Chris Pope concludes his post at City Journal on our healthcare systems like this:

The United States cannot solve its health-care challenges by adopting one or another country’s health-care system wholesale. But it could avoid lots of heartache by better aligning its four principal health-care systems. In recent decades, the Netherlands and Germany have sought to break down barriers between employer-sponsored insurance and individual coverage. The United States should do something similar.

I’ve said it before. We have an employer-based healthcare system larger than Germany’s, a single-payer system (Medicaid) larger than Canada’s, and a “dual payer” system like France’s or Australia (Medicare) larger than both of those systems put together. Needless to say our tightly regulated individual insurance system (PPACA) is larger than Switzerland’s by an order of magnitude. We even have a fully socialized system like National Health in the system of the Bureau of Indian Affairs although it is significantly smaller than BNH.

I agree that we need reform but I find it farfetched that uniting our healthcare systems under any single system will result in cost savings until and unless the Congress is willing to limit that system which it has shown little inclination to do. The burden of proof is on anybody who thinks that just scaling up any of these systems will inherently result in cost savings.

Practically no one would like the way I would reform our healthcare systems so I won’t even bother to outline it. Suffice it to say that the focus would be on public goods (non-excludable and non-rivalrous) and, consequently, would be limited to public health.

The definition of “schadenfreude” is taking pleasure from the misfortunes of others. Other than schadenfreude what is the interest in the squabbling among Republicans over who will be the next Speaker of the House?

I have even less interest in what Republicans do or do not do than most. No Republican has even run for mayor of Chicago in the last 45 years. That’s why it always galls me when Republicans say “Well, that’s what you get for electing Democrats”. Who else are we going to elect? They’re the only ones running.

I sincerely believe that if every Republican were to mysteriously vanish from the State of Illinois, it wouldn’t solve a single one of the state’s problems.

According to House rules the majority and minority caucuses each nominate one candidate and whichever of those candidates receives a majority of the votes cast by House members becomes speaker. In theory the Speaker of the House is not a partisan role like House Majority Leader. In practice it is.

As I’ve said before IMO the Speaker of the House is the most powerful individual in the United States. Not the president. Not the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Not the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Not even the CEO of Amazon. The Speaker of the House.

I also think that the accretion of power by party leaders is what makes the United States undemocratic. Consequently, reducing the power of party officials is more urgent than electoral reform or even civil service reform, both of which are long overdue.

So, what’s the big deal about Republicans squabbling over who will be the next speaker? I think it’s healthy. Healthier than no contest, anyway.

I used to do annual prediction posts but I’ve given that up so I’ll ask you. What do you expect to happen in 2023?

Some reasonable guesses:

• On January 2, 2024 the war in Ukraine will continue to grind on.
• At best: economic malaise; at worst: recesssion.
• Another major conflict somewhere in the world that we’re up to our hips in.
• Government by edict (“executive order”).

Anything else?

HeyJackass! reports the preliminary yearend tally in Chicago as 734 homicides, 2,936 shot. I’m sure that Mayor Lightfoot is touting that as a significant accomplishment but, as the author observes, there have been 700 or more homicides every year of Mayor Lightfoot’s term. By my calculations that’s the worst tally ever when adjusted for population. By far the greatest percentage of both victims and perpetrators are black and the percentage is even worse when considered by black population. Chicago’s black population has declined substantially over the last several decades. It’s lower than it was 50 years ago as is Chicago’s total population.

The Illinois Supreme Court has issued a stay on the provision of the SAFE-T Act abolishing cash bail. Tim Ward reports at ABC 7 Chicago:

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (WLS) — The Illinois Supreme Court has halted the Pre Trial Fairness Act, a provision of the Safe-T Act, hours before it is set to go in effect at the first of the year.

The decision handed means, until further notice, every county in the state must maintain a cash bail system.

The court issued the order Saturday evening, keeping the cash bail system until further notice as the state appeals a judge’s ruling on the matter.

“Throughout the entire state of Illinois, we need to have the same rules, the same protections for every single person no matter where they live,” said Kane County State’s Attorney Jamie Mosser.

Earlier this week, a Kankakee County judge ruled that a portion of the Safe-T Act, that ends cash bail in Illinois, is unconstitutional after states attorneys in 65 Illinois counties challenged the new law.

In his 33-page opinion, Judge Thomas Cunnington cited the need for a separation of powers, saying “…the appropriateness of bail rests with the authority of the court and may not be determined by legislative fiat.”

It’s a step in the right direction but I suspect the stay won’t be maintained forever. I question Judge Cunnington’s reasoning in this.

I’ve posted about a number of the lines in my family history but I don’t believe I’ve posted about the Schneiders. My maternal grandmother’s given name was Annunciata Augusta Schneider. She was named for her father, August Schneider, who in turn was named after his mother’s uncle, August Didier. Her given name was Celestine Didier.

My maternal grandmother’s mother’s given name was Mary Jane Flanagan. I’ll write a separate post about the Flanagans. There’s a lot to write about there, particularly my great-great-grandfather Edwward Flanagan. He was in the Civil War, was a cowboy, working on some of the famous trails out west in the 1870s, and then became a cattle grader.

August Schneider was an alcoholic. He deserted the family and he and my great-grandmother were divorced, quite a scandal in those days. My grandmother was the oldest of five children: Sylverius (William Sylvester), Celestine, Edward, and Joseph. Her mother managed to eke out a living as a cook for a prosperous family. That left my grandmother to care for her four younger siblings.

They were incredibly poor. They lived in the cheapest possible housing in St. Louis—a houseboat moored on the Mississippi. One room with just a stove for both heating and cooking. No central heat, no electricity, no plumbing. I presume they dredged water from the river. The stench must have been unimaginable. No wonder my grandmother ran away and joined a vaudeville troupe.

All but one of the Schneider children died relatively young: my grandmother, known as “Joanne” or “Babe” at 51 of a brain aneurysm, Bill (Sylverius) at 28, Celestine at 18, and Joseph at 12. Jennie (Mary Jane) outlived all of her children but my grandmother and Ed. Hers was a tragic life.

Ed was called up for World War II, the Korean War, and Vietnam. He served in the Navy. He lived to be 96. I met Ed many times. I wouldn’t say we were close but I definitely knew him and was fond of him and his family. His children are my closest living blood relatives other than my siblings.

August lived into his 80s. He died in a poor house on the other side of the river. I’ve seen his grave.

Those are the Schneiders. One of the great mysteries in my family history is how August’s father, William Schneider, and his mother, Celestine Didier, met. Although a third generation American Celestine was a native speaker of French. I presume she also spoke English at least a little but when my mother met her as a very young child she spoke only French. Her family was prosperous and her uncle and guardian August Didier was married into one of St. Louis’s most prominent families, one that went back before the city’s founding. At the time of his death her grandfather’s estate was valued at nearly $600,000 in today’s money.

Update

It has been pointed out to me that I did not represent how awful the Schneiders’ circumstances actually were. The Schneider kids were in and out of orphanages throughout their childhoods, as their parents’ fortunes varied. Ed was quite resentful about that. The youngest, Joe’s, official cause of death was epilepsy. Ed said he died of malnutrition. Celestine’s grave was violated by a graverobber.

George Friedman opens his post with a list of the ways that wars end:

1. A war ends when one side lacks the material to continue. Germany’s campaign in World War II ended when it was unable to produce and field the weapons needed to fend off the Allied powers.
2. A war ends when one side’s morale is exhausted – when soldiers and civilians are simply unwilling to bear the burden of war, even if victory is possible. This was the case for the United States in the Vietnam War.
3. A war ends when there is no hope of a radical increase in military power, and when foreign intervention is impossible. In WWII, Britain persevered knowing it could not defeat Germany but reasonably expecting an American intervention.
4. A war ends when the consequences of defeat seem tolerable to civilians. In World War II, the Italian public saw Allied occupation as a preferable alternative. (Conversely, nations will continue to fight when the cost of defeat is catastrophic.)

concluding that the war in Ukraine is likely to continue for a long time:

Over time, then, the sense of the impossibility of victory will trigger peace talks, but not until reality forces it.

I wonder if the war will continue until there aren’t enough Ukrainians between the ages of 15 and 45 to maintain an organized resistance.

As usual I didn’t make it all the way to midnight last night. I’m still planning to watch ABC Chicago’s show. There’s always a dance number that’s fun featuring one of the meteorologists and one of the news anchors.

May we all have a better year in 2023! Setting a low bar, I know.

Expanding on the thoughts in my last post, in her Washington Post column Megan McArdle says that Southwest’s problem is staffing:

How did it come to this? If I had to pick only one factor — one hole in the cheese — it would be staffing. That’s hardly Southwest’s only problem, but it’s probably the one problem that made all the others worse.

The operational efficiency and brand loyalty that made Southwest a case study were built on a foundation of human capital. You can’t run a finely tuned productivity machine with disgruntled, undertrained employees who are phoning it in; you need teams that work together well and solve problems on the fly. Southwest has long been known for its strong corporate culture; as Gary Leff of the indispensable View From the Wing blog told me, “Front-line people, from gate agents to flight attendants, at Southwest Airlines usually seem to like their jobs, which can be a contrast from other carriers.”

which has some resonance with one of the factors I cited in my post—generational shift. Old employees retired and the newer, younger ones didn’t know Southwest’s procedures and operations as well.

The editors of the Washington Post on the other hand blame Southwest’s management for failing to upgrade the company’s information technology infrastructure:

The core problem is Southwest’s failure to modernize its infrastructure. Casey Murray, president of the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association, told CNN the airline still uses phones and a computing system from three decades ago. While 1990s fashion might be back en vogue for teenagers, that era’s data processors should not be running one of the nation’s largest airlines in 2022. The system was unable to figure out where crews were, making it impossible to match up pilots, flight attendants and planes.

Those two explanations are not unrelated. A more experienced staff might have been compensating for deficits in the company’s IT and the newer staff might have been frustrated with the antiquated programs.

Here’s the “blame” part:

What’s particularly egregious is the fact that Southwest had the money to upgrade its systems but chose to hand it to shareholders instead. The airline recently announced it would pay a dividend again that amounts to $428 million a year. Southwest also received more than $7 billion from the U.S. federal government to shore up its operations during the pandemic. It paid a quarterly dividend for years before the coronavirus struck, signaling to Wall Street that the airline had cash to spare.

In other words, given a choice, Southwest put its investors ahead of its customers and crew. Now, the full ramifications of those decisions are causing massive pain — and what will almost certainly be a collapse of trust from the budget-minded travelers who have consistently ranked it among the best airlines when it comes to customer satisfaction.

I have no way of adjudicating among these explanations. I’m just passing them along.

I would point out that the entire air travel sector is notoriously slow to upgrade its IT. As late as the 1980s the air traffic system being used was one that had been developed in the 1960s, reliant on vacuum tube technology. American and United were still using systems they had developed 20 years previously. Maybe that has changed but I doubt it.