What it means to be a man

It's been a tough fall at la casa. It's been a tough fall with the health of some people that - while not in that first circle of immediate family - are closely related to those that are. Here's a short excerpt from one friend, whose daughter has been stricken:

"Daddy please don't leave, just hold my hand until I fall asleep" - so of course I stayed and had to let the tears fall down my face as I had her hand in my hand and was wiping her face etc. with the other ... The best cry this man has had in his lifetime. God it was great to provide her some comfort ... thank you God for that special time with my little girl.

Election 2016

From Paul Krugman:

The election was rigged by mainstream news organizations, many of which simply refused to report on policy issues, a refusal that clearly favored the candidate who lies about these issues all the time, and has no coherent proposals to offer.

I am frustrated that we as a country seem to lack the ability to have decent policy-focused discussions that might lead to compromise, progress, and maybe even a closer sense of community, but it's pretty galling for a member of the "mainstream news" to complain that [they] "simply refused" to report on policy.

What Exogenous Factors?

This blog post has been making the rounds on facebook lately. It troubles me on multiple levels, because (a) it seems to resonate with people in spite of its fundamental flaws, (b) if this is scholarship then we are not demanding enough of our scholars, and (c) the author is pretty darned condescending. (On twitter, I would shorten that to: Stupid! Unprofessional! Bad Man!) I hope this young man has a decent thesis advisor. I would challenge his analysis of cause and effect in describing the policies of the 30s-70s. I mean, many people refer to it as the "postwar" era for a reason. If WW2 is what you have in mind to trigger a "political revolution", please count me out.

As you can see in the chart, between the 1930’s and the 1970’s, the United States drastically reduced economic inequality. It redistributed wealth from the top to the middle and the bottom, resulting in consistent wage increases and consequently consistent consumption increases. This allowed investment to be put to effective use–because the bottom and the middle were rising, they were able to support the additional spending that business owners needed to successfully expand. This was accomplished through a series of policies that if they were proposed today, would strike most Americans as socialist–Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, welfare, strong union rights, high minimum wages, high marginal tax rates on the wealthy (with a 90% top rate under Eisenhower), and strong enforcement of financial regulations and anti-trust laws.

As I wrote the first time this article was presented:

I'd like the author to consider -- I know, heresy! -- the impact of WW2 on his narrative. Because if we have to fight and win a global war that wrecks every other country of substance in the world, decimates both industrial capacity and male population, and leaves us relatively unscathed with a full generation headstart on recovery before they begin to catch up... well, I'd just like to know if that's what they mean by "political revolution".

I'm baffled that someone could write this as a PhD candidate.

Antonin Scalia

I think the one thing that reverberates to me when I consider engaging in some sort of political argument is the following from Scalia:

What I do wish is that we were in agreement on the basic question of what we think we’re doing when we interpret the Constitution. I mean, that’s sort of rudimentary. It’s sort of an embarrassment, really, that we’re not. But some people think our job is to keep it up to date, give new meaning to whatever phrases it has. And others think it’s to give it the meaning the people ratified when they adopted it. Those are quite different views.

Say what you will about the overall dysfunction of polticians and our political process, but I think most people would agree that the Supreme Court appointment represents a high degree of knowledge and understanding of some reasonably complex topics -- that anyone that rises to this level has enough brains to noodle through the major issues of the day. The fact that there are (at least) two opposite and competing understandings of such a basic tenet doesn't mean we should shout and give up hope, or that the republic's days are numbered, but it does argue that you are unlikely to win that facebook argument you're in the middle of.