MetLife chairman Steven Kandarian’s op-ed at the Wall Street Journal is mostly benign. In it he urges other large company CEO’s not to defend the various tax breaks their companies have been using:

To achieve meaningful tax reform, America’s business leaders need to do our part, as our predecessors did 30 years ago. If Congress is to succeed, we must be willing to put the national interest ahead of our narrow self-interest.

It will not be easy. The lobbyists and special interests have been busy since 1986. The tax code is again stuffed with loopholes, credits and deductions. Every provision benefits some company or industry, my own included.

The lobbyists hired to protect such preferences always predict doom if they are stripped away. But if our businesses cannot survive without tax subsidies, we should ask ourselves how much value we are truly creating for customers and shareholders.

It’s the last sentence that caught my eye and that’s a theme he repeated in the op-ed:

The argument for high corporate tax rates is that companies ought to pay their fair share. But businesses merely pass on the value they create to real people—owners, customers or employees.

As the late Mayor Daley used to say, let’s look at the record. Over the period of the last thirty years real wages have been practically flat and large company payrolls have been slashed. Today’s largest companies have far fewer employees than the giants of yesteryear. Consequently, it doesn’t seem reasonable to say that employees have captured much of the value added by today’s large companies.

Let’s look at the second leg of that tripod—customers. Consumer prices have not been falling. They’ve been rising slowly.

Over that period of the last 30 years the DJIA has risen more than 10-fold. Over the last 10 years it has quadrupled. It is obvious that owners have captured almost all of the economic surplus that has been generated over the period of the last 30 years. You can see it when you look at the ratio of CEO compensation to ordinary employee inflation in most companies and the proportion of income and wealth held by the top .1% of individuals.

We need tax reform because we need greater efficiency. The corporate income tax is a prime target for reform because it’s inefficient. But we shouldn’t stop there. We need to reconsider the entire list of neoliberal policies that have driven our society and economy for the last half century and, increasingly, for the last 25 years. They aren’t working for most people. They aren’t working for consumers or employees.

I have searched in vain for a dispassionate, factual assessment of the damage in Puerto Rico. Very nearly all I’ve been able to come up with is that Hurricane Maria has wreaked enormous damage to the island’s structures, power grid, and telecommunications system. Communications, especially with the interior, are spotty and major news outlets are more interested in counting coup than they are in reporting the news. Much of the island may be without electricity for months or even years. There is a major dam that has been severely damaged and may be on the brink of failing.

Puerto Rico has a confusing and anomalous status. It is neither a state nor an independent country. It is a territory of the United States, notionally under the direct control of Congress—like the District of Columbia which should tell you something. However, it also has its own constitution and governor. In the most recent referendum nearly all of those voting voted for statehood but only 22% voted.

The island’s government has incurred enormous debt and the hurricane’s damage will make it hard for the island to make its interest payments.

In my view our response to the disaster in Puerto Rico should consist of four planks:

• The Navy and/or Coast Guard should immediately be dispatched to Puerto Rico to render humanitarian aid, do what is possible to prevent a massive dam burst, and generally manage the situation there. The military is the only institution capable of responding at the level required in the time that is available.
• Puerto Rico should be taken into a sort of receivership. A civilian manager should be appointed to assess the damage, continue the provision of assistance, and manage the ongoing federal government response. The commonwealth’s present government should be subordinate to this manager.
• Congress should pass a massive emergency support stipend for Puerto Rico, as noted above to be administered by the federal manager. The money should be spent as quickly as possible.
• Puerto Rico should either become an independent country or a state. It shouldn’t be a choice. Its status should be determined by Congress with all due speed. Its present status is a formula for failure.

The people of Puerto Rico should should not be required to face the problems imposed by domestic partisan political squabbling as well as the consequences of the natural disaster but that’s what’s likely to happen.

Update

At City Journal Nicole Gelinas says that there’s help that Puerto Rico needs now:

Puerto Rico is different. Gov. Ricardo Rosselló says power will be out for weeks or months.
Puerto Rico can get some power much faster, and already is. Big generators combined with the hundreds of electric-industry workers who are already descending from the mainland with emergency equipment can likely re-power critical sites in days, and major population centers in days or weeks.

One aircraft carrier can power and provide drinking water for a city.

Echoing some of the things I said in my first post this morning, the editors of the Wall Street Journal have one paragraph worth passing on in their mournful editorial:

American democracy was healthier when politics at the ballpark was limited to fans booing politicians who threw out the first ball—almost as a bipartisan obligation. This showed a healthy skepticism toward the political class. But now the players want to be politicians and use their fame to lecture other Americans, the parsons of the press corps want to make them moral spokesmen, and the President wants to run against the players.

We all lose!

Sometimes the only way to win is not to play the game.

Angela Merkel’s ruling coalition has won the German elections. Sort of. Deutsche-Welle reports:

Angela Merkel has won a fourth term, but official results have shown she’ll have a “tough road” for coalition talks. While the CDU remains the largest party, the far-right AfD will be the third biggest political force.

With all 299 constituencies reporting, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its Bavarian sister party the CSU came out ahead in Germany’s national election on Sunday, with 33 percent of the vote.

Rival Social Democrats (SPD) led by Martin Schulz tumbled to a mere 20.5 percent, while the Green and Left parties remained about the same as they did in 2013, each with 8.9 and 9.2 percent, respectively.

The only real success stories of the night were for the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) and far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD). After failing to make the 5-percent hurdle to enter the Bundestag last time around, the FDP managed a 10.7 percent to cement its comeback.

As for the populist AfD, a remarkable showing of 12.6 percent means that Germany will have a far-right party in parliament for the first time in more than half a century.

In the coming days and weeks you are likely to read all sorts of claptrap about the German elections written by people who know better. Americans’ instincts for elections other than our own tend to be poor.

Germany does not have a “winner take all” system like ours. They have a multi-party parliamentary system. Each German voter votes twice: once for the “direct candidates” in their districts who must win by a plurality and the second time for a slate of candidates, the party list, in the province. Half of the Bundestag is composed of the direct candidates, the other half elected from the party lists.

I’m sure that some of those who voted for the Allianz für Deutschland (AfD) the Alliance for Germany, are in fact neo-Nazis but I also believe that most of those who turned out to vote for it were protest voters, unhappy with Angela Merkel’s de facto open borders program. They’re concerned about their jobs; Germany doesn’t have an unemployment program but it has a serious underemployment problem. Jobs are being divided into multiple microjobs. They’re also concerned that Germany is becoming de-Germanized. Treating those protest voters as though they were the same as the neo-Nazis will not rebuild the strength of the middle parties. Does any of this sound familiar?

That wasn’t the way the “European project” was supposed to work. They thought it would mean Europe becoming Germanized. Not only is that not happening but they’re worried that Germany is becoming de-Europeanized. AfD’s capturing nearly 13% of the Bundestag where it had previously held no seats shows which way the wind is blowing.

Expect the junior partners to Angela Merkel’s Christlich Demokratische Union Deutschlands, Christian Democratic Union Party, (CDU) to press their advantage in forming a new coalition government.

Update

The editors of the Wall Street Journal on the German elections:

This is a very German protest vote: safe. The AfD struggled for most of the campaign season, and its home-stretch surge owes to two factors. A television debate between Mrs. Merkel and her SPD challenger, Martin Schulz, this month highlighted how little the two major parties compete with each other. And polls showing Mrs. Merkel steamrolling her opponents reassured voters they could cast a ballot for the AfD without handing the party real power.

with which I agree but this:

The message is that Germans want competition. The AfD draws support from voters on both left and right who are disillusioned with 12 years of Mrs. Merkel’s bland-as-she-goes leadership, and with the SPD’s failure to oppose her for eight of those years when it formed coalitions with her.

Nah. Take the results at face value. A significant number of Germans want fewer Middle Eastern immigrants.

Actually, I do have one more thing to say. The news media need to choose their words more carefully. Criticizing football players isn’t an attack. Even when the criticism is wrong or intemperate. Deliberately running people down with cars or shooting at people are attacks.

Trying to get millionaire entertainers who aren’t being entertaining fired isn’t coercion. Beating people until they work or fight for you is coercion.

When you call things that aren’t attacks attacks and things that aren’t coercion coercion, what do you call attacks and coercion?

I don’t have a great deal to say about the NFL/national anthem/Trump kerfuffle but I’ll say it here. Both sides of the argument seem to think they’re winning. I don’t know whether it’s deliberate jiu jitsu but Trump has actually gotten the NeverTrumpers to argue against the national anthem. They seem to think that’s an argument they can win.

All I can say is that if this is winning losing might be preferable.

From time to time I’ve mentioned my childhood home but I don’t believe I’ve ever shown it to you. The picture above is of the house where my parents lived when they were first married and where I spent my first ten years. The picture was taken very shortly after my parents moved in.

One of the first things they did after moving in was to redo the steps in front of the house and put a brick railing around the porch. I strongly suspect that the work on the steps and porch was done by my dad and his law school pal, Jack Fisher. Although that picture was taken right after they’d redone the steps, that’s very much what the house looks like now. Subsequent owners have done almost no maintenance. I believe that tiny spruce in the foreground, looking for all the world like a weed, was my parents’ first Christmas tree.

When they moved in the house consisted of a small living room with adjoining dining room, a kitchen, bathroom, and one tiny bedroom. In addition to the steps and porch they also put an addition on the back of the house—a single large room. That room was shared by my me and my siblings. It was our bedroom, our playroom. Each of us took a corner and when my youngest siblings were born they got the bedroom and my parents took the fourth corner. That’s my mom standing on the new addition looking glum.

I think that you can see that when I said that it was modest I was sugar-coating it. It was a dive, a pit. But my mom did a good job of making it into a home and, well, it’s still home to me even though well over a half century has passed. I cried when we left.

I’ve mentioned it before but when I was a kid we saw lots of movies, mostly at the drive-in. For a buck both of my parents and a carload of kids could all go to the movies and we would go just about once a week. It’s not that we were fantastically well-off at the time. We lived in an extremely modest home in a working-class neighborhood and my dad was working two jobs (associate at a law firm and teaching law at St. Louis University). It was more a question of priorities and one of the priorities was getting out of the house.

My parents had, well, peculiar ideas of what constituted family-friendly viewing. I don’t think my dad much cared for genre pictures so nearly all of the movies we saw were dramas, comedies, or musicals and I wouldn’t be surprised if I’ve seen just about every drama, comedy, or musical made between about 1950 and 1960, nearly all of them at the drive-in.

Here are some of the movies that I definitely remember seeing:

The Robe (1953)
The Rose Tattoo (1955)
Lili (1953)
Wild Is the Wind (1957)
Trapeze (1956)
East of Eden (1955)
Rebel Without a Cause (1955)
Giant (1956)
Elephant Walk (1954)
Executive Suite (1954)
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958)
The Hustler (1961)
Wind Across the Everglades (1958)
Baby Doll (1956)
Anatomy of a Murder (1959)
Singin’ in the Rain (1952)
7 Brides for 7 Brothers (1954)
Jupiter’s Darling (1955)
The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)
Written on the Wind (1956)
The Long Hot Summer (1958)
Ben Hur (1959)
The Ten Commandments (1956)
The Conqueror (1956)
Around the World in 80 Days (1956)
All That Heaven Allows (1955)
Magnificent Obsession (1954)
Marty (1955)
Athena (1954)
The Rains of Ranchipur (1955)
The Night of the Hunter (1955)
The Tender Trap (1955)
The Catered Affair (1956)
Tammy and the Bachelor (1957)
The Mating Game (1959)

and that’s just off the top of my head in no particular order. I’m sure if I thought about it for a while I would remember more. A lot of those I haven’t seen since seeing them at the drive-in but if I start watching them I’ll remember them immediately.

Kiddie pictures we saw in the theater, probably at a Saturday matinee although my memory is a little fuzzy about that. I know we saw all of the Disney full length animated cartoons, nature pictures, and live action pictures of the period in the theater. I remember seeing Hondo (1953) in the theater (it was in 3D and we wore glasses). And I think I’ve told you the story of going with my mom to see Forbidden Planet (1956). Those are the only western and science fiction movies, respectively, I can remember seeing when I was a kid although there must have been more westerns. The only Hitchcock picture I remember seeing as a kid was Dial M for Murder, in the theater in 3D.

People just don’t go to the movies like that any more. It’s too expensive. They watch TV or DVDs or streaming but that’s a very different experience.

When I saw the caption of Andrew Michta’s article at The American Interest, “Five Priorities for Europe’s Trans-Atlantic Strategy”, I almost laughed out loud. Why should European politicians change anything? What they’re doing is perfect.

Not only do they spend less on their own defense than would otherwise be necessary, their spending is insufficient to maintain their responsibilities in collective defense or to play the role that they should on the world stage. They can use the money they’ve saved to buy votes through social and infrastructure spending. And they can lambast the United States for spending too much and being so warlike.

How could it be any better? It’s perfect as it is.