The editors of the Wall Street Journal crow over a recent Gallup poll that Americans continues to prefer capitalism over socialism by a substantial margin:

Politicians and think tanks these days welcome the death of free markets as they support more power for the state. But a new poll from Gallup confirms that the American people still have more faith in capitalism than they do in socialism. Gallup further reports that this support for capitalism over socialism has held steady for more than a decade.

Asked in an October survey—“just off the top of your head”—whether they have a positive or negative image of six different economic and governmental terms, 60% reported “positive” for capitalism against 38% for socialism.

Gallup notes that the negative view of socialism has remained constant “even as Sen. Bernie Sanders and progressive Democratic politicians have pursued an expanded government role in addressing healthcare, poverty and early childhood education.” They might have noted that some of the push these days for more government control of economic life is coming from the political right as well.

I wonder what people mean by “capitalism” and “socialism”? I strongly suspect that most people including most elected officials think in terms of slogans rather having any informed views on the subject. In particular how do you reconcile the enduring popularity of Medicare, Social Security retirement income, and the military with support for capitalism?

In considering this let’s make one observation and then define our terms. In every country in the world there are only two basic forms of organizing an economy: a market system and a command economy. In a market system prices are determined by what people are willing to pay and what is bought and sold depends on the choices of individual buyers and sellers. In a command system the government determines what will be bought and sold and the prices that will be paid. There are very few pure market systems or pure command economies. Almost all countries are somewhere in between.

Now I’ve already defined “capitalism”. “Socialism” on the other hand means government control of the means of production. Some people blithely talk about “public control” or “popular control” but other than in very small communities such a thing does not exist in the wild. In practice all socialism is state socialism.

What would a pure market system look like? Just to make a little list under a pure market system there would be no government regulations, no patents or copyrights, no occupational licensing, no health or safety requirements, no Medicare or Medicaid, no Social Security, no public highways, and no standing army. I presume some will disagree with that last. The reality is that a modern standing army cannot be supported solely based on a head tax and anything other than a head tax is redistribution which is socialism. What most people forget is that money is the most important means of production and, if the government controls the money, it’s socialism.

Only the most doctrinaire anarcho-capitalists want such a pure market system. My observation is that most people, including the editors of the Wall Street Journal, square the circle by creating their own fuzzy definitions of capitalism and socialism. When you take such a post-modern view anything can be anything. Nothing has any meaning.

Which do I prefer? Both. Neither. My preference would be for a government focused intently on keeping everything including the government at a human scale. Corporations, NGOs, bureaucracies, all organizations would be limited in how big they could be. The federal government would remain large but it would be limited in its scope to that purpose, to the military, and to foreign policy. Every day my ideal system recedes farther and farther into the distance. I’ve learned to deal with disappointment.

Economist Casey Mulligan has an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal on the childcare provisions in the “Build Back Better” bill. Here’s a sample:

Child care is already a major expense for parents, and President Biden pledges to reduce its cost with his multitrillion-dollar Build Back Better bill. Yet while some of those who receive government subsidies may see reduced costs, millions of other working parents could see their child-care costs double. The new program would act like a $20,000 to $30,000 annual tax on middle-income families.

The bill’s latest draft proposes to reinvent child care with a trifecta of cost-increasing forces. First, it would remove much of the incentive to offer lower-cost care. Millions of families would have their child-care expenses capped by statute, which means they’d pay the same at an expensive facility as at a cheaper one.

Providers would quickly discover that lower prices no longer are much of a competitive advantage. Moreover, the providers would be reimbursed extra for what Congress calls “quality,” which is a euphemism for having more staff per child. The history of rate regulation is that cost-plus schemes result in needless waste and higher prices for consumers without quality improvements.

Churches and other faith-based institutions have a natural cost advantage in child care because church facilities would otherwise sit unused on weekdays, when the demand for care is greatest. Build Back Better would squander this advantage by financing capacity expansions only at nonreligious competitors.

Second, providers would need extra staff to comprehend and comply with all the new statutes, certifications and agency rules. Just as physicians complain about paperwork eating up time that could be spent with patients, child-care providers will lose time they could be spending with kids.

Third, the bill imposes “living wage” regulations on staff pay. In a study for the Committee to Unleash Prosperity, I estimate these regulations alone would add 80% to child-care costs.

I agree with some of what Dr. Mulligan has to say but disagree with others. For example, I disagree with this completely:

The best way to help working families is to cut their tax bills, which helps not only families using child-care facilities but also those providing the best care available—at home with mom or dad.

Almost 2/3s of households already pay no federal income taxes. What good is a tax cut to them? And to my eye at any rate those are the households most in need and deserving of assistance.

In addition there are basic questions that need to be addressed. No one seems to be pointing out the inherent contradictions in positions that Republicans are taking. I agree with conditioning receiving welfare on work. It has proven effective. However, is it not obvious that also imposes a mandate for childcare?

About a quarter of all children live in single parent households. For them there is “at home with mom or dad” there is only “home alone”.

Additionally, I believe there is a categoric difference between subsidizing childcare for the highest quintile of income earners and for the lower quintiles. For the latter childcare is a necessity like food or shelter. Providing subsidies for the former is just subsidizing their lifestyles. Why do the Democrats insist on subsidizing the lifestyles or the well-to-do?

The editors of the Wall Street Journal remark on the hard time that President Biden’s vaccine mandates are encountering in the courts:

What legal sage advised President Biden to impose vaccine mandates? The adviser needs to have his law licence pulled because the courts are repudiating the Administration’s mandates at an astonishing pace. A federal judge in Georgia was the latest on Tuesday when he blocked its vaccine requirement for employees of federal contractors—the fifth judicial rebuke in less than a month.

Judge R. Stan Baker ruled in a challenge brought by seven states that the Administration had exceeded its authority under the Federal Property and Administrative Services Act. The President claimed his executive order would “promote economy and efficiency in procurement” by contracting with sources “that provide adequate Covid-19 safeguards for their workforce.”

But the law does not give the President “the right to impose virtually any kind of requirement on businesses that wish to contract with the Government (and, thereby, on those businesses’ employees) so long as he determines it could lead to a healthier and thus more efficient workforce or it could reduce absenteeism,” Judge Baker wrote.

Last week federal Judge Gregory Van Tatenhove enjoined the Administration from enforcing the contractor mandate in Kentucky, Ohio and Tennessee. While conceding that Congress delegated broad power to the President, the judge noted that his “authority is not absolute” and the President’s overreach raises “several concerning statutory and constitutional implications.” The mandate “intrudes on an area that is traditionally reserved to the States,” Judge Tatenhove wrote, noting the Constitution grants the states general police powers to regulate public health and welfare.

which you may notice closely follows what I have been saying.

Good intentions are not enough. You must also be doing the right things in the right way. Anything else is a waste of time. I like to believe that the Administration thinks that its good intentions are enough but they increasingly seem to be showing that they are less interested in actually accomplishing things than in being seen to be trying to accomplish things.

As I’ve also said before I believe the executive branch should be using its constitutional powers as well as encouraging the legislative branch and the states to use theirs. I have no doubt that the states have the authority to impose vaccine mandates and I am equally certain that the federal government has the authority to regulate commerce and transportation between the states, particularly on federal highways.

I recognize that some will view this as pure partisan politics but I think it’s more than that. It’s an issue of separation of powers and legal authority. Presidents are not absolute monarchs. It doesn’t matter to which party they belong.

In his Wall Street Journal column William Galston attempts to explain Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin’s view of the situation with respect to the Ukraine:

Mr. Putin’s master narrative rests on his interpretation of more than 1,000 years of Russian history, from which he derives a conclusion: Russians and Ukrainians are “one people—a single whole,” speaking variants of one language, professing a common faith, sharing a common culture, whose separation results from a divide-and-rule strategy pursued for centuries by Russia’s enemies. He attributes the idea of the Ukrainian people as a separate nation to 19th century “Polish elites” and Malorussian (“Little Russian”) intellectuals, a theory concocted with “no historical basis” and subsequently adopted by Austro-Hungarian authorities for their own purposes before World War I.

I should point out that the view expressed above he is hardly knew. It’s a key component of what is called “Pan-Slavism” and has been the preeminent view in Russia for nearly 200 years. He continues:

Russia’s enemies in the West have conspired with right-wing and neo-Nazi Ukrainians to create an “anti-Russia project” whose purpose is to drive a wedge between Russia and Ukraine. Although the two countries are “natural complementary economic partners” that have long developed as a “single economic system,” the West has used loans and grants to cut Ukraine off from Russia and subordinate it to foreign economic interests.

After what Mr. Putin labels a “coup” in 2014 that led to the removal of a pro-Russian government, Ukraine’s new government signed an association agreement with the European Union that deepened Ukraine’s anti-Russian orientation, “inevitably” provoking “civil war” in the Donetsk region. Worse still from the Russian president’s perspective: the deployment of Western military advisers, infrastructure and weapons on Ukrainian soil.

to which James Joyner responds:

Now, this is almost complete horseshit. But I can understand why Putin would see it this way.

I wish James had expanded on that a bit more. Much of it is merely a statement of fact. There was a coup in 2014 which led to the removal of the pro-Russian Yanukovych government which was the legitimate and democratically elected government of Ukraine as had been certified by international observers, among them Jimmy Carter. Does he disagree that some of the supporters of the coup were “right-wing and neo-Nazi Ukrainians”? That, too, is a statement of fact. Some were. Were they all? I doubt it. I think they were just anti-Russian. Is it the notion that the coup had the support of the United States or other Western countries? My understanding is that is hotly disputed. I think it is beyond question that some in the West did, indeed, encourage the coup but I doubt it was officially supported by the U. S. government. Given the rather obvious involvement of the Biden family, the participants in the coup may have believed they had the support of the U. S. government.

I wouldn’t claim that the Yanukovych government was good; it was corrupt as all Ukrainian governments since the collapse of the Soviet Union have been.

What is apparent is that there are more than just two parties (Russia and Ukraine) and, indeed, more than three (Russia, Ukraine, and the U. S.) involved in this matter. There’s also Germany, as Katja Hoyer observes in an op-ed in the Washington Post:

As things stand now, Russia supplies a quarter of the E.U.’s oil and 40 percent of its gas. Germany’s controversial Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which runs under the Baltic Sea — bypassing Ukraine, unlike some of earlier routes — will make this dependency worse. Putin has already tested the political potential of this situation by withholding gas supplies when Europe recently asked for more.

Deterrence works only if the other side believes that you mean business. Putin knows that the E.U. will not risk high energy prices, power outages and domestic friction to protect the integrity of Ukraine. The invasions of Georgia and Crimea showed this. And now that Germany is phasing out nuclear energy and coal, European dependency on Russian gas is more severe than ever.

With so little credibility behind economic threats, the only way to make deterrence work is a united military front through NATO. Merkel’s 16-year tenure has done much damage in this regard. A Russian speaker who grew up in East Germany, she has always had a very personal relationship with Putin, who speaks fluent German and also spent years in East Germany as a KGB agent. In conflicts, Merkel’s first instinct was to call Moscow directly, going over the heads of the people of Eastern Europe. She has done the same during the recent migrant crisis in Belarus, making two calls to Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko.

The new German government will have to break this pattern of bilateral diplomacy, which is sowing resentment among its European neighbors. There is growing suspicion that Berlin believes it has a special relationship with Moscow.

I would point out that no two of these parties have interests that are perfectly aligned and bringing them closer together will be no mean feat. There are many things I don’t understand about all of this. For the life of me I don’t understand the U. S. interest in Ukraine and, in particular, in having Ukraine join the European Union or NATO. Since we’re apparently willing to risk global thermonuclear war over Ukraine we must have some interest but, as long as Germany is more aligned with Russia than it is with us, it’s very hard for me to see the interest.

The editors of Bloomberg call for the public schools to remain open:

At this point, the evidence against remote learning is overwhelming. A November study from the National Bureau of Economic Research compared standardized test scores from schools in districts that fully reopened early in the pandemic with those that remained at least partly virtual. While passing rates in math slumped by an average of 14.2% overall, the decline was smaller for districts that returned to in-person instruction. Drops in reading scores were heavily concentrated in areas with large populations of minorities and low-income students, which were slower to reopen.

Though students have largely returned to the classroom, the vast majority still have ground to make up. Additional instruction — in the form of longer school days, summer classes and individual tutoring — is critical for those at greatest disadvantage. Instead, some districts, from Bellevue, Washington, to Brevard County, Florida, have done the opposite. Citing staffing shortages related to teacher exhaustion, among other excuses, schools have been adding last-minute vacation days, often with little notice for parents. Leading the mental-health relief trend, officials in Detroit announced that schools would conduct in-person instruction only four days a week during December, with Fridays all remote.

Reducing in-person class time is not just a disaster for students — it’s also a betrayal of public trust. Congress has passed three separate relief packages, across two administrations, with funds intended to help districts stay open. But tens of billions of dollars apparently remain unspent.

Policy makers should require districts to demonstrate that they’re using these funds to keep schools open. At a minimum, the practice of adding unplanned vacation days should be halted. More support for teachers may be warranted, but it shouldn’t come at the expense of learning. Schools should instead expand professional development and mental-health services for teachers so that more of them remain on the job. They should hire reading and math specialists to supplement classroom teachers. Reforming licensing policies to allow teachers to use their credentials across state lines could help ease any localized staffing strains.

Meanwhile, federal and state officials should better prepare schools to stay open during a possible winter surge driven by the Omicron variant. On-site vaccination clinics and access to rapid tests should be expanded. School leaders should adopt “test-to-stay” strategies, which allow more students to continue in-person learning, even if classmates test positive for the virus.

As I’ve been pointing out since the beginning of the pandemic there are actually multiple parties involved in this issue. There are parents and students, faculty, and politicians and their interests are not always aligned.

When I read Joel Kotkin’s piece at Quillette about the “post-work society”, of which this is a snippet:

While Asian countries are focusing on future work, Western societies seem determined to eliminate gainful employment for blue-collar and middle-management workers. Many jobs that could support families have disappeared, and most new opportunities tend to be low-wage service work. One widely cited reason for the recent labor shortages relates to a post-pandemic reluctance to accept low wages, including those in the “gig” economy, where pay and hours are often uncertain.

Some low-paid workers have also found state support during the pandemic to be, in some cases, more profitable than work, and a way to remove the risks associated with crowded offices and public transport. Yet, although the pandemic was the trigger for this withdrawal, high levels of public welfare delinked from work have also been associated with the persistently high unemployment that has plagued countries such as Italy and Spain.

Not everyone sees mass idleness as an unalloyed negative. “Post-work” fits neatly with the de-growth philosophy pushed by climate activists today. This notion seeks to ratchet down consumption among the masses by reducing the size of homes, cars, air travel, and air conditioning. Particularly hard-hit would be millions of working-class people, particularly those in well-paying manufacturing, construction, and energy jobs. UBI would provide the basics for a properly austere ecological lifestyle.

I was immediately reminded of Cyril M. Kornbluth’s influential science fiction story, “The Marching Morons”. I’ve got a copy of it sitting around in an old Galaxy magazine around here somewhere. I wonder how long it will take for people to come up with Barlow’s solution to the problem raised?

Here’s the peroration of Brandon J. Weichert’s piece at Asia Times decrying the degree to which we have unlearned the lessons of Pearl Harbor:

The solution is not to court war; it is to delay it. The only thing the US can do is to rebuild itself over the next decade. It must make itself economically more dynamic and attractive to the rest of the world than it has ever been. It must stop getting mired in regional micturating contests with tinpot dictators or funding antiquated defense systems that only enrich the contractors that ring Washington, DC.

Instead, Washington must build actual space-based defenses and it must invest in its own hypersonic capabilities – all the meanwhile reaching out to both Moscow and Beijing potentially to create a new world order that is amenable to all sides (without sacrificing America’s moral position).

There is a pathway forward for ensuring America’s long-term dominance on the world stage. But that must be left primarily to the innovators and diplomats.

Pearl Harbor was the result of years of failed American and Japanese policies toward each other. Another surprise attack, followed on by a new world war, would come from similar failures – and given America’s current weakness, it is not guaranteed that the United States will win.

Another world war is an entirely avoidable event.

Ignoring the internal contributions in that statement, let me present my view on what we need to do.

First, we need to recognize that U. S. power and influence have never been due to our holding the moral high ground (we never have) or that other countries envy our system and its freedoms (they never have). They have resulted from the power and depth of the U. S. economy. We need to re-industrialize the United States. Even if environmentalists don’t like it. Even if doing that is against the interests of some of the most powerful companies and the richest people in the U. S. Even if it means that we must consume less.

Second, Japan did not attack the U. S. Navy 80 years ago because it was weak but because it was strong and posed a threat to Japan’s ambitions in the Pacific. I don’t think we need a military build-up. I’m arguing for right-sizing the U. S. military and aligning its capabilities with our actual interests.

Third, 80 years ago we were not going out of our way to aggravate either Germany or Japan. Today we are going out of our way to aggravate Russia. Why?

Fourth, we need to understand our own interests more clearly. Over the period of the last half century we have repeatedly confused U. S. interests with the interests of our notional friends and with those of powerful companies and rich people in the U. S. Is a Greater Israel in our interest? Is a European continent dominated by a united Germany in our interest? Is expanding NATO by admitting countries that do not provide a positive contribution to the collective security of the alliance in our interest? Are the interests of companies that are openly at odds with the emergent U. S. grand strategy in our interest? Example: the Great Firewall of China.

Finally, we need to recognize that other countries are in fact other countries complete with preferences and interests of their own. I don’t believe that Russia pursuing the interests it has pursued for 300 years interferes in any way with U. S. interests. The Chinese authorities on the other hand see both trade and foreign affairs as a zero-sum game, i.e. the only way for China to achieve its goals is at the expense of the U. S. failing to achieve its goals.

I thought you might find this part of Walter Russell Mead’s Wall Street Journal column about “Biden’s Only Honorable Course on Ukraine and Russia” interesting:

For Mr. Putin and the Russian nationalists whose support he needs, the consolidation of genuine Ukrainian independence is a threat. Russia needs Ukraine, they believe, to dominate the Black Sea, re-establish itself as the principal power in Europe, and defend the Orthodox and Slavic character of the Russian Federation itself at a time of rapid demographic change. A Ukraine aligned with the West, and especially with anti-Russian countries like Poland and the Baltic republics, is an unbearable humiliation and an unacceptable threat to Russian power.

which is closely aligned with observations I’ve made here. Russia has considered those things to be vital national interests for, literally, hundreds of years. They predate Putin, the present Russian republic, and the Soviet Union.

Here’s his proposed course of action:

Mr. Biden needs to reach a clear decision. If he is committed to helping Ukraine integrate with the West, he will have to convince Mr. Putin that he means business, possibly leading to the dispatch of significant NATO forces to the country. If he does not think Ukraine is worth the risk of a Cold War-style crisis with Russia, he must seek the most dignified retreat Mr. Putin will allow.

Neither course is attractive. Taking a hard line brings the risk of escalation. Many Americans will oppose another open-ended commitment, and Russian enmity for the U.S. will intensify.

Coming so soon after the Afghan meltdown and at a time when many longtime allies doubt America’s word, retreat would be even worse. Russia would become more powerful and more contemptuous of the U.S., while Iran and China will view Mr. Biden as a loser and adjust their policies accordingly.

From a position of strength, the U.S. can and should offer Russia face-saving ways out of the crisis, but on substance Mr. Biden should stand firm. The reality is that Russia has lost its battle for the heart of Ukraine. After encouraging Ukraine to cast its lot with the West for three decades, America’s only honorable course is to sustain Kyiv in this hour of trial.

The highlighting is mine. I would very much like to see the contours of such a “face-saving ways out”. I don’t believe there is one. I’m also skeptical that we are actually in “a position of strength”.

Does anyone believe that such brinksmanship is within President Biden’s wheelhouse? Can anyone provide an example?

I have other questions including:

• Why is expanding the European Union to include Ukraine in U. S. interest? I can see why it’s in Germany’s interest but why it’s in the U. S. interest eludes me.
• Why is expanding NATO to include Ukraine in U. S. interest?

I’m not asking why they’re against Russia’s interest. I understand that. Is the view that anything against Russia’s interest is in the U. S. interest? That’s a Cold War mentality which is very obsolete.

I found this part of Amy Walter’s remarks at Cook Political Report on the complexity of “bouncing back” from the COVID-19 pandemic interesting:

Cities across the country have seen a rise in so-called “smash and grab” robberies of retail stores, incentivized in part by a pandemic-boosted online marketplace where organized criminals can sell the stolen goods.

I would love to see that quantified. One way of doing so would be to see if the number of offerings on various platforms of the preferred booty from these incidents of “flash mob looting” had risen. I’m actually skeptical that it’s Amazon, Craigslist, eBay, etc.’s fault. Other potential factors might be growing sense of entitlement, bad law enforcement (in the broadest sense), and the ease of organizing such “flash mobs”.

On her larger subject, my own opinion is that the very notion of “bouncing back” from COVID-19 is based on flawed assumptions. You don’t “bounce back” from something that has become endemic. You adapt to it.