You might want to read this description of the aftermath of Hurricane Helene in North Carolina by Nancy Rommelmann at RealClearInvestigations. Here’s a passage I found telling:

Ramsey had been in Weaverville, a town of about 5,000 people 11 miles from Asheville, at her elderly mother’s home when Helene hit. As for how terrifying it initially was that morning: not very.

“I slept through it,” she said. Her main concern, when she woke up and saw the power was out, was being unable to make coffee. She decided to walk to a nearby Bojangles.

Forty-five minutes later she was back, the scene she encountered outside both impassable and making no sense. Dozens of big trees lay across the suburban street. Climbing over limbs and under fallen power lines, she came across three men using chainsaws to cut a hole in the fallen trees. Did they know what had happened? They did not; they had no cell service. Ramsey checked her own phone. No signal. Overhead, she heard the whomp whomp of a Chinook helicopter. What the hell was going on?

It was not until that night, when a neighbor used a power inverter to hook a car battery to his television, that Ramsey would begin to learn of the damage caused by Hurricane Helene. The flooding appeared to be the worst since The Great Flood of 1916 when the region experienced 26 inches of rain. Helene would dump 30 inches, or more than 40 trillion gallons, though Ramsey would not know as much for days; no one could, not with all communications cut, and roads crisscrossed with downed trees, and some washed away entirely. Other than by helicopter, there was no way in or out, and in some cases, people could not reach their closest neighbors, to say nothing of the outside world.

Help nevertheless got through. “That first day, people brought us gas, water,” said Ramsey, who let those who could not get home, or no longer had homes to get to, crash on her floor. Where some blamed the government for not immediately rushing to the rescue, Ramsey praised the self-reliance of her neighbors.

“Hillbillies and rednecks are a community. They want to talk about how Podunk we are and backwards. But no, we got this,” she said. “We need outside assistance, obviously. But we came together immediately.”

It is neither an indictment of the federal government response to the disaster nor a lionization of it but rather an account, largely relying on first person accounts, of how ordinary people came together under extraordinary circumstances.

Gabriel Elefteriu’s proposal at Brussels Signal for restoring global stability rests on four factors:

• First, a new system for managing great power relations.
• Second, we’ll need a new global security architecture.
• Third, we’ll need a new arrangement for global trade and economic relations.
• Finally, we need a new cooperation system for planetary protection.

I found the piece terribly skewed. Here’s an example:

The legacy UN system has clearly failed, and the US-led Western Alliance – broadly speaking – has also proven unable to deter major state aggression in Europe and the Middle East. This fact should not be in dispute, after Russia has literally invaded Ukraine and Iran has literally attacked Israel. Only China is still holding back over Taiwan, but it’s not clear for how long. It should be obvious to everyone that whatever “international security system” we think we still have in place right now, it is not working.

What’s missing from that statement? Leading the way in the chipping away at the “UN system” has been the United States, first by its invasion of Iraq and then by its destabilization of Libya, far in excess of the Security Council mandate it received for defending civilians there.

I think this statement of the creation of the United Nations Security Council is mistaken:

This was the original idea behind the P5, the permanent members of the UN Security Council. Their special right of veto reflected their great power status and role in shaping global affairs via the UN.

It ignores that the veto-wielding members of the Security Council were all Allies during World War II.

It’s also fraught with bad assumptions. Do the “four policemen” still want global stability? I would argue that China definitely does not. I think it’s looking for a new, different stability. I believe it is seeking the respect it believes it deserves which IMO would amount to primacy. That is intrinsically destabilizing. There can be only one.

Another bad assumption is that there is some sort of enforceable law to govern trade and economic relations. There isn’t and assuming there is weakens countries which abide by the rule of law.

I agree that restabilization is highly desirable but I would build it on somewhat different bases. First, we need to acknowledge that other countries have interests. We don’t seem to recognize that. Second, we need to start living up to our own putative standards.

Most importantly, I would stop seeking multi-lateral treaties in favor of bilateral agreements. In the past we have been able to negotiate those and adhere to them. Why not now?

Otherwise we should just recognize that it isn’t stability we seek but global hegemony. That comes at a price and I remain unconvinced we are willing to pay it or should be.

At The Spectator Yascha Mounk laments about the end of what has mischievously called the Pax Americana:

Would either Kamala Harris or Trump be willing to risk the lives of American soldiers to maintain American deterrence in the Taiwan Strait? (Trump previously remarked that protecting the island wasn’t even possible: ‘Taiwan is 9,500 miles away. It’s 68 miles away from China.’) And failing boots on the ground, would either candidate be willing to impose sanctions that meaningfully hurt China’s economy if those same policies also lead to a serious economic shock back home?

The answer to both questions is likely no. Trump, for instance, has publicly lamented that ‘immensely wealthy’ Taiwan took America’s chip business; echoing remarks he has frequently made about Europe, he called for the island to ‘pay for its own defence.’

This bipartisan retreat puts America in a strange position. It would be easy to believe that the will to play the world’s policeman has gone. In some quarters, the obituaries for what, until recently, was thought to be the world’s only remaining superpower are already being written. Historian Harold James dubbed the country ‘late Soviet America’ in the dying days of Trump’s first presidency. Niall Ferguson, meanwhile, now concludes that, in what he considers the new cold war between America and China, it’s the former rather than the latter that resembles the Soviet Union.

The irony of this is that Americans would just like to do what our European allies have been doing for the last 40 years: letting someone else pay for their defense so they can use that money for food, healthcare, education, etc.

I would challenge the claim that we have been serving as the world’s policeman. We don’t observe the rule of law. We attack whom we want to when we want to. That’s the “Batman theory” of America’s role in the world. We attack those we don’t like when it suits our fancy.

In response to Mr. Trump’s claim about Taiwan IMO Trump’s remarks cited above are a good example of my problems with Mr. Trump. They’re mistaken. Taiwan is paying quite a bit for its own defense. Its defense spending has declined considerably relative to GDP compared to what it was 35 years ago (2.3% today vs. 50% 35 years ago) but that’s because its GDP has grown so rapidly over the last 35 years, much of that due to the growth of its semiconductor industry.

Some say that Taiwan’s semiconductor industry has just out-competed those of other countries. I think that’s some of it but I don’t think it’s the whole story.

As I’ve said before I don’t believe we can afford to be the “world’s policeman” without tightening our belts and home and rebuilding our manufacturing sector. I don’t believe that either a Trump Administration or a Harris Administration will do that.

At Responsible Statecraft Michael Corbin remarks on the meeting of the BRICS+ nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa and now Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, and the UAE)—representing nearly 40% of global GDP and 45% of the world’s population:

Despite objections from some BRICS+ members, it seems as though de-dollarization is slowly moving towards an economic reality. According to the Jerusalem Post, China has already unveiled plans to use a gold-backed yuan and Russia is trading in currencies tied to gold. Together with the significant gold accumulation by BRICS countries, these actions suggest a world shifting away from dollar reliance. For example, the divergence between treasuries and gold as safe havens has signaled investors’ heightened uncertainty given skyrocketing government debt and their preference for physical assets. Over the last 10 years, central bank purchases of gold have significantly outpaced purchases of U.S. Treasuries.

The Kazan BRICS summit has demonstrated a considerably impressive level of ambition, no doubt fueled by Russia’s chairmanship and the many underlying financial and economic issues with which it is currently wrestling. Although Russian interests obviously are driving the current agenda, it is evident that the issues presented resonate strongly among a variety of countries, from global powers like China to nations throughout the Global South. They all share a common interest in navigating the emerging challenges presented by a rapidly developing multipolar architecture.

Although BRICS 2024 is unlikely to implement immediate solutions to its economic and finance proposals, it has already successfully generated enthusiasm for alternative approaches to the post-World War II order. After several decades of war and harmful sanctions, BRICS+ nations are increasingly distrustful of the United States led “rules-based order” that favors the few at the expense of many. Western nations should take notice that while BRICS will not immediately bring down the existing global architecture, it is a looming threat to the unrivaled dominance of its institutions, which no longer maintain the trust or confidence of a growing majority of the world’s inhabitants.

Shorter: we’ve screwed up. Not only have we screwed up but whether Harris or Trump is elected president we are likely to continue to screw up in just this way.

The consequences may be serious. For one thing if we are impelled to pay for our imports in something other than dollars it could cause a reduction in standards of living much more drastic than those being predicted for tariffs.

Democrats’ complaints about Trump being a fascist would probably be more effective if they hadn’t compared (nearly) every Republican presidential nominee since Dewey to Hitler.

I don’t think that this report at the Wall Street Journal by Kate King on how higher rents are pressing small retailers tells the whole story:

When the lease for Alex Macias’ furniture store in Mesa, Ariz., came up for renewal in 2021, his landlord asked for twice the current rent.

“In hindsight, they were saying, ‘Well, this is what a national tenant will pay. Can you pay that?’ ” Macias said.

Macias balked at the higher cost and closed the store. His landlord replaced it with Five Below, a national discount chain that has been expanding aggressively in recent years and agreed to the higher rent.

A lengthy stretch of scant new construction of retail real estate, combined with demand from expanding retailers, has reduced a longstanding property glut. Retail availability sits near record lows.

She concludes:

Phoenix has experienced some of the nation’s biggest rent increases this year. Prices there rose 7.4% in the second quarter compared with the same period in 2023, according to real-estate firm JLL.

Macias, the furniture-store owner, was able to solve his rising-rent problem by reopening in a building that he purchased.

His former landlord, Joshua Simon of SimonCRE, said the furniture store had been paying below-market rent.

For many of the city’s small businesses, developing a close relationship with the local landlord is crucial to survival. Sarah Bingham, co-owner of the vintage clothing store Antique Sugar in downtown Phoenix, said her landlord recently offered to buy her out of her lease so a restaurant he was an investor in could take her space.

I suspect that what she’s reporting is highly variable depending on location. I have no reason to doubt her findings about Phoenix.

But I could turn on my smartphone’s camera, start walking west, and pass dozens of empty storefronts, some of which have been empty since long before COVID. I’m not entirely sure why there’s so much available retail space here. Declining population, more people in this area shop online, high taxes, it could be all sorts of things.

It reminds me of the old wisecrack about farming that there’s either not enough rain or too much rain. How much retail space is enough? How do you know when you’re overbuilt on retail space? How about office space?

and do we want it to be?

George Friedman provides his definition of a superpower:

The idiosyncratic point I am trying to make is that great power depends on weapons, warriors, bravery and training, but it also depends on the power to persuade or induce, or even more generally, the ability to get things done. War is not waged with tanks; it is waged with the delivery of fuel to tanks. This is not an Earth-shattering statement, nor am I the first one to say it. But in constructing a model that forecasts the future of, say, the Chinese military, words matter.

We think of military power as the massive engine of war. There is truth in that. But the root of that power is the ability of a force to maintain itself at the essential operational level. Some nations have both. In China, power is determined largely by whether Beijing can sustain it for an extended course. China’s geography internally and along its boundaries indicates that a war waged on its territory could be long, complex and, above all, subtle. This is China’s history and its future. How it handles the subtle will determine whether it can be called a superpower.

And, even beyond “the delivery of fuel to tanks”, remaining a superpower is contingent on having the fuel to deliver to tanks and being able to deliver components to maintain our weapons systems in the field and the ability to produce those components. Today we do not have that ability. That has been the cost of our deindustrialization.

The bottom line is that we can’t remain a superpower unless we continue to produce our weapons of war and the fuel and components to maintain them domestically. The question I can’t answer is whether to remain a superpower. To whatever extent our own security depends on our remaining a superpower, I think the answer is “yes”. To the extent that it means our continuation of what I’ve called “the Batman theory of the U. S. role in the world”, I think the answer is “no”.

Before it disappears into the memory hole I wanted to comment on this editorial in the Wall Street Journal. The article is about the record on inflation,taxation, and economic growth.

I agree with this:

Some of the $3 trillion in Covid spending during 2020 no doubt contributed to inflation, especially the $900 billion that December when the economy had nearly rebounded to pre-pandemic levels. That bill was a bipartisan mistake.

Said another way Donald Trump shares some of the blame for the inflation that ensued early in the Biden Administration. But we need to understand this:

Then in March 2021, Democrats stoked consumption even more with their $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act, even as states were lifting lockdowns and vaccines rolled out.

The bill was largely composed of transfer payments, including $1,400 checks per person, $3,600 per child tax credits, an extra $300 a week in unemployment benefits, a 15% increase in food stamps, rental assistance and more. Such handouts discouraged unemployed Americans from returning to work since they could earn as much not working.

President Biden further loosened the spending spigot with executive actions, sweetening food stamps and waiving monthly student loan payments. A Congressional Budget Office report this week noted that the 2021 food-stamp boost likely reduced the labor supply since people received fewer benefits the more income they earned.

This unprecedented helicopter drop of money, aided by the Federal Reserve, kicked off the highest inflation in 40 years.

I think it’s actually arguable that the ensuing inflation was actually worse than it had been 40 years ago—how inflation is calculated has changed considerably since then.

This is a bone of contention:

Mr. Trump’s tariffs would be anti-growth, but by themselves they won’t cause inflation, which is an increase in the general price level. Tariffs increase relative prices in specific goods or industries. Mr. Trump’s first-term tariff blitz hurt economic growth but it didn’t lead to broad inflation.

I can’t actually adjudicate it. It sounds about right to me.

I agree with this, too:

Ms. Harris’s economists fret that Mr. Trump’s restrictionist immigration policies will create labor shortages that will drive up wages and prices. But even with Mr. Trump’s tougher border policies in his first term, the U.S. added 1.7 million immigrants, most of whom entered legally. His deportations didn’t make a dent in the labor force.

I challenge those who claim that the United States has a large and growing demand for unskilled or low-skilled workers to produce evidence of it.

I disagree with this:

As for Mr. Trump’s tax reform, it slightly reduced revenue as a share of GDP in 2018 and 2019. But it spurred business investment that boosted the supply-side of the economy and helped keep down inflation.

Let’s look at the record:

It looks pretty much like trend to me. There might have been an extremely small change in the curve relative to trend but it’s extremely small. I would speculate that any increase in investment was produced by the larger share of disposable income of the highest income earners unrelated to taxation than it was to changes in the marginal tax rates.

I also question this:

Today’s Keynesian economists underestimate the growth dividend, and overestimate the deficit impact, of tax cuts.

Don’t blame Keynesians or even neo-Keynesians. They understand how aggregate product limits the ability of deficit spending to produce economic growth. Blame “folk Keynesians” who believe that federal spending always stimulates the economy or modern monetary theorists who provided the theoretical foundation for them. Even the MMT-ers understand the role of aggregate product. Where they err is in thinking that fine-tuning is possible.

In an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal Joseph Epstein does a pretty fair job of airing some of my feelings about the present presidential election campaign:

I can’t vote for Kamala Harris. I find many of Donald Trump’s policies—his stand on closing the borders, his economic programs, his unflinching support for Israel—appealing but for one thing: the man who holds them. A friend of mine, also an independent voter, recently told me that on Election Day he thought he would probably hold his nose and vote for Mr. Trump. For others, even with noses held, the smell remains too strong to do likewise.

What, precisely, is wrong with Donald Trump? To start with the obvious, his vanity: his preposterously bleached and elaborately coiffed hairdo, his sprayed-on tan, the lengthy neckties to cover his avoirdupois. Add to this his propensity for insulting his political enemies. (He calls Gavin Newsom, governor of California, “Gavin Newscum.”) Then there’s his hyperbole, everywhere adding to his opponents’ misdeeds, building up his own achievements.

Still, why can’t I live with all this and vote for the man based on the general soundness of his policies? What I can’t live with, what I can’t vote for, is Mr. Trump’s relentless immodesty.

The balance of the piece is devoted to Mr. Epstein’s rejection of Mr. Trump’s “immodesty” which I think I would characterize as self-centeredness.

I’ve already expressed my disapproval of Donald Trump many times. Trump is Trump and beyond that he does not have the inclination or qualities of mind necessary to accomplish what he claims he will accomplish or adapt to changing circumstances. You can’t learn anything if you already know everything.

However, to my eye Kamala Harris is no better. I believe that Joe Biden is objectively the worst president of the post-war period (inflation, border control, sparse accomplishments of his key legislative victories, feckless foreign policy, etc.) and the Harris campaign is trying to straddle running on President Biden’s record with Vice President Harris’s airy goals while denying her commitment to the positions she staked out in her ill-fated presidential campaign in 2020. That she is a poor manager is a matter of record.

Can anyone make an affirmative argument to vote for Kamala Harris. Not a negative argument, e.g. that she’s not Trump or that she disagrees with the putative Republican view on abortion. An affirmative argument based on what she’s accomplished.

I’m skeptical that such an argument can be made but I’m open to persuasion. I think she’s running on identity and her theoretical good intentions.

BTW scolding is not persuasive.