Just because it’s out of sight and doesn’t show up on the evening news night after night after night doesn’t mean it’s gone away. Consider the case of air pollution:

Pollution from China travels in large quantities across the Pacific Ocean to the United States, a new study has found, making environmental and health problems unexpected side effects of US demand for cheap China-manufactured goods.

On some days, acid rain-inducing sulphate from burning of fossil fuels in China can account for as much as a quarter of sulphate pollution in the western United States, a team of Chinese and American researchers said in the report published by the US National Academy of Sciences, a non-profit society of scholars.

Cities like Los Angeles received at least an extra day of smog a year from nitrogen oxide and carbon monoxide from China’s export-dependent factories, it said.

“We’ve outsourced our manufacturing and much of our pollution, but some of it is blowing back across the Pacific to haunt us,” co-author Steve Davis, a scientist at University of California Irvine, said.

In the 1960s and 1970s we solved our environmental problems with a series of clean air and water laws. Those cleaned up our air and water but, ultimately, drove manufacturing to China where the environmental problems are beyond our direct control and intractable because China does not have a robust system of civil law.

There have been a few articles in recent weeks about the Germans reconsidering their own environmental strategy

Germany must reduce the cost of its switch from atomic energy toward renewables to protect growth, Economy and Energy Minister Sigmar Gabriel said.

German companies and consumers shoulder as much as 24 billion euros ($32 billion) a year for renewables because of subsidy payments, Gabriel told an energy conference in Berlin.

“I don’t know any other economy that can bear this burden,” Gabriel said today. “We have to make sure that we connect the energy switch to economic success, or at least not endanger it.” Germany must focus on the cheapest clean-energy sources as well as efficient fossil-fuel-fired plants to stop spiraling power prices, he said.

What goes unmentioned is that most of the greening of Europe hasn’t been accomplished by conservation, by weatherizing their homes and offices, or by the “cap and trade” system they put into place. It’s been accomplished by offshoring their heavy manufacturing to China. That doesn’t solve the problem. It just moves it to China and, as the article cited above suggests, eventually back to us and makes the problem much harder to address.

The environment isn’t the only area in which “out of sight, out of mind” is a hopeless strategy. When our troops left Iraq, it meant that our news media stopped covering the news in Iraq. It didn’t mean that the war ended. When we leave Afghanistan as we surely will, it won’t mean that the war has ended there, either. Just because we’re not bombing Libya today, it doesn’t mean that the civil war there has ended.

There are solutions we could implement that would, at least marginally, address the problems that Chinese environmental recklessness are wreaking on our air and water even if they’re measures that would make free trade advocates tear out their hair. For example, we could impose an environmental surcharge on products imported from China as long as the pollutants originating in China remained over some established level.

Solving the problems caused by our “bull in the china shop” approach to foreign policy will be significantly more difficult.

Some interesting facts on Accenture, the company tasked with evaluating Healthcare.gov’s status, from the New York Post:

Accenture saves money by underpaying foreign guest workers they import — typically 25 percent less for their imported employees than the prevailing wage for a similar US citizen worker.

Ron Hira, an associate professor of public policy at the Rochester Institute of Technology, analyzed Accenture’s use of the H-1B program. In 2005, the company had 12,684 H-1B foreign guest workers earning an average of $53,042 per year. That’s far less than the median $80,000 salary the same job responsibilities and skills required would fetch for an American worker. Accenture is so bad, they paid a foreign guest worker $25,113 per year — for the title of “chief programmer.” Typically chief programmers make six figures in the United States.

It appears undercutting wages with H-1B visas is part of Accenture’s business model. Hira found that, in 2012, the median salary paid for Accenture’s new H-1B workers was $64,700, while Amazon paid their equivalent H-1B workers a median salary of $95,000. Google, who also uses comparable technical skills sets to Accenture and Amazon, paid a median salary of $110,000 to their new H-1B visa hires.

Accenture also avoids American taxes. The company is headquartered in Chicago, but it’s incorporated in noted tax haven Ireland.

It’s tremendously easy to be profitable when you’re a scofflaw. And, as this case illustrates, scofflaws are rewarded with lucrative government contracts. Sounds like perverse incentives to me but it’s completely consistent with the Tim Geithner model of technocratic governance.

In defense of Accenture, née Andersen Consulting, there is probably no company better suited to identify the reasons that the Healthcare.gov project went wrong and my understanding is that’s the task they’ve been assigned.

Many years ago I took a class from Andersen Consulting and was certified in their project management methodology. After a couple of days of mind-numbingly boring classes, I asked a question of the instructor to the effect that I was getting the impression that their project management methodology was intended to assist managers in assisting managers in identifying where projects had gone wrong rather than giving them tools for seeing to it that projects go right. The instructor agreed enthusiastically. Perhaps things have changed over the years but my experience is that corporate cultures change very slowly, even more slowly when the companies are successful as Accenture has been.

I would also suggest that there is no company better prepared than Accenture to give the client the answer they wanted rather than the answer that they needed. The client here is the federal government and if that’s the case, their results could give us a handy window into what the Obama Administration wants to hear about Healthcare.gov.

Thomas Friedman’s most recent column, on the state of education in the United States, is simultaneously true and another tiresome example of his bad habit of disparaging the United States in favor of one Asian country or another. In this case, it’s South Korea:

“In 2009, President Obama met with President Lee of South Korea and asked him about his biggest challenge in education. President Lee answered without hesitation: parents in South Korea were ‘too demanding.’ Even his poorest parents demanded a world-class education for their children, and he was having to spend millions of dollars each year to teach English to students in first grade, because his parents won’t let him wait until second grade. … I [wish] our biggest challenge here in the U.S. was too many parents demanding excellent schools.

“I want to pose one simple question to you: Does a child in South Korea deserve a better education than your child?” Duncan continued. “If your answer is no … then your work is cut out for you. Because right now, South Korea — and quite a few other countries — are offering students more, and demanding more, than many American districts and schools do. And the results are showing, in our kids’ learning and in their opportunities to succeed, and in staggeringly large achievement gaps in this country. Doing something about our underperformance will mean raising your voice — and encouraging parents who aren’t as engaged as you to speak up. Parents have the power to challenge educational complacency here at home. Parents have the power to ask more of their leaders — and to ask more of their kids.”

His underlying point is that there’s nothing wrong with the U. S. educational system that better students wouldn’t cure. That’s probably true. It’s notable that in any given year there are three quarters of a million international students studying at American institutions of higher learning of whom about 80,000 are South Koreans. My guess is that South Koreans studying in the U. S. outnumber American students studying in South Korea by about 10 to 1. That’s what hegemony means.

There are two questions I would ask Mr. Friedman: why and how? The problem to which he draws attention, American students’ disinterest in education, is not one that can be addressed by spending more money. In real terms we spend about three times as much now on education as we did twenty years ago. There is little evidence that we’re getting more from all that money and considerable evidence that our educational system has reached the point at which it is capable of sucking up every resource we could conceivably throw at it without producing more in the way of actual measurable outputs.

I suspect that the disinterest he reports on the part of American students is real and it’s the product of a combination of litigiousness and the presumption of parental control of children. Gone are the days of in loco parentis. Today too many students do not succeed or fail based on their own efforts but are guaranteed “success” by a system that passes students through it without their gaining a noticeable education.

Although the problems of which Mr. Friedman takes note may be characteristic of our educational system, they aren’t unique to it. The other evening my wife and I had dinner with some college chums of mine and their wives. One of them, who’s worked for many years for a large insurance company, mentioned that his company gives a workshop to managers on dealing with Millennials. The gist is that many of the young folks coming up have out-sized estimates of their own worth, expect to be compensated without performance, and are incapable of working or unwilling to work without close supervision.

Welcome to the new age, to the new age.

Last night my wife and I saw the new-to-Lyric production of Johann Strauss, Jr.’s 1874 operetta, Die Fledermaus. Die Fledermaus is one of only two German-language operettas to make it into the common repertory, the other being Lehar’s The Merry Widow, and it’s easy to see why it’s proved so enduring. The music is delightful and effervescent, its characters memorable, and its comedy truly funny.

This production which originated with the San Francisco Opera is a “traditional” production, i.e. it’s done as a period piece. The sets, costuming, and staging were all wonderful, the staging in particular being a cut above the Lyric norm. So far it’s the highlight of our Lyric season.

The stand-out performance was by Daniela Fally as Adele, the parlormaid posing as an actress. She’s Austrian and something of an Adele specialist. Her look, manner, acting, and especially her singing were all perfectly suited for the part, her singing in particular executed with ease and grace.

I would characterize the other performances as “workmanlike”. I could have wished for more from Juliane Banse as Rosalinde. Perhaps she was out of voice last night—we noticed that she did not hold her high notes.

The season so far: Die Fledermaus, La Traviata, Madama Butterfly

The Critics

I see that John Von Rhein saw the same things as we did:

Who would have thought that the strongest overall ensemble effort of the Lyric Opera season so far would be “Die Fledermaus”?

Many companies, Lyric included, have treated the perennially popular Johann Strauss Jr. operetta, with its irresistible waltz tunes and familiar plot involving amorous antics among the Viennese upper crust, as a brainless parade of tired gags and groaners, a silly diversion to pass the time between helpings of Strauss’ greatest hits.

No so here. Just ahead of the holidays, Lyric unveiled a new-to-Chicago production of “Fledermaus” Tuesday night at the Civic Opera House that had the audacity to take this wonderful work seriously. The 1870s period-sitcom plot may be predictable, but the champagne hasn’t lost its sparkle nor the music its ebullience.

This “Fledermaus” is, in short, a singing and dancing delight, with plenty of laughs that arise naturally out of the comic situations and don’t feel forced. It’s the fifth time around for Strauss’ melody-rich Viennese confection at Lyric, and most certainly the best.

I was remiss in not mentioning the dancing in this production of Die Fledermaus. Probably the best we’ve seen in a production at Lyric for some time.

Wynne Delacoma, writing at the Sun-Times remarks:

Lyric Opera has whipped up a perfect holiday confection for opera lovers in “Die Fledermaus (The Bat)” by Johann Strauss Jr., which opened Tuesday night at the Civic Opera House. This new-to-Chicago production is as fizzy as fine champagne and as pretty as a pop-up Victorian Christmas card.

“Fledermaus” is one of operetta’s most durable hit shows and it contains some of Strauss the younger’s most infectious tunes. But in the wrong hands, this 140-year-old comic tale of duplicitous spouses, their ambitious parlor maid and random eccentrics can fall flatter than an overcooked souffle. It isn’t easy to keep the energy high and American audiences engaged for three-hours-plus of German-language song and dance and snappy patter.

But aided by a superb cast and production team, stage director E. Loren Meeker and conductor Ward Stare managed that difficult feat. Making her Lyric debut with this production from the San Francisco Opera, Meeker filled the stage with non-stop action that generally avoided contrived shtick. Wolfram Skalicki’s sets and Thierry Bosquet’s costumes were delicately charming fantasies. The cut-away view of the Eisenstein’s two-story apartment took us inside a 19th century dollhouse, complete with a curving staircase and fanciful plaster work. Prince Orlofsky’s grand ballroom was a vast space full of soaring arches and shadowy walls painted to resemble crowded theater boxes.

I found Chicago Theater Beat to be reviewing the opera a bit more than the production but its critic was favorably impressed as well:

The froth never settles in E. Loren Meeker’s intoxicating staging. Wolfram Skalicki’s brilliant cut-away sets open with a stage-stretching blow-up of the original program for the 1874 “Komische Operette,” then reveal the Eisenstein mansion as a huge Victorian doll house. Orlovsky’s Viennese villa is first shown as a noble façade, which opens up into a vast vestibule with huge semi-erotic painting, and finally the balcony-laden ballroom (inevitably recalling the venue for Verdi’s masked ball). Finally, a very empty jail soon fills to bursting in the hung-over third act: At last all the “mistakes of a night” are sorted out in a cascade of poetic justice.

As playful as regal, these storybook settings serve up Strauss’ strudel with contagious delight. So does the fail-proof cast, with Michael Spyres almost too animated as the horny husband, his mischief-making elegantly undermined by Juliane Banse’s commanding Rosalinde (a tad weak on the final note of the famous “Czardas,” but bewitching enough). Like many here, Banse fully engages in the second act’s elaborate ballet: Choreographer Daniel Pelzig cleverly integrates other selections by Strauss into the already irresistible social dances of the soiree’s programme, ¾ glories performed by the tipsy “Bruderlein und Schwesterlein” with “chacun a son gout.”

This sounds to me like a problem for the PPACA:

Early signals suggest the majority of the 2.2 million people who sought to enroll in private insurance through new marketplaces through Dec. 28 were previously covered elsewhere, raising questions about how swiftly this part of the health overhaul will be able to make a significant dent in the number of uninsured.

Insurers, brokers and consultants estimate at least two-thirds of those consumers previously bought their own coverage or were enrolled in employer-backed plans.

The data, based on surveys of enrollees, are preliminary. But insurers say the tally of newly insured consumers is falling short of their expectations, a worrying trend for an industry looking to the law to expand the ranks of its customers.

The article goes on to mention that Michigan has about 1.2 million uninsured people of which it expected about a third to enroll for healthcare insurance under the PPACA. At this point only about 76,000 have enrolled and most of those had previously been covered.

For quite a while I’ve been saying that it was too early to tell whether the PPACA was accomplishing its objectives or not. We’re now four months into a six month open enrollment and that’s beginning to ring a little hollow.

The PPACA isn’t free. Billions have already been spent and more will continue to be spent. I would have thought that making a considerable dent in the number of people without healthcare insurance would have been the minimum objective. It’s too expensive for a vanity project.

There are significantly more people in Illinois who are unemployed than earn minimum wage. The number is even greater when you take discouraged workers into account.

In general the Illinois minimum wage is not available to restaurant workers. Employers of workers who receive tips are only required to pay the difference between their wages including tips and the minimum wage. This is widely unenforced.

You know the more I read about Harris v. Quinn the more I wonder whether there isn’t more than concern posturing on the part of Illinois politicians’ support for increasing the state’s minimum wage. A lot of home healthcare workers, unionized essentially by fiat a decade ago in Illinois, are paid minimum wage or near minimum wage. Increasing that minimum would as a byproduct increase the union dues that are handily recycled into political contributions.

Illinois’s senior Sen. Dick Durbin is urging Illinois lawmakers to raise the state’s minimum wage:

(AP) — Raising Illinois’ minimum wage and a Republican gubernatorial candidate’s changing stance on the issue were the main topics of U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin’s speech at an annual breakfast honoring the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

Durbin told attendees Friday he’s working with Illinois lawmakers to raise the state’s $8.25 hourly rate. Pushing for an increase is a Democratic strategy nationwide.

Durbin then blasted Republican Bruce Rauner for being “out of touch” on the issue. Rauner said he’d advocate for lowering Illinois’ rate to the national $7.25-per-hour. Then said he’d support raising it under certain circumstances.

The topic has been prominent in the gubernatorial primary. The three other Republicans running in the race oppose an increase. They are state Treasurer Dan Rutherford and state Sens. Bill Brady and Kirk Dillard.

Despite my tentative support for a cautious increase in the national minimum wage, I think that raising Illinois’s minimum wage would be foolhardy. Political posturing masquerading as concern.

Illinois already has a higher state minimum wage than any of the states that surround it. All but Missouri have the national minimum wage. Missouri’s state minimum wage is $7.50 an hour.

Many of Illinois largest population centers are adjacent to other states. Chicago is adjacent to Wisconsin and Indiana. East St. Louis is adjacent to Missouri. Rockford and Moline are adjacent to Iowa. All of those states are mobilized to attract businesses away from Illinois and have been successful in doing so, largely on the basis of Illinois’s taxes and higher minimum wage. Illinois already has a higher unemployment rate than any state other than Michigan, Nevada, and Rhode Island. And a worse fiscal position than any of them. Illinois simply can’t afford to drive more businesses out-of-state.

If Illinois’s politicians were really concerned about the working poor in Illinois, they’d be devoting their attentions to improving the state’s fiscal situation and creating more jobs in Illinois. Raise the minimum wage at the national level but not on the state level.

My view on increasing the minimum wage isn’t ideological or political. It’s pragmatic. If increasing the minimum wage helps a lot more people than it hurts, I have no opposition to it. Additionally, if Robert Samuelson is characterizing the Democrats’ approach to doing it:

Democrats propose raising the present federal minimum of $7.25 an hour to $8.20 this year, $9.15 in 2015 and $10.10 in 2016. Assuming no job losses, almost 28 million workers would benefit by 2016, estimates the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a liberal think tank. That’s about 17 million who now make less than the proposed minimums, plus 11 million slightly better-paid workers who would get increases to keep them above the minimum.

fairly it sounds like a pretty good approach. It would at least give the opportunity for course corrections. I think I’d spread it out a bit more, say, two or three years between rises but I suspect that their implementation schedule probably isn’t completely unrelated to calculations of electoral politics.

I do have a question, however. Let’s assume that your view is that a small or moderate increase in the minimum wage probably won’t have much adverse effect on employment. What’s being proposed is a 40% increase. Is a 40% increase “small or moderate”?

I also think that by far the more important issue is increasing the rate of domestic job production (which would itself increase wages paid). Clearly, Congress and the White House have no idea of how to do that.