When a neighbor comes across the street asking to borrow a cup of sugar, it’s reasonable and polite to lend them one. When the neighbor takes to the streets demanding a cup of sugar it’s equally reasonable to be concerned.

Generosity towards guests is an ancient and honorable human impulse. Reciprocity is more ancient yet. Even babies and animals understand it.

Finally someone echoes the point I’ve been making for more than a decade here at The Glittering Eye. In an interview at Bloomberg View historian Sir Max Hastings gives us the following nugget:

And there’s a second point which I think is significant: We too often use the word “peace” to denote the highest good. Yet my hero among British historians, Sir Michael Howard, often makes the point — which Richard Haass echoes — that “stability” should be the key word, that what are really most precious and most likely to save us from getting into another war are stability and predictability. We need statesmen who say what they mean and mean what they say. Our troubles start when they don’t do that.

Stability works in our favor; instability is not in our interest. Why have we been creating instability for the last three decades at least? It’s not working for us. Too many Americans and particularly Americans in positions of power view the U. S. role in the world as Batman roaming the streets of Gotham City looking for supervillains. As if! What we’re actually doing is leaving the Joker and Penguin alone while beating up the penny ante hoods.

There are lots of other gems in the interview including words of wisdom about Russia, commonsense about Israel, and a balanced view of immigration. Read the whole thing.

We have a new pack member. Mamie is a ten week old Australian Shepherd puppy bitch. As you can see her coloring is what’s called “red merle”. Last Monday my wife jumped on a plane early in the morning, got a connecting flight, and met Mamie’s breeder in Texas. They spent the whole day together and got along famously.

Late in the afternoon my wife and Mamie boarded another plane for their trip to Chicago.

Mamie is settling in nicely. She’s very fond of our Sammie girls each of whom has reacted to her in their own way. I suspect that after a brief period of adjustment she’ll become a pack member much beloved by the older dogs.

Mamie is confident, affectionate, and absolutely delighted with the other dogs. So far she’s the easiest puppy we’ve ever had.

Before there was Veteran’s Day it was Armistice Day, commemorating the end of World War I. My grandfathers were both too old to be called up for the Great War; my father was far too young. None of my grandmothers’ brothers were called up for it, either, so no one in my family participated.

I wish I could say that World War I was the U. S.’s first war of choice but it wasn’t. Obviously, it wasn’t the last, either.

As Lincoln said, you can fool all of the people some of the time, some of the people all of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time. A poll has found that most Americans don’t think that all of our military interventions over the last several decades has made us any safer:

Arlington, Va.— A new poll shows Americans are unaware of the United States’ current overseas commitments, disconnected with the burden placed on military families, and believe our men and women in uniform are overstretched. By and large, our nation’s veterans share this perspective.

This comes on the heels of the revelation that the U.S. military is deployed in Niger, a fact which was unknown to 71% of the general public and 55% of veterans. The poll, released today by the Charles Koch Institute (CKI) and RealClearPolitics, surveyed 1,000 members of the American public, including 500 active military and veterans. The survey, taken at the end of October 2017, showed Americans are not confident that U.S. military involvement abroad makes their families safer at home.

“Americans are unclear of all the places where the U.S. military is engaged, concerned about whether our foreign policy has been making us safer, and wary of war with North Korea. These views are also shared by veterans,” said Will Ruger, vice president for research and policy at the Charles Koch Institute. “This survey shows that veterans are actually a diverse group when it comes to issues of using force abroad. They aren’t all enthusiastic about relying on military power to solve problems, as is sometimes stereotypically assumed. The majority don’t believe that challenging the wisdom of the United States’ current approach to the world is unpatriotic and are divided on things like whether additional military engagement abroad would make America safer.”

Now if we could just convince the Congress to trust the evidence of their own lyin’ eyes. IMO our repeated military interventions over the years have less to do with American public opinion and a lot more to do with the Congress’s estimation of risks and rewards.

What’s the greatest risk? From a Congressman’s point of view it’s not being re-elected. I don’t believe any Congressman anywhere has ever lost his or her seat because she or he supported a feckless intervention. They’re worried that if they don’t support an intervention against Country or Group X and an attack on the U. S. emanates from Country or Group X, their constituents will be mad enough about it that they’ll vote them out of office. The problem with that line of reasoning is that there’s no limit to it.

That’s one of the reasons that I believe in Congressmen who have more at stake than just holding on to their offices until they’re too old and decrepit to teeter up the Capitol steps.

At the RAND Blog Dan Grunfeld outlines California’s public pension problem:

California leads the nation in pension underfunding. The numbers are staggering. Currently, the state government has approximately $464.4 billion in unfunded liabilities — the difference between resources that will be available in the state’s pension fund and what will be owed to retiring employees. To provide some context, on an inflation-adjusted basis, that figure represents nearly two-thirds the cost to the U.S. of the entire Vietnam War. Nationally, state and local governments are carrying $4 trillion to $6 trillion in unfunded pension liabilities. That exceeds the combined military expenditures for every war, save World War II, fought by the U.S. since 1775. The California Public Employee Retirement System (CalPERS) and the California State Teacher’s Retirement System (CalSTRS) have reported a combined $136 billion in unfunded pension liabilities. Los Angeles County alone has $7 billion in unfunded liabilities, and San Francisco’s burden is $2.3 billion. This particular bomb will not be easy to defuse. “The severe underfunding of public pension plans will not be fixed easily or fast,” says my RAND Corporation colleague James Hosek. “There is no silver bullet.”

Illinois has a similar problem. Plus its population is declining in absolute terms meaning that there are fewer people to bear the tax burden that will be required to meet those obligations.

At Bloomberg View Noah Smith has a post with multiple graphs and charts that substantiates points I’ve been making here over the years about Chicago. So, for example, this passages substantiates the point I’ve made from time to time—that conscious or not Rahm Emanuel’s strategy for Chicago is to drive poor people from the city:

The city’s defenders like to point out that both the homicide wave and income declines are confined to certain areas of the city. But maybe that’s exactly the problem. By some measures, Chicago is the most segregated city in the nation (although it has become slightly less so in recent years). A 2016 study by the Chicago Urban League found that Chicago’s black residents have seen their poverty rates rise, even as the city provides fewer social services for black neighborhoods. No wonder, then, that black Chicagoans are heavily over-represented among those moving away from the city.

Chicago, in other words, is failing its poor residents, and especially its poor black residents. This is probably not a recent thing, either — Chicago has a long and sordid history of racial segregation. But if the city is going to fix its problems, it’s going to have to reverse that legacy.

More police officers are unlikely to remedy the situation. Chicago already has the highest police to population ratio of any major U. S. city. Besides, Chicago can’t afford more police officers: the average Chicago police officer earns over $100,000 per year plus benefits. It’s more what the police do and don’t do than how many of them there are.

One thing that Mr. Smith doesn’t delve into is that while metro area GDP and the number of jobs in the metro area are rising sharply that doesn’t mean that’s the case for the city of Chicago. The metro area includes Oak Brook, Naperville, and Waukegan. What’s happening here is that the rich are remaining in the city, the poor are staying in the city, those in the middle who are mobile are leaving.

Here’s a pop quiz. If we raised taxes it would:

1. Increase private sector economic activity.
2. Decrease private sector economic activity.
3. Have little or no effect on private sector economic activity.
4. It depends.

Although I actually think the correct answer is D, all other things being equal I think that increasing taxes will decrease private sector activity and I honestly can’t see how anyone could believe otherwise. Note that we’re not talking about increasing public sector spending here. We’re just talking about increasing taxes without increasing public sector spending.

Now let’s turn to Robert Samuelson’s latest column:

We Americans are having the wrong debate. Almost all the arguing over the Trump administration’s proposed tax cut centers on two issues: Will the tax reduction stimulate faster economic growth? And is the proposal too generous toward the wealthy and too stingy toward the middle class and poor?

Interesting questions, to be sure — but mostly irrelevant to the nation’s long-term well-being.

The truth is that we can’t afford any tax reduction. We need higher, not lower, taxes. What we should be debating is the nature of new taxes (my choice: a carbon tax), how quickly (or slowly) they should be introduced and how much prudent spending cuts could shrink the magnitude of tax increases.

Mr. Samuelson never explains why he wants lower private sector growth but apparently he does.

IMO at our present rate of economic growth we can run a deficit of 2% of GDP indefinitely without inflicting harm on our economy. We’d be running at a deficit but the deficit would actually be decreasing as a percentage of GDP. U. S. GDP is around $18.5 trillion. 2% of that would be around $370 billion. The present deficit is around $440 billion or, in other words, we should trim spending by about $70 billion. It would seem to me that we could accomplish that just by doing things we should (or shouldn’t) be doing anyway. We shouldn’t be fighting wars of aggression. There are also changes we should make in Social Security and health care spending. $70 billion of cuts sound pretty reasonable to me.

Yesterday a commenter said something to the effect that Trump supporters were moving from their states to blue states seeking greater opportunity than afforded under their red state homes’ benighted policies. I believe he should check his assumptions.

The three states that have lost the largest number of citizens, i.e. people eligible to vote, are all reliably blue states—California, New York, and Illinois. Since not as many immigrants arrive in Illinois as in California or New York, Illinois has actually lost population. Those people haven’t all died or just evaporated. They’ve moved elsewhere, notably to Texas, hitherto a reliably red state, but also to Georgia and North Carolina.

Other places that have gained in citizen population: counties containing state capitols or adjoining counties containing state capitols or adjoining Washington, DC, especially Northern Virginia.

In other words Trump voters aren’t moving to anti-Trump states; anti-Trump voters are moving to states that went to Trump in 2016. It remains to be seen what the consequences of that might be. It could be that Illinoisans moving to Texas will become Texans. I doubt it. I think they’ll vote for the same dysfunctional politics and policies in their new homes that are destroying Illinois now.

I think that what we will see in the 2018 and 2020 elections will reflect a major realignment. Purple Virginia has become blue. Some hitherto reliably red states will become purple. Reliably blue states will remain blue but won’t have the vote totals expected in the past. Blue counties in red states may turn purple.