The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has reported that as of yesterday the number of cases of measles in the U. S. had exceeded one thousand:

On June 5, 2019, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that the number of measles cases nationwide so far in 2019 was 1,001. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar released the following statement:

“The Department of Health and Human Services has been deeply engaged in promoting the safety and effectiveness of vaccines, amid concerning signs that there are pockets of undervaccination around the country. The 1,000th case of a preventable disease like measles is a troubling reminder of how important that work is to the public health of the nation. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, alongside others across HHS, will continue our efforts to support local health departments and healthcare providers in responding to this situation, with the ultimate goal of stopping the outbreak and the spread of misinformation about vaccines, and increasing the public’s confidence in vaccines to help all Americans live healthier lives, safe from vaccine-preventable diseases.

“We cannot say this enough: Vaccines are a safe and highly effective public health tool that can prevent this disease and end the current outbreak. The measles vaccine is among the most-studied medical products we have and is given safely to millions of children and adults each year. Measles is an incredibly contagious and dangerous disease. I encourage all Americans to talk to your doctor about what vaccines are recommended to protect you, your family, and your community from measles and other vaccine-preventable diseases.”

So far there have been no reports of deaths associated with measles. If we are to avoid a recurrence of what has happened this year policy changes at the local, state, and federal levels will be needed.

The morning news is full of reports of the commemoration of the 75^th anniversay of D-Day and it has caused me to reflect. What do my nephews and nieces and their contemporaries know about D-Day? World War II?

My guess is not much and much of what they think they know is wrong. D-Day at least from a psychological standpoint in this ephemeral modern world of ours is more distant to them than the battle of Gettysburg was to me when I was their age. I also suspect that what they think they know is colored by their parents’ or their parents’ contemporaries’ views on the Vietnam War.

I wonder if they know that at the beginning of the war the Soviets were not our allied but became our allies in 1941 after the Soviet Union was invaded by the Germans? The American Left and American Right were united in opposing our entrance into World War II. The American Left stopped resisting that effort after the Germans invaded the Soviet Union. The American Right stopped resisting that effort after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.

That pragmatically speaking the war in Europe was fought between the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union on one side against just about everybody else on the other? The French Resistance consisted of a few hundred French Communists, the Free French were not really much of a factor other than politically in the war and many of the French actually supported the Nazis. Many of the countries occupied by the Germans actually had lots of Nazi sympathizers.

I wonder if they know that the Russians think that they actually won “the Great Patriotic War” and they’re not entirely wrong? I wonder if they realize how completely the Germans have dismissed World War II from their collective memory?

There’s an enormous confusion of propaganda with reality. Not just our propaganda but British proganda, Soviet propaganda, French propaganda, German propaganda, etc.

In her recent post at City Journal Kay Hymowitz sees the spike in suicides, particularly among middle-aged and elderly white men, much as I do:

cholars sometimes refer to the domestic earthquake that first rumbled through wealthy countries like the U.S. in the mid-twentieth century as the Second Demographic Transition. (The first transition occurred around the time of the Industrial Revolution, as the high death and birth rates that had been humanity’s default condition since the Neanderthals declined dramatically, leading to rapid population growth.) Mostly associated with the Belgian demographer Ron Lesthaeghe, the SDT (the unfortunately evocative acronym) is a useful framework for understanding the dramatic rupture between the Ozzie and Harriet and Sex and the City eras.

The SDT began emerging in the West after World War II. As societies became richer and goods cheaper and more plentiful, people no longer had to rely on traditional families to afford basic needs like food and shelter. They could look up the Maslovian ladder toward “post-material” goods: self-fulfillment, exotic and erotic experiences, expressive work, education. Values changed to facilitate these goals. People in wealthy countries became more antiauthoritarian, more critical of traditional rules and roles, and more dedicated to individual expression and choice. With the help of the birth-control pill, “non-conventional household formation” (divorce, remarriage, cohabitation, and single parenthood) went from uncommon—for some, even shameful—to mundane. Lesthaeghe predicted that low fertility would also be part of the SDT package, as families grew less central. And low fertility, he suggested, would have thorny repercussions for nation-states: he was one of the first to guess that developed countries would turn to immigrants to restock their aging populations, as native-born young adults found more fulfilling things to do than clean up after babies or cook dinner for sullen adolescents.

Read the whole thing. The concurrent spike in drug abuse doesn’t refute those observations but corroborates them. As I’ve said before, we’re doing something wrong.

I don’t have any solid prescriptions for changing the course of events. All I can say is teach your children well. Don’t encourage them to fall into the same self-destructive patterns we have let ourselves fall into even though the entire world is pushing them that way. They may not see it now but they may in thirty or forty years.

John Greenwood and Steve H. Hanke have an op-ed at the Wall Street Journal, yet another critique of neo-Chartalism, this time using Japan’s experience as an indicator:

At the outbreak of the global financial crisis in 2008, Japan’s government deficit was only 2% of GDP, while the combined corporate and household surplus amounted to 5.1%. Within a year, a massive contraction of private investment and consumption occurred in Japan. By the fourth quarter of 2009, the private-sector surplus had surged to 12% of GDP. At the same time, the government deficit exploded to 9.9% of GDP. The resulting net savings surplus has fueled capital outflows. Today, these outflows amount to 2.1% of GDP and finance a stream of Japanese foreign investment.

This pattern of large private savings surpluses offset in part by large public deficits continues. The result has been a massive increase in the size and role of the Japanese public sector. Government debt has risen from 60% of GDP in 1990 to an astounding 235% today. But contrary to MMT, this fiscal extravagance has done nothing to boost the economy.

Separate from Japan’s overall savings surpluses, its broad-money metrics have grown at a snail’s pace. Since Japan’s bubble burst in 1990-91, broad money has grown at a paltry 2.6% a year, as measured by M2. In addition, since the 1950s money velocity has been negative, decreasing at an average rate of close to 2% a year. This is one of the most striking and consistent macroeconomic relationships on record. Japan’s slow broad-money growth mixed with a contracting money velocity has held down nominal GDP growth.

Faced with a contracting money velocity, Japan would have to increase its M2 money supply at a minimum of 5% a year, which is double its trend rate, to hit its inflation target of 2% a year and reach its potential annual growth rate of 1%. In practice, inadequate M2 growth over nearly three decades, combined with a declining money velocity, has translated into average real growth of just 0.9% a year. This has put Japan into a deflationary straitjacket, with prices decreasing by an average of 0.6% a year, as measured by the GDP deflator.

As long as M2 growth in Japan remains minimal, low inflation—or outright deflation—will prevail regardless of whether the public and private sectors are running savings surpluses or deficits. As Milton Friedman counseled, “Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon.” The same is true of deflation. Money dominates.

Understanding Japan and other economies requires classical monetary theory, not MMT nostrums. From 1974-84, Japan enjoyed a golden period with generally stable broad-money growth, steady real GDP growth, and low inflation. Then monetary policy was derailed by the 1985 Plaza Accord and the 1987 Louvre Accord. The Bank of Japan dropped monetary targets and began to focus on interest-rate targets. The result was Japan’s disastrous bubble from 1987-90, followed by a so-called lost decade, which has turned into a lost generation.

While op-eds like this may help dissuade people who are wondering about MMT, I don’t think they’ll convince any advocate. The advocates of MMT have their eyes firmly on the theory rather than on the evidence and make assumptions about government that more practiced eyes would recognize do not recognize how governments actually function.

In an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal cartoonist Ted Rall, of whom I am not a particular fan, says that progressives may well prefer that Trump be re-elected than that Biden be elected:

Winning the next election isn’t necessarily more important than the long-term objective of winning over the Democratic Party. Progressives’ broader aim is to move the 50-yard-line of American politics to the left. In the Trump era they feel ascendant. The leftward surge in 2018 gave us Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other celebrity progressives. Most of the major Democratic presidential candidates—Mr. Biden notably excepted—at least pretend to be progressive by endorsing measures such as Medicare for All and the Green New Deal.

But centrists are coalescing around the idea that Mr. Trump is so dangerous that the Democrats must unite behind the most “electable” candidate to save the country from him—never mind that in 2016 that approach gave us Mr. Trump.

Hard as it is for centrist Democrats to fathom, many progressives would rather see a second Trump term than a President Biden, who would govern through Clintonian triangulation. And all those progressives have to do to win is sit on their hands.

So much for the high moral imperative of getting rid of Trump. Let’s engage in a thought experiment. What if the bulk of the Resistance is simply playing politics? What if the opposition to Trump is not principled but tactical?

I think that’s indeed the case for the DNC. IMO the “Trump collusion” theory originated in a CYA move on the parts of the Clinton campaign and the DNC, largely interchangeable terms. Now it’s taking the form of diehard anti-Trumpers making up Trump quotes, history repeating as farce.

There’s a post on Canada’s immigration policy at Law & Liberty by Grant Havers you might be interested. Here are some highlights:

The new system assigned scores based on the following criteria:

• education and training
• personal character
• occupational demand
• occupational skill
• age
• pre-arranged employment
• knowledge of English or French
• the presence of a relative in Canada

If potential immigrants demonstrated that they could benefit Canada’s economy, they would receive a high score and be accepted. They could also sponsor immediate family members in the bargain, although distant relatives would still have to undergo the points-system assessment. (In 1976, this restriction was lifted, based on the proviso that immigrants who sponsored distant relatives would provide financial care for them for up to 10 years.)

That’s similar to the systems that prevail in Australia and New Zealand. If you’ve visited any of them you can testify that they’re not exactly racist hellholes.

Given our persistent low demand for low-skilled workers, evinced by persistent low wages, it’s long past the time we should be considering following their lead.

The Progressive Caucus in the House has 95 members. The House New Democrat Coalition has 101 members. I found this post by Mort Kondracke at RealClearPolitics on the contest between them pretty interesting:

The New Dems are hardly conservative — they backed legislation extending civil rights laws to LGBTQ persons and equal pay for women — but are proposing realistic programs on health care, climate change, worker empowerment and infrastructure that will actually better the lives of the mass of Americans — and are likely to be popular.

Instead of Sanders’s Medicare for All health plan (supported by six other presidential candidates), the New Dems are sponsoring legislation to strengthen Obamacare, undo Trump’s sabotage of it, stabilize private insurance markets and expand coverage by lowering drug and insurance costs and offering tax credits to offset premiums.

Some polls suggest a majority of voters favor Medicare for All, but others show a majority prefers to improve the current health system rather that replace it with something new. In one poll, only 13 percent favors eliminating private insurance, as Sanders proposes.

On climate change, as opposed to AOC’s Green New Deal that calls for a World War II-style mobilization to achieve zero greenhouse gas emissions in 10 years — clearly heavily government mandated — New Democrats backed HR 9, which the House passed May 2, requiring Trump to recommit to the 2015 Paris Climate Accord and its goal of limiting world temperature increases.

In all likelihood you’ve never heard of the New Democrats. None of them are doing fashion shoots but they’re at least as representative of today’s Democratic Party as the progressives are and possibly more so.

It’s pretty early in the whole nominations process but just for fun let’s do some handicapping. Who do you think Democrats will nominate for president?

At this point I think the ticket is very likely to be Biden-Harris (although I’d prefer Biden-Booker). I’d prefer a Hickenlooper or Bennet at the top of the ticket but clearly Biden is the candidate to beat. He can get the support of the Praetorian Guard DNC and public employees’ unions, that’s for sure.

I don’t know about you but I’m seeing a lot of battlespace preparation that seems to indicate that Republicans have decided that Biden will be the nominee.

Here’s Walter Russell Mead’s analysis of the Trump policy on Europe from his Wall Street Journal column:

There are five elements of the Trump critique of the European Union. First, some of the “new nationalists” believe multinational entities like the EU are much weaker and less effective than the governments of nation-states—so much so that the development of the EU has weakened the Western alliance as a whole. In this view, cooperation between nation-states is good and through it countries can achieve things they couldn’t achieve on their own. But trying to overinstitutionalize that cooperation is a mistake. The resulting bureaucratic structures and Byzantine politics and decision-making processes paralyze policy, alienate public opinion, and create a whole significantly less than the sum of its parts.

A second concern—in the Trump view—is that the European Union is too German. As some on the president’s team see it, German preferences mean the Continent is too hawkish when it comes to monetary and fiscal policy, and too dovish when it comes to defense. A fiscal and monetary straitjacket has cramped Europe’s growth, while the refusal of Germany to live up to its NATO commitments weakens the alliance as a whole.

A third concern is that the EU is too liberal—in the American meaning of the term, which is to say too statist on economics and too progressive on social issues. Besides the common American conservative view that statist economic policy undermines European dynamism and growth, Mr. Trump seems to believe European migration policy—especially Chancellor Angela Merkel’s 2015 decision to welcome more than a million mostly Muslim migrants to Germany—is a tragic mistake.

The fourth problem, as the Trumpians see it, is that the EU seeks to export its preferences on issues like capital punishment, climate policy, global governance, gender relations and so on to the rest of the world. Jacksonian American populists are deeply suspicious of virtually any form of global governance. On top of that, many of the causes that most engage the EU—LGBTQ issues, Palestinian statehood and carbon controls—aren’t exactly Jacksonian America’s cup of tea.

Finally, Mr. Trump doesn’t like the EU because on trade issues—the field where the EU operates most effectively in world politics—he believes it is an instrument intended to limit American power and reduce American leverage in trade negotiations.

I think that those “concerns” are just about right. As is not unusual they sound a lot more reasonable when they’re articulated by someone other than Trump. That fourth problem is interesting. I don’t think that the gilets jaunes protesters rallying in French cities every weekend as they have done since December are protesting “the causes that most engage the EU” other than very indirectly. Like Americans, they’re more concerned with basic bread and butter issues, ways and means rather than high level objectives.

And ways and means are my concerns about Trump’s Europe policies. I’m not convinced that his peripatetic, seat of the pants style will actually get results. As has been said in other contexts, at least he’s pushing in the right direction.