I don’t know if you’ll find Edward Tenner’s piece at The Hedgehog Review on the humanities as interesting as I did but I thought I would pass it along. Here’s his opening:

The humanities may have suddenly mattered more than ever, but their support was also as fragile as it had been for decades. Governors and legislators in Alaska, Wisconsin, and other states were slashing budgets even before the pandemic. High levels of student debt were shifting enrollments to departments perceived as safe career choices, even though markets for scientific and technical skills (think of petroleum geology at a time of cheap oil and curtailed exploration) can also be cyclical. Tenure rules protect freedom of teaching and research for individual faculty but permit entire departments to be abolished during financial emergencies like the one that is upon us.

The humanities have shown themselves to be both vital and imperiled, and this paradox reveals how complex they are. There is no monolithic humanities. There are multiple communities, sometimes in happy consilience, sometimes at odds. Prominent among these are what could be called the folk humanities, enthusiast humanities, and academic humanities. Members of the first and second might not identify as humanists at all, while those of the third are divided about whether and how to work with the other two. The result is a cultural whirlpool, and one likely to change as a result of the pandemic.

I think his distinction among the academic humanities, the folk humanities, and enthusiast humanities is a good one but it contradicts his claim that their support is fragile. I would say that the public support for the humanities has never been stronger but the primacy of post-modernism in the academy has destroyed any reason for the academic humanities of indeed the academy itself to receive public support.

At Patch.com Pulitzer Price-winning columnist Mark Konkol affirms points I’ve been making for months—that Illinois Gov. Pritzker’s lack of transparency, arrogance, and playing fast and loose with the science has undermined his credibility in dealing with COVID-19:

A recent Cornell University study found that politicians who pontificate in deterministic terms about the pandemic science that guides them risk eroding the public’s trust in their policies and, worse, in science itself.

Dr. Sarah Kreps and Dr. Doug Kriner surveyed more than 6,000 people to shed light on how political messaging about scientific research guiding government responses to the pandemic affects the public’s trust in science and science-based public policy.

The study findings, published in the journal Science Advances, suggested that when politicians downplayed the scientific uncertainty of pandemic modeling, it appeared to create a short-term spike in support for pandemic policies.

But when scientific predictions don’t exactly jibe with reality, which they almost never do, the Cornell study showed the potential consequences — the erosion of the public trust.

“No model is right,” Kriner told me. “As the old saying goes, some models are just more useful than others. If we talk about it in these deterministic ways, when they will almost always not end up matching reality perfectly, there can be a downside.”

The study found: “Communicating the science in ways that are more categorical, sidestepping uncertainty, and weaving in fatalistic interpretations of the data are effective at building support at least in the short term. However, if projections prove incorrect, then arguments emphasizing reversals in projections can temper these gains and, potentially, even decrease support for science-based policymaking.”

From the pandemic’s start, Pritzker has consistently downplayed the omnipresent uncertainty of scientific research that guides him. His administration still keeps coronavirus predictive modeling that determines pandemic policy a state secret. And when faced with a Greek chorus of skeptics, the governor warned of the dangers of continued disobedience, stoking fear of the certain catastrophic consequences as the coronavirus crisis intensifies.

“What will it take to make this real for you?” Pritzker said last month in an attack on folks backing open rebellions against his coronavirus edicts.

“Do we have to get to a positivity rate of 50 percent like we’re seeing in Iowa? Fifty percent. Are you waiting for health care workers to get sick to a point where you don’t have staff in the local hospital to cover the next shift? What about if the hospitals get so overrun that your sick and your dying have nowhere left to turn?”

It’s the kind of coronavirus messaging the Cornell study suggests politicians might want to avoid.

“I’m sensitive to what politicians do. They’re using our best guess right now in trying to get people to take urgent action to try and save lives,” Kriner said. “But I think there is some danger when [scientific] guidance changes, and it always changes.”

As Illinoisans continue to struggle under the devastating economic shutdowns enacted in an attempt to slow the spread of spiking COVID-19 cases, it’s become increasingly clear that Pritzker’s reliance on “not scientific” coronavirus metrics that trigger the state’s tiered pandemic mitigation restrictions have created a credibility crisis that the governor has struggled to overcome.

It probably doesn’t help that he has sent his own family gallivanting out of the state, flitting among their many homes in Florida, Wisconsin, and who knows where, sending workman from Illinois up to his Wisconsin horse farm to make improvements, sending Illinois state troopers there, and generally making a mockery of the notion that we’re all in this together. It’s nearly as bad as when the mayor of Chicago allows rioters to loot Michigan Avenue but breaks up demonstrations near her own home.

I continue to believe that any plan that deems half of all workers essential or that closes down mom-and-pop stores while leaving major chains and online retailers conducting business as usual is absurd on its face, especially when reports of outbreaks in Amazon warehouses and Wal-Mart stores hit the news. It probably doesn’t help when other governors (and, we learn, mayors) flout the mandates they’ve imposed on others.

As I’ve been proposing since at least March, the strictest measures should be imposed first rather than imposing diktats that are not strict enough to have the desired effect but too strict to maintain in the long run. Eventually the long run arrives.

Yesterday I finally broke down and updated my old Windows 7 workstation to Windows 10. I had held back due to the enormous amount of software I have installed on it. After determining I hadn’t used any of them in two years, I uninstalled the software I knew would not be compatible with Windows 10, backed up my files, and started the update. Somewhat to my surprise it went without a hiccup and for the last 24 hours I haven’t encountered any problems. Everything I’ve tried has worked. I don’t see much change in performance one way or another.

I found this column in the Washington Post by David Ignatius interesting and dismaying:

Violent white-supremacist groups have formed a connected global movement that rose before Donald Trump’s presidency and threatens to continue long after he leaves office.

These white-supremacist groups have used the Internet to recruit and train followers, much as Islamist extremists did a decade ago, argues a major new study by Jigsaw, a research arm of Google. The study, described here for the first time, is being published Tuesday by Jigsaw’s digital journal, the Current.

The study shatters the image that many analysts have of white supremacist attackers as “lone wolf” extremists. Jared Cohen, the chief executive of Jigsaw, argues that “this myth obscures the vast underlying infrastructure of white supremacist online communities around the world.”

These groups “move fluidly between mainstream and fringe platforms,” Cohen warns. They recruit followers on Facebook or YouTube, among other venues, and then direct them to protected “alt-tech” sites where they can privately share propaganda and boast about operations.

I oppose both neo-Naziism and white supremacy unequivocally. I’m also not post-modern and I believe that words actually have meanings. I wish that Mr. Ignatius and The Current were a little more forthcoming about their definitions. Keep in mind that if you define something broadly enough and contrast it with an extremely narrow definition of something else you can prove practically anything. Just as an example, I don’t think that believing that nations have a right to defend their borders and limit entry is “anti-migrant” but I can see how some would think that. I also don’t think that reason, moderation, and non-violence are white supremacy but there are some who think so. I also don’t think that it’s anti-Muslim to point out that radical Islamist violence is a graver problem than violent white supremacists, as the Current piece documents (and you’d never know from Mr. Ignatius’s piece).

Here’s his peroration:

The Jigsaw study reminds us that the Internet is a rage accelerator. Good leaders can discourage extremism rather than feed it; they can encourage norms of good behavior. But tolerance needs to become a mass movement, more powerful than hatred.

Let’s no mince words. The underlying problems are Facebook and Twitter. I do not believe they should or can be regulated. I think their business model should be rendered unworkable.

In her most recent Washington Post column Megan McArdle makes some good points about testing. In reference to the Abbott Labs test that the White House was using and other rapid testing methods:

The high rate of false negatives means that testing provides the most protection when it’s deployed at the population level. At the group level, it’s only a weak, adjunct tactic to other precautions. And at the individual level, it’s borderline useless.

Start with the individuals: If you think you might have been exposed to covid-19 — for example, by flying home for the holiday — a negative test can’t tell you it’s safe to hang out indoors with your elderly parents. There’s a significant risk that you simply aren’t testing positive yet, and with case fatality rates still extremely high among older age groups, that’s a risk you should take very seriously.

That’s the reason I’ve been so skeptical about EZ home testing as a way back to normal. It’s not nearly as useful for that purpose as its exponents seem to think. Ms. McArdle continues:

At the group level, we should think of testing the way medieval kings thought about fending off barbarians. They didn’t just throw up a wall and call it a day, because what do you do if the enemy breaches the wall? So they built a layered defense — moats, catapults, boiling oil — plus some soldiers inside the walls. That’s also the best way to hold covid-19 at bay: testing and masks and hand-washing and distancing and good ventilation (or best of all, staying outdoors). Because if you instead try to use testing as a substitute for other safety measures, then eventually the virus is likely to slip through your lone line of defense and wreak mayhem within.

I’m not nearly as optimistic about the prospects for mass testing as she is:

If those people who test positive do the patriotic thing and immediately quarantine themselves, then in the second round of transmission, we would end up with 30,000 infections, instead of 300,000. In the third round, having caught 27,000 of the second round of infections, we end up with 9,000 new infections, instead of 900,000. Repeat that a few more times, and we’ve basically wiped out the novel coronavirus without doing much else.

The problem, of course, is that I think that relatively few will “do the patriotic thing” which renders the whole exercise useless. What I have been saying for something like nine months now is that what we really need is epidemiological testing and, honestly, it might be too late for that. It would have enabled policy-makers to craft more narrowly-tailored mitigation strategies. I write this as Chicago shambles to a stay-at-home directive like the one that was in place in March. The difference is that March was March and it’s December now.

The editors of the Washington Post are optimistic about a proposal for an $908 relief bill proposed by a bipartisan group of senators and representatives:

The ray of hope came Tuesday in the form of a $908 billion proposal from a bipartisan group of nine senators and representatives, including Virginia’s Sen. Mark R. Warner (D). The package would address crucial areas, including a four-month extension of $300-per-week unemployment benefits (total cost: $180 billion); another round of aid to small businesses ($288 billion); funds for state, local and tribal governments ($160 billion); schools ($82 billion); health care and vaccines ($51 billion combined). One can quibble about the total amount of the bill, which seems calculated to placate Republicans averse to exceeding the $1 trillion mark, even if a higher figure would probably do more good, as Democrats have maintained.

The ray of hope came Tuesday in the form of a $908 billion proposal from a bipartisan group of nine senators and representatives, including Virginia’s Sen. Mark R. Warner (D). The package would address crucial areas, including a four-month extension of $300-per-week unemployment benefits (total cost: $180 billion); another round of aid to small businesses ($288 billion); funds for state, local and tribal governments ($160 billion); schools ($82 billion); health care and vaccines ($51 billion combined). One can quibble about the total amount of the bill, which seems calculated to placate Republicans averse to exceeding the $1 trillion mark, even if a higher figure would probably do more good, as Democrats have maintained.

Probably the most controversial aspect of the proposal is its omission of another round of direct payments to households, though this is defensible given its inclusion of $26 billion in additional nutritional aid for low-income families. The main point is for Congress to be generous with what aid it does give and to target it where it’s most needed. Imperfect as it is, the bipartisan proposal merits support both in substantive terms and political ones. Substantively, it is better — much better — than nothing, which is what the 10 million who remain jobless, and the 26 million facing food insecurity, are getting now. Politically, it shows the way to yes for the negotiators, Mr. Mnuchin and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), and puts pressure on them to get there.

The proposal is greater than the $500 billion that Mitch McConnell has supported but less than the $2.2 trillion that Nancy Pelosi is holding out for. I have reservations about the portion of the bill intended to prop up state and local governments for a simple reason: money is fungible. If our experience here in Illinois is any gauge there will be at least some state legislatures which, rather than augmenting what they’re spending for pandemic support, will substitute federal money for the money they’ve already appropriated and devote their own money to other priorities having little or nothing to do with pandemic support.

But, as the editors say, it’s better than nothing.

One of the odd things about the coverage of this story is how squirrelly the reports are about who, precisely, is this group of nine senators and representatives. By reading multiple articles I have gleaned that Mark Warner, Mitt Romney, Joe Manchin, Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins, and Angus King are all part of it along with three House members. Something that should be clear from that list is that the lack of moderates in the Congress is a serious impediment to forging compromises. The next step will be whether either Majority Leader McConnell or Speaker Pelosi quashes this effort.

I thought you might be interested in this observation from Greg Hinz at Crain’s Chicago Business:

Chicago-area business leaders are moderately optimistic about how economic conditions will fare under President-elect Joe Biden. But they’re less peppy about the fiscal future in the city and state, expressing particular unease about what hasn’t been done to curb growing public-pension debt.

Those are the dominant themes to emerge in the latest edition of The Harris Poll Chicago Executive Pulse survey, conducted in partnership with Crain’s in the wake of the 2020 presidential election.

The quarterly survey, designed in such a way as to track changes in sentiment over time, found that 57 percent of the 200 business execs and owners questioned say they believe the incoming Biden administration will have a positive effect on job growth, with only 31 percent disagreeing. The remainder were undecided. That opinion came even though those surveyed clearly fear Biden may cost them some money, with the sample split 39 percent to 38 percent on whether his impact on corporate income taxes will be positive or negative.

Those surveyed weren’t as positive about the city or state, which are run by two other Democrats, Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Gov. J.B. Pritzker.

Asked about the state of the economy, 48 percent said they believe conditions will be good or very good nationally in six months, compared to 44 percent in the city and just 41 percent in the state.

What they’re worried about, of course, is the public pension overhang for both the city and the state. Spoiler alert: they don’t know what to do about it, either.

Here was the eye-opening part:

Consistent with the last survey, a whopping 53 percent of local business leaders say expect to reduce or end their office lease when it expires, and 51 percent intend to wait more than six months to bring all of their employees back to the office.

or, said another way, we may not be going back to normal but to “normal”.

Well, speak of the devil. In the Wall Street Journal Rahm Emanuel advises the incoming Biden Administration on a strategy for getting things accomplished with a divided Congress:

When the election was called for President-elect Joe Biden, progressives across the nation breathed a sigh of relief. But as the congressional results became clear, many of us paused the celebration. Unless Democrats win both Georgia Senate seats in Jan. 5 runoffs, Mr. Biden will be the first Democrat to face a Republican Senate at the beginning of his first term since Grover Cleveland in 1885. How can he even hope to pursue a progressive agenda?

The concern is well-founded because continued gridlock would be a disaster, blocking America from working through its challenges. But there is a way forward. Pundits are prone to parse the electorate between red and blue, but voters are much more complex. Millions who cast their ballots for Mr. Biden or President Trump support policy positions held by the other candidate. That isn’t to argue that President Biden should walk away from his agenda and put his finger in the wind. But it does suggest that, while Republican senators may profess to oppose the Democratic agenda, on particular issues, they’re poised to join a “coalition of the willing.”

He looks to state referenda as a guide, bascially proposing a triangulation strategy that peels off individual senators in their own political interest:

A more promising approach would be to find issues on which individual senators would benefit politically from breaking with their leadership and supporting President Biden’s plan. That would allow for small compromises that build the trust needed to advance bigger legislative priorities later.

He suggests

• Increasing the minimum wage
• DACA
• Modest steps on the environment, e.g. tougher fuel economy standards, more incentives for renewable energy
• Criminal justice reform
• Modest health care reform, e.g. end of “surprise billing”, “make prescription drugs more affordable”

I remain unconvinced he’ll be able to gain Republican support for any of those measures. And DACA, in particular, has been stymied for years by Democrats insisting on another amnesty program which is poison to Republicans. Said another way President Biden may face as many problems gaining the support of the progressive wing of his own party as from the Republicans.

The editors of the Wall Street Journal assess those who’ve been tapped as Joe Biden’s economics team:

The overall message of Mr. Biden’s picks is of a progressive team that views government as the leading engine of economic growth. Our guess is that they’ll use the lingering damage from the pandemic to propose a major spending and tax increase in early 2021.

The irony is that on present trend Mr. Biden will inherit an economy that is recovering much faster than Keynesian economists predicted earlier this year. The Atlanta Federal Reserve has raised its estimate for fourth-quarter growth to 11%, and Wall Street economist Ed Hyman has raised his to 8%.

This isn’t 2009. Once the Covid vaccine is delivered broadly, the economy should soar. The job of the Obama economists will be to keep it going, not dampen growth with the same policy mix that produced the slowest recovery in decades the last time they held power.

I both agree and disagree with that. My views of the economy are largely informed by a remark made by one of my economics profs: “We know how to create shortages; we don’t know how to produce prosperity”. Keep in mind that back in those days of yore when I took economics Keynes was king, the Phillips Curve was Holy Writ, and the term “rent-seeking” hadn’t been coined yet. I think that the federal government in general’s ability and the president’s in particular to produce economic growth is extremely limited. While in theory a properly timed and properly structured stimulus can produce economic growth during a recession, in practice it’s more likely to introduce deadweight loss and promote rent-seeking, having rather little impact on growth. The Keynesian multiplier would be larger if we didn’t import as much as we do or, more precisely, under present circumstances the effects of the multiplier are less likely to be felt here.

I also think that increasing taxes will do a lot less to reverse income inequality than President Biden may believe. What increasing taxes does accomplish is to increase the premium on tax avoidance which is what I expect to happen.

I think the present circumstances present a rare opportunity for the federal government to act to undo the damage the prevailing neoliberal wisdom has done over the last 30 years and bolster sectors other than retail, health care, and hospitality—sectors that can produce better jobs for ordinary workers than retail, health care, and hospitality do—but it will take a steely-eyed determination and understanding of how businesses actually work to make the most of. Does this team have the right stuff? I have my doubts but people can rise to the occasion and I’m willing to give them a chance.