I’ve been mulling over the interaction among commercial users of the Internet, social media, AI, data centers, and end users for some time now.

The graphic above summarizes those thoughts. Comments appreciated.