This is apropos of nothing in particular, except that I just finished what I believe may be the last book by humorist-cum-travel writer Bill Bryson that I'd never read, except for one. And since the man has been entertaining me off and on for a goodly portion of my reading life, I feel like some sort of summing up is in order, if only for my own satisfaction.
Beginning with his account of a rambling trip around the Australian outback ("In a Sunburnt Country"), I've followed Bryson across three continents, plus an entire journey dedicated to Great Britain, and another that traversed much of the Appalachian Trail.
But he's considerably more than just a travel writer; perhaps his best work is "A Brief History of Nearly Everything," an ambitious and, overall, hugely successful attempt by a scientific layman to recount the history of almost all major scientific knowledge for a layperson audience, interspersed with biographical sketches of all the great, often bizarre, thinkers who made the most momentous contributions to science. (My personal favorite is his account of Sir Isaac Newton, who probed the bones in his skull behind his eyeball with a sharp knife with clinical detachment, but suffered no pain.)
I read Bryson's works largely out of order, but there's no particular reason not to do that. His account of a whirlwind tour across Europe from northernmost Scandanavia to Istanbul ("Neither Here nor There") was written a decade before the much more popular "A Walk in the Woods," but no matter. If anything, I've enjoyed picking up the various threads of an interesting man's life at different, haphazard intervals, skipping forwards and backwards in time. At any age and on any subject, Bryson is an engaging writer, and since he'd completed most of his work before I became aware of him, I've had the luxury of picking and choosing from a wide repertoire.
But whatever his subject matter, I ultimately read Bill Bryson because the man is a hoot. He has the wonderful ability both to find his way into absurd situations, particularly when traveling, and to appreciate the humor in those situations, even when at his own expense. For instance, in one memorable passage of his European tale, he blunders into an exorbitantly priced hotel in Gothenberg, but because he's too embarrassed to simply walk out upon hearing the outrageous rates, tries to seize on some supposed deficiency of the hotel as an excuse to find it unacceptable. Grilling the desk clerk, he inquires, "'I assume it has a private bath and color TV?'
'Of course.'
'Free shower cap?'
'Yes, sir.'
'Assortment of complimentary bath gels and unguents in a little wicker basket by the sink?'
'Certainly, sir.'
'Sewing kit? Trouser press?'
'Yes, sir.'
'Hair dryer?'
'Yes, sir.'
I played my trump card. 'Magic-wipe disposable shoe sponge?'
'Yes, sir.'
Shit."
Stymied, he took the room.
But this wouldn't be Jim Unfiltered if I didn't have bones to pick, and even a writer I enjoy as much as Bill Bryson has a flaw or two.
Actually, Bryson' s flaws really are few and far between, and I write this humble criticism largely as a genuflection to a writer I admire a great deal. But I will say this: After reading a small stack of his travel books, I cannot help but grow weary of a fair constantly stream of griping about the expensiveness of the hotels he stays in and the restaurants where he dines. Granted, in a pure travel guide, notes about logistical costs of a given destination figure prominently; vacations are always an exercise in cost/benefit analysis, and so readers need a Fodors or similar guidebook to plan ahead.
But Bryson isn't Fodors. He doesn't write to advise readers where to stay or what restaurant to avoid. He writes to describe the places he visits, so that a job-bound reader with no prospect of going on his own grand tour of Europe can at least get a flavor of the experience and understand why it's worthwhile. So to have a very amusing writer forever interrupting his own amusing narrative with complaints about the high costs of traveling wears a bit thin after a while. To be able to travel widely and then get complete strangers to pay to read your descriptions afterwards is something of a luxury, one that Bryson doesn't seem to fully appreciate. At some point reading "Neither Here nor There" on a commuter train on the way to my office cubicle, I remember thinking, "Yes, too bad you had to buy all those expensive beers in Copenhagen before flying off to Italy. I feel for you."
Occasionally, this lack of awareness translates into a certain political myopia. Bryson forever laments the demise of old, medieval architecture in Europe and its replacement by ugly modernity. While I sympathize on aesthetic grounds, I can't help but notice a certain latent, "There ought to be a law against things I don't like" sort of authoritarianism lurking between the lines. For a man clearly well-versed in history, he doesn't seem to have gathered that human beings have been building things and tearing them down to build new things for about as long as we've been walking on our hind legs.
And it was with a certain amount of shock that I read this commentary on the fall of Communism in Europe, at the end of his chapter on Bulgaria, which he visited in 1990:
"[I]t seemed strange to me that in all the words written about the fall of Iron Curtain, nobody anywhere lamented that it was the end of a noble experiment. I know that communism never worked, and I would have disliked living under it myself, but nonetheless it seemed there was a kind of sadness in the thought that the only economic system that appeared to work was one based on self-interest and greed."
An intelligent, learned man ought to know better than to call the Soviet empire, which killed or impoverished countless millions, a "noble experiment."
But I'll forgive him these foibles, because for the most part, Bill Bryson is a lively, hugely informative writer with a great eye for detail and at least one good laugh per page. It is with real sadness that I realize how the bulk of his writing is no longer new to me, though rereading most of it will probably prove a solid consolation.
Thursday, April 9, 2009
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
In Which I Defeat Lyndon LaRouche by Default
Perhaps this anecdote is amusing. Or maybe it's just lurid.
Yesterday afternoon found me not at work, but at the Virginia Motor Vehicles service center in Alexandria, replacing my drivers license after an unfortunate mishap permanently separated me from my wallet. Though I rushed in 40 minutes before closing time with visions of stony-faced, callous DMV staffers explaining in excruciating detail why my seven alternate forms of identification were insufficient to replace my license, I met with the pleasant surprise of actually receiving a new one with astonishing speed and efficiency. Government bureaucracies everywhere, take note: The Alexandria, VA DMV has shown you the way.
So, walking out, I can perhaps be forgiven for feeling light-hearted, a tad giddy, and even charitable. Charitable enough that when a middle-aged man in geeky aviator glasses who was handing out some sort of political pamphlet outside the DMV exit collared me and launched into his inevitable diatribe against somebody or other, I indulged him and listened.
Try as I might, I can't help feeling sorry for these people, whom you see all too often in the DC area; they're just so earnest and dedicated, they'll actually attempt to get perfect strangers to join their righteous cause. They just have a certain lonely, pathetic air about them that makes it difficult to not feel a slight twinge of pity. And this particular speciman had clearly been standing there all day in the cold wind with no success.
About 20 seconds into his canned speech, I gathered that the guy was raising money for Lyndon LaRouche. The same Lyndon LaRouche who's been running for president in every election since before I was born; the same Lyndon LaRouche who espouses an ambiguous blend of FDR-style big government but has incurred accusations of anti-semitism, Soviet-backed treason and all sorts of other weird charges. Prior to yesterday, I knew the following about LaRouche: He's a perennial feature of fringe American politics, he's sort of a crank with a cult following, and he's not to be taken seriously.
So I listened politely for five minutes, nodded sympatheticly, and even accepted a profferred sheaf of LaRouche screeds. But when the punchline came -- "How much would you like to donate?" -- I had to demur. Sorry, I said, but I just don't think LaRouche's political positions mesh with mine very well (though apparently we both think western civilization is in mortal danger at the moment).
And that's when my interlocutor lost the argument I didn't know I was having. In a classic case of Godwin's law, he called me a Nazi, thus, according to one popular formulation of the law, forfeiting any claim to a reasonable position by virtue of rhetorical name-calling. And all because I disagreed with his, and Lyndon LaRouche's, ardent demand for a new New Deal, which apparently anyone who's not a Nazi knows is exactly what our country needs right now. Had he accused me of KKK membership, I would have been no less astounded.
Perhaps he was just a coherent lunatic whom I made the mistake of listening to. Or perhaps there is a running tide of political polarization sweeping this country, one that teaches people to reflexively hate any opponent without regard for rational thought, and this was merely the first wave lapping at my feet. Optimist that I am, I'm going to assume the former. At least until my socks feel wet.
Yesterday afternoon found me not at work, but at the Virginia Motor Vehicles service center in Alexandria, replacing my drivers license after an unfortunate mishap permanently separated me from my wallet. Though I rushed in 40 minutes before closing time with visions of stony-faced, callous DMV staffers explaining in excruciating detail why my seven alternate forms of identification were insufficient to replace my license, I met with the pleasant surprise of actually receiving a new one with astonishing speed and efficiency. Government bureaucracies everywhere, take note: The Alexandria, VA DMV has shown you the way.
So, walking out, I can perhaps be forgiven for feeling light-hearted, a tad giddy, and even charitable. Charitable enough that when a middle-aged man in geeky aviator glasses who was handing out some sort of political pamphlet outside the DMV exit collared me and launched into his inevitable diatribe against somebody or other, I indulged him and listened.
Try as I might, I can't help feeling sorry for these people, whom you see all too often in the DC area; they're just so earnest and dedicated, they'll actually attempt to get perfect strangers to join their righteous cause. They just have a certain lonely, pathetic air about them that makes it difficult to not feel a slight twinge of pity. And this particular speciman had clearly been standing there all day in the cold wind with no success.
About 20 seconds into his canned speech, I gathered that the guy was raising money for Lyndon LaRouche. The same Lyndon LaRouche who's been running for president in every election since before I was born; the same Lyndon LaRouche who espouses an ambiguous blend of FDR-style big government but has incurred accusations of anti-semitism, Soviet-backed treason and all sorts of other weird charges. Prior to yesterday, I knew the following about LaRouche: He's a perennial feature of fringe American politics, he's sort of a crank with a cult following, and he's not to be taken seriously.
So I listened politely for five minutes, nodded sympatheticly, and even accepted a profferred sheaf of LaRouche screeds. But when the punchline came -- "How much would you like to donate?" -- I had to demur. Sorry, I said, but I just don't think LaRouche's political positions mesh with mine very well (though apparently we both think western civilization is in mortal danger at the moment).
And that's when my interlocutor lost the argument I didn't know I was having. In a classic case of Godwin's law, he called me a Nazi, thus, according to one popular formulation of the law, forfeiting any claim to a reasonable position by virtue of rhetorical name-calling. And all because I disagreed with his, and Lyndon LaRouche's, ardent demand for a new New Deal, which apparently anyone who's not a Nazi knows is exactly what our country needs right now. Had he accused me of KKK membership, I would have been no less astounded.
Perhaps he was just a coherent lunatic whom I made the mistake of listening to. Or perhaps there is a running tide of political polarization sweeping this country, one that teaches people to reflexively hate any opponent without regard for rational thought, and this was merely the first wave lapping at my feet. Optimist that I am, I'm going to assume the former. At least until my socks feel wet.
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Thoughts on Mumbai
Of all the holidays we in the U.S. celebrate, can any of them compare to Thanksgiving for pure hedonism? The historical significance of the occasion notwithstanding, for most people, Thanksgiving is a great excuse to have a long weekend, eat and drink to extreme excess, and then hit the malls for the frenzied start of the Christmas shopping season.
This year, Thanksgiving was no different, except for a jarring reminder from the other side of the world that life is not necessarily as comfortable and safe as the holidays usually make us feel. While a few hundred million Americans blissfully overate and then retired to their sofas to watch some mediocre football, a handful of armed militants -- all of them likely Muslims from Pakistan -- went on a killing spree in Mumbai and murdered almost 200 civilians before police finally killed or captured them.
While disturbing, the sad truth is that events such as this one aren't totally unsurprising. But that's all the more reason to reflect at some length on the Mumbai killings; they were not the first, and they will not be the last. And I see no reason why the next bloodbath can't take place in New York, or Omaha, or Richmond.
Probably the most obvious, visceral question to ask when an atrocity like this happens is: Why? Why would 10 young men infiltrate a foreign city and proceed to murder scores of innocent people they never met before? For that matter, why did two dozen young men hijack airplanes and crash them into skyscrapers? The latter is the question shocked Americans asked after 9/11, and except for the specific numbers, locations and means of assault, it's the same question many more people are asking now.
Unfortunately, the answer isn't obvious, at least to me. If it was pure homicidal mania, I could understand, to the extent that insanity can be understood at all. But I'm fairly certain these young Pakistani guys who shot tourists for being American, or Jewish, or just shot people for the sake of shooting them weren't insane in the clinical sense. Neither were the 9/11 hijackers. The stock answer that I think most Americans would give, then, boils down to "They just hate us." No doubt they do, but it takes more than pure hate to motivate a normal human being to commit mass murder.
So the conclusion I have to draw is that there was some sort of point to this carnage, that these terrorists were trying to accomplish something beyond the bloodshed they wrought. What that might be, I don't profess to know. Inflame tensions between India and Pakistan -- both technically American allies -- to force the U.S. to come down on Pakistan and wreck the ongoing campaign against the Taliban in that country? Force India to consider negotiating the status of the predominantly Muslim state of Kashmir? Something entirely different? I don't know.
The "why" matters, but it's elusive. Equally important though is the more pragmatic question: How do we respond to such barbarism? I won't claim to know that either, but I do know how not to react. To figure this out, all I had to do was read The New York Times' editorial on the killings, which demonstrated just how dangerous the road to political correctness can be. The Times does not ask why the Mumbai attackers did what they did, but rather, The Times asks why the Indian government allowed them to do it:
"How can their government have ignored the warning signs? A 2007 report to Parliament warned that the country’s shores were poorly protected — and some or all of the attackers arrived by boat. Why weren’t the police and the army better prepared to respond?"
Implicit in these questions is the attitude that, like hurricanes and earthquakes, terrorist attacks just happen. And because they happen, governments -- including the Indian government -- have a responsibility to respond to them as effectively as possible. The culpability of the terrorists for their actions is completely absent, as if they're just as mindless as Hurricane Katrina.
Do we really live in such a debased age that a major newspaper like The New York Times can't muster some genuine horror, and anger, that armed savages took advantage of a free, open society to commit murder? To put it bluntly, where's the outrage?
Mumbai symbolizes much that modern liberalism claims to value: multiculturalism, freedom of religion, democracy, commerce, tolerance, and on a basic level, the freedom to come and go as one pleases. All of this was exploited and attacked by a small group of people who prefer an unfree, intolerant, bigoted society, but liberal bastions like The Times can't bring themselves to acknowledge this clash, because doing so comes dangerously close to passing judgment on a culture. So in the name of cultural sensitivity, fanatical Islamism must be treated as a sort of natural disaster, with no blame to assign, except for the negligent governments that don't get out of the path of the storm.
Seven years ago, when the 9/11 attacks finally woke Americans up to the fact that Al Qaeda had been at war with their country for years, the outrage wasn't lacking. Almost to a man, the country was shocked and justly furious that someone could commit that sort of wanton violence. Have we really changed so much since then? When only 170 people are killed instead of 3,000, do we take it in stride, especially when it happened in a different hemisphere?
The issue of how to respond to this and future attacks is indeed complicated, with no clear course of action in sight. But the immediate, gut-level reaction is, or ought to be, very simple. Reality dictates that cities in India, America and elsewhere develop strategies for responding to terror, but the fact that they have to should never stop appalling us.
This year, Thanksgiving was no different, except for a jarring reminder from the other side of the world that life is not necessarily as comfortable and safe as the holidays usually make us feel. While a few hundred million Americans blissfully overate and then retired to their sofas to watch some mediocre football, a handful of armed militants -- all of them likely Muslims from Pakistan -- went on a killing spree in Mumbai and murdered almost 200 civilians before police finally killed or captured them.
While disturbing, the sad truth is that events such as this one aren't totally unsurprising. But that's all the more reason to reflect at some length on the Mumbai killings; they were not the first, and they will not be the last. And I see no reason why the next bloodbath can't take place in New York, or Omaha, or Richmond.
Probably the most obvious, visceral question to ask when an atrocity like this happens is: Why? Why would 10 young men infiltrate a foreign city and proceed to murder scores of innocent people they never met before? For that matter, why did two dozen young men hijack airplanes and crash them into skyscrapers? The latter is the question shocked Americans asked after 9/11, and except for the specific numbers, locations and means of assault, it's the same question many more people are asking now.
Unfortunately, the answer isn't obvious, at least to me. If it was pure homicidal mania, I could understand, to the extent that insanity can be understood at all. But I'm fairly certain these young Pakistani guys who shot tourists for being American, or Jewish, or just shot people for the sake of shooting them weren't insane in the clinical sense. Neither were the 9/11 hijackers. The stock answer that I think most Americans would give, then, boils down to "They just hate us." No doubt they do, but it takes more than pure hate to motivate a normal human being to commit mass murder.
So the conclusion I have to draw is that there was some sort of point to this carnage, that these terrorists were trying to accomplish something beyond the bloodshed they wrought. What that might be, I don't profess to know. Inflame tensions between India and Pakistan -- both technically American allies -- to force the U.S. to come down on Pakistan and wreck the ongoing campaign against the Taliban in that country? Force India to consider negotiating the status of the predominantly Muslim state of Kashmir? Something entirely different? I don't know.
The "why" matters, but it's elusive. Equally important though is the more pragmatic question: How do we respond to such barbarism? I won't claim to know that either, but I do know how not to react. To figure this out, all I had to do was read The New York Times' editorial on the killings, which demonstrated just how dangerous the road to political correctness can be. The Times does not ask why the Mumbai attackers did what they did, but rather, The Times asks why the Indian government allowed them to do it:
"How can their government have ignored the warning signs? A 2007 report to Parliament warned that the country’s shores were poorly protected — and some or all of the attackers arrived by boat. Why weren’t the police and the army better prepared to respond?"
Implicit in these questions is the attitude that, like hurricanes and earthquakes, terrorist attacks just happen. And because they happen, governments -- including the Indian government -- have a responsibility to respond to them as effectively as possible. The culpability of the terrorists for their actions is completely absent, as if they're just as mindless as Hurricane Katrina.
Do we really live in such a debased age that a major newspaper like The New York Times can't muster some genuine horror, and anger, that armed savages took advantage of a free, open society to commit murder? To put it bluntly, where's the outrage?
Mumbai symbolizes much that modern liberalism claims to value: multiculturalism, freedom of religion, democracy, commerce, tolerance, and on a basic level, the freedom to come and go as one pleases. All of this was exploited and attacked by a small group of people who prefer an unfree, intolerant, bigoted society, but liberal bastions like The Times can't bring themselves to acknowledge this clash, because doing so comes dangerously close to passing judgment on a culture. So in the name of cultural sensitivity, fanatical Islamism must be treated as a sort of natural disaster, with no blame to assign, except for the negligent governments that don't get out of the path of the storm.
Seven years ago, when the 9/11 attacks finally woke Americans up to the fact that Al Qaeda had been at war with their country for years, the outrage wasn't lacking. Almost to a man, the country was shocked and justly furious that someone could commit that sort of wanton violence. Have we really changed so much since then? When only 170 people are killed instead of 3,000, do we take it in stride, especially when it happened in a different hemisphere?
The issue of how to respond to this and future attacks is indeed complicated, with no clear course of action in sight. But the immediate, gut-level reaction is, or ought to be, very simple. Reality dictates that cities in India, America and elsewhere develop strategies for responding to terror, but the fact that they have to should never stop appalling us.
Saturday, November 22, 2008
Government 4.0
File this one under "aimless musings."
Even if apocryphal, the image makes for good symbolism. The hallmark of Bush's tenure has been the attitude that government policy, especially foreign policy, ought to be forceful, direct and unwavering. Decisive action is a virtue, whereas long-winded theorizing and analysis, replete with all those annoying "What if" questions, is a hindrance to getting things done.
So why can't my inner geek get excited, after eight years of get-er-done governance?
So I guess my unease has more to do with the limits of intelligence itself, and the difference between intelligence and wisdom. Because these days especially, with the economy in a worsening recession, there are calls from all sides for the new administration to "do something" to make it all better. As I noted in an earlier post, liberal columnist Bob Herbert wants a "tough" and "very, very smart" plan to save the Detroit Big Three automakers. Twit though he is, at least Herbert has the humility not to try to write that plan himself. Instead, he wants the smart kids to do it. And therein lies my worry.
I believe there are essentially two ways to view what's happening in our present economy. There is the enlightened liberal position that government must take certain actions to bring us out of this recession; and there is the competing position, that try though it might, the government can't save the day, and that we as a country are best off simply weathering the storm. The first view is predicated on the notion that if you get enough "very, very smart" people together in a room and tell them to solve a problem, they'll drink a lot of caffeine, stay up very late, and eventually find the solution. The second position is rooted in a much more pragmatic world-view, in which bad things sometimes happen and there's nothing anyone can do to change that.
Consider the implications of the "we can fix it" position: If it's possible for a government of very smart, very earnest people to design and implement policies that can end a recession, doesn't that imply that bad economic times can actually be warded off before they arrive? More simply, if it's possible to fix something that's broken, shouldn't it logically follow that the damage can be averted in the first place? If so, that would imply that, in theory, recessions are all avoidable.
I'm sorry, but I'm just too much of an empiricist to buy this Utopian vision. If life has taught me nothing else, it's that bad things sometimes happen. And just because there are comprehensible causes of those bad things, this does not mean we can head them off at the pass. After this recession, a lot of economists will no doubt study the factors that gave birth to it and get the postmortem right; however, this does not in any way imply that anybody can solve the problem in the present tense.
But do Barack Obama and his advisers know this? After all, we are talking about a group of people who are accustomed to succeeding at mental challenges, and the mindset that engenders does not lend itself to intellectual humility. Years spent integrating Taylor series and receiving high marks on term papers at the most prestigious universities in the world can go a long way toward convincing an intelligent person that there's nothing he doesn't know or can't figure out. And with the pro-Obama press clamoring for his administration to get to work "fixing" the economy, we are already hearing assurances that they have all the answers.
Such confidence frightens me. Consider: In 1933, Franklin Roosevelt took office and appointed "whiz kid" technocrats to combat the Great Depression. His administration was nothing if not energetic and well-intentioned, but six years later, the country was still mired in depression. Can Obama's Ivy Leaguers succeed where they failed? Or will they approach today's crisis with the humility that comes from recognizing their limitations as imperfect human beings?
Or more abstractly, have they considered the possibility that this is not a test, and there are no right answers?
I believe there are essentially two ways to view what's happening in our present economy. There is the enlightened liberal position that government must take certain actions to bring us out of this recession; and there is the competing position, that try though it might, the government can't save the day, and that we as a country are best off simply weathering the storm. The first view is predicated on the notion that if you get enough "very, very smart" people together in a room and tell them to solve a problem, they'll drink a lot of caffeine, stay up very late, and eventually find the solution. The second position is rooted in a much more pragmatic world-view, in which bad things sometimes happen and there's nothing anyone can do to change that.
Consider the implications of the "we can fix it" position: If it's possible for a government of very smart, very earnest people to design and implement policies that can end a recession, doesn't that imply that bad economic times can actually be warded off before they arrive? More simply, if it's possible to fix something that's broken, shouldn't it logically follow that the damage can be averted in the first place? If so, that would imply that, in theory, recessions are all avoidable.
I'm sorry, but I'm just too much of an empiricist to buy this Utopian vision. If life has taught me nothing else, it's that bad things sometimes happen. And just because there are comprehensible causes of those bad things, this does not mean we can head them off at the pass. After this recession, a lot of economists will no doubt study the factors that gave birth to it and get the postmortem right; however, this does not in any way imply that anybody can solve the problem in the present tense.
But do Barack Obama and his advisers know this? After all, we are talking about a group of people who are accustomed to succeeding at mental challenges, and the mindset that engenders does not lend itself to intellectual humility. Years spent integrating Taylor series and receiving high marks on term papers at the most prestigious universities in the world can go a long way toward convincing an intelligent person that there's nothing he doesn't know or can't figure out. And with the pro-Obama press clamoring for his administration to get to work "fixing" the economy, we are already hearing assurances that they have all the answers.
Such confidence frightens me. Consider: In 1933, Franklin Roosevelt took office and appointed "whiz kid" technocrats to combat the Great Depression. His administration was nothing if not energetic and well-intentioned, but six years later, the country was still mired in depression. Can Obama's Ivy Leaguers succeed where they failed? Or will they approach today's crisis with the humility that comes from recognizing their limitations as imperfect human beings?
Or more abstractly, have they considered the possibility that this is not a test, and there are no right answers?
Saturday, November 15, 2008
Champions of Failure
I tried to have a pleasant, relaxing Saturday. I really, really tried. All was going well, up until about two minutes ago, when I read this op-ed in today's New York Times by Bob Herbert. And that's when my heretofore enjoyable day went completely off the rails. Just knowing that perhaps the most influential newspaper in the country employs someone as intellectually threadbare and vapid as Bob Herbert to write a twice-weekly opinion column fills me with despair.
To get right to it: In case you live under a rock, America's automakers, which have been on the decline for years due to high costs and a reputation for making bad cars, are now seriously flirting with actual bankruptcy. Particularly GM, which announced just recently that it is losing money at the rate of about $2 billion a month. At this pace, the company projects that it could be out of cash and in bankruptcy court by early in 2009. So naturally, GM is doing what every troubled business enterprise does these days: Demand a federal bailout. In GM's case, such a bailout would come in the form of a $25 billion (for starters) loan from the government.
It now appears that Democrats lack the support to pass such a loan, until the new Congress convenes in January, so at least for the time being, this latest transfer of losses from the private sector to the taxpayers is on hold. And much to the chagrin of Bob Herbert, who, as usual, knows just how our economy ought to be structured. Sniffs Herbert:
"If G.M., which is on life support, or Ford or Chrysler were to go bankrupt, the reverberations would kill the jobs of entire armies of American workers. It would undermine the standard of living of hundreds of thousands of families and shutter the entrances of untold numbers of small and intermediate businesses."
To stave off this potential economic nightmare, Herbert would have the federal government step in to instruct GM, which has been in the business of selling automobiles for exactly 100 years, on how to build cars people actually want. The Treasury would open its bottomless pockets yet again to lend GM however many billions it needs, but with conditions. In Herbert's own words: "That means dragging the industry (kicking and screaming, no doubt) into the 21st century by insisting on ironclad commitments to design and develop vehicles that make sense economically and that serve the nation’s long-term energy security requirements." (Italics mine.)
Is the man serious? In a single sentence, he proposes that the government force a for-profit company to operate profitably, AND serve the "nation's long-term energy security requirements." Does he really believe that GM's management hasn't been trying to make money all this time, and that a government-appointed technocrat will succeed where a once-mighty industrial giant has failed? Earth to Bob Herbert: If a group of people who've spent their entire careers trying to make money building and selling cars can no longer do it, the federal government is not going to lead them back to profitability.
And how about that "serve the nation" business? Is Mr. Herbert aware that the political system in which government coerces nominally private companies into "serving the nation" by building what the government decrees is called "fascism"?
So, allow me to offer a competing analysis (a very short one, I promise) of GM's woes: GM is a massive company with too many brands, too many dealerships, too many employees and prohibitively costly labor agreements. GM workers earn, between wages, pension and health care benefits, upwards of $70 an hour, whereas nonunionized workers at Japanese car plants located in the U.S. make considerably less (though by no means poorhouse wages). In recent years, GM, like the other two Detroit car makers, has depended heavily on SUV and truck sales to stay afloat, and demand for those highly profitable vehicles is evaporating.
In other words, GM's problems are structural, long-term problems that cannot be fixed by anything short of a major overhaul. And this is exactly what bankruptcy is designed to promote. Bankruptcy would allow GM to renegotiate the impossibly high wages it pays employees, sell off production facilities and entire brands to eliminate dead weight, and begin the painful process of scaling itself back down to a manageable-sized company that can compete with foreign rivals. Bankruptcy does NOT mean that all of a sudden, poof, no more GM, as Bob Herbert implies with all his doomsday scenarios. In recent years, US Airways, United Airlines and Delta all declared bankruptcy; surely he's noticed that those companies still exist today, right?
And really, what alternative to bankruptcy can Herbert offer? Well, here it is, in his own words: "The government should craft a rescue plan that is both tough and very, very smart." So let me see if I have this straight, Bob: Your plan is for someone else to come up with a good plan?
Good plan.
To get right to it: In case you live under a rock, America's automakers, which have been on the decline for years due to high costs and a reputation for making bad cars, are now seriously flirting with actual bankruptcy. Particularly GM, which announced just recently that it is losing money at the rate of about $2 billion a month. At this pace, the company projects that it could be out of cash and in bankruptcy court by early in 2009. So naturally, GM is doing what every troubled business enterprise does these days: Demand a federal bailout. In GM's case, such a bailout would come in the form of a $25 billion (for starters) loan from the government.
It now appears that Democrats lack the support to pass such a loan, until the new Congress convenes in January, so at least for the time being, this latest transfer of losses from the private sector to the taxpayers is on hold. And much to the chagrin of Bob Herbert, who, as usual, knows just how our economy ought to be structured. Sniffs Herbert:
"If G.M., which is on life support, or Ford or Chrysler were to go bankrupt, the reverberations would kill the jobs of entire armies of American workers. It would undermine the standard of living of hundreds of thousands of families and shutter the entrances of untold numbers of small and intermediate businesses."
To stave off this potential economic nightmare, Herbert would have the federal government step in to instruct GM, which has been in the business of selling automobiles for exactly 100 years, on how to build cars people actually want. The Treasury would open its bottomless pockets yet again to lend GM however many billions it needs, but with conditions. In Herbert's own words: "That means dragging the industry (kicking and screaming, no doubt) into the 21st century by insisting on ironclad commitments to design and develop vehicles that make sense economically and that serve the nation’s long-term energy security requirements." (Italics mine.)
Is the man serious? In a single sentence, he proposes that the government force a for-profit company to operate profitably, AND serve the "nation's long-term energy security requirements." Does he really believe that GM's management hasn't been trying to make money all this time, and that a government-appointed technocrat will succeed where a once-mighty industrial giant has failed? Earth to Bob Herbert: If a group of people who've spent their entire careers trying to make money building and selling cars can no longer do it, the federal government is not going to lead them back to profitability.
And how about that "serve the nation" business? Is Mr. Herbert aware that the political system in which government coerces nominally private companies into "serving the nation" by building what the government decrees is called "fascism"?
So, allow me to offer a competing analysis (a very short one, I promise) of GM's woes: GM is a massive company with too many brands, too many dealerships, too many employees and prohibitively costly labor agreements. GM workers earn, between wages, pension and health care benefits, upwards of $70 an hour, whereas nonunionized workers at Japanese car plants located in the U.S. make considerably less (though by no means poorhouse wages). In recent years, GM, like the other two Detroit car makers, has depended heavily on SUV and truck sales to stay afloat, and demand for those highly profitable vehicles is evaporating.
In other words, GM's problems are structural, long-term problems that cannot be fixed by anything short of a major overhaul. And this is exactly what bankruptcy is designed to promote. Bankruptcy would allow GM to renegotiate the impossibly high wages it pays employees, sell off production facilities and entire brands to eliminate dead weight, and begin the painful process of scaling itself back down to a manageable-sized company that can compete with foreign rivals. Bankruptcy does NOT mean that all of a sudden, poof, no more GM, as Bob Herbert implies with all his doomsday scenarios. In recent years, US Airways, United Airlines and Delta all declared bankruptcy; surely he's noticed that those companies still exist today, right?
And really, what alternative to bankruptcy can Herbert offer? Well, here it is, in his own words: "The government should craft a rescue plan that is both tough and very, very smart." So let me see if I have this straight, Bob: Your plan is for someone else to come up with a good plan?
Good plan.
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
A Bear Market for Liberty?
As I was reminded by a random commenter on a recent blog post, there is no shortage of people in this country with irrational and absurd notions as to how our society and its economy "ought" to be structured. And as a rule of thumb, I try not to pay them much heed. One of the greatest things about this great country of ours is that everybody has the constitutional right to say whatever they please, without fear of legal retribution. But the unspoken corollary to that freedom is that no one is obligated to listen, thank God.
However, when influential people with irrational and absurd notions of how our economy "ought" to be structured have certain powerful congressmen nodding in agreement, I tend to sit up and take note. And such is the case right now. Lost in all the sound and fury over the looming election and the plunging economy is a proposal -- currently winning some powerful converts on Capitol Hill -- that would fundamentally alter the way most Americans save and invest for their retirement years.
Economist Teresa Ghilarducci of the New School for Social Research has lately been promoting a plan to scrap the current system of allowing workers to shelter a portion of their income from taxes by investing it in a 401(k) or company-sponsored pension plan, and replace it with a government-run system in which all workers must participate by contributing at least 5 percent of their paycheck. In return, they'd receive an annual tax credit of $600, and a "guaranteed" return on their retirement savings of 3 percent, adjusted for inflation. Are we having fun yet?
The rationale for this not-so-subtle abrogation of personal freedom and choice is multifaceted, and deserving of at least a little consideration. First and foremost, such a plan would end the "subsidy" that 401(k) and pension plan contributions receive by virtue of their tax-exempt status. Ms. Ghilarducci -- who apparently cannot sleep at night knowing that somewhere, someone is not paying taxes on some of their income -- claims that this tax exemption costs the federal government $80 billion in lost revenue each year. (Just for context, this figure represents about 2.5 percent of the current federal budget.)
But more important than the added tax revenue, the Ghilarducci plan would "guarantee" an after-inflation return of 3 percent on workers' accounts, to guard against plummets in the stock market, such as the current one that's got so many workers nervous about their pensions and 401(k)'s these days. In a comment that deserves serious consideration for "Most Fatuous Statement of the Century," Ghilarducci notes that, "These last three weeks people are learning their 401(k) plans can go down." Who knew!
So, rather than allowing workers to choose whether and to what degree to participate in a company-sponsored retirement plan, and in the case of 401(k)'s, to choose what type and risk-level of assets to invest in, Teresa Ghilarducci would like to make that choice for you. Or rather, she'd like to abolish choice and turn your retirement fate over to the Social Security Administration. To make good on that guaranteed 3 percent return her plan promises, the government would invest workers' money in the only asset that can plausibly guarantee any level of return: government bonds!
So what sets this particular know-it-all economist apart from all the other self-proclaimed geniuses who would like to be running our lives? Well, in this case, a federal audience. George Miller of California and Jim McDermott of Washington, both Democrats in the House of Representatives, invited Ms. Ghilarducci to pitch her plan to their respective committees, and apparently they both like what they heard. McDermott's press secretary said the idea "Certainly is intriguing." No legislation is pending, but with both houses of Congress and the presidency all but certain to be in Democratic hands this January, there's really no need to rush.
And just think of it! Hundreds of millions of workers becoming more dependent on the federal government for their basic quality of life! Trillions of dollars currently locked up in pensions and 401(k)'s that will suddenly become available to finance the trillion-dollar annual deficits the government is expected to run starting next year! What isn't there for a big-government liberal to love?
To be sure, the last couple of months have served as a wake-up call to anyone who thought that investing in the stock market is a can't-miss proposition. Unfortunately, this is leading quite a few people to the very worst conclusion; namely, that the unavoidable risk that comes with any aspect of human existence serves as a justification to banish risk by government fiat, and that personal responsibility is trumped by promises of security.
"What people want from their pensions is guaranteed income for life,"Ghilarducci says. Actually, there is no end to what people probably want. As my favorite high school teacher taught me long ago, economics is the study of allocating finite resources among infinite desires. Unfortunately, modern liberalism has degenerated into the business of denying the former by pandering to the latter.
Post script: I employed a 401(k) calculator to determine whether a 25-year-old worker with zero savings and an income of $50,000 per year would be better off with a guaranteed return of 3 percent above inflation or the average stock market return of 7 percent above inflation, aided by the standard 50 percent match that most companies offer on employees' first 6 percent of income. The score after 35 years: $859,086.47 for the 401(k) and $286,927.89 for Ms. Ghilarducci.
However, when influential people with irrational and absurd notions of how our economy "ought" to be structured have certain powerful congressmen nodding in agreement, I tend to sit up and take note. And such is the case right now. Lost in all the sound and fury over the looming election and the plunging economy is a proposal -- currently winning some powerful converts on Capitol Hill -- that would fundamentally alter the way most Americans save and invest for their retirement years.
Economist Teresa Ghilarducci of the New School for Social Research has lately been promoting a plan to scrap the current system of allowing workers to shelter a portion of their income from taxes by investing it in a 401(k) or company-sponsored pension plan, and replace it with a government-run system in which all workers must participate by contributing at least 5 percent of their paycheck. In return, they'd receive an annual tax credit of $600, and a "guaranteed" return on their retirement savings of 3 percent, adjusted for inflation. Are we having fun yet?
The rationale for this not-so-subtle abrogation of personal freedom and choice is multifaceted, and deserving of at least a little consideration. First and foremost, such a plan would end the "subsidy" that 401(k) and pension plan contributions receive by virtue of their tax-exempt status. Ms. Ghilarducci -- who apparently cannot sleep at night knowing that somewhere, someone is not paying taxes on some of their income -- claims that this tax exemption costs the federal government $80 billion in lost revenue each year. (Just for context, this figure represents about 2.5 percent of the current federal budget.)
But more important than the added tax revenue, the Ghilarducci plan would "guarantee" an after-inflation return of 3 percent on workers' accounts, to guard against plummets in the stock market, such as the current one that's got so many workers nervous about their pensions and 401(k)'s these days. In a comment that deserves serious consideration for "Most Fatuous Statement of the Century," Ghilarducci notes that, "These last three weeks people are learning their 401(k) plans can go down." Who knew!
So, rather than allowing workers to choose whether and to what degree to participate in a company-sponsored retirement plan, and in the case of 401(k)'s, to choose what type and risk-level of assets to invest in, Teresa Ghilarducci would like to make that choice for you. Or rather, she'd like to abolish choice and turn your retirement fate over to the Social Security Administration. To make good on that guaranteed 3 percent return her plan promises, the government would invest workers' money in the only asset that can plausibly guarantee any level of return: government bonds!
So what sets this particular know-it-all economist apart from all the other self-proclaimed geniuses who would like to be running our lives? Well, in this case, a federal audience. George Miller of California and Jim McDermott of Washington, both Democrats in the House of Representatives, invited Ms. Ghilarducci to pitch her plan to their respective committees, and apparently they both like what they heard. McDermott's press secretary said the idea "Certainly is intriguing." No legislation is pending, but with both houses of Congress and the presidency all but certain to be in Democratic hands this January, there's really no need to rush.
And just think of it! Hundreds of millions of workers becoming more dependent on the federal government for their basic quality of life! Trillions of dollars currently locked up in pensions and 401(k)'s that will suddenly become available to finance the trillion-dollar annual deficits the government is expected to run starting next year! What isn't there for a big-government liberal to love?
To be sure, the last couple of months have served as a wake-up call to anyone who thought that investing in the stock market is a can't-miss proposition. Unfortunately, this is leading quite a few people to the very worst conclusion; namely, that the unavoidable risk that comes with any aspect of human existence serves as a justification to banish risk by government fiat, and that personal responsibility is trumped by promises of security.
"What people want from their pensions is guaranteed income for life,"Ghilarducci says. Actually, there is no end to what people probably want. As my favorite high school teacher taught me long ago, economics is the study of allocating finite resources among infinite desires. Unfortunately, modern liberalism has degenerated into the business of denying the former by pandering to the latter.
Post script: I employed a 401(k) calculator to determine whether a 25-year-old worker with zero savings and an income of $50,000 per year would be better off with a guaranteed return of 3 percent above inflation or the average stock market return of 7 percent above inflation, aided by the standard 50 percent match that most companies offer on employees' first 6 percent of income. The score after 35 years: $859,086.47 for the 401(k) and $286,927.89 for Ms. Ghilarducci.
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Airbrushing a Crisis
"Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past."
~Eric Blair, aka George Orwell
I don't believe I'm going out on a limb in saying that there are at present a number of troubling and unsettling currents permeating the media and the national consciousness in general. Read any newspaper, watch any news program, or talk to anybody even remotely abreast of current events, and you're likely to encounter a competing host of negative sentiments: unease, or perhaps outright fear, over the state of our teetering economy and still-falling stock markets; apprehension about the upcoming presidential election and what the outcome will mean for all of us; and in general, a certain dread as to what the immediate and distant future will bring to a country that already believes itself to be on the wrong track. And marching in lockstep with the advancing malaise comes a growing interest in blame: blame for our present woes, and the parties who deserve it.
Liberal politicians and influential opinion-shapers didn't have to look very far for the villain responsible for failing banks and plunging 401(k) portfolios. Free-market capitalism has been caught red-handed, they announce;all those misguided theories about deregulated markets and laissez-faire economics have delivered us unto the brink of disaster and now deserve the intellectual equivalent of euthanasia. Harold Meyerson of the Washington Post makes the case for the prosecution with as much self-assured rectitude as the most zealous Marxist: "What exactly do economic conservatives believe now that their god is dead? What's become of the glories of privatized Social Security? Of the merits of 401(k)s vs. defined-benefit pensions?"
His prose might border on the florid, but Meyerson is representative of the entire political Left, which has already delivered a guilty verdict in the case against capitalism. Wealthy Wall Street hucksters, the popular narrative runs, spent years trafficking in shoddy mortgage-backed investments they either didn't understood, or understood to be junk, eager only to cash in before the bottom fell out. And now, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average down a tidy 6,000 points or so since last year, the bottom has well and truly fallen out. The agreed-upon catalyst in this version of the story -- the recent collapse of the housing market -- was all that was required to bring the whole shaky edifice down.
It all makes for compelling op-ed pieces, and it almost certainly guarantees that the liberal intelligentsia's political champion will ascend to the presidency this fall, but something is missing. Lost in all the recriminations over who's to blame and the ominous rumbles about nationalizing banks is a question that isn't being asked. Why exactly did the housing market, which had been red-hot for so many years, start to crater recently? And why were there so many of these so-called "toxic" mortgage-backed securities for Wall Street vandals to dabble in? The answer calls the popular narrative vilifying capitalism into question, and might spread the blame around a bit more evenly.
In 1999, long before anyone had heard of "collateralized debt obligations" or "asset-backed securities" or any of the other wreckage that litters today's financial landscape, The New York Times printed a brief article that today sounds stunning, and even chilling, in its prediction of things to come. It's short, it's comprehensible, and I implore anyone interested in understanding today's crisis to read it.
The upshot: that government-backed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac deliberately steered billions of dollars in mortgage financing to risky borrowers, with potentially ruinous implications: "In moving, even tentatively, into this new area of lending, Fannie Mae is taking on significantly more risk, which may not pose any difficulties during flush economic times. But the government-subsidized corporation may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue similar to that of the savings and loan industry in the 1980's." And one Peter Wallison, of the unabashedly free-market American Enterprise Institute, anticipated the consequences with remarkably acuity: ''From the perspective of many people, including me, this is another thrift industry growing up around us ... If they fail, the government will have to step up and bail them out the way it stepped up and bailed out the thrift industry.'' Nine years later, Fannie and Freddie failed, the government had to bail them out, and taxpayers are left with the bill.
I offer this quick trip back in time not as a categorical refutation of the charges that unchecked, capitalist greed is at the root of all our troubles, but simply as a reason to stop and think. Anyone who tries to sell you a quick and easy explanation of an economic recession or a financial crisis, with well-defined villains and heroes, is offering a false bill of goods. Times such as these call for honest historical inquiry into the roots of the problem, not political witch trials seeking scapegoats. A decade ago, at least a few prescient observers saw the seeds of today's crisis taking root, and they discerned the unmistakable influence of government at work in the sewing. Consider this the next time you hear some demagogue of the Left try to take ownership of the past while doling out damnation in the present.
~Eric Blair, aka George Orwell
I don't believe I'm going out on a limb in saying that there are at present a number of troubling and unsettling currents permeating the media and the national consciousness in general. Read any newspaper, watch any news program, or talk to anybody even remotely abreast of current events, and you're likely to encounter a competing host of negative sentiments: unease, or perhaps outright fear, over the state of our teetering economy and still-falling stock markets; apprehension about the upcoming presidential election and what the outcome will mean for all of us; and in general, a certain dread as to what the immediate and distant future will bring to a country that already believes itself to be on the wrong track. And marching in lockstep with the advancing malaise comes a growing interest in blame: blame for our present woes, and the parties who deserve it.
Liberal politicians and influential opinion-shapers didn't have to look very far for the villain responsible for failing banks and plunging 401(k) portfolios. Free-market capitalism has been caught red-handed, they announce;all those misguided theories about deregulated markets and laissez-faire economics have delivered us unto the brink of disaster and now deserve the intellectual equivalent of euthanasia. Harold Meyerson of the Washington Post makes the case for the prosecution with as much self-assured rectitude as the most zealous Marxist: "What exactly do economic conservatives believe now that their god is dead? What's become of the glories of privatized Social Security? Of the merits of 401(k)s vs. defined-benefit pensions?"
His prose might border on the florid, but Meyerson is representative of the entire political Left, which has already delivered a guilty verdict in the case against capitalism. Wealthy Wall Street hucksters, the popular narrative runs, spent years trafficking in shoddy mortgage-backed investments they either didn't understood, or understood to be junk, eager only to cash in before the bottom fell out. And now, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average down a tidy 6,000 points or so since last year, the bottom has well and truly fallen out. The agreed-upon catalyst in this version of the story -- the recent collapse of the housing market -- was all that was required to bring the whole shaky edifice down.
It all makes for compelling op-ed pieces, and it almost certainly guarantees that the liberal intelligentsia's political champion will ascend to the presidency this fall, but something is missing. Lost in all the recriminations over who's to blame and the ominous rumbles about nationalizing banks is a question that isn't being asked. Why exactly did the housing market, which had been red-hot for so many years, start to crater recently? And why were there so many of these so-called "toxic" mortgage-backed securities for Wall Street vandals to dabble in? The answer calls the popular narrative vilifying capitalism into question, and might spread the blame around a bit more evenly.
In 1999, long before anyone had heard of "collateralized debt obligations" or "asset-backed securities" or any of the other wreckage that litters today's financial landscape, The New York Times printed a brief article that today sounds stunning, and even chilling, in its prediction of things to come. It's short, it's comprehensible, and I implore anyone interested in understanding today's crisis to read it.
The upshot: that government-backed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac deliberately steered billions of dollars in mortgage financing to risky borrowers, with potentially ruinous implications: "In moving, even tentatively, into this new area of lending, Fannie Mae is taking on significantly more risk, which may not pose any difficulties during flush economic times. But the government-subsidized corporation may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue similar to that of the savings and loan industry in the 1980's." And one Peter Wallison, of the unabashedly free-market American Enterprise Institute, anticipated the consequences with remarkably acuity: ''From the perspective of many people, including me, this is another thrift industry growing up around us ... If they fail, the government will have to step up and bail them out the way it stepped up and bailed out the thrift industry.'' Nine years later, Fannie and Freddie failed, the government had to bail them out, and taxpayers are left with the bill.
I offer this quick trip back in time not as a categorical refutation of the charges that unchecked, capitalist greed is at the root of all our troubles, but simply as a reason to stop and think. Anyone who tries to sell you a quick and easy explanation of an economic recession or a financial crisis, with well-defined villains and heroes, is offering a false bill of goods. Times such as these call for honest historical inquiry into the roots of the problem, not political witch trials seeking scapegoats. A decade ago, at least a few prescient observers saw the seeds of today's crisis taking root, and they discerned the unmistakable influence of government at work in the sewing. Consider this the next time you hear some demagogue of the Left try to take ownership of the past while doling out damnation in the present.
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