Pacific has announced that Pacific and Arclight Cinemas will close permanently. Variety reports:

Arclight Cinemas and Pacific Theatres will close down, a victim of a global pandemic that brought moviegoing to a standstill. The news comes as things were beginning to look up for the hard-hit exhibition industry and serves as a reminder of the economic devastation wrought by a public health crisis that upended cultural life.

“After shutting our doors more than a year ago, today we must share the difficult and sad news that Pacific will not be reopening its ArcLight Cinemas and Pacific Theatres locations,” the company said in a statement. “This was not the outcome anyone wanted, but despite a huge effort that exhausted all potential options, the company does not have a viable way forward.”

The chain has more than 300 theaters, mostly in California but also in Chicago, Boston, and Maryland.

The critical success factors for cinemas are location and rent (most locations are not owned but rented). Lockdowns followed by capacity restrictions have cut into the business of the cinema operating companies.

I suspect we’ll see a sort of cascade effect. Some of the cinemas vacated by Pacific will be taken over by other operators but I suspect most spaces will be used for other purposes. There isn’t a throng of retailers eager to take over the spaces they vacate. It may be some time before those spaces are repurposed. Around here the nearest shopping malls already have a lot of empty space. We’ll probably also see mall failures and a commensurate reduction in property tax revenues and possibly even sales tax revenues on which state and local governments depend.

We don’t know what the “new normal” is going to look like yet but there are likely to be some major differences from the pre-2020 normal. Just as another indicator big city public school kindergarten enrollments for September 2021 are substantially lower.

At Quillette Joel Kotkin pens a lament for the sort of social democracy championed by among others the late Michael Harrington (disclosue: Michael Harrington was a graduate of my high school, in the same class as Dr. Thomas Dooley):

In a world that seems to be divided between neoliberal orthodoxy and identitarian dogmas, it is possible to miss the waning presence of traditional social democracy. Born of the radical Left in Marx’s own time, social democrats worked, sometimes with remarkable success, to improve the living standards of working people by accommodating the virtues of capitalism. Today, that kind of social democracy—learned at home from my immigrant grandparents and from the late Michael Harrington, one time head of the American Socialist Party—is all but dead. This tradition was, in retrospect, perhaps too optimistic about the efficacy of government. Nevertheless, it sincerely sought to improve popular conditions and respected the wisdom of ordinary people.

In its place, we now find a kind of progressivism that focuses on gender, sexual preference, race, and climate change. Abandoned by traditional Left parties, some voters have drifted into nativist—and sometimes openly racist—opposition while more have simply become alienated from major institutions and pessimistic about the future.

concluding:

Arguably the single greatest distinction between social democracy and the new progressivism lies in the word agency. The original social democrats sought “to enhance their economic power” by mobilizing grassroots support. In contrast, today’s “Left” tends to favor rule by experts—a reprise of Wilsonian progressivism. Like its contemporary analogue, this was more a product of the university and the boardroom than the union hall. And like the original model, today’s progressives increasingly embrace Wilson’s preference for censorship and the political repression of uncooperative political tendencies.

There’s really no way to reconcile this progressivism with social progress. Climate change policies, in particular, wipe out any gradual way to increase wealth for the middle or working classes, although enforced strictures like “de-carbonization” create bounteous opportunities for highly profitable renewable energy speculation among financial and tech giants. The obsessive emphasis on race and culture reflects the concerns of the faculty lounge and the media newsroom.

In a slow-growth world, with few opportunities for upward mobility, perhaps the solution lies in a Universal Basic Income, a modern variant of what Marx described as a “proletarian alms bag.” Universal income is widely favored, particularly in Silicon Valley, where many dismiss the idea of upward mobility. The consensus there increasingly embraces a 21st century equivalent of the “bread and circuses” given to the masses in Imperial Rome. But Labour activist Embery notes such efforts “disempower workers,” discourage organizing, and turn them into essentially wards of the state, rather than independent agents.

None of this is far-fetched, as we can see by the growing acceptance of stimulus transfer payments in both the United States and Europe. Yet, over time, as families become more dependent on government transfers, they may choose to confiscate the wealth of the uber-rich. Great inequality, Adam Smith suggested, naturally leads the poor to “invade” the “possessions of the rich. Some on the Left already propose using the riches of the oligarchy to fund a “fully automated luxury communism,” a kind of technologically enabled collectivist paradise. Given the history of utopian musings like these over the past century, they should be feared. But compared to growing inequality and dismal prospects for most, such a radical approach could still become surprisingly attractive.

For every former Republican like, say, Peggy Noonan who mourns the disappearance of her Republican Party to be replaced by the Party of Trump, there are probably two Democrats who are just as saddened to find what they thought of as their Democratic Party of the Little Guy being replaced by today’s nearly thoroughly gentrified technocratic party of Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos. Like the Cheshire Cat it is vanishing little by little until all that is left is the smile.

It’s not hard to understand why. Their business models could be destroyed with the stroke of a pen—they’re completely dependent for their billions on control of political power and the Democratic Party was a distressed property both after the defeat of Al Gore by George W. Bush and then after Hillary Clinton’s defeat by Donald Trump. Now it’s government of the people by the political donors for the political donors.

In a column at The Hill Niall Stanage lists what he characterizes as “Biden’s five biggest foreign policy challenges”. His list is and I’ve added my comments to each one:

1. Countering the rise of China

   As my distant ancestor put it, don’t set the fence too far. We either cannot counter the rise of China or China’s rise may counter itself. What we need to do is figure out how we will adapt to China’s rise which is a somewhat different matter.

2. Exploring a return to the Iran nuclear deal

   That was sort of a campaign promise. President Biden is pretty much obligated to pursue that. I don’t think it’s in his five biggest challenges though.

3. Seeking progress between Israel and the Palestinians

   If the Biden Administration doesn’t screw up the groundwork for this one was laid pretty well by the Trump Administration. Waning support from other Arab countries will pretty well ensure progress. Or a desperate last ditch attempt by the Palestinians. Whichever of those takes place what more can we do?

4. The Russia question

   List me among those who do not think that Russia is much of a threat to the U. S. or U. S. interests. If we stopped acting aggressively towards them, they’d probably do the same.

   Have no doubt the relationship between Russia and the U. S. is the most important bilateral relationship in the world today and will remain so. IMO those who worry about a Russia-China entente don’t know much about either country.

   Unreconstructed Cold Warriors have been screwing up our relationship with Russia for the last 25 years and that has probably resulted in our losing the opportunity to forge a really constructive relationship with Russia. It’s time for us to try a different tack. We have a number of areas of mutual interest. Like not destroying the world.

5. Clarity on Cuba

   I have no idea how this item landed on this list. I can think of a dozen more pressing issues.

   /li>

Unmentioned are forging betters relations with our neighbors in Central and South America, the prospect of a serious war in Africa, ongoing carnage in the Middle East, Europe’s continuing decline, forging an Anglospheric cooperative group, North Korea which will not allow itself to remain ignored for long, and making our Asian allies less nervous.

Update

And what about places where we continue to have troops in the field like Syria and Afghanistan? You remember Afghanistan? It was in all the papers. And what about Yemen?

The editors of the Wall Street Journal note that inflation is rising:

The U.S. on Friday reported a rise of 1% in producer prices for March, double the consensus prediction of economists. Prices are up 4.2% in the last year, with goods prices up 7%.

The year-over-year increase is higher in part because of low, pandemic-induced numbers from 2020. The recent acceleration is also related to constraints on the supply of goods, while demand surges as the pandemic eases and consumers spend their pent-up savings and government checks.

For these reasons, Federal Reserve economists say inflation will be “transitory,” receding later this year as supply constraints ease. Let’s hope they’re right.

Everything is transitory. It all depends on the horizon. Maybe inflation will decline “later this year”. How long is “later”? One of the implications is that the passbook savings rate, already extremely low, is now effectively negative.

As should be surprising to no one, representatives of various industries are lining up to feed at the trough which the Biden Administration’s “infrastructure plan” will provide. Among them I found this at RealClearPolicy from Ben Bordelon, representing the maritime industry, particularly interesting:

The U.S. maritime industry is resilient, and as the backbone of America’s national and economic security, has delivered despite significant trials from natural disasters to foreign conflict. However, 2020 brought unprecedented challenge. Reduced demand and the increased operational costs that have accompanied some harsh new operating realities dampen hopes for an industry that will be critical if we are truly going to “Build Back Better.”

To ensure the maritime industry’s long-term viability as a critical engine of the U.S. economy, our country is in need of decisive leadership. From regulations, to shipbuilding, to port development, there are many areas that are in dire need of attention. It is our hope that the Biden administration will put the personnel and policies in place to make that a reality.

He continues with a defense of the Jones Act, the century old legislation that mandates that only American-flagged ships built, owned, and operated by U. S. citizens may transport goods between U. S. ports or operate in inland waterways. The Jones Act is controversial with supporters arguing that it fosters American jobs and interests and opponents arguing that the effect of the Jones Act has been to decimate American shipbuilding. Today the U. S. builds very few if any container ships—almost all are built in Asia. American ships tend to be older and inefficient.

Furthermore, the Jones Act is easily subverted for much coastal transport and shippers have incentives to do so as Cato points out:

To get a sense of the inefficiencies, a Maritime Administration report found that the operating costs of U.S.-flagged vessels engaged in foreign commerce in 2010 were 2.7 times greater than those of their foreign competitors.61 The daily operating costs, which include crew, tools, supplies, maintenance and repair, insurance, and overhead were tallied at $7,454 for foreign‐​flagged vessels, but a whopping $20,053 for U.S.-flagged vessels. Of the U.S. total, 68 percent ($13,655) was crew costs, as compared to 35 percent for foreign‐​flagged ships. It should be no surprise that labor unions are among the Jones Act’s most vigorous supporters.62 Maintenance and repair costs, meanwhile, are inflated by a provision in the Tariff Act of 1922 — supported by Senator Jones — mandating that repairs made in foreign ports be subject to a 50 percent ad valorem tax.63 Moreover, any rebuilding of a ship abroad — defined as the addition of more than 7.5 percent of the vessel’s steelweight to the hull and superstructure, or adding a major component weighing more than 1.5 percent of the vessel’s steelweight — will cause the vessel to lose its Jones Act eligibility.

Unlike Cato my view is that subsidizing U. S. shipbuilding would be prudent and that the Jones Act should be expanded if anything. There is presently no such thing as a genuinely “green” container ship. Although present container ships have become more efficient over the last decade, they are completely dependent on oil to power them and there is a limit on how efficient they can become. For the record China’s restrictions on cabotage, as it is called, are much stricter than ours are.

If I had to pick the most prominent political blogs unaffiliated with news media, I would say the Huffington Post, Vox.com, and PowerLine. To the best of my knowledge PowerLine is the only one of those three blogs to make the cover of Time magazine. It is also the only conservative, Republican blog among those three.

I read PowerLine only very occasionally—perhaps three times in the last year. Two of those three times was during the rioting in Minneapolis. Since the blog’s authors reside in Minneapolis I thought they might have some particular insights into what was happening there. I didn’t find much that I didn’t already know.

The guys at PowerLine do a pretty fair job of expressing the conservative Republican point of view and Paul Mirengoff’s recent post on the director of the Centers for Disease Control’s proclamation that racism is a public health threat is no exception. I wanted to pass along one passage from the post:

For example, in reporting Walensky’s statement the Washington Post cites findings that “because of segregated housing, Black people are nearly four times more likely to die of pollution exposure that White people.” But to assume that housing patterns are the result of racism is to apply the dogma that all outcomes unfavorable to Blacks are due to racism.

Where Blacks live is the result of (1) where they want to live and (2) where they can afford to live. If Blacks want to live in upscale neighborhoods populated by Whites, but can’t afford to, we shouldn’t assume that racism is responsible. More likely, the Blacks in question haven’t done the things they needed to do — e.g., stay in school, avoid having kids too young, get and stay married — to afford the housing they want.

mostly to disagree with it. That is certainly the conservative, Republican point of view but I think it’s a grave over-simplification. It’s more complicated than that. While I believe that black people who “stay in school, avoid having kids too young, get and stay married” on average do better than those who do not, I think it’s a superficial analysis.

For example, in all of the ten states in which the most black people live (Florida, Texas, New York, Georgia, California, North Carolina, Illinois, Maryland, Virginia, and Ohio) the state contribution to the funding of public K-12 education is below the U. S. median. In practice that means that school funding is more dependent on local property taxes than would otherwise be the case. That is true both in Red States (Texas, Georgia, North Carolina) and Blue States (New York, California, and Illinois). In my view racism is among the reasons for that. That in turn is a contributing factor to poor schools where blackk people live. That’s what I mean by “more complicated”.

Illinois ranks dead last among the states in the state’s contribution to K-12 public education and I believe that racism is, at the very least, a contributing factor to that.

In his Wall Street Journal column James Freeman highlights a Wharton study:

A new analysis of the president’s “American Jobs Plan” from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School finds that over the next decade the Biden scheme would reduce U.S. economic growth, capital stock, wages and hours worked. But there is something that the plan would increase—federal debt. In short, it’s a disaster for U.S. investors, workers and taxpayers.

The Wharton crew doesn’t think the results would get all that much better in succeeding years, with one significant exception. The analysis does see a benign impact on the federal budget after 2031 because the plan’s spending is scheduled to end while the new taxes are intended to last forever. But how often do massive Washington subsidy schemes fail to get renewed by Congress?

He goes on to quote from the study itself:

The decline in capital makes workers less productive despite the increase in productivity due to more infrastructure, dragging hourly wages down by 0.7 percent in 2031 and 0.8 percent in 2050. Overall, GDP is 0.9 percent lower in 2031 and 0.8 percent lower in 2050.

One of the problems is that much of what is being billed as “infrastructure” is in fact just consumption. That won’t result in increases in productivity. As Lincoln quipped no matter what you call it a tail is not a leg.

But there will be those who benefit from these spending programs: preferred vendors, SEIU union leaders, and lots of political backers. The promises that are being made will be enough to make these programs popular. At least for a while. If Mr. Biden is lucky, their popularity will hold out past the midterms.

The editors of the Wall Street Journal commenting on the economic effects of the lockdowns in 2020 take an unsurprising stance:

As the U.S. economy reopens more fully, comparative data is emerging about the 50 states that illuminate how much of the economic harm was self-inflicted.

The Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) recently published state personal income and GDP data for the fourth quarter and 2020 calendar year. Most states suffered a massive decline in GDP in 2020’s second quarter as governors followed the advice of public-health officials to shut down businesses to “flatten the curve.”

But the new data show that states that allowed businesses to reopen sooner, and maintained fewer restrictions for the rest of the year, recovered by year-end. Real GDP for private industries fell 1.3% nationally at an annual compounded rate between the first and fourth quarters, according to BEA.

Yet there was large variation among the states. Hawaii’s economy declined the most (-9.9%)—no surprise given its dependence on tourism. Wyoming (-6.6%) and other energy-producing states were also slow to bounce back. New York’s (-5%) recovery was third worst, and even New Jersey (-2.3%) and Connecticut (-0.3%) fared better. Utah performed the best, growing 4.3%. It also has the sixth lowest per capita Covid death rate.

Northeast states were slammed hardest in the spring, so governors in the region were understandably more cautious about easing business restrictions. Yet New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo kept many businesses shut all summer despite ample hospital capacity and fewer Covid cases. He let retail and restaurants in New York City partially reopen in the fall, but then reimposed a near-total lockdown in December. New York’s economy never awoke from its spring coma.

By contrast, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis let nearly all businesses stay open after May. Florida’s private GDP had shrunk only 1.1% by year-end, dragged down by weak international and domestic tourism. New York’s food and accommodation industry shrank more than twice as much as Florida’s and the most in the U.S.

Retail also recovered in most states during the summer and fall, thanks in part to online commerce and federal payments to individuals. States in the South and Southwest that reopened sooner—such as Utah (8.3%), Arkansas (5.7%), Arizona (4.9%) and Georgia (4.7%)—had the strongest retail growth from the first quarter. The biggest exception? New York (-8.8%). Even New Jersey saw a small retail uptick between the first and fourth quarters.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s business restrictions were the strictest in the Midwest. Her state’s private GDP also fell three times more than the Great Lakes region. Or consider California, whose private economy shrank 1.9% between the first and fourth quarters as Gov. Gavin Newsom gradually lifted restrictions last summer only to reimpose a stay-at-home order in November. By contrast, Arizona’s private GDP increased 1%, buoyed by construction, manufacturing and retail comebacks.

Democratic Governors began to ease business restrictions this January as cases ebbed, vaccines rolled out and Joe Biden became President. But the unemployment rates in California (8.5%) and New York (8.9%) remained significantly higher in February than the national 6.2% average. Unemployment in New York City was still 12.9%.

But that dodges the larger question: did the lockdowns save lives? The jury remains out on that question. Such answers as I have been able to find remain strongly politically motivated.

I searched in vain for any models of, for example, fatalities in New York with or without the lockdowns. Research, too, appears to be highly politically motivated.

I have long felt that morbidity and mortality due to SARS-CoV-2 was less related to policy that to other factors like population behaviors, demographics including age distribution and genetic variation, density, climate, and geography. It may be decades, centuries before we have conclusive answers if ever. We really need them now.

The editors of the Wall Street Journal point out that the number of ‘encounters” at our southern border last month represented a substantial increase over the number in the same month of 2019:

The White House has tried to pass off the migrant surge at the U.S.-Mexico border as nothing more than a routine seasonal sojourn. “It happens every year,” President Biden said in a news conference last month. New York Rep. Ritchie Torres called the crisis “more of a cyclical occurrence than a unique consequence of the Biden Administration policy.”

Bad timing, as the latest data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection shows. CBP said this week that there were more than 172,300 encounters with migrants on the Southwest border in March, a 71% increase over February. That’s up from 103,731 in March 2019 and 50,347 in March 2018.

That includes a record 18,890 unaccompanied children, compared to 9,380 in March 2019 and 5,244 in March 2018. CBP also reported 53,623 encounters with family units last month, a 173% increase over February and the most since the peak of the 2019 border crisis. In 2020 the pandemic kept numbers low.

There is a seasonal element to this, but the current surge is a much more serious spike related to the incentives provided by Biden Administration rhetoric and policy. The U.S. now expels single adults under a pandemic emergency measure known as Title 42, but it allows children who cross the border illegally alone to stay. The Biden Administration has also released into the U.S. large numbers of families who crossed the border illegally with young children. Migrant parents recognize this as a chance to gain entry.

U.S. facilities for housing migrants are overcrowded and the border patrol is overwhelmed. The humanitarian crisis will continue to worsen unless the policy incentives change.

I would add that circumstances matter as well. In March 2019 the U. S. unemployment rate was 3.8%; now it’s 6% and some of the sectors in which it’s hardest to get jobs are the same ones in which these migrant job-seekers will be seeking employment. Additionally, immigrants represented 13.8% of the population in 2019. Now they represent more than 14%.