I found this review at the Hoover Institute of a book about how the Germans regard George S. Patton thought-provoking:

Of the allied world War II generals, George Patton may be considered the most “German.” He had carefully studied the early Blitzkrieg campaigns against Poland and France and shared the conviction of the Wehrmacht commanders that that a war of movement — short, sharp, and furious — was the way to avoid a repetition of the endless slaughter of World War I. “Always take the offensive. Never dig in,” was Patton’s motto. He expressed his aversion to fixed positions in graphic fashion: After having found some slit trenches around a command post in Tunisia meant to protect it from air attacks, he asked the commanding officer, Terry Allen, to show him his, whereupon he promptly urinated into it. “There. Now try to use it.”

It’s not particularly surprising that the Germans have a fairly low opinion of Patton. They think that he was just lucky, unaware of Branch Rickey’s remark about luck. For the last seventy some-odd years the Germans have been trying to figure out how a rabble of mongrel lunkheads managed to prevail against their impeccable, educated, and aristocratic generals who consistently out-maneuvered them and their determined soldiers who routinely out-fought them. There are probably as many opinions as there are people rendering opinions.

The Russians’ opinion is that we didn’t win. We just held their coats while they won the “Great Patriotic War”.

Hollywood’s opinion was that free, clean-cut Yanks, pulling together despite their differences, prevailed over the beastly Huns.

If I’m not mistaken the prevailing view in the United States is that the U. S. economy beat the German economy and American logistics beat German and Japanese logistics at the same time. I think there’s merit to that. The Germans and the Japanese had a similar problem: they needed to keep the United States out of the war. As the Japanese generals recognized the only way to accomplish that was via a master strike. Unfortunately for them, that needed to be followed up by occupying the Hawaiian Islands and that was just beyond their reach. Had they accomplished that the logistical challenges of fighting a war across the Pacific might well have been insurmountable.

The Germans had a similar problem but a better position. Had they been able to defeat the British in short order, the logistical challenges might have deterred the United States. Consequently, there’s a pretty good argument that the British won World War II, not just their military but the whole British people.

Just for the record, I think that migrants held at the border for attempting to enter the country illegally should be maintained in humane conditions. Further, I think that should go without saying. I think that most of the blame for the present situation resides with the Congress, chronically unable to rise to the occasion. Appropriating more money enable the Border Patrol and ICE to manage the unprecedented numbers of families with children coming into the country is a start but it’s just a start.

The idea that prices reflect the inherent value of something is incredibly tenacious. It’s reflected in attempts to determine the relative values of different jobs that have few if any similarities and it’s being played out right now in the complaints about how the members of the U. S. women’s soccer team are paid. Shouldn’t water, necessary for life, be more valuable than diamonds which aren’t? The idea doesn’t hold water.

At the Washington Post Democrat Richard Cohen, who has vowed never to vote Republican and remains firm in that promise come what may, has this to say about the Democratic candidates for president:

But the Democratic Party is on a tear. One by one, its candidates have embraced losing issue after losing issue. First came reparations for slavery, a noble idea lacking only popular support and practicality and possibly amounting to yet another attempt to right a wrong with money. Before that, the various candidates raised their hands in support of Medicare-for-all, which could strip millions of people of their private insurance plans. That is sure to be characterized by Trump as socialized medicine with the sick growing old and dying, covered in cobwebs while waiting to see the doctor. GOP strategists must be hyperventilating over all the goodies arrayed before them. This is a campaign even Trump could win.

The Democratic Party has a possibly fatal inability to prioritize. The urgent challenge is to rid the nation of Trump, not to mollify this or that identity group or wrestle over issues that could not be solved when they were relevant — such as busing. As it is, the candidates are campaigning in an America of their own imagination — a bit to the left of Sweden and as racially unified as one of those old Coke commercials. They pander to the extremes of the early caucus and primary states, thinking they can seduce the middle later on down the road or, in my case, giving me a choice of one of them or Trump. Sedate me first.

Most of the column is devoted to reminding us of how unpopular forced busing was, among blacks and whites alike. It does make one wonder if the candidates really long for that imaginary America or whether they’re just posturing. Posturing seems like a safe bet. As I’ve said before in a day in which you can’t actually suppress embarrassing things you’ve said and in which even 40 year old scores will be raked up I don’t believe they can actually change course to appeal to voters for whom what they’re advocating now without alienating the voters they’re presently trying to woo.

At Wired Daniel Oberhaus points out one of the challenges facing the “Green New Deal” or any other largescale plan to replace U. S. energy with something more carbon-free—the electrical grid:

The fundamental challenge with integrating solar and wind energy into the US electric grid is that the areas that are best for generating these types of clean energy are usually very remote. The Great Plains is the place to harvest wind energy, and the Mojave Desert gets sun 360 days a year, but these locations are hundreds—if not thousands—of miles away from America’s biggest cities, where clean energy is needed most. Piping this energy from wind and solar farms means building more interstate high-voltage transmission lines, which are expensive, ugly, and loud. Unsurprisingly, most people don’t want transmission lines near their homes, so new builds often face stiff political resistance from locals.

That’s also a problem with things like mass use of electrical vehicles which will inevitably place a greater load on the grid. It’s an interesting piece and you may find it informative. Something that goes unmentioned in the article is that the most efficient place in which to use energy is near where it’s captured or generated. Just conversion from direct to alternating current causes a drop.

Why is Tom Steyer running for president?

1. The House Democrats have not impeached Trump (that’s what he said)
2. He’s dissatisfied with what the present Democratic candidates are saying about environmental issues
3. He doesn’t think that Kamala Harris can cut it
4. Because it is there
5. Why not?
6. It’s a consequence of the Law of the Conservation of Democratic Presidential Candidates. When one stops running, someone else must start running.
7. All of the above
8. Other

I’m not sure that George Melloan has thought his recent remarks in an op-ed decrying “monetary stimulus” in the Wall Street Journal through completely:

After the 2009 slump, economic growth from 2010-17 averaged 2.2%, well below the 3% historical average, despite the Fed’s drastic measures.

Low interest rates certainly stimulate borrowing, but that isn’t the same as economic growth. Indeed it can often restrain growth. The national debt doubled during the Obama years and now stands at more than $22 trillion. Congress got the idea that credit somehow comes free of charge. So now the likes of Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders think there is no limit to how much Uncle Sam can borrow.

Easy money not only expands debt-service costs but also encourages malinvestment. Hence America’s productivity growth rate has averaged only 1.3% since the recovery began, until its leap to 3.4% in the first quarter of this year on a resurgence of business confidence and productive investment.

The emphasis is mine. I agree with the assertion that borrowing or, indeed, credit expansion is not synonymous with economic growth and the reason (“encourages malinvestment”) is deadweight loss. That, too, is the reason I’m skeptical about infrastructure spending, defined as building roads and bridges. Some of it is investment, some is just throwing money into a hole. The exigencies of politics result in some of each but the balance between them is important. IMO nowadays we’re throwing far too much money into holes. Heroic measures to preserve a few weeks of additional vegetative life for the elderly? More people with degrees in journalism, art history, or interest studies? Throwing money into a hole. A better electrical grid is worthwhile infrastructure investment and it’s not something that private enterprise will do on its own. How do I know that? Because that’s not the direction in which the incentives point. But the electrical grid never appears on the list of infrastructure projects, possibly because no politician ever put her or her name on the electrical grid.

IMO the lowest hanging fruit for economic growth is to stop subsidizing people who don’t need subsidies and behaviors we don’t want to encourage but every subsidy has its political constituency.

Howsomever, if borrowing isn’t economic growth, what is economic growth?

The campaign for a $15 per hour minimum wage has become one of the keystones of Democratic economic policy. Its conceptual underpinning is something called in econ-speak the “downwards inelasticity of employment” with respect to wages. At the Wall Street Journal Michael Saltsman discusses a Congressional Budget Office report that to my mind demolishes the case for a $15/hour minimum wage:

Democrats pledged a $15-an-hour minimum wage while campaigning in 2018, and all but three of the party’s 2020 presidential candidates endorse the increase. But a new report from the Congressional Budget Office finds the policy could leave nearly four million workers without a job.

This week’s analysis is an update of CBO’s 2014 analysis of a $10.10 minimum wage, which said one million workers would be pulled out of poverty at the cost of half a million jobs. That conclusion was enough to tank the proposal; a Bloomberg poll at the time found that 57% of Americans viewed the jobs trade-off as “unacceptable.”

Democrats have responded to CBO’s wage warning by ignoring it. The Raise the Wage Act of 2019, introduced in January, would set a $15 minimum wage by 2024. The trade-offs from this legislation are even worse than in 2014. CBO finds a $15 minimum wage would pull 1.3 million workers out of poverty at the cost of 1.3 million jobs in the median scenario, and 3.7 million jobs in the worst-case scenario.

Here’s a verbatim quote from the report cited above:

In an average week in 2025, the $15 option would boost the wages of 17 million workers who would otherwise earn less than $15 per hour. Another 10 million workers otherwise earning slightly more than $15 per hour might see their wages rise as well. But 1.3 million other workers would become jobless, according to CBO’s median estimate. There is a twothirds chance that the change in employment would be between about zero and a decrease of 3.7 million workers. The number of people with annual income below the poverty threshold in 2025 would fall by 1.3 million.

To my eye that fails to meet the moral standards for a $15/hour minimum wage let alone the pragmatic standards. My advice: try something else. From a cost benefit standpoint an increase to $10/hour is much better although it, too, rests on shaky moral grounds.

Persisting in campaigning for a $15/hour minimum wage at this point would suggest that your actual objectives in a $15/hour minimum wage are something other than helping the people you’re claiming you want to help. Objectives that have been suggested are to render non-unionized mininum wage workers non-competitive with unionized ones which seems pretty convoluted to me or giving unions with minimum wage multiple contracts an automatic raise.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the percent of hourly workers who receive the minimum wage or less is 2.3% of hourly workers, about 1% of total workers. They tend to be young, in the South, and work in the restaurant and food service sector. It would be interesting to see the effect of increasing the minimum wage on rents since the states that have increased their minimum wages also have higher rates of homelessness.

At Bloomberg Noah Smith explains in the form of a parable why a universal basic income will not work:

Rejoice, people of Earth! News outlets are reporting that NASA is planning to visit an asteroid made of gold and other precious metals! At current prices, the minerals contained in asteroid 16 Psyche are said to be worth $700 quintillion — enough to give everyone on the planet $93 billion. We’re all going to be richer than Jeff Bezos!

OK, now for the bad news: This isn’t going to happen. Yes, 16 Psyche and other asteroids will probably be mined for their metals. But once those metals start hitting the market in large quantities, they’re unlikely to be precious for much longer. As any introductory economics student knows, price is a function of relative scarcity — flood the market with gold, and it will go from being a rarity to being a common decoration. Supply goes up, price goes down.

But in fact, there’s a more fundamental reason why a giant golden asteroid wouldn’t make the world fabulously rich. It’s because wealth mostly doesn’t come from big hunks of metal. It comes from the ability to create things that satisfy human desires.

In addition once people start buying things other than gold with all of that newfound gold the prices of those things will rise in turn and we’ll be right back where we were before all of that gold was plopped on the Earth.

It doesn’t actually matter whether an asteroid made of gold was towed back to the Earth or we just extended credit to ourselves. Sweeping plans like a universal basic income cannot work simply because of the way they are constructed.

That is not to say that nothing should be done to ameliorate the circumstances of the poor. They should! We should try all sorts of carefully designed and painstakingly regulated measures, adopting those that work and abandoning those that don’t. One thing that we might try is to stop subsidizing the rich and the near-rich. An outrageous suggestion but worth a try for the very same reason an asteroid of gold won’t do it.

The very best measure to reduce the burdens of poverty would be a meaningful job which brings benefits that do not arrive in the form of a purse of gold.