So, who plans to watch the debate tonight. I’m pretty sure my wife will insist that we watch it. Otherwise I would avoid it and read the commentaries tomorrow. I suspect it will be pretty painful.

I agree with one of the things they’ve said will be done wholeheartedly—when it’s one of the candidates turn to speak muting the mike of the other candidate. I think the presumption is that will affect Mr. Trump more than it will Mr. Biden. Who knows?

Other changes from past presidential candidates’ debate format include no opening statements and no studio audience. I honestly wish these events were actual formal debates.

William Galston, a Democrat, uses his Wall Street Journal column to argue for fiscal prudence:

We’re backing ourselves into a fiscal corner. Annual outlays for Social Security will rise by about $1 trillion over the next decade, as will outlays for Medicare. But Mr. Trump has ruled out cuts to these programs, bringing his party into alignment with the Democrats’ longtime stance. Nor will Republicans accept tax increases. Meantime, projected defense spending falls far short of what will be necessary to protect the U.S. in an increasingly dangerous world. And there won’t be any room for additional domestic spending on young families with children. Taking the path of least resistance—increasing spending without increasing revenue—will make a bad fiscal situation worse.

Add to this that the U.S. is a rapidly aging society. Americans 65 and older made up 9% of the population in 1960. Today, this figure is 18%, and it’s projected to rise to 23% over the next three decades. As older Americans’ share of the electorate increases, so will the cost of guaranteeing them basic income and medical security. I doubt many elderly voters will rally around a fiscal strategy that reduces their benefits.

Continuing on our current fiscal course will mean a gradual loss of America’s financial independence followed by an abrupt economic decline. The U.S. will have to ask the rest of the world to finance its debt, and it’s reckless to assume that other nations will do so indefinitely. The risk is that countries the U.S. relies on will draw back gradually—and then suddenly, when some unforeseen shock crystallizes their mounting doubts. As the late economist Herb Stein quipped, “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.”

We have to recognize the consequences of these realities and start taking steps to secure America’s fiscal future. Leaders with vision should address these issues realistically and make the case to the public that they must either pay for the programs they want or agree to cut them. Faced with this choice, I suspect that voters would support the higher taxes that are needed to stabilize Social Security and Medicare for decades to come, help families with young children, and defend the country against mounting threats.

All I can say to Mr. Galston is welcome back to the fight. I wish I knew our side will win.

Sadly, I think it very unlikely. Both Republicans and Democrats are addicted to free beer, they just take it in different forms. The Republicans take theirs in the form of tax cuts while the Democrats take theirs in the form of not curbing spending.

There are two things I have missed in the several columns and editorials I have read recently on our growing debt. The first is that there is empirical evidence that public debt overhang constrains the rate at which GDP can grow. The second is deadweight loss.

In an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal Seth Cropsey declaims that war between Israel and Iran is inevitable:

Israel faces a strategic choice with regard to Iran—war now or war later. The political conditions for war now are poor. The strategic conditions later will only grow worse.

Iran’s goal is to destroy Israel as a uniquely Jewish state through a strategy of attrition. The mullahs hope to bind Israel in a series of conflicts and pressure it from multiple angles while using diplomacy and media manipulation to prolong the conflict. Tehran understands the potency of Israel’s military, which has adapted well to difficult urban and subterranean combat conditions in Gaza. The Israel Defense Forces field formidable air, artillery and armored units that, if unleashed in the north, would threaten the existence of Hezbollah, Iran’s most capable proxy. The Iranian deterrence strategy couples pressure on the U.S. with the threat of large-scale rocket and missile attacks against critical Israeli infrastructure.

Hamas is the most apparent element of Iran’s strategy. Iran wants the terrorist organization not only to maintain control of Gaza but to catapult itself into control of the Palestinian movement. The best way to do that is to compel the Israelis to accept a cosmetically appealing “peace agreement” involving the Arab states that allows Hamas to integrate into the Palestinian Authority and co-opt its necrotic rival, Fatah. The West Bank could then become another axis of pressure on Israel.

Here’s my hypothetical. If Iran attacks Israel, I think we should provide assistance to Israel similar to the aid we are providing to Ukraine and for the same reasons.

But what if Israel attacks Iran? What should we do then?

Is the Biden Administration’s abandoning of our policy of “strategic ambiguity” with respect to Taiwan good or bad and why?

If you are concerned about American problems, you might consider reading this lament for France at Brussels Signal by Kevin Myers:

The most traditionally-French thing about modern France is its ability to conjure riots out of thin air: this time last year, in a single nation-wide eruption 2,000 cars were torched, 3,380 buildings set on fire, 220 towns and cities were swept with violence and 40,000 police were mobilised, with 250 of them being injured. Which is why the gendarmerie has banned fireworks during this summer’s national feast day, especially since the latest “festive” rockets can be fired horizontally at 100 km/hr.

Not Belfast: Bastille Day. Aux armes, citoyens!

I have been to Normandy on four occasions in the past two years. Each time was like visiting an old folk’s home as the residents slumbered their way to the grave. The last trip. the two of us, just off the ferry and searching Cherbourg for breakfast, finally found the only café that promised both coffee and baguettes (or so we thought).

The result was intrinsically Egyptian: the coffee tasted like the effluent from the Cairo fever hospital and the baguette was one of the “long-life” variety, this one apparently from the age of Tutankhamun and resembled a condom filled with wet sawdust ….well, I hope that’s what it was.

Thereafter, matters grew worse, like time-travelling to Poland in the 1960s. Even finding somewhere that served lunch would usually take at least an hour. One day we consumed an omelette that had apparently died after a long and painful illness, bravely borne, and sought consolation in two coffees. “Désolée, monsieur,” yawned the waitress [ed.: sorry, sir] through her tattooed hand. “Nous n’avons pas de café aujourd’hui. Demain peut-être?” [ed: We have no coffee today. Maybe tomorrow.]

Lunch the next day in a different café seemed to consist of road-kill on toast. The menu promised café au lait, which we asked for, it being a café. “Désolée, monsieur,” snuffled Waitress Mark Two through her nose-ring, “nous n’avons pas de lait aujourd’hui. Demain peut-être?” [ed.: We have no milk today, etc.]

No milk in Normandy? There was a supermarket two doors away. Travail is such travail in modern France.

Read the whole sad thing. I just received some photos from friends who live in Paris, one of the Seine. They’re planning to swim in that? They might be able to walk across it.

While I’m on the subject of Chicago politics Ed Burke, the longest-serving alderman in Chicago history, sometimes called “Chicago’s most powerful politician”, has been sentence to two years in prison, convicted of various charges of corruption. ABC 7 Chicago reports:

CHICAGO (WLS) — Ed Burke, once the most powerful Chicago alderman, was sentenced on corruption charges Monday at the Dirksen Federal Building.

Judge Virginia M. Kendall gave him a two-year prison sentence and $2 million fine.

The fine consists of $200,000 on count one and $150,000 on each of the remaining counts. The money will go toward the victims of Burke’s crimes.

My reaction: it’s a start. If every Chicago alderman who engaged in corrupt practices were tried and convicted, the City Council probably couldn’t get a quorum together. Now on to Mike Madigan who has been chairman of the Illinois Democratic Party for much of my lifetime. He, too, is facing trial on charges of corruption.

I didn’t want to let the story of Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson’s reparations task force pass without comment. Here’s the editors’ of the Sun-Times/s reaction:

Johnson didn’t say what form reparations would take or how they would be funded. Any potential solutions would likely have to be policy-based, given the city’s budget constraints.

Johnson’s office issued a news release saying the task force will “create a definition and framework” for reparations, identify “core issues for redress and reparative actions,” and examine “all policies that have harmed Black Chicagoans from the slavery era to the present day.” The task force would then “make a series of recommendations [to fix] past injustices and present harm.”

All of this seems iffy, ponderous and time-consuming. If the mayor wants to make things better for Black Chicago, he doesn’t have to wait for a task force’s findings.

He can fix the CTA so people all across the city can get to work and school safely and on time. He can fight to make sure the public school system, with its $9.4 billion budget, is properly educating all students.

He can make crime in Black communities a priority by working closely with police and the Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability on a coherent, workable plan to make those neighborhoods safer.

He can make sure parks on the West and South sides are safe, have good programs and are properly maintained, the same as parks on the North and Northwest Side.

Fixing these things won’t change the past. But they can make for a better future.

My question about reparations is the same as it has always been: paid by whom to whom? I question the justice of newly-arrived Hispanic and Asian immigrations paying reparations to Chicagoans of African-American ancestry, some of whom are recent immigrants themselves. I do predict that the $500,000 budget announced for the task force will improve the lives of some Chicagoans of African-American ancestry: those serving on the task force.

I noticed two things in the Wall Street Journal editorial, lauding NATO members for increasing their defense spending to 2% of GDP:

Some 23 of 32 NATO member countries are on track to spend at least 2% of their economy on national defense in 2024. That’s up from a mere six in 2018 and three in 2014, when members agreed to the 2% floor.

No surprise that the countries spending most are those that understand the Russian threat from painful experience. Poland is spending 4.12% of its economy, with half of its expenditure on equipment. Estonia and Latvia are above 3%. The doughty Finns, one of the alliance’s newest members, sit at 2.41%.

But even Germany, France and the Netherlands are on track to squeak above 2% in 2024. Ditto for Albania and Montenegro. The prize for embarrassment goes to Canada, which is wealthy enough to devote more than a mere 1.37% to defense. Spain is a more predictable but still deplorable low at 1.28%. Both countries should be told to meet their burdens or they’ll be replaced as members by better allies.

The first is that nearly a third of NATO members, including, as the editors mention, Canada and Spain, are spending less than 2%.

The second is that the words “readiness”, “preparedness”, or “fitness” do not appear at all in the editorial. Let me explain.

Imagine that you decided 30 years ago that you need to spend 2% of your income on home maintenance to keep your house up and then for the next 30 years you spend 1% or less. Unless your income is a lot more than mine that means you wouldn’t be able to replace the roof, repair the floors, repair the foundation, paint the hour, or do anything substantial with the plumbing, electric, or HVAC. After 30 years of neglect I daresay the house would be in falling down condition. If at that point you step up and start spending 2% on home maintenance, how long would it take you to put the house in livable condition?

That’s the situation that NATO is in. As of 20 years ago the only NATO members with militaries at the highest levels of readiness were the United States, France, and Britain and, sadly, France and Britain have not kept their military readiness up. What level of readiness will “squeaking above 2% in 2024” achieve?

The editors of the Wall Street Journal, taking note of the trends in the graph above, argue that the United States does not have a tax problem but a spending problem:

You may have heard that the 2017 GOP tax cuts blew a giant hole in the federal budget—or so Democrats tell voters. The Congressional Budget Office’s revised 10-year budget forecast out Tuesday offers a reality check. Spending is the real problem, and it’s getting worse.

CBO projects that this year’s budget deficit will clock in at roughly $2 trillion, some $400 billion more than it forecast in February and $300 billion larger than last year’s deficit. This is unprecedented when the economy is growing and defense spending is nearly flat. The deficit this fiscal year will be 7% of GDP, which is more than during some recessions.

CBO says deficits will stay nearly this high for years, and the total over the next decade is now expected to total $21.9 trillion compared to $19.8 trillion in its February forecast. Debt held by the public will grow to 122.4% of GDP in 2034 from 97.3% last year.

Notably, CBO’s revenue projections are little changed. Revenue is expected to total 17.2% of GDP this year—roughly the 50-year average before the pandemic, as the nearby chart shows. But CBO significantly revised up projections for federal spending. Outlays are now expected to hit 24.2% of GDP this year and average 24% over the next decade. Wow.

You will note that although noisy federal tax revenues as a percentage of GDP have been remarkably stable. Federal tax revenues of roughly 17% are more than a “50 year trend”. That’s basically the post-war trend and marginal tax rates have made little difference.

There are a couple of ways of looking at that. One is that the Congress has carefully crafted the federal tax laws to return that percentage of GDP. Another is that 17% is what Americans are willing to pay in federal taxes. Beyond that they lobby, cheat, or otherwise arrange to limit their federal taxes to 17%. Those two are not mutually exclusive.

I would add that I think our problem is neither a tax problem nor a spending problem but either a consumption problem or a production problem (or both). Either we’re consuming too much or we’re not producing enough.