While Max Boot’s strategy for competing with China, expressed in his most recent Washington Post column:

First, end the covid-19 outbreak. Nothing has done more to foster a global image of the United States as weak and incompetent than the fact that we have more covid-19 deaths than any other country. What a difference a change of administration makes. The number of vaccinations per day has increased from fewer than 818,000 on Jan. 20 to more than 3 million on Sunday. That’s a 267 percent increase in just 60 days. The United States has become a world leader in vaccinations, with 38 doses administered per 100 people, compared with only 5.4 doses per 100 people in China.

Second, revive the economy. Because China stopped the spread of covid-19, its economy grew by 2.3 percent in 2020, while ours shrank by 3.5 percent. But Biden’s growing success in combating the pandemic, combined with the $1.9 trillion stimulus package approved by Congress, should turbocharge the economy. Economists surveyed by the Wall Street Journal predict torrid 5.95 percent growth this year — the strongest pace since 1984.

Third, unify the country. This will be tougher, but Biden is off to a good start by refusing to engage in the GOP’s culture wars and pursuing popular initiatives such as his stimulus bill — which has 70 percent support in the country despite the lack of any GOP votes in Congress. Biden’s job approval rating is at 55.1 percent — far higher than Trump’s ever was — and Republicans are struggling to figure out how to attack him.

Fourth, reinvigorate America’s alliances. The administration is making this a priority. Before the Alaska summit, Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin visited two U.S. allies in Asia — South Korea and Japan — and Biden convened a virtual meeting of the so-called Quad with Australia, Japan and India. Confidence in the United States has surged among our allies since Biden’s election. The Pew Research Center reported in January: “Large majorities in Germany (79 percent), France (72 percent) and the UK (65 percent) say they have confidence in Biden to do the right thing in world affairs — a dramatic change from the low ratings Trump received.”

Fifth, reorient defense spending. The United States spends a lot on defense — $714 billion in fiscal year 2020 — but much of it goes for “legacy” systems such as aircraft carriers, short-range fighter aircraft and tanks that would be unlikely to survive a war against an adversary such as China equipped with precision-guided missiles, cyberweapons and other high-tech systems. Classified Pentagon war games “strongly suggest” that the United States would lose a conflict with China. Catching up requires, as retired Adm. James Stavridis and former Marine Elliot Ackerman argued in The Post, “investing in offensive cyber capabilities, smaller platforms, drone and stealth technology and artificial intelligence.” We can’t do that and maintain all of our expensive, existing capabilities.

Sixth, safeguard our technological edge. We can’t take that for granted, given that, from 2000 to 2017, China’s research and development spending grew by more than 17 percent a year while America’s grew only 4.3 percent a year. The National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence, chaired by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and former deputy defense secretary Robert Work, recently came out with a report that has important recommendations for how the United States can remain a tech leader. Its proposals include doubling research spending on artificial intelligence, reforming the immigration system to attract “highly skilled immigrants” and expanding domestic manufacturing of semiconductors. Congress can begin by passing a bipartisan Senate bill to expand funding for the National Science Foundation and to give it more of a technology focus.

is framed as things that might actually be accomplished, I think they vary from foregone conclusion to materially impossible.

The pandemic will end but it will end by becoming endemic. In that sense the outbreak of COVID-19 in the U. S. will never end. The economy will revive as soon as government (at all levels) allows it to. How fast, how strongly, which sectors of the economy will recover and which will never recover are different matters. I think Mr. Boot is overestimating what is actually going to happen, largely because he does not appear to understand how either government spending or the U. S. economy works. I also think that Mr. Boot’s view of how to assist the economy in recovering would be somewhat different than mine which would largely consist of proposing it get the heck out of the way. Increasing corporate income taxes is probably not the best strategy for fostering economic growth. Neither is focusing on reducing carbon emissions. I didn’t mention it in my last post but one of the secrets of our success has been abundant cheap energy.

The United States has not been unified in any meaningful sense other than for a few days following 9/11 since the end of World War II. I believe it would require an actual existential threat against the U. S. to unify the country. The present approval rate of the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 is a lousy gauge for unifying the country. The ARRA was popular initially, too, but its popularity waned sharply over time and not just for partisan reasons.

I don’t believe that Mr. Boot recognizes it but his fourth and fifth suggestions are in diametric opposition. His recommendation to “reorient” defense spending is a lot more than that. It would be an abrogation of America’s grand strategy over the last 250 years which includes maintaining freedom of navigation. Extending that grand strategy to include freedom in telecommunications is one thing; abandoning our large Navy in the interests of doing it is something else entirely. Make no mistake: that Navy is really the only thing we have to offer the Quad countries. Without it we’re not much more interesting to them than Chile. I have suggested revisiting our need for a large, standing but I recognize that would mean doing a lot of things differently than we do now which Mr. Boot does not seem to appreciate. I’m skeptical that the United States government is temperamentally suited to engage in largescale offensive cyber capabilities. And artificial intelligence? That has been touted as right around the corner since I was in grad school which is now more than 50 years ago. Contrary to popular beliefs the main developments in AI over that period have been due to cheap hardware rather than any new insights into AI as such. Just as a for instance, neural nets have been around since 1958. I think that an AI breakthrough will remain elusive for years to come. I sincerely wish I had persuaded somebody to take me up on my wagers of some years back that there wouldn’t be a single street legal fully autonomous vehicle anywhere in the U. S. by 2020. There wasn’t and the latest test runs have been pretty catastrophic. A car that can park itself is still not a fully autonomous vehicle.

I agree that we need to reshore manufacturing of semiconductors. It’s something I’ve been saying for the last 30 years. It’s unclear to me how we can maintain our technological edge as long as we allow the Chinese to maintain their 24/7/365 cyber espionage programs not to mention their ordinary human espionage. Like the Soviets before them, all it takes to turn U. S. assets is money.

Unlike Mr. Boot I think we should be capitalizing more effectively on our strengths rather than putting a futile attempt at shoring up our weaknesses. But that’s material for a different post.

In his new York Times column Tom Friedman laments that the Chinese have lost respect for the United States because we’ve “stopped following our formula for success”:

At last week’s Alaska meeting between America’s and China’s top diplomats, Chinese officials made it quite clear that they no longer fear our criticism, because they don’t respect us as they once did, and they don’t think the rest of the world does, either. Or as Yang Jiechi, China’s top foreign affairs policymaker, baldly told his U.S. counterparts: “The United States does not have the qualification … to speak to China from a position of strength.”

Surprised? What did you think, that the Chinese didn’t notice that our last president inspired his followers to ransack our Capitol, that a majority of his party did not recognize the results of our democratic election, that a member of our Congress believes that Jewish-run space lasers cause forest fires, that left-wing anarchists were allowed to take over a section of downtown Portland, creating havoc for months, that during the pandemic the U.S. printed money to help its consumers keep spending — much of it on Chinese-made goods — while China printed money to invest in even more infrastructure, and that gun violence in America is out control?

Which brings me to the 2022 Winter Olympics, scheduled for China.

A rising number of voices are beginning to suggest that we boycott the China Games. I have sympathy with that call, as we watch China crush the infrastructure of democracy in Hong Kong and use internment camps to brutally suppress Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang with utter indifference to world opinion. How do we just ignore all that and focus on ice skating?

But here’s the thing: The competition that we really need to focus on winning is not the 2022 Olympics but the 2025 Olympics.

Oh, you haven’t heard of the 2025 Olympics? They are not on your NBC calendar? Well, they are on Chinese President Xi Jinping’s calendar. Xi unilaterally declared the 2025 Olympics in 2015 and suggested that there would be only two competitors: China and America. It was an initiative that Xi’s government called “Made in China 2025.”

He goes on to advise:

But my message to my fellow Americans is: We now have to return to and double down on what was our formula for success.

And that is: educating our work force up to and beyond whatever technology demands; building the world’s best infrastructure of ports, roads and telecommunications; attracting the world’s most energetic and high-I.Q. immigrants to enrich our universities and start new businesses; legislating the best regulations to incentivize risk-taking while curbing recklessness; and steadily increasing government-funded research to push out the boundaries of science so our entrepreneurs can turn the most promising new ideas into start-ups.

It’s unclear to me how he decided those things were our formula for success or, indeed, how he measures success. Presumably, it wasn’t by increases in GDP:

Find more statistics at Statista

There’s quite a bit to unpack there. I’ll focus on these:

• Chinese respect
• Friedman’s formula
• Our actual formula
• Our national goals

The Chinese authorities do not respect us, never have, and never will. How could they? We’re not them and we’re not Chinese. Furthermore they see our civil liberties and diversity as liabilities rather than assets. As final nails in our coffin our lack of willingness to enforce our own laws and their confidence that they can breach our digital security any time they care to are damning.

Fortunately, I don’t care whether they respect us or not. It concerns me that they may no longer fear us. IMO that would be a grave error on their part.

My guess is that arriving at his “formula” Mr. Friedman was only looking at our national ability to “accomplish big things”. The United States is now almost 250 years old. Over that entire period the only times in which anything resembling the items in his formula were national priorities were during World War II (the Manhattan Project) and during the 1960s (the Mercury and Apollo Programs). In aggregate that lasted about 20 years. It’s a bit of a stretch to call that “our formula for success”.

I would say our actual formula for success was more like:

• Import as little as we can. Impose tariffs on foreign goods to ensure that’s the case
• Ensure that the entire U. S. is a large free trade zone.
• Restrict immigration to the “high-I. Q.” people he mentions.
• Education, healthcare, and physical infrastructure are primarily state and local responsibilities.
• R&D are primarily the responsibility of private companies and individuals
• The responsibilities of the federal government are limited to national defense (narrowly construed), foreign relations, ensuring the soundness of the dollar and U. S. credit, and enforcing federal laws.
• Don’t invade other countries or occupy countries where the people hate us.

I will freely concede that our greatest period of national accomplishments and growth was also marked by racial discrimination and injustice. Can those be reconciled? Mr. Friedman seems to take that as an article of faith. I would hope so but it remains to be seen.

In conclusion I would suggest that I agree with Mr. Friedman that we have gone astray but I think I part ways with him in just how we have gone astray. I don’t think it’s in “accomplishing big things”, maximizing the DJIA, maximizing GDP, maximizing population, or maximizing the wealth of a small number of ultra-wealthy people. Or gaining the respect of the Chinese authorities. I think it’s in ensuring a decent life for all Americans and that people have the freedom to work out their own hopes and dreams.

I disagree strongly with some of the things in Jeremy Devine’s Wall Street Journal op-ed but I wanted to highlight one observation of his that I found interesting:

The concept of long Covid has a highly unorthodox origin: online surveys produced by Body Politic, which launched in 2018 and describes itself atop its website’s homepage as “a queer feminist wellness collective merging the personal and the political.” In March 2020, the group’s co-founders created the Body Politic Covid-19 Support Group, and as part of their mission of “cultivating patient led research,” the organization coordinated a series of online surveys on persistent symptoms. Based on the results of these, Body Politic produced the first report on long Covid in May.

But many of the survey respondents who attributed their symptoms to the aftermath of a Covid-19 infection likely never had the virus in the first place. Of those who self-identified as having persistent symptoms attributed to Covid and responded to the first survey, not even a quarter had tested positive for the virus. Nearly half (47.8%) never had testing and 27.5% tested negative for Covid-19. Body Politic publicized the results of a larger, second survey in December 2020. Of the 3,762 respondents, a mere 600, or 15.9%, had tested positive for the virus at any time.

I find the prospect that we are taking seriously the claims of people that they’ve had the disease without actual material evidence distressing. Who are we to doubt lived experience? If that notion catches hold entire fields of inquiry might as well be tossed in the dustbin.

Where I disagree with him is his suggestion that diseases for which there is no clinical test are psychosomatic in nature and should be treated as psychological disorders rather than as diseases. There is an enormous array of diseases that have no definitive clinical tests but which we’re pretty sure have physical causes. These include Alzheimer’s Disease and Parkinson’s Disease. Maybe I’m being unkind but I attribute that to his specialty. Just as surgeons tend to look for surgical solutions to health problems so are psychiatrists tempted to view anything for which no definitive test exists as requiring psychiatric treatment.

In his regular Washington Post column David Ignatius interprets the meeting between Chinese and American diplomats that took place in Alaska last week:

The Chinese initially appeared almost cocky in Anchorage, with Yang lecturing his hosts about the United States’ moral and diplomatic shortcomings. This message was probably intended to impress the domestic audience back in China about Beijing’s resolve. But behind this outward confidence, the Chinese seemed peeved that before the Anchorage meeting Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin had traveled to China’s backyard to visit neighboring Japan and South Korea.

The Biden administration’s emphasis on “the Quad” — the informal U.S. partnership with India, Japan and Australia — has at least modestly bolstered the United States’ position in the region. India, in particular, has moved further and faster than U.S. officials expected. And Japan, though feeling its way under new Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, remains a committed partner.

China faces a paradox in Asia: The stronger and more confident it becomes, the more it frightens its neighbors and pushes them toward Washington. That’s why the United States’ recent political disarray worries its Asian allies: Against a rising China, they don’t want to bet on a fading superpower.

That’s certainly one interpretation of the meeting but I think there are others. First, trying to put an opponent on the back foot is a pretty standard tactic in Chinese diplomacy. Keeping high-ranking U. S. officials waiting on the tarmc; sending lower ranking officials to meet with the president when he visits. I’ve made my own suggestions about counter-signalling but the White House pays no attention to me.

The Chinese leadership recognizes that the Biden Administration is sensitive about the events surrounding the election and its aftermath. They also think that the openness of our society and diversity are weaknesses rather than strengths. Of course they’ll probe along those areas. Whether they’re right about those things remains to be seen.

But I’m more concerned about what they do rather than what they say and I don’t believe their actions show as much confidence as their scolding of American diplomats might suggest.

In an article in the the Washington Post Nick Miroff and Maria Sacchetti declaim that there’s a crisis at our southern border:

The last three presidents have each had to grapple with a sudden arrival of thousands of unaccompanied migrant teenagers and children along the Mexico border, but the challenge facing President Biden in recent weeks is an unprecedented one. Never before have so many minors arrived so fast.

Over the last three weeks, the average number of teenagers and children crossing into the United States without their parents has topped 550 per day, according to the latest government data reviewed by The Washington Post. Border officials are on pace to take in more than 17,000 minors this month, which would be an all-time high.

The influx has overwhelmed the government’s ability to safely shelter and care for the minors before delivering them to family members and vetted sponsors living in the United States, a challenge complicated by the coronavirus pandemic. Photos released Monday by Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas) showed teens packed into a South Texas tent facility operated by U.S. Customs and Border Protection that was at 1,500 percent of its pandemic-rated capacity as of Sunday, per CBP data. Cuellar’s office said the photos were taken over the weekend.

As evidence they produce the graph above. They add an interesting statistic:

The last three presidents have each had to grapple with a sudden arrival of thousands of unaccompanied migrant teenagers and children along the Mexico border, but the challenge facing President Biden in recent weeks is an unprecedented one. Never before have so many minors arrived so fast.

Over the last three weeks, the average number of teenagers and children crossing into the United States without their parents has topped 550 per day, according to the latest government data reviewed by The Washington Post. Border officials are on pace to take in more than 17,000 minors this month, which would be an all-time high.

The influx has overwhelmed the government’s ability to safely shelter and care for the minors before delivering them to family members and vetted sponsors living in the United States, a challenge complicated by the coronavirus pandemic. Photos released Monday by Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas) showed teens packed into a South Texas tent facility operated by U.S. Customs and Border Protection that was at 1,500 percent of its pandemic-rated capacity as of Sunday, per CBP data. Cuellar’s office said the photos were taken over the weekend.

I wonder how the claimed relationship was established. It should also be noted that projections are not established facts but IMO we’re close enough to the end of March at this point that the projection should be pretty close.

Meanwhile, at The Week Ryan Cooper says that nothing of the sort is happening:

There is a problem at the border, but it is not remotely a “crisis.” It’s an administrative challenge that could be solved easily with more resources and clear policy — not even ranking with, say, the importance of securing loose nuclear material, much less the ongoing global pandemic, or the truly civilization-threatening crisis of climate change. The mainstream media is in effect collaborating with Republicans to stoke unreasoning xenophobic panic.

Here’s what’s happening: in short, the number of people trying to cross the border has skyrocketed over the past month. There has been a particular surge in unaccompanied children — according to the Department of Homeland Security, average apprehensions of unaccompanied children have increased from 313 per day last month to 565, on average. It’s unclear why this is happening exactly, though presumably it has something to do with a new president who isn’t such a racist maniac, and the hope that vaccination is beginning to beat back the coronavirus pandemic in the U.S.

Now, there are genuine challenges here. Tens of thousands of people trying to sneak across the border is, at a minimum, unsafe (many have died trying to do so). And as Felipe De La Hoz writes at The New Republic, unaccompanied minors are a particularly thorny issue — the Biden administration wants to avoid the negative press of “kids in cages,” but one can’t simply turn young children loose with no one to care for them. The natural solution is to house them in a decent facility for a short time while host families are located. But then again, the facilities for caring for these kids are typically underfunded and loosely regulated, and often run by unscrupulous contractors with a history of abuse.

But all of these problems are, in principle at least, easily fixable. With some more money the government could build more holding facilities so children aren’t stuck for days or weeks. With more staff the immigration courts system could be beefed up to process asylum applications in a timely fashion (as required by U.S. law, incidentally). Probably most importantly, comprehensive immigration reform could rationalize and streamline the legal immigration process, which is currently a Kafkaesque nightmare.

That actually sounds like he’s describing a crisis to me but he doesn’t like to use that word. Can we agree that tens of thousands of unaccompanied minors presents problems we don’t need? Would that be fair?

There’s a lot to decompress in these pieces. The problem does not primarily belong to the Biden Administration but to the House. Urgent action by the House is needed. The money that Mr. Cooper wants to spend will not appropriate itself.

Which is more humane, more compassionate? Finding “host families” for these young people or returning them to their countries of origin? As Mr. Cooper intimates I don’t think there’s an obviously right answer. Host families can be abusive. Without better resources for establishing the veracity of claimed relationships than we have we may be releasing children into the hands of human traffickers of one form or another.

I would add that for young people over the age of 12 if they do not already speak English fluently they probably never will and the economy of the 21st century is dramatically different from that of the 19th century. Being able to speak and at least to some degree read and write in English is a necessity. Incomes for people with less than a high school diploma have been languishing for decades.

I agree with Mr. Cooper’s observation that devoting more resources to promoting economic growth in Mexico and Central America would pay dividends across many areas. It’s easier said than done and doing it requires Congressional action.

I agree with the overall concept of the editorial at the Deseret News on handling the massive inflow of immigrants at our southern border:

As the United States sees a sharp increase in immigration under President Joe Biden’s administration, the nation must respond from a place of principle — and Utah offers solid foundations from which to start.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas this week directed the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to assist as 4,200 children were being kept in poor, crowded conditions in Customs and Border Protection facilities, in cells meant for adults. Biden, who criticized former President Donald Trump for keeping “kids in cages,” is passing the buck to his predecessor for the current situation, with White House press secretary Jen Psaki saying that “the last administration left us a dismantled and unworkable system.”

Meanwhile, Republicans are caught up in semantics, criticizing the Biden administration for calling the situation at the border a “challenge” and urging the president to label it a “crisis.” They say Biden’s rhetoric since taking office has encouraged the surge in immigration and point to the dangers posed to both American citizens and migrants by the COVID-19 pandemic in packed detention facilities.

The particular nuances of 2021 notwithstanding, it’s the same back-and-forth that’s plagued both parties for decades.

But principle is out there, and it can be found right here in Utah. The Utah Compact on Immigration, first signed in 2010 and reaffirmed in 2019, is “a declaration of five principles to guide Utah’s immigration discussion,” such as urging against unnecessary family separation, acknowledging strong families as “the foundation of successful communities,” recognizing the “economic role immigrants play as workers and taxpayers,” and adopting “a humane approach” to the reality that immigrants are integrated into Utah’s communities, which reflects the state’s “unique culture, history and spirit of inclusion.”

The compact is not meant to be a legislative solution — indeed, director of the National Immigration Forum Ali Noorani praised it as “designed to stop harmful legislation with a set of principles based on values fundamental to the broader community” and declared that “culture and values defeated politics and policy” — but it has been the foundation for numerous real-world solutions. In 2011, after the compact was signed, the state passed an immigration reform law that was heralded as a “model for America.” Years later, the principles laid out in the compact served as the bedrock upon which Gov. Gary Herbert requested more refugee resettlement in Utah, even as other states turned asylum-seekers away.

Lawmakers at the federal level can learn from the values enshrined here in Utah, as they balance the rule of law and complex law enforcement with the United States’ history as a nation enriched by immigrants — and as a beacon of hope for the huddled masses yearning to breathe free.

What’s happening at the border is not a picture of compassion, but neither is an unfettered pipeline into the United States. Between the extremes is reasonable immigration reform that prioritizes families while maintaining order and the rule of law.

but I suspect I differ from them in what I would consider compassion. I’ll give an example. I think the compassionate thing to do with unaccompanied minors who enter the U. S. illegally is to turn them over to the Mexican authorities. They are much better prepared to return those children to their parents than we will ever be. But is that even the compassionate thing?

The issue of what to do with unaccompanied minors is particularly thorny and fraught. An American parent who sent his or her children into the desert alone, gave them to human traffickers, or, in effect, sold them to adults who wanted to get in illegally as a “family with children” would be considered abusive. Their children might well be taken from them. The attitude I hear in the U. S. about Mexicans and Central Americans is incredibly condescending and patronizing. Treating poverty as a legitimate case for asylum is inconsistent with past practice and tremendously impractical. There are nearly three quarters of a billion poor people in the world. We don’t have work for them or even the resources to admit all of them.

In an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal Scott Gottlieb offers some advice about the evolution of the CDC’s guidelines that I think is sensible, prudent, and considerate: cut them some slack! He reviews the history of CDC guidelines during the COVID-19 pandemic:

More distance is always better when it comes to contagion. But the 6-foot directive might have been the single costliest measure CDC has recommended, which have been largely followed over the past year. So what science went into making—and, more important, sustaining—the recommendation?

Nobody knows for sure. Most agree the guideline derives from a belief that Covid is largely spread through respiratory droplets, like flu. Old studies suggest that larger respiratory droplets are unlikely to travel more than 6 feet, and therefore close contact with an infected person is the primary mode of exposure. This research was hardly conclusive, but by most accounts it formed the basis for the initial Covid recommendations. More-recent research shows that the novel coronavirus can also spread through airborne particles, known as aerosols, especially indoors.

Most planning for a pandemic prepared for a bad flu outbreak. Given how little was known about Covid, it was reasonable to base early assumptions on the flu blueprint. But this doctrine wasn’t revisited as more data became available about the novel coronavirus. The reliance on a flu model caused public-health authorities to underestimate and overestimate Covid in important ways.

They overestimated the role of contaminated surfaces. Some Americans are still wiping down their groceries before bringing them inside. One consequence is that we were slow to recognize the extent of asymptomatic spread. The effort dedicated to scrubbing surfaces wasn’t spent improving air ventilation and filtration, which would have had a greater effect. On the other hand, because of the assumption that Covid spread primarily through droplets and not through smaller aerosols, we underestimated the protective role of wearing high-quality masks.

Experts were trying to protect Americans, and we can’t blame them for being wrong in the absence of good information. The question is whether there is an effective process for establishing these measures and re-evaluating them as new information emerges. Science isn’t a set of unchanging truths handed down by a government agency.

Beyond changing the 6-foot recommendation, the Biden administration should consider reforming the decision-making process. CDC can move fast in a crisis, which is a virtue, but this makes it even more important that its advice is re-evaluated and updated when necessary. The agency’s guidance, even though it is nonbinding, has more impact than many regulations, but much less transparency and public scrutiny. There are no open dockets or opportunities for expert input, such as public advisory meetings.

Moreover, the CDC isn’t always clear on when the science is unsettled. This makes it harder for the American public to identify which recommendations are more open to discretion. The agency also doesn’t always identify the underlying science of its recommendations. We don’t know the exact basis for its initial view to stay 6 feet apart.

I think there’s a tension between providing guidance in the absence or insufficiency of actual scientific evidence and undermining public confidence. Multiple studies have suggested that a little humility and frankness can go a long way in resolving that tension. I know it’s a lot to ask but why not try treating adult Americans like grown-ups?

I continue to believe that the “Swiss cheese strategy” advocated by our cousins Down Under is a sound one. I wear a mask as required when in stores or other indoor venues. The only venue I’ve gone into other than a store, bank, or hospital over the last six months has installed a new AirPhx ventilation system I’ve discussed which I wish more office buildings would adopt. I try to maintain a more than two meter social distance from people other than my wife whenever I can including when I’m out-of-doors.

In her column in the Wall Street Journal Mary Anastasia O’Grady reviews a plan which I think is the best way by far to reduce illegal immigration from Mexico and Central America:

The HUGE Business Council—an acronym for Honduras, U.S., Guatemala, El Salvador—aims to create one million jobs in the next three to five years by “near-shoring” supply chains that serve U.S. manufacturing. It also proposes to attract capital to build or rebuild things like roads, ports and airports and to bring U.S. natural gas to the region.

The council already includes some big players, including Parkdale, one of the world’s largest yarn manufacturers and apparel maker Intradeco.

The idea dovetails beautifully with the vision of a commercially interconnected Central America, Mexico and U.S. Gulf Coast—via rail and shipping—laid out in a 2017 report on the Mexico-U.S. relationship from the Mexican Council for International Affairs.

Highlighting “investment in logistics and transport infrastructure,” the report called for “complete modernization” of a train line from Guatemala to the tip of the Yucatán Peninsula to open “a new frontier” with the eastern U.S. “It should also contemplate the extension of this train line to Tegucigalpa in Honduras.” The same rail lines could be used to lay fiber-optic cable.

What are the impediments to the plan?

These are private initiatives, but they need buy-in from government—and that’s a problem. U.S. politicians from both sides of the aisle love to grandstand along the southern border, bemoaning the poverty and misery that sends desperate migrants north. But standing up to progressives who shape counterproductive U.S. foreign policy, and to labor unions that work at cross purposes with risk-taking capitalists, is another matter.

and, contrary to what you might infer from Ms. O’Grady’s column, the need for “buy-in from government” isn’t limited to the U. S. The governments of Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador need to be enlisted as well which brings us to the core problem at the root of Central America’s economic woes: bad government. During the Cold War we tolerated and in many cases supported bad governments on the grounds that they were better than pro-Soviet communist governments but the Cold War has been over for 30 years now. Now we’re nervous about Bolivarianism. When will we learn that among the greatest risks we face are unfair, undemocratic, corrupt governments in Mexico and Central America?

If they’re convinced they have something to gain by them, elites in these countries will go along with such plans. The remedy for bad government isn’t more government or less government but better government and whatever we can do to encourage those among our closest neighbors, the better off we will be.

The editors of the New York Times have a plan for increasing federal tax revenues without increasing marginal rates:

Unreported income is the single largest reason that unpaid federal income taxes may amount to more than $600 billion this year, and more than $7.5 trillion over the next decade. It is a truly staggering sum — more than half of the projected federal deficit over the same period.

The government has a basic obligation to enforce the law and to crack down on this epidemic of tax fraud. The failure to do so means that the burden of paying for public services falls more heavily on wage earners than on business owners, exacerbating economic inequality. The reality of widespread cheating also undermines the legitimacy of a tax system that still relies to a considerable extent on Americans’ good-faith participation.

Proposals to close this “tax gap” often focus on reversing the long-term decline in funding for the I.R.S., allowing the agency to hire more workers and to audit more wealthy taxpayers. But Charles Rossotti, who led the I.R.S. from 1997 to 2002, makes a compelling argument that such an approach is inadequate. Mr. Rossotti says that Congress needs to change the rules, by creating a third-party verification system for business income, too.

The core of Mr. Rossotti’s clever proposal is to obtain that information from banks. Under his plan, the government would require banks to produce an annual account statement totaling inflows and outflows, like the 1099 tax forms that investment firms must provide to their clients.

Individuals would then have the opportunity to reconcile what Mr. Rossotti dubs their “1099New” forms with their reported income on their individual tax returns. One might, for example, assert that a particular deposit was a tax-exempt gift.

Mr. Rossotti has proposed that the I.R.S. require the new forms only for people with taxable income above a generous threshold. A bill including Mr. Rossotti’s plan, introduced by Representative Ro Khanna of California, sets that threshold at $400,000, to minimize the burden on small business. The money is undoubtedly in chasing wealthy tax cheats, but equity argues that business income, like wage income, should be subject to a uniform reporting standard. Small businesses ought to pay their taxes, too.

The proposal would not increase the amount anyone owes in taxes. It would, instead, increase the amount paid in taxes by those who are currently cheating.

Were it to accomplish that, I’d be in favor of it. I think we should enforce our laws. But it might have some unforeseen consequences as well since it places an additional premium on strategies which may or may not be available to us ordinary citizens for declaring income as not subject to tax. As such rather than generating additional revenue it might be a full employment program for tax attorneys and accountants.