Mozart and the Illusion of Political Stability

An Illusion of Stability

Recently, as I drank my second cup of coffee and looked out at a beautiful, sunny morning, I listened to one of Mozart's horn concertos. The music was lovely and conveyed a comforting sense of order and stability as his music generally does. His original audiences must have felt that it expressed well their feeling that they lived in a world that was itself well-ordered and secure. As I drank my coffee, I imagined a roomful of wealthy Viennese or Parisians listening to Mozart’s music and thinking how comfortable and secure their lives and their social order were.

We know now that their comfort was an illusion. Their governments and their social order were tottering to a fall. The French Revolution took place in Mozart’s lifetime as did the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. The Napoleonic Wars, which destabilized all of the governments and societies of Europe, occurred only a few years later. As I thought about that, I wondered whether our political situation today may be similar to that of Mozart’s original listeners. I wondered whether our sense of stability and order may not also be an illusion.

We too live under a government and in a social order that seem stable and secure. Those of us who are comfortably well off feel secure in our positions just as Mozart’s listeners did. Oldsters like me receive our Social Security checks regularly and draw from our retirement accounts. We sip our coffee, and we appreciate the orderliness of Mozart’s music. We feel secure, but our government and society are threatened just as the governments and societies of Mozart's contemporaries were threatened and for the same reasons.

Why the French Revolution Happened

The French Revolution was triggered by the fact that the French government was broke. The revenue of the government did not cover its expenses, and it had to borrow money to pay its bills. Its debts grew larger every year, and lenders were becoming more and more reluctant to lend. One of the reasons for this situation was that the nobles who owned most of the country’s wealth refused to pay taxes. To find a way out of that difficulty, the king had to convene a national parliament: the Estates General. We all know what happened after that.

The French government’s need for money triggered the revolution but was not its only cause. Pressure for change had been building for decades. The new, urban middle class resented the privileges of the nobility, and the urban proletariat demanded food and justice. The peasants in the countryside were also deeply oppressed and often on the verge of starvation. The royal government, like ours, refused to acknowledge the problems of the people. When the poor complained that they had no bread to eat, Queen Marie Antoinette famously responded, "Then let them eat cake." There were extravagant displays of wealth next to extreme poverty. The king and the nobles sat atop a social order that was waiting to explode.

Are We Too Deluded?

We too live in a social order and under a government that seem to be secure and stable, but we too have a government whose expenditures outrun its revenue. Our government, like that of eighteenth-century France, has to borrow money to cover its costs. Our upper class, like that of eighteenth-century France, owns most of the country’s wealth and refuses to pay a fair share of the taxes. In our country as in eighteenth-century France, social injustices have been accumulating. Perhaps our society like that of eighteenth-century France is a cauldron waiting to explode. 

The strains in our system are visible in both of our political parties. The Republican Party is an uneasy alliance between its billionaire wing and its working-class MAGA voters. The party uses racist and nationalist appeals to cover its oligarchic ambitions. The billionaire wing, represented by Elon Musk, is working as fast as it can to reduce the costs of government enough to allow the already minimal taxes that the wealthy pay to be reduced still further. The working-class MAGA voters depend on services that the billionaires want to eliminate. 

The Democratic Party, which has in the past claimed to be the party of the working class can no longer count on the unwavering support of labor unions and has yet to devise a unified response to the Trump administration. The Party is divided between its "progressive" wing and its "centrist" wing. The latter suffers from the illusion that there are still "independent" and "undecided" voters in our electorate. The party has so far been unable to unite around a progressive, populist platform that might really appeal to working-class voters.

In the meantime, the cost of living continues to rise for most Americans, and healthcare emergencies remain the number one cause of personal bankruptcy. Housing becomes every day more unaffordable. Our president wants to put a tariff on Canadian lumber, and that will of course make housing still more expensive. Many of our people have lost faith in our system of government because it has failed to live up to the tacit bargain that makes representative democracy consistent with market capitalism. In the meantime, our president and his people are working to stifle dissent and weaken our democracy. W. B. Yeats put it well:

    Turning and turning in the widening gyre
    The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
    Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
    Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
    The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
    The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
    The best lack all conviction, while the worst

    Are full of passionate intensity.

Perhaps the comfort that I felt listening to Mozart’s Horn Concerto was as delusional as the comfort felt by his original audiences. Après nous le déluge?

Grifter in a Hurry

A Man in a Hurry

Our Grifter-in-Chief (GC) is in a hurry.  He is in a hurry because he knows that he has only a about a year to pull off one of the greatest and most spectular long cons in history: his plan to change the tax system and cut key programs in order to steal money from his working and middle-class supporters to give to billionaires like himself, like Elon Musk or like Jeff Bezos. The GC has only about a year to pull this off because historically, the president’s party loses support in the midterm elections, and because once the election season begins, he will have little chance of passing major legislation. 

A Grifter Masquerading as a Populist

In order to pull of his spectacular long con, the GC ran for office claiming to be a populist, a voice of the people against an oppressive elite. He claimed that the government was controlled by a shadowy elite in alliance with a deep state, and he said that he would be the voice of the people. If he were elected, he claimed, the people would truly be represented. 

However, the GC's populism was always a masquerade. We can see that in the main achievement of his first term in which he did nothing for working Americans but did provide a major tax cut for wealthy people like him. That was the first stage of his long con, and I imagine that he was surprised that he could pull it off so easily. 

Now, he wants to steal still more money from you and me to give to billionaires, and if he succeeds, the effect will be the greatest transfer of wealth from the American middle class to the very wealthy that our people have ever seen. To achieve that goal, he will have to cut government spending severely because otherwise, the deficit hawks in Congress will block him. His only hope of pulling off such a huge transfer of wealth is to cut services like Medicaid, Medicare and SNAP that many of his voters depend on. Such cuts will inevitably alienate many of his supporters.

The GC's populist masquerade allowed him to build a political coalition which included rural voters and the racist right. To satisfy the racist right, he promised to deport millions of immigrant workers.  Unfortunately for his coalition, that effort will decimate the work force on which many farmers and agricultural businesses depend. So, deporting the workers will split the GC's coalition, and therefore, he has to do it quickly before opposition has time to organize.

Tariffs are also a part of the GC's plan. In fact, they are a key part of the con. He has proposed that the revenue from the tariffs (paid mainly by the middle class) will replace the revenue lost when he cuts income taxes (which fall heavily on the rich).  The tariffs will not hurt the rich very much because they do not spend much of their income on goods that are taxed, and any small hurt that they feel will be more than offset by benefit they receive from a reduction in the income taxes that they pay. 

The tariffs will mainly be paid by poor and middle-class consumers who have to spend a large part of their incomes on goods that are taxed. In addition, the tariffs will bring more inflation as they cause prices to rise, and that, too, will hurt the poor and the middle class. Finally, the tariffs will bring retaliation from trading partners. The retaliation will hurt American agriculture, which depends on exports. So, the GC must complete the con before people notice what he is doing. He must cut taxes, raise tariffs and deport millions of people all before the midterm elections because he will very likely lose his control of Congress in 2026. He has just over a year to pull it off.

Time Pressure Underlies Political Conflicts

The pressure of time explains some of the political conflicts that the GC is involved in. For example, he and his supporters are furious at Judge Boasberg because his court orders will delay the deportations, and delay is the one thing that the GC cannot allow. So, he is calling for the impeachment of federal judges, and his supporters are looking for other ways to rein them in. 

The pressure of time also explains the speed of Musk’s firing of federal workers and dismantling of federal agencies. Again, the GC has no time for niceties like following legal procedures. He has to eliminate trillions of dollars in spending by the fall in order to be able to pass his tax cuts in the current Congress.

The pressure of time also explains the GC’s suppression of dissent including the muzzling of Democratic law firms. Dissent could lead to effective opposition and bring his carefully planned con to the attention of the voters. All of that would create delays that he cannot tolerate. So, he does what he can to suppress dissent.

A Ray of Hope

The time pressure that the GC is under is a ray of hope for those of us who want to preserve programs like Medicare, Medicaid and SNAP along with a progressive tax system and American democracy. Delay is our friend. We don’t have to defeat the GC decisively in the courts. We only have to delay the implementation of his policies for a year, and our system of justice provides an ideal means for doing that. We can tie him up in endless lawsuits and thus spoil his plan to rob the American people. A year is a blink of an eye in our judicial system. We can delay the long con that long. Of course, the GC will do what he can to defy or delay court rulings, but that effort will itself take time. So, there is light at the end of this tunnel.

The End of Free Speech in the United States?

An Arrest to Discourage Dissent

The recent arrest of Mahmoud Khalil should make you very angry and very afraid because it is a direct assault on your right to free speech. In case you think that I am exaggerating, read on. Here is a little background on the case.

Khalil is a legal resident of the United States with a green card. He was a graduate student at Columbia University and a leader of the demonstrations against Israel's invasion of Gaza. He was arrested under a 1952 law that says that an “alien whose presence or activities in the United States the secretary of state has reasonable ground to believe would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States is deportable.” After his arrest in New York, he was shipped to a prison camp in Louisiana.

Under the 1952 statute, the government does not have to say that Khalil has committed a crime, and in fact, he has not been accused of a crime. The government has only said that flyers bearing the logo of Hamas were distributed at a protest rally of which Khalil was a leader.  In effect, Khalil has been arrested and threatened with deportation because he is believed by the secretary of state to espouse views that our president doesn't like. The courts may well prevent Khalil from being deported, but that will not matter to the Trump administration because the purpose of arresting and trying Khalil is not merely to deport him. The purpose is to show us all that it is dangerous to disagree with our president. Let me repeat that. The purpose of arresting and trying Khalil is to show that it is dangerous to disagree with our president.  

The Case Was Chosen Carefully

The administration chose its case carefully. Khalil is Palestinian by birth, and the demonstrations he led were in opposition to the Israeli invasion of Gaza. There are deep divisions of opinion among Americans over the invasion. Many Jews, in particular, view any criticism of Israel as antisemitic, and many Christians also have strong reasons for supporting Israel. The Trump administration believes that many people will support the arrest and deportation of Khalil because of their feelings about the invasion of Gaza and will ignore the issues of free speech that Khalil’s arrest raises.

A Method For Suppressing Dissent

It would be a grave error to ignore those issues. What is being done to Khalil is a trial run for a method of suppressing all kinds of dissent in the United States. It is a method for eliminating freedom of speech for all of us and not just for Khalil or for Palestinians. The method is not new. A variant of it was used by HUAC and by Senator Joseph McCarthy Here is how it works.

The Trump administration has threatened to deport Khalil. A district court may declare that Khalil cannot be deported because he has committed no crime, but the Trump administration won’t care. It will appeal the case up though the court system, and that will enmesh Khalil for years in an expensive and time-consuming defense. Even if the administration ultimately loses the legal case, it will have proved that it can make protests against its policies extremely expensive.

The Method Can Be Used Against American Citizens

The method can be used not only against immigrants but also against any American citizen. It can be used against you or me. The government can bring a case against an American citizen under any law of its choosing and force the citizen to defend him/herself at great expense. It won’t matter that the case is bogus or that there is no evidence to support the accusation brought against the citizen because again, the goal is not to obtain a conviction. The goal is to frighten all of us into keeping silent, and that goal will be attained. The mere threat of such a suit will be enough to stifle most dissent. To avoid even the remote possibility of being sued by the government, most people will choose to be silent. Moreover, the method described here will not be used alone. Its effect will be magnified when it is used in combination with the institutionally focused methods described in last week's post, and the results will be devastating for free speech in the United States.

The Method Can Suppress Any Kind of Activism

The threat of lawsuits can also be used to prevent citizens from promoting causes or engaging in activities that the president opposes.  A recent article in The New Republic tells us that, "The FBI is moving to criminalize groups like Habitat for Humanity for receiving grants from the Environmental Protection Agency under the Biden administration." The groups are being accused of defrauding the United States by accepting the grants, and here again, the government can lose in court and still attain its objective, which is to make American citizens afraid to espouse causes or promote ideas that are opposed by the president. 

Resist While You Still Can

So, don't kid yourself. Khalil's case is not just about him. It is not about American policy in the Middle East or even about the rights of immigrants. It is about you. It is about all of us. It is about our freedom to speak out. If you care at all about preserving your freedom, you will resist with all of your strength while you still can. Soon, it may be too late.

Fake Science, Suppression of Dissent and Death

Who Was Lysenko?

Today, hardly anyone remembers  Trofim Lysenko, Josef Stalin’s favorite biologist, but in his day, he was responsible for millions of deaths. His story shows us how dangerous it is to put a believer in fake science in a position of authority that allows him/her to suppress dissenting views. Lysenko insisted, contrary to standard biological theory, that acquired characteristics could be inherited. His beliefs led him to recommend agricultural practices that were responsible for widespread crop failures that caused  the famines from which millions of people died in the Soviet Union in the early 1930s.

Lysenko was able to do what he did because Stalin suppressed dissent in the Soviet Union rigidly. A person could be imprisoned for expressing unapproved ideas including any disagreement with Lysenko’s scientific theories. So, there was a deadly silence. It was deadly because fake scientific theories can kill people, and that is what happened in the Soviet Union. Lysenko was put in charge of the collectivization of agriculture, and he was able to forcethe farmers to adopt practices that led to massive crop failures. As a result, millions of people died of famine in those years. No one could protest because dissent was suppressed, and protests were illegal.

Is Robert Kennedy a Lysenko?

Robert Kennedy, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, believes in fake science concerning vaccinations, and he is trying to suppress dissent. He has recently issued an order prohibiting public comments in the rule-making process at HHS. Rules regarding public health will be written without comment from scientists or others outside of HHS. Inevitably, bad decisions will be made, and bad public health decisions kill people. We are already seeing children die in the measles epidemic in Texas as a result of anti-vaccination propaganda.

The Battle Over the Suppression of Dissent Here at Home

Kennedy and Donald Trump his boss cannot yet suppress dissent completely, but they are doing what they can to change that. That is why Trump has revoked the security clearances of lawyers who have filed lawsuits against the government in the past. A recent New York Times article, quotes the legal scholar Thomas Vladeck saying:

What the Trump administration is doing is not just about specific lawyers representing unpopular clients, but is rather far more ominous: The administration is acting in ways that will necessarily chill a growing number of lawyers from participating in any litigation against the federal government, regardless of who the client is.

That, in turn, will make it harder for many clients adverse to the Trump administration to find lawyers to represent them — such that at least some cases either won’t be brought at all or won’t be brought by the lawyers best situated to bring them.

 In addition, Trump announced recently that colleges and universities that allow what he called “illegal protests” will lose their federal funding, and that students who participate in such protests will be arrested. 

No lawsuits and no protests. 

In addition, scientists at the Center for Disease Control are now discouraged from engaging in research with colleagues outside the CDC and are forbidden to publish research results that conflict with the Trump administration's executive orders. This mirrors the approach used in Stalin's Soviet Union, where nothing could be published that had not been approved by the Communist Party.  

Moreover, federal support for university research is being cut. and given Trump’s well-known tendency to reward his friends and punish his enemies, we can feel confident that the remaining federal dollars will be directed to institutions and projects that support him and his agenda. Scientists who need research funding to further their careers will learn to avoid criticizing Kennedy just as Soviet scientists learned to avoid criticizing Lysenko. 

We can see the results in a recent New York Times article, which says,

The silence grows louder every day.

Fired federal workers who are worried about losing their homes ask not to be quoted by name. University presidents fearing that millions of dollars in federal funding could disappear are holding their fire. Chief executives alarmed by tariffs that could hurt their businesses are on mute.

Even longtime Republican hawks on Capitol Hill, stunned by President Trump's revisionist history that Ukraine is to blame for its invasion by Russia, and his Oval Office blowup at President Volodymyr Zelensky, have either muzzled themselves, tiptoed up to criticism without naming Mr. Trump or completely reversed their positions.

More than six weeks into the second Trump administration, there is a chill spreading over political debate in Washington and beyond.

People on both sides of the aisle who would normally be part of the public dialogue about the big issues of the day say that are intimidated by the prospect of online attacks from Mr. Trump and Elon Musk, concerned about harm to their companies and frightened for the safety of their families. Politicians fear banishment by a party remade in Mr. Trump's image and the prospect of primary opponents financed by Mr. Musk, the president's all-powerful partner and the world's richest man.

The silence that "grows louder every day" endangers all of our lives because epidemics can kill people just as effectively as famines. How far will Kennedy go if our freedom to speak out is limited or destroyed? How many Americans will die?

The Grifter-in-Chief Swindles His Working-Class Supporters to Reward His Billionaire Friends

The Grifter in Chief Will Cut Medicaid to Give Tax Cuts to Billionaires

Last week, under pressure from the Grifter-in-Chief (GC) in the White House, the House of Representatives passed a budget resolution that envisions enormous tax cuts for billionaires that will be paid for by cuts in the Medicaid and food assistance programs that many of Grifter’s supporters depend on. That is to say that the Grifter will stiff his working class supporters in order to give money to his billionaire supporters. Medicaid is a tempting target because it is big. As a recent New York Times article said,

Once considered a poor people’s program, Medicaid has proved itself a political juggernaut. Why? Start with the money. The Medicaid program spends about $900 billion a year in state and federal funds, paying for close to one-fifth of health care expenditures in the United States. The program is the primary payer for almost two-thirds of nursing home residents and funds just over 60 percent of long-term care.

A Clear Expression of the Confidence Game Played by the Grifter's Republicans

Cutting Medicaid would be a clear expression of the confidence game at the heart of the GC’s Republican Party. The Party serves the interests of oligarchic billionaires who want to reduce the taxes they pay and at the same time depends on the votes of white,working-class people many of whom depend on government programs like Medicaid or SNAP. The billionaires pay for Republican electoral campaigns, and the working-class people provide the votes. They do so because they are the victims of a confidence game in which they are promised benefits that the candidates do not intend to deliver. The voters are swindled.

In the most recent election, millions of working-class people voted for the GC because they believed that they were voting to “Make America Great Again.” They expected that groceries and housing would be cheaper. They expected that there would be more jobs in manufacturing. Some expected that millions of immigrants would be deported. These voters did not vote to lose their health insurance or their food. They did not expect that America would be great again only for billionaire oligarchs. These voters are being swindled.

In campaigning, the GC focused on the fears and hopes of his white, working-class supporters. His campaign speeches were filled with promises to deport millions of undocumented immigrants, to restore “family values,” to bring down the price of eggs and to create lots of manufacturing jobs. In governing, on the other hand, the GC focuses on the rewarding his billionaire supporters.  He has Musk his Assistant Grifter eliminating programs and firing thousands of government workers in order to reduce government expenses enough to allow the taxes paid by the billionaires to be cut. The pretense is that the cuts increase the efficiency of our government although there has been no effort to determine which if any cuts would really increase its efficiency. 

Some Republican legislators have already noticed that the Grifter-in-Chief wants to swindle their constituents in order to reward the billionaires. The legislators have gently voiced their concern, but they have not yet found enough courage to oppose the GC directly. Some legislators are concerned about job losses in their districts, while others are concerned about cuts to SNAP or Medicaid.

The Deficit Hawks Block the Way

The problem for the Grifter-in-Chief and his oligarchic friends is that the deficit hawks in Congress have made it clear that they will oppose his tax cuts unless they are balanced by cuts in federal spending, but cutting federal spending is not easy, especially when the GC wants to increase spending on military preparedness, on controlling the border and on deporting 11 million undocumented workers. He cannot reward oligarchs like Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos without cutting federal spending substantially, and the only cuts available to him are firing lots of federal workers - which will do great harm to the economies of states like Idaho - and cutting programs like SNAP and Medicaid that his working class supporters depend on. In order to reward his billionaire friends, the GC will literally have to take health insurance away from hardworking Americans and take food away from hungry children. He will have to swindle his supporters, and of course, he has always known that. 

Swindling Makes the Grifter in Chief Vulnerable

It appears that the GC will not hesitate to swindle his working-class supporters to reward his billionaire friends, but the swindling makes him vulnerable to attack both from Democrats and from Republicans from swing districts. We should not hesitate to take advantage of the GC’s vulnerability. Oppose the oligarchy! Attack the Grifter-in-Chief now and keep attacking!

Trump Will Destroy Our World If We Let Him

A Nineteenth Century View in the Twenty-First Century

Pres. Trump’s foreign policy frightens me so much that I have no words to express the depth of my fear. I truly believe that his policy may bring the end of our world. Let me try to explain. 

Trump's recent moves make it clear that he has a nineteenth century view of foreign policy. He sees a world of entirely autonomous nation-states each with its own interests. Like Lord Palmerston (Queen Victoria's foreign minister), Trump believes that a nation-state has no permanent friends or allies; it has only interests, and it pursues them to the exclusion of all other considerations. International organizations have no importance, and there are no significant international laws or norms. Every nation-state has the right to use whatever power it possesses to pursue its interests.

Mr. Trump’s view is expressed in his recent claims to Greenland and the Panama Canal. He has said that he does not rule out the use of military force to obtain them. If he were to use such force, neither Denmark, which owns Greenland, nor Panama could resist effectively. We would acquire those territories in the same way that we acquired Puerto Rico and The Philippines in 1898. 

We can also see Mr. Trump's view of foreign policy in the way that he has abandoned our NATO allies to cozy up to the Russians. He believes that we have an interest in the commercial possibilities that Russia offers, and he sees the war in Ukraine as an obstacle to taking advantage of those possibilities. In his view, Russia’s power gave it a perfect right to claim a part of Ukraine’s territory, and Ukraine is responsible for the war because it failed to accede to Russia’s claim. In effect, Mr. Trump believes that Russia has the same right to take a part of Ukraine that we have to take Greenland or a part of Panama. 

The Nineteenth Century World Destroyed Itself In Deadly Wars

A world in which powerful nation-states do whatever they want in pursuit of their national interests can lead only to deadly and destructive wars because sooner or later, the powerful nations come into conflict with each other. We know that because we know what happened to the world of the nineteenth century. It exploded and destroyed itself in the two deadliest and most destructive wars the world has ever seen. 

In World War I, 40 million people died. In the area where the trenches were, everything was destroyed. Even today, more than 100 years after the end of the war, there are places in France and Belgium where farmers have to drive tractors with armor plating on the bottom to avoid being killed by unexploded ordinance in the soil. A few people are still killed every year.  

In World War II, an estimated 80 million people were killed including at least 50 million civilians. The damage to property in World War II was so great that it cannot really be estimated. At least 220,000 homes were destroyed and another 3.5 million were damaged. There were at least 21 million refugees in Europe. In Asia, the suffering was even greater. In India, millions died of famines related to the war. In Japan, approximately 30 percent of the urban population was rendered homeless. The sufferings of the Chinese, including the Rape of Nanking are beyond calculation.

Most of the empires of the nineteenth century were destroyed. The Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Turkish empire and the Prussian empire disappeared in 1918. The British and French empires survived for a few more years, but after 1945 Britain and France had been so bankrupted by the world wars that they could not hold onto their empires, and they disappeared as well. The Russian empire became the Soviet Union. So, it survived, but the suffering of the Russian people was terrible. An estimated 2.3 million people - mostly civilians - died in the First World War and about 10 million died in the civil war that followed. An estimated 24 million died in the Second World War. The United States fared better only because the Atlantic and Pacific oceans protected us from the destruction that occurred in other parts of the world. So, we made Hawaii into a state, but we gave up the Philippines.

In short, the world of the nineteenth century was almost completely destroyed, and most of the major powers of that time – Britain, France, Germany, Japan - have never completely recovered. Today, they are shadows of their former selves. They exist under the protection of the United States, and they are starting to realize that they cannot trust that protection. 

We Cannot Allow Our World To Be Destroyed

For the sake of our children and our grandchildren, we cannot allow Mr. Trump to repeat the mistakes of the nineteenth century or to resurrect the world of 1914. We cannot allow it because we know that it leads only to death and destruction on a colossal scale. The destruction produced by the world wars was so great that even the winners realized that they could not go through such wars again, and they founded international institutions to provide an alternative to wars. Those institutions are very imperfect, but they point toward a world in which our children and grandchildren can hope to live in peace.

The United States has played a role in maintaining a peaceful world since 1945 by using our navy to patrol the sea lanes to allow all nations to trade safely. We have not played that role consistently. We have allowed ourselves to become involved in pointless wars in places like Vietnam and Afghanistan, but those wars did not spiral into world wars, and on balance, I think that we can be proud of the work that our navy has done.

Mr. Trump may be right when he says that we should not indefinitely bear the burden of maintaining the peace of the world by ourselves. It made sense for us to do that in the years after 1945, but perhaps, it no longer makes sense today. However, we should not try to relieve ourselves of that burden by resurrecting the world of 1914. That way lies disaster. Instead, we should share the burden by strengthening international institutions. If we do not want to guarantee the safety of the sea lanes by ourselves, we should promote the establishment of an international alternative.

If we allow Mr. Trump to recreate the conditions that produced that explosion of 1914, we should expect that the explosion will occur again, but this time, the violence and destruction will be a hundred times greater than they were in 1914-45 because this time the wars will be fought with nuclear weapons. In addition, the use of intercontinental ballistic missiles will guarantee that the United States suffers the same destruction as other parts of the world. The oceans will not protect us. For the sake of our children and grandchildren, we cannot allow Mr. Trump to do resurrect the world of 1914. If our children and grandchildren are to have a world to live in, we must oppose his foreign policy with all of our strength. Resist!

Trump's Tariffs Are An Attack on the American Middle Class

Tariffs Can Have Bad Results 

Trump's tariffs may ruin the middle class. He has proposed tariffs - he says - to rebuild our manufacturing base and create thousands of jobs for American workers, but the tariffs are more likely to have just the opposite result. Tariffs can sometimes create jobs, but to do so, they must be very carefully designed and implemented, because the results of tariffs are complex. Jobs may be created in the manufacture of products that complete directly with imports, but at the same time, jobs may be lost in industries that depend on exports because countries affected by the tariffs may retaliate by imposing tariffs on goods that they import from us. Thus, our exports may decline.

In addition, tariffs can create American jobs only in industries where our products can really compete with foreign products. For example, American workers might be benefitted by a tariff on certain kinds of computer chips, but American workers would not be benefitted by a tariff on Mexican mangoes or Colombian flowers because we cannot grow tropical fruits like mangoes, and we cannot grow flowers in winter. So, to create American jobs, tariffs must be very selective. They must focus on products that we can expect to produce on a large scale, and the tariffs must avoid destroying jobs in export sectors of our economy.

Tariffs As A Blunt Instrument Will Harm American Workers

However, Trump’s approach to tariffs is not selective because he wants to use tariffs and the threat of tariffs to bludgeon foreign countries into supporting his policies, as we saw in the last month's dispute with Colombia He threatened to put a tariff on Colombian exports including coffee and flowers. Such a tariff might benefit Brazil or Mexico, who produce those products, but it will do nothing for American workers.

We have also seen Trump's crude approach in his decision to put tariffs on imports from Mexico and Canada to bludgeon them into clamping down on drugs coming to the United States. Mexico and Canada succeeded in getting him to put off for a month the imposition of the tariffs, but if he does ultimately impose them, no one thinks that they will create American jobs. The tariffs will only raise prices for Americans.

Tariffs On Steel And Aluminum Will Harm Middle Class Americans

More recently, Trump ordered a 25% tariff on all imports of steel and aluminum. Presumably, the tariff is intended to create American jobs in steel and aluminum production, and the tariff may well achieve that goal. However, by making steel and aluminum more expensive in the United States, the tariff will hurt industries that buy those products. Such industries include manufacturers of automobiles, airplanes, motorcycles and household appliances. The increase in the cost of steel and aluminum will raise the production costs for those manufacturers, and the result may be a loss of jobs in those industries. Indeed, the number of jobs lost may be greater than the number gained, as a study found in 2018, when Trump imposed tariffs on steel and aluminum. That study found that the number of jobs lost was much greater than the number gained, and the prices of consumer products rose in the United States. 

It gets worse. Trump's proposed tariffs of 25% on all imports from Canada and Mexico mean that the automobile industry would be hit not only by increases in the cost of steel and aluminum but also by increases in the cost of automobile parts from Mexico.  Here is a comment on this subject from the CEO of Ford Motor Company:

There’s no question that tariffs at a 25 percent level from Canada and Mexico, if they’re protracted, would have a huge impact on our industry, with billions of dollars of industry profits wiped out and an adverse effect on the U.S. jobs. ... Let's be real honest: Long term, a 25% tariff across the Mexico and Canada borders would blow a hole in the U.S. industry that we've never seen. ... 

Frankly, it gives free rein to South Korean, Japanese and European companies that are bringing 1.5 million to 2 million vehicles into the U.S. that wouldn't be subject to those Mexican and Canadian tariffs. ... It would be one of the biggest windfalls for those companies ever.

Trump's Tariffs Will Hurt Us All

Trump's tariffs increase the prices of many consumer products will probably not increase the number of jobs in manufacturing in our country. It is true that tariffs may help domestic industries under some circumstances, but the tariffs must be very carefully designed, and we know that Trump is not a careful man. He is infantile and probably senile; he is vindictive and impulsive; he is too impatient to read reports; and he rarely listens to expert advice. We can be confident that any tariffs designed by him will do much more harm than good to the American middle class.

Appeals to “Government Efficiency” Are A Smokescreen For Political Decisions

The Appeal to Government Efficiency Is a Smokescreen

 Pres. Trump likes to present his political program as one of promoting efficiency in government. He and Mr. Musk say that government agencies are inefficient and that we can save money by eliminating waste. This idea seems to be appealing. After all, who can be against efficiency? Who does not support eliminating waste? However, the idea of eliminating waste as it is used by Trump and Musk is always a smokescreen for eliminating programs that they don’t like. In order to see why this is so, we need to delve deeper into the idea of economic efficiency.

What Is Economic Efficiency?

Economic efficiency is the ratio of benefits to costs, or 

efficiency = benefits/costs. 

If the benefits of a program are big and the costs are small, the efficiency will be high, but if the costs are high and the benefits are low, the efficiency will be low.  Suppose for example, that we invest $500 in the stock market and the value of our investment increases to $1000, the efficiency of the investment will be $1000/$500, which will give us an efficiency of 2. We can multiply that by 100 to get an efficiency of 200%.

Measuring Economic Efficiency Requires a Point of View

Measuring efficiency always requires a certain point of view that determines what is considered to be a benefit and what is seen as a cost. For example, the efficiency of a business is usually easy to measure because in a business, the owners define the point of view. The benefit is the profit earned by the business, and the wages earned by the workers are a cost. The owners have an interest in lowering their workers' wages because doing so increases the efficiency of the business, but the owners must allow the workers to earn a certain wage because otherwise, the business would fail, and the owners would lose their profit.  

From the workers’ point of view, however, the wages they earn are the benefit, while the owners’ profit is a cost. The workers' wages are always limited by the owners' need to make a profit. The workers must allow the owners to make a profit because otherwise, the business would fail, and the workers would lose their wages. Thus, even in a business, the idea of efficiency is tied to a point of view.

Efficiency in Government Programs

When we are speaking of the efficiency of a government program, we must always take a point of view that determines what will be considered a benefit and what is seen as a cost. Is better police protection a cost or a benefit? Is affordable childcare a cost or a benefit? Is affordable healthcare a cost or a benefit? There are no simple answers to these questions because in each case, the answer depends on one’s point of view. 

In questions of public policy, the various points of view are political. In fact, elections are often about the choice of the point of view that will frame the discussions of particular policies. The question of what is considered a cost and what is a benefit is always political when we are speaking of government programs. It follows that we cannot begin to measure the efficiency of a government program independently of a political point of view. If efficiency = benefit/cost, we cannot calculate its value until we have decided what is a benefit and what is a cost.

Two Practical Examples: Consumer Protection And Clean Air

To most of us, protecting consumers from fraud is a benefit, but businesses can make a profit by defrauding consumers, and from their point of view protecting consumers is a cost. The Trump administration shares that view. Trump sees protecting consumers as a cost, and therefore, reducing protection for consumers increases the efficiency of our government. That is why the administration has ordered the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to stop all of its work. Trump and Musk believe that our government should not protect consumers from financial fraud because to do so is wasteful, and elimination of waste increases efficiency. To the Trump administration, protecting us from financial fraud is not a benefit. It is a cost.

Here is another example. To most of us, clean air is a benefit provided by government regulations. From that point of view, eliminating the regulations would reduce the benefit of clean air, and reducing a benefit does not increase efficiency. However, from the point of view of businesses that produce pollutants, the regulations that force the companies to emit fewer pollutants are a cost, not a benefit. The Trump administration shares that view. To Trump, clean air is not a benefit; it is a cost because complying with the regulations costs money. From that point of view, eliminating the regulations will reduce costs and will thereby increase efficiency. 

Don't Be Fooled

In the cases of clean air and consumer protection, the idea of increasing efficiency cannot be separated from the political question of whether clean air or protection from fraud are benefits or costs, and that is true of every government program. Is the medical care provided by Medicaid a benefit or a cost? Is DEI a benefit or a cost? Are agricultural price supports benefits or costs?

The answers to these questions are inherently political. Trump and Musk like to pretend otherwise. They try to persuade us that increasing efficiency is politically neutral. They claim that increasing efficiency can be separated from politics, but that is a lie, and it is a screen for their real goal, which is to eliminate programs that do not increase corporate profits. Anything that does increase profits is seen as a benefit while anything that does not increase corporate profits is described as a cost. Social Security? It's a cost. Cut it! Medicare? It's a cost. Cut it? Air quality regulations? They're a cost. Cut them! Public education? It's a cost. Cut it!  Don’t be fooled. Resist!

Raising Tariffs and Deporting Immigrants: A Case of Incompatible Policies

Incompatible Policies

President Trump has adopted two policies that are incompatible with each other. They cannot both succeed. The first policy is the deportation of undocumented immigrants, and the second is the imposition of tariffs. Let us consider the tariffs first. The purpose of tariffs is to make foreign goods more expensive in the United States in order to encourage companies to produce goods here and thereby to rebuild our manufacturing capacity and create jobs for American workers. 

Economists disagree over the effectiveness of tariffs for this purpose, but even if we assume that they can do what they are intended to do, they will fail to achieve their goal if we deport our immigrants. They will fail because without immigrants, the United States will face a shortage of workers, and no company will build factories here unless it expects to find workers to staff the factories. The United States, like all industrial countries today, has a declining, native-born population of working age. In recent years, our economy has grown faster than the economies of other industrial countries only because our working age population has grown due to immigration.

We Have Always Needed Immigrant Labor

The United States has always been a country with vast natural resources and a shortage of labor. We have been able to leverage our resources to become a rich and powerful country only by importing labor. That has been true since the very beginning of our country. In 1794, the cotton gin was invented. It made large-scale cotton farming in the American South possible, but we did not have the labor to exploit that possibility. So, through the slave trade, we imported hundreds of thousands of Africans to do the work. We do not usually think of the slaves as immigrants, but they were immigrants who were forced to come here, and a huge share of our country's wealth was created by their labor. Cotton accounted for more than half of American exports before the Civil War, and the wealth created by the slave and cotton trades was later invested in industrial development. We should not be proud of the slavery in our past, but we cannot deny its contribution to our country's wealth.

In the late nineteenth century, the United States was poised to become the world’s greatest industrial and commercial power. We had vast natural resources, endless fertile land and a marvelous water transportation network, but we lacked the labor to develop our industrial capacity. So, we recruited foreign workers. Between 1870 and 1900 we took in neatly 12 million immigrants, and that immigration supported a huge growth in our economy.

Immigrants Allow Our Economy To Grow

Today, we still need immigrant workers. We and all of the world’s rich, industrial countries face a shortage of workers due to aging populations. As countries industrialize, families become smaller. Women bear fewer children. Today, in every industrial country including the United States, the number of children born to each woman is less than the number required to maintain the current level of the population. So, every industrial country today has a population which is aging, and that means that there are fewer people of working age.  Except the United States. Our working population continues to grow through immigration, and because of our hospitality to immigrants, our economy can continue to grow. Our economic growth rate is the envy of the world. We outstrip Europe, and we will eventually outstrip China, as well. We can do that only because we have so many immigrants.

Without Immigrants We Cannot Rebuild Our Manufacturing Base

This is where deporting our immigrants comes into conflict with the imposition of tariffs. The point of the tariffs is to rebuild our manufacturing capacity by encouraging companies to build and operate factories here in the United States, but companies will not build factories here if they cannot find workers to staff the factories.  We can rebuild our manufacturing base, or we can deport our immigrants. We cannot do both.

Deporting Our Immigrants Weakens Our Economy And Our Country

This means that anyone who is in favor of rebuilding our manufacturing base must oppose deporting our immigrants. We cannot be a strong, rich industrial country without them. Moreover, deporting our immigrants weakens our national security by making us more dependent on industrial products from abroad. We won the Second World War in part because our factories were able to produce the weapons used by us and by our allies.  Thus, deporting our immigrants will weaken our national security as well as our economy. Deporting our immigrants is un-American as well as foolish.

The Attack on American Farmers Has Begun

 Raids in California and New Jersey

Trump’s attack on American farmers has begun. A few days ago, the Border Patrol staged a series of dragnet raids to arrest undocumented immigrants in Bakersfield, California. Bakersfield is a major center of the citrus industry in California’s San Joaquin Valley. The valley is the source of a large share of the produce consumed in the United States, and the farms there are completely dependent on immigrant labor. At least half of the farm workers in the valley are undocumented. Without the labor of undocumented workers, the farms would not be able to operate; they would go out of business, and the immediate result of the raids showed just how that could happen. The workers who had not been arrested were afraid to leave their homes, and so, they didn’t show up for work, and there was no one available to replace them. The idea that there are thousands of native-born, Americans of any race just waiting for opportunities to work as agricultural laborers is a fantasy.

Farms like those in the San Joaquin Valley cannot operate without workers. If the raids continue, California’s agriculture will have to shut down. The farmers will go bankrupt, and Bakersfield along with communities like Fresno and Modesto will be ruined. Moreover, this week’s raids have not been confined to California. A few days ago, five hundred people were arrested in a raid on a workplace in New Jersey.

What About Wisconsin?

My state of Wisconsin – like many states in the Midwest – is an agricultural state. Wisconsin’s dairy farms are very heavily dependent on undocumented immigrant labor, and without that labor, they will be unable to operate. Moreover, farms are not the only parts of our agricultural system that depend on immigrant labor. Chicken packing plants and slaughterhouses use huge amounts of immigrant labor, and without that labor the plants will close.  Communities all over Wisconsin and the Midwest will be ruined if they lose their immigrant workers. The communities’ businesses will lose their customers; the schools will lose their students; towns will lose their tax bases; home values will fall.

Other Industries Will Suffer

We should not imagine that agriculture will be the only industry to suffer. Construction also depends heavily on immigrant workers and cannot function without them. Florida discovered in 2023 what can happen when immigrant workers are afraid to go to work. In Florida's case, they were able to move to other states, but Trump's attack is national.

In rural communities, the farmers and their workers are customers of local businesses. Grocery stores, clothing stores, gas stations, restaurants and farm supply businesses will all suffer. Many will be bankrupted, and that means that communities will lose much of their tax base.

We Will All Suffer

We should not imagine that rural communities will be the only ones to suffer. What will happen to the price of fruits and vegetables if California’s farms shut down? What will happen to the price of milk if Wisconsin’s dairy farms shut down? What will happen to the price of chicken if the country’s chicken processing plants shut down?  The prices of all of these commodities will rise because there will be a sharp drop in their supply. We will all have to pay more for our food.

In theory, we could compensate for the drop in the supply of food by purchasing it from other countries, but our president has promised to impose tariffs on imports from outside the United States. So, food from elsewhere would be expensive both because of the cost of shipping it here and because of the tariffs that our president has promised to impose on imports.

If construction workers are deported, fewer houses and apartments will be built, and this will occur at a time when the cost of housing has become a serious, national problem. Importing houses from abroad is not really a possibility. So, we will all pay a high price for Trump's policy.

Restaurants in the United States depend heavily on undocumented workers. If they are deported, many restaurants will be unable to find the workers they need, and they will go out of business. That will damage the restaurant supply businesses that serve those restaurants.

Contact Your Representatives

Trump’s attack on American farmers and on other businesses is an attack on all American people. We should not tolerate our elected government’s attacking us all. We should resist. If you care about your own well-being or that of your community, you should contact your congressional representatives and tell them to oppose the insanity of these raids. You can find your representatives on this page. Find and contact elected officials | USAGov

Resisting Effectively

We Must Not Be Distracted

 We are in for four years of a Republican administration led by Donald Trump, and we have to think about how to resist effectively. We can do so if we remember what the key issues really are, and if we refuse to be distracted by Mr. Trump’s craziness. He is very good at floating crazy ideas that Democrats and the media then respond to. He has renamed the Gulf of Mexico, and he says that he wants to take back the Panama Canal and take over Greenland. These nutty actions and proposals and the responses to them then fill the media and thereby provide a screen behind which Republicans in Congress can enact policies that will be windfalls for his billionaire supporters and harm the American people. We must avoid getting caught up in the discussions that provide the screen. We must focus on the policies that really threaten our democracy.

Policies That Threaten Our Democracy

The Republicans have shown already that they are willing to allow the whole country to suffer from the effects of climate change in order to make more money for the oil and gas industry. They can also enact tariffs that will provoke a trade war. They can gut Medicare and Social Security under the guise of saving them.  They can destabilize our economy by reducing the regulation of banks. They can cause irreparable harm to our planet by eliminating the incentives to move from fossil fuels to non-polluting energy sources. They can cause a recession by deporting a large share of our work force.

Mr. Trump will undoubtedly try to do such things if only because he has committed himself to doing them. Some of them will create resistance within his own party. Big American agricultural interests who will be hurt by a trade war will resist tariffs. The same interests will resist any attempt to deport a large share of their work force. Other actions will be supported by his party. Deregulation of banks and promotion of fossil fuels will be enthusiastically supported. So, will the gutting of Social Security and Medicare.

This Is What We Need To Resist

These are the things that we need to resist. We should work with Republicans to resist tariffs and the mass deportation of workers, and we should oppose Republicans on the deregulation of banks, the promotion of fossil fuels and the gutting of Social Security and Medicare. We should do these things not only to keep our economy from tanking but also because that will be the most effective way of preserving our democracy.

The Real Danger To Our Democracy

Many people believe that Mr. Trump is a serious danger to American democracy, and they are right. He is a danger to democracy but not merely because of his well-known authoritarian tendencies. His economic policies present a far greater danger to democracy because, as Martin Wolf argues, democracy and capitalism can coexist only if the capitalism provides a decent standard of living for the bulk of the people. If capitalism fails to do so, the people are bound to become disillusioned with a democracy which appears to be rigged against them, and they will support authoritarian politicians like Trump who promise to make their lives better.

Our democracy is already precarious because so much of our national income goes to the top 1% of our population. Our country today is much richer than it was in the 1960s, but millions of our people are poorer than they were then. If the Republicans are able to enact the economic policies that Trump has said that he intends to enact, our national income will be even more concentrated in the top 1%, and the plight of our people will become even worse.

Thus, the real danger to our democracy is not merely that Trump will find ways to increase his power at the expense of the other branches of government. The real danger is that he and his party will destroy the conditions that make democracy possible. We need to do all that we can to prevent that from happening.