Here’s an interesting development. The Wall Street Journal reports that the United States, Canada, and Mexico are preparing a unique joint bid to host the soccer World Cup:

Leaders of the soccer federations of the U.S, Mexico and Canada unveiled their plan to bid jointly for the 2026 World Cup Monday.

Under an agreement reached by the three organizations, the U.S. would play host to 60 of the 80 matches, including all quarterfinal, semifinal and final matches. If the bid is successful it would mark the first time three countries played host to the event.

Sunil Gulati, the president of the U.S. Soccer Federation, said bidding with Canada and Mexico made the bid stronger than if the U.S. tried to bid alone, in part because of the variety of modern stadiums available and because of the statement it makes about the divisiveness in the world today. While acknowledging that sports cannot solve the world’s problems, “From a social perspective, this is a positive,” Gulati said.

The ironies in this abound. While the three North American countries have much in common, their differences are great as well. What they seem to have in common is a common love of being the center of attention.

At Bloomberg View Tyler Cowen has a post on the role of British rule in India’s lagging economic development:

Another way to make the historical comparison is to consider which Southeast Asian economy never fell under colonial rule. That would be Thailand, which has a per capita income in the range of $16,300 by World Bank estimates, compared with India’s $6,100. Again, that single comparison is not dispositive, but it hardly favors the British record in India. If you are looking for the upside of British colonialism, you are more likely to find it in the wealthier and better-treated Singapore or Malaysia.

I wish he supplied more specifics. What he presents are hints and third stage observations but not much else.

What I have observed is that former colonies are all undercapitalized and the longer they were colonies the worse that condition is. That’s not just true for India. It’s true for Greece which was a harshly-treated colony of the Ottoman Empire for most of a half millennium. Or Canada.

And I think it stands to reason. Why do countries have colonies? And how do they treat them?

Colonialization isn’t India’s only problem, however. In addition to the lingering effects of colonialism it has ethnic and sectarian factionalism and colossal mismanagement since independence. What’s amazing is that India’s doing as well as it is.

Why should we subsidize Ivy League schools or any private universities for that matter? At RealClearPolicy Adam Andrzejewski lists some facts and figures about federal support for Ivy League schools that should be pretty eye-opening if not horrifying. I’d be interested in knowing what the comparable figures are for non-Ivy private colleges or universities.

And what’s a “not for profit” institution? In my book any corporation whose CEO earns more than four standard deviations over median income is de facto for profit.

In future business school classes if case studies on handling public relations are considered, United Airlines’s handling of the “re-accommodating” of Chicago-Louisville passenger David Dao, who was forcibly and, apparently, violently removed from the plane because the airline had overbooked the flight, it needed to deadhead personnel from Chicago to Louisville, and the flight was full, will be studied as an example of what not to do. The editors of the Wall Street Journal seem to agree with me:

As corporate PR fiascoes go, the United Airlines case of the doctor forcibly dragged off an overbooked flight at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport Sunday is one for the ages. The late-night comics have a new non-Trump target, United’s stock fell more than 4% before rallying to 1.1% off on Tuesday, and CEO Oscar Munoz’s use of the word “re-accommodate” to describe the episode will enter the Euphemism Hall of Fame. To think that a simple lesson in market economics might have spared everyone the trouble.

Passengers loathe overbooking, for understandable reasons, but the practice is legal, makes economic sense for airlines, and doesn’t inconvenience many passengers. Airlines use algorithms to monitor no-show probabilities, and overbooking helps airlines run with fewer empty seats. Passengers can also benefit because not penalizing no-shows means there will likely to some seats available to fly stand-by or at the last minute.

I do have some questions. Why did United offer so little? According to published reports under the laws governing air transport, airlines must offer up to 400% of the fare as compensation. That would have meant $1,350 rather than the $1,000 United CEO Oscar Munoz reported was offered. Is that United policy or an error on the part of United’s Chicago personnel?

Why doesn’t United conduct an auction under these circumstances? I’ve experienced that many times on other airlines.

What do people think should have happened? The digital linchmobs are out, calling for the blood of United and the City of Chicago. Clearly, United should have handled the situation much better and in particular the situation should have been identified and dealt with prior to boarding Dr. Dao. Whether United is liable for damages is up to the courts to decide. If airlines are forced to abandon overbooking, it will result in increased air fares for everybody and possibly even less popular measures.

By what stretch of the imagination are the people of Chicago to blame? Sovereign immunity should hold the city secure from such suits but Illinois law has exposed Chicago and other cities. Even if the Department of Aviation security officer roughed Dr. Dao up, by all accounts he was operating outside of official guidelines. The security officer, the Department of Aviation, the mayor, and other city officials won’t end up paying a cent if damages are awarded. The City Council will borrow the money and the people of Chicago will pay into the indefinite future. How is that just?

John Tamny’s recent post at RealClearMarkets distressed me and I’ll try to explain why. Here’s his thesis from the very beginning of his post:

In a recent piece for the Wall Street Journal, columnist Justin Lahart wondered “If Americans don’t buy so many cars and trucks, will they buy other things instead?” Supposedly the answer to his question “could matter a lot to the economy.”

Lahart’s economic analysis is informed by the teachings of John Maynard Keynes. Keynes believed that consumption was the driver of economic growth, and his teachings broadly inform the analysis of economists, along with most who write about economics. But is it correct? Simple logic indicates that it isn’t. Consumption really doesn’t matter.

When you get right down to it, the study of economics is about just three things: supply, demand, and money. Or, if you’d rather talk about flows than stocks production, consumption, and the issuance of credit.

I’ve not an economist but I’ve taken quite a few economics courses including a year-long introduction sequence, a year-long treatment of microeconomics (individual buying and selling decisions), a year-long treatment of macroeconomics (the big things in the economy like GDP, unemployment, etc.), a one quarter course on banking, and a one quarter course on labor economics.

And I’m a practical guy. I don’t think it makes any more sense to talk about consumption in isolation from production than it does to talk about production in isolation from consumption. Granting primacy to one or another is sophistry.

I do know enough to recognize Say’s Law when I see it. Say’s Law is usually stated as “supply creates demand”. The early economist David Ricardo (a very smart, savvy guy) believed that and it was the prevalent view until the 1930s.

But the 1930s saw something that should have been impossible if Say’s Law were true. There was a general glut and resulting mass unemployment. That’s what prompted John Maynard Keynes to conclude that Say’s Law was wrong.

I’d have more confidence in Mr. Tamny’s sweeping conclusions if I thought that he’d taken an economics course beyond the one quarter survey required for MBAs.

Yesterday on my daily visit to my beloved Happy Foods, I walked up to the service desk and in a very low, confidential tone of voice asked my friend there “So, can I find bags of lettuce in the meat counter or the produce section?” referring to this story about the unhappy shopper who found a dead bat in a bag of lettuce. I went on to explain that I felt a little deprived—I’ve never found a bat in my lettuce.

She responded in a much louder voice to the effect of how horrible that was. Meanwhile, another shopper broke out into peals of laughter over my comments. Other shoppers asked her what she was laughing about and soon the entire store was laughing.

I’ve got a million of them.

You might be interested in Walter Russell Mead’s testimony before the Senate Finance Committee, presented here at The American Interest. In it he provides historical perspective on the ways in which the federal government has aided Americans in providing for their old age from the founding to the present.

Here’s a snippet:

As the 20th century witnessed a clear transition from an agricultural to an industrial era, a new version of the American Dream appeared and a corresponding federal policy model began to take shape. Teddy Roosevelt capitalized on widespread calls for reform and ushered in a new kind of politics. Past Presidents made history by opening new land for settlement; Theodore Roosevelt made history by protecting federal lands from settlement and establishing our system of national parks. Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal policies further advanced the evolution of a new system tailored to an urban society with a manufacturing economy.

The process of transition was a slow one, with many setbacks and upheavals, but by the 1950s, a new and stable social system had emerged. Americans had learned to manage the forces of industrialism, to regulate the power of finance, and to use the vast resources an industrial society creates to address the unprecedented social problems that the rise of the modern city and the modern factory system brought into being. In post-World War Two America, both blue-collar and white-collar workers increasingly had stable, lifetime jobs in a growing economy. Within this new economy, high school graduates were essentially guaranteed lifetime employment in a job that, at a minimum, provided a comfortable, lower middle-class lifestyle. Likewise, college graduates could expect an equally secure future with an even greater standard of living.

The new economy led to a new American Dream. Americans no longer dreamed of owning a family farm, rather they dreamed of owning a suburban home accompanied by a consumer lifestyle. To ensure that Americans willing to work for it could have that dream come true, the United States government created a novel policy system during the 1950s and 1960s – a set of policies and practices sometimes called the “Blue Model.”

His proposals for alternatives to the present system of Social Security Retirement Income and Medicare are interesting but I think inadequate. Just as examples of the inadequacies I think that the two gravest problems our old age support policies face are the byzantine system of fund accounting that is presently used and that health care benefits are uncapped.

I leave it to the readers. What sort of old age support system will be both effective and sustainable in the brave, new world to which we are evolving today? Keep in mind that the beneficiaries of the present system, by no means limited to the old, will fight tooth and nail to preserve our present system as-is, regardless of generational justice, need, or sustainability. If American history tells us anything, it’s that once granted benefits are darned hard to withdraw. Heck, we’re still subsidizing helium production, something that began nearly a century ago when dirigibles looked like the transport of the future.

The scholar of cities, Richard Florida, makes a telling observation at Bloomberg View about the political conflicts over American cities. Rather than being a conflict between haves and have nots, the conflict is overwhelming between different factions of haves:

True, many “creatives” are undoubtedly struggling and being priced out of their neighborhoods. But, empirically speaking, even though the vast majority of them are not truly wealthy, their aggregate economic situation puts them closer to the company of a more advantaged urban elite, and a world away from that of the less-advantaged service class.

This becomes clear when we take into account the amount of money that artists and other cultural creatives have left over after paying for housing. In New York, artists and other cultural creatives have, on average, $52,750 left over after paying for housing, less than tech workers ($65,900) and business and financial professionals ($88,770), but nearly three times more than service workers ($16,800).

So, put bluntly, some of the noisiest controversies regarding our changing cities spring from the competing factions of a new urban elite. The real debate is to what extent the incredible wealth generated by tech startups can and does contribute to the growing gaps between the advantaged and less advantaged.

It was always thus. Civil war is always between competing factions of the ruling class. Although the poor may be the cannon fodder and the wars may be fought nominally on their behalf, the real combatants are differing factions of the elite.

Sadly, the peasant are never revolting but the aristocrats are.

The new concierge of the Wall Street Journal’s “Best of the Web” column, James Freeman, makes an interesting observation, in this instance about the confirmation of Neil Gorsuch as associate justice of the Supreme Court:

When the most politically active young adults in the Democratic Party are urging restraint in pursuing the liberal agenda, it’s probably a good sign that party leaders are going too far.

Our political problem didn’t start a week ago or a month ago or on January 20 or on election day. It started years earlier.

We have far too many superannuated student radicals in both houses of the Congress. Playing power politics requires more than 50% + 1 vote. You’ve got to have overwhelming power to make it stick.

If moderation and compromise have become truly impossible, it’s either time for basic electoral reform, reform that goes far beyond the Electoral College, or an amicable divorce.