While I agree with Ed Kilgore’s assessment of the risks in the present situation in his piece in New York Magazine, I’m not sure I agree with him about its sources:

I’d argue we are at another big inflection point. It’s more likely the country will turn left or right than achieve major compromises. That today’s conservatives are frantically trying to suppress popular majorities by exploiting anti-democratic features of our system or, worse yet, by denying such majorities exist is a pretty clear sign of which way the wind is blowing. If the authoritarian strain in Republican politics exemplified by Trump morphs into the kind of reactionary movements that crushed parliamentary democracy entirely in Europe nearly a century ago, perhaps we will long even more for the phony solidarity of an imagined bipartisan past, when backs were slapped and deals were cut in Congress and justice and progress were denied.

More likely, we are destined in the very near future to acknowledge and resolve our differences by choosing sides and having it out. That’s far healthier than denying those differences or blowing up the whole system to avoid defeat.

As Kevin Drum documented in the post to which I linked last week, the aggressors in the struggle are progressives. How else do you explain the situation in Portland? Who are the “oppressors” there and how are they conservatives?

I also wonder what he means by “having it out”? If he means each side whatever they may be trying to impose their views on the other by force, how is that justified under anything resembling a liberal order?

In an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal Joe Lieberman appeals to President Biden and, implicitly, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer to “save the infrastructure bill”:

I worked closely with Mrs. Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer for decades. They’re both great people and skilled legislative tacticians, and they apparently think this strategy is the only way to hold their fragile majorities together and give all Democrats at least some of what they want.

I hope they rethink their strategy. President Biden has agreed to an infrastructure proposal with a bipartisan Senate group and the House Problem Solvers Caucus. Linking it to a separate multitrillion-dollar partisan reconciliation bill would likely end with passage of neither. The American people wouldn’t soon forgive this failure, and they’d blame Mr. Biden and Democrats because we’re in the majority.

That risk became clearer last week when Mr. Biden went to Wisconsin to advocate for the bipartisan agreement, which would be the largest federal infrastructure investment since the creation of the Interstate Highway System 65 years ago. The president said the plan would create millions of good jobs and ensure America can compete with China. It would replace 100% of the lead water pipes that go into 10 million homes and 400,000 school across America, repair roads and bridges, upgrade the power grid, close the digital divide, make U.S. coastlines more resilient against climate change, and entail the largest investment in public transit in American history.

In other words, the president’s essential message in Wisconsin was that this is a historic plan every American should be very excited about, while the message from Mrs. Pelosi and Mr. Schumer in Washington is that we can’t have this infrastructure plan until Congress is done debating and voting for a separate, controversial, costly bill that may or may not pass months from now.

He concludes:

If it all falls apart, Americans will be fuming and they would be justified in their anger. They won’t understand or accept why leaders in Washington couldn’t say yes to a deal protecting their kids from lead-tainted water, making bridges and highways safer, improving mass transit, growing the economy and creating jobs.

In the first paragraph cited Sen. Lieberman makes the essential observation. The Speaker and Senate Majority Leader are struggling to keep their own caucuses in line. The concern is well-founded. I have heard multiple pledges from various members of the House to vote against the bill unless it includes their pet cause. Some of these causes are “poison pills”, all but guaranteed to ensure no Republican support.

I suspect the question will be one of choosing between party unity and bipartisan agreement. Don’t be surprised if party unity wins the tug o’ war.

There seems to be a difference of opinion about ranked-choice voting. The editors of the Washington Post support it and think it should be used in more places:

In a ranked-choice system, voters submit lists of candidates in their preferred order. The candidate who attracts the fewest first-choice votes is eliminated after an initial count. Voters who put that eliminated candidate top on their lists have their votes reallocated to their second choices. This process continues until one candidate claims more than 50 percent of the vote.

Not quite all the sunny predictions that ranked-choice voting advocates made about this system materialized. In theory, it should reduce acrimony, but the New York primary race still got very ugly. The system also seemed to encourage gaming; as the election drew near, candidates forged alliances to guide their voters on whom to pick second on their candidate lists.

But this teaming up may not have been an entirely bad thing. Ranked-choice voting encouraged candidates to seek compromise and identify areas of common ground. This enabled voters to identify the candidates who represented the section of the political spectrum or who prioritized the issues that appealed to them.

When voters did so, the ranked-choice system came through on its most important promise: benefiting candidates who are broadly acceptable by weeding out niche candidates who would have fractured the field in a traditional vote. Mr. Adams led after the first and final tallies. But in the final round, his opposition turned out not to be left-wing champion Maya Wiley, who came in second in the initial count, but Kathryn Garcia, a less ideologically hard-edge candidate. Had Ms. Wiley prevailed in the initial tally, which was a plausible result in a fractured field of candidates, ranked-choice voting almost certainly would have saved Mr. Adams or propelled Ms. Garcia into the lead over the less broadly popular Ms. Wiley.

In other words, the system provided much more information about what voters wanted. It turns out that lefty progressives are a substantial but minority group in New York. Ranked-choice voting makes it harder for candidates with a fervent but narrow base of support to eke out a victory.

while Dr. Harvey Mansfield, writing in a op-ed in the Wall Street Journal doesn’t like it at all:

Ranked-choice voting makes the common good inferior to each person’s private first choice. The common good of the country typically gets ranked second choice or below for each citizen.

Ranked-choice suffuses the spirit of systems where multiple parties vie to build coalitions after votes are cast. In the U.S., parties aspire to gain majorities through the voting rather than by secret, chancy negotiation afterward. Each looks for ways to bring together difficult companions: Republicans must reconcile the interests of evangelical Christians and libertarians; Democrats must balance the desires of progressives and moderates. Ranked-choice voting splits these coalitions and requires the pieces be brought together after the election, and not by voters. In presidential elections, the Electoral College produces a majority intended to recognize the importance of the states, one that sometimes differs from a popular majority. But in any case it is a coalition majority.

Voters in a coalition are reminded that most of them didn’t get what they wanted but avoided what they most disliked. Though this is often true, it should not be the goal. The goal should be a first choice willed as a compromise rather than a first choice abandoned for a compromise. This seemingly slender distinction makes a big difference in common trust and the way Americans think politically.

It is often thought that the sole purpose of an election is to make government accountable to the people and representative of their will. A second fault of ranked-choice voting is that it aims to perfect this idea by offering some success to as many shades of opinion as possible. But another, greater purpose for elections was intended by the Constitution’s framers: to find competent governors.

A good result from an election relies on its accuracy in representing the people’s will. The voters should get not only what they want, like consumers, but also what is good for them as citizens. Competency among those elected is never assured, but it will stand a better chance when voters are selecting the candidate who is best for the job as well as the one most representative of their will. Ranked-choice voting may bring competency along with accuracy, but accuracy is all that is asked for. Again, elections are held not to buy products but to put people in office. Competency ought to include the ability to unite the country in a majority, not just to make pleasing speeches to the voters known as “the base.”

A third fault: Ranked-choice voting rewards extremism in the electorate. Voters who make extreme choices should be punished via exclusion from the majority. Ranked-choice voting rescues them from the penalty they deserve for throwing away their ballot on an extreme first choice. One suspects that progressives like ranked-choice voting because it would allow them to vote twice: once for Bernie Sanders and once for Joe Biden.

What am I missing here? To my eye the outcome in New York was almost the opposite of what Dr. Mansfield predicts. It reminds me of Yogi Berra’s comment: “In theory there’s no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is.”

What would have happened in the Chicago mayoral election if ranked-choice voting had been in place? A plurality of black voters supported the most conservative candidate running. The present incumbent found her base of support among white ethnic voters on the Northwest Side of Chicago. You cannot convince me that the Northwest Side is a progressive stronghold. I’m confident that Lori Lightfoot’s pledge not to raise property taxes was dispositive. In the run-off one of the two contending candidates (Toni Preckwinkle, the “establishment” candidate) failed to carry any wards including her home ward. I suspect that what would have happened would have been that we would have selected a much less “woke” candidate than Lori Lightfoot has proven herself to be. Given her track record as mayor that would have been a good thing.

What should I think of ranked-choice voting? To me it seems like an improvement.

Dr. Alan Blinder urges us to remain unconcerned about inflation in a Wall Street Journal op-ed:

Much of this year’s inflationary surge can be traced to two transitory factors: bounceback from the anomalous negative inflation readings of early 2020 and bottlenecks as the economy reopens unevenly.

One simple way to assess the importance of special factors is to consult the trimmed mean inflation series maintained by two of the Federal Reserve banks. These measures ignore the prices with the highest and lowest inflation rates and focus on the rest.

It turns out that the Dallas Fed’s trimmed mean PCE inflation rate over the past 12 months is 1.9%, and the Cleveland Fed’s trimmed mean CPI inflation rate is 2.6%. Not very scary. The high-inflation outliers—such as prices for used cars and energy—aren’t illusions, but they won’t persist.

A second inflation worry is that the U.S. economy, powered by pent-up consumer demand and huge government expenditures, will soon soar into the inflationary zone. Could be. But there are three counterarguments.

First, this worry reflects Phillips curve thinking, which hypothesizes that low unemployment rates make the inflation rate rise. But inflation wasn’t rising before the pandemic despite a 3.5% unemployment rate.

Second, the bond market isn’t buying the argument. Inflation forecasts embedded in bond yields remain consistent with the Fed’s low target.

Third, much of the extreme fiscal stimulus that has been driving spending is transitory. Most pandemic relief spending will be ending soon, and I don’t think Congress will approve much more spending this year that isn’t paid for.

The big question is how pent-up consumer demand will play out. American households socked away about $2 trillion in bank accounts as the pandemic raged. If that money gushes out, we’re likely in for some classic demand-side inflation. But if it gets spent gradually, American businesses will meet demand easily.

The third inflation worry is more subtle. Most of the supply-side bottlenecks, such as the shortage of computer chips, are global. Yet inflation is running higher in the U.S. than in other advanced economies. Is this evidence that we’ve used up the slack and are already “running hot”?

Milton Friedman famously remarked that “inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon” and I don’t think the astonishing increase in the money supply over the last year should be ignored. A question that Dr. Blinder does not address: does he think that the additional fiscal stimulus that the Biden Administration advocates is called for? No one can seriously maintain that it will not require creating additional money. And even advocates of Modern Monetary Theory do not argue that production can be extended beyond potential production using borrowed money. What if the additional potential short term production is zero?

David Ignatius expresses delight with President Biden’s “back-door actions” in his Washington Post column:

These under-the-radar initiatives were outlined recently by White House officials familiar with the details. Most of the initiatives address basic economic problems stemming from the pandemic and global warming. The idea is to use the executive powers of the presidency to advance the White House agenda without legislation, just as President Donald Trump did in his first year.

The authority for these programs is an executive order Biden issued in February, directing federal agencies “to strengthen the resilience of America’s supply chains.” In Biden’s definition, that covers a lot of ground, from pharmaceuticals to electric vehicles to semiconductors and a thousand other things needed to build what the executive order describes as “a world-class American manufacturing base and workforce.”

Take pharmaceuticals, whose importance was so viscerally obvious during the pandemic. It turns out that as much as 90 percent of America’s supply of “active pharmaceutical ingredients,” the drugs that keep us healthy, is manufactured abroad. This offshoring exposed a vulnerability, not only in terms of supply but also of quality, during covid times.

So the Department of Health and Human Services is deciding which drugs the United States needs to produce at home. When that list is complete, the administration will consider how to encourage production in the United States — through government purchases, stockpiles or other incentives. The best strategy, obviously, would be a version of what happened with the coronavirus vaccines: U.S. companies were so innovative in drug design, testing and production that we didn’t need foreign drugmakers.

The United States’ power supply is vulnerable to disruption, too, as we saw in the freeze that crashed the Texas grid in February and the cyberattack that shut the Colonial Pipeline in May. The key to energy resilience (and also to reducing carbon emissions) is partly better battery technology.

So the Biden Energy Department launched a “National Blueprint for Lithium Batteries” in June, aimed at making the United States a dominant producer of this essential energy-saving tool by 2030. The document proposed public-private partnerships to secure raw materials, research and development and manufacturing capacity for a market that will grow five- to tenfold in this decade.

Electric vehicles are a big part of any rational attempt to lower carbon emissions. So in Biden’s first week in office, he issued a “Buy American” order with a provision to purchase “clean electric vehicles.” And in a subsequent order, he directed his National Climate Task Force to replace the federal fleet of more than 600,000 cars and trucks with zero-emission electric vehicles.

The White House also identified a potential shortage of critical materials used in high-tech products. The Defense Department is using grants, loan guarantees and other powers to ensure supplies. And working with Congress, the administration is drafting aggressive plans to keep innovation and production of advanced semiconductors at home.

but lurches uncontrollably in to one of the flies in that ointment:

Government intervention in the economy is a slippery slope. Policies that protect U.S. jobs at a cost of featherbedding and inefficiency are a mistake.

It’s not the only problem. Let’s consider a few, starting with electric vehicles. It is beyond the president’s authority to command the replacement of all 600,000 GSA vehicles. I believe he could direct that all replacement or new vehicles be electric vehicles. That would affect at most 20,000 vehicles per year, a far cry from 600,000. There are issues with that, too, since the president can block purchasing anything but electric vehicles but he can’t mandate the budget for doing so. That is solely within the Congress’s purview. If it were otherwise, we’d have a gigantic wall on our southern border alreaedy.

The average cost of an EV in the U. S. is about 50% higher than what is being spent for a car with an internal combustion engine. At the pace at which the GSA replaces vehicles, the job will be done in 2054 and will cost about $33 billion. That’s doable but it will require an act of Congress.

But wait! There’s more. A relatively small number of the batteries used in EVs are made in the U. S. Most are made in Japan and South Korea, as this document avers and there’s even more to it than that. The components used in building those batteries wherever they’re made frequently originate in China. Consequently, unless the entire supply chain from raw materials to off-the-assembly-line vehicle is mandated as well as the country of origin sticker the mandate will amount to a back-door subsidy to Japan, South Korea, and China which is presumably not the intention. How much more will that cost and how long? No one knows.

There’s a very similar situation with the active ingredients in pharmaceuticals. As much as 90% of them originate in either China or India. I advocate relocating all of that production to the U. S. That’s what I mean when I write about “basic production”. But it will take more than executive orders to do it including both time and money. Keep in mind that no one is going to invest in building a plant in the U. S. if they expect the executive order will be rescinded by the next president.

And I haven’t even gotten to the ghastly track record of public-private hybrid companies, e.g. Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, etc. They’re great ways to provide cushy jobs to political cronies but they’re also constantly in need of bail-outs.

I’ve told this anecdote before but in the very first economics course I ever took the prof said “We don’t know how to create economic growth but we do know how to produce shortages”. That would be a good way to start answering P. J. O’Rourke’s question in his amusing post at American Consequences:

I had one fundamental question about economics: Why do some places prosper and thrive while others just suck?

He doesn’t offer an answer but let’s start formulating one ourselves, shall we?

There are countries with very few natural resources that have become rich (Japan) and countries with vast natural resources that are terribly poor (the Democratic Republic of Congo). If you look at history the countries that became richest earliest (U. K., Netherlands, the U. S.) had a few things in common: finance, a market system, limited government, and the absolute nuclear family. Starting with that base I think we can identify some of the factors that enabled countries to become wealthy:

• Good government including a functioning legal system
• Resources
• A solid financial system
• A market system
• Social structures

They all work together, sometimes in ways that aren’t obvious. No one of them is enough. China, despite enormous resources both human and natural, was horrifically poor due to bad government until about 1979. After 1979 it didn’t have good government but it had better government.

I’m skeptical that the U. S. can have terrible government, undermine the market system, the dollar, and the absolute nuclear family but remain a wealthy country. However, as Adam Smith observed there is a great deal of ruin in a nation.

This is the best passage I have read today. From Jared Marcel Pollen at Quillette:

If the culture were a book, as Mallarmé thought, it would be a postmodern novel in which the characters, conscious of the author’s operations, have conspired against them and hijacked the story.

He is, of course, Canadian.

Me auld mither used to say that no celebration was complete unless something happened that made her cry. This July 4 post by C. Bradley Thompson made me cry. Here’s its conclusion:

American Revolutionaries were rebels with a cause. Despite the vicissitudes that befell them—the hardships of war, the blood and toil, the starvation, the imprisonment and torture, the destruction of home and property, the loss of family and loved ones, and finally death itself—American Revolutionaries refused to compromise, or to surrender their lives, their fortunes, or their sacred honor.

The moral universe they inhabited might seem like a foreign place to 21st-century Americans, but we forget its moral lessons at our peril. Their revolution is surely one of history’s greatest monuments to human virtue. It is ours to remember, celebrate, and restore.

Read the whole thing.

Do you think that critical race theory should be taught to elementary school students in the public schools? Are state legislatures right or wrong to ban it?

Footnote:

The title of this post is derived from the all-time greatest English language instruction book in the history of such book: English As She Is Spoke, written IIRC by a native speaker of Portuguese with little knowledge of English and without even an English-Portuguese dictionary. He did have, however, a Portuguese-French dictionary and an English-French dictionary which he used in his instruction book by dragging definitions first from Portuguese into French and then from French into English. My point is that calling something “critical race theory” does not necessarily mean that is what is being taught.