A Day Part I

James understood it for the first time on a hot and humid August night. For a moment he knew in a way that goes beyond conscious thought that everything in the universe was inextricably connected, that there was no past, present and future, there was only a timeless interplay of matter and energy changing forms, expanding and contracting, living, dying, renewing. He felt a momentary calm slip over him and a sly smile crept onto his face.  

1. The cat lady was out again.  Every night she rode her bike into the alley behind James and Dorothy's building calling "Here kitty kitty! Here kitty kitty!" usually while James and Dorothy were outside on their patio, which overlooked the alley, eating dinner.  Tonight was no exception.  

"Why doesn't she get hit by a bus?" said Dorothy.

"Babe, seriously, what do you have against her?" James replied.  

"She's annoying and all those stray cats hang out in the alley waiting for her.  I don't like them being back there, they're feral cats, one of them hissed at me last week." Dorothy shot back. 

"But those cats keep the rats away. Remember when we first moved in here there were those rats the size of footballs living in the alley?  Well, they're mostly gone now."  James said.
The moon, almost full, was out and it clearly illuminated the cat lady's movements. Dorothy watched as the cat lady dismounted her bike, and began putting food on the ground in small piles as she walked up the alley.
Dorothy looked back at James with a face that indicated she didn't want to concede the point. God it was so easy to hate the cat lady. Her piercing lilt when she said "Here kitty kitty!" over and over again, which Dorothy heard every night just as she was finally unwinding from the office.
The cat lady was now at the end of the alley, and had bent down to pet one of the alley cats who had come towards her, and as she did so the cat brushed her affectionately with its tail.
"Whatever" Dorothy finally said as she was watched the cat lady get back on her bike after the cat she was petting walked away. She turned back to James, and with an air of both defeat and disgust said, "Fuck her and fuck you for taking her side." This made James laugh in his unabashed way, and after a minute Dorothy's non-plussed lips turned into a smile as she remembered that James loved her just the way she was. "Seriously, fuck you!" she said laughing.   

Ta-Nehisi Coates on Context

"'Context" is not a safe word that makes all your other horse-shit statements disappear."

That's from Ta-Nehisi Coates in his post yesterday on Richard Cohen's recent infamously racist column. But really this is a great statement of a point that gets too often lost.  Context isn't one-sided.  If you want to argue that someone's interpretation of what you said was "taken out of context," and didn't account for these other things that you also said or meant, you'd better be prepared for people to point out other things that you have said that have bearing on the situation, such as that time in your column that you supported jewelry store owners refusing to allow young black men inside their shops because of a "fear of crime."

The Meat Clearver Approach to Governance

Will Wilkinson is on to something here in talking about the sequester's meat cleaverish approach to cutting the federal budget

Meat cleavers work, and they aren't in practice so indiscriminate as they may seem to be. They focus attention, clarify priorities, and lead to the swift discovery of previously unimagined economies.

This is quite true.  Bureaucrats, despite their classical depiction, are often quite creative and adaptive.  And it's often healthy for them to be forced to shift things around, reprioritize, and cut out some of the dreck that lines their budgets.  If done in reasonable measure, such cutting and reshuffling is healthy, like spring cleaning, as it helps to remove some of the non-essential additions to the federal budget that accumulate over time.  As we've found from the sequester, there are funds that routinely go unspent, maintenance work that doesn't need to be done quite so often, and potential creative solutions to problems that don't require the funds that would otherwise have been spent to solve them. 

But then I think Wilkinson takes his point a bit too far

That the effect of the sequester has been relatively benign so far strikes me as a data-point in favour of relatively inflexible fiscal rules, such as debt-ceilings and balanced-budget amendments, capable of somewhat offsetting the diffuse-cost/concentrated-benefit dynamic that otherwise drives democracies toward imbalance and ruin.

There are plenty of areas of bloat in the Federal budget, the Defense Department and the Farm Bill being two prime examples. But thinking you're creating efficiencies by having rules that invite standoff and make it impossible to fix any of the issues that inherently arise in any country is not a way to cut government waste, it's a long term recipe for disaster.  Running the government in the way that we have over the past 2 years, in the way that has lead to the sequester is a recipe for making it a poorly run organization over the long term. Bureaucracies are inherently inefficient, but once you add on the fact that Congress now doesn't even pass a budget till we're halfway through the fiscal year, can't address any important issues because they're too contentious, doesn't have the staff to conduct real oversight, doesn't spend the time to really learn about the issues or about how the government operates and instead spends most of their time scoring political points, well you have a recipe for gridlock and long term disaster.  Wilkinson is right that the all government programs have concentrated sets of beneficiaries who howl every time they're proposed for a cut.  But if none of their issues are being addressed, if every program is untended and is slowly hollowed out by one indiscriminate cut after another, soon ever constituency will be feeling the pain.  The cuts aren't concentrated if every part of the government is taking them.  And that is where we're at right now.  The sequester is set to run for 10 years, and with the lines between democrats and republicans hardening every day, it's easy to wonder whether default is the only policy we have left.

Seeing Things for What They Are

History is unfair.

Why? Because bedevilingly it repeats itself but not in the same way under the same seeming circumstances.  It forces historical actors, all of us, to confront problems that look similar to past instances, but that are actually entirely different, while also forcing us to confront seemingly novel situations that are actually quite similar to past events. It makes fools of us this way.

The student of history is called to act on the basis of what is right in front of one's nose. Simple in theory, terribly difficult in reality.  The reason for this of course is that history exists in a context of past actions.  Human beings are not "clean slates" able to process a situation only on the basis of the information presented by that situation.  No, humans process a given situation through the lens of past accumulated experiences, which have often been distilled down into crusted over ideologies and "pictures of the world", which once imbedded in the mind are maddeningly difficult to alter.  But the challenge remains, we must see things as they are.

Perhaps a famous historical example of this principle will help to clarify my point.

Munich Germany, 1938.  Neville Chamberlain is about to make one of history's most famous mistakes, he is about to sign an agreement with Nazi Germany to achieve "peace in our time" allowing Nazi Germany to annex Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland, where many ethnic Germans lived, while preserving  a state of peace between Great Britain and Germany.  Chamberlain's mistake was that he did not see the situation for what it was.  He did not see Hitler's intentions, he did not see that by not pushing back against Hitler's mad ambitions, he was inviting more aggression.  Chamberlain wanted peace.  He wanted peace because he had learned the lesson of the First World War, that War in Europe would involve myriad entanglements and great bloodshed and would achieve little for it.  He knew that if he pushed back against Hitler now, he would be starting a great conflict. He was wrong, this situation was different, it required a different response. Hitler wanted to start a great war, that was his objective, and he had clearly stated as much.  There was no appeasing him.  War, Great War, was the only choice.

The beginnings of World War I and World War II are similar, but the situations and the correct responses to each were tragically different. Winston Churchill made the wrong choice in World War I. Churchill was a hawk, who aggressively pushed for Great Britain's entry into the Great War. But I would argue that Great Britain should never have moved so aggressively to insert themselves in that War.  Had they made it clear from the outset that they were opposed to a conflict, the whole situation might have been different.  Certainly hundreds of thousands of young British men would have lived a lot longer.  But Churchill was right in 1938.  He saw Hitler for what he was. He was not afraid because of the mistakes he had made during World War I.  This is the unfairness of history.  It is best not to be wrong when it counts, but it especially bad to be wrong when it counts twice, and especially good to be right when it counts even if you were wrong the first time.

One thought now on how this applies in our time.

President Obama gave a press conference today, and among a number of topics, the president discussed climate change, and how he might address it (or not address it) in his second term.  While the president quite clearly articulated the changes being wrought by climate change, he was dismissive of the political opportunities for doing anything about climate change in the near term.  He is probably correct in his assessment, but I hope he is prepared to do more than he described today. Like Hitler in 1938, the forces changing the climate of our planet will not be appeased. It doesn't really matter what the political climate is now. In 1938 Great Britain was not much prepared for war either, and Chamberlain understood that. But we don't ask out leaders to always do what we want them to do, we ask them to do what is right for us. History has quite unfairly been unkind to Chamberlain for just this reason. He did what his people wanted but not what was right.

There are a number of things the president can do that would help fight climate change that he need not ask Congress to help him do. For example, he could use the regulatory powers of the Federal Government, especially the EPA, to help drive down fossil fuel emissions. He has done this up to a point, but there is more that he can do.  These actions may not be popular, especially given the current economic environment, but climate change is a mortal threat, and we do not have the luxury of being wrong on this issue for very much longer. History will deliver its unfair verdict to President Obama one way or the other.  I hope he makes the right choices for us all.

What this Campaign is About

There are two excellent articles in the New York Times this morning that I think clearly articulate the central fulcrum of this election.  The first by Tyler Cowen focuses on how America has begun to move from a wealth generating society into a wealth taking society by focusing too much of our energy on the political fight over how the pie is divided up, and not enough on actually enlarging the size of the pie.  The second by Chrystia Freeland compares the US to Venice in the 14th Century, and how the US is in danger of, as Venice did then, moving from an inclusive economy where there were opportunities for risk takers to enter the ranks of the elite, to a closed system where the elite just sucked as much wealth out of everyone else as they could and closed off opportunities to the rest of society to join their ranks.

Mitt Romney has recently been trying to apologize for and walk back his comments about the "47%" of Americans who are "takers" as opposed to "makers" in our economy.  A recent survey showed that 96% of Americans have received direct benefits from the government at some point in their lives (Mitt Romney's own father was on welfare at one point in his life), so the idea that there is one portion of society that takes and another that makes is absurd.  But beyond the absurdity of his comments, and the absurdity of his apology for them (Romney's first reaction to the public finding out about his 47% comments was to stand behind them), lies I think the essence of what this campaign is about.

Romney, even in his recent "moderate" incarnation, clearly believes that he and wealthy people like him are the primary engine of our economy.  He believes that the wealthy people, by putting their money at risk in the market help to grow the economy and create jobs through their support of new innovative ideas.  It's why Romney sees nothing wrong with his effective tax rate being far lower than most working class Americans.  In contrast the President  has always said that he "wants to grow the economy from the middle out."  Now Mitt Romney would always say that the middle class is important,  and that his policies will do more for them than the president, but let's go back to his comments on the 47% of Americans.  Think about the audience for those comments.  Mitt Romney made his makers and takers distinction before some of his very wealthy campaign donors, people who were spending thousands of dollars just to hear him talk and ask him a few questions. His message to them was that even though they and other people like them had been by far the greatest beneficiaries of the US's economic growth over the last half century, that it was the poor and the working class, who have hardly benefitted at all from that economic growth, who deserved to pay more in taxes.

This is the whole campaign. Mitt Romney is pretty vague about his policies, but one thing he has not been vague about is that he thinks that wealthy people like him are so important to our success as a country that we should keep cutting taxes on them to allow them to put more money into the economy and help it to grow.  What are the consequences of such a policy?  Well, there are really two possibilities.  If you want to cut taxes on the rich, or even just leave them where they are, you either have to raise taxes on everyone else, or you have to borrow more money which will eventually force everyones takes to go up.  The bottom line is that for the rich to pay less everyone else has to pay more.  That hurts social mobility.  If you have to pay more in taxes, you really aren't able to worry about taking a risk and starting a new business, or getting education to learn a new skills.  We need more people taking risks not less, and right now the system is set up to really only favor those at the top, whose only real concern seems to be to stay on top.  Which is why they're all too happy to hear from Romney that he sees them as the makers, and those who are the most vulnerable are the takers.  It absolves them of their responsibility to pay their fair share.  Can you close the budget deficit just by taxing the wealthy? No, but if you don't raise taxes on the wealthy, you have to make up the difference some place else, and all of the other options tend to hurt those Americans who can least afford it the most.

The consequences of such a policy put into action would be disastrous.  We have already seen how much the deck is stacked in favor of the wealthy with this recession. Wall Street gets a bailout and they're already back to making big profits.  Meanwhile, the payroll tax credit, which is a huge benefit to working families, will likely die at the end of this year, with neither party lifting a finger in its defense. If the President wants to win reelection, he needs to make this distinction clearer.  It's great to talk about growing the economy from the middle out, but Obama needs to provide a clearer vision of what that means.  America should be able to provide a quality education to all of its citizens. It should be able to provide anyone with a good idea the ability to put that idea into action in the marketplace. But those things are not true right now for any number of reasons. Obama has to show himself to be the president who will help change that, who will fight to make the system work for its citizens. We all have an ownership stake in America.  We don't need a president who absolves those who have benefitted the most from their responsibility to their fellow citizens, we need a president who fights so that everyone has the opportunity to achieve their version of the American dream.

The State of the Election

Obama and the Democrats had a great convention, and the Republicans and Mitt Romney had a bad convention, with Clint Eastwood merely the most memorably bad part.  Then Mitt Romney had a great first debate and Obama had a bad first debate, which was all the more bad because of how much it changed the narrative of the campaign (the media loves a new narrative!). So now we are back where we started, with the fundamentals making Obama a slight favorite, but with the election really anyone's game.  As an ardent Obama supporter this should have me worried, but somehow it doesn't at the moment. For one thing I am confident that the president will turn in a much better debate performance in the second presidential debate.  He didn't lose the first debate on arguments, he lost it on tone, body language and posture, which should not be discounted, we say a lot with how we carry ourselves, and no one wants to follow a president who is not confident and self-assured, especially when he's defending his record and his plans for the future of our country.  But the president has good arguments, he simply has to marshal them.  Here are some things I'd like to see the president do.

1) Directly appeal to young families and young female voters in particular by campaigning for mandating employer provided maternity and paternity leave.  Maternity leave should be a no brainer for the president.  It helps him highlight the Republican party's ambivalence to female voters, and the democratic party's historical strength with that demographic.  Also, this gives his younger supporters something to be excited about.

2) The payroll tax holiday is about to expire at the end of this year, and most economists expect the end of the holiday to exert a significant drag on the economy at just the wrong time. Why not commit to trying to extend it if you're president and make Mitt Romney say why he wouldn't support such a move. It's good policy and it's a strong direct appeal to the middle class, and as long as politicians are getting away with saying things they'll never do, why not at least try to reignite some momentum behind an actually worthwhile idea, even if Congress will never go along with it.

3) Talk more bluntly about why his record and his plans for the future of the country are better than Mitt Romney's.  Romney gave a rather generic republican foreign policy speech this week in an attempt to convince voters that he can pass the commander in chief test, but Obama has a lot of actual foreign policy accomplishments to point to. 1) Bin Laden, 2) a number of free trade agreements (despite Romney's contentions), 3) the sure handed Opening up of Burma, 4) Libya (the tragic death of our Ambassador and several embassy staff not withstanding), 5) the broad tough sanctions against Iran, which would never have been achieved if the president did not make it clear through his open overtures to Iran that the Iranian regime was not interested in diplomacy or compromise in ending its pursuit of nuclear weapons, 6) the elegantly executed safe-harboring of Chen Guangcheng, and the list could go on.  If he wants to talk about the economy, he can talk about the 2+ years of private sector job growth and the fact that the unemployment rate is now below where it was when he came into office.  If he wants to talk about healthcare he can talk about the 80 million plus people who would lose their health insurance under Romney's plan because they have preexisting conditions, or the fact that the federal government picked up a large part of the tab for Romneycare, and in the words of Jeb Bartlett, can we have our money back?  Also, and perhaps more importantly, it is obvious to anyone with a calculator that Romney does not currently have a workable plan to bring down the deficit.  Obama should call him on this, and do so succinctly and clearly.  He should say something like

"To reduce the deficit Governor Romney wants to start by reducing tax revenue by 5 trillion dollars, then he wants to increase military spending by 2 trilling dollars.  Then he wants to start reducing the deficit.  Now, you know, if I told my wife that my solution to our household budget problems was to switch to working half time and buy that new sports car I've had my eye on, she'd slap me upside the head and tell me grow up.  And she'd be right, because you know when you reduce the amount of money you have coming in, and you spend more on things you don't need like a $2 trillion increase the pentagon isn't asking for, well then you have to cut back on the basics, the things people are counting on like medicare, and medicaid, and funding for education and medical research, and for our crumbling roads and bridges, and pretty soon you're living in a country where it's everyone for themselves, and not a country where we care for and support each other."

The president is fully capable of making these arguments.  All he needs is 1) a good nights sleep before the next debate, 2) to remember that American's like presidents who want to fight for them.

I wish him all the best.  We still need him to finish the job he started.

What the Anti Gay Rights Folks Fail to Understand About the Gay Rights Movement Today

What anti gay rights folks fail to understand about the current gay rights movement is that young gay men and women just don't give a fuck anymore.  Let me give you an example.  I'm 28 years old, when I was a freshman in high school, half my lifetime ago, I had a classmate who was out.  He had been out since middle school.  No one cared.  Did I mention that I went to an all boys catholic high school.  No one cared...except of course for the administration, and that was really only when he forced them to care.  You see, he was one of the top students (he got a full ride scholarship to a name institution), he sang at chapel, he was one of the stars of the theater department, he was a really nice guy, he was everything that they could possibly have hoped for in a student. They didn't make an issue of his being gay.  But then senior year rolled around, and he wanted to bring a date to prom, a guy.  They said no.  He circulated a petition, and we all signed it.  They still said no, and of course when we debated it in religion class the answer we got was "because his taking a date implies they'll have sex, and that's a sin."  Well that's good old catholic church hypocrisy for you; no one in our class was married, making the implied sex we might have with our dates a sin too.  But that's not really the point I'm making. The point I'm making is that when the Church, or any societal institution or group in America tells young gay men and women what they can and can't do these days, they tell them to go fuck themselves. And their friends do too.  Everything that the anti gay rights movement is fighting for, from this bullshit anti-gay marriage constitutional amendment in North Carolina, to the mealy-mouthed walk back of Joe Biden's statement about his comfort with gay marriage,  all of this will be rolled away some day.  My generation knows this, we grew up with it, we don't give a fuck.

Battleship! F@%&ing Battleship is a F*#@ing Movie!

I like bad movies, I like them a lot actually. And of course by bad I mean stupid, I mean movies that don't even try to be rational or coherent, that just aim purely at entertainment, but manage to succeed in not quite the way they intended.  I mean something like John Carpenter's Vampires (Actual Quote:  "Can I ask ya somethin, Padre? When I was kickin? your ass back there... you get a little wood?"). 

But then there are movies like Battleship, movies that make you weep for the souls of Hollywood executives. It's based off of a fucking game!  Are you kidding me!  Some people might be annoyed with all of the comic book movies coming out these days, but those movies are drawing from a deep reservoir of content and character development, Battleship is based on a game where each player randomly guesses where the other person's battleships are located on a board.  I'm guessing the decision to make this movie was made in much the same way.  I honestly don't care whether this movie would be enjoyable to see, the whole concept of it makes me want to insert pencil shavings in my eyeballs every time I see that stupid trailer.

There are so many stories to be told and Hollywood has the capacity to only tell so many.  I accept the fact that most of the stories that will get told are stupid and pointless (at least in the grand scheme of things) but it would nice if the movies that Hollywood made didn't have to have an already developed brand behind them.  I suppose that would involve taking risks and of course actually using one's imagination, two ideas anathema to the species Homo Hollywoodexecutivus, but a boy can dream, can't he? Or have I just watched too many movies?

This is a great article from Dahlia Lithwick on how Stephen Colbert has masterfully, through satire, rendered the Supreme Court's Citizen's United decision allowing unlimited campaign spending utterly ridiculous.  I thought this was an especially insightful point from the article articulated by Colbert's "personal lawyer" Trevor Potter.

Potter says Kennedy’s majority opinion is not so much disconnected from reality but, rather, “assumed that the world would work in the way he thought it would.” (In Kennedy’s fantasy, there would be no chance of corruption, no coordination between PACs and candidates, and full disclosure of corporate contributions.) And had the FEC done its job, had Congress passed better disclosure rules, had shareholders been better able to control corporate activity, the Kennedy decision would have been less monumental. (Potter is quick to point out that the court needn’t reverse itself completely for the country to fix the worst problems in the post-CU system.) Still he adds that Citizens United “epitomizes the problem of having a court where no justice has ever run for any office, including dogcatcher.”

I think this is an oft overlooked point.  The members of the supreme court do not have a lot of experience being answerable to the public whose lives are affected by their decisions.  Often coming directly from the federal bench, they have spent large portions of their careers completely insulated from any meaningful consequences arising from their decisions.  Also, they don't have a lot of experience actually making laws. Developing case law and what the Supreme Court does are not the same thing. The Supreme Court actually makes laws (or unmakes them), it doesn't just develop a body of interpretation around them. And of course the supreme court makes laws in perhaps the worst way possible, it makes them in the form of individual cases, it transforms seemingly limited disputes into massively influential precedent. It does so without much debate, maybe an hour or two and a nice 30 to 50 page brief from each side, and then a neat little conference, where they decide the cases in complete secrecy (take that openness and accountability!).  Say what you will about Congress, but the legislating that it does allows far more outside input and involvement, which helps to add a lot more reality to the deliberative process, and is actually openly visible to the public (except with regards to certain national security issues and the usual influence peddling).  People who are going to be impacted by the new laws Congress makes actually get to weigh in. The Supreme Court accepts briefs from outside groups, but it knows that no matter what, whichever way they vote, they'll have a job.  Members of Congress usually have a healthy dose of fear of the public (however, that often includes lobbyists).

Congress is imperfect, but at least it allows in information capable of disabusing it of any absurd notions it has about the way they world works. It still makes rotten decisions, but its at least usually been forced to reckon with those who know they're rotten. The Supreme Court doesn't have to reckon with anyone, except maybe being chastised by the President or Stephen Colbert on national TV.  This allows it I think to continue to hold onto many absurd theoretical precepts that just don't work in the real world no matter how much their legal philosophy says they should.  The public doesn't honestly care whether freedom of speech means that cop orate speech should be protected.  Most people have enough common sense to realize that the consequences of the Citizens United decision tilt the playing field massively in the favor of the few over the many.  That the Court was unable or unwilling to see this, or that they frankly didn't care is just one in a  long line of reasons I think the Court should be reformed and greatly reduced in power.  You can't hand 9 unelected people a job with unbelievable power and influence for life and not expect them to become corrupted and more disconnected from the rest of society.

Downton Abbey and It's Historical Lessons

Downton Abbey is addictive, and besides its wonderfully gossipy nature that's probably most of all because it shows a world caught up in such fundamental change.  World War I is the defining event of the past 100 years, it presages everything, from World War II and the Shoah, to the Cold War, to women's suffrage, to globalization, to decolonization, to the conflicts in the middle east. World War I and its deciding aftermath at Versailles defines our world to this day.  The characters in Downton are living through that rending tumult.  Their lives are not as much their own as they might hope. They're being forced to make decisions that the world they grew up in has not well prepared them for. That world is ending. This of course this isn't a new phenomenon, the world is always being remade.  But I think that two things make the world of Downton particularly ripe for current obsession.  One is that its world is different enough from our own to attract fascination, but not so different as to be incomprehensible.  And the second is that by living before so many of the defining moments of our age gives their world a sort of graceful wonder.  There are values on display, especially a certain gallant honor, that I think we find sadly missing in our modern world that has only recently come down from its temple built to greed. That honor would be prized above happiness is shocking to our sensibilities that prize happiness above everything. Of course the characters at Downton are also corrupted by all the pre-progressive mores of Edwardian England, especially the Crawley family and their spoiled remove from life's inconveniences, which is sadly not so incomprehensible to our time.

This isn't to say that the picture Downton portrays is wholly accurate.  Especially with regards to its depiction of the War, it is far too antiseptic.  It displays tragedy, yes, but not nearly with the necessary gruesomeness and tragic meaninglessness to give the Great War its due. Perhaps because it is so hard for anyone who has grown up with the Iraq and Afganhistan Wars as their touchstone for what conflict feels like as a nation this is understandable, but World War I existed on a wholly different scale.  Why Lady Sybll says that "It seems as if all the men I ever danced with are dead," she is speaking for every woman her age in Britain.  Every class, every city, everyone in Britain felt the pain of the war intimately.  We haven't seen anything like that since World War II.  I think it would be impossible in a mini-series to do it justice. I think perhaps only a documentary could recreate the kind of terror and tragedy experienced by the soldiers and their families and friends back home. But I love that Downton has tried because it is such a defining period in our world, and people should be exposed to it however imperfectly.  

Our Times

I've been reading Tyler Cowen's The Great Stagnation lately. It is a rather dour book for our rather dour times. It is impressively, lucidly argued, and I do think that Cowen is onto something about the disappearance of what he calls "low hanging fruit" or the easy wealth derived by the 19th and 20th centuries' defining innovations such as modern communications technologies that enabled many of our problems to be solved without too much sacrifice. Now in Cowen's argument we've entered a time of less innovation and therefore less easy wealth. It is therefore far more difficult for society to make the now comparatively tough decisions about how we will fund the solutions to our most vexing social problems, such as how do we pay for health care, or education. But I wonder too if it isn't a bit too easy to write a book like the Great Stagnation at a time like this. It's easy to see no way out of the hole when you've hit the bottom. I don't pretend to believe that it won't take us a while to get our economy back on track, but for a recent, hopeful example look at Germany. I was studying there 7 years ago when they began their labor market and government reforms that have now made them such a competitive economy with their strongest employment market in a generation. Those reforms were not easy. I can remember seeing lots of protests by students and workers against proposals to raise tuition and to cut back on worker benefits, and of course those reforms ultimately cost the SPD and Gerhard Schroeder their majority. But the reforms worked, and Germany is stronger for it. I don't think it's so hard to believe that the U.S. won't be able to find its own way out of the mess it's in right now. There are ideas out there about reforming the tax system by lowering rates but eliminating loopholes to increase the overall amount of revenue being generated (and also perhaps reducing the amount of taxes that go uncollected, in part because the system is too complicated), lowering the rate at which healthcare costs increase by reforming the incentive structure of doctors and health care providers, and by using the powers of the affordable care act to keep a tight leash on health insurance rate increases, modifying our patent system to better serve the new methods and modalities of our times, allowing innovators to enjoy the fruits of their inspiration but not stifle creativity and further innovation in the process, and so on. These ideas could help us get rid of a lot of the rust that has ossified our political economy.

America is at a turning point I feel. We're at a low ebb. We reached the height of our post-war economic boom during the late 1990s and we've been searching since then, or probably since even before that, for a new direction, a new unifying system to help drive our unrivaled run of prosperity into the future. There is no guarantee that we will soon find the answer, but as I said I think there are a lot of good ideas out there waiting. And so I can't feel as dour as I probably should reading Mr. Cowen's book, and perhaps that is a luxury I have that others do not. If you're part of the long-term unemployed right now it's hard not to feel like you've unknowingly signed up to eternally receive the short-end of the stick. I can know that without really knowing what it feels like, and so I am able to believe that we will get out of this, I have that luxury, the luxury of knowing that even if we never make it out I'll probably be alright. But I don't think that makes me wrong, I just think that makes me lucky, and I am most of all grateful for that.

Writing

I've had this goal for a long time to write everyday. But maybe I'm just not gritty enough.

I think what has always appealed to me about writing is the ability to create something out of seemingly nothing. Your thoughts, which are constantly spinning during the day, can be transformed into coherent thoughts by the focused force of concentration it takes to put words down on the page. If you do it often enough it no longer even feels like work, and the words just pour out of you. When you're hammering away at the keyboard, and the words appear on the screen just as fast as you type them, as if your hands were directly connected to the synapses in your brain, it's a wonderful feeling of accomplishment. But of course real writing requires rewriting, requires rethinking. It's not enough just to hammer away, you also have to be critical of what you're actually saying. Is that what I mean? How will someone reading this understand what I just said? Is that the point I want to make? What's the most important thing I'm trying to convey? Is this boring? And so on. If you don't think about those things your writing becomes little more than typing.

What am I trying to say right now? I suppose it's that I needed to start typing to start writing again. I've made a lot of excuses about why I didn't want to write, and all of those moments of laziness have added up over time to a lot of non-writing, which was the opposite of my goal in the beginning. I want to write, and so I had to start with something, and sometimes nothing turns into something quite worth writing.