There are few better barometers (other than Larry Summers) of the conventional wisdom among establishment Democrats than Steve Rattner who, in his New York Times op-ed, warns about debt:

Medicare for All. The Green New Deal. Free college tuition.

With each new entrant into the Democratic presidential sweepstakes comes a fresh cascade of ambitious social programs to entice and excite would-be supporters.

The list of “payfors,” to use a bit of Washington jargon, grows more slowly. They’ll pay for this how, again? Tax the rich, tax the rich — or take cover behind a convenient bit of progressive dogma: Don’t worry about the fiscal impact because America’s rising budget deficits and debt levels don’t much matter.

That’s a scary drift of thought, and it should set off alarm bells for all Americans. Vast increases in debt will ultimately compromise Washington’s ability to maintain its current array of spending programs, let alone add new ones, and threaten our standard of living.

It would be nice if he were as concerned about debt during Democratic administrations as he is during Republican ones but, alas, that seems to be too much to ask for.

There’s more than one way of looking at debt. One way is that more debt today means less spending tomorrow and that’s the thinking he reflects in his piece.

Another way is that government spending doesn’t matter. We can just issue ourselves credit without let or hindrance.

My own view is that we should not issue ourselves credit to pay operating expenses, only for things that will pay real dividends. Some things pay dividends far beyond what is spent, e.g. the space program, some things have diminishing returns to scale, e.g. health care spending, other things actually have declining returns to scale, e.g. war. All spending, public or private, affects incentives. Bad incentives are like gunk in the engine. They reduce the power of the whole machine.

We should choose wisely.

However, pay attention to what Mr. Rattner has to say. He’s telling us what the present Democratic leadership thinks.

Springfield’s State Journal-Register reports that Illinois’s budget is in significantly worse shape than had been thought:

With Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s first budget speech less than two weeks away, the Pritzker administration said the state’s financial problems are worse than expected.

In a report released Friday, former comptroller and now deputy governor Dan Hynes said the state’s budget deficit next year will hit $3.2 billion unless steps are taken to bring it under control.

The administration said the deficit is 16 percent higher than what former Gov. Bruce Rauner’s administration projected in a report it released in November.

“We’ve had several weeks now to work with the agencies to look through their financials and really do an assessment of the damage done by the previous administration,” Hynes said in an interview. “It’s worse than we thought both in terms of the scope and size of the deficit facing us (next year), but also the amount of unpaid bills left on our desk.”

Naturally enough, he lays the blame squarely on his predecessor:

The report placed most of the blame for the problem on Rauner and continued fallout from the budget impasse during his administration. The report said spending pressures became obvious as various state agencies submitted budget requests to the administration that were considered maintenance budgets.

For example, obligations for human services means those projects face an additional $275 million shortfall. State employee health insurance is facing an estimated $170 million deficit.

The report also said that simply looking at the bill backlog gives a misleading picture of the money owed in connection with unpaid bills. The backlog stood at $7.9 billion at the end of last year. However, the state also owes $5.5 billion on money borrowed to help pay down the backlog and save on interest payments. There is also $650 million to be repaid to special state funds and about $500 million owed to state workers for unpaid step increases.

“Adding all of that up was a stunning revelation,” Hynes said. “It really spells out how serious this problem is.”

Would-a, could-a, should-a. It’s Gov. Pritzker’s watch now and he will be tested. The question is will he preside over the state’s continuing decline or seek to expand Illinois’s population and economy? I know where I’d put my money. My advice: stop digging.

The editors of the Wall Street Journal call for a rollcall floor vote on the proposed “Green New Deal” legislation forthwith:

President Obama’s Clean Power Plan looks modest by comparison. The 10-year Green New Deal calls for generating 100% of power from renewables and removing greenhouse gas emissions from manufacturing and transportation—to the extent these goals are “technologically feasible.” Hint: They’re not.

The plan also calls for “upgrading all existing buildings in the United States and building new buildings to achieve maximal energy efficiency, water efficiency, safety, affordability, comfort and durability, including through electrification.” That’s all existing buildings, comrade.

Millions of jobs would have to be destroyed en route to this brave new green world, but not to worry. The resolution says the government would also guarantee “a job with a family-sustaining wage, adequate family and medical leave, paid vacations, and retirement security to all people of the United States.” Good that they’re starting small.

Sorry to mention unhappy reality, but renewable sources currently make up only 17% of U.S. electric-power generation despite enormous federal and state subsidies. Wind and solar energy have become more competitive over the last decade as costs have plunged. But without subsidies, solar costs remain about 20% higher than natural gas while offshore wind is two-thirds more expensive. The bigger problem is solar and wind don’t provide reliable power, so backup plants that burn fossil fuels are required to run on stand-by.

I presume that the editors are counting on the GND being legislation to argue about rather than to pass. Don’t propose anything like that unless you already know the outcome.

My advice: be careful what you wish for. What will the dog do with the car if he catches it?

This is another case in which I think that mandatory performance metrics are of tremendous importance. If the program doesn’t result in a net decrease in carbon emissions, it’s a zero. Fun fact: after transportation and power generation the third largest source of carbon emissions in the U. S. is the production of cement. There are on the order of 150 million buildings in the United States. rehabbing and retrofitting all of them will end up producing a lot of greenhouse gases. If you accept the assumptions of the GND, unless we reduce net emissions there is no long term so arguing that the massive building project will ultimately result in decreases is moot. If you reject the assumptions of the GND, there is no need for a crash program.

Here’s another issue. We don’t have enough power engineers to replace the present power grid completely and it takes time to train new ones. You can’t just retrain computer designers or programmers to do the job. Power engineering is a specialty of its own. Over time they could be trained but, again, if the assumptions of the GND are correct there isn’t enough time.

At the Huffington Post Laura Paddison reports on the results of Finland’s experiment with a universal basic income (UBI):

Finland’s universal basic income test, which cost the government about $22.7 million, was designed and administered by the country’s social insurance agency, Kela. The experiment aimed to help the country assess how to respond to the changing nature of work and ― given its 8-percent unemployment rate at the time ― how to get people back into the labor market.

The trial ended in December. While final results won’t be available until 2020, preliminary results were revealed on Friday.

On employment, the country’s income register showed no significant effects for 2017, the first year of the trial.

The real benefits so far have come in terms of health and well being. The 2,000 participants were surveyed, along with a control group of 5,000. Compared with the control group, those taking part had “clearly fewer problems related to health, stress, mood and concentration,” said Minna Ylikännö, senior researcher at Kela. Results also showed people had more trust in their future and their ability to influence it.

“Constant stress and financial stress for the long term – it’s unbearable. And when we give money to people once a month they know what they are going to get,” said Ylikännö. “It was just €560 a month, but it gives you certainty, and certainty about the future is always a fundamental thing about well being.”

I would tentatively support a UBI experiment in the United States under certain conditions on the grounds that improving wellbeing is good. Among the conditions I would require are that it be closely modeled on the Finnish program. It should be a “carve out” program rather than a “pile on” meaning that it should replace other benefits rather than just adding to benefits. Individuals participating should be selected at random from the unemployed meaning that those unwilling to work would be excluded. Performance metrics should be defined in advance including measurements of the cost of administration and the program should be self-cancelling if it fails to achieve its pre-defined goals.

I also think that we should be prepared that the outcome of such a program would be quite different in the U. S. than in Finland. We also should take into account that the monthly stipend would need to be much higher here because of differences between our system and Finland’s. Finland is a tiny ethnically and culturally homogeneous country. The rate of alcohol abuse there is much higher than here but their rate of opiate abuse is enormously lower. I wouldn’t be surprised if a similar program here would end up being exponentially more expensive and result in an increased mortality rate among its beneficiaries.

But it might not. And that would be good to know.

In a piece at Bloomberg Faye Flam covers a lot of the same territory I did yesterday:

A team of 37 scientists has designed a diet for the long-term future, and the good news is that it doesn’t require anyone to eat insects or soylent green. There’s nothing dystopian about it, but some nutrition experts are still turning up their noses at the plan, which was designed to minimize environmental degradation while still feeding the 10 billion people expected to inhabit the planet by 2050.

The main complaint: The EAT diet, published in the Lancet last month, is padded with lots of corn and soy, and would ask Americans to make a drastic cut in our average consumption of meat, dairy and eggs. There’s a bitter aftertaste of the 20th-century government-recommended diets high in carbohydrates and low in fat, which are now considered a factor in skyrocketing obesity and Type 2 diabetes.

Critics quickly blasted the Lancet authors’ claims that meat is harmful to our health, or that vegan diets are better for the human body. They point out that scientific studies to date give mixed results, and are based on hard-to-interpret evidence rather than controlled experiments

She takes note of the historical record:

Historically, advances in food quantity went along with degradation of quality. By studying ancient skeletons, archaeologists have found that as grain farming expanded, people deteriorated — their skeletons became shorter, with more signs of disease, and their teeth went from healthy to rotten. Nobility remained tall and healthy — eating more varied diets, including meat. It was the peasants who suffered.

Scientists eventually figured out that it takes more than just adequate calories to feed humans. We evolved to need the right combination of amino acids and particular forms of fat, as well as vitamins and minerals. Science has made great strides in preventing vitamin deficiencies, but we still don’t know what’s optimal — just what’s good enough.

and finally arrives where I began:

It might look arrogant for anyone to claim to have designed a perfect diet. What’s perfect for weight-conscious Americans may not coincide with what’s necessary to ensure proper brain development of every child in Africa. It’s also smart to be looking ahead to our more crowded future — so we can keep eating food and never have to resort to dystopian mystery substances.

There are other issues. A significant amount of the data on which they rely has been derived from Chinese studies which have come into question and, even if true, may be more relevant for Chinese people than for Norwegians. And concurrent with the environmental warnings are other warnings that the population of humans is likely to peak around 2050. China’s population may already have peaked.

A more benign future may be realized by educating women, particularly in Africa and the Middle East. Those are the places where fertility rates are still sky-high and the available evidence suggests that fertility rates decline as women become better-educated. Rather than preparing for a Stand on Zanzibar or Soylent Green future we might want to start thinking about the implications of a stable or even declining human population.

Can someone explain the Monty Python-esque anti-corn syrup Budweiser ads to me? Doesn’t Anheuser-Busch InBev use rice syrup in Budweiser? That doesn’t belong in beer, either. In Germany that couldn’t even be sold as beer.

Judging by his tone the CEO of Gallup is pretty apparently shocked at the results of a poll taken by his own organization:

Here’s a good question about caravans: How many more are coming?

Gallup asked the whole population of Latin America. There are 33 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. Roughly 450 million adults live in the region. Gallup asked them, “Would you like to move to another country permanently if you could?”

A whopping 27% said “yes.”

So this means roughly 120 million would like to migrate somewhere.

The next question Gallup asked was, “Where would you like to move?”

Of those who want to leave their Latin American country permanently, 35% said they want to go to the United States.

The Gallup analytics estimate is that 42 million want to come to the U.S.

Forty-two million seekers of citizenship or asylum are watching to determine exactly when and how is the best time to make the move. This suggests that open borders could potentially attract 42 million Latin Americans. A full 5 million who are planning to move in the next 12 months say they are moving to the U.S.

Rather than find a solution for the several thousand potential migrants currently at the border, let’s start by answering the bigger, harder question — what about the 42 million who would like to come? What is the message to those millions who will seek entrance either legally or illegally? What should we tell them?

Most U.S. citizens like me just want to know the plan. What is the 10-year plan? How many, exactly whom and what skills will they bring? What do we want? Answer these questions, and the current discussion can be resolved.

Keep in mind that it’s not only 330 million Americans who are wondering — so are 42 million seekers from Latin America.

I think it’s a question that demands an answer.

How are New York and Los Angeles going to house those migrants? How will Seattle and San Francisco? How will they be fed and clothed? How will their children be educated?

We are barely producing enough jobs for what used to be quaintly called the “natural increase”. It is fantastical to believe we will produce an additional 5 million jobs beyond that over the next year, two years, or 10 years let alone 42 million.

In his latest piece at Bloomberg legal scholar and Obama Administration appointee and advisor Cass Sunstein leaps to the defense of capitalism, cautioning Democrats of the hazards of embracing socialism:

Since 2010, most Democrats have had a favorable attitude toward socialism. Recently, 57 percent of Democrats reported such a favorable attitude, well above the 47 percent who said they have a positive attitude toward capitalism. (By contrast, 71 percent of Republicans are upbeat about capitalism, and only 16 percent feel positively about socialism.)

True, most of the Americans who approve of socialism are likely to be thinking of something like Scandinavian-style social democracy, rather than something out of Karl Marx. But words matter, especially when they refer to systems of governance. What, then, is socialism?

According to a standard definition, socialism calls for government ownership or control of the means of production. By contrast, capitalism calls for private ownership and control — for a robust system of property rights.

In capitalist systems, companies and firms, both large and small, are generally in private hands. In socialist systems, the state controls them. If they are given room to maneuver, their rights are conditional; they can be taken away at any time.

Many people have identified socialism with government planning. Socialist systems give public officials a great deal of authority over prices, levels of production and wages.

Friedrich Hayek, socialism’s greatest critic, showed that giving that authority to government is a recipe for disaster. The reason is that even if officials are well-motivated, they lack the necessary information.

Unlike planners, free markets and the price system are able to encode the knowledge, the preferences and the values of dispersed people. Hayek rightly described the process as “a marvel.”

Whether we are speaking of laptops or sneakers, coffee or candy bars, umbrellas or blankets, markets establish prices, levels of production and wages on the basis of the desires, the beliefs and the values of countless people. No planner can possibly do that.

So here’s the problem. Many Democrats say that they like socialism. But it is doubtful that they want the government to own and operate the nation’s airlines, hospitals, restaurants and department stores.

Nor is it likely that they would favor a political candidate who called for a National Planning Agency, establishing prices for goods, services and wages. Even if they want an increase in the minimum wage, socialist-style planning is surely a bridge too far.

In his own effort to explain what he meant by socialism, Sanders did not invoke Karl Marx. Instead he spoke of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

In particular, Sanders pointed to Roosevelt’s great 1944 speech, in which he called for a Second Bill of Rights. As Roosevelt described it, the Second Bill includes a right to adequate medical care; a right to a good education; a right to protection against the fears of old age, sickness, accident and unemployment; a right to freedom from domination by monopolies; a right to earn enough to provide adequate food, clothing and recreation; and a right to a useful and remunerative job in the private sector.

Roosevelt contended that “economic security and independence” are essential to individual freedom. Sanders endorsed that claim.

Sanders also spoke of economic inequality, emphasizing the extraordinary wealth of the top one-tenth of 1 percent, and the distress and difficulty faced by those at the bottom.

In his words, “Democratic socialism means that we must create an economy that works for all, not just the very wealthy.” That means better access to health care, higher taxes on the wealthiest, better educational opportunities for all, and an effort to “put millions of people back to work.”

Reasonable people are drawn to all of those ideas. But please, let’s not call them “socialist.”

Roosevelt’s own goal was to save capitalism, not to overthrow it. As he once put it, “One of my principal tasks is to prevent bankers and businessmen from committing suicide.” He believed in what Democratic Representative Joe Kennedy of Massachusetts is now calling “moral capitalism.”

I think that part of the problem is the sloppy use of language. How much of that is deliberate I have no way of knowing but I suspect that some of it is. “Socialism”, “state socialism”, and “social democracy” are not synonymous although far too many people use the terms as though they were. Indeed, history tells us that rather than their being allies state socialism is the implacable enemy of social democracy. The former has inevitably stamped out the latter whenever it encountered it.

My own view is more aligned with G. K. Chesterton’s—that the main problem with capitalism is that there are far too few capitalists. What is needed is less government power rather than more. Natural monopolies are the exception rather than the rule—most have been granted, nurtured, or supported by government. Very few billionaires have become billionaires or once acquired held on to their riches other than through rent-seeking.

In other words powerful, centralized governments far from being an effective tool for decentralizing wealth abet ,its concentration. It would help if people desired freedom more than they did what the wealthy can afford to buy.

I think that Eric Alterman needs to be very careful about saying things like those in his recent New Yorker piece:

That’s what history does best. It locates us and helps us understand how we got here and why things are the way they are. “History instills a sense of citizenship, and reminds you of questions to ask, especially about evidence,” Willis told me. In a follow-up e-mail after our conversation, Mikhail wrote, “A study of the past shows us that the only way to understand the present is to embrace the messiness of politics, culture, and economics. There are never easy answers to pressing questions about the world and public life.” Bruce Springsteen famously developed a profound political consciousness after happening upon Allan Nevins and Henry Steele Commager’s “A Pocket History of the United States,” first published in 1942. In his recent Broadway show, Springsteen explained, “I wanted to know the whole American story. . . . I felt like I needed to understand as much of it as I could in order to understand myself.”

I realize that his primary purpose is to forge a club to beat over Donald Trump’s head but people might reach the logical conclusions from his remarks that people who have experienced more of history might have perspective that those who haven’t lack, that there may be wisdom in tradition, or that the headlong rush to overturn traditional norms to meet the preferences of those without historical perspective are misguided.

My own view of history is somewhat jaded. While I think that a knowledge of history and, even more importantly, historiography are important, I think that we know almost nothing of events that occurred prior to about 1400 and that most of what we think we know (before and since) is actually propaganda.

Is it history or propaganda that George Washington chopped down a cherry tree and never told a lie?