There is an article in the New York Times including offerings from multiple different contributors which the NYT refers to as “bold ideas to revitalize and renew the American experiment”. They include:

• All workers shall have the right to form and join labor unions.
• Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime where of the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
• The word ‘person’ shall apply to all human life — born or unborn.
• International law shall be part of American law.
• The right of the people to have privacy and be secure against searches and seizures of their persons, houses, papers and effects, including their data and metadata.
• The Supreme Court shall be expanded and its powers limited.
• No state or city shall restrict people’s movement.

To my eye those proposals vary from those that can never be passed as an amendment, those that are unnecessary, those that are ill-considered, to those that are extremely ill-considered. I suspect that which category you would assign them to varies depending on your ideological preferences. Spoiler alert: I think the last is extremely ill-considered. I get his point. It’s just excessively broad and will horrible run-on effects. I also think that only one of them is particularly bold and that one has absolutely no chance of passage.

I have a number of changes I would like to make but I think that this one is the most important:

Every law shall embrace but one subject and matter properly connected therewith, and the subject shall be briefly expressed in the title.

There is a common thread running through the articles I want to comment on today. I’ll try to connect the dots later.

Before I get to the article I’m commenting on, let me set out what I believe and what I’d like to happen. I think that

• The U. S. had much greater income and wealth equality 50 years ago than it does now.
• Increasing income and wealth inequality are corrosive to a free and liberal society.
• We cannot reduce income and wealth inequality via the tax code.
• We should restrain the growth of rent-seeking, particularly among those in the top 10% of income earners, more strenuously than at present.
• We cannot reduce income and wealth inequality without controlling immigration into the U. S.
• We should adopt immigration systems like those of Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, countries with which we have much in common historically, socially, and linguistically>
• We should reduce uncontrolled immigration by addressing both the push and pull factors involved. Of the two reducing the pull factors is much easier and quicker.

Now, onwards to the Washington Post’s editorial on income and wealth inequality:

Over the course of this series, we have made the case that inequality of wealth is a serious problem in the United States. Disparities between the wealthiest 1 percent and the bottom half are far larger in this country than in other democratic capitalist countries, and far larger than can be justified as reward for productive effort. Indeed, to an unhealthy degree, wealth in the United States is being gained through unproductive activity — “rent-seeking” — or simply through inheritance. Well-designed government interventions can reduce inequality from the top down, through more aggressive taxation of capital gains and estates, and from the bottom up, through better-targeted support for homeownership, higher education and retirement savings.

I don’t believe any of those measures can have material impact on income or wealth inequality. They are predicated on false assumptions. The tax code proposals do not take into account something that every seasoned policymaker understands: people change their behavior in response to incentives or, in this case, disincentives. And the “better-targeted support” is cargo cult thinking. It confuses causes with effects.

They go on to challenge the observations in a WSJ editorial on which I commented earlier:

A new study has indeed found that the share of U.S. private wealth held by the top 5 percent of people ages 40 to 59 was 45.4 percent in 2019, including the value of future Social Security benefits and pensions, as opposed to 63.5 percent without them. The study confirmed that, between 1989 and 2019, the top 5 percent’s share of total wealth grew by 10 percentage points factoring in Social Security, as opposed to 15 percent without doing so. A 2020 paper, done by University of Pennsylvania researchers using different methodology, found that, including Social Security, the top 1 percent’s share of wealth remained essentially unchanged between 1989 and 2016.

Even taking pension wealth into account, however, wealth distribution in the United States remains far more skewed toward the top than in peer countries, as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development found when it estimated the impact in 2018. Given this context, the fact that a government intervention — Social Security — mitigated wealth inequality would seem to bolster our argument that additional interventions could reduce it even more.

and that’s where I want to focus my attention. What is a “peer country”? That could be assessed in any number of ways, e.g. members of the OECD, countries that are not ethnically homogeneous and are in the top 10 in terms of population, etc. Is any country that does not have a 1,500 mile land border with a country with a per capita income a third or a fifth of our own really a “peer country”?

Among members of the OECD income and wealth inequality is high here, among countries that are in the top 10 in terms of population our income and wealth inequality is low, and there are no other countries with a 1,500 mile land border with a country with a per capita income a third or a fifth of our own.

IMO there is only one straight line way to reduce income and wealth inequality in the U. S. and that is to control immigration into the United States. As I have mentioned I think we need laws like those of Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, a general agreement that they should be enforced, and an agreement that we should not be hinting at easing such laws.

Alternatively, we could accept that our peer countries are actually countries like Mexico, Brazil, and Chile and income and wealth inequality are part of the package.

Note, too, that the period during which Social Security mitigated inequality was one during which immigration into the U. S. neared zero.

Like just about everywhere else in the country Illinois is seeing an increase in identified cases of COVID-19. The governor has issued a mandate for masks to be worn by students, faculty, and staff in all public schools. He’s receiving a certain amount of pushback for that.

Whatever the merits of this action I believe that the governor is exceeding his legal authority. Where is the Illinois legislature? They seem to be AWOL. Unlike some I believe that good government consists of doing the right thing in the right way at the right time for the right reasons. Good intentions are not enough.

It’s also unclear to me what the goal is. Here, for example, from the Illinois Department of Public Health is a graph of ventilator utilization across the state:

The picture is much the same for ICU bed utilization or hospital bed utilization. The diagnosed cases are increasing but whatever minimal increase in ventilator utilization that has impelled is certainly not straining the medical system here. In Chicago there are probably more people in ICU beds after gunshot wounds than from COVID-19.

I just heard Dr. Fauci on television arguing for “zero COVID” which I think is an illusory goal at this point.

I think that the FDA should approve the vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 with all due haste. I believe that people should get vaccinated. I believe that people should use good judgment in wearing masks and crowding together in large groups. Are we actually back to square one as the media are breathlessly claiming? Show me more than anecdotal evidence.

It isn’t all the uncommon that something I read reminds of the classic movie, The Red Shoes. At the end of the movie, the ballerina heroine has committed suicide but the ballet goes on, her red shoes carried around the stage to where she should have been by one of the other dancers. That was the case with David Ignatius’s most recent Washington Post op-ed:

The centerpiece of Kadhimi’s visit was what he called a “strategic partnership” with Washington, in which the United States will withdraw its remaining combat troops but keep in place a sizable force that can assist in training, intelligence-sharing and other support activities. Kadhimi had told me in Baghdad last month that he wanted such a pact, despite objections from some Iranian-backed Shiite militias.

The surprise for me was how warmly this accord was received by Iraqi factions when Kadhimi returned home. Endorsements came last week from Iraqi nationalist Moqtada al-Sadr, various former prime ministers and even Shiite militia leader Hadi al-Amiri. The Shiite religious leadership under Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani in Najaf was also said to be pleased, according to U.S. and Iraqi officials.

which I laud as far is goes. But do you notice something about it? Every individual he mentions is an Arab Shi’ite. Iraq has three major ethno-confessional divisions: Shi’ite Arabs, Sunni Arabs, and Kurds. Conspicuous by their absence from Mr. Ignatius’s account are Iraq’s Sunni Arabs and the Kurds. The Kurds have tended to be pro-American, seeing the Amerians as their protectors but DAESH sprang from Iraq’s Sunni Arabs and was ultimately ejected from Iraq by Iraq’s Sunni Arabs.

Even if there’s widespread approval from Shi’a Arabs lack of support from Iraq’s Kurds and Sunni Arabs does not sound to me like a formula for a stable Iraq.

BTW Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani is a greater threat to Iran than we are. He’s the most senior Shi’ite cleric and he’s not a Khomeinist. But that’s a subject for a different post. He’s 91 and we’ll miss him when he’s gone.

I found this Wall Street Journal op-ed by Robert M. Kaplan perversely gratifying:

The idea that recent, deliberate misinformation campaigns created hesitancy to the Covid-19 vaccine appears itself to be misinformation.

Over the past year the Stanford Clinical Excellence Research Center has asked representative samples of the U.S. population about the likelihood they would accept vaccines. A poll completed in August 2020 showed that about 20% of the population reported they were very unlikely to take a vaccine even if the evidence suggested it was safe and effective. Another 15% said they were unlikely to take it. Those two categories add up to approximately the percentage of adults yet to get a first dose a year later.

Without even knowing there would be a vaccine, more than a third of the population told us they were not planning to accept it.

The study was repeated in late December 2020 after highly impressive results from clinical trials led the Food and Drug Administration to give emergency-use authorization for two vaccines. News cycles prior to our December survey were dominated by stories on the potential for vaccines. Still, about 35% said they were unlikely or very unlikely to take the vaccine. The numbers are almost identical to those seen in August when vaccine potential had not received public scrutiny.
In politics, voters choose their loyalties early. After they do, expensive and exhausting campaigns affect few voters. Vaccine acceptance may similarly be determined by the groups we align with rather than evidence—or false information—about the vaccine itself.

It’s a lot easier to sow distrust than it is to cultivate trust. That takes consistency and a commitment to the long haul.

Pro tip: if you’re trying to convince people to do something, brow-beating them or trying to force them may have the opposite effect from what you’re trying to accomplish. As me auld mither use to say you’ll catch more flies with sugar than with vinegar.

The Wall Street Journal ran an op-ed by Sen. Bernie Sanders today arguing for the passage of his proposed $3.5 trillion American Rescue Plan. Here’s the kernel of his argument:

We need structural reforms to improve the lives of U.S. families. If Democrats can’t get Republican support for these reforms, then we have to do it alone through the reconciliation process.

In recent years, Republicans used reconciliation to pass trillions in tax breaks, which primarily benefit the rich and large corporations, and they used it to try to repeal the Affordable Care Act and throw some 32 million people off the healthcare they had. We are going to use it too. But we will use it to support the middle class and struggling families and, in the process, create millions of good-paying jobs.

Here is some of what is in the $3.5 trillion reconciliation package that the Senate Budget Committee agreed to:

We are going to end the days of billionaires not paying their fair share of taxes by closing loopholes, while also raising the individual tax rate on the wealthiest Americans and the corporate tax rate for the most profitable companies in our country.

We will take on the greed of the pharmaceutical industry, which charges U.S. residents the highest prices in the world by far for prescription drugs. Under our proposal, Medicare will finally be allowed to negotiate prescription drug prices with the industry.

We will end the absurdity of the U.S. having the highest levels of childhood poverty of almost any major nation by extending the Child Tax Credit so families continue to receive monthly direct payments of up to $300 a child. We will radically improve our dysfunctional child-care system so that no working family pays more than 7% of its pretax income on child care, and we will provide universal pre-K to every 3- and 4-year-old.

We will expand higher education and job-training opportunities for students by making community college tuition-free for all Americans.

We will end the international disgrace of the U.S. being the only industrialized country not to guarantee paid family and medical leave. Women shouldn’t have to return to work a week after giving birth because they have no paid leave and can’t afford to stop working.

We will expand Medicare for seniors to cover dental needs as well as hearing aids and glasses. We will also make sure that we have enough doctors, nurses and dentists in underserved areas, while expanding Medicaid to provide healthcare to the uninsured.

We will give hundreds of thousands of seniors and people with disabilities the ability to get the care they need in their own homes instead of in expensive nursing facilities.

We will also address homelessness and the national housing crisis by making an unprecedented investment in affordable housing.

Further, we will provide undocumented people living in the U.S. with a pathway to citizenship, including Dreamers and the essential workers who courageously kept our economy running in the middle of a deadly pandemic.

I don’t know how long that link will be good for so read it quick. The WSJ says it’s free.

I will limit my remarks to one, what do you mean by “we”? Sen. Sanders with all due respect you’re not a Democrat. You may caucus with the Democrats but you’re not a Democrat.

On the opinion page of the Wall Street Journal there are arguments both pro and con on the eviction moratorium. The WSJ’s editors make legal:

As Democrats push to renew the nationwide ban on evictions that expired Saturday, they’re squabbling—er, screaming—over who’s failing the party’s progressive base. Speaker Nancy Pelosi puts the onus on President Biden, urging him to act unilaterally. The White House says it lacks legal authority, as the Supreme Court recently made clear.

Mr. Biden is correct: The public-health powers of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention do not extend to an interminable blanket prohibition of evictions across the entire nation. Any ban also may be an unconstitutional “taking” of property under the Fifth Amendment, though that’s an argument for another day. The point is that for 11 months President Trump and President Biden stretched their authority, but now Mr. Biden must heed the Supreme Court’s warning.

economic (and federalism)

Little is being said in this debate about economics, but the numbers make it hard to see any case for a blunt national policy. The unemployment rate is 2.5% in Nebraska. It’s 2.7% in Utah, 2.9% in both New Hampshire and South Dakota, and 3% in Idaho. How much more recovered from Covid can those labor markets get? Other places that suffered longer lockdowns are lagging. But if state and local leaders want, they can pass tailored eviction policies, and then they can be accountable for the results.

Too often ignored are the costs on the other side of the evictions ledger. Renters are facing hardships, but so are landlords. There are about 48 million rental housing units in the U.S., according to a 2018 federal survey. For 42% of them, day-to-day management of the property was performed by either the owner or an unpaid agent. Another 25% had a paid manager who was still “directly employed” by the owner.

There are millions of mom-and-pop landlords who own a house here, a duplex there, a small apartment building two streets down. Some of them are going on a year, or more, without rental income, yet they’re responsible for paying the taxes and the upkeep. A few nightmare stories are trickling out, say, of a woman living in a house with a basement apartment, occupied by abusive tenants who apparently saw the moratorium as impunity.

and, ultimately, a practical argument that the moratorium should be lifted now:

The U.S. is 11 months from when President Trump’s CDC first issued its eviction moratorium. Democrats would like to extend it, and for who knows how long. What would be the criteria for ever rescinding the policy? Good luck trying to get an answer.

The hard fact is that eventually the rent will come due, and tenants and landlords will have to work it out. If the moratorium is extended, back payments will continue to stack up, and the result will be an even bigger problem when the music finally stops.

while columnist William Galston makes an appeal to sympathy

Millions of Americans—mainly lower and middle-income workers—lost their jobs last year amid the pandemic and couldn’t pay the rent. Congress enacted a limited and temporary moratorium on evictions, which ended in July 2020.

as well as a public health argument for extending the moratorium:

The public-health consequences of allowing the moratorium to expire could be serious. One study from last fall found that states that had lifted their own moratoria last spring and summer experienced much higher coronavirus caseloads and deaths than states that kept them in place. Those evicted ended up living in more-crowded places—relatives’ apartments, motel rooms or shelters—where social distancing is harder. This is especially relevant to the Delta strain, which is substantially more transmissible than earlier variants.

However, there is little doubt in Mr. Galston’s mind where to place the blame:

The blame for this sad situation is widely shared. Months ago, Congress could have provided the executive branch with the clear legal authority the Supreme Court is now requiring. States and localities could have designed simpler, more efficient ways of carrying out the clear intent of Congress. And the Biden administration should have responded sooner to mounting evidence that state and local plans were not working.

While it is true that the states have been slow to hand out the funds that were appropriated for this, I’m not as convinced as he that an even more distributed situation would not have been better. The circumstances in Utah or South Dakota are not the same as those in New York or New Jersey and, frankly, the federal government does not have the boots on the ground to implement a program like this nationally.

In my view there should be considerably tighter means-testing on the moratorium and, honestly, there’s a point at which a policy shifts from mercy to constituent service. Any program should have a date or conditions certain when it will end. And while they’re being merciful why not extend a property tax jubilee while they’re placing a moratorium on evictions. As I’ve pointed out before the three biggest expenses for landlords are mortgage payments, property taxes, and maintenance. In some jurisdictions there is the surreal situation of renters who are paying rent and can’t be evicted nonetheless empowered to sue landlords if the landlords don’t maintain their premises.

It is not my practice to comment on the goings-on in other states except under rare circumstances. I have no intention of commenting at length on the charges that have emerged about New York’s governor. He has apparently lost the support of the Democratic Party leadership. Joe Gandelman has his typically excellent round-up.

The party leadership had best hope that this matter does not grow into a protracted struggle. The last thing they need is for this to continue to hang over their heads when the mid-terms roll around in 15 months. It’s not just an embarrassment for the party. There are many, many media outlets that were lionizing him 15 months ago for whom he is now an embarrassment.

I thought you might be interested in this passage from Walter Russell Mead’s most recent Wall Street Journal column:

Far from uniting the world, the coronavirus renationalized human life. It’s not only that most of humanity has been cooped up inside its national borders, with a handful able to travel. Vaccination has become a national matter, with your access to lifesaving shots dependent more on where you are than anything else. International efforts at vaccination have largely failed—and the resulting bitterness and feelings of alienation in poor countries is likely to leave an enduring imprint on world politics.

The World Health Organization has been a shame and a disgrace, from its initial silence over China’s coverup of early data on the outbreak through its unreasoning hostility toward Taiwan and its collusion with Beijing’s efforts to discredit the lab-leak hypothesis. The premier international health agency has failed.

Covax, the much-touted international program aimed at providing vaccines to citizens of countries too poor to purchase adequate supplies on the open market, has also fallen abysmally short. According to WHO statistics, of the 3.7 billion vaccine doses distributed around the world, less than 2% have been given in Africa.

Rather than coordinate their policies, countries have followed their interests at every turn. From China’s protective coverup of the emerging threat, to the squabbles between the U.K. and European Union over vaccine deliveries, to India’s decision to prohibit the export of vaccine doses originally intended for global distribution, leaders have consistently put their own countries (and political fortunes) ahead of promoting a unified global response.

What’s worked in the pandemic so far has been the dog everyone wants to kick: Big Pharma. Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson succeeded where the internationalists failed. Scientists in free societies working with the resources that capitalism provides have given the world hope. The WHO, Covax, the Chinese and Russian vaccines, and the “global community,” not so much.

A couple of observations. First, I wonder how those who blame the CDC’s weak performance during the pandemic on poor leadership explain its continuing weak performance and that of the World Health Organization? While I don’t disagree that leadership is a factor, I believe that blaming it entirely on leadership is naive. Regardless of who the leaders are they will continue to be run by the same bureaucrats in the same way. To me that doesn’t call for “doubling down” so much as on hedging your bets.

I would hope the lesson that would be learned is that there need to be better, clearer lines of communication between government and industry without an adversarial, conspiratorial, or condescending tone in either direction. That is a much taller order than you might think. Human nature practically guarantees one or all of the three.

I’m afraid that what our political leaders will learn is that people will put up with an awful lot when they’re frightened.