the administration’s tax “plan” offers less detail than most supermarket receipts
.. The funny thing about that confidence surge, however, was that it was very much along partisan lines — a sharp decline among Democrats, but a huge rise among Republicans. This raises the obvious question: Were those reporting a huge increase in optimism really feeling that much better about their economic prospects, or were they simply using the survey as an opportunity to affirm the rightness of their vote?
.. almost nobody ever admits being wrong about anything
.. when Bloomberg surveyed a group of economists who had predicted that Ben Bernanke’s policies would cause runaway inflation, they literally couldn’t find a single person willing to admit, after years of low inflation, having been mistaken.
.. most voters probably got the message that the political/media establishment considered Trump ignorant and temperamentally unqualified to be president. So the Trump vote had a strong element of: “Ha! You elites think you’re so smart? We’ll show you!”
.. What will Trump’s Katrina moment look like? Will it be the collapse of health insurance due to administration sabotage? A recession this White House has no idea how to handle? A natural disaster or public health crisis? One way or another, it’s coming.
Q&A: Economist Tyler Cowen Thinks Americans Are Too Complacent
The George Mason University author says Americans have lost the pioneer spirit that created a more dynamic country
.. I think this has always been a country that gets things done by plunging in first and figuring out later how to pay for it.
.. we move across state lines at much lower rates. We take fewer risks in many forms. We hold a higher percentage of government-insured safe assets. We are far, far more risk-averse with how we bring up our children—often we don’t even let them play outside anymore. There is a lot of data about how we innovate less.
.. Mobility used to be much higher in our history and in many regards measured segregation is going up.
.. if you look at lower earners–how many years people stay at home, that a lot of them are less likely to get married, or aspire to own their own home or cars, how many extra hours they spend playing video games or watching pornography or smoking marijuana. To me those are signs of a kind of complacency... There’s a new paper by Erik Hurst and he measures a lot of the less-skilled, out-of-work males and he thinks they are actually very happy or they at least think their situation is OK... everyone thought the internet would help make a more dynamic world. Instead, you suggest it allows people to stay within their comfort zone—they order up the music or food or news they know they like rather than exploring, trying something new... I don’t think of Trump himself as a change agent. I view him as someone who talked a good game on change but in fact has been doing nothing, doesn’t know how to get things done, was mostly about rhetoric. In a way, his biggest promise was to bring back the past and along the way not to cut entitlements. So he’s actually the ultimate complacent president... Q: What will it take to make the U.S. a more dynamic nation again?
A: There’s what we could do and won’t do: Take more chances, start new businesses, deregulate a lot, expose ourselves to a lot more risks, segregate less.
.. I think the actual reality is we will have some kind of crack-up in terms of governance and institutional quality and we’ll be forced to become dynamic again just because we won’t be able to escape risk by burrowing in more deeply... I discuss three scenarios.
- One would be a debt crisis, which I don’t think is the most likely.
- Another would be a foreign-policy crisis where we just don’t have the wherewithal to respond to it.
- And the the third would be this ongoing collapse in the quality of governance, and I think that’s what we have been seeing so far–when nothing the president says seems to matter, no deal can be cut.
The Republican Party has no coherence, the Democratic Party doesn’t either. I don’t think you call it gridlock anymore. Gridlock is very 2011. This is some new phenomenon of chaos and lack of coherence.
Mistakes, He’s Made a Few Too Many
Crisis will inevitably strike, so America needs stability and strength. Will Trump be ready?
2008 and the years just after (the crash and the weak recovery) had changed everything in America, and that the country was going to choose, in coming decades, one of two paths—a moderate populism or socialism—and that the former was vastly to be preferred, for reasons of the nation’s health.
.. Undergirding my thinking is the sense that a big bad day is coming—that we have too many enemies, and some of them have the talent to hurt us, and one or more inevitably will.
.. our country is stressed to the point of fracture culturally, economically, politically, spiritually. We find it hard to hold together on a peaceful day, never mind a violent one.
.. The priority is stabilizing and strengthening what we have, and encouraging wherever possible an atmosphere of peacefulness and respect.
.. This Thursday he may have launched a Republican civil war: The Freedom Caucus had better “get on the team, & fast. We must fight them, & the Dems, in 2018!” That will help promote harmony.
.. Mr. Trump revealed that he has no deep knowledge of who his base is, who his people are. I’ve never seen that in politics. But Mr. Trump’s supporters didn’t like the bill. If they had wanted a Republican president who deals only with the right, to produce a rightist bill, they would have chosen Ted Cruz.
.. I had worked in a White House. I had personally observed its deeper realities and requirements. Their sense of how a White House works came from news shows and reading, and also from TV shows such as “House of Cards” and “Scandal.” Those are dark, cynical shows that more or less suggest anyone can be president.
..
Crisis reveals the character, the essential nature of a White House. Seventy days in, that is my worry.
Trump and North Korea: A Looming Foreign Policy Crisis
As I have written before, the North Koreans are serious about building a nuclear deterrent and we are not serious about stopping them.
.. He figured Washington actually wanted Pyongyang to have nuclear weapons so it could tighten its alliances with South Korea and Japan.
.. North Korea has methodically plotted and implemented a strategy of building missiles and warheads using the political shield of China
.. Sunday’s launch of a new but short-range ballistic missile able only to reach South Korea and Japan may have been the least provocative provocation that North Koreans could devise.
.. There will be a price to pay, of course. In the near-term, it may require lifting sanctions, eventually replacing the temporary armistice ending the Korean War with a permanent peace treaty, signifying the end of enmity and of what the North Koreans call Washington’s “hostile policy.”
.. we may be on the cusp of the Trump administration’s first major foreign policy crisis, with last Sunday’s missile test only the first in a series of missiles and nuclear weapons tests. Unless Washington quickly formulates a strategy for dealing with Pyongyang — that includes not only sanctions and protecting our allies but diplomatic outreach to the North — it is going to be a rough ride.