Today I find myself somewhat uncomfortably in at least partial agreement with Thomas Friedman. His most recent New York Times column is about immigration policy and the factors underpinning mass immigration. Here’s the part with which I agree:

The first is a way to think about the border and the second is a way to think about all the issues beyond the border — issues that are pushing migrants our way. You cannot think seriously about the first without thinking seriously about the second, and if you don’t, this week’s scenes of Customs and Border Protection officers firing tear gas to keep out desperate migrants near Tijuana will get a lot worse.

Regarding the border, the right place for Democrats to be is for a high wall with a big gate.

I also agree with something else he implies in his column. The Democratic leadership should make their views on the border and on immigration clear. For years they’ve been engaging in strategic ambiguity, willing neither to embrace or reject open borders because they know that either position will lose votes. Their apologists are engaging in sophistry, saying in effect that if they don’t say right out in so many words that they are opposed to open borders it’s terribly unfair to suggest they are. The opposite is the case. If they don’t say they’re against open borders, won’t support enforcing our laws, and have suggested that they are at least uncomfortable with enforcing our laws, e.g. “I don’t believe in borders” or “we should abolish ICE”, deducing that they quietly support open borders is completely reasonable.

I disagree with this:

But the country won’t do as well as it can in the 21st century unless it remains committed to a very generous legal immigration policy — and a realistic pathway to citizenship for illegals already here — to attract both high-energy, low-skilled workers and high-I.Q. risk takers.

The emphasis is mine. I think that Mr. Friedman is living in the past. Wages for unskilled workers have been stagnant or declining for decades. Here in Chicago a family of four (two adults, two children) must earn at least the median income for a family four or they will be a net burden. That translates to both adults working full-time and earning at least $15/hour. Many unskilled workers, regardless of energy, will not receive that income. They are not assets. They are liabilities and drive down the wages of other unskilled workers.

In today’s American economy unskilled workers are not a necessity but a luxury. I think we should continue to admit a certain number of unskilled immigrants—those who are legitimate refugees. Those are a very small minority of the total number of unskilled workers that enter the U. S. annually. In short we need an immigration policy that much more closely resembles those of Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, other “nations of immigrants”, than they do our present policies.

He also dwells at considerable length on Venezuela and on climate change. While I think that lack of resources, inadequate capital investment, disease, and overpopulation are all significant problems for developing countries, their most serious and challenging problem is bad government. Venezuelans brought their present circumstances on themselves. Mr. Friedman can’t bring himself to draw the unavoidable and terrible conclusion. Either Venezuelans have no right of emigration (something recognized by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights) or there are limits to their sovereignty and the other countries of their region should have stepped in long ago in self-defense.

A “snarl word” is a word or phrase applied to a person, people, or belief to dismiss it in a derogatory fashion. We have all heard some of them used that way. You can find a list of snarl words here. The opposite of a snarl word is a “glittering generality”.

In my writing and in my speech I attempt to eschew agonistic forms of expression, either pro or con. I attempt to use the technically correct and apt terms. Le mot juste.

But I don’t think it’s possible any more to avoid snarl words or glittering generalities completely. If that list is any gauge anything you might say is a snarl word to somebody.

As you may know the word “utopia” was coined by Thomas More. It is from the Greek and literally means “a good place”. The opposite of utopia is dystopia and recently we’ve been treated to a rash of dystopian future both in works of fact and fiction.

In his New York Times column David Brooks paints a picture of the present and the very near future that I find dystopian in the extreme. Here’s a snippet:

Two great belief systems are clashing here. The older liberals tend to be individualistic and meritocratic. A citizen’s job is to be activist, compassionate and egalitarian. Boomers generally think they earned their success through effort and talent.

The younger militants tend to have been influenced by the cultural Marxism that is now the lingua franca in the elite academy. Group identity is what matters. Society is a clash of oppressed and oppressor groups. People who are successful usually got that way through some form of group privilege and a legacy of oppression.

The big generational clashes generally occur over definitions of professional excellence. The older liberals generally believe that the open exchange of ideas is an intrinsic good. Older liberal journalists generally believe that objectivity is an important ideal. But for many of the militants, these restraints are merely masks for the preservation of the existing power structures. They offer legitimacy to people and structures that are illegitimate.

When the generations clash, the older generation generally retreats. Nobody wants to be hated and declared a moral pariah by his or her employees. Nobody wants to seem outdated. If the war is between the left and Trumpian white nationalism, nobody wants to be seen siding with Trump.

Plus, the militants have more conviction. In the age of social media, virtue is not defined by how compassionately you act. Virtue is defined by how vehemently you react to that which you find offensive. Virtue involves the self-display of a certain indignant sensibility, and anybody who doesn’t display that sensibility is morally suspect.

He then turns to the generation gap on the right and it’s equally depressing if not more so.

Let me offer my own dystopian prediction. I think that in the coming years we’ll be seeing an increasing number of young people in Europe and North American converting to Islam. It provides the certitude and stability presently lacking in other belief systems.

Most imams in the United States are Saudis. If you like the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, you’ll love what is coming.

Do you believe that President Obama “saved the economy”? Quoting long-time econblogger Brad DeLong, Robert Samuelson in his Washington Post column, replies:

Not so fast, objects economist J. Bradford DeLong of the University of California at Berkeley. “Fifty years from now, historians will . . . write that President Franklin Roosevelt, Congress and the Federal Reserve provided a collective policy response that was, if not optimal, at least respectable. . . . By contrast, they will [argue] that the responses of President Barack Obama, Congress and the Federal Reserve did not come up to the standard [set by] the mid-1930s policy-makers.”

Could DeLong be correct? The answer matters, because if he’s right, the economy — despite its present strength — faces a future of long-term sluggishness.

Writing in the Milken Institute Review, an economics journal, DeLong accepts the conventional wisdom that the rapid response to the Great Recession by both the Federal Reserve and Congress — the Fed lowered short-term interest rates to near zero, and Congress passed a huge stimulus package of spending increases and tax cuts — prevented a second Great Depression. But his praise stops there.

We are now 11 years removed from the beginning of the crisis in 2007, and income per worker has risen only 7.5 percent, DeLong notes. By contrast, income per worker rose 10.5 percent in the 11 years following the 1929 stock-market crash.

What explains the gap, he argues, is a psychological hangover from the Great Recession. Consumers and businesses are more cautious, and the despondency is likely to persist. He writes:

“We are haunted by our Great Recession in a sense that our predecessors were not haunted by the Great Depression. . . . No unbiased observer projects anything other than slow growth, much slower than the years during and after World War II. Nobody is forecasting that the haunting will cease — that the shadow left from the Great Recession will lift.”

I don’t think that’s quite accurate. What I think is closer to the truth are:

• The GWB Administration and the Federal Reserve had already taken the steps necessary to prevent a Great Depression 2 by the end of 2008.
• While it is possible that the ARRA and the various phases of quantitative easing put in place by the Federal Reserve prevented a second dip, IMO it is more likely that they only served to improve the fortunes of certain favored constituencies and had a negligible effect on the greater economy.
• After the ARRA the Obama Administration turned its attention beyond the economy and never really returned to it.
• Imposing the largest tax increase on the working poor in American history as happened at the end of 2012 was unwise.

As I have said for over a year, I disagreed with the Trump Administration’s decrease in the personal income tax for the simple reason that I don’t think that slow economic growth in the U. S. has been caused by a shortfall in personal consumption but by inadequate domestic business investment over the period of the last 18 years. However, if there is one thing that should be unarguable at this point, it has been demonstrated that it is possible for the U. S. economy to grow at a rate faster than 2%, something repeatedly denied previously.

What I think what actually happened was a sort of one-two punch. The Obama Administration could not promote faster growth because of the limitations of its own ideological framework and because of the opposing policies of the Fed. What we should be doing is decentralizing, cutting business taxes, cutting payroll taxes, and streamlining federal regulations. What is likely to happen is increased business taxes (under the rubric of “paying their fair share”), increasing payroll taxes (in the name of “saving Social Security”), promoting consumer spending (mostly on goods produced in China and health care), and increasing the deadweight loss of government generally.

I broadly support the measures that Ben Rhodes and Jake Sullivan are encouraging the new Democratic House to put in place in their op-ed in the New York Times. For example:

Second, Democrats should challenge the president on his approach to the “forever war.” Despite running on a pledge to withdraw from military conflicts, Mr. Trump has escalated every conflict he inherited — largely behind a cloak of secrecy and without a clear strategy. Congress can insist on greater transparency around American military deployments, forcing the administration to specify which terrorist organizations the United States is at war with and the military objectives. Democrats should also push for a plan that removes our troops from harm’s way in Afghanistan, while insisting that a war against Iran cannot take place without congressional authorization. As Mr. Trump faces political setbacks at home, Democrats must be vigilant in checking military adventurism abroad.

and

Congress can also work to end United States support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen, which has precipitated the world’s worst humanitarian catastrophe. Rather than fuel the war, we should be driving the parties toward a diplomatic solution and increasing assistance to stem the spread of famine. This is even more pressing in the aftermath of Mr. Trump’s shameful statement on Saudi Arabia last week that signaled that American foreign policy is for sale and that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman can act with impunity.

I wish those causes had a better messenger. I notice that Mr. Rhodes fails to mention from whom President Trump inherited the “forever war” in Afghanistan. Where was this zeal for peace when President Obama was escalating the war in Afghanistan, a move which has had little measurable effect other than spending billions and the deaths of American soldiers? And I seem to recall Mr. Rhodes’s zeal for President Obama’s drone war. Somehow he fails to mention that the drone war was one of the factors that contributed to Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen.

I have opposed the war in Afghanistan under three presidents, one Democrat and two Republicans. I opposed the drone war as not being a just war. I oppose U. S. support for Saudi Arabia in its war against Yemen. At least that’s consistent. When you support something when it’s done by a Democrat and oppose it when done by a Republican it sounds more like partisanship than high-minded statesmanship.

It is a frequent source of amazement to me that Illinoisans refuse to do anything about the abuses of their state and local governments but choose to vote with their feet. At RealClearPolitics Steve Cortes cites some examples:

Recently, Fox affiliate Channel 32 and Open the Books detailed the exorbitant pay package for part-time interim school Superintendent Joyce Carmine. She retired in 2017 making $398,000 annually, the highest-paid superintendent in Illinois, in a community where the median household income is $44,000. She will receive, courtesy of taxpayers, a pension of just under $300,000 for the rest of her life. Adding insult to injury, the school district hired this retiree back as a consultant at the rate of $1,200 per day for a total of 100 days, bringing her pay this year to $419,000 total for part-time work. Given the modest $75,000 median home price in Park Forest, her salary equates to 5.5 home purchases…per year.

Is Carmine somehow producing educational miracles to justify such munificence? The answer is no — testing reveals that only 26 percent of her district’s elementary school students meet state standards for their grade level, and a paltry 2 percent exceed those standards. By the time those students matriculate to the local Rich East public high school, only 16 percent meet expectations and a truly shocking 0 percent exceed them.

I wish that this Park Forest absurdity could be chalked up as exceptional profligacy. But here’s the reality: While Carmine’s pay package and benefits are particularly offensive, especially compared to the modest economic means of those she serves, similar stories abound. For example, in nearby impoverished Ford Heights, school Superintendent Gregory Jackson earned $340,000 for leading a tiny district of only 437 total students, 97 percent of whom live in low-income households.

That should help to explain what I’m complaining about.

Contrary to the editors of the Washington Post, if I were going to make the federal tax system more egalitarian, I wouldn’t expand the Earned Income Tax Credit to cover 80% of taxpayers:

Understandably, given that hypocritical recent history, Democrats are starting to roll out big, budget-unconstrained policy plans of their own in preparation for the 2020 presidential campaign. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has his Medicare-for-all proposal, and Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.) has her Livable Incomes for Families Today (LIFT) tax plan. Basically, the LIFT plan would provide cash tax credits of $3,000 per year (delivered in monthly installments) to working individuals earning up to $30,000, and $6,000 for married couples earning up to $60,000. Thereafter, it would phase out at different rates depending on household status, such that none with incomes exceeding $100,000 would benefit. If this sounds familiar, it’s because it resembles the existing earned-income tax credit; the main differences are that Ms. Harris’s plan (which would add to, not replace, the EITC) would pay people higher in the income scale, and regardless of the number of children they have.

The net effect of that would be to encourage consumer spending (something not presently needed) and make the federal budget more dependent on the revenue from payroll taxes than it already is. IMO preferred ways of making federal taxes more egalitarian would be either by reducing payroll taxes or increasing FICA max to at least $250,000 from where it presently is at $128,400. How about making 100% of every Congressman’s wages from serving as a Congressman subject to FICA?

I think this statement from economist Brian Domitrovic in an op-ed at Forbes:

As I have argued for years, taking a cue from Nobel economist and Wanniski companion Robert A. Mundell, a major nation shorn of all forms of taxation can get all the revenue, in effect, it needs by issuing currency. The demand for the dollar, from international and domestic sources alike, would be unthinkably large if we eliminated all forms of taxation. The United States could buy anything it wanted on the open market by issuing currency into this demand. It could also, in such an environment, easily make the dollar convertible in gold, in that currency would be in tremendous differential demand against gold in business conditions that were fantastic.

should warm the hearts of all proponents of Modern Monetary Theory.

To the larger questions of the evils of both tariffs and taxes addressed in the op-ed I would very much like to see an explanation from advocates of free trades, low (or no) taxes, and expansive immigration policies, how they plan to accomplish decent lifestyles for most Americans under their plan. They should show their work, i.e. put real, practical, foreseeable numbers behind their plans.

At RealClearPolitics Peter Berkowitz laments the sorry state of higher education and its lamentable impact on today’s society and politics:

No antidote to the poison that higher education has been pumping into our politics for three generations can succeed without reforming higher education. But prospects are poor for effecting the necessary changes from within. The progressive grip on higher education shows no signs of weakening. Faculty and administrators exhibit little appetite for self-criticism or external accountability. The implementation of inherently desirable practices inside the university such as a core curriculum are likely to be hijacked to serve illiberal ends.

That leaves a variety of alternatives outside of the university. Home schooling and charter schools that nurture the acquisition of knowledge and spirit of free inquiry before college are important options. Another is the expanding network of initiatives, generally supported by conservative philanthropists, that provide undergraduates and recent graduates the liberal education neglected or abused by our colleges and universities. The focus should be on an education for liberty, beginning with literacy and numeracy and proceeding through study of America and the West to the exploration of other civilizations. Successful experiments in education in the private sector might have a salutary influence on public education.

Neither Donald Trump’s antics nor his achievements should be allowed to obscure the urgency of educational reform. Without a basic familiarity with, and an education that is governed by, the norms of free and democratic societies, how will we be able to evaluate properly our current president, or any other one?

I don’t think that reform of higher education is possible without returning to first principles. Presently, 84% of the spending on education by government at all levels is for higher education. Over the last 60 years it has tripled in real terms. Why?

The conventional answer is that the path to a secure, prosperous future for Americans runs through higher education. Considered uncritically, that leaves out half of the American people for whom higher education is a path to failure and debt rather than to security and prosperity.

But is it actually true?

It is no accident that so many millennials emerge from college with $50,000 in student debt. At present starting wages that is debt they will be in their 30s before they discharge if ever. That is a drastic shift in prospects compared to previous age cohorts and affects every sector of our economy and every aspect of our society.

But I’m skeptical that the ROI on higher education is actually what it is advertised to be. What are the differences in lifetime earning prospects for those with college education compared to those without when you discount the very high incomes of a relative handful of college grads, e.g. physicians, graduates of top law schools, graduates of top business schools, and a few others? Factor in the opportunity costs of education, etc. does higher education really pay? Or for most is it a luxury and, for the average American, a luxury they can’t afford?