but deterrence isn’t one of them. When I first heard that the United States and United Kingdom forces had struck Houthi positions in Yemen, my first reaction was not unlike the one that Farea al-Muslimi expresses at Chatham House:

The air strikes are highly unlikely to have a significant impact on Houthi military capabilities, especially their maritime operations.

The Houthis are far more savvy, prepared, and well-equipped than many Western commentators realize. They are highly experienced in waging war after years of brutal conflict, involving direct confrontation with Saudi Arabia and a lot of supporting and capacity building from Iran through the years.

and

Regardless, an anti-Israel/US stance is fundamental to Houthi ideology and their leadership will have calculated, correctly, that a Western attack on Yemen will only increase local and regional support for their efforts. The US and UK will more than ever be perceived by a majority in the Middle East as outright allies of Israel in a broader regional conflict.

The question that has not been considered sufficiently is what the U. S. and Britain are trying to achieve with the strikes? It strikes me as a politically motivated response and an instance of the “politician’s syllogism”:

• Something must be done.
• X is something.
• Do X.

Far from deterring the Houthis it will probably encourage them to more and greater attacks on Red Sea shipping and sympathizers in the Gulf region will be happy to donate to their cause to enable them to do it.

That’s not to say that I don’t think the Houthis can be deterred. They can. I just think they can’t be deterred using the approach we appear to be using and that the strategies that would deter them would be widely characterized as war crimes, both domestically and internationally. For example, if we conducted air, land, and see operations in Yemen with the objective of finding Houthi leaders and killing them and their families, that would probably deter them.

What I think we’re actually accomplishing is deterring ourselves or, as someone waggishly observed, we’ve just spent $47 million destroying a couple of thousand dollars worth of drones; good job!

What are reasonable military objectives for strikes against Houthi positions?

• Degrade their ability to carry out attacks. The means they are using are so darned cheap that will be darned hard to do.
• Take out command and control centers. Frankly, I doubt they actually have anything we could reasonably call command and control centers. I strongly suspect this is more like using missiles to take out criminal gangs.
• We could attack Iranian command and control centers. That would reasonably be considered a major escalation and might not stop the Houthis from carrying out attacks, see above. The Iranians aren’t the only ones providing financial support to the Houthis.

Let’s turn this around. What are the Houthis trying to accomplish by attacking Red Sea shipping? I suggest it is probably to show that they can and to provoke military responses. They’ve been successful. To counter that we need to cut off their supplies of military equipment and money. Failing that our attacks are counter-productive if anything.

In his latest Washington Post column Fareed Zakaria says that Israel’s war against Hamas is not genocide but wonders if it is “proportionate”:

Israel suffered a brutal terrorist attack on Oct. 7 and had a right to respond forcefully. But consider what it has done in a small territory housing 2.2 million people, half of whom are children and of which, by Israel’s own estimate before the war, only 30,000 are Hamas fighters.

A Wall Street Journal analysis of Israel’s bombing campaign notes that by mid-December, “nearly 70 percent of Gaza’s 439,000 homes and about half of its buildings have been damaged or destroyed. … Much of the water, electrical, communications and healthcare infrastructure that made Gaza function is beyond repair.” Of Gaza’s 36 hospitals, only eight can still accept patients. U.N. monitors report that more than two-thirds of all school buildings have been damaged, as have several churches and more than 100 mosques.

The Associated Press reports that according to experts, in roughly two months, Israel caused more destruction in Gaza than the battle for Aleppo in Syria or the razing of Mariupol in Ukraine, and killed more civilians than the United States and its allies did in a three-year campaign against the Islamic State. Proportionally, Israel’s campaign has exceeded the destruction of the Allied bombings of Germany in World War II and, as the University of Chicago’s Robert Pape notes, “is one of the most intense civilian punishment campaigns in history.”

Let me start right off and admit that I have no idea whether Israel’s response has been proportionate and I doubt that Mr. Zakaria does, either, but he’s using the language of just war and I believe I understand that.

The question cannot be answered by appealing to the numbers killed in Hamas’s attack or by comparing it with Allied bombings of Germany in World War II or any of the other things to which Mr. Zakaria compares the violence because “proportionate” means something different than I think he realizes. The question is whether the amount of death and destruction being wrought by Israel is proportionate to the threat Israel faces and I don’t believe anybody but the Israelis can answer that.

Hamas has said outright that its intention is to kill every Jew in Israel. That’s part of its mission statement. Hamas has illustrated that it is willing and able to do grievous harm to Israel and kill lots of Israeli Jews. That’s the threat Israel faces.

In three days in February 1945 (mostly) British and American bombers firebombed the German city of Dresden nearly leveling the city and killing something between 25,000 and 125,000 people, mostly civilians. We’ll probably never know for sure. Was Germany an existential threat to Britain or the United States in February 1945? Almost unquestionably not and certainly not the threat that Hamas is to Israel since in February 1945 nobody believed that it was the Germans’ intent to exterminate all of the British or Americans while today nobody doubts that Hamas is serious.

At Liberal Patriot Ruy Teixeira warns Democrats that they are repeating the same mistake they made 20 years ago but this time instead making bad assumptions about black, Hispanic, and Asian voters they’re making incorrect assumptions about younger age groups. He starts by questioning just how progressive Generation Z actually is:

Just how progressive are today’s youth (or “youts” as My Cousin Vinny would have it)? It’s fair to say that compared to older generations they generally lean more left on most issues, are more likely to say they’re “liberal” and more likely to support Democrats. But that’s a relative assessment; it doesn’t follow logically that the entire generation is therefore “progressive,” especially as the term has come to be understood by Democrats.

This potential problem has been thrown into relief by recent poll findings that the show the youth vote lagging considerably for Democrats when Biden is matched against Trump in 2024 trial heats. Some polls even show Biden polling behind Trump among voters under 30 (a group dominated by members of Gen Z). But on average Biden is still polling ahead of Trump among these voters—the problem is that the margin in his favor is much less than it was in 2020.

Data from the Split Ticket analytics site, based on an average of December cross-tabular data, show Biden carrying 18-29 year olds by 11 points, a 12-point pro-Trump shift relative to Catalist estimates from 2020. Similarly, pollster John Della Volpe collected a number of mostly December 18-29 year old crosstabs on his site. These crosstabs average out to a 6-point advantage for Biden among voters under 30, a 17 point shift toward Trump relative to 2020.

Looking at polling data he finds that on issue after issue young voters see themselves as moderate to conservative and President Biden as being more progressive than they are: immigration, transgender issues, crime, oil and gas exploration.

Now there are actual several distinct possibilities. The first, as I have been pointing out for 20 years, is that placing yourself correctly on the left-right axis is highly subjective and that many people don’t actually know where their views lie on that axis. The second is that other than ideologues, the views of many people don’t fit neatly into any category. On some issues they’re progressive, on some conservative, on others moderate. A third is that President Biden is doing such a lousy job of communicating that respondents are incorrectly placing him on the political spectrum.

I don’t believe the third. To the contrary I think that the progressive wing of the party has been punching considerably above its weight since President Biden took office and whatever the president believes privately his actions have been more progressive than young voters are comfortable with.

He concludes:

The lesson here: Demographics are not destiny. This cannot be repeated enough. The demographics are destiny thesis seems to attract Democrats like moths to a flame. We saw it in the bowdlerization of (ahem) The Emerging Democratic Majority argument and we’re seeing it today in the enshrinement of generational change as the engine of certain Democratic dominance. Rising pro-Democratic generations = larger share of voters over time = Democratic dominance.

We’ve been here before with the rise of nonwhite voters. Here’s how the argument is being repurposed: if voter groups favorable to the Democrats (racial minorities, now younger generations) are growing while unfavorable groups (whites, now older generations) are declining, that’s good news for the Democrats. This is called a “mix effect”: a change in electoral margins attributable to the changing mix of voters.

and

In short, there’s no free (demographic) lunch. The boring, tedious, difficult task of persuasion is still the key to building electoral majorities. So maybe instead of blowing off these polls that show poor support for Democrats among young voters, they should take them seriously and get to work.

I think his advice is in vain. As Jonathan Swift observed 300 years ago it is useless to attempt to reason anyone out of a thing they were never reasoned into. Position are being drawn from premises and the premises themselves are unprovable.

There is another risk to the hypothesis that demographics is destiny. It is an observed phenomenon that changes in life circumstances have an effect on voting patterns. Once a Democrat, always a Democrat is not nearly as true as it once was.

I’m sure you’ve all heard about Sec. Lloyd Austin’s absence in December and the first part of January. If you haven’t Google it.

For me the mysterious absence and that his deputy was out of the country on vacation at the time and did not cut her vaca short raises an interesting question: do we really need a Secretary of Defense and if so why?

I wish the Supreme Court would come down with a decision on whether what transpired on January 6, 2021 was an insurrection within the meaning of the 14th Amendment and whether the states can bar Donald Trump from the ballot under Section 3 of that Amendment and that they would do so well before Super Tuesday and with a 9-0 or 8-1 verdict. As usual I expect to be disappointed.

I found this presentation at Kite & Key interesting and thought-provoking:

In Papua New Guinea, the national wealth averages out to about $3,500 per person per year. In Australia, it averages out to around $65,000 per person per year.iv Two-and-a-half miles apart … and nearly 20 times wealthier.

How does this kind of thing happen? Actually, we know the answer.

Because it turns out that the secret to how nations get wealthy … isn’t really a secret at all.

The point they’re trying to make is that economic freedom makes countries wealthy or, at least, wealthier.

I’m not convinced. For one thing it’s unclear to me why the logic isn’t reversed, i.e. do countries choose more economic freedom as they become wealthier?

Or maybe it’s something entirely different. For example, judging by the maps they show, isn’t having been a British colony, preferably a British colony with a mostly European population, a pretty good explanation?

Here’s another: maybe the explanation is the primacy of the absolute nuclear family. That brings the United Kingdom, Canada, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Netherlands, and Norway all together under the same umbrella.

There are a number of reasons for my doubts but they can generally be summed up in this question. If economic freedom makes a country wealthy and U. S. economic freedom was greater in 1900 than it is now, why wasn’t the U. S. wealthier in 1900 than it is now?

Tying in with the previous discussion about fairness vs. equality, you might find this piece at Vox.com by Fabiola Cineas on chronic absenteeism by public school students K-12 interesting:

Before the pandemic, during the 2015–16 school year, an estimated 7.3 million students were deemed “chronically absent,” meaning they had missed at least three weeks of school in an academic year. (According to the US Department of Education, there were 50.33 million K-12 students that year.) After the pandemic, the number of absent students has almost doubled.

Chronic absenteeism increased in every state where data was made public, and in Washington, DC, between the last pre-pandemic school year, 2018–19, and the 2021–22 school year, according to data from Future Ed, an education think tank. Locations with the highest increases saw their rates more than double. In California, for example, the pre-pandemic chronic absenteeism rate stood at 12.1 percent in 2018–19 and jumped to 30 percent in the 2021–22 school year. New Mexico experienced one of the largest increases, with the rate jumping from 18 percent before the pandemic to 40 percent after the pandemic.

I believe that should be considered in conjunction with the Department of Education’s findings on chronic absenteeism:

What is the relation between chronic absenteeism and fairness and equality? Unless you believe there is no relationship whatsoever between actions and outcomes there is quite a bit. My own belief is that the difference is mostly social and one of expectations—those of the students, their parents, their teachers, etc.

In Norway the rate of chronic absenteeism is lower than it is here but just about the same as the rate of chronic absenteeism among white Americans.

Consider Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan. He’s not the beneficiary of multi-generational inherited wealth. His family did work in the financial sector since before they emigrated from Greece nearly a century ago. When they came over here they had nothing except ambition and the conviction that working in the financial sector was their goal. Working in the financial sector is a pretty good way to become wealthy if that’s your goal. He attended a top prep school, then a top tier non-Ivy college, then went to work in the financial sector, then got an MBA from Harvard Business while working in the financial sector. Now he’s one of the richest people in the country. Had he and his ancestors skipped school he might be waiting on tables.

First, car sales remain pretty slow:

Find more statistics at Statista
That chart only goes through 2022. Since then small vehicle sales have increased 12%. That’s still below pre-pandemic levels.

My contacts in the auto world aren’t what they used to be but something which I’m sure that auto manufacturers have considered but which may not have been considered by others is that rapid technological change can actually inhibit sales. The “I’ll wait until the new model comes out” mentality sets in. When something costs $1,000 (like smartphones although most people don’t pay that) it’s possible to get the latest model. It’s a lot less possible when an EV costs $30,000. Only the truly rich will get the latest and greatest and some of the truly rich will, like Warren Buffett, stick with their 2014 Cadillac XTSs.

The editors of the Washington Post remark on income inequality in the United States:

Consider the distribution of income across the entire spectrum. This is often measured by the Gini index, which represents how the actual distribution of income deviates from the line of perfect equality, where everybody gets the same. It ranges from zero in a perfectly uniform society to 1 in a society in which all income accrues to the top dog. Mr. Auten and Mr. Splinter estimated that between 1970 and 2019, America’s Gini rose from about 0.42 to 0.54, before taxes and transfers. Including the effect of government redistribution, it rose from 0.35 to 0.42.

This speaks well for American redistribution — pushing back against market forces driving up inequality. But the numbers are also pretty similar to preexisting work. The Luxembourg Income Study, which estimates inequality based on survey data (rather than official government data, as Mr. Auten, Mr. Piketty et al. do), finds that the U.S. Gini index rose from 0.40 to 0.51 before taxes and transfers over this period and from 0.32 to 0.39 after redistribution is added in.

America’s story might be due for some reinterpretation. Perhaps the very rich do not take quite as large a slice of the pie as many thought. Still, the “new” version of the United States remains a remarkably unequal place, more so than most other industrialized countries. According to data from the Luxembourg study, Norway’s Gini, after adding in taxes and transfers, is 0.28; Canada’s is 0.29, Germany’s is 0.30 and Britain’s is 0.30. Of the 38 countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, only four are more unequal: Chile, Costa Rica, Mexico and Turkey.

I have a number of thoughts on this. The first and, possibly, the most important is what is fair? Are equal and fair the same thing?

Let’s say there are two workers with the same job titles and responsibilities. The first comes in late, leaves early, and is slapdash in his work. The second comes in early, leaves late, and is unfailingly conscientious. They’re paid the same amount. That is equal. Is it fair?

Second, I was unaware that Norway, Canada, Germany, or Britain shared 2,000 mile land borders countries where the typical household income was a quarter theirs. In fact I believe we are the only country in the world with that distinction. It’s not too much of a leap to suspect that has some impact on incomes at both the low and high ends.

Third, we import very large numbers of very intelligent, highly educated, hardworking people into the United States at wages considerably higher than in their country of origin. That, too, is bound to have some impact on incomes both at the high end and the low end.

All of that said I will admit to being very uncomfortable with the incredibly high incomes being realized by some. When they can be related to supply, demand, and output, that’s completely reasonable. When it can’t it isn’t and that will be the case far too frequently. I have no idea how to remedy that but I’m open to suggestions. Please don’t suggest the tax system. If there’s one thing we’ve learned over the last 40 years it’s that our political leaders are allergic to taking money away from their donors. At least without giving them even more.