I have a bit of a problem with this Wall Street Journal editorial, the second in a series on migration induced by the pandemic. Yes, people are moving. Here’s the meat of the editorial:

The survey ranks the states that drew large shares of move-ins in 2021, with a corresponding list of the biggest losers.

The largest net gain belonged to Vermont, where 74% of moves were inbound. The rest of the top five includes South Dakota (69%), South Carolina (63%), West Virginia (63%) and Florida (62%).

One common theme is affordability. West Virginia, South Dakota and South Carolina all placed in the bottom third of states by median home price, according to the index site World Population Review. Nearly half of the moves into Vermont and Florida that the survey captured were among households earning more than $150,000 a year, likely relocating from pricey spots in the Northeast.

New Jersey was the biggest loser for the fourth consecutive year, with 71% of its moves heading out. Next on the departures list were Illinois (67%), New York (63%), Connecticut (60%) and California (59%). The trend here is easy to spot. The states Americans left in droves are among the most expensive in the country. Home costs are high in part because of zoning and regulations. These states also have some of the highest tax burdens.

The popularity of the Sunbelt is often chalked up to nicer weather, but that can’t account for the trend toward the Idaho, the Great Plains and western New England. No matter the weather, the top states for movers have more open spaces compared with the states that lost residents. This low density often corresponds to lower crime as well as greater resistance to pandemic lockdowns.

Americans vote with their feet, as well as their wallets and ballots. They are sending a message to high-tax, ill-governed states.

While I agree with their premise, I don’t necessarily agree with their conclusion and the reason for that is Indiana. By just about any reckoning Indiana is one of the better-governed states in the Union. Here’s the statistics for Indiana. Basically, the state is holding its own. Slightly more people are inbound than outbound and the majority are 55 or over. In income terms the majority of those inbound are in the top 10% of income earners.

My tentative conclusion from all of this is that people are not optimizing, as the editors would have you believe. Some are minimizing. I think that’s how you explain people moving to South Dakota, South Carolina, and West Virginia. I’m eagerly awaiting the editors’ explanation of people moving to Vermont. To my eye it looks as though whiteness were a better explanation that good governance. Have you ever heard West Virginia touted as a well-governed state?

The guidelines for a sensible Ukraine policy are outlined by Katrina vanden Heuvel of all people in her Washington Post column. After a bit of boilerplate about the global pandemic and climate change, she gets to the point:

The United States has no significant national security interest in Ukraine. A civil war has been internationalized into a geopolitical struggle. Ukraine’s people are divided, with millions speaking Russian and looking to the East. The poverty rate is over 50 percent. We’re not about to spend the money and energy needed to bolster the country internally.

The esteemed diplomat George Kennan correctly predicted in 1998 that Russia would “react quite adversely” if NATO expanded to the East. “I think it is a tragic mistake,” he said. “This expansion would make the Founding Fathers of this country turn over in their graves. We have signed up to protect a whole series of countries, even though we have neither the resources nor the intention to do so in any serious way.” Since then, NATO has added 11 member countries that were once either Soviet republics or a part of the Warsaw Pact. NATO expansion has, unsurprisingly, driven Russia and China closer together, a strategic debacle that no U.S. president should encourage.

If he’d taken stock early, a sensible Biden might have decided to defuse tensions with Russia so we can focus on real security concerns. Extending the New START arms-control pact, as Biden did, would be only a first step.

Instead of ramping up military aid to Ukraine and allowing loose talk about Ukraine joining NATO, Biden could call for a joint guarantee of Ukraine’s independence and neutrality. The United States and NATO would agree not to station troops or offensive weapons in former Soviet republics; the Russians would guarantee not to threaten them with military force. Both would pledge not to interfere with those countries’ internal political affairs.

If the U. S. has “no significant national security interest in Ukraine”, whose interest is being promoted? It’s not France’s, Germany’s, or Italy’s. The only answer I’ve been able to come up with on that is anti-Russian Poles and Ukrainians who, for reasons I have been unable to discern, have an outsize influence on our foreign policy.

I’ll post a little later on the risks posed by Russia’s hypersonic missile capability but I do want to add that the time to have considered all of these issues was before our second round of NATO expansion, the one to George Kennan was speaking about above. Now our position is much weaker than it was then.

To understand the horns of the dilemma on which the Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee finds itself in responding to inflation, I wanted to turn to a subject that I do not think is receiving sufficient attention: zombie companies. Simply defined, a “zombie company” is a company for which the interest payments on its corporate debt exceeds its revenue. The only way it can survive is by borrowing more.

How significant a problem is this? Extremely. Since 1980 the percent of zombie companies was 4%. Now it’s nearly 20%. And we’re not talking about “mom and pop” operations or just a couple of sectors:

From Bloomberg:

Bloomberg’s analysis looked at the trailing 12-month operating income of firms in the Russell 3000 index relative to their interest expenses over the same period. The results paint a grim picture. Almost a quarter of the index, or 739 companies, haven’t earned enough to meet their interest payments. That compares with 513 firms at the end of last year. The $1.98 trillion they collectively now owe dwarfs the $1.05 trillion of debt zombie firms reported before the pandemic laid waste to balance sheets. Boeing has seen its total obligations balloon by more than $32 billion this year, while Carnival’s debt burden has increased $14.8 billion, Delta has added $24.2 billion, Exxon $16.2 billion and Macy’s $1.2 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

See also here. These “zombie companies” include all four major airlines, Boeing, and Exxon-Mobil.

What’s the relation between inflation and these zombie companies? They’re highly dependent on ultra-low interest rates and interest rates are the Fed’s main tool for countering inflation.

If interest rates are raised some of them will be unable to raise enough additional borrowing to cover the increased interest payments.

My quest to find someone bold enough to provide his or her definition of democracy led me to this op-ed by Jedediah Britton-Purdy in the New York Times. In it Mr. Britton-Purdy, horrified at the state of American democracy, suggests some reforms:

Jan. 6 and the four years before it were a forcible reminder that democracy is a task, not a birthright. Having rediscovered that we must take democracy seriously, we should now put it first in our politics.

Majorities of the people, not the Electoral College, should be able to pick the president and decide who controls the House and Senate. Everyone making their lives in the United States — including the incarcerated, people convicted of felonies and noncitizens — should be allowed to vote.

This might sound alarming to inland Republican voters who imagine themselves besieged by a permanent coastal majority. But in a working democracy, there are no permanent majorities or minorities. Forging partnerships in a truly democratic system, inland conservatives would soon find new allies — just not ones determined to break democracy itself.

Some of these changes probably require amending the Constitution. Hard changes have come through constitutional amendment before: Shortly before World War I, activists successfully pressed state legislatures to ratify an amendment giving up their power to choose U.S. senators. Maybe we can revive mass movements for amendments, starting with one that would make the amendment process itself more democratic. If the public supports a constitutional amendment to limit money in politics, restrict gerrymandering or enshrine a core abortion right, a committed majority should be able to say what our fundamental law is by popular vote, rather than having to go through the current, complicated process of ratifying amendments through state legislatures or dozens of constitutional conventions.

What surprised me was that he failed to ask the next, rather obvious question. In a “true democracy” (his phrase, not mine) what would be the use of a House or Senate? How can any system be a representative democracy without representing the views of the people? It’s a contradiction in terms.

What is also rather obvious is that political parties are undemocratic. Consider that in every state the redistricting process has resulted in conferring an advantage to whichever political party controlled the process. The again rather obvious conclusion from that is that seizing such advantages is not a Republican thing. It is a human thing. National at-large elections for representatives in which the districting process is controlled nationally would inevitably result in a permanent advantage conferred to whichever part happened to hold a majority at the time. In other words, to return to Mr. Britton-Purdy’s terminology, we can have a “working democracy” or we can have a representative democracy with political parties but we cannot have both. Again, it’s a contradiction in terms.

There continues to be substantial fulmination over U. S. democracy although few seem ready to define what they mean. I thought it might be illuminating to take note of some policies that would be put in effect if the U. S. were indeed a democracy (defined as a majority of people supporting the policies):

• There would be a national health plan
• There would be national vaccine mandates covering federal contractors and companies with more than 100 employees
• U. S. troops would oppose the Russians if Russia were to invade Ukraine
• U. S. forces would defend Taiwan if it were attacked by the Chinese
• More robust enforcement of our southern border
• English would be the national language
• Interracial and same-sex marriage would remain legal
• Marijuana wo8uld be legalized (Ibid)
• Athletes would compete on teams that reflect their birth gender.
• The death penalty would remain legal

I would add that income and wealth inequality and climate change are not major priorities among a majority of Americans.

Note that these are not necessarily my views but they reflect the views of a majority of Americans. I would be happy to add to this list but please include empirical support for any proposed additions.

I do not believe that our present government is democratic and that most of those calling for greater democracy actually seek permanent single party rule. For my part I don’t think that greater democracy is possible without weakening the hold that the party leadership has on both political parties.

Update

• Immigrants brought here illegally as children would be granted legal status.
• Abortion would be legal under certain circumstances.
• Ownership of firearms by private individuals would remain legal but gun control would be stricter than at present.

What struck me about Aaron Herzberg’s lengthy list of adverse consequences of wearing facemarks at Brownstone Institute:

One of the most trenchant arguments made by proponents of forced masking is some variation of “it’s just an inconvenience”, so/and/or “why do you have to make such a big deal about it”. (To be clear, this is not a legitimate scientific or factual argument for the adoption of any policy, but that is not what this article is about.) I am largely going to avoid the issues unique to masking children – what is plainly institutionalized child abuse – and for people with disabilities or past trauma, as many of the harms inflicted by masks are readily apparent and easily articulable.

On the surface, this contention seems like a morally and factually compelling argument. After all, if masks had any meaningful efficacy, wouldn’t it be a worthwhile tradeoff to endure a little discomfort to reduce the far worse suffering and death that would otherwise be inflicted by covid?

Yet this argument – “what’s the big deal” – does not square with how many people experience masks and mask mandates, including practically everyone who disagrees with masking as a policy. It is undeniable that millions of people are considerably more tormented by facemasks than what we would expect is reasonable or even possible for something that is indeed merely an “inconvenience”. People generally do not profoundly suffer from trivialities.

is that I honestly don’t think I experience any of them. My greater concern about them which I don’t see in his list is moral hazard, i.e. that wearing facemasks could encourage people to take risks they otherwise would avoid. I just found it interesting to hear how other people experience them.

We were saddened to learn that Betty White had died. We’ve been watching her on television all our lives—she’s appeared on television almost continually for seven decades although it was in mid-life that she gained the most fame and success, first in The Mary Tyler Moore Show and then in The Golden Girls. All of her performances had a certain mischievous quality to them, right from her very first television program, Life With Elizabeth, back in the days of live television. The Variety obit observes:

In 1953 White landed her first sitcom, “Life With Elizabeth,” which was short-lived, as was daytime talkshow “The Betty White Show” in 1954, “A Date With the Angels” in 1957 and comedy variety skein “The Betty White Show” in 1958.

She then drifted into gameshows, including “To Tell the Truth,” “I’ve Got a Secret,” “Match Game,” “Password” and “What’s My Line?” White was also a regular on the nighttime “Jack Paar Show” and the syndicated woman’s daytime show “Girl Talk.” During that time she had her own radio show on CBS, “Ask Betty White.”

You can’t honestly say that she was the last remaining performer from the Golden Age of Television but now those who remain were undoubtedly children at the time.

2021 has been a hard year for the cast of The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Ed Asner, Chloris Leachman, Gavin McLeod, and now Betty White have all died this year.

Try to catch an episode of Life With Elizabeth some time. It’s readily available on the Internet. I presume it’s in the public domain. It’s eccentric—before television sitcoms had settled into the formulae they continue to follow today.

I first posted on what is an important emerging category of spirits, American single malt whiskies, back in November 2019 and now, after two years of arduous, even single-minded research I am prepared to make my results public. Over the last two years I have consumed more whiskey than at any prior time in my life (not to excess, mind you). The cause of advancing science sometimes demands sacrifice. Here, in no particular order, are my favorites. During the last two years I only found one American single-malt whiskey which was actually undrinkable. I will not mention it here. Suffice it to say, if you stick with the drams I mention here you can hardly go wrong.

Stranahan’s Blue Proof: 86 Finish: aged in American oak barrels, Solera finished Price: $39.99 This whiskey, produced in Denver, has become one of our house staples.
Balcones Lineage Proof: 94 Finish: Aged in refill and new oak barrels Price: $39.99 While not quite as refined as the Stranahan’s, this whiskey has a substantial amount of character. It has replaced its cousin, Balcones Baby Blue, as one of our house staples. It is distilled in Waco, Texas.
Westward Proof: 90 Finish: aged in charred American oak barrels Price: $69.99
Cedar Ridge Quintessential Proof: 92 Finish: Price: $59.99 This whiskey is distilled in Swisher, Iowa.
Corsair Single Malt Proof: 90 Finish: Price: $64.99 This is distilled in Nashville, Tennessee. Sadly both the Corsair Single Malt and Triple Smoke are out of stock. The Triple Smoke sort of defies description. A bit like drinking a rib smoker.

I struggled with myself before posting on this editorial at the Wall Street Journal. On the one hand I agree with their premise and would even add one of my own. On the other hand I think they’re overstating the strength of their case.

Their premise is that most of the major media outlets are run by progressives who, shall we say, slant their coverage to get progressives elected and favor the policy goals of progressives which has led to their taking egregiously false positions on a number of significant stories over the last several years. Those outlets include to varying degrees of bias the New York Times, the Washington Post, ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, and MSNBC.

My additional claim is that progressives tend to hold erroneous views of human nature which inevitably result in their favored policies producing bad results.

Here are the editors’ remarks on some stories that the media got wrong. My observations will follow.

• The Wuhan Virology Lab origin theory of Covid-19. In the early days of the pandemic, even raising this as a possibility was taboo. Sen. Cotton was vilified for doing so. The Lancet, a supposedly open-minded scientific journal, published a letter in February 2020 “to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin.”

This year we learned that the Lancet letter was part of a coordinated effort to quash the lab theory. We learned about the conflicts of interest of Anthony Fauci and others who provided funding for the Wuhan lab. Eventually even the press noticed that China had blocked an honest inquiry, and that no evidence for a natural origin has emerged.

• Lockdowns stop Covid-19. There was no fiercer consensus in the early days of the virus than the belief that locking down the economy to stop the virus was an unadulterated social good. We felt the consensus wrath when we raised doubts, in an editorial on March 20, 2020, about the harm that lockdowns would do to the economy and public health.

Two years later we now know that lockdowns at most delay the virus spread. The damage in lost education for children, lost livelihoods for workers and employers, and damage to mental health is obvious for all to see. Even Randi Weingarten, the teachers union chief who did so much to keep schools closed, now claims she wanted to keep them open all along.

• The supply side of the economy doesn’t matter. The Keynesian consensus, which dominates the U.S. and European media, has long held that the demand for goods and services drives the economy. The ability or incentive to supply those goods is largely ignored or dismissed. Spurring demand was the theory behind the trillions of dollars in spending by Congress and easy money from the Federal Reserve.

All that money did spur demand. But the Keynesians ignored the disincentives to increase supply from paying people not to work and restricting work with lockdowns and mandates. The result was the surging inflation that caught nearly all of them by surprise. Their demand-side models never saw it coming.

• The Steele dossier and Russia collusion narrative. In 2019 the Mueller report exposed the lack of evidence for the claims that Donald Trump and the Kremlin were in cahoots. This year the indictments by special counsel John Durham have revealed how Democrats and the press worked together to promote the dossier that was based on disinformation.

Yet for four years nearly everyone in the dominant media bought the collusion narrative. One or two of the gullible have apologized, but most want everyone to forget what they wrote or said at the time.

• Vilifying police won’t affect crime. The fast-congealing consensus after George Floyd’s murder was that most police were racist, as was most of American society, and violent protests against this were justified—even admirable. Woe to anyone who pointed out that the victims of these riots and crime were mostly poor and minority communities.

Police funding was cut and bail laws eased in many cities. Eighteen months later we see the result in rising crime rates and a soaring murder count. A political backlash now has even many Democrats claiming they really do want more funding for police.

Theory suggests that SARS-CoV-2 developed in an animal population and made the jump to infecting humans. At this point we’ll probably never know its true origins. My view is that there is already sufficient evidence that it spread via a leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology to prevail in a civil suit in the United States and that course of action should be pursued if for no other reason that it might energize the Chinese authorities to pursue and provide compelling evidence of an alternative theory.

Was there actually a fierce consensus that lockdowns were “an unadulterated social good”? I wish they had presented some evidence to that effect. My recollection was that it was a desperate move to slow the progress of the virus, taken with the understanding that it would also have adverse consequences. I think it would have been helpful if political leaders at the time had laid out their thinking in more detail and with more metrics. At least here in Illinois those were completely absent.

I think they misstate the “Keynesian consensus”. I also think that it is no more wrong than Newtonian mechanics is wrong, i.e. it’s just a special case. The underlying assumption is that an increase aggregate demand will impel an increase in aggregate supply. That’s the source of the “Keynesian multiplier”. I would say an increase in aggregate demand through borrowing is only benign to the extent that it does not exceed the increase in aggregate supply. IMO globalization throws everything into a cocked hat.

I thought the Steele dossier and the attendant Russia collusion narrative were pretty obviously the products of Clinton campaign oppo research but deserved investigation. I think that my more restrained approach has paid off. If not taking a highly confrontation stance with respect to Russia is being “in cahoots” with the Kremlin, most reasonable, well-informed people are.

I largely agree with their point about “vilifying the police”. Rather than going into hysterics about racism in police departments I think we’d be much better off devoting our energy to the problem of police officers taking an “us vs. them” attitude with “us” being police officers and “them” being everybody else. I also see a distinction between “vilifying the police” and taking a realistic attitude towards them.
I don’t deny that some police officers are racist; some are; some aren’t. One of the least racist, most progressive people I know (a college roommate) spent 30 years as a police officer. You learn a lot getting invited to cop parties.

I wouldn’t classify the stories they selected as the things the media got most egregiously wrong, either. I think that honor belong to its defense of the “1619 Project” which has been demonstrated to be a lie. A close second would be the role of CEI in the schools which IMO is extremely widespread and almost completely malignant.