I found this article at Foreign Policy on Germany’s upcoming elections interesting. It highlights the struggle that I think most European countries have. Will they continue to be ethnic states or not?

The AfD is eager to show that Merkel and the CDU will not dare to fight for what it has always claimed to value: the conservation of a Christian Germany and Europe. And in doing so, they are exposing the tension inherent in the CDU’s program: the repressed assumption that the maintenance of a certain type of ethnic majority is necessary for that project. The AfD claims it is no more deserving of the “white nationalist” label than the historic CDU upon which it is modeled.

Those are the tensions in many European countries today. Is being European synonymous with being culturally Christian even if you’ve abandoned Christianity? Is there Hungarian, Czech, or Finnish culture separate from Hungarian, Czech, or Finnish ethnicity?

I think the analogy they paint between what’s going on in Europe today and what’s going on in the United States is a stretch but Europeans are indeed in the position of deciding the future fates of their countries and the continent.

At RealClearMarkets Allan Golombek considers the criteria Amazon says it will use in determining where it will open its new joint headquarters:

Anyone looking for proof of the overwhelming importance of human talent in today’s economy should take a glance at the criteria Amazon is using in selecting a site for its new joint corporate headquarters.

Amazon has stated that to be even considered as the home of its second corporate headquarters, a city needs a million-plus metropolitan population, mass transit, a strong higher education system, a large technically fluent workforce, and the ability to attract and retain skilled workers. In other words, they want immediate access to the kind of workforce they need to compete, targeting software development engineers, accountants and administrative personnel, with many of the jobs paying $100,000. Like almost all companies making location decisions these days, Amazon is also looking for financial inducements from government. But while a city may feel it is necessary to offer financial incentives to buy itself a place on the short list, that will probably not be sufficient to leap to the top. Before opening the vault, or deciding how wide to open it, governments should consider that to snag a corporate headquarters and the jobs and prestige that come with it, a city must possess other assets. In a time of growing specialization and deployment of sophisticated technologies, increasingly the most important asset is people.

Understandably, just about every major city is vying for Amazon. If I were Amazon’s management, I’d pick Atlanta.

No city on the West Coast gives Amazon anything they don’t already have. San Francisco, Los Angeles, etc. are out. Denver, Phoenix, ditto.

New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and Washington are too expensive. Atlanta has everything Amazon says it’s looking for, reasonably priced housing, a good lifestyle plus the benefit of improved access to Europe, Latin America, and Africa. It’s a good pick.

Update

The New York Times says Denver.

In my opinion Jonathan Chait’s New Yorker column in which he plants his flag on “the only problem in American politics is Republicans” demonstrates one thing positively:

Political scientist Lee Drutman argues in a Vox essay that American politics is descending into what he calls “doom-loop partisanship.” Drutman notes that Americans have been “retreating into our separate tribal epistemologies, each with their own increasingly incompatible set of facts and first premises,” each heavily racialized, in which “[t]here’s no possibility for rational debate or middle-ground compromise. Just two sorted teams, with no overlap, no cross-cutting identities, and with everyone’s personal sense of status constantly on the line.”

Drutman attributes this to winner-take-all elections, the expanding power of the presidency, and the growing influence of money in politics. I think, despite all the very real design flaws in American politics, the problems he describe stem mainly from the pathologies of the Republican Party.

It is that he doesn’t live in Chicago. As an exercise I would recommend that he take he take a cold, hard, green eyeshades look at Chicago, Cook County, and the State of Illinois, and explain how their problems were created by Republicans.

I have a different viewpoint. I think that one of our major political parties, largely run by whites, is determined to keep blacks in a permanent state of poverty and subordination. That party is the Democratic Party. And yes, the Republican Party has made common cause with racists and white supremacists to its lasting shame. That does not exonerate the Democrats.

I’m a Democrat. Here in Chicago, County County, Illinois Republicans have no bearing on daily life and that has been the case for generations. My interest is in healing the Democratic Party which is in dire need of it. I don’t want it just to be the party of Big Government. I want it to be the party of Good Government. We have a long way to go. The first step is being honest. The second is being frank.

I would be remiss were I not to mention that this is the 16th anniversary of the attacks on New York and Washington. I’ve already said everything I care to on the subject but I’ll update this post with links to any memorable reflections I stumble across today.

Update

I promised to update if I found something memorable and I think this is. According to the Tribunist the pilots who scrambled on 9/11 were ordered to take down Flight 93, regardless of whether they had missiles or live ammunition:

On September 11, 2001, Lt. Heather “Lucky” Penney in an F-16 at Andrews Air Force Base. She had her orders. She was to take down down United Airlines Flight 93. The hijacked plane was headed toward Washington DC. Three other planes had hit targets in New York and Washington, and Flight 93 was destined to become the fourth.

Penney was the second combat pilot in the air that morning. The idea of shooting down a civilian aircraft, even a hijacked one, was troublesome enough–but Penney had no missiles or live ammunition. All she had were her orders and her plane. She was going to take the plane down the hard way.

“We wouldn’t be shooting it down. We’d be ramming the aircraft,” Penney said of the surreal moment. “I would essentially be a kamikaze pilot.”

One of the very nicest things about late summer is harvesting the basil I’ve been growing through the summer to make pesto. Last night I harvested one plant and used it to make one batch of pesto. I’ll harvest more in the coming days, consume some, and freeze the rest.

My experience has been that how good pesto is depends greatly on the quality of the ingredients used in its preparation. This year in addition to my own fresh basil, harvested moments before processing, I used fresh garlic, good olive oil, good pine nuts, and good Parmesan cheese, grated just minutes before I added it to my pesto. My wife pronounced it our best ever.

I both agree and disagree with Jedediah Purdy’s essay at Politico on the transition of the United States from Chesterton’s “country founded on a creed” to one in which warring racial, ethnic, and religious groups vie for power:

We all know the lived experience of the new American tribalism, both the outward-facing kind—us, the United States, versus them, the rest of the world or at least our chosen foes—and the inward-facing kind—the bubble neighborhoods, the fractured media, the rush of blood upon seeing bumper stickers for the other candidate. We know the sense that there is not even a common premise of fact in an argument over a new police shooting or the latest Trump tweet. There is a sense that maybe there is no way out of these foxholes, that this clash of tribes rules out even an imperfect common understanding or a partial overlap of common principles that might breed progress. At a bubble-neighborhood musical event recently, I stepped aside for a well-groomed, younger middle-aged guy whose shirt said, “I’VE BEEN TO THE FUTURE. WE WON.” At first, I kind of liked it. Then I wondered, what did WE do to them? What would they have done to us, if they had won instead? And who drew the lines?

I agree that it has happened and that saddens me. I disagree with his wholesale exoneration of the Obama Administration and with his prescription:

Solidarity is one idea that might help begin coming to terms with these conflicts. Trump used the word in his inaugural address—surprisingly, the first time a president had done so. In his mouth, it had a nationalist meaning, but historically speaking, it is a word for robust democracy—from the Polish workers’ movement of the same name that helped bring down the Soviet-backed communist state in the 1980s to the social democratic governments of Europe that built, for a few decades after World War II, the most egalitarian societies the modern world has seen. It evokes being in a shared struggle, lending a hand, understanding that people can flourish only with support from one another.

Coming together does not mean embracing Trump’s “many sides” framing. Some American inheritances, such as nostalgia for the Confederacy’s racist social order, are flatly incompatible with real solidarity, and must be fully repudiated. And like other values, such as liberty and equality, solidarity inevitably has left-leaning and right-leaning inflections that might seem at odds—more emphasis on public higher education, on the one hand, and respect for and identification with law enforcement on the other, for instance. But institutions such as unions, public schools and religious communities still connect people with very different partisan outlooks. The fight over repealing Obamacare, with its unexpected surge of rural conservatives recognizing their communities’ reliance on Medicaid, is a reminder that when institutions really do tie people together and serve their essential needs, those institutions are harder to shred by vilifying them or identifying them with the other tribe.

I see no room for solidarity other than in a totalitarian double plus good duck speak sort of way. Solidarity as long as you adhere rigidly to today’s orthodoxy which is certain to change tomorrow?

I don’t see the kind of loyalty to any of the institutions he names that existed a half century ago. Identity politics has killed it.

The topic du jour, spurred, no doubt by the discussions of the federal budget and debt ceiling, is federal debt. Here’s Phil Gramm’s and Michael Solon’s sally at the Wall Street Journal:

Growth deniers are declaring that America’s economy has lost its ability to grow at 3% above inflation. If that’s the case, maybe we should go back to where we lost 3% growth and retrace our steps until we find it. For only with 3% or higher growth does America experience measurable progress in poverty reduction, strong job creation and income growth. If 3% growth is irretrievably lost, so is the American Dream.

Did America actually experience 3% real growth to start with? Yes. In the postwar era, the U.S. averaged 3.4% annual growth from 1948 through 2008. We averaged 3% growth for half of the George W. Bush presidency (2003-06). From 2009-12, the Obama administration, the Congressional Budget Office and the Federal Reserve all thought they saw 3% growth just around the corner. If the possibility of 3% growth is gone forever, it hasn’t been gone very long.

America enjoyed 3% growth for so long it’s practically become our national birthright. Census data show that real economic growth averaged 3.7% from 1890-1948. British economist Angus Maddison estimates that the U.S. averaged 4.2% real growth from 1820-89. Based on all available data, America has enjoyed an average real growth rate of more than 3% since the founding of the nation, despite the Civil War, two world wars, the Great Depression and at least 32 recessions and financial panics. If 3% growth has now slipped from our grasp, we certainly had it for a long time before we lost it.

So poor was our economic performance during the Obama presidency, with its 1.47% economic growth, that now many Americans believe 3% growth is gone forever. The CBO has slashed its 10-year growth forecast to a measly 1.8% per year. If we never see 3% growth again, our grandchildren may point to 2009 and say, “That was when the American economy ran out of gas.”

Not to be left behind, in his regular Washington Post column Robert Samuelson, too, complains about the debt:

A new study by Paul N. Van de Water of the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities makes this clear. On the one hand, government gets bigger. In 2016, federal spending totaled 20.9 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), our economy. By 2035, this will be 23.5 percent of GDP, Van de Water projects. That 2.6-percentage-point gain may seem tiny. It isn’t. It equals almost $500 billion in today’s dollars. (Remember: The U.S. economy has a $19 trillion GDP; one percentage point is $190 billion.)

At the same time, much of government is projected to shrink. The simple answer is that the increases for the elderly overshadow the losses for everyone else. Look at the table below. It measures the major categories of federal spending as a share of GDP in 2016 and Van de Water’s estimates for 2035. (Using the share of GDP eliminates the effect of inflation between the two years.)

The elderly enjoy big gains in Social Security, Medicare and “other health spending.” Meanwhile, defense spending drifts toward its lowest level since 1940. Other domestic programs (the FBI, the national parks, regulation) could face crippling defunding. The same holds true for “other entitlements” (food stamps, unemployment insurance).

Note also that, despite the cuts and a large tax increase, there remains a big 2035 deficit running into the hundreds of billions.

Here’s the table to which Mr. Samuelson refers:

To put that into perspective, present state, federal, and local government spending already exceeds what it was at the height of World War II as a percentage of GDP and there’s no end in sight.

That’s not a painless increase. Deadweight loss results in less economic growth than would otherwise be the case as does financing the deficit via debt.

Trimming the federal budget would require ending foreign adventurism and cutting defense spending correspondingly, making the commonsense reforms to Social Security Retirement Income suggested in Mr. Samuelson’s column, and slowing and/or reversing the growth in healthcare spending. Increasing median wages by curbing immigration of low wage workers and creating a tighter labor market would help, too, as would depending less on consumer spending and imports, incentivizing business investment, and more exports. As long as the party of small government that won’t cut government faces it off against the party of big government but, sadly, not of good government, the prospects are bleak.

Wasting no time, the editors of the Wall Street Journal have put in their oar for open borders:

Even before the hurricanes, construction firms around the U.S. reported trouble finding enough workers. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported 225,000 construction job openings in June, up 30% in the last year and 125% since 2012. According to a survey this month by the Associated General Contractors of America, 86% of firms nationwide anticipate hiring workers in the next year.

The worker shortage is especially acute in fast-growing metro areas in the South such as Atlanta, Houston and Miami. In Texas, 69% of contractors said they struggled to fill positions. About 60% of contractors in the South are having trouble finding carpenters and concrete workers while half need more day laborers.

Older construction workers have left the workforce since the last housing boom. About a third moved to higher-paying industries such as energy and manufacturing. Fewer young men are pursuing the trades or a vocational education, and some can’t pass a drug test.

Big Labor and the restrictionist right say employers simply need to increase wages. But in Texas 57% of contractors reported increasing base pay while a quarter offered bonuses—and they’re still struggling to recruit workers. Between 2013 and 2016, the base pay for a day laborer increased 30% in Houston. Carpenters there earn about $25 an hour, 55% more than three years ago. Large contractors with government contracts can perhaps pay more. But small firms then get out-competed for workers.

Let’s put that in a little perspective. Real wages in construction in the United States are lower than they were 45 years ago:

That decline was mostly due to workers imported from abroad, almost entirely illegally. Do I need to produce evidence that wages in big banks have continued to increase right through the Great Recession despite their having created it? Over time one becomes accustomed to an ever-growing stream of workers who can be paid below what used to be the ordinary expected wage. It’s a great business model as long as the stream continues.

And let’s not talk about the secondary effects. The depressing of wages more generally. The higher spending for roads, schools, sewers, healthcare and so on than would otherwise have been the case.

Meanwhile, the black youth unemployment rate in Houston hovers at around 20%. Sounds like there are plenty of workers available to me.

In his op-ed at the Washington Post advocating additional sanctions against North Korea, Josh Rogin says there’s still pressure to be applied on North Korea:

Once the Trump administration acknowledges that China and Russia have done all they intend to, the United States can go much further unilaterally, or with allies, to finally test whether drastic sanctions, combined with tough diplomacy, can move Kim from his defiant position.

“The amount of pressure North Korea has been put under economically is still far short of what we applied to Iran or even Iraq,” a senior administration official said. “There is a long way to go before North Korea is going to feel the pressure they would need to feel to change their calculus.”

but what he means is that we need to start pressuring China:

The Trump administration has dabbled in imposing sanctions on Chinese entities that help enable the Kim regime’s illicit activities, but it has yet to cross the line into any area that might put delicate U.S.-China coordination at risk. Royce urged Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis to put such measures into action during a briefing last week.

His committee also wrote a letter to the administration listing large Chinese entities ripe for sanctions, including the Chinese Agricultural Bank and the China Merchant Bank.

“We have not had the resolve to put these sanctions on those major institutions,” said Royce. “It’s time to go to maximum pressure.”

There are risks in confronting large Chinese banks, which are essentially arms of the Chinese government. Former top Treasury Department official Adam Szubin testified to the Senate Banking Committee last week that imposing sanctions on the banks could harm the Chinese economy and have unintended consequences for the U.S. economy.

In the op-ed he doesn’t mention a single additional sanction against North Korea that doesn’t involve China. That’s not saying that it couldn’t or shouldn’t be done. It is saying that it won’t be done.

You can hear the arguments already. We don’t want to start a trade war. My company will lose money. It will cost jobs. The Chinese won’t risk millions of North Koreans streaming across their borders should the Kim regime fall. And so on.

Part of the art of accomplishing objectives is establishing priorities and subpriorities. If everything is equally important, nothing is important. If, as I expect, once North Korea has the ability to use nuclear weapons against us, our allies, or our interests, it will or, worse, it will sell their technology to others who will, avoiding nuclear war would seem to me to be a higher priority than keeping Apple’s stock price high.