When Jack and I set out on our morning walk this morning we saw many, many moms, dads, and their kids engaging in an annual ritual: the first day of school. In this neighborhood it is a commonplace for one parent, mom or dad, to accompany their child to school every day. Today was distinctive because in so many cases both parents were making the trek.

I remember my first day of school. I think I was five. My mom walked me to school to show me the way. I think that was the last time either of my parents ever walked me to school. I’m sure I remember my first day of school because it was the first time I had ever spent that much time without one of my parents. Nowadays nursery school or day care of some sort before the age of five is a commonplace but that wasn’t within my experience.

When my younger siblings started kindergarten walking them to school was my responsibility.

As Jack and I walked I asked one of the sets of parents whether they remembered their first day of school. Neither of them did.

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed Ray Tayekh recaps the 1953 Iranian putsch that overthrew Mossadeq:

After seven decades it’s time to set the record straight. Mossadeq was a Persian aristocrat who objected to Britain’s control of Iran’s oil. He led the nationalization charge and was instrumental in Iran’s reclaiming its national asset. He wasn’t democratically elected to his post but appointed by Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. He was stubborn and uncompromising, and he relished defying the great powers.

America became involved with Iran at Mossadeq’s instigation. Once negotiations over oil with Britain deadlocked, Mossadeq implored President Harry S. Truman to mediate the dispute. From 1951 until the eventual coup, a succession of American diplomats came up with numerous plans, all of which Mossadeq rejected. The U.S.-crafted compromise called for Britain to accept the principle of nationalization and for Iran to compensate Britain for the loss of its assets, which included the world’s largest refinery. Although London resented Washington’s evenhandedness, as a junior partner it had no choice but to agree. Diplomacy failed only because of Mossadeq’s obduracy.

To pressure him, Britain imposed an embargo on Iranian oil. Deprived of revenue, Iran’s economy cratered. The less money Mossadeq got, the more despotic he became. He rigged elections, disbanded Parliament, usurped the powers of the monarch, and showed little respect for the constitution.

His ruinous policies and dictatorial tendencies alarmed Persian power brokers. The shah was still too young and hesitant to take charge, but merchants, mullahs and military officers all began plotting against the prime minister. The clerical estate was critical to Mossadeq’s overthrow—something the Islamic Republic denies and Western professors whitewash.

By 1953 Iranians were asking the U.S. Embassy for support. Eisenhower seemed sympathetic because of Mossadeq’s increasing reliance on the Tudeh Communist Party. Eventually the Central Intelligence Agency dispatched Kermit Roosevelt to Iran to work with the horde of scheming Persians.

But the CIA didn’t create the opposition to Mossadeq. Lt. Gen. Fazlollah Zahedi, one of Iran’s most distinguished officers, had already organized the military to overthrow the prime minister, mullahs were using their street muscle to organize demonstrations against Mossadeq, and merchants were closing their bazaars in protest.

All the while the monarchy as an institution still commanded popular support. America’s most essential contribution to Mossadeq’s removal was to get the shah to dismiss his prime minister. The monarch had the constitutional authority to do so but lacked the courage. Finally, on Aug. 15, after much American arm-twisting, Pahlavi fired Mossadeq. All the talk of a coup should note that once the shah issued his decree Mossadeq’s premiership was rendered illegal.

Tipped off by communist cells in the Iranian army, Mossadeq was waiting for the officer who delivered his dismissal orders. The officer was quickly arrested, and the shah fled the country. For Washington, the coup had ended. The State Department acknowledged that the “operation has been tried and failed and we should not participate in any operation against Mossadegh.” The CIA concurred: “Operations against Mossadegh should be discontinued.” Gen. Walter Bedell Smith, Eisenhower’s aide, told the president that the plan had failed and that “we now have to take a whole new look at the Iranian situation and probably have to snuggle up to Mossadeq if we are going to save anything there.”

In Tehran, the Iranians took command of the situation. The mullahs inflamed the streets with their sermons while the military gained control of the capital. Mossadeq went into hiding, only to turn himself in after a few days on the run. A stunned shah planning for a life in exile was summoned back to Iran. No one was more surprised by this turn of events than the spy masters at the CIA.

That basically comports with what one of the Iranian officers who participated in the coup wrote in his memoir. And it also is completely consistent with what I’ve been saying around here for the last 20 years.

It also explains why the revolutionaries of the 1989 revolution purged the military when they took over. They knew the threat was from the military not external forces.

The editors of the Wall Street Journal don’t understand something very basic about power companies:

The deadly fires in Maui last week are still being investigated, and there may have been more than one contributor. But one culprit that seems to be emerging is the tradeoff the local utility had to navigate between power grid safety and the government-mandated green energy transition.

Video footage points to fallen power lines as a possible cause of the deadly fires. Hawaiian Electric’s bonds and stocks have sold off this week as investors worry that the utility will be liable for fire damage.

and

Hawaii’s mandate was an especially tall order since only about 20% of its power in 2015 came from renewables. The islands lack large amounts of empty land to build solar and wind. They also lack natural-gas power that can ramp up quickly to back them up. Most of Hawaii’s power was derived from oil and coal.

To meet the government mandate, Hawaiian Electric embarked on a rapid renewable build-out, which involved heavily subsidizing rooftop solar and batteries and contracting for large-scale renewables at elevated prices. Oil can be an expensive fuel source, but decommissioning fossil-fuel plants prematurely wastes sunk capital.

Every dollar the utility spent on subsidizing solar and connecting renewables to the grid was one less dollar available for strengthening equipment and removing combustible brush. Despite rising fire risk from non-native grass, Hawaiian Electric spent less than $245,000 on wildfire projects on the island of Maui between 2019 and 2022.

Unless they are compelled to by mandate and enforcement power companies will never pursue resilience. It doesn’t add to the bottom line and needing to spend more money on maintenance actually bolsters their case for higher rates. Whatever your views on government there are some things which require government action and more resilient power distribution is one of them.

At Reason.com Emma Camp worries that hundreds of thousands of students disappeared from U. S. schools during the COVID-19 lockdowns and have never returned:

During the first few months of the COVID-19 pandemic, a staggering number of students went “missing.” Kindergarten enrollment rates dropped, and students already enrolled in classes failed to log in for online learning.

From March to October 2020, the education nonprofit Bellwether estimated, as many as 3 million students nationwide went missing from classrooms. Another estimate from FutureEd, an education think tank, found a sevenfold increase in the number of students missing at least half a school year during the pandemic.

Once in-person school resumed, many students didn’t return to the classroom, nor did they register for homeschooling. No one knows exactly how to get them back.

According to the Associated Press (A.P.), California alone is missing more than 150,000 students, while New York is down nearly 60,000. In all, around 230,000 students in 21 states and Washington, D.C., are missing, which suggests that many more students are absent from classrooms nationwide. When the A.P. and Stanford University researchers analyzed data from pre-pandemic years, they found that almost no students were missing.

Where did the students go?

1. They’re being homeschooled
2. They’re truant
3. They’ve moved to other districts
4. They’ve left the United States
5. They never existed in the first place
6. All of the above
7. Other

I’m going for “All of the above”.

The irony of this post by Geoff Cooper at RealClearEnergy was not lost on me:

In the 15 years since the RFS was expanded, the amount of U.S. cropland has continued to shrink, grasslands and forests have increased, and the volume of animal feed grain and exports has risen—all while renewable fuel production has tripled.

How is that possible? Through innovation, greater productivity, and an unwavering commitment from American farmers and biofuel producers to use sustainable practices.

Farmers today grow nearly 20% more corn per acre than they did when the RFS was created. Thus, less land is required to produce the crops needed for renewable fuels. In 2022, farmers planted five million fewer corn acres (an area the size of New Jersey) than they did in 2007, but produced a corn crop that was 5% larger. Meanwhile, ethanol producers squeeze 10% more ethanol out of every bushel of corn than they did 15 years ago.

To me this illustrates that technological improvement is a two-edged sword, at least if your objective is to reduce carbon emissions. It doesn’t just result in better batteries; it also allows farmers to grow corn more efficiently.

That sounds like a good illustration of Jevons Paradox to me. Articulated more than a century ago, the paradox is that the more efficiently a resource is used (or produced) the more it will be used.

I had quite a bit of trouble in writing this post. To understand some of the problems I need to provide some definitions:

real means using constant dollars, taking inflation out of the picture
median means half are above and half are below
average or mean is determined by adding everything up and dividing by the number that you’ve summed
mode means the most frequently occurring number in whatever you’re counting
normal distribution means the median, mean, and mode are all the same
willingness to pay is a measure of demand

The problem that I had is that the figures I’m seeking are not readily available. What I was seeking was a graph of median college tuitions from 1970 to 2020 in real dollars. I’m going to need to use some anecdotal data.

This morning John Stossel’s op-ed in the New York Post, “Why college has become a total ripoff”, caught my eye. Naturally, he blames the high cost of a college education on the federal government:

It’s August. Many young people head off to college.

This year, fortunately, fewer will go.

I say “fortunately” because college is now an overpriced scam.

Overpriced because normal incentives to be frugal and make smart judgments about who should go to college were thrown out when the federal government took over granting student loans.

Why?

Because our government basically vomits money at everyone who applies.

If private lenders gave out the loans, they’d look at whether they were likely to be paid back.

I think that while government has played a role it’s not the only factor at work and I want to explain why. The TL;DR version is that college tuition has been rising very rapidly for a very long time, longer than the present round of student loans and (attempted) debt forgiveness.

I happen to know some of the following because I’m inquisitive and I talk to people. In 1960 the annual tuition at my elite alma mater was $600. By 1970 it had tripled to $1,800. It continued to triple roughly every 10 years: $5,400 (1980), $16,200 (1990), $48,600 (2000). Now it’s $62,391. Said another way over 60 years it increased more than a hundredfold.

Now let’s look at that in real terms:

Obviously, that’s a lot faster than inflation but inflation has played a role. It’s also clearly not just government action at work. If it had been, we’d see less regularity in the inexorable rise in inflation.

Now let’s look at real median family incomes over the same period:

Those are in 2021 dollars. Said another way in 2021 dollars the median family income was around $45,000 while today it’s around $89,000 dollars. Not quite doubled.

So, let’s recap. Inflation has rendered your dollar roughly equal to a dime in 1960. Median family incomes have roughly doubled. College tuitions have increased a hundredfold. Note that if median incomes had kept pace with inflation the median household income would be $450,000 today.

Here’s my interpretation of what’s happened. College tuitions have been increasing very rapidly for a very long time. That is driven by inflation and increased willingness to pay. Willingness to pay has increased become people have more money than they used to, because there’s a widespread and somewhat mistaken believe that the only way to get a good job is with a college education, as well as because the federal government has been throwing money at tertiary education. Basically, I think that John Stossel has the causality reversed. The government is throwing money at tertiary education because of voter demand and the increasing gap between college tuitions and median income.

I think that several things should happen. First, more strings should be attached to college loans. They should be restricted to majors that are likely to provide ROI. Second, we should deemphasize tertiary education in public discourse. It’s a lot less important than has been made out by opinionmakers. We need to reduce the role that the financial sector plays in the economy, referred to as “financialization”. And, finally, more policy should be directed at increasing median income. We can’t do that by increasing the number of workers in the country who can only get minimum (or sub-minimum) wage jobs. We need to produce more of what we consume.

I’m open to other suggestions. Increasing median income has been neglected for far too long.

I don’t intend to write about Trump’s latest indictment. There’s tons of commentary out there and I doubt I could write a balanced post without writing something that might be construed as a defense of Trump which I don’t care to do.

I’ll just make this observation. The last Republican to be elected president whom Democrats accepted as legitimately elected was George H. W. Bush in 1988. In general I think they should be very, very cautious about declaring “election denial” a criminal activity. It might come back to haunt them.

After my dad died well over half a century ago, the journal, a slender brown college notebook, that he wrote in during his trip to Europe in 1937-1938, sat on a workbench in our garage for decades. When my mom died which is now more than a decade ago it fell to me as co-executor of my mom’s will to sort, catalog, and distribute her voluminous personal possessions. To accomplish that I spent several days a week for several months going down to St. Louis, staying in her now-quiet house, sorting, cataloguing, and in many casees, photographing her things and placing them in numbered boxes for retrieval. I then organized their distribution among my siblings and myself.

The last place I tackled in my rather dolesome project was the garage. Up in the rafters of the garage I made a discovery. In a large moving box I found all sorts of things I had never seen before: correspondence, magazines, odds and ends from college, and, mirabile dictu, more of my dad’s journals. I immediately recognized what had happened. When my grandmother, my dad’s mother, had died the better part of a century ago, my dad dumped all of the stuff she had been keeping for him in the two-flat on Clayton Ave. that he owned and she lived in into a box and stored it in the garage of our house on Griefield Place. When we moved from Griefield Place to Ladue the box moved, too, to the rafters of our new garage. And there it remained until I disturbed its resting place 50 years later.

Clearly, what had happened is that my dad had filled up many of those old brown journals with his notes from his European trip and, when he filled one up, he sent it to his mother who kept it for him. So I now have quite a number of journals that I never knew existed.

Here’s an example of something I have. After Kristallnacht (November 9, 1938), which evoked an extremely cryptic and guarded notation from my dad, the U. S. Department of State inserted mimeographed flyers into the American Express boxes of all U. S. citizens, warning them to get the heck out of Europe. I have that flyer.

I’ve been putting off going through those journals because it will in all likelihood not be a pleasant task. No sort of preservation was done—they were just dumped unceremoniously into a box. They’re mildewed, covered with mouse droppings and insect casing, and generally disgusting. Additionally, my dad’s handwriting is not the easiest to decipher.

I think I should break down and preserve and transcribe those old journal immediately. After all neither they (nor I) are improving with age. I’m hoping that they hold some of the stories my dad told me: attending a Hitler rally, getting arrested as a German spy in Serbia, his bicycle chain breaking while cycling down an alp, etc. In his own words I mean.

This caption caught my eye in an article in Variety by Patrick Frater, “China Box Office Reaches All-Time Summer Record, With Minimal Help From Hollywood”. The short version is that the Chinese box office, completely unsurprisingly, prefers homegrown movies.

That should serve as a warning for Hollywood. As Stephen Follows documents, the average cost of making a Hollywood “summer blockbuster” has risen sharply over the years. Now it’s $100 million to $200 million. Reportedly, Barbie cost $145 million, Oppenheimer cost $100 million, the latest Indiana Jones installment $300 million, and Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning $300 million. Add about the same for distribution and promotion to get an idea of what the picture needs to take in to break even. It should be obvious that these blockbusters can’t depend on domestic earnings alone and, indeed, they typically get about half their box offices from international distribution. But everybody wants their own domestic film industries to dominate their domestic (if not global) box offices.

If you eliminate China and India, the two biggest markets in the world, that imposes a high hurdle for Hollywood movies.

I honestly don’t know what’s going to happen but I don’t think it bodes well for the $1 billion Hollywood blockbuster which you can see looming on the horizon if you squint a little. I would prefer many more lower budget movies tailored for narrower primarily domestic audiences but I don’t believe that will happen. I also note that the coming reality should have some impact on the writers’ and actors’ strike that is presently going on but I doubt that it will.