Pandora Dewan in an article in Newsweek notes that the mortality rate of working age Americans is higher than those in other high-income countries:

Over the past three decades, most high-income countries have seen a significant decline in midlife mortality between the ages of 25 to 64. However, according to researchers at Oxford and Princeton Universities, mortality declines in the U.S. for this age bracket have been significantly slower than in other countries, and have even reversed in recent years.

Using data from the World Health Organization Mortality Database between 1990 and 2019, the team concluded that by 2019, all-cause midlife mortality rates in the U.S. were 2.5 times higher than the average rates in other high-income countries. The study, which was published in the International Journal of Epidemiology on March 21, did not evaluate data during the years of the COVID-19 pandemic, when the life expectancy gap between the U.S. and other high-income countries widened even further.

I wish the author had provided some conjectures on why that might be. The United States is different from other high-income countries in innumerable ways. I’m sure that some will rush to conclude that the difference is the availability of insurance but health care insurance has been widely available in one form or another for a decade or more and that is not evident in the mortality statistics.

The original study is here. It appears to me that a considerable amount of the differences are due to high and rising suicide rates and deaths due to alcoholism and other substance-related deaths.

At Big Think Ross Pomeroy reports on another study of the monetary value of a college education. Here are the results:

Zhang and his co-authors also pored through 2009–2021 data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey. Specifically, they compared the incomes of 2.9 million individuals with college bachelor’s degrees, ages 18 to 65, to the incomes of 2.9 million individuals with only high school diplomas.

“The earnings gap between college and high school graduates is around $14,000 annually,” Zhang told Big Think. “This gap is initially lower, then increases to about $20,000, and slightly decreases as they near retirement.”

Knowing the cost of attending a four-year university and the considerable income bump that comes with it, the researchers were then able to calculate the value of a college degree. They found that investment in a college education yields a return of about 9.1% for men and 9.9% for women. The higher rate for women is because female high school graduates earn far less than males. Over a 40-year career, these rates of return translate into millions of dollars of extra income.

While prepared to believe that graduating from college provides monetary value, I wish the article provided more information about the study. Unfortunately, the study itself appears to be restricted. Among my questions are:

• Did they calculate total income net of the cost of attending college? Or did they just compare incomes?
• Did they consider the extra years of income for those not attending college?
• Did they exclude individuals who went on after obtaining a four year college degree to attend medical school? A top law school? Get an MBA from a top school?

There are others.

This

Together, they estimated the total cost of attending a four-year college, using data from 1,160 public, 480 private nonprofit, and 230 for-profit institutions. Grant awards, tuition and fees, books and supplies, room and board, transportation, and opportunity costs from not working were accounted for in the tabulations. This brought the overall cost of college to roughly $140,000, Zhang told Big Think in an email.

makes me think they did consider the first two in their study but I’m not sure.

Any of those issues could render the study meaningless or at best change the results drastically.

Early in my career my college degree got me very little if anything and my having graduated from an elite school got me literally nothing. Bizarrely, no one cared about my post-graduate degree until recently.

At Brussels Signal Gabriel Elefteriu has harsh words for those NATO members advocating direct military intervention in the war between Russia and Ukraine:

The collective flight of reason triggered by Emmanuel Macron’s bombshell suggestion last month about a possible Western military intervention in Ukraine is only gathering more pace. After prominent Dutch, Lithuanian, Estonian, Czech and Polish officials and leaders quickly endorsed the idea, the Finnish and Latvian foreign ministers have also recently joined the push to normalise this utterly irresponsible notion.

Commendably, some countries including the US, UK and Germany have ruled out deploying troops to Ukraine. But even in their ranks there are voices, such as that of former UK defence secretary Ben Wallace, who are on board with it all.

and

In summary, there is no such thing as a “non-combat” deployment in Ukraine and direct engagements with Russian forces are all but guaranteed, with further escalation from there.

The idea that this can be done on some “coalition of the willing”-basis by just some NATO countries acting separately from the Alliance itself, is worse than a bad joke: it betrays a petrifying deficit of understanding and lapse of judgement regarding the political realities around Article 5.

I think the intent of this coalition of the gung-ho is direct U. S. military intervention in that war, i.e. “boots on the ground”. Here’s why any NATO countries joining the fray would end NATO:

All the other allies – including, quite likely, the United States – who declined to join the mad dash into Ukraine, but now would be asked to help, would quite reasonably say, “no, thank you”.

He concludes:

The current narrative being artificially built up around Europe, suggesting that we need to fight Putin in Ukraine, otherwise we’ll have to fight him on NATO territory, only serves to discredit the Alliance. It is also an insult to the intellect of any thinking person.

There is a reason why there is a NATO border that separates those who are in from those who are not: it marks the limit to which an adversary who wishes us harm can stretch its power – yes, even through conquest – before the rules of the game change and the might of the entire alliance comes into play.

By trying to erase these limits and wipe out any distinction between NATO membership and non-membership, Macron and his followers are weakening the Alliance and doing European security a great disservice.

That’s also why admitting Poland in particular to the alliance was an error. Poland has ongoing territorial disputes with Russia. Do we really expect the U. S. to pursue those claims on behalf of Poland? Of course not.

Adding Ukraine to NATO would similarly be an error. As George Kennan pointed out some time ago, it would be like the Soviet Union admitting Pennsylvania to the Warsaw Pact.

I think that U. S. economic and munitions support for Ukraine is right and proper because I am anti-invasion but that’s where I think our support should end. And the U. S. government has a fiduciary responsibility which it is not presently satisfying to ensure that our aid actually gets to the Ukrainian military and is used appropriately. The limitation of our commitment I support is not because I am pro-Putin or pro-Russian but because I am not pro-Ukrainian. I am pro-American and our national interests in Ukraine are very limited.

I don’t have a great deal of time to comment today but I did want to remark on this. It appears that the Chicago referendum to raise property transfer taxes will go down to defeat. Supporters of the measure are unbowed. Some, including the mayor, say that the measure was defeated because Trump supporters voted against it.

No, your honor. It wasn’t just Trump supporters. In my neighborhood, the area with which I’m most familiar, 70% of the voters voted against it and you don’t see a lot of MAGA hats here. It’s a lot more than Trump supporters.

I don’t oppose a graduated property transfer tax or oppose paying higher taxes on principle but I voted against this particular measure because it was a poorly crafted piece of legislation with adverse run-on effects. It even had the possible consequence of increasing the number of homeless people in Chicago. Before increasing taxes or imposing a graduated real estate transfer tax they should consider ending Chicago’s status as a “sanctuary city”. We’re presently spending millions housing thousands of migrants. The City Council knew that if Chicago’s “sanctuary city” status had been put on the ballot it would have gone down to defeat. Opposition to it is widespread and not just among Trump supporters.

The measure wasn’t put on the ballot in the general election because they knew it would be defeated then and hoped that the lower turnout in the primary election would allow it to prevail. They miscalculated.

I think that 42nd War Alderman Brendan O’Reilly was closer to the mark when he said “I think the Mayor got a report card last night and he did not pass”.

The mayor’s take, blaming it on Trump supporters, illustrates what’s wrong with our politics. There’s a lot more than Trump supporters vs. Biden supporters. Not every voter is willing to accept every piece of progressive claptrap.

I genuinely don’t know what to make of the chaos surrounding Texas’s SB 4. Here’s a report at NBC News from Rebecca Shabad and Kyla Guilfoil:

Judges on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals appeared unreceptive to arguments by Texas’ solicitor general Wednesday that the state’s new immigration law should take effect because it “mirrors” federal law.

A three-judge panel of the court had ruled 2-1 late Tuesday that the measure, known as Senate Bill 4, should be temporarily blocked while the judges hear the case. Earlier Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court said that it could take effect.

“Texas has a right to defend itself,” state Solicitor General Aaron Nielson said, adding that the district court had acknowledged that “sometimes those associated with the cartels cross over the border with malicious intent.”

As flip as it sounds I don’t think that Texas’s argument is entirely without merit. Does the federal government have the right not to defend Texas and to prevent Texas from defending itself? That doesn’t sound reasonable, either.

I suspect the question is not whether there is a line but where the line should be.

I wanted to take note of one passage in William A. Galston’s Wall Street Journal column on Chuck Schumer’s Israel speech:

The majority leader also misreads Israeli public opinion. Like many U.S. politicians, he seems unaware of the vast changes in Israeli sentiment since the collapse of the Oslo accords in 2000. The gravamen of his speech was the familiar call for a two-state solution, which Jewish Israelis reject by a margin of about 2 to 1, even if accompanied by U.S. security guarantees and a peace agreement with Saudi Arabia. “Call me an optimist,” Mr. Schumer said in his speech. Others would be less generous.

Israeli sentiments about the war in Gaza are no less challenging for American liberals. Nearly three-quarters of Jewish Israelis favor extending military operations to Rafah, Hamas’s last stronghold, where more than a million Gazans have taken refuge. Two-thirds of Jewish Israelis polled in February opposed more humanitarian aid for Gaza “at this time,” even if delivered through organizations unrelated to Hamas or the United Nations Relief and Works Agency. The U.S. should disregard this sentiment, but our leaders should try to understand why it has taken hold.

A slight majority of Jewish Israelis polled in February even favored expanding hostilities to include a northern front against Hezbollah, as Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has urged. In this respect, Mr. Netanyahu has been a moderating influence.

Would we prefer that the Palestinians weren’t dominated by radical Islamists? Sure. But they are. Would we prefer that Israelis weren’t responding by becoming more militant? Sure. But that’s not what’s happening. I don’t think we should like either group very much.

Yesterday I dutifully went to vote at my assigned polling place, cheat sheet provided by the ward Democratic organization in hand. It showed me exactly how not to vote.

Actually I did vote for one of the approved candidates: Spyropoulous for Clerk of the Circuit Court. Although I recognize that most of the party’s opposition to Martinez was because she had not been a “good soldier”, I still think there

About 20% of registered Chicago voters voted in the primaries all told. That includes in-person voting yesterday, early voting, and vote-by-mail, something like 300,000 in all of Chicago’s 1.7 million voters. One individual characterized the turnout as “shockingly low”. I don’t believe that the low turnout was due to disinterest but to despair. It really didn’t make any difference how we voted.

You can see details of the results here, provided by ABC 7 Chicago.

Of greatest interest to me was the race to succeed outgoing Cook County States Attorney, the execrable Kim Foxx. It’s a close race. To the best of my ability to determine at no time did Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle’s hand-picked candidate, party apparatchik Clayton Harris, III lead but it’s tight, Burke 51%-Harris 49%, a difference of about 10,000 votes. The outcome will depend on votes mailed in which will trickle in over the next several days. If Harris wins based on mail-in votes, I think we should all smell a rat.

The mayor’s real estate transfer tax referendum appears to be going down to defeat 54%-46% but that, too, is too close to tell. The measure provided for a graduated real estate transfer tax with properties of values below $1 million taxed at .6%, $1 million taxed at 2%, and $1.5 million or greater taxed at 3%. Had the measure been more narrowly tailored, applying only to single family dwellings and adjusted for inflation I might have voted for it. It isn’t what the mayor characterized it as, a “mansion tax”. It doesn’t take much of an apartment building to have a valuation of $1 million or more. As such it’s mostly a commercial property tax. Furthermore, “bracket creep” should not provide an automatic tax increase.

The editors of Bloomberg remark on President Biden’s budget. In general they support it but they find a few defects:

The plan is right to raise taxes more than spending — enough to curb borrowing and stabilize the ratio of debt to gross domestic product at 106% by 2029. That’s much better than the current baseline, which shows debt rising from 99% of GDP this year to 117% by 2034, with more to follow.

Yet the budget’s forecasts optimistically assume strong and steady growth over the coming decade. A downturn would drive debt higher. Starting out with a ratio pinned at well more than 100% of GDP — the highest since just after World War II — leaves no space for emergency fiscal expansion. When the economy is at full employment and growing well, public debt should be falling.

and the numbers don’t add up:

First, after 2025, many of the measures included in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 will expire. Biden’s plan relies on the revenue that would result despite promising (no details) to extend the law’s changes for people making less than $400,000 a year. In effect, that hides a shortfall of $1.4 trillion. Second, Social Security is heading for insolvency in 2033. The budget promises to prevent this, but doesn’t say how — another big fiscal hole.

I thought these were their central observations:

Unrealized capital gains should be taxed at death, not erased by so-called step-up basis. Carried interest should be taxed like ordinary income. But smart reforms like this can’t do the heavy lifting. With households making less than $400,000 excluded, the biggest hauls come from taxing profits at 28% instead of 21% and from sharply higher taxes on the rich.

This strategy is questionable. Recent evidence suggests that former President Donald Trump’s corporate tax cuts spurred investment; over time, that means faster growth. And by international standards, the US personal tax code is already progressive. (Europe’s governments, having tested the limits of income taxes, rely heavily on broadly based consumption taxes to pay for their more expansive spending programs.) New taxes that fall heavily on capital formation and boost the rewards for tax avoidance are likely to hurt the economy and raise less money than the administration’s planners think.

They also don’t mention that public debt overhang tends to reduce GDP growth, something demonstrated empirically. Increasing public debt while relying on growth for solvency is a non sequitur.

The editors of Bloomberg are generally supportive of the president.

I wanted to call attention to just two sentences in the editors’ of the Wall Street Journal’ remarks on Sen. Schumer’s and President Biden’s recent statements on Israel. First is this:

The joke around Jerusalem is that while Mr. Biden once worked to help Israel after Oct. 7, he’s now working on the “two-state solution”: Michigan and Nevada.

That comports pretty closely with my earlier observation: Sen. Schumer and President Biden are doing damage control, trying to avoid losing Jewish votes and Arab votes. I wish them luck. I don’t believe there is any way of threading that needle.

Here are the other two sentence:

To leave Hamas in power in Rafah is to lose the war, and to replace Hamas with Fatah is to lose the peace. That’s an Israeli consensus, not “Bibi.”

which comports with my observation yesterday that Sen. Schumer and President Biden are imagining an Israel that does not exist. That they are also imagining Palestinians who don’t exist doesn’t compensate for that. It actually makes it worse.