Category: Daily Escape

No Cake For You, No Democracy For Me

The Daily Escape:

Manhattan, NYC skyline viewed from Brooklyn – 2018 photo by Max Guilani

The gay wedding cake ruling was absurd. If a wedding photographer didn’t want to take photos at the wedding, it would be understandable, because then they’d be present at the ceremony, in some way, participating.

But a person baking and decorating a cake? The baker isn’t participating in the event, and the cake isn’t usually at the ceremony either. The cake can’t represent a religious belief unless it’s actually a religious cake.

There’s a difference between freedom “from” and freedom “to”. This case, and a few others, notably Hobby Lobby, have swung the pendulum in the direction of “freedom to”. That could be the freedom to refuse to serve a customer, to refuse to provide health coverage, to claim an infringement of your religious rights, to say that baking the cake causes undue harm to your right to believe as you do. Much of what the Right touts as freedoms fall under this category, like the freedom to bear arms.

But at the same time, will the court protect those groups who need freedom “from” something, like freedom from discrimination, or harassment?

So, here we are in 21st century America: Stuck, this time by the Supreme Court.

And most of the time, we are stuck by the House and Senate’s inability to move the country forward. The question is: How long will the majority of Americans consent to be governed by the minority?

This, from David Brooks:

Now the two-party system has rigidified and ossified. The two parties no longer bend to the center. They push to the extremes, where the donor bases and their media propaganda arms are. More and more people feel politically homeless, alienated from both parties and without any say in how the country is run.

Our system of democracy must evolve. Under our winner take all rules, the minority can control the country with say, 20 million votes, representing about 6% of the population.

Consider that every state has two senators. The 22 smallest states have a total population less than California.  If the Senate’s filibuster remains in effect, just 21 States can stop any presidential appointment, or any legislation. Even without the filibuster, it takes 26 states to stop legislation.

And the smallest 26 states have a population of about 57 million, less than the population of California and the New York metro area. And today, neither major political party commands more than 30% of the voters.

How long can the country sustain this lack of balance and democratic fairness? The competing interests that the framers tried to balance in 1789 have been overtaken by newer competing interests that they never envisioned.

Maybe it’s time to seriously rethink our electoral processes.

In a recent column in the NYT (quoted above), David Brooks recognizes the problem, and argues for multi-member House districts and for ranked-choice voting (RCV). Russell Berman explained how it works in The Atlantic:

Ranked-choice voting, which cities like San Francisco, Minneapolis, and Portland, Maine, use to elect their mayors, has been likened to an “instant runoff”: Instead of selecting just one candidate, voters rank their choices in order of preference. If no candidate receives a majority of first-place votes, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated, and whoever their voters chose as their second choice is added to the tally of the remaining contenders. That process continues until there are only two candidates left, and the one with the most votes wins.

Supporters say RCV ensures that candidates with the broadest coalitions of support will win, and that it allows voters to choose the candidate they prefer, without splitting the vote and handing the election to the other party. They also say RCV will inspire more positive campaigning, because candidates will aim to become voter’s second and third choices instead of targeting each other with negative advertisements. Further, they hope that RCV could create room for third-party candidates to succeed.

Wrongo thinks something needs to change. We can’t keep a system that allows the minority to run the country, especially if it is persistently a racist minority, a misogynist minority, a fundamentalist minority, and a cruel minority.

Wrongo grew up believing that having public education, public housing, public transportation (including roads) and human services paid for by the public in proportion to their income or wealth, was what created a civilized nation, an educated populace, a world-class work-force. Now, Wrongo really worries about our current political situation. He worries about his grandchildren. Unless there is political change, their future looks grim.

Herbert Stein said: “If something can’t go on forever, it won’t.”

We have to change our electoral process.

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Review of: “Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World”

The Daily Escape:

Bayanzag Flaming Cliffs is a region of the Gobi Desert in Mongolia. Photo via Khaan Tours. In the early 20th century, these cliffs gained worldwide fame for an incredible collection of fossils.

While in Europe, Wrongo finished reading “Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World” a history of the Mongol dynasty written in 2004 by Jack Weatherford, a former professor of anthropology. It is a fascinating journey from the 13th Century through the 14th Century. His specialty is histories of tribal peoples.

Weatherford presents Genghis Khan and his dynasty in wonderful detail. But the book reads as much like an adventure story, as it does history. Wrongo’s view of Khan was shaped as much by Hollywood caricatures as it was by his degree in history. It turns out that Khan was not simply the ring leader of a group of barbarians, he unified the Mongols, forming them into a fighting machine that conquered nearly all of Asia, the Middle East, and parts of Europe.

The book shows the important role of the Mongols in creating a precursor to the modern world. Initially, through warfare. Their military innovation was the lightly armed warfighter on horseback. Charging horsemen went against foot soldiers often accompanied by a relatively small, heavily armored cavalry. Genghis Khan was the original inventor of blitzkrieg. Time after time, the Mongols’ disciplined horsemen, moving in coordinated units, defeated much larger armies. The Mongol armies were undefeated for nearly 100 years.

But Khan’s greatest achievement was the redrawing of the boundaries of the modern world. His armies united a dozen Slavic principalities and cities into a large Russian state. They created a single state of China, and unified Korea and India.

It was the Mongolian Khans, rather than the Han Chinese, who founded Beijing. Their Yuan dynasty ruled until 1368.

The Mongols captured both Baghdad and Damascus in two years, something the European Crusaders had been unable to achieve in two centuries. The last Mogul in India was removed by the British in 1857. The Russians took over the original homeland of the Khans in Mongolia, in 1920.

Weatherford tells the story of the rise of Genghis Khan from a yak herding slave to ruler of the greatest empire on earth. Along the way, he ended the Mongols’ feudal system of aristocratic privilege and birth, replacing it with a system based on individual merit, loyalty and achievement. In most countries, the Khans expanded both cultural communication and trade. They were the first builders of the “Silk Road”.

Trade was key to the empire. Silk was the apex trade item, but cotton and wool were sent both to the East and the West. The Mongols made culture portable. It wasn’t just trade in goods, whole systems of knowledge were sent in both directions. Persian and Arab doctors went to China. Chinese doctors went to the Middle East.

And Khubilai Khan, the Great Khan emperor of China, recognized the need for paper money to facilitate trade, so it was used throughout the empire until its collapse. There was a dazzling array of innovations that can be ascribed to his reign: in addition to paper money, printed passports gave access to the entire Empire. There was a synthesis of knowledge from all corners of the Empire.

The Empire was ultimately carved up between Genghis Khan’s grandsons. They held cross-ownership in each other’s territories of trade networks and manufacturing facilities, which moderated their desire to fight each other. But, once the Black Death erupted in their networks, the Empire collapsed. It took about 300 years to finally end.

Genghis Khan was tolerant of all religions in a conquered country. He abolished torture, and brought back to Mongolia the learned and skilled members of each conquered nation to help to build the skills of his empire.

But the Mongols weren’t saints. In each conquest, the ruling class was rounded up and killed. The peasants and professionals were spared if they swore allegiance to the Great Khan. Although there are instances of extreme violence, these are balanced by the thoughtfulness and care that the various Khans took to administer and improve their vast empire.

We learn that some of his family were practicing Christians. That there was more religious freedom in Mongolia than in Europe at the time. He was willing to learn from his mistakes, a quality rarely seen in today’s leaders. And his attitude toward women was also surprising: his daughters became leaders, right along with his sons in the empire.

You end with a sense of how visionary and complex Genghis Khan was: An illiterate who appreciated learning, a marginal person from an obscure corner of the world who led a global empire.

This is a marvelous journey through time, about an era we rarely think of today.

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Monday Wake Up Call – June 4, 2018

The Daily Escape:

The Blue Grotto, Malta – photo by SingularET. Not to be confused with THE Blue Grotto on Capri, the hangout of the Roman emperor, Tiberius.

NewdealDemocrat over at Angry Bear raised a few excellent points about historically low unemployment and stagnant wage growth: (emphasis by Wrongo)

As I noted several weeks ago, even though we are at least closing in on full employment, the percentage of employers not raising wages at all has gone up in the last year:

(The blue line is the percentage of employers who have not increased wages. The grey shaded areas are recessions.)

There was more bad news from Axios , reporting on a meeting with the Dallas Federal Reserve about how big companies aren’t planning on raising wages at all:

The message is that Americans should stop waiting for across-the-board pay hikes coinciding with higher corporate profit; to cash in, workers will need to shift to higher-skilled jobs that command more income.

Troy Taylor, CEO of the Coke franchise for Florida, said he is currently adding employees with the idea of later reducing the staff over time “as we invest in automation.” Those being hired: technically-skilled people. “It’s highly technical just being a driver,” he said.

The moderator asked the panel whether there would be broad-based wage gains again. “It’s just not going to happen,” Taylor said. The gains would go mostly to technically-skilled employees, he said. As for a general raise? “Absolutely not in my business,” he said.

John Stephens, chief financial officer at AT&T, said 20% of the company’s employees are call-center workers. He said he doesn’t need that many. In addition, he added, “I don’t need that many guys to install coaxial cables.”

The Civilian Non-Institutional Population (those who the government tracks for jobs analysis), grew 21.3% between April 2000 and April 2018, yet, full-time jobs grew only 11.7%. This means that we can’t possibly be at full employment, despite the government’s headline unemployment rate of 3.8%, the lowest since 2000.

And if most employers are thinking like those at Coke and AT&T, wages won’t increase, despite the country’s nine-year economic recovery. If wages will not be increasing, where do employers think increased demand will come from? And, if companies are freezing wages during the supposed good times, what will happen when times turn bad?

Corporate policies are designed primarily to respond to the requirements of its management and its institutional shareholders, not employees. Employers’ profits have been increasing steadily, but the wealth keeps getting transferred upwards. And it’s the employers who are responsible for layoffs, and who use other methods to increase profits, such as automation, which leave the surviving workers in an increasingly poor negotiating position when it’s time for the annual raise discussion.

Do workers “deserve” an annual increase? By performing their jobs, workers produce value for the company. If a company is profitable, workers should get a cut, and if profits go up, so should their share.

If a particular individual isn’t performing well, then in an efficient/well-managed company, they’ll be replaced. If the job itself is not structured to produce effectively, in an efficient/well-managed company, the job will change. And if the company fails to do either, then in an efficient/well-managed company, the company will change, or it will fail.

It appears that with their paltry increases, workers are losing ground. Rents are rapidly rising in most cities. Wrongo saw a story about a New York City couple who moved from Brooklyn, NYC to Westport, CT for cheaper housing. It wasn’t many years ago that Westport was substantially more expensive than Brooklyn. In fact, it was once the home town of Paul Newman and Martha Stewart.

Many workers are fighting for a 2% raise. (Remember, 2.6% is the average, which means many workers are getting less than that). Factor in the rising rents, food costs, and health care insurance, and you can see that the average hourly worker has little chance of upward mobility.

Is this an inevitable outcome caused by Mr. Market? Not really. Our government has its thumb on the scale via tax benefits to corporations, combined with a Federal minimum wage that is impossibly low.

Time to wake up, America! We must stop letting corporations hoard the profits! Capitalism is institutionalized avarice. Its purpose is concentration of power. And one outcome is the spreading of economic misery.

To help you wake up, here is the Soup Nazi who, says, “No soup for you! Come back 1 year!” Just like many employers say when hourly employees ask for a raise.

Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.

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Saturday Soother – June 2, 2018

The Daily Escape:

Claude Monet’s home, Giverny, France via @archpics

So much to think about as the week ends: It is one year since Trump pulled the US out of the Paris Climate Accord. The nuclear summit with North Korea is back on. Trump now has a trade war going on against Europe, China, Canada and Mexico.

It is difficult to see how the US emerges as a winner in any, or in all of these, when the other side always has the option to say “no”. But this weekend, let’s ignore Roseanne Barr’s tweet about Valerie Jarrett, and talk about Trump pardoning the racist conspiracy theorist Dinesh D’Souza.

On May 19, 2014, D’Souza plead guilty to making illegal campaign contributions to a Republican senatorial candidate. He confessed and admitted his guilt. D’Souza admitted that he violated federal campaign financing laws, and by pleading, he became a convicted felon.

As an admitted criminal he need to pay his debt to society for his transgressions. But D’Souza is a member in good standing of the Party of Personal Responsibility, so he was pardoned by Donald Trump. After all, the rule of law is based on the assumption that Republicans are patriots and Progressives are America-hating zealots. And, D’Souza had surely paid a price for his patriotism 
 or something. Let’s review what D’Souza said in court:

I knew that causing a campaign contribution to be made in the name of another was wrong and something the law forbids…I deeply regret my conduct.

This is the person Trump claims “was treated very unfairly by our government!” It is possible to claim that D’Souza was persecuted because of his politics, but there’s absolutely no proof that was the case. D’Souza pled guilty in order to receive the lightest possible sentence for the federal crime he admitted to.

The pardon serves Trump’s purposes in one important way: It sends a signal to members of the Trump followers who are under investigation by Robert Muller that they will not be held accountable by the federal government for crimes committed on Trump’s behalf while he holds office.

The true problem was captured in a tweet by David Frum about the D’Souza pardon:

And this is exactly why Trump’s contempt for democratic norms and values really matters.

But, enough of politics! It is time to take a few moments to untether from the internet, and get soothed by contemplating the natural world. So, turn off your phone (unless you are reading this on your mobile). Brew up a vente cup of Finca La Maria Geisha Natural from San Diego’s Birdrock Coffee ($51.00/8oz). Taste its bright notes of stone fruit and honeysuckle, its plump mouthfeel and flavor-saturated finish.

Now, sit in front of a large window, and listen to Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 9 in C major, Op. 59,  No. 3, published in 1808. Here it is performed live by the Jasper String Quartet at the Jerome L. Greene Performance Space in New York for WQXR’s Beethoven String Quartet Marathon on November 18, 2012:

Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.

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The US Also Has Immigration Issues

The Daily Escape:

One World Trade Center viewed from Brooklyn, NY – 2018 photo by nyclovesnyc

Yesterday, we talked about immigration-skepticism in Europe. As if to underline that toxic atmosphere, the Hungarian government just announced it has drafted new laws to criminalize acts that help illegal migrants in Hungary. From the BBC:

If passed in its current form, the legislation could make printing leaflets with information for asylum-seekers and offering them food or legal advice a criminal offence.

Reuters quotes Hungary’s Magyar Hirlap newspaper saying that prison sentences ranging from a few days to a year, are part of the new legislation. Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia all oppose an EU plan to relocate 160,000 refugees from Italy and Greece, where migrant camps are overcrowded.

While the US is now wrestling with its own immigration issues, it has more immigrants than any other country in the world. Today, more than 40 million people living in the US were born in another country, about one-fifth of the world’s total migrants in 2015.

The US granted nearly 1.2 million individuals legal permanent residency in 2016, more than two-thirds of whom were admitted based on family reunification, a policy that Trump wants to end. Other categories included: employment-based preferences (12%), refugees (10%), diversity (4%), and asylum seekers (3%). At the end of 2017 there were more than four million applicants on the State Department’s waiting list for immigrant visas.

Donald Trump and his Attorney General Jeff Sessions, have many anti-immigrant views. Trump has tried to ban immigrants from predominantly Muslim countries, but it’s clear that his main issue is with migrants from Mexico and Central America, not Muslims. From the Council on Foreign Relations:

Trump more than halved the annual cap of refugees admitted to the US to fifty thousand, and his orders could make it more difficult for individuals to seek asylum; more than 180,000 applied for asylum in 2016. In 2017, the administration ended temporary protected status (TPS) for thousands of Nicaraguans and Haitians who were allowed into the US after environmental disasters in their home countries in 1999 and 2010, respectively….In 2018, Trump ended the same relief program for nearly two hundred thousand Salvadorans who came after a 2001 earthquake.

Trump signed several executive orders (EO) affecting immigration policy. The first, focused on border security, ordered the construction of a physical border wall across the US border with Mexico.

The second EO restricted federal funds to so-called sanctuary cities. That isn’t as bad as Hungary prosecuting anyone who assists migrants, but it’s getting close.

The third banned nationals from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen from entering the US for at least 90 days, and blocked nationals from Syria indefinitely.

Trump also cancelled the DACA rules.

But the new policy of separating immigrant kids from their parents should earn the Trump administration a special place in hell. Families crossing the border are being separated, with kids going to a separate place of detention, while their parents go to a different holding facility. To help facilitate the process, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, (ICE), developed a bus fitted with child seats for the small children who still need them, and who were separated from their parents when ICE arrested the parents. Here is a screen grab from website of the ICE contractor, the GEO Group:

Of course putting children on buses can be innocuous. Most of us have ridden on school buses. But the picture is disturbing even if you didn’t know that it was used as part of an immigrant round-up, because every seat is a car seat.

It implies that there are going to be a bunch of infants and toddlers in the bus with few, or no parents. The damage being done by the Trump administration by separating these kids can’t be undone.

It’s like those kids in Detroit drinking lead-laced water. This will damage all of them.

Just when we think humanity’s capacity for vileness can’t be exceeded, we are again proven wrong. It’s not just that the Trump administration had the idea for a prison bus for children to begin with. It’s not just that the contractor is proud enough to advertise the bus on their website. What are they both telling us?

Why do they bother with the child seats?

The implication is: “Sure, we rip these small children away from their mothers, but we care a lot about their safety in traffic.”

Trump and Sessions should live in a pit of fire in their special place in hell.

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Europe’s Immigration Dilemma

The Daily Escape:

The Labrouste reading room, Bibliotheque Nationale de France, Paris France – photo by Thibaud Poirier. The room was finished in 1868 by Henri Labrouste.

Wrongo and Ms. Right were in Hungary and Poland last week, and it was clear from discussions with locals that both countries are immigration-skeptic. In the past year, we have also been in England, France, Germany and the Netherlands, and immigration from the Middle East and Africa is a hot button issue in each.

The forever war in the Middle East is at the core of the political upheaval underway in Europe. From Carnegie Europe: (brackets by Wrongo)

Suddenly, [in 2015] hundreds of thousands of refugees and migrants climbed out of boats, walked across borders, and occupied public spaces in European towns and villages. Their chaotic arrival not only shattered an illusion of tranquility but also pointed to Europe’s loss of control.

At the time, Europe was also emerging from the worst economic crisis of the postwar period. The new arrivals placed a burden on social services and public budgets. Like in the US, Europe’s citizens felt that the refugees were enjoying privileged access to benefits while citizens were losing out.

Immigration and refugee policy now dominate all political agendas within the EU, even though overall refugee flows to Europe are down substantially. The continent saw around 171,000 sea arrivals in 2017, compared to over one million in 2015. The National Interest reports that about 1.2 million refugees that made it to Europe applied for asylum in 2016:

This exposed deep fissures in the EU’s current system. It divided the continent on how to handle the refugees who have already arrived, and what to do with the many thousands that will inevitably land on Europe’s shores in the coming years. Europe now needs a strategy that can simultaneously address the legitimate concerns of some EU members but also place refugee well-being at the forefront of decision making.

Many throughout the EU are concerned about losing social homogeneity and cohesion. We heard that while in Poland and Hungary, where even government officials said that they think that immigrants must be fluent in the language even to be allowed in the country.

Yet, many European countries have low birth rates. According to Eurostat, Europe’s population rose in 2016 only because of migration. Eurostat says that without migration, only Ireland, France, Norway and Britain would see rising populations by 2050; Germany and Italy would both see population declines.

Much of Europe needs immigrants in order to sustain their economies. To capitalize on this, the EU and individual countries need to increase programs that help with language and skills training for refugees. Partnering with private firms could also help ease the transition from immigrant to productive citizen.

Since conflicts in the Middle East show no signs of abating, far-right parties across Europe will have easy selling points on the threat of migration for the foreseeable future. The rise of the populist right has coincided with an electoral catastrophe for the center-left throughout Europe.

Listening to fears and addressing concerns openly has to occur. In that regard, Project28 just conducted its third annual survey of 1000 Europeans about migration, in which 78% of EU citizens said that the external borders of Europe should be better protected. There was a clear majority in all European countries for the view that immigration represents a “very serious” or a “somewhat serious” problem.

A frightening 50% of Europeans believe that their children will have a worse life than their parents. This view is noticeably higher in countries like Austria, Greece and Germany, which have been at the forefront of the migration crises. 70% of the European public believes that the “rapid population growth of Muslims” is either a “somewhat serious” or “very serious” threat to Europe.

The future for immigration is unclear in both Europe and the US. How it works out will depend on the wisdom and skill of our political leaders over the next few years. Will Europe adopt more exclusionary policies on immigration and refugees? Will these new policies be the kind that the majority of people in Europe can live with?

Can Europe’s politicians adopt anti-immigration policies like those proposed by their populist, right-wing adversaries that are doing so well politically? If they can, it increases the odds that Europe’s liberal democracies will resist the corrosion of press freedom, and independent civil society that we have seen in Poland and Hungary.

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Monday Wake Up Call – Memorial Day, 2018

(Today, Wrongo repeats 2017’s Memorial Day column. It still seems all too appropriate for America)

The Daily Escape:

NYC’s Grand Central Station – 1943

“On Memorial Day we commemorate those who died in the military service of our country. In 1974, a sci-fi novel called “The Forever War” was released. It is military science fiction, telling the story of soldiers fighting an interstellar war. The protagonist, named Mandella, is sent across the galaxy to fight a poorly understood, apparently undefeatable foe.

Sound familiar? Today the forever war is not simply fiction. Our all-volunteer military has been fighting in the Middle East for the past 16 years in the longest war in American history. And there is little reason to hope that we will not be fighting there 16 years from now. Brian Castner, a former explosive ordnance disposal officer who served three tours in Iraq, observes:

Our country has created a self-selected and battle-hardened cohort of frequent fliers, one that is almost entirely separate from mainstream civilian culture, because service in the Forever War, as many of us call it, isn’t so much about going as returning. According to data provided by the Center for a New American Security, of the 2.7 million veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, half have done multiple tours. More telling, 223,000 have gone at least four times, and 51,000 have done six or more deployments.

We can’t get our fill of war. In fact, since 1943, the year the picture above was taken in New York City, the US has been at peace for just five years: 1976, 1977, 1978, 1997 and 2000 were the only years with no major war.

So today, we gather to celebrate those who have died in service of our global ambitions. We watch a parade, we shop at the mall, and we attend a cookout. Perhaps we should be required to spend more time thinking about how America can increase the number of years when we are not at war.

Wrongo can’t escape the idea that if we re-instituted a military draft, and required military service of all young Americans, it would soon become impossible for the politicians and generals to justify the forever war.

So, wake up America! Instead of observing Memorial Day with another burger, get involved in a plan to re-institute the draft. It won’t stop our involvement in war, but it will unite American mothers and fathers to bring about the end of this forever war, and any future ‘forever war’”.

To help you wake up, listen to Curtis Mayfield doing his tune “We Got To Have Peace”, live on the Old Grey Whistle Test, a BBC2 TV show that was aired from 1971 to 1988. In 1965, Mayfield wrote “People Get Ready” for the Impressions, another of his politically charged songs. Here is “Got To Have Peace”:

Gotta have peace.

Sample Lyrics:

And the people in our neighborhood
They would if they only could
Meet and shake the other’s hand
Work together for the good of the land

Give us all an equal chance
It could be such a sweet romance
And the soldiers who are dead and gone
If only we could bring back one

Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.

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Travels With Wrongo – Poland Edition

The Daily Escape:

Chopin’s Piano at his birthplace, Zelazowa Wola, Poland. Chopin is far and away the most famous Polish national – 2018 photo by Wrongo

Sometimes there can be unintended consequences, even when the intended consequence is a good idea.

The focus of Wrongo and Ms. Right’s visit to Poland is to learn more about the current state of Polish nursing (Ms. Right is a PhD nurse). Over the past few years, Poland has worked very hard to create national qualification standards for nurses in practice, and to dramatically improve the quality of their education. Prior to 2004, most nurses attended vocational schools, they entered practice after two years, and most of their education was on-the-job training.

Today, most nurses entering practice have Bachelor’s degrees. Both Master and PhD degrees are offered as well. There is a detailed, nation-wide standard for nursing education that is required in all 420 schools of nursing.

This all happened in a period of about 14 years, and is a direct result of Poland joining the European Union in 2004. The EU’s interest was that Polish nursing education and practice standards would be raised to meet the overall standards for EU member countries. To that end, the EU provided Poland with funding that was used for “bridge studies”, designed to bring the vocational school graduates up to the new standards, and university programs for new nurses.

The results are impressive. Today, Polish nurses meet the standards of the EU. They are in demand for jobs all across the other EU countries.

This has led to an unintended consequence: a nursing shortage in Poland. In Poland, the average nurse’s salary is about $10,000/year. But as you can see below, Polish nurses can earn substantially more elsewhere in Europe. These are pre-tax monthly averages in Euros:

Source: Nursingcee

Nurses earn less than the average worker in Poland. The average salary in Poland in Q1 2017 was 4,449 zt, or about $1215/mo. Compare that to a nurse’s average salary of $833/month, and the reason for the shortage is clear. About 20,000 nurses migrate annually from Poland to elsewhere in the EU.

The result is a current 60,000 nurse shortage in Poland, where there are 5.4 nurses per thousand of population. That ratio is 9.1/thousand in the OECD countries. And it is the younger, educated nurses that are leaving: The average age of a Polish nurse is 51.

Over the past two days, we met with the chief nurse executives at two hospitals, the vice-minister for nursing in the Ministry of Health and the president of the Polish equivalent of the American Nurses Association. None could articulate a clear strategy for ending the nursing shortage, or for increasing the average nursing salary sufficiently to slow outward migration for economic reasons.

Most Americans were unaware of how the EU imposes standards on member countries for many aspects of economic life until the Brexit issue arose in the UK. Those in the UK who voted to leave the EU felt that the requirements to stay were not worth the costs. That may have been a shortsighted decision.

There will always be costs when a degree of sovereignty is surrendered when joining an organization like the EU.  Consider Jan and Thera Kuiper, dairy farmers at Kuiper’s dairy in the Netherlands, who Wrongo and Ms. Right met in 2017. The Kuiper’s went from being simple dairy farmers supplying a local market, to now selling 4000 pounds of cheese a week throughout the EU. It wasn’t easy to comply with the EU’s requirements to sell cheese, but now their business is thriving.

It looks like Mr. Market will continue to determine where Polish nurses work, at least until Poland comes up with a solution that leads to better pay at home.

Until then, those who are most confident in their skills will continue to move elsewhere in the EU for better pay.

And Poland will continue to have a first-world system of nurses’ education, without a first-world career path for their graduates.

Since Wrongo is returning to the US on Saturday, there can’t be our customary musical interlude to start the weekend. But, Wrongo and Ms. Right had the pleasure of hearing a private performance of three pieces by Chopin on Friday by the remarkable 23 year-old Polish pianist, Wojciech Kruczek. Among the pieces Kruczek played for us was Chopin’s Ballade No. 1, in G minor. Chopin’s four Ballades are one-movement pieces for solo piano. Ballade No. 1 was completed in 1835 when Chopin was 25. The Ballades are considered to be some of the most challenging pieces in the standard piano repertoire. Here is the Ballade #1 by Mr. Kruczek

While the video says the artist is Kayo Nishimizu, Wrongo assures you that it is Wojciech Kruczek.

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Last Day In Budapest Teaches a Valuable Lesson

The Daily Escape:

Liberty (or Liberation) Statue, Budapest, Hungary. The statue was erected in 1947 in remembrance of the liberation of Hungary by Soviet troops. Many recalled the period of  Soviet control as a time when they were “under liberation” – 2018 photo by Wrongo

Sometimes a person-to-person experience can jolt you from your comfort zone, and provide insight into a wholly different life experience. On Monday, we visited Tabitha House, a pediatric hospice and palliative care facility in Hungary. As its name implies, it provides end of life care for terminally ill children or for those kids with chronic and life-shortening conditions.

We spent time talking with Judit Hegedus, head nurse of Tabitha House. She told us that Tabitha House is the largest pediatric hospice in Hungary. It has five beds.

Just five beds.

There are 9.8 million people in Hungary, of which 2.1 million are children. The first Hungarian hospice started in 1991, and insurance coverage for adults in hospice began in 2004. But it took until 2017 before there was any government financing for pediatric hospice and palliative care.

As of 2015, the most recent year with data, there were only 215 hospice/palliative care beds in Hungary. If this seems low, the World Health Organization’s recommendations for a country with a population of 10 million like Hungary is that a minimum of 500 beds are needed.

Tabitha House has a mostly part-time staff of 15, including pediatric and hospice nurses, a psychologist, a physiotherapist and a physician. There is a problem recruiting sufficient professionals because some misunderstand the value of palliative care, and they share society’s fear of childhood death.

Obviously, there is a large unfilled pediatric hospice need in Hungary. The most cost-effective way to expand assistance to terminally ill kids would be by offering home care services. Judit says that in-patient costs average about $72/day, low by US standards. In-home care costs about $16.50/visit.

While funding expansion is an issue, she hopes to initiate offering home care services later in 2018.

When we arrived at Tabitha House, we expected to be moved by the struggle of kids fighting for their lives. Of course that happened, but the biggest emotional wallop came from listening to Judit, and watching her staff deal with the impossible situation they face. In their country, there is an overwhelming need for pediatric hospice services, and totally insufficient resources to meet that need.

You leave feeling that these people are saints. They are a happy team, persevering despite having to make do with less-than-the-best equipment, and fighting the long odds facing their patients.

It was touching to stand with Judit in front of their “family tree”, a wall mural of a tree with many branches. At the end of each branch was a photo of a child. Judit would pause with her finger over each, say the child’s name, and offer a short memory of him or her.

There are wonderful people in the world. People who are not playing the angles, who are not reaching for wealth. People who exclude no one from their care and concern.

People who do good simply because it is necessary.

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Travels With Wrongo

The Daily Escape:

Budapest, Hungary – photo via @archpics

Wrongo and Ms. Right are leaving today, escaping to Hungary and Poland. We will return just before Memorial Day. You can expect blogging to be light for the next ten days.

Wrongo will try to post photos of Budapest and Warsaw when high speed internet is available.

Take a break from the mad rush, and listen to Philip Glass play his composition, “Mad Rush”. In 1979, the organizers of the Dalai Lama’s first public address in North America approached Glass to create a musical piece with one prerequisite: Because the Dalai Lama’s schedule was so vague, they needed a piece of music that could be stretched for an indefinite period of time without the audience realizing there was any delay to the start of the meeting. This provided Glass the inspiration for Mad Rush.

Mad Rush is based on alternations between two themes. One is peaceful and meditative, the other is fast and frantic. Glass says that the two themes represent the interplay of the wrathful and peaceful deities in Tibetan Buddhism.

In the 1960s, Glass became a practicing Buddhist. He is also a strong supporter of Tibetan independence:

May your peaceful and meditative side win over your fast and frantic side.

Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.

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