On this President’s Day, once back from the mall, if we're not too tired or too busy with the barbecue, we might actually think briefly about, well, presidents. Presidents past and those we have known well enough to vote for -- or against. We might even think about which ones in the country's history were the best, and which ones were not.
For me there have been only three truly great presidents, one in each of the centuries past: 18th, 19th and 20th. (The 21st century is a little young yet to pick a winner -- we're still working on the bridge to it.)
What made them stand out? First, each was sorely challenged by events that put the nation in peril and each fully met his challenges. Second, each was venerated by his countrymen because he led at the crucial moments in a way that unified the nation. Third, all were beacons abroad, bearers of the light and hope radiating from our still young republic. Fourth, they left office – and this life – to the keenly felt grief and regret of all the people.
George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt are the great ones, in that order. All others, and there were some good ones, either failed to master as completely the events that tested them or, unfortunately for their reputations, lived in less interesting times.
We can put Lincoln ahead of Washington only by forgetting all that the First George did for us. The father of our country is still first in war and first in peace but, alas, no longer first in the hearts of his countrymen. Stiff, aloof, unsmiling, with bad teeth and a plain way of speaking, Washington has not worn as well as the simple geniality and melancholy eloquence of the story telling Rail Splitter.
But look at all that Washington did. Before there was a nation he was the paramount citizen-soldier of the colonies. He was the overwhelming choice for commanding general of the amazing victorious revolution; the universal choice to preside at the Constitutional Convention, that “Miracle in Philadelphia;” the unanimous first choice for President of the United States, an office that would have been defined less powerfully in the Constitution without the expectation that he would hold it first and establish the precedents for all who would follow.
Equally important were two things Washington did not do. He did not let his continental army officers, disgruntled over tardy pay, talk him into leading a coup. Instead he talked them out of it. And he did not stay on, as he could have, as president for life. Instead he chose to retire after two terms, setting a precedent now part of the Constitution, and in so doing orchestrated that first peaceful transfer of power, a tradition that is our glory – and the envy of nations – to this day.
Of course Washington had help – from that impressive assemblage of talent we revere as the Founding Fathers. But by words and deeds virtually all of them publicly accorded him first place in their pantheon. We can do no less.
Washington’s only signal failure of leadership came immediately after his death. His carefully drawn will, anticipating the objections of his widow and her powerful Custis clan, successfully freed all his slaves. He had hoped Virginia and the nation would follow his lead, but they did not.
That wrong was left for Honest Abe to right. His great accomplishment was of course to end slavery while preserving the union and its constitution. Historians also find much merit in his conduct of the civil war as President and Commander-In-Chief. And, like Washington, he helped create and lead a great political party.
Academics also admire the way Lincoln put profound, enduring thoughts into simple words to the service of statecraft. From the mingled blood of Gettysburg, he distilled a "new birth of freedom" to renew and redefine the nation. Before his assassination he pledged “to bind up the nation’s wounds.” The rebels, he said, were “our countrymen” again. At his urging Grant accepted Lee’s surrender on generous terms.
Lincoln also wrote in spare legal terms the presidency’s greatest executive order, “The Emancipation Proclamation,” now set in constitutional stone as the thirteenth amendment: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude. . .”
Had he lived to turn his prescription of “malice toward none, with charity for all” into policy and practice, Lincoln could have so "[bound] up the nation wounds" as to temper and perhaps foreshorten the time of segregation and prejudice that lingers on still. With that accomplishment he would have drawn even with Washington, but it was not to be.
Franklin Roosevelt was wealthy, young, handsome, social, athletic. But heady early success was stopped by the crippling shock of polio. He reached for and took strength from his adversity in time to lead the nation – bewildered and despairing after its roller coaster ride of the Roaring Twenties and the Great Crash -- through the Depression Thirties, the New Deal, Pearl Harbor and to the edge of victory in World War II.
At his death in 1945, after four unprecedented election victories and over 12 years in office, he was the only president youngsters (including this one) had ever known. After him the federal government was paramount in the nation and the nation predominant in the world. Sixty five plus years on these relationships endure, though long under fire, not least these very days.
One disquieting question: does greatness require victory in war? Thus far it would appear so, and today’s turbulent times augur for no exception. But the squabbles of humankind, so much on our minds, are overdue to shrink before the needs of the small blue marble to which we cling.
Perhaps on one future Presidents' Day in this century we will have followed a leader to peace and to harmony with the only planet we have, and we will use these new metrics to measure his or her greatness with that of centuries past. Now that would be great.
Now, what'ill it be: chicken, ribs or dogs?
Sunday, November 8, 2009
Remembering When I Couldn't Win For Losing
Way back when, before we had a new young president and no incumbent was running for the office and politics was young again, my personal preferences vs Democratic primary results were zip to 3. It was enough to send me sulking to my tent and it went like this.
"I like Bill Richardson," I told my wife. "He was a successful Federal executive, had some notable diplomatic successes, speaks fluent Spanish and is a state governor. Sounds like a winning story."
After Richardson dropped out of sight, I necessarily adopted a deeply strategic approach.
"The party has great depth this year," I remember explaining over coffee. This black guy, Obama, is young, articulate and promising. But he has a funny name and needs time to season. Hillary has too much baggage for the presidency and Bill is temperamentally unsuited for First Husband. Her job is to succeed Ted Kennedy as Best Senator and then become the first woman majority leader of the Senate.
"I’m switching to John Edwards. Who says an ex-trial lawyer can’t really be a populist? He’s for the little guy because he started out as one. And it looks like Al Gore is too busy being good and honored to run."
When Edwards dropped out after a not-so-super Tuesday I again thoughtfully reconsidered. It was just as well, as he turned out to be more in love with his hair than his country or his wife.
"Hillary has demonstrated the guts of a bear and her human side is peeking through, too. Women are strong for her. Obama’s coming on also, and would make a fine vice president. Why, we could lock in 16 years of a democratic White House given a little team work among rivals!"
My wife is a career executive now retired. She has bumped against more glass ceilings than Einstein and Betty Friedan together could count. "I like Obama," she said.
It was my first indication that unity would not come easily to the Democratic party that year.
When Hillary settled for a "significant achievement," I sensed a pattern developing. "I’m a real kiss of death," I said to the wife, who quietly said nothing. "Way back I even voted for Adlai Stevenson. Twice. Maybe if I backed that Republican fella the Dems could win in November."
"Many women, passionate for one of their own to achieve the presidency, are feeling hurt and betrayed," I went on. "How now can they convincingly tell their daughters and grand daughters that ‘Some day you could be President?’"
My wife was more secure in her own skin than that. "You all need to get over it. Or don’t you
remember 1968?"
1968 was a year worth remembering. First, Lyndon Johnson took himself out of the running over Vietnam. Then Bobby Kennedy died tragically in Lost Angeles. Finally, from the tumult of the Chicago convention then vice-President Hubert Humphrey emerged as the Democratic nominee to the despair of Eugene McCarthy’s legions of college kids and anti-Vietnam war activists.
But Richard Nixon narrowly beat Humphrey in November because McCarthy’s followers sulked in their tents on election day, and we had more war and Watergate and Republicans as president for 20 of the next 24 years.
"Well," I said slowly, "Richardson, Edwards and Clinton have all come out for Barak Obama, who is already an historic figure, and . . ."
My wife smiled sweetly as only she can. "Now you’re talking," she said. "More coffee?"
That was then, and now of course the country has finally followed my lead. We even have a an echo of Abe Lincoln's team of rivals running the country with Hillary at State and Robert Gates staying on at Defense.
I remember thinking, "The market's up, real estate is rising, we have a new president set to retake the high road at home and abroad, what could possibly go wrong?"
"I like Bill Richardson," I told my wife. "He was a successful Federal executive, had some notable diplomatic successes, speaks fluent Spanish and is a state governor. Sounds like a winning story."
After Richardson dropped out of sight, I necessarily adopted a deeply strategic approach.
"The party has great depth this year," I remember explaining over coffee. This black guy, Obama, is young, articulate and promising. But he has a funny name and needs time to season. Hillary has too much baggage for the presidency and Bill is temperamentally unsuited for First Husband. Her job is to succeed Ted Kennedy as Best Senator and then become the first woman majority leader of the Senate.
"I’m switching to John Edwards. Who says an ex-trial lawyer can’t really be a populist? He’s for the little guy because he started out as one. And it looks like Al Gore is too busy being good and honored to run."
When Edwards dropped out after a not-so-super Tuesday I again thoughtfully reconsidered. It was just as well, as he turned out to be more in love with his hair than his country or his wife.
"Hillary has demonstrated the guts of a bear and her human side is peeking through, too. Women are strong for her. Obama’s coming on also, and would make a fine vice president. Why, we could lock in 16 years of a democratic White House given a little team work among rivals!"
My wife is a career executive now retired. She has bumped against more glass ceilings than Einstein and Betty Friedan together could count. "I like Obama," she said.
It was my first indication that unity would not come easily to the Democratic party that year.
When Hillary settled for a "significant achievement," I sensed a pattern developing. "I’m a real kiss of death," I said to the wife, who quietly said nothing. "Way back I even voted for Adlai Stevenson. Twice. Maybe if I backed that Republican fella the Dems could win in November."
"Many women, passionate for one of their own to achieve the presidency, are feeling hurt and betrayed," I went on. "How now can they convincingly tell their daughters and grand daughters that ‘Some day you could be President?’"
My wife was more secure in her own skin than that. "You all need to get over it. Or don’t you
remember 1968?"
1968 was a year worth remembering. First, Lyndon Johnson took himself out of the running over Vietnam. Then Bobby Kennedy died tragically in Lost Angeles. Finally, from the tumult of the Chicago convention then vice-President Hubert Humphrey emerged as the Democratic nominee to the despair of Eugene McCarthy’s legions of college kids and anti-Vietnam war activists.
But Richard Nixon narrowly beat Humphrey in November because McCarthy’s followers sulked in their tents on election day, and we had more war and Watergate and Republicans as president for 20 of the next 24 years.
"Well," I said slowly, "Richardson, Edwards and Clinton have all come out for Barak Obama, who is already an historic figure, and . . ."
My wife smiled sweetly as only she can. "Now you’re talking," she said. "More coffee?"
That was then, and now of course the country has finally followed my lead. We even have a an echo of Abe Lincoln's team of rivals running the country with Hillary at State and Robert Gates staying on at Defense.
I remember thinking, "The market's up, real estate is rising, we have a new president set to retake the high road at home and abroad, what could possibly go wrong?"
We The People . . . Forming a More Perfect Union
Quickly, now: what is the significance of this date, September 17, 1787, in our nation’s history?
Kudos if you knew that it is the day that the U. S. Constitution was signed by 39 of the 55 state delegates that attended that miraculous Convention in Philadelphia at which it was not so much written as hammered out.
All of us know and celebrate with flags and fireworks the Fourth of July as Independence Day, the day tradition declares that Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence was adopted by the Continental Congress. The day we became free.
All of us know that the phrase, "Father of our Country," is the, well, seminal title that honors George Washington, who led us to revolutionary victory, presided over the Constitutional Convention and guided the new nation as President for its first eight precedent-setting years.
Few, though, associate our basic law with the name of the man constitutional scholars have long lauded as its Father: James Madison, fourth President of the United States and neighbor and colleague of Jefferson’s.
What did Madison do to earn that accolade? Only that he was the principal author of the constitution’s blue print, know to history as the Virginia Plan; that he served as unofficial recording secretary of the Constitutional Convention and his notes are the best, and nearly the only, record we have of that secretive proceeding; that he wrote xmany of the Federalist Papers, the series of essays that sold the American people on the virtues of their new constitution and that have influenced constitutions world-wide ever since.
And, oh yes, as a member of the first Congress assembled he drafted the first ten amendments to the constitution he fathered, amendments we know as the Bill of Rights.
In Virginia, Montpelier, Madison’s ancestral home, is again open to the public, thanks to its owner, the National Trust For Historic Preservation, following a five-year, $24 million restoration. The goals of the Trust and its partners go well beyond restoration and preservation, however, to giving the nation a place where Madison’s immense contributions can receive the recognition and understanding they deserve.
Madison knew and accepted that his brain child was, and would forever remain, a work in progress. Now that work continues on the grounds of Montpelier in the form of a new Center for the Constitution, where visiting historians and law professors tutor high school teachers and the occasional government official in constitutional theory.
The Constitution has changed as we have changed. While only 27 of the estimated 9,000 proposed amendments have been adopted, the courts have been busy applying its tersely eloquent provisions to the concrete facts of specific cases brought before them. For somebody must interpret its meaning if every wrong is to have its remedy.
So it was that in the case of Marbury vs Madison (1803) the Supreme Court ruled "It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is." The Constitution was only in force for 14 years when Madison’s fellow Virginian, Chief Justice John Marshall, wrote those words, easily the most important of his 35 year tenure on the Court.
But has it changed enough to keep up with our times? Another Virginian, Larry J. Sabato, doesn’t think so. His book, "A More Perfect Constitution," was published in 2007. It’s subtitle says it all: "23 Proposals to Revitalize Our Constitution and Make America a Fairer Country."
Sabato, founder and director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, has an on line presence as well: www.centerforpolitics.org. There you can vote on his proposals (My favorite would require impartial redistricting), compose your own 24th proposal or comment on the multi-colored opinions and attempts at constitution writing by your fellow citizens. It, too, is a work in progress at which we all can labor.
But isn’t the Constitution a sacred text not to be tampered with? Many think so. But let wise old Ben Franklin again have the last word. Because Franklin was old and frail it was read for him by James Wilson as the Constitutional Convention closed in his beloved Philadelphia. Addressing Washington as chair, he said in part:
"I confess that I do not entirely approve of this Constitution at present; but, sir, I am not sure I shall never approve of it, for, having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged . . . to change opinions even on important subjects, which I once thought right, but found to be otherwise. . . I agree to this Constitution with all its faults—if they are such—because I think a general government necessary for us, and there is no form of government but what may be a blessing to the people if well administered. . .
"I doubt, too, whether any other convention . . . may be able to make a better Constitution; for, when you assemble a number of men, to have the advantage of their joint wisdom, you inevitably assemble with those men all their prejudices, their passions, their errors of opinion, their local interests, and their selfish views. From such an assembly can a perfect production be expected?
"It therefore astonishes me, sir, to find this system approaching so near to perfection as it does. . . Thus I consent, sir, to this Constitution, because I expect no better, and because I am not sure that it is not the best. . ."
Kudos if you knew that it is the day that the U. S. Constitution was signed by 39 of the 55 state delegates that attended that miraculous Convention in Philadelphia at which it was not so much written as hammered out.
All of us know and celebrate with flags and fireworks the Fourth of July as Independence Day, the day tradition declares that Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence was adopted by the Continental Congress. The day we became free.
All of us know that the phrase, "Father of our Country," is the, well, seminal title that honors George Washington, who led us to revolutionary victory, presided over the Constitutional Convention and guided the new nation as President for its first eight precedent-setting years.
Few, though, associate our basic law with the name of the man constitutional scholars have long lauded as its Father: James Madison, fourth President of the United States and neighbor and colleague of Jefferson’s.
What did Madison do to earn that accolade? Only that he was the principal author of the constitution’s blue print, know to history as the Virginia Plan; that he served as unofficial recording secretary of the Constitutional Convention and his notes are the best, and nearly the only, record we have of that secretive proceeding; that he wrote xmany of the Federalist Papers, the series of essays that sold the American people on the virtues of their new constitution and that have influenced constitutions world-wide ever since.
And, oh yes, as a member of the first Congress assembled he drafted the first ten amendments to the constitution he fathered, amendments we know as the Bill of Rights.
In Virginia, Montpelier, Madison’s ancestral home, is again open to the public, thanks to its owner, the National Trust For Historic Preservation, following a five-year, $24 million restoration. The goals of the Trust and its partners go well beyond restoration and preservation, however, to giving the nation a place where Madison’s immense contributions can receive the recognition and understanding they deserve.
Madison knew and accepted that his brain child was, and would forever remain, a work in progress. Now that work continues on the grounds of Montpelier in the form of a new Center for the Constitution, where visiting historians and law professors tutor high school teachers and the occasional government official in constitutional theory.
The Constitution has changed as we have changed. While only 27 of the estimated 9,000 proposed amendments have been adopted, the courts have been busy applying its tersely eloquent provisions to the concrete facts of specific cases brought before them. For somebody must interpret its meaning if every wrong is to have its remedy.
So it was that in the case of Marbury vs Madison (1803) the Supreme Court ruled "It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is." The Constitution was only in force for 14 years when Madison’s fellow Virginian, Chief Justice John Marshall, wrote those words, easily the most important of his 35 year tenure on the Court.
But has it changed enough to keep up with our times? Another Virginian, Larry J. Sabato, doesn’t think so. His book, "A More Perfect Constitution," was published in 2007. It’s subtitle says it all: "23 Proposals to Revitalize Our Constitution and Make America a Fairer Country."
Sabato, founder and director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, has an on line presence as well: www.centerforpolitics.org. There you can vote on his proposals (My favorite would require impartial redistricting), compose your own 24th proposal or comment on the multi-colored opinions and attempts at constitution writing by your fellow citizens. It, too, is a work in progress at which we all can labor.
But isn’t the Constitution a sacred text not to be tampered with? Many think so. But let wise old Ben Franklin again have the last word. Because Franklin was old and frail it was read for him by James Wilson as the Constitutional Convention closed in his beloved Philadelphia. Addressing Washington as chair, he said in part:
"I confess that I do not entirely approve of this Constitution at present; but, sir, I am not sure I shall never approve of it, for, having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged . . . to change opinions even on important subjects, which I once thought right, but found to be otherwise. . . I agree to this Constitution with all its faults—if they are such—because I think a general government necessary for us, and there is no form of government but what may be a blessing to the people if well administered. . .
"I doubt, too, whether any other convention . . . may be able to make a better Constitution; for, when you assemble a number of men, to have the advantage of their joint wisdom, you inevitably assemble with those men all their prejudices, their passions, their errors of opinion, their local interests, and their selfish views. From such an assembly can a perfect production be expected?
"It therefore astonishes me, sir, to find this system approaching so near to perfection as it does. . . Thus I consent, sir, to this Constitution, because I expect no better, and because I am not sure that it is not the best. . ."
Why Aren't Batteries Included?
Have your Christmases been all-electronic lately? One of ours certainly was: a new high definition TV, a GPS and one of those electronic picture album thingies.
The TV was up and wonderously clear in time for the Rose Parade, thanks to the local signal provider, who plans a further monthly extraction from our wallets for his trouble. Although the clock only blinks for now. The other two remain resplendent in their boxes. Occasionally we circle them warily.
We appreciate them of course. We will confidently open the boxes any day now, and master their mysteries in good time. Along with the combination digital camera and binoculars given to us a season or so ago.
The new gadgets are so thick on the ground these days it is hard to keep up. Priority setting is needed. Which ones, at this time of counting them, are blessings? Which blessing is Number One and why?
For me it’s hands down the good old TV remote. I panic when it gets lost under the potato chip bag, or joins the dimes deep in the sofa, just when some unctuous voice is telling me what to ask my doctor. Of course most remotes are way too complicated. Two buttons are enough on mine: on/off and mute. My wife picks our channels on hers. We’re good at sharing power.
Next I like my car key at a distance. It is passing cool to unlock the car from the porch in the rain. I understand that some keys will even start the engine at a distance. That may be too complicated. The only time I use the panic sequence is by mistake. But I’m glad it’s there.
A close third, and for many of the same reasons, is the garage door opener. It’s even better now that it has been given the sense not to pin you to the ground. And it gets by with one button. If it’s up it knows to go down and vice versa.
Then there’s that stern disciplinarian, the electric tooth brush with timer. Each quadrant gets brushed equally because it tells you when to shift. You stop brushing when it does. It’s simple, effective, saves you money and your dentist likes you better. I’d like it even better if it wasn’t good for you.
Now we come to the multi-function machine attached to the computer on which I write. I especially like the copier. It reminds me of when I worked, which was so long ago that I had a real secretary who taught me how to use one. I use the printer, of course, but I’m not into scanning much yet. Occasionally, we wish we had bought one with a fax.
Last, and grudgingly, the computer itself is okay, no thanks to Microsoft. I made a career out of tending computers way back when they were room sized. They are a lot smaller now, but not much better once you get past their razzle dazzle specs and over abundant features and talk about what they can do for you. Email is great for passing jokes around and some of the stuff you find when surfing the web is quite startling. And I do like my mouse for Spider Solitare.
I wish the cell phone had never been invented. It’s nothing but an even more ubiquitous telephone intruding within the last bastions of privacy. I keep thinking people are talking to me -- or themselves -- when they are not. It gets tangled up with the car keys in my pocket and only gets taken out for wrong numbers, to turn it off in entertainment venues, or to locate my spouse when we get separated in some big box store.
Next Christmas, just to prove I am not a Luddite, I would like a Roomba and a Segway with a seat. And the Christmas after that I won’t settle for anything less than world peace and my own personal Robot.
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Not My Car You Don't
It is against my knee jerk liberal instincts to say so, but to get me out of my car you must first pry my cold dead hands from the steering wheel and tug my stiffened foot from the gas pedal. I'm too old to walk, pedal or skate and trains and buses only go where they want to go.
Almost all Americans – and a growing number of Chinese – feel this way. You can see that this is so, to paraphrase an old cliche, by watching how we go, not how we "blow." We love our cars more than the lone cowboy loved his horse. And we are faithful lovers.
Our politicians know this, which, for example, is why the Florida Lege* "forgot" twice to endorse the Central Florida commuter rail plan, leaving $300 million in federal funds on the table, until the Great Recession hit and a flood of federal stimulus money was poised to pour upon the heads of thirsty people. They knew in their hearts that we wouldn’t ride those rails, not enough, not yet, not even to save the environment or our own sorry species. (Then, of course, Governor Scott killed the whole deal to the delight of California, which got the money.)
The sum of pollution, congestion, sprawl, mayhem, and rising seas and gas prices doesn’t, as of now, out weigh the memory of adolescent thrills; the pride of owning wheels, and the continuing ease, apparent economy and undoubted flexibility of moving you, yours and your stuff around on your own schedule.
Face it: most days we rather enjoy that lengthy commute, alone with our privacy, solitude, thoughts, fantasies and music. Will $4 a gallon gas induce enough of us to join the traditional car pool -- let alone catch a bus? Not on your private suburban life!
But we must also face this: our present course is unsustainable. What must we do? Painful and expensive things.
First, accept the verdict of our own actions. The car, which may yet kill us, has overwhelmingly won us. We take the train some places, such as underneath Manhattan type cities and through populated parts of Europe and Japan -- but not into our hearts, and only for routine commutes or the occasional pleasure trip.
Second, make peace with the automobile. This does not mean unconditional surrender. We are more resourceful than that. We are already on track to switch to hybrid vehicles, soon to be plug-ins or the occasional all-electrics . Unlike in the 1970's we need to stay on track – with higher gas taxes if needed.
Beyond hybrid cars we have two potent negotiating strategies vis a vies the old Detroit traditions: substitution and reinvention.
If you are at all Internet savvy you know already that the most economical and eco friendly trip is the one not taken. Increasingly, we can and do substitute communication for transportation. Ever more face-to-face meetings, family events, financial dealings and business conferences can be virtual, versus actual, given enough cheap band width and the right electronics for communication and display. SKYP can be just like being there.
This incipient trend needs an investment nudge from government. Universal Internet service, if not free then subsidized enough to be affordable, can and should connect even the very poor to the rest of society and lessen their dependence on the oldest gas guzzlers on the road. Nobody should ever need to transport just information -- or travel just for face time.
Reinvention is a slippery concept. Is it akin to revolution or more like evolution? The automobile itself was a revolutionary idea, but the transformation of the horseless carriage into the beloved buggy of today has been evolutionary, with steady improvements -- in cars and roads -- over decades.
More of the same can in time turn braking, accelerating and steering over to an artificial intelligence that is now growing in the evolving electronic circuits and micro-processors fast polulating our cars and trucks. In partnership with ever more intelligent roadways that are linked by satellites with traffic management computers, our new smart cars will eventually become the better drivers.
Gradually, almost imperceptibly, we will turn driving over to our electronic doppelganger. One day the brag will be "Well, we drove all the way here, over 10 miles through traffic, and never once touched the steering wheel!"
The experiments are already on the roads, possibly near you. Examples:
More of the same can in time turn braking, accelerating and steering over to an artificial intelligence that is now growing in the evolving electronic circuits and micro-processors fast polulating our cars and trucks. In partnership with ever more intelligent roadways that are linked by satellites with traffic management computers, our new smart cars will eventually become the better drivers.
Gradually, almost imperceptibly, we will turn driving over to our electronic doppelganger. One day the brag will be "Well, we drove all the way here, over 10 miles through traffic, and never once touched the steering wheel!"
The experiments are already on the roads, possibly near you. Examples:
DOD is experimenting with driver-less vehicles for ground warfare (Google DARPA Urban Challenge), while the Air Force flies drones by virtual pilot in combat today. Like the Internet before it, the personal vehicle of the future may well emerge as a by product of defense R and D.
The driver-less vehicle challenge by ARPA (Advanced Research Projects Agency) was won by a team from Stanford. Their prize: $2 million. Now that same winning team has joined with Google, the software giant which collects much of the mapping and positioning data, Google's test cars are on public roads today. For now their test vehicles come with a conventional driver behind a standard steering wheel, which he never touches unless he has to -- a backup Plan B that is less and less frequently necessary.
For all this progress, cars without drivers is not something we want to rush into. To begin with we could settle for empty cars that drive themselves to where they belong next: to a parking place, back to the rental car office, back home for the convenience of the one car family, to Joe's Spreading Chesnut Tree Auto Repair/ Gas Station for a tune-up/fill-up, to the drive-in liquor emporium/pizza place to pick up drinks/dinner, etc.
Right now the answer is that we can’t allow an empty car to move itself from where it has been abandoned to where it is needed. Or trust a driver-less vehicle on a public road, let alone in a school zone. But that will change by use of radar, lasers, motion censors, cameras, global positioning satellites, smart software and a redundance of interconnected microprocessors.
A next step might be car sharing. That abandoned car goes to the next person needing wheels. However we might not enjoy making do with whatever car happens to be available when needed. Even the lone driver is typically surrounded by her "stuff." The experience might be more like changing planes, and who would enjoy that even without a walk between gates.
Along the way cars will gradually become smart enough to prevent us from killing and maiming each other by the thousands each year, and won't that be a blessing. Your insurance agent knows that robot vehicles can be improved much faster than humans, perhaps even to the point that they can detect and even prevent insurance fraud along with more legitimate accidents.
Finally, when cars are more aware of themselves and each other than we can hope to be, steering wheels and brake and gas pedals can begin to vanish from the interior of all kinds of moving vehicles. More spacious and comfortable interiors will inhabit integrated trains of lighter more fuel efficient cars and trucks traveling steadily at swift uniform speeds down highways built for the traffic.
Elsewhere, country roads and scenic by-ways will beckon, for even the "driver" will be able to enjoy the passing views unless sleep or other relaxing pleasures intrude. Hmm. Perhaps it's time to let the crystal ball go dark. But keep your eyes open and your hands atop the steering wheel -- for now.
A next step might be car sharing. That abandoned car goes to the next person needing wheels. However we might not enjoy making do with whatever car happens to be available when needed. Even the lone driver is typically surrounded by her "stuff." The experience might be more like changing planes, and who would enjoy that even without a walk between gates.
Along the way cars will gradually become smart enough to prevent us from killing and maiming each other by the thousands each year, and won't that be a blessing. Your insurance agent knows that robot vehicles can be improved much faster than humans, perhaps even to the point that they can detect and even prevent insurance fraud along with more legitimate accidents.
Finally, when cars are more aware of themselves and each other than we can hope to be, steering wheels and brake and gas pedals can begin to vanish from the interior of all kinds of moving vehicles. More spacious and comfortable interiors will inhabit integrated trains of lighter more fuel efficient cars and trucks traveling steadily at swift uniform speeds down highways built for the traffic.
Elsewhere, country roads and scenic by-ways will beckon, for even the "driver" will be able to enjoy the passing views unless sleep or other relaxing pleasures intrude. Hmm. Perhaps it's time to let the crystal ball go dark. But keep your eyes open and your hands atop the steering wheel -- for now.
*Short for Legislature, a useful coinage of the late great writer, Molly Ivins, who is missed.
Better Gum'int Contracting?
Given the truly horrific problems circling the Obama Administration – war, unemployment, home repossessions, a sharp business downturn, a global financial meltdown, medical insurance reform, global warming – it is a welcome surprise that the President has found time to promise reform of the buying habits of the federal government.
There certainly is room for improvement and those of us who have been involved in federal contracting wish him well as he attempts to instill such good habits as more competitive bidding,
speedier awards, and better oversight of contract execution.
But pardon us if our next reaction is to chant that old oxymoron, "deja vu all over again."
For these are not new notions. That does not make them less welcome, only less easily implemented than most citizens are apt to believe. Intuitively we assume that government agencies can buy stuff like we do. Not possible. Consider the following fable, which assumes we have to buy the way government agencies are required to.
Joe Average has decided to buy a car for his daughter who leaves for college next month on a hard earned full scholarship. He wants one that is economical and safe; nothing flashy, maybe even a little stodgy, but a nice fun color. He decides on a new car for the smell, because she deserves it, and for the warranty in case she forgets to add oil.
Joe kicks some tires, reads the literature, dickers uneasily with smooth salespersons who do this for a living all day and makes his choice. The chosen vehicle is on the lot and he arranges for a big red bow and a Sunday morning surprise delivery.
Next day Joe gets a call: "Mr Average, this is the County Office of Consumer Procurement Review. We have been informed that Aceman Used Cars, a duly qualified competitor, has protested your decision to buy a new car on a sole source basis."
"Nonsense!" Joe protests, "I shopped around. Besides, I don’t do business with those lowlifes."
"Did you solicit uniform proposals from all licensed county new and used car dealers based on a timely written request for proposal, score and rank their bids and select from among the top three contenders?"
"Well, yeah, sort of. I don’t want a used car. They don’t smell right."
"Mr. Average, the state law authorizing county offices like mine explicitly disallows such subjective criteria as smell under the competitive bidding rules now governing all major consumer purchases. I’m afraid I must advise the DMV not to license your new vehicle on grounds of an insufficiently competitive procurement.
"What do you expect me to do? My daughter leaves for college in a month. She needs wheels."
"You should call the nearest DMV office within three days and register for a class on vehicle procurement. After you successfully complete the class my office will assign the next available procurement officer to your case and help you conduct a lawful competitive bidding process that gives every licensed car dealer an equal shot at your business. I can’t guarantee your daughter will have her car in a month, but it shouldn’t be too long. Perhaps you could buy her a bicycle for now."
About now you are probably wishing Joe would say, "Buzz off, Buster! It’s my money!"
That’s exactly right and it’s also the rub: you can do any wise or foolish thing you want with your own money. But those who conduct the public’s business on the public’s dime do not have that luxury. When they assume otherwise we rightly call it corruption.
Above all governments must honor the mantra of competition, even if the time honored slogan, "The customer is always right," is turned on its head in the process. Instead, "Suppliers are always eligible (the occasional convicted felon aside)."
Unlike you and me, government offices cannot dismiss a product or a source on the basis of a smell test. They may also have to give legally required consideration to union shops, minority businesses and local suppliers; not to mention unofficial concern for the supporters of legislators with control over their budgets.
Nor is the process necessarily over once a contract is duly signed. For all but the smallest buys at least one higher ranking official must "review and approve" in his own sweet time. And if the procurement is big enough at least one losing bidder will protest if only to give the errant government agency something to think about for the next go round.
That’s the government procurement game by the book, Mr President, and again we wish you well. But that book is hard to rewrite in a fundamental way.
There certainly is room for improvement and those of us who have been involved in federal contracting wish him well as he attempts to instill such good habits as more competitive bidding,
speedier awards, and better oversight of contract execution.
But pardon us if our next reaction is to chant that old oxymoron, "deja vu all over again."
For these are not new notions. That does not make them less welcome, only less easily implemented than most citizens are apt to believe. Intuitively we assume that government agencies can buy stuff like we do. Not possible. Consider the following fable, which assumes we have to buy the way government agencies are required to.
Joe Average has decided to buy a car for his daughter who leaves for college next month on a hard earned full scholarship. He wants one that is economical and safe; nothing flashy, maybe even a little stodgy, but a nice fun color. He decides on a new car for the smell, because she deserves it, and for the warranty in case she forgets to add oil.
Joe kicks some tires, reads the literature, dickers uneasily with smooth salespersons who do this for a living all day and makes his choice. The chosen vehicle is on the lot and he arranges for a big red bow and a Sunday morning surprise delivery.
Next day Joe gets a call: "Mr Average, this is the County Office of Consumer Procurement Review. We have been informed that Aceman Used Cars, a duly qualified competitor, has protested your decision to buy a new car on a sole source basis."
"Nonsense!" Joe protests, "I shopped around. Besides, I don’t do business with those lowlifes."
"Did you solicit uniform proposals from all licensed county new and used car dealers based on a timely written request for proposal, score and rank their bids and select from among the top three contenders?"
"Well, yeah, sort of. I don’t want a used car. They don’t smell right."
"Mr. Average, the state law authorizing county offices like mine explicitly disallows such subjective criteria as smell under the competitive bidding rules now governing all major consumer purchases. I’m afraid I must advise the DMV not to license your new vehicle on grounds of an insufficiently competitive procurement.
"What do you expect me to do? My daughter leaves for college in a month. She needs wheels."
"You should call the nearest DMV office within three days and register for a class on vehicle procurement. After you successfully complete the class my office will assign the next available procurement officer to your case and help you conduct a lawful competitive bidding process that gives every licensed car dealer an equal shot at your business. I can’t guarantee your daughter will have her car in a month, but it shouldn’t be too long. Perhaps you could buy her a bicycle for now."
About now you are probably wishing Joe would say, "Buzz off, Buster! It’s my money!"
That’s exactly right and it’s also the rub: you can do any wise or foolish thing you want with your own money. But those who conduct the public’s business on the public’s dime do not have that luxury. When they assume otherwise we rightly call it corruption.
Above all governments must honor the mantra of competition, even if the time honored slogan, "The customer is always right," is turned on its head in the process. Instead, "Suppliers are always eligible (the occasional convicted felon aside)."
Unlike you and me, government offices cannot dismiss a product or a source on the basis of a smell test. They may also have to give legally required consideration to union shops, minority businesses and local suppliers; not to mention unofficial concern for the supporters of legislators with control over their budgets.
Nor is the process necessarily over once a contract is duly signed. For all but the smallest buys at least one higher ranking official must "review and approve" in his own sweet time. And if the procurement is big enough at least one losing bidder will protest if only to give the errant government agency something to think about for the next go round.
That’s the government procurement game by the book, Mr President, and again we wish you well. But that book is hard to rewrite in a fundamental way.
Credit Cards For Dummies
Autumn is officially here, and in many parts of the nation there is a bracing chill in the morning air -- although not yet in central Florida. That means, especially in these desperate times, that the holiday shopping season soon will be upon us: "Shop the malls for gifts of folly . . ."
But even as we contemplate heading for the malls and the annual holiday shopping spree, plastic in hand, a slightly sour note can be heard, timidly competing for our ears with the traditional chorus of Christmas carols.
For ‘tis also the season for the merry media to solemnly balance all those alluring ads with a column of solemn advice about the evil men can do even unto themselves with credit cards.
Don’t, you are advised, charge more than you can afford, for the piper must be paid.
Don’t, you are told, just pay the minimum amount the card men so thoughtfully highlight on your bill, for that only puts off the piper – with compound interest.
Don’t, you are admonished, carry a balance and pay late and max out and otherwise dig a hole you can’t crawl out of until long after your holly, jolly Christmas is a hung over memory of broken baubles and overdue bills.
Don’t, in short, be a credit card dummy. It’s never too late to cut back, pay up, ax the cards and vow never again.
Now this is fairly good advice if you can hear it over the ads. But I for one hope you don’t take it to heart.. For if the two thirds of you who pay the interest, the fees and the penalties were to kick the habit, who would reimburse the card men for the sweet secret deal they cut for the rest of us who pay the piper on time?
What’s the secret deal? Don’t you remember that bundle of sugar coated enticements that led you to sign up in the first place? Or didn’t you notice when they took the candy away piece by piece because you ignored the balance, were late to pay and went over your limit? The card men counted on that and you didn’t let them down.
You were naive enough to play by their rules, while we savvy ones took the deal they had to offer everyone in order to hook and land you. Then we made up some even better rules of our own to follow. Whether rich or poor, you can too:
Rule 1. Never pick a card that charges an annual fee or entices you with low interest rates. Cards that charge the dummies the highest rates can afford the best deals for the rest of us.
Rule 2. Only consider cards that pay you back a percent or two of what you charge and give you a payment grace period to boot. The lower the thresholds at which rebates start, the higher the rebate percentages and the longer the grace period the better the card. (Cash rebates are best, but discounted gift cards and airlines miles can be golden for some. )
Rule 3. Pick and use a one best card, forsaking all others, to avoid more than one rebate threshold.
Rule 4. Only use your card when you don’t have to, but when you don’t have to always use your card. Forget cash, checks and especially debit cards. They don’t pay and the last two can cost you in postage and hidden fees, respectively.
Rule 5. Pay always as close to the last day of the grace period as you safely can. The better cards will let you schedule your payment on that day as a direct withdrawal from your checking account. That way tardy snail mail can’t ding you for a late payment penalty.
Play by these rules and you join the one third of us who get paid to use our cards and also enjoy an interest free loan from the time we buy to the end of that well named grace period.
Let the card and ad people get their loot from the remaining dummies. Long may they pay!
But even as we contemplate heading for the malls and the annual holiday shopping spree, plastic in hand, a slightly sour note can be heard, timidly competing for our ears with the traditional chorus of Christmas carols.
For ‘tis also the season for the merry media to solemnly balance all those alluring ads with a column of solemn advice about the evil men can do even unto themselves with credit cards.
Don’t, you are advised, charge more than you can afford, for the piper must be paid.
Don’t, you are told, just pay the minimum amount the card men so thoughtfully highlight on your bill, for that only puts off the piper – with compound interest.
Don’t, you are admonished, carry a balance and pay late and max out and otherwise dig a hole you can’t crawl out of until long after your holly, jolly Christmas is a hung over memory of broken baubles and overdue bills.
Don’t, in short, be a credit card dummy. It’s never too late to cut back, pay up, ax the cards and vow never again.
Now this is fairly good advice if you can hear it over the ads. But I for one hope you don’t take it to heart.. For if the two thirds of you who pay the interest, the fees and the penalties were to kick the habit, who would reimburse the card men for the sweet secret deal they cut for the rest of us who pay the piper on time?
What’s the secret deal? Don’t you remember that bundle of sugar coated enticements that led you to sign up in the first place? Or didn’t you notice when they took the candy away piece by piece because you ignored the balance, were late to pay and went over your limit? The card men counted on that and you didn’t let them down.
You were naive enough to play by their rules, while we savvy ones took the deal they had to offer everyone in order to hook and land you. Then we made up some even better rules of our own to follow. Whether rich or poor, you can too:
Rule 1. Never pick a card that charges an annual fee or entices you with low interest rates. Cards that charge the dummies the highest rates can afford the best deals for the rest of us.
Rule 2. Only consider cards that pay you back a percent or two of what you charge and give you a payment grace period to boot. The lower the thresholds at which rebates start, the higher the rebate percentages and the longer the grace period the better the card. (Cash rebates are best, but discounted gift cards and airlines miles can be golden for some. )
Rule 3. Pick and use a one best card, forsaking all others, to avoid more than one rebate threshold.
Rule 4. Only use your card when you don’t have to, but when you don’t have to always use your card. Forget cash, checks and especially debit cards. They don’t pay and the last two can cost you in postage and hidden fees, respectively.
Rule 5. Pay always as close to the last day of the grace period as you safely can. The better cards will let you schedule your payment on that day as a direct withdrawal from your checking account. That way tardy snail mail can’t ding you for a late payment penalty.
Play by these rules and you join the one third of us who get paid to use our cards and also enjoy an interest free loan from the time we buy to the end of that well named grace period.
Let the card and ad people get their loot from the remaining dummies. Long may they pay!
Monday, September 21, 2009
Charles Darwin, You're Out Of Date
Charles Darwin's 202 birthday has come and gone, but most of us didn't think to send a card, let alone throw a party.
Perhaps it was memories of the family fight at the bicentennial celebration of his birth, when we couldn't agree on whether or not there is a scientifically based alternative to Uncle Charles' theory of evolution.
Even the late Aunt Emma, though ever Darwin's loving wife, thought intelligent design should be taught equally in school, while Cousin Thomas Henry in his day called ID a Trojan Horse for the Christian religion. He was a real bulldog on the subject.
Since then, we, the bright young grandkids have begun to disagree with both viewpoints. We believe neither traditional evolution nor intelligent design are adequate for the classroom.
If we are to equip our children for their future we need to teach what evolution has and will become in our hands. For its mechanisms have been so hijacked by humankind that the old evolutionary rules, while still around and handy, are no longer the significant story. Intelliegent design matters even less. (In fact, it doesn't matter at all except to evolution deniers, whom are one intellectual cut above holocaust deniers.)
Plants, animals, even we humans, are now poised to evolve largely by humankind's own guiding hand, as we become ever more adept at exploiting evolution's mechanisms for our own ends.
We began the abduction of evolution eons ago by dividing plants into crops and weeds and animals into livestock and game. Then we used artificial selection to transform our chosen cultivars -- now spread far and wide -- to our liking and benefit.
Now of course we seek to by-pass the slow mode of cross breeding for the speedy tempo of genetic engineering. The billions of us about to be born will need the food.
Also long ago humans trumped nature's way of species development by the technique of geographic and climatic isolation that was first observed and exhaustively documented by our ingenious Uncle D. They did so by taking plants and animals along as herds, seeds and stowaways while migrating to the earth's farthest corners.
More lately we have replaced boots, dugout canoes and pack animals with cargo holds, ballast water, airplane wheel wells and our own baggage. In Florida we legally import then abandon thousands of exotic pets, making the likes of pythons and howler monkeys at home in the Everglades.
Most alien species so introduced dwindle and die. But those which survive often supplant the natives -- and the life forms dependent upon them -- that are unable to compete. The diversity of life takes another hit, although one alien species so far has always endured -- ours.
Of late we have concentrated on the future evolution of our own species. We have deployed the tools of science and technology in a ferocious fight with death. We have notched some victories. In many favored societies infants and children seldom die and many more of us live comfortably and well to the invariant end.
When we do die, we usually succumb to ailments that afflict us after our reproductive years are well over. But by then there is nothing natural selection can do to cull and improve our kind. Since we are not apt to practice artificial selection on ourselves any time soon, that leaves genetic engineering. Our tool of choice is the human genome, now grossly mapped and manipuable.
We are, in short, testing a new style of evolution, with the only earth we know and ourselves as guinea pigs. We had better do it intelligently. There won't be a second chance, not for our species.
Perhaps it was memories of the family fight at the bicentennial celebration of his birth, when we couldn't agree on whether or not there is a scientifically based alternative to Uncle Charles' theory of evolution.
Even the late Aunt Emma, though ever Darwin's loving wife, thought intelligent design should be taught equally in school, while Cousin Thomas Henry in his day called ID a Trojan Horse for the Christian religion. He was a real bulldog on the subject.
Since then, we, the bright young grandkids have begun to disagree with both viewpoints. We believe neither traditional evolution nor intelligent design are adequate for the classroom.
If we are to equip our children for their future we need to teach what evolution has and will become in our hands. For its mechanisms have been so hijacked by humankind that the old evolutionary rules, while still around and handy, are no longer the significant story. Intelliegent design matters even less. (In fact, it doesn't matter at all except to evolution deniers, whom are one intellectual cut above holocaust deniers.)
Plants, animals, even we humans, are now poised to evolve largely by humankind's own guiding hand, as we become ever more adept at exploiting evolution's mechanisms for our own ends.
We began the abduction of evolution eons ago by dividing plants into crops and weeds and animals into livestock and game. Then we used artificial selection to transform our chosen cultivars -- now spread far and wide -- to our liking and benefit.
Now of course we seek to by-pass the slow mode of cross breeding for the speedy tempo of genetic engineering. The billions of us about to be born will need the food.
Also long ago humans trumped nature's way of species development by the technique of geographic and climatic isolation that was first observed and exhaustively documented by our ingenious Uncle D. They did so by taking plants and animals along as herds, seeds and stowaways while migrating to the earth's farthest corners.
More lately we have replaced boots, dugout canoes and pack animals with cargo holds, ballast water, airplane wheel wells and our own baggage. In Florida we legally import then abandon thousands of exotic pets, making the likes of pythons and howler monkeys at home in the Everglades.
Most alien species so introduced dwindle and die. But those which survive often supplant the natives -- and the life forms dependent upon them -- that are unable to compete. The diversity of life takes another hit, although one alien species so far has always endured -- ours.
Of late we have concentrated on the future evolution of our own species. We have deployed the tools of science and technology in a ferocious fight with death. We have notched some victories. In many favored societies infants and children seldom die and many more of us live comfortably and well to the invariant end.
When we do die, we usually succumb to ailments that afflict us after our reproductive years are well over. But by then there is nothing natural selection can do to cull and improve our kind. Since we are not apt to practice artificial selection on ourselves any time soon, that leaves genetic engineering. Our tool of choice is the human genome, now grossly mapped and manipuable.
We are, in short, testing a new style of evolution, with the only earth we know and ourselves as guinea pigs. We had better do it intelligently. There won't be a second chance, not for our species.
Why Not Abolish The Corporate Income Tax
In keeping with President's Obama's avowed interest in bi-partisanship and the obvious need to reform the Federal income tax laws here is an example of what he might do when his re-election is safely bagged, beribboned and under the White House Christmas tree.
The hardest part, though, is finding a changes that both simplifies the tax code and is fair to taxpayers. Also, given these days of deficits to the horizon, it should add up as revenue neutral.
So, what should the Dems offer? I propose, in total violation of my progressive bent, complete elimination of the Federal Corporate Income Tax.
I can hear my fellow liberals now: "What! Corporations not pay their fair share? Why they can and should pay more, not less, and certainly not nothing!"
My answer to that: When did our corporate citizens ever not successfully connive, cajole or otherwise conveniently find their way to tax avoidance? Corporations, especially the ones that dominate their markets, have both economic and political clout. What they can’t pass on to the public in higher prices they whittle away by constant lobbying of the Congress. "Little" companies, meanwhile, have banded together and whined their way to tax credits, subsidies paid by the rest of us ($56.5 billion in 2001).
Abolishing corporate levies would hugely simplify the job of the IRS and the accounting tasks of those corporate entities still unable to avoid being tapped for taxes ($153.6 billion in 2001). Once all reason for loophole lobbying vanishes from Washington, companies will have one less major reason to drum up cash for politicians. They can concentrate on competing at home and abroad with one less cost to cover when pricing their products and services.
Some of our corporate citizens might even forsake their Carribean tax shelter headquarters and come home to America.
What should the GOP give up that would delight Democrats and make up for the loss of revenue from corporate coffers? How about keeping the inheritance tax for estates in excess of, say, $5 million, indexing that threshold amount for inflation, instead of letting that long standing tax expire as republicans so earnestly desire.
Unfortunately, the inheritance tax is only about one seventh of what is needed for revenue neutrality. I suggest another, higher tax bracket for personal incomes, calculated to raise the plugging figure needed for neutrality. That should be as painful to the GOP as abolishing the corporate income levy would be to Democrats.
Nor does this "complicate" the income tax law. Picking from among four brackets is harder than choosing the right one from three? Please. Not even Turbo Tax programmers can complain. But if this doesn't float your boat, how about a carbon tax on businesses of a certain size? We could install a gradual rise in the gas tax, too, to pay for the better, more intelligent roads we are going to need and to compensate for the smarter, more economical cars that are coming our way. I suppose it is too utopian to plump for a taxation of legalized marijuana.
Tax time could thus be vastly simpler for business, more progressive hence fairer to all individuals and easier on the heirs of small businesses and family farms while continuing to strip the excessive part of their unearned wealth from undeserving heirs.
This approach to compromise deserves a name. Call it the Chinese Menu Scheme. Pick a simplification from Column A and an Offset from Column B and enjoy a fair and balanced outcome.
And there remains plenty more for future Congresses to do: Social Security, Medicare and budget and trade deficits to the horizon for openers. Maybe even more compromises on the income tax code.
First, though, to be bi-partisan tax reform ought to focus on a political balance of items. If each item requires either Democrats, or Republicans to yield something to the other, the package can be fairly colored bi-partisan.
The hardest part, though, is finding a changes that both simplifies the tax code and is fair to taxpayers. Also, given these days of deficits to the horizon, it should add up as revenue neutral.
So, what should the Dems offer? I propose, in total violation of my progressive bent, complete elimination of the Federal Corporate Income Tax.
I can hear my fellow liberals now: "What! Corporations not pay their fair share? Why they can and should pay more, not less, and certainly not nothing!"
My answer to that: When did our corporate citizens ever not successfully connive, cajole or otherwise conveniently find their way to tax avoidance? Corporations, especially the ones that dominate their markets, have both economic and political clout. What they can’t pass on to the public in higher prices they whittle away by constant lobbying of the Congress. "Little" companies, meanwhile, have banded together and whined their way to tax credits, subsidies paid by the rest of us ($56.5 billion in 2001).
Abolishing corporate levies would hugely simplify the job of the IRS and the accounting tasks of those corporate entities still unable to avoid being tapped for taxes ($153.6 billion in 2001). Once all reason for loophole lobbying vanishes from Washington, companies will have one less major reason to drum up cash for politicians. They can concentrate on competing at home and abroad with one less cost to cover when pricing their products and services.
Some of our corporate citizens might even forsake their Carribean tax shelter headquarters and come home to America.
What should the GOP give up that would delight Democrats and make up for the loss of revenue from corporate coffers? How about keeping the inheritance tax for estates in excess of, say, $5 million, indexing that threshold amount for inflation, instead of letting that long standing tax expire as republicans so earnestly desire.
Unfortunately, the inheritance tax is only about one seventh of what is needed for revenue neutrality. I suggest another, higher tax bracket for personal incomes, calculated to raise the plugging figure needed for neutrality. That should be as painful to the GOP as abolishing the corporate income levy would be to Democrats.
Nor does this "complicate" the income tax law. Picking from among four brackets is harder than choosing the right one from three? Please. Not even Turbo Tax programmers can complain. But if this doesn't float your boat, how about a carbon tax on businesses of a certain size? We could install a gradual rise in the gas tax, too, to pay for the better, more intelligent roads we are going to need and to compensate for the smarter, more economical cars that are coming our way. I suppose it is too utopian to plump for a taxation of legalized marijuana.
Tax time could thus be vastly simpler for business, more progressive hence fairer to all individuals and easier on the heirs of small businesses and family farms while continuing to strip the excessive part of their unearned wealth from undeserving heirs.
This approach to compromise deserves a name. Call it the Chinese Menu Scheme. Pick a simplification from Column A and an Offset from Column B and enjoy a fair and balanced outcome.
And there remains plenty more for future Congresses to do: Social Security, Medicare and budget and trade deficits to the horizon for openers. Maybe even more compromises on the income tax code.
Reforming Medical Care: A Task For A Generation
With the Supreme Court's historic decisions upholding Obama Care (aka theAffordable Care Act) the stars are aligned to light the path to affordable medical care for all – even in the U. S. of A. Broadly affordable and available health insurance is one key part of what is needed: the wholesale makeover of our medical world.
The once (and future) warring tribes of the medical, business and political regions of this nation have lately begun, to commence, to get ready to bring about this historic transformation. Some are eager. Insurance companies are salivating over all the new business from up to 30 million new customers. Hospitals and clinics happily anticipate more paying customers making appointments rather than showing up in extremis in emergency rooms unable to pay. Others are not. Small business groups are spooked over the confusion of new requirements and regulations. States are of two minds about Medicade expansion, now that the Supreme Court has made it optional. Doctors dread the conversion from manual to automated medical records and an ultimate end to fee for service pricing.
Good luck to them all! And rubarbs for the reactionaries who have made this day so hard to reach. But insurance is hardly the whole enchilada. Nor will we be at the end of that rocky path when everyone is covered. Medical care will still cost too much and as long as it does insurance will too. ObamaCare does not automatically change the way medical care is priced and delivered by doctors and nurses, clinics and hospitals, though it does mandate studies and pilot programs galore and encourage outcomes based pricing.
Meanwhile, the ever rising cost of medical care reflects a mismatch of supply and demand. Our chaotic and fragmented supply of increasingly exotic, perennially palliative medical services has collided with the insatiable demands of a medically addicted population of ex-hunter gatherers turned couch potatoes living so much longer thanks to past medical advances that they sicken and die from a whole new set of causes. The best that can be said of them is that generally they are not infectious.
Those iconic words, "supply" and "demand" may suggest to the orthodox that the magic of the market place is all we have to invoke and all will be well. But, Adam Smith not withstanding, markets just don’t happen. They are created, nurtured, shaped, dominated and, yes, exploited by those most keenly interested in doing so. Eventually governments are led to intervene on behalf of one put upon constituency or another and to civilize marketplace conduct.
Medical markets evolve no differently. Doctors are now more rigorously licensed, drugs better tested, research more impartially conducted, hospitals and nursing homes more effective and pleasant, some frauds prosecuted, and standards of care tightened, if only because politicians have responded over time to public demand for reform and the medical professions, for all their faults, do prefer a service ethic over the law of the jungle.
But, even while we enjoy the improvements they have wrought, the zeal for reform wanes, we grow complacent and the iron law of unintended consequences ensures that the cycle will repeat.
Having been here before, we well know what we must do. All of us, in our respective social roles, must assume our share of the responsibility for the rising costs and diminishing results of the medical marketplace and take the opportunity provided by Obama Care to change our behavior in ways large and small.
–Doctors and Hospitals need to embrace information technology and best outcomes medical procedures. If timely patient and treatment information is accurately and readily shared electronically, and then if the practitioners deign to follow what is best in diagnosis and practice, several hundred thousand of us would not die prematurely and expensively each year from ignorance, silly mistakes and outmoded treatments.
Those step-children of the medical world in the federal Department of Veteran’s Affairs have won wide acclaim by success with both of these reforms, even though VA doctors work for the government in government run hospitals and clinics. If I were an MD enjoying the lucrative freedom of private practice in my chosen specialty I would think hard about that.
A conventional bit of folklore I remember from my youth was that in ancient China people only paid their medicine men when well, never when sick. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when the causes for many common ailments were finally deciphered and actual valid cures discovered, medicine men became doctors and charged for every treatment. This model needs to give way to team practicing, outcomes pricing and the practice of prevention. If the independent practitioner can’t continue without a fee for each service rendered so be it.
–Drug Companies need to ensure that a new treatment continues safe and effective once in general use, not just during clinical trials, and to aggressively pursue reports of adverse actions and ineffectual results. Then they need to do the obvious with the information.
Big Pharma ought not game the patent system with "me too" drugs in order to keep generic versions at bay and then tout these latest "wonders" on the tube. I for one promise never, ever to ask my doctor if that new pill I saw on television is "right for me." What a dumb question! What a dumb decision to allow such a dumb question to polute the airways.
If the drug companies can’t profitably conduct research to cure the common afflictions of the poor then the government must. It is especially important to save the children so women (and the planet) won’t be compelled to bear so many.
–Insurers should embrace, enthusiastically, the reforms of ObamaCare: no annual or lifetime caps, no denial of coverage due to pre-existing conditions, free preventative care, no cancellations when people are desperately sick, etc. Whipsawed by the jungle-like structure of their market, they have been driven to sell as much insurance as possible to those who need it least and then deny or delay authorization of treatment and payment of claims to those in greatest need in ways bureaucratic and exasperating beyond belief. They have had to do this, they say, in order to compete in the corner-cutting scenario long endemic in their business. Not any more.
For this bottom feeding business model, while technically not criminal, is grossly immoral, and must be a source of shame for many caught up in careers based on it – especially if they feel they can’t leave because then they would lose their medical insurance.
To survive the mounting fury of the public -- which cannot be channeled into anger at the big socialist government boogyman forever -- insurers had best beg the feds to reorganize and regulate their offerings even further in the years to come:
--A uniform menu of policies available to all regardless of age or dependency;
--No denial of coverage for preexisting conditions or life circumstances (including age, occupation and gender);
--Co-payments based on ability to pay;
--Coverage of all (and only) effective treatments for recognized ailments and preventions;
--Discounts only for healthy conduct (exercise, diet, safe driving);
--Penalties only for unhealthy conduct (smoking, substance abuse);
--Denial only for the unnecessary, cruel and problamatical treatments (non-reconstructive cosmetic surgery, genital mutilation and scientifically unproven medications and procedures);
--No lifetime or annual or treatment caps.
In most particulars this structure is the Obama Care goal, and is how the new Insurance Exchanges should structure the plans they accept. It is also the way the federal government, including the military, has long provided for its own workers, retirees and their families – including the Congress (and this writer) -- living proof that a federally managed insurance system can work effectively with the private insurers – once it can corral their competitive juices within a guiding framework.
–We, the Insured especially must change to afford our longer, healthier lives. We should all know why the doctor tells us to take two pink pills twice a day, as well as do what we are told, and lead lives that make and keep us at a healthy trim through diet, exercise and sensible conduct.
--Parents who need it must be helped to ensure and nurture their children.
–-Schools and parents should refrain from feeding them junk.
--Adults, especially young adults, must not elect to ride free until old and sick.
--The very old ( I am 82) must learn to die as inexpensively as possible, rather than consume the bulk of all medical care adding unsatisfactory days to the last months of ever longer lives.
--Society in general, and care givers in particular, should accept the critical need to ease the terminal out of this world as painlessly and tranquilly as possible. Morphine addiction at the end of life is not immoral and should not be illegal. Neither, under careful public procedures, giving the last word to the dieing person, should euthanasia.
–We, the People, finally, need to comprehend that this medical Rome will not be built in a day. It may take a generation and still be imperfect. But we need to persevere so our children will have something better to improve in their turn.
The once (and future) warring tribes of the medical, business and political regions of this nation have lately begun, to commence, to get ready to bring about this historic transformation. Some are eager. Insurance companies are salivating over all the new business from up to 30 million new customers. Hospitals and clinics happily anticipate more paying customers making appointments rather than showing up in extremis in emergency rooms unable to pay. Others are not. Small business groups are spooked over the confusion of new requirements and regulations. States are of two minds about Medicade expansion, now that the Supreme Court has made it optional. Doctors dread the conversion from manual to automated medical records and an ultimate end to fee for service pricing.
Good luck to them all! And rubarbs for the reactionaries who have made this day so hard to reach. But insurance is hardly the whole enchilada. Nor will we be at the end of that rocky path when everyone is covered. Medical care will still cost too much and as long as it does insurance will too. ObamaCare does not automatically change the way medical care is priced and delivered by doctors and nurses, clinics and hospitals, though it does mandate studies and pilot programs galore and encourage outcomes based pricing.
Meanwhile, the ever rising cost of medical care reflects a mismatch of supply and demand. Our chaotic and fragmented supply of increasingly exotic, perennially palliative medical services has collided with the insatiable demands of a medically addicted population of ex-hunter gatherers turned couch potatoes living so much longer thanks to past medical advances that they sicken and die from a whole new set of causes. The best that can be said of them is that generally they are not infectious.
Those iconic words, "supply" and "demand" may suggest to the orthodox that the magic of the market place is all we have to invoke and all will be well. But, Adam Smith not withstanding, markets just don’t happen. They are created, nurtured, shaped, dominated and, yes, exploited by those most keenly interested in doing so. Eventually governments are led to intervene on behalf of one put upon constituency or another and to civilize marketplace conduct.
Medical markets evolve no differently. Doctors are now more rigorously licensed, drugs better tested, research more impartially conducted, hospitals and nursing homes more effective and pleasant, some frauds prosecuted, and standards of care tightened, if only because politicians have responded over time to public demand for reform and the medical professions, for all their faults, do prefer a service ethic over the law of the jungle.
But, even while we enjoy the improvements they have wrought, the zeal for reform wanes, we grow complacent and the iron law of unintended consequences ensures that the cycle will repeat.
Having been here before, we well know what we must do. All of us, in our respective social roles, must assume our share of the responsibility for the rising costs and diminishing results of the medical marketplace and take the opportunity provided by Obama Care to change our behavior in ways large and small.
–Doctors and Hospitals need to embrace information technology and best outcomes medical procedures. If timely patient and treatment information is accurately and readily shared electronically, and then if the practitioners deign to follow what is best in diagnosis and practice, several hundred thousand of us would not die prematurely and expensively each year from ignorance, silly mistakes and outmoded treatments.
Those step-children of the medical world in the federal Department of Veteran’s Affairs have won wide acclaim by success with both of these reforms, even though VA doctors work for the government in government run hospitals and clinics. If I were an MD enjoying the lucrative freedom of private practice in my chosen specialty I would think hard about that.
A conventional bit of folklore I remember from my youth was that in ancient China people only paid their medicine men when well, never when sick. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when the causes for many common ailments were finally deciphered and actual valid cures discovered, medicine men became doctors and charged for every treatment. This model needs to give way to team practicing, outcomes pricing and the practice of prevention. If the independent practitioner can’t continue without a fee for each service rendered so be it.
–Drug Companies need to ensure that a new treatment continues safe and effective once in general use, not just during clinical trials, and to aggressively pursue reports of adverse actions and ineffectual results. Then they need to do the obvious with the information.
Big Pharma ought not game the patent system with "me too" drugs in order to keep generic versions at bay and then tout these latest "wonders" on the tube. I for one promise never, ever to ask my doctor if that new pill I saw on television is "right for me." What a dumb question! What a dumb decision to allow such a dumb question to polute the airways.
If the drug companies can’t profitably conduct research to cure the common afflictions of the poor then the government must. It is especially important to save the children so women (and the planet) won’t be compelled to bear so many.
–Insurers should embrace, enthusiastically, the reforms of ObamaCare: no annual or lifetime caps, no denial of coverage due to pre-existing conditions, free preventative care, no cancellations when people are desperately sick, etc. Whipsawed by the jungle-like structure of their market, they have been driven to sell as much insurance as possible to those who need it least and then deny or delay authorization of treatment and payment of claims to those in greatest need in ways bureaucratic and exasperating beyond belief. They have had to do this, they say, in order to compete in the corner-cutting scenario long endemic in their business. Not any more.
For this bottom feeding business model, while technically not criminal, is grossly immoral, and must be a source of shame for many caught up in careers based on it – especially if they feel they can’t leave because then they would lose their medical insurance.
To survive the mounting fury of the public -- which cannot be channeled into anger at the big socialist government boogyman forever -- insurers had best beg the feds to reorganize and regulate their offerings even further in the years to come:
--A uniform menu of policies available to all regardless of age or dependency;
--No denial of coverage for preexisting conditions or life circumstances (including age, occupation and gender);
--Co-payments based on ability to pay;
--Coverage of all (and only) effective treatments for recognized ailments and preventions;
--Discounts only for healthy conduct (exercise, diet, safe driving);
--Penalties only for unhealthy conduct (smoking, substance abuse);
--Denial only for the unnecessary, cruel and problamatical treatments (non-reconstructive cosmetic surgery, genital mutilation and scientifically unproven medications and procedures);
--No lifetime or annual or treatment caps.
In most particulars this structure is the Obama Care goal, and is how the new Insurance Exchanges should structure the plans they accept. It is also the way the federal government, including the military, has long provided for its own workers, retirees and their families – including the Congress (and this writer) -- living proof that a federally managed insurance system can work effectively with the private insurers – once it can corral their competitive juices within a guiding framework.
–We, the Insured especially must change to afford our longer, healthier lives. We should all know why the doctor tells us to take two pink pills twice a day, as well as do what we are told, and lead lives that make and keep us at a healthy trim through diet, exercise and sensible conduct.
--Parents who need it must be helped to ensure and nurture their children.
–-Schools and parents should refrain from feeding them junk.
--Adults, especially young adults, must not elect to ride free until old and sick.
--The very old ( I am 82) must learn to die as inexpensively as possible, rather than consume the bulk of all medical care adding unsatisfactory days to the last months of ever longer lives.
--Society in general, and care givers in particular, should accept the critical need to ease the terminal out of this world as painlessly and tranquilly as possible. Morphine addiction at the end of life is not immoral and should not be illegal. Neither, under careful public procedures, giving the last word to the dieing person, should euthanasia.
–We, the People, finally, need to comprehend that this medical Rome will not be built in a day. It may take a generation and still be imperfect. But we need to persevere so our children will have something better to improve in their turn.
Constitutional Responsibility For Us All
A letter to the Daytona Beach News Journal concluded by declaring, "I thank [then]President Bush for doing his best to fulfill his primary responsibility for providing security at home." Most of us, whether we favored or opposed that President’s policies, would agree that his primary responsibility is our security within our borders.
Most of us would be wrong. Here is the oath a new president takes, quoted in its entirety from Article II of the United States constitution:
"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."
Plainly the enduring Constitution, not We The [present] People, is the President’s primary responsibility. Even when our safety is at risk, our Commander in Chief may not erode, abandon and ignore the Constitution in order to better secure our sorry hides.
We in turn need to remember, even as the twin towers fall, that when the President raises his right hand we take the oath too – and the risks that go with it. We cannot, for instance, detain people indefinitely and otherwise torture them, even to save our selves, fellows and families from terror and death, else we dishonor our past and degrade the legacy due our children.
History shows we have forgotten before, to our later shame and regret . The Greatest Generation could have won World War II without interring American citizens of Japanese ancestry. Lincoln’s suspension of the writ of habeas corpus cost the Confederacy less than the Union he preserved. The loyalty oaths and blacklists of the 1950's only hindered the unity and resolve which inspired and led the free world to contain and defeat the USSR.
At Guantanamo Bay we are writing another shameful chapter for the history books, though the Supreme Court has somewhat mitigated our gross folly. Meanwhile we have afforded ourselves the opportunity to learn anew that rights stripped from the least among us are loosened from all of us.
The lesson continues as President Obama, with agonizing slowness, attempts to close such places.
Still another unfolding story is the continuing surveillance of the actions and communications of ordinary Americans. It calls to mind the witch hunts following both world wars and the dossier days of the civil rights movement and Vietnam protests; unconstitutional all. (Only now the computers are far more powerful, their programs are impenetrably more complex, and the data bases much more massive and error prone.).
Again, the change in administrations has brought less relief from the prying and spying of the thought police than we deserve and the constitution requires.
We are in sum faced with a choice. Will we risk the rule of law or be ruled by fear and terror?
Article IV says, "This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof, and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the Supreme Law of the Land. . ."
Article II, Section 3 says in part, ". . .he [The President] shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed. . ."
No part of the Constitution says, or even implies, that "The President shall keep us Safe, the Laws notwithstanding."
Nor should we let any president devalue any part of our Constitutional heritage in the name of security. Let old Ben Franklin have the last word, spoken over two hundred years ago: "Those who would trade their Liberties for Safety deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Most of us would be wrong. Here is the oath a new president takes, quoted in its entirety from Article II of the United States constitution:
"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."
Plainly the enduring Constitution, not We The [present] People, is the President’s primary responsibility. Even when our safety is at risk, our Commander in Chief may not erode, abandon and ignore the Constitution in order to better secure our sorry hides.
We in turn need to remember, even as the twin towers fall, that when the President raises his right hand we take the oath too – and the risks that go with it. We cannot, for instance, detain people indefinitely and otherwise torture them, even to save our selves, fellows and families from terror and death, else we dishonor our past and degrade the legacy due our children.
History shows we have forgotten before, to our later shame and regret . The Greatest Generation could have won World War II without interring American citizens of Japanese ancestry. Lincoln’s suspension of the writ of habeas corpus cost the Confederacy less than the Union he preserved. The loyalty oaths and blacklists of the 1950's only hindered the unity and resolve which inspired and led the free world to contain and defeat the USSR.
At Guantanamo Bay we are writing another shameful chapter for the history books, though the Supreme Court has somewhat mitigated our gross folly. Meanwhile we have afforded ourselves the opportunity to learn anew that rights stripped from the least among us are loosened from all of us.
The lesson continues as President Obama, with agonizing slowness, attempts to close such places.
Still another unfolding story is the continuing surveillance of the actions and communications of ordinary Americans. It calls to mind the witch hunts following both world wars and the dossier days of the civil rights movement and Vietnam protests; unconstitutional all. (Only now the computers are far more powerful, their programs are impenetrably more complex, and the data bases much more massive and error prone.).
Again, the change in administrations has brought less relief from the prying and spying of the thought police than we deserve and the constitution requires.
We are in sum faced with a choice. Will we risk the rule of law or be ruled by fear and terror?
Article IV says, "This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof, and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the Supreme Law of the Land. . ."
Article II, Section 3 says in part, ". . .he [The President] shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed. . ."
No part of the Constitution says, or even implies, that "The President shall keep us Safe, the Laws notwithstanding."
Nor should we let any president devalue any part of our Constitutional heritage in the name of security. Let old Ben Franklin have the last word, spoken over two hundred years ago: "Those who would trade their Liberties for Safety deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Sunday, September 20, 2009
Dismal Days, Dismal Science
The cause of today’s global mess,is an economic theology, preached of late not just by economists such as Milton Friedman and Alan Greenspan but by such politicians as British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and U. S. Presidents Reagan and Bush (father and especially son).
The central tenant of this materialistic religion has been the notion of "the free market." The notion is wrong because the modifiers within the phrase are wrong. There is no such thing as the market. Look around and note the many markets. Note too that each one is organized, manipulated, regulated or otherwise shaped by some group or other with an avid interest in doing so. No market is truly, purely free, or, in the jargon of economists, perfectly competitive.
Nor should they be. The closest thing to an economic free for all in modern times is the lawless Gangsta Capitalism practiced for a time in post-communist Russia. Resurrected Cossacks are no economic model for a civilized society. On that we can all agree.
Less agreeable is the inconvenient truth (thank you, Al Gore, for that useful phrase) that our corporate cowboys, Wall Street raiders and hedge fund pirates have become our Cossacks. In suits and ties they wield computer screens as effectively as sabers. To risk another metaphor, in the name of the free market theology we let them off the reservation Franklin D Roosevelt allotted them and now we have to corral them again.
To round them up we must revisit another central tenant of our economic theology, most aptly phrased by Ronald Reagan: government is the problem, not the solution. The Great Communicator was not totally wrong. History backs his assertion all too often. The more enlightened concepts of Adam Smith, for example, replaced mercantile dogmas that had strangled ambition and innovation for centuries. Now, though, Smithian theory has congealed into a computer modeled theology that hides its basic over simplifications behind the elegance of its math.
The first modern economist to find a principal (rather than supporting) role for government was British economist John Maynard Keynes. It is his play book that the principal actors in Washington today are reading from. It started with the Bush administration Treasury and Federal Reserve, continued even more strongly with the Obama team, but is now bucking the headwinds of a frustratingly slow recovery (typical, the pundits say, of financial panics) and the Tea Party tide's incoherent ways.
Keynes demonstrated that economic downturns such as the one we lately enjoyed are not always self correcting. Supply and demand can reach a stable equilibrium well below the level of economic activity that fully employs us all. When, as lately, this happens ever more frequently to nations so wealthy that what they fail to produce is only marginally necessary, governments cannot and, after Keynes, should not, fail to fill the gap. Free market theologians will argue that governments simply can’t, and on the record they have a point. But there is nobody else to do it so we had best bend ourselves to learning how.
Still, following past Keynesian fixes will not be enough, if not now then in the not too distant future. We have lately rediscovered that dumping mounds of cash into the coffers of reluctant lenders and traumatized consumers is like pushing on a string and expecting the other end to go somewhere. Government investments in infrastructure (bridges and roads, hopefully to somewhere; a smart electrical grid, electronic medical records and such) are agonizingly slow to ramp up. They tend to stimulate just as business, too, revives, and the reinforcing combination can twist the economy into an inflationary spiral.
If Keynes as traditionally applied is not enough, what is? What will the brilliant young man or woman who is destined to be the next Lord Keynes contribute to the economic system of tomorrow?
In the beginning were the fundamental factors of production: land, labor and capital. The witches brew we call wealth was concocted presumably from the toil and trouble of their proper mixture. Capital was the active ingredient, though. Land was passive and labor docile or reactive. At least equally fundamental today as this trio are two equally active ingredients: energy and information, and tomorrow’s theories would do well to take them fully into account.
Our approach to designing markets should be scientific and creative rather than prayerful and passive. Such thin theories as perfect competition, rational actors and perfect information need to be demonstrated or discarded. With personal consumption counting for two thirds of all economic activity, "economic man" needs to be replaced with homo sapiens in all his and her evolved glory. This will not go down easy, for economists just love the simplifying assumption, and do not like fuzzy minded psychologists, political scientists, game theorists, evolutionary biologists, ecologists and (especially) sociologists mucking up the elegant simplicity of their take on humankind.
Some markets cannot abide unfettered competition. We have recently learned anew that the financial markets are first among them. Governments and international institutions cannot let go of the reins of money and credit without risking a runaway every now and then. That fact needs to be enshrined in the DNA of all political parties serious enough to be allowed to govern and conduct diplomacy.
Another such market is the financing and provision of health care. The best care anywhere in the US is provided entirely by government to our aging veterans of past wars. The Veterans Administration builds and operates the hospitals, hires the doctors and nurses, bargains hard for low drug prices and exports the only electronic medical support system in the country worth mentioning. And they do it in the face of resources that are chronically delayed by a dithering Congress that continually forgets the immediate consequences of the wars it funds.
Other critical economic activity would never occur if we waited on markets to join supply with demand. Still other markets, like some weeds, can’t be eradicated except by the most draconian methods. Thus government succeeds when making the market for basic science research, struggles to shape an equitable market for equities, and utterly fails to quash the booming market for illegal drugs.
We need better measurements of what we do economically to replace the gross national product and other such aggregates. A system that adds Katrina’s and Sandy's recoveries without subtracting their losses only measures what is easy not what is real.
Equally a system that doesn’t deliberately include "externalities" -- from garbage disposal to polluted land, air and water to accelerated species extinction to global climate disruption – in the cost of goods and services bought and sold, should not be called capitalism.
The next economic system will not be handed down from above as holy writ. Nor will it evolve from the vacuum of Laissez Faire. It will have to be deliberately invented and continuously perfected by some smart members of humankind for all human beings. We will probably call them economists and politicians for lack of better four letter words.
Last revised December 25, 2012. Merry Christmas to you, too.
The central tenant of this materialistic religion has been the notion of "the free market." The notion is wrong because the modifiers within the phrase are wrong. There is no such thing as the market. Look around and note the many markets. Note too that each one is organized, manipulated, regulated or otherwise shaped by some group or other with an avid interest in doing so. No market is truly, purely free, or, in the jargon of economists, perfectly competitive.
Nor should they be. The closest thing to an economic free for all in modern times is the lawless Gangsta Capitalism practiced for a time in post-communist Russia. Resurrected Cossacks are no economic model for a civilized society. On that we can all agree.
Less agreeable is the inconvenient truth (thank you, Al Gore, for that useful phrase) that our corporate cowboys, Wall Street raiders and hedge fund pirates have become our Cossacks. In suits and ties they wield computer screens as effectively as sabers. To risk another metaphor, in the name of the free market theology we let them off the reservation Franklin D Roosevelt allotted them and now we have to corral them again.
To round them up we must revisit another central tenant of our economic theology, most aptly phrased by Ronald Reagan: government is the problem, not the solution. The Great Communicator was not totally wrong. History backs his assertion all too often. The more enlightened concepts of Adam Smith, for example, replaced mercantile dogmas that had strangled ambition and innovation for centuries. Now, though, Smithian theory has congealed into a computer modeled theology that hides its basic over simplifications behind the elegance of its math.
The first modern economist to find a principal (rather than supporting) role for government was British economist John Maynard Keynes. It is his play book that the principal actors in Washington today are reading from. It started with the Bush administration Treasury and Federal Reserve, continued even more strongly with the Obama team, but is now bucking the headwinds of a frustratingly slow recovery (typical, the pundits say, of financial panics) and the Tea Party tide's incoherent ways.
Keynes demonstrated that economic downturns such as the one we lately enjoyed are not always self correcting. Supply and demand can reach a stable equilibrium well below the level of economic activity that fully employs us all. When, as lately, this happens ever more frequently to nations so wealthy that what they fail to produce is only marginally necessary, governments cannot and, after Keynes, should not, fail to fill the gap. Free market theologians will argue that governments simply can’t, and on the record they have a point. But there is nobody else to do it so we had best bend ourselves to learning how.
Still, following past Keynesian fixes will not be enough, if not now then in the not too distant future. We have lately rediscovered that dumping mounds of cash into the coffers of reluctant lenders and traumatized consumers is like pushing on a string and expecting the other end to go somewhere. Government investments in infrastructure (bridges and roads, hopefully to somewhere; a smart electrical grid, electronic medical records and such) are agonizingly slow to ramp up. They tend to stimulate just as business, too, revives, and the reinforcing combination can twist the economy into an inflationary spiral.
If Keynes as traditionally applied is not enough, what is? What will the brilliant young man or woman who is destined to be the next Lord Keynes contribute to the economic system of tomorrow?
In the beginning were the fundamental factors of production: land, labor and capital. The witches brew we call wealth was concocted presumably from the toil and trouble of their proper mixture. Capital was the active ingredient, though. Land was passive and labor docile or reactive. At least equally fundamental today as this trio are two equally active ingredients: energy and information, and tomorrow’s theories would do well to take them fully into account.
Our approach to designing markets should be scientific and creative rather than prayerful and passive. Such thin theories as perfect competition, rational actors and perfect information need to be demonstrated or discarded. With personal consumption counting for two thirds of all economic activity, "economic man" needs to be replaced with homo sapiens in all his and her evolved glory. This will not go down easy, for economists just love the simplifying assumption, and do not like fuzzy minded psychologists, political scientists, game theorists, evolutionary biologists, ecologists and (especially) sociologists mucking up the elegant simplicity of their take on humankind.
Some markets cannot abide unfettered competition. We have recently learned anew that the financial markets are first among them. Governments and international institutions cannot let go of the reins of money and credit without risking a runaway every now and then. That fact needs to be enshrined in the DNA of all political parties serious enough to be allowed to govern and conduct diplomacy.
Another such market is the financing and provision of health care. The best care anywhere in the US is provided entirely by government to our aging veterans of past wars. The Veterans Administration builds and operates the hospitals, hires the doctors and nurses, bargains hard for low drug prices and exports the only electronic medical support system in the country worth mentioning. And they do it in the face of resources that are chronically delayed by a dithering Congress that continually forgets the immediate consequences of the wars it funds.
Other critical economic activity would never occur if we waited on markets to join supply with demand. Still other markets, like some weeds, can’t be eradicated except by the most draconian methods. Thus government succeeds when making the market for basic science research, struggles to shape an equitable market for equities, and utterly fails to quash the booming market for illegal drugs.
We need better measurements of what we do economically to replace the gross national product and other such aggregates. A system that adds Katrina’s and Sandy's recoveries without subtracting their losses only measures what is easy not what is real.
Equally a system that doesn’t deliberately include "externalities" -- from garbage disposal to polluted land, air and water to accelerated species extinction to global climate disruption – in the cost of goods and services bought and sold, should not be called capitalism.
Finally, as John Kenneth Galbraith, the finest student of economic phenomena never to win a Nobel Prize, long ago said, and I paraphrase: None would select the squirrel wheel as a model for the economy. Growth, in other words, must end some day. Either we achieve wealth beyond measure just before our well deserved extinction or we learn how to create and equitably distribute basic material needs and agreeable comforts for that somewhat longer journey called a sustainable future.
The next economic system will not be handed down from above as holy writ. Nor will it evolve from the vacuum of Laissez Faire. It will have to be deliberately invented and continuously perfected by some smart members of humankind for all human beings. We will probably call them economists and politicians for lack of better four letter words.
Last revised December 25, 2012. Merry Christmas to you, too.
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