I’ve been cooking for more than 60 years. I cooked for my family when I was a kid. I worked in a restaurant and made 300 breakfasts every morning Monday through Saturday for five years. I’ve cooked for as many as 500 people at a time and cooked dinner for two nearly every evening for 35 years. I made every recipe in Mastering the Art of French Cooking in the 1970s—long before Julie and Julia.

I’ve been making gumbo off and on for 40 years and last night I made the best gumbo of my life bar none. A shot of American single malt and a bowl of of gumbo and I was good to go.

My reaction on reading Alexander William Salter’s Wall Street Journal op-ed87 was pretty much the same as my reaction when my wife and I watch Jeopardy and none of the contestants know the answer to a simple question about history, geography, movies, TV, literature, etc. What do they teach young people nowadays? The sad thing about it is that I agree materially with many of his observations. But he’s either grossly oversimplifying or he simply does not know.

Whether public or private, spending doesn’t cause growth. Mr. Stiglitz and his allies have it backward: Consumption is downstream from production. Growth is about increasing the supply of goods over time; you can’t spend if the goods haven’t been produced. Production grows as technology and production processes improve. Such improvement requires saving and investing rather than consuming.

The early details on Mr. Biden’s infrastructure plan aren’t promising in terms of incentives for saving and investment. The bill includes significant tax increases on corporations, which would also hurt households and investors. The president and his team deserve credit for attempting to pay for the plan. But raising taxes, especially on businesses, weakens incentives to invest. The result is lost growth.

Mr. Biden’s plan also largely directs resources away from uses that would increase productivity. Improvements in roads and bridges may boost how much companies can produce, and hence growth, by making it easier to move labor and goods across the nation. But that’s a minority of the bill’s spending; other expenditures will have the opposite effect. Take the proposal to invest in expanding clean energy and electric-vehicle charging stations. This is a rather elastic interpretation of infrastructure, and a wealth-wasting one besides.

He concludes:

The government is not good at picking investments. President Obama promised smart green projects. What we got was the Solyndra debacle, which consumed hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars while producing little of value. Those dollars are resources that could have been invested elsewhere. What Mr. Biden proposes amounts to a great many Solyndras. That’s an enormous amount of productive capital to squander.

Mr. Biden positions himself as the inaugurator of a Newer New Deal and a Greater Great Society, but there’s nothing new or great about the politicization of investment. Policy makers have tried many times, and it’s clear that all the financing in the world won’t boost productivity if it isn’t channeled correctly. More-efficient producers, not partisan spending, create economic flourishing. Though the president’s plans will consume plenty, they’ll produce only disappointment.

As I’ve mentioned before when I was in college and took economics courses Keynes was king. His teachings were Holy Writ. I went farther than most undergraduates and, apparently, most graduate students these days and read primary sources. Not only did I read The Wealth of Nations and Keynes’s General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money but David Ricardo’s On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation and many, many others. That’s one of the things that I learned in high school: don’t rely on secondary or tertiary sources. Keynes’s assumption is that there’s a gap between potential product and actual product. The purpose of the spending is to incentivize bringing unused assets back into production.

I don’t believe that unused assets are our problem today. I think that our problem is that we’re not producing enough of what we consume and under the circumstances massive deficit spending will cause an increase in asset prices, promoting increasing income and wealthy inequality, increase general prices, or worse.

Federal spending could, indeed, incentivize additional investment and increasing of productive assets but a) not in the near term and b) as Dr. Salter notes, the government is not good at picking investments. That’s why I support what I’ve characterized as “mass engineering projects”. Examples of those are the Manhattan Project, the Mercury and Apollo projects, Boulder Dam, and the like. Medical research is good but may take a long time to bear fruit. Nixon began his “war on cancer” in 1971 and it’s still going on. Given the length of time it takes to become a medical researcher, the mostly likely near term consequence of investing more money in medical research will be to increase the wages of medical researchers, producing the paradoxical result of getting fewer results per dollar spent. Such increases need to be done much more slowly and carefully.

And, as has been mentioned here before, the “infrastructure spending” plan of which about 5% is devoted to increased infrastructure and about 95% is devoted to consumption is likely to increase deadweight loss, another paradoxical result.

The editors of the Washington Post caution Senate Democrats:

EVERY FEW years, whichever party is running Congress encounters an obstacle: The nonpartisan scorekeepers at the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT). These professionals issue the official estimates on what major legislation would accomplish and how much it would cost, and they have a way of puncturing the narratives federal lawmakers construct to justify their policies. They tell Republicans that tax cuts are not likely to pay for themselves, and they tell Democrats that expanding government-subsidized health-care coverage may reduce the number of hours Americans work.

When majority lawmakers get a score they dislike, they and their ideological allies often try to work the refs — making their case to the CBO and JCT staff, or issuing statements challenging the estimates. Sometimes, and increasingly, they go further, threatening to eviscerate the scorekeepers’ independence. Mother Jones’s Kara Voght reported last week that Senate Democratic staffers are talking about firing CBO Director Phillip Swagel, after the CBO released an analysis projecting that increasing the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour would result in 1.4 million job losses over a decade. Staff on the Senate Budget Committee, which Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) runs, have even sent Senate Democratic leaders a list of possible replacements. This is a terrible idea.

They don’t just want to “work the refs”. They want to replace the CBO director with someone who’ll give them the answer that they want:

The CBO also does not get everything right. Its experts provide highly educated guesses. Sometimes this helps Democrats, as when the CBO concluded that repealing Obamacare would increase the deficit. Sometimes it hurts their case, as it did on the minimum wage. CBO estimates force caution on those who have an interest in the numbers turning out a specific way, and its careful approach means that both parties’ legislation is measured against the same yardstick over time. It cannot perform either function if each passing congressional majority stacks the CBO in its favor.

The difference between an expert and an “expert” in this particular case is that an expert provides an unbiased assessment of the consequences of a policy change. Not a perfect assessment but a professional one. An “expert”, regardless of credentials, is someone who give you the answer that you want. Replacing experts with “experts” will temporarily provide political cover but it also cast doubt on every expert. Short term benefit and long term cost.

If the Congress wants someone to rubberstamp their policy judgments, why bother? They should have the courage to defend their own actions.

AS you’re presumably aware, a few days ago a 13 year old kid was killed by a police officer in Chicago in the little Village neighborhood. There’s a video making the rounds which most media reports are portraying as proof of a cold-blooded police killing but that’s a subject for another post. In an op-ed in the Washington Post law prof Sheila Bedi presents her diagnosis:

Change requires entirely new approaches to public safety, informed by the experiences and expertise of the Black and brown communities most likely to experience police violence.

Adam Toledo’s death demonstrates that the CPD — and, indeed, police departments across the nation — simply can’t be “fixed.” For more than 100 years, Chicago city officials have made public pronouncements of their intent to “reform” the CPD. None of those purported reforms has rooted out racist police violence and corruption, or created safe communities.

and her prescription:

Justice for Adam Toledo requires investments in our Black and brown communities and disinvestments in policing. One would be a proposal by the Chicago-based, Black youth-led GoodKids MadCity collective called the Peace Book, which would create neighborhood peace commissions with resources sufficient to meet community needs. The resources include funds for positive youth spaces, political and art education, mental health treatment, restorative justice, and conflict resolution services.

The Peace Book could operate with a diversion of just 2 percent, or $35 million, from the CPD’s budget. Other major cities have diverted far more from policing into communities.

Second, the Treatment Not Trauma ordinance, sponsored by Chicago Democratic Socialist Alderwoman Rossana Rodriguez-Sanchez and backed by a diverse, citywide coalition, would prohibit CPD officers from responding to people in mental health crises and instead fund community-based mental health professionals. Similar programs in Oregon both reduce police violence and better serve community needs.

I have mixed feeling about her prescription and even more about her authority to make it. Maybe that would work in Hyde Park where Ms. Bedi lives. Hyde Park isn’t known for either gun violence or gang activity. It’s where Barack Obama’s Chicago residence is. It’s about as dangerous as where I live which is to say not particularly dangerous at all.

Why doesn’t Ms. Bedi live in Austin or Englewood or Garfield Park or North Lawndale? Or in Little Village? Because those neighborhoods are much more dangerous and have lots of gang activity. Little Village is split between the Latin Kings and the Two Six. My offhand guess as to what would happen if Ms. Bedi’s plan were adopted is that in the neighborhoods most at risk the money would be given to NGOs that were affiliated with the gangs, that were in fact fronts for the gangs. Why do I think that? Because it’s happened before. It’s not a lack of money that makes these neighborhoods dangerous. It’s gang activity.

Consequently, while I have no problem with increasing the funding for city-run crisis response units, I’m pretty suspicious of funding NGOs for that purpose.

And that would have done nothing for Adam Toledo. I agree that his death is a tragedy. But the question that no one seems to be asking is what the heck a 13 year old kid was doing wandering around at 3am in the morning with a gun? I don’t know what would happen if the officer who fired the gun that killed Adam Toledo and is on the video attempting to render assistance to the kid just shot and audibly sobbing when he realized that the kid was dead were brought to trial. I don’t know what I would have done in the fraction of a second the officer had to make a decision. I don’t know if the case could even come to trial.

But I believe wholeheartedly that whoever put the gun in that kid’s hand should be prosecuted and I hope convicted and sent to jail.

in his latest New York Times column Thomas Friedman, quoting from his journal, explains how people like Sen. Biden and himself who knew nothing about Afghanistan or, indeed, the region got the U. S. to spend 20 years on a fool’s errand in Afghanistan against the advice of people who actually understood the country, its circumstances, and its history:

I was not surprised that Joe Biden decided to finally pull the plug on the U.S. presence in Afghanistan. Back in 2002 it was reasonable to hope that our invasion there to topple Osama bin Laden and his Taliban allies could be extended to help make that country a more stable, tolerant and decent place for its citizens — and less likely to host jihadist groups. But it was also reasonable to fear from the start that trying to graft a Western political culture onto such a deeply tribalized, male-dominated and Islamic fundamentalist culture like Afghanistan’s was a fool’s errand, especially when you factored in how much neighboring Pakistan never wanted us to succeed because it could wrench Afghanistan from Pakistan’s cultural and geopolitical orbit.

Biden was torn between those hopes and fears from the very start. I know because I was with him on his first visit in early January 2002 to postwar Afghanistan. It was just weeks after the major fighting had subsided and the Taliban were evicted from Kabul.

It was always a fool’s errand, as people like, for example, Rory Stewart, attempted in vain to explain.

After quoting a number of passages from his diary of his and Sen. Biden’s visit to Afghanistan he concludes:

Our nation’s effort there was worth a try; our soldiers and diplomats were trying to make it better, but it was never clear that they knew how or had enough Afghan partners. Yes, maybe leaving will make it worse, but our staying wasn’t really helping.

Our leaving may be a short-term disaster, and in the longer run, who knows, maybe Afghanistan will find balance on its own, like Vietnam. Or not. I don’t know. I am as humbled and ambivalent about it today as I was 20 years ago, and I am sure that Biden is too.

All I know for sure are: 1) We need to offer asylum to every Afghan who worked closely with us and may now be in danger. 2) Afghans are going to author their own future. 3) It is American democracy that is being eroded today by our own divisiveness, by our own hands, and unless we get that fixed we can’t help anyone — including ourselves.

I agree with his conclusion. But you didn’t need to fly to Kabul via Bagram Air Base and spend a week basking in the poverty and misery of Afghanistan’s largest city to realize that committing to staying as long as it took to “get it on its feet again” presumes that it was ever on its feet in the first place. Doing what Mr. Stewart did—walking across the country—would have proven that to them. Staying in the U. S. Embassy? Not so much. And you didn’t even need to go to Afghanistan. A quick glance at a map should have shown the impossibility of the task.

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot has rejected the rumors of a sex scandal which would impel her to resign. From NBC 5 Chicago:

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot on Sunday slammed unspecified “rumors” circulating online as “trash” as she vowed to “continue to lead” the city.

In a five-part Twitter thread posted Sunday morning, Lightfoot called the virtual chatter “homophobic, racist and misogynistic” as she warned anyone not willing to work with her on problems facing the city to “get out of the way.”

Never believe anything until it’s been officially denied.

She’s also being pressed by activitists to resign over the police killing of Adam Toledo.

In his column in the New York Times Neil Irwin raises an interesting question: how can the unemployment rate be so high while employers are unable to find people to hire?

There are two distinct, and completely opposite, ways of looking at the American job market.

One would be to consult the data tables produced every month by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which suggest a plentiful supply of would-be workers. The unemployment rate is 6 percent, representing 9.7 million Americans who say they are actively looking for work.

Alternately, you could search for news articles mentioning “labor shortage.” You will find dozens in which businesses, especially in the restaurant and other service industries, say they face a potentially catastrophic inability to hire. The anecdotes come from the biggest metropolitan areas and from small towns, as well as from tourist destinations of all varieties.

The explanations he explores are:

• Benefits are too generous
• People are worried about getting sick
• They’re still needed at home
• They’re not being offered enough money
• They’re reconsidering earlier career decisions

I suspect that all of those are true to some extent but I’d like to offer another he doesn’t mention. It’s something I’ve been aware of for 50 years. The jobs that employers advertise don’t always exist. There are many reasons for that including they’re reality checking their present pay scales, they’re testing the pool of hirees to see who’s out there, or they’re trying to make a case for hiring an H1-B worker. In tech jobs it’s not uncommon to list jobs with ridiculously specific lists of requirements. One of the most notorious was the ad in 1983 for an experienced IBM PC programmer.

I’m not sure how you’d go about testing my explanation empirically.

Update

Here are some more explanations. Two career families make it hard to relocate for jobs. And members of racial and ethnic minorities may be less predisposed to relocate for work. It means leaving their support systems behind and they may not be able to re-establish them in the new location.

In the Chicago Tribune Gregory Pratt evaluates Lori Lightfoot’s term as Chicago’s mayor which is closing in on its second year:

As Lori Lightfoot rose in the polls against better known rivals two years ago, she pulled together nearly $300,000 to launch her first television ad.

In the commercial, first aired in January 2019, Lightfoot walked into a dark room, flicked on the lights and said, “I’ve prosecuted corrupt aldermen and held police accountable. Now, I’m running for mayor to finally make City Hall work for you.”

Speaking directly into the camera, Lightfoot said she supports an elected school board, “making all neighborhoods safe and reducing the unfair tax burden on working families.”

The ad, combined with intense fallout from the federal corruption case against Ald. Edward Burke, helped propel Lightfoot into a runoff against Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle.

But in the two years since she won that runoff election, Lightfoot has not unveiled a plan to create an elected school board. Nor has she formally introduced a plan to create civilian oversight of police, a promise she pledged to fulfill during her first 100 days in office. Lightfoot also has not yet put forward a plan to end or significantly curtail the long-standing practice that allows Chicago aldermen to hold sway over zoning matters in their individual wards.

Let me give you the short version: not only has she not made good on any of her campaign promises, in some cases she has done the opposite. Furthermore, she is the only Chicago mayor during whose term of office Michigan Avenue has been looted by rioters and, at least according to any objective measures, her policy response to the challenges imposed by COVID-19 has been weak. The only good thing I can say about Mayor Lightfoot is that she isn’t Toni Preckwinkle who didn’t carry a single ward in the mayoral run-off election.

You can’t blame Chicago’s black voters for the debacle of the last two years—the plurality of black voters voted for a candidate other than either of those two in the primaries.

The piece concludes:

Others have expressed disappointment in the mayor for not yet following through on her campaign promise.

Roderick Wilson, executive director of the Lugenia Burns Hope Center and a Chicago Public Schools parent who is involved with the campaign for an elected school board, said he’s disappointed by the mayor’s opposition to the Martwick bill as well as her failure to put something forward.

“People do what’s important to them,” Wilson said. “If It was a priority, it would’ve been there.”

Mayor Lightfoot is presently being pressured to resign over the killing of Adam Toledo by a Chicago police officer and there are rumors of a sex scandal. Interesting times.

In an op-ed in the Washington Post President George W. Bush presents a remarkably rosy scenario for reforming immigration. According to him there are six areas on which both Republicans and Democrats can agree:

• Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA)
• Controlling the border
• Support for development in Central American countries
• A modernized asylum system
• Increasing legal immigration
• Bringing illegal immigrants already here “out of the shadows”

and concludes

Over the years, our instincts have always tended toward fairness and generosity. The reward has been generations of grateful, hard-working, self-reliant, patriotic Americans who came here by choice.

If we trust those instincts in the current debate, then bipartisan reform is possible. And we will again see immigration for what it is: not a problem and source of discord, but a great and defining asset of the United States.

My own view is that the only one of those measures on which a compromise is possible is DACA and even that will be difficult despite the measure being popular in the abstract because the two political parties cannot agree on the details. What is the objective? Who would qualify? How would claims be proven? The Republicans aren’t the Republicans he remembers, the Democrats aren’t the Democrats he remembers, the immigrants aren’t the immigrants he imagines, and, frankly, America isn’t as he imagines it, either.

I found this passage from early in his op-ed laughable or, at least, grossly exaggerate:

The help and respect historically accorded to new arrivals is one reason so many people still aspire and wait to become Americans.

When was that? It certainly wasn’t from 1921 to 1965. During that period a strict quota system essentially limited immigration to Northwestern Europeans. It certainly wasn’t in the 1830s and 1840s during which both New York and Philadelphia were rocked by anti-Irish riots. It wasn’t between 1882 and 1892 when the Chinese Exclusion Act made immigration China illegal. It wasn’t during the 1930s and 1940s when the U. S. refused to accept refugees from Eastern Europe. And it wasn’t during the 1930s when migrant workers from Mexico were forcibly shipped to Mexico in boxcars including some people who had been born here. What I would say is that over the last 30 years the U. S. has been more accepting of more immigrants from more different places than at any previous time in its history.

My own view is that we are desperately in need of immigration reform but it is impeded by mutual detestation on the part of our political parties and lack of agreement on the objectives of reform.