George Friedman is puzzled by the mysterious balloons:

The problem I have is imagining the mission these objects could carry out, one that would be invisible, allow loitering if needed and be able to avoid detection. There could be some highly specialized targets, but the fleet that the Chinese appear to have, and that they claim the U.S. has, seems excessive to the task. One Chinese craft was over a U.S. Air Force base that is doubtless loaded with secrets, but how many of the secrets would be visible or broadcasting in the clear?

One theoretical mission would be to divert attention. Russia is much closer to Alaska than is China. It is engaged in a war where the United States has a role, to understate it. Having large, weird craft flying over the continental United States could, in this thinking, generate panic, with the public demanding that the government focus on national defense and not Ukraine. There are a hundred diversionary functions these objects could serve for a limited time, although the result of this episode is low panic and high confusion.

The fundamental question is how objects this large, at altitudes allowing enhanced visibility, could go unnoticed if U.S. and Chinese charges are even close to true. From available information, the craft move with the grace of an elephant and could be shot down by aircraft, missile or a well-aimed slingshot. They must be stunningly advanced, which would explain why the U.S. government is withholding answers. If national security requires it, then it should be. But the price is that the U.S. government is shooting down aircraft and, knowing from the beginning that they are Chinese, is unable to tell us what it found in the wreckage.

and spending probably $1 million a pop or thereabouts to do it. I agree with Mr. Friedman that it behooves the Biden Administration to explain what it’s doing. Sadly, I doubt we’ll ever receive a genuinely coherent explanation. The answer may be “letting them fly didn’t work so now we’re shooting them down to see if that works” which isn’t very satisfying.

Here’s Heather Long’s explanation for the state of the economy from her Washington Post column:

The most plausible explanation of all is that the pandemic and subsequent recovery were so unusual that the normal rules of economics don’t apply. Demand surged for everything from toaster ovens to used cars. Supply chains could not keep up. Prices spiked. Now, there’s a right-sizing. Goods inflation has come down for most items (even for eggs) as demand has subsided. The question is whether services inflation for travel, restaurants, entertainment, insurance and deliveries will follow.

It’s reasonable after a fashion to think that the phrase “the normal rules of economics don’t apply” has actual meaning. If it means anything it means that people don’t have preferences, don’t pursue their incentives, and behavior is completely unpredictable. And yet everywhere I go, on a daily even hourly basis, I see almost exactly the opposite. I see people buying things when they’re on sale, stopping their cars when the traffic light turns red (unless they think they can get away with running it), and picking Coke over the store brand of cola.

On the other hand I think it’s completely plausible, when the measured numbers are 10% or the reported numbers, to wonder if the calculations are completely reliable.

I found this interview by Brendan O’Neill at Spiked of Batya Ungar-Sargon, deputy opinion editor at Newsweek, refreshing. First, to place Ms. Ungar-Sargon on the political spectrum:

Batya Ungar-Sargon: I consider myself a left-wing populist. Routinely, people on the left would say that I’m a conservative and that the points I make are conservative talking points. I always laughed at this because, first of all, I don’t think ‘conservative’ is an insult. People expect you to act like somebody just called you fat.

In a way that hearkens back to one of my earliest posts here at The Glittering Eye. Because such statements are almost always subjective, they’re also almost always off target. Most people identify themselves as moderates because they’re in the center of their universes. However, when you analyze their views according to some objective standard, it may turn out quite differently than they might anticipate. Every year or so I check my own views over at The Political Compass and gosh dern it I’m actually centrist—almost smack dab in the middle.

I don’t know what Ms. Ungar-Sargon’s political views are but for that reason she probably doesn’t have a very clear notion of where she fits into the political spectrum.

Here’s an interesting exchange:

O’Neill: Do the elites really believe in the green agenda? Or do they just benefit from it?

Ungar-Sargon: I think they definitely believe it. I don’t think you can look at Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, for example, and not see somebody who is deeply sincere. The only thing that makes me think that they don’t believe it is the private jets. If you believed so deeply in man-made climate change, surely the first thing you would do is ban private jets. But on the whole I do think they believe it. It would be very hard to pull off at this scale if they didn’t.

The way the elites think of the economy is very related to green ideology. They picture an economy in which the top 20 per cent keeps making over $100,000 a year and lives in nice neighbourhoods and nice cities. All production is done in China. All service-industry jobs are performed by slave-wage Venezuelans brought in by cartels. And everybody making under $100,000 a year – who used to be the working class – is on universal basic income. That’s the view that a lot of so-called progressives consciously or unconsciously have of their ideal economic system.

Of course, this fits right into the green movement. You can’t have a middle class without cheap, affordable fuel and energy. And climate activists don’t believe in cars, they don’t believe in trucks, they don’t believe in farming. They don’t believe in the jobs that we actually rely on to survive. They’ve essentially given up on America. They’re definitely not proud of America, they’re ashamed of it. They hate conservatives, religious people, Republicans, people who voted for Trump. To them, those people are anathema to the good life.

The green movement just fits so neatly into this worldview. We’re outsourcing the dirty jobs to China, so we can forget about the CO2 emissions. At the same time, we’re happy to sentence the people who do those jobs to impoverishment. It’s an incredibly dark and elitist worldview.

Of course the environment doesn’t care where the emissions are produced. If human action is the primary driver of climate change, it doesn’t make any difference whether that action is taken in the United States, China, or Brazil. In time it will spread across the entire world.

I honestly don’t know if that’s what today’s progressives believe. It certainly doesn’t comport with my idea of progress, indeed, it sounds a lot more like totalitarianism to me.

The greatest irony of all is that while a tremendous number of those in the top 20% of income earners, the so-called “creative class”, are completely expendable. Those are the jobs that will be replaced by artificial intelligence. They can be replaced but plumbers and UPS drivers can’t.

The editors of the Washington Post offer advice to the people of the drought-stricken Southwest:

Agreeing to cuts, while critical, is only the first step. Communities, including cities and suburbs across the Southwest, will then have to undertake the difficult process of reimagining their water use.

Some localities have already managed to dramatically reduce their reliance on water. Las Vegas has been a standout, banning ornamental turf, limiting water deliveries to golf courses and reducing swimming pool sizes. This comes after decades of effective advertising to get households to voluntarily reduce their water use. Local authorities have also invested heavily in water recycling: Approximately 99 percent of indoor water in the Southern Nevada Water Authority’s service area is recycled, meaning that even the resorts on Las Vegas Strip waste very little water.

Cities can also make existing infrastructure more efficient. That could involve reducing leakage in pipes by auditing water loss and setting up controls to reduce the drain. States could also establish high-efficiency standards for plumbing products so they require less water pressure.

In the long term, however, western cities looking to conserve water will need to find ways to reduce urban sprawl. Low-density development can cause more runoff, while lawns and parks require lots of water to maintain. Shifting development will take planning and foresight — and that work should begin now.

They go on to discuss water conservation in farming and possible desalinization.

The editors are quick to blame climate change. Maybe they’re right. However, the current drought is not the first in the history of the Southwest and not the most severe. Indeed, there was a “megadrought” in the late 1500s, right about the time the Spanish arrived. The difference between then and now is that in 1542 the entire population of the Los Angeles Basin was around 5,000 people. Now it’s more than 12 million. We need to adjust ourselves to the realization that the Southwest has never been suited to the enormous population it now hosts and no amount of conservation will change that. Not only is the population of the Los Angeles Basin enormous, the economy there is largely dependent on that population growing. I don’t honestly see how that can be made to work.

It’s not just Los Angeles, of course, or just California. It’s California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado. The populations of those states must be regulated to what the environment will support. That’s not politics. It’s a statement of fact.

The editors of the Washington Post struggle to offer President Biden meaningful advice on the unknown object that all seem to be balloons:

Some are demanding a nationally televised presidential address. That seems unnecessary at this juncture, unless it’s to reveal new facts.

But it also makes sense to develop a framework for how to approach future such incidents. On Monday, Mr. Biden directed an interagency team, under the direction of the national security adviser, to study the broader policy implications for detection, analysis and disposition of unidentified aerial objects that pose either safety or security risks. This effort could provide important perspective. Not every balloon that appears in the sky over North America needs to be fired upon by a costly missile. It’s harder still to see the need for an even costlier balloon defense program, although military contractors will certainly try to pitch them to lawmakers. To best protect the American people, it’s important to approach these incursions clear-eyed, calmly and without partisan gamesmanship.

IMO the source of the conflict is that you can’t have it both ways. Either the “objects” are completely non-threatening or they aren’t. If they’re non-threatening, why shoot them down?

I don’t think a “balloon defense program” is such a bad idea if by it is meant a face-saving and cost-effective way of dispatching these “objects”. Some military drones would appear to be capable of reaching the altitude at which these objects float. Now we need an alternative method for downing them, able to be carried by a military drone, that’s less pricey than $400,000 missiles.

Alternatively, we could have a military and political leadership with the guts to stand up to the criticism if the “objects” actually do turn out to be threatening in some way.

I found Seema Verma’s op-ed in the Wall Street Journal on Medicare and Medicaid reform a mixture of sound advice and wishful thinking. As is pretty typical in these pieces she does a pretty decent job of stating the problem she wants to solve:

The current rate of growth in Medicare and Medicaid is unsustainable and jeopardizes the country’s ability to fund other priorities such as education, infrastructure and public safety. While the Medicare board of trustees has warned that the program is headed for insolvency in as little as six years, Medicaid has become the largest budget item in most states. Medicare and Medicaid collectively are one of the largest contributors to the national debt and will be the largest federal budget item by 2030, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

It’s her proposed solution that caused me to raise an eyebrow. She suggests changing from the present “fee for services” system to a capitation system.

I’ve written favorably about capitation systems in the past. Under a capitation system a physician is paid a fixed amount for each patient under his or her care. Part of the payment is related to patient outcomes. The advantage of a capitation system is that it aligns the physician’s, patient’s, and the taxpayer’s interests. Here’s her description:

In value-based care, instead of getting paid only when a patient gets sick or for rendering a specific treatment, a doctor is prepaid a fixed amount based on the patient’s health status. This payment method, called capitated payment, is used to cover all the patient’s healthcare-related costs. The prepaid amount creates incentives for the provider to make investments in the type of care that avoids expensive emergency-room visits and hospital stays.

To ensure that care isn’t rationed, part of the doctor’s reimbursement is tied to quality and patient outcomes. For example, doctors can use part of the capitated payment to cover the costs of home modifications to prevent falls, to provide medically tailored meals for diabetics, or to send a nurse to a patient’s home to administer medications.

Value-based reimbursement can also be used to address new high-cost medications. If a patient doesn’t show meaningful improvement after taking the medication, the drug manufacturer’s reimbursement would be reduced or not paid at all.

I’m skeptical for a number of reasons first and foremost because I find it hard to imagine how a capitation system could work alongside a fee for services system for private insurance. I think the only way it would work would be within the context of a full-fledged national health system. Another issue is that historically such systems have been resisted by physicians and medical practices. A capitation system for the U. S. was proposed 80 years ago. The idea died in its infancy due to physician opposition. Again, a capitation system for Medicare was tried in the 1970s. It gained very little participation from physicians. What’s different now?

Something she doesn’t mention. For such a system to work, physicians would not be able to pick and choose among patients. Practices would either be closed to new patients or open to any patient. It’s hard for me to see that gaining much acceptance.

The Air Force shot down another “object” over Lake Huron yesterday. Ka-ching! At the Associated Press Colleen Long, Lolita C. Baldor, and Zeke Miller report:

WASHINGTON (AP) — A U.S. fighter jet shot down an “unidentified object” over Lake Huron on Sunday on orders from President Joe Biden. It was the fourth such downing in eight days and the latest military strike in an extraordinary chain of events over U.S. airspace that Pentagon officials believe has no peacetime precedent.

Part of the reason for the repeated shootdowns is a “heightened alert” following a spy balloon from China that emerged over U.S. airspace in late January, Gen. Glen VanHerck, head of NORAD and U.S. Northern Command, said in a briefing with reporters.

Since then, fighter jets last week also shot down objects over Canada and Alaska. Pentagon officials said they posed no security threats, but so little was known about them that Pentagon officials were ruling nothing out — not even UFOs.

“We have been more closely scrutinizing our airspace at these altitudes, including enhancing our radar, which may at least partly explain the increase,” said Melissa Dalton, assistant defense secretary for homeland defense.

Meanwhile, the Chinese have said that at least ten U. S. balloons have entered their airspace in the last year. From Lily Kuo at the Washington Post:

China’s Foreign Ministry on Monday said the United States has sent at least 10 unsanctioned balloons into Chinese airspace since last year, as the two countries feud over a Chinese airship discovered and shot down by the U.S. military earlier this month. The United States denied the allegation.

and the Taiwanese say that Chinese balloons enter their airspace all of the time. From Kathrin Hille at Financial Times:

Taiwan has observed dozens of Chinese military balloon flights in its airspace in recent years, far more than previously known, adding to concerns that Beijing could be preparing for an attack on the country.

“They come very frequently, the last one just a few weeks ago,” said a senior Taiwanese official. Another person briefed on the matter said such incursions were happening on average once a month.

Previously, Taiwan’s defence ministry had only confirmed one incident in February last year, in which multiple Chinese balloons in four batches loitered over the north of the country.

Other countries in the region, including Japan and the Philippines, have observed balloon incursions into their airspace, but their governments have given little detail.

I’m still trying to figure out what the model is. We need to spend $2 trillion a year on our military to be unprepared to deal with $1,000 lighter-than-air craft other than by shooting $400,000 missiles at them? And we only do it when a civilian points it out?

Update

The editors of the Wall Street Journal declaim:

The military operations in North America have Americans concerned, all the more so because the Administration has been both tight-lipped and dissembling. It didn’t disclose the presence of the first balloon until civilians spotted it over Montana. Then it claimed it posed no threat, only to shoot it down after political criticism. President Biden said it was “not a major breach” but still shot it down.

The Administration also whispered to its media mouthpieces that the Trump Administration had tolerated such balloon intrusions in U.S. airspace, only to correct that story after Trump officials denied any such knowledge. Turns out the Trump-era balloons were discovered only after the fact using intelligence methods.

which is not precisely reassuring. They conclude:

Are we seeing these objects now only because we are suddenly looking for them? Are they sent by foreign actors, or someone else? Do they pose a threat, and we don’t mean only to civilian air traffic? What the hell is going on up there, Mr. President?

I’m more concerned about what the heck is going on down here. Why hasn’t our military been concerned about this?

Even as survivors continue to be pulled from the rubble following the earthquake that struck Turkey and Syria last week, the death toll continue to mount. As of this writing it was around 30,000. Why?

My speculations are:

• Low construction standards and lack of civil enforcement
• Crowding
• Poor civilian infrastructure—much of the area struck was out in the middle of nowhere and consequently hard to reach
• Poor government response—lot of Turks are pointing to this
• Poor preparedness—they really don’t have the equipment, medical resources, etc. to deal with an incident like this

George Friedman asks six very good questions about the prospect of war with China:

• Who will start the war?
• Why would they wait to start the war?
• What does the aggressor hope to accomplish, and is it worth the risk?
• Will the war be on land, in the air, at sea, or some combination of the three?
• Are their respective economies healthy enough to support a war?
• Why would either side leak its intentions?

Given recent news stories war with China may already have begun and it has started in space or, at least, “near space”.

I have several thoughts on this. First, I think that war with China is extremely unlikely. Or, at least, China is extremely unlikely to start a war with us.

Second, I think that war with China would be economically ruinous for the United States but not for China.

And, as I have said before including recently, we are pursuing our own self-destruction so assiduously and enthusiastically we are our own worst enemy.