Category: Health Policy

Saturday Soother – January 21, 2017

Did Wrongo miss anything yesterday? We had multiple meetings, and thus, no chance to see the “You Bet Your Country” reality show that premiered in DC.

Look on the bright side, there are now only 1,459 days left in the reign of DT, so two things to focus on:

  • Work hard to save the ACA, and
  • Remember to toast to the health of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer every day.

Today is the Women’s March in Washington DC. Two days in a row of firsts for our Orange Overlord. Yesterday, he was sworn in as the 45th president. Today, he sees his first mass protest in the form of the Women’s March, and companion marches (600 at last count) around the country and the world.

New York Magazine tweaks the main stream media’s coverage thusly: (brackets by the Wrongologist)

…the media’s treatment of the [women’s] march has been so fretful that you’d be forgiven for thinking that this grass-roots demonstration of hundreds of thousands on behalf of women’s rights is an example of feminism in crisis and disarray.

Whenever there are protests from the left, we’re always adjured that we’re doing it wrong and/or that our “message” is defocused or unclear. Leftwing protests get little coverage in the MSM. Wrongo has observed that when there are rightwing protests, they are typically universally covered by the MSM. Plus their “message” is always described as clear, and unequivocal.

There have been protests at most recent inaugurals, but they have been generally along the parade route, as there were in DC today. The car and trash can burnings made today’s DC protests look more like what we see in European capitals.

What the Women’s March envisions is a protest that creates as much buzz as the inauguration itself. That means the organizers are attempting to create a widespread, and diverse coalition for this event. The hope is: (1) a huge crowd shows up to protest; (2) the protest is marked by its size and the quality of its direct action (without violence); (3) the obvious fissures in the coalition remain unclear to the public until long after the march.

The March on Washington in August, 1963 was one of the largest political demonstrations in American history. The organizing idea was a protest for “jobs and freedom”. You may not remember that John Lewis’s original speech at the March on Washington was highly controversial. Now, 54 years down the road, no one cares, because of the power of Lewis’s personal history, and the fact that the march ultimately led to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

The March on Washington was broadcast on TV, because we had not yet become jaded about protests, and the White House was vulnerable from both sides of the racial divide. The Women’s March is only expected to be live-streamed via cell phone. The networks will give us highly edited snippets on the evening news.

The value of these large public protests are in building a more unified opposition movement. Perhaps it will happen this time, although there is a risk that it fizzles like the Occupy Movement did.

The Tea Party began building their national presence with a rally of maybe 7000 people in tri-corner hats, enabled by a few Congress Critters. That was enough for the media to legitimize their birth. Perhaps it will work for the Women’s March: it will become a viable movement only if the commitment to messaging and building a national presence in Congressional districts and statehouses is carried through.

What will be more significant for the future are the state capitol and major city rallies once the protesters leave Washington. Resistance IS the message: The voters did not deliver Trump an overwhelming mandate to do the things his juggernaut is planning to shower on America.

Handled correctly that could make Trump and the GOP vulnerable. The Wrongologist will post a first-person report from an attendee at the Women’s March, on Tuesday.

But today is Saturday, and you need to mellow out a little. Here is something radically different, yet completely familiar. This is the Austrian brass ensemble Mnozil Brass performing Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody”. What better tribute to Freddie Mercury? These guys are demonstrably horny and have lots of brass. High energy, and completely entertaining:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJTIJRoEWPE

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

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January 20, 2017 – Trump Inaugural Edition

Today is the Trump Inaugural. So many preparations, and so much detail for the transition team to worry about. From the no stone left unturned department, comes this from the WSJ:

 Workers preparing for the Trump Inaugural have taped over the name of the company — “Don’s Johns” — that has long supplied portable restrooms for major outdoor events in the nation’s capital…Virginia-based Don’s Johns calls itself the Washington area’s top provider of portable toilet rentals. But the name apparently strikes too close to home for inaugural organizers.

Too close to Donald John for Donald John Trump? Of course. Somebody placed blue tape over the company name on dozens of portable restrooms installed near the Capitol for the inauguration. The company says they didn’t do it. But, the company’s name is clearly blocked from the TV cameras:

Once Donald J. Trump becomes the 45th president of the US, he will certainly push the agenda that got him elected. We all will need a way to sort the signal from the noise that we will hear from both his partisans and his opposition (which includes the Wrongologist). When you hear people raising reasoned questions and objections to Trump’s proposed policies, odds are that you’re listening to the kind of dissent that’s essential to our democracy, and you ought to take it seriously. For the kinds of arm-waving, emotional, knee-jerk support (or criticism) that you will hear every day, feel free to ignore that. You will know the knee-jerk stuff, since it will be sung in harmony by all the other partisans. And the media will repeat it often for your consideration.

Wrongo has serious problems with Trump, but is hopeful that his administration will:

  • Live up to his populist domestic promises, and
  • Simplify our country’s confusing foreign policy

If he normalizes relations with Russia, extracts us from the messes in Iraq and Syria and if he encourages domestic jobs growth, Wrongo will likely sign up for all of that. If he pushes through a big infrastructure bill that isn’t a wealth transfer to corporations, Wrongo will probably go along with that as well.

Wrongo does not trust Trump or the GOP on health care insurance. He worries that Republicans will throw a number of Americans under the bus, causing a great deal of unnecessary pain.

You can be sure that Trump is going to try to do some terrible things over the next four years, such as appointing ideologues to the Supreme Court. But, Congressional Republicans will clearly attempt far worse things than will The Overlord.

So the terrible fact is, we have to count on Trump to rein in the worst of the GOP’s ideas and instincts.

Needing to trust Donald Trump is enough to frighten anyone.

Trump tweets continually to rally his supporters while simultaneously manipulating the media. It’s unnerving. Saying that Trump is terrifying, while correct, is useless. The most obsessive of his opponents focus on worst-case scenarios that are designed to rally (and raise money from) the anti-Trump troops among us. Sadly, that strategy largely guarantees that the opposition will look disorganized and fragile. It also causes the American center-left to be fragmented issue by issue, and therefore, unable to broadly challenge the GOP, at least in the short run.

The Dems need to coalesce around only the potentially win-able issues. Otherwise, they should “just say no” to any Trump legislation intended to weaken or break our social contract. Sen. Schumer is correct when he says that the GOP needs to own 100% of the pain they cause the average person, whenever they break the contract. Any Democrat that breaks ranks to support issues like cuts to Medicare or privatization of Social Security must be challenged from the left in the next primary.

Democrats did not believe they would be in this political mess. They are trying to find their footing, but establishment Democrats want to simply tweak the message, and stay the course.

However, the battle against Trump and the GOP majority must move from “Republican Lite” to a fight to put social justice and progressivism back on the table as viable options for all Americans.

Otherwise, it will be a precipitous fall from political relevancy for Democrats.

Establishment Democrats who profit from the status quo, have no incentive to come up with an agenda that appeals to people who are suffering because of that status quo. The great weakness of Hillary Clinton’s campaign was that she aimed her appeals at the minority of voters who would benefit from the established neoliberal order, while largely ignoring those who suffered under it.

That decision could cost the Dems for a generation.

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Saturday Soother – January 14, 2017

You may have noticed that the Wrongologist has not posted a column since Monday. Life intervened, as we began a to-the-studs kitchen renovation this week. Think about it, no kitchen in January in the Northeast. It’s like camping, but you sleep in your own bed, and use your own shower.

This week, the Trumpathon marched forward, with each day giving us something unique to consider, to react to with disbelief as our Overlord moves to fully take the reins of power.

The commonly accepted story is that the Russians hacked Podesta and the DNC, and that might have helped Trump defeat Clinton. Then there is the “Dossier” of possibly incriminating info that the Russians may, or may not, have on Trump. The story could be false or true, and there is no solid evidence either way.

Trump’s plan to place his business in “trust” is ridiculous, but he has no plan to abide by the spirit of a blind trust, and he’s exempt from the rules for other public servants, so deal with it.

The Democrats didn’t lose to the Republicans because of a Russian conspiracy, but because they didn’t do a good job of governing, for two reasons: First, the economy hasn’t recovered for quite a few Americans. Second, Obama’s record on foreign policy is at best, mixed and is possibly a failure.

Despite his success with Obamacare, we should remember that insurance coverage is not health care. Consider that the US mortality rate is going up. And there is still considerable economic uncertainty: Elevate’s Center for the New Middle Class looked at how much money in the form of an unexpected expense would be a crisis for ordinary Americans. Their study asked 502 nonprime (credit score below 700) and 525 prime Americans (credit score of 700 or above) how they could handle an unexpected expense. They found that:

A bill becomes a crisis for nonprime Americans at $1,400. For Primes, it’s $2,900…

160 million Americans come under the nonprime category, according to the study. That’s half of our population who would have difficulty paying for a trip to the emergency room with a broken arm. Two-thirds of Americans would struggle to cover a $1000 emergency expense. Half of Americans find it hard to pay over $100 a month for health insurance, while the average price nationally in 2017 for a bronze plan is $311 per month for a 30-year-old nonsmoker who does not qualify for subsidies. That means without subsidies, half of America is at serious risk of being uninsured under repeal and replace.

This speaks to our uneven economic recovery better than any average wage or unemployment statistics.

In short, Democrats lost to a very flawed person because they (Dems) ran the country badly for people like those in this study, and those people are upset.

If that didn’t bring you down far enough, there are just six days until the inauguration.

Wow, with all this going on, we need something to help us relax. Today’s soother is Samuel Barber’s “Knoxville: Summer of 1915“, with soprano Dawn Upshaw and the Orchestra of St. Luke’s. Barber was a 20th century American composer, perhaps our best. He was twice awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Music.

He wrote this piece in 1947, based on a prose poem by James Agee. Agee would later use the poem as a preamble to his Pulitzer Prize-winning book, A Death in the Family, published posthumously in 1957. Agee was also the screenwriter for the movie, the African Queen. Here is Knoxville: Summer of 1915:

While this feels operatic, the lyrics are in English. Here is a sample:

It has become that time of evening when people sit on their porches, rocking gently and talking gently and watching the street…People go by; things go by. A horse, drawing a buggy, breaking his hollow iron music on the asphalt; a loud auto; a quiet auto; people in pairs, not in a hurry, scuffling, switching their weight of aestival body, talking casually, the taste hovering over them of vanilla, strawberry, pasteboard and starched milk, the image upon them of lovers and horsemen, squared with clowns in hueless amber.

“Aestival” means of, or occurring in the summer.

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Sunday Cartoon Blogging – January 8, 2017

Congress returned, and immediately shot itself in the foot by being against ethics before they were for them. That made no sense, even to Overlord Donald I, so Congress backed down. Then Congress got down to business: They revived a rule allowing them to reduce the pay of individual government workers, which was why they were building lists of pro-climate change bureaucrats. Now, they are working on the process for dismantling Obamacare. Dr. Pence nailed the GOP theme:

The GOP will try to baffle the people by guaranteeing “Universal Access”, to health care. That does not ensure that anyone actually has insurance:

The big story of the week was the Russian hacking. Trump was briefed on Friday. Wrongo is skeptical that it made any difference to the election result. Trump’s public skepticism that Russia was behind it is also troubling:

Don’t worry about Trump releasing any secret stuff. The hacking report is 50 pages long, so he’s not reading it. He’ll watch the declassified stuff on Fox News and tweet what he thinks:

The Inauguration is coming. It might look like this:

(This cartoon is by Marian Kamensky, Slovakia)

Once in office, here is Trump’s foreign policy:

(This is from Tom Janssen, The Netherlands)

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American Exceptionalism Doesn’t Include Your Healthcare

The Republican’s effort to repeal and (maybe) replace the Affordable Care Act (ACA) began today. From NPR:

Opening punches were thrown in what one top Democrat today called “the first big fight” of the new congressional year – the promise by President-elect Donald Trump and GOP lawmakers to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act.

The Obamacare debate is political and ideological, and it obscures a hard truth about healthcare in America. Historically, we spend more money than any other country on healthcare.

In the late 1990s, the US spent roughly 13% of its GDP on healthcare, compared to about a 9.5% average for all high income countries. However, the difference has steadily increased. Last year, as the ACA continued to roll out, healthcare costs hit 17.5% of GDP, the highest ever. That’s $9,695 per person.

We spend over $3 trillion on healthcare annually, and that rate of spending is expected to accelerate over the next decade. With all the debate about Obamacare, and what should replace it if it is repealed, we are ignoring what healthcare costs in the US, relative to other high income countries. It may surprise you that America doesn’t have better care than other high income countries, if we compare life expectancy to per capita health expenditures:

Source: Visual Capitalist

Americans spend more money, but do not receive similar results to other countries using the basic metric of life expectancy. Whilst we have fantastic services, like Functional Medicine Clarksville TN for instance, accessibility to these services varies greatly. The chart shows that the divergence started before 1980, and it widens all the way to 2014. While the 2015 statistics are not plotted on this chart, but we know that the healthcare expense in 2015 was 17.5% of GDP, so the divergence is likely to continue to widen.

The conclusion is that while our healthcare spending is considerably higher than in other high income countries, it’s also relatively less effective. If America spent more money and got the same results, we might say that our system is unique, but it produces similar outcomes, so let’s keep it the way it is.

But in fact, Americans on average live shorter lives than people in other high income countries. In fact, life expectancy went down in 2015:

The overall death rate for Americans increased because mortality from heart disease and stroke increased after declining for years. Deaths were also up from Alzheimer’s disease, respiratory disease, kidney disease and diabetes. More Americans also died from unintentional injuries and suicide.

We have a broken political system, one that cannot deal with the root cause of our expensive healthcare, or the fact that our healthcare system simply doesn’t produce the results that others can.

Despite the talk by Republicans about Obamacare being socialized medicine, our system is private, with the exception of the health insurance provided by Medicare and Medicaid. Our insurance companies are private, our physicians (like those at Southwest Care) and providers are private.

By some estimates, the private multi-payer system in the US adds $0.38 for every dollar spent to cover the profits and the discreet management organizations that exist in our multi-payer system. The problem is that there is so much money (over $1 trillion) going to the private players, that they will fight like hell to keep the system as it is.

And they have the lobbying funds available to fight to keep the status quo. Thus, we will continue to deal with excessive costs regardless of no Obamacare, or some jury-rigged GOP Obamacare replacement.

In our Exceptional system, the fact is that even though you pay for health insurance, you are not the actual customer. When you go to the doctor or to the hospital, you are not the actual customer. The Insurance companies are the true customers of the doctors and the hospitals, and for the insurance companies, their shareholders are the true customers.

And before you question the statistics, saying for example, that the US counts infant deaths differently than they do in other countries, the infant death rate in the US is about 0.5% of births, and with about 4 million births in the US that translates into about 20,000 infant deaths. If you remove 20,000 people assigning them a life span of zero, in a country of 320 million people, the overall average life expectancy rises by only 1.81 days (43.4 hours). That is the statistical life span increase assuming we had zero infant deaths. (Please check Wrongo’s math).

Higher infant death rates have virtually no effect on the results shown on the chart.

Remember: Whomever is getting that extra $1 Trillion dollars every year has a trillion reasons why they should keep getting it.

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Congress Is Back, And the Revolution Begins!

Here is food for thought from David Weigel of the WaPo: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

When the 115th Congress begins this week, with Republicans firmly in charge of the House and Senate, much of that legislation will form the basis of the most ambitious conservative policy agenda since the 1920s. And rather than a Democratic president standing in the way, a soon-to-be-inaugurated Donald Trump seems ready to sign much of it into law…

That plan was long in the making. Almost the entire agenda has already been vetted, promoted and worked over by Republicans and think tanks that look at the White House less for leadership and more for signing ceremonies

There is little reason for Republicans to seek bipartisan support for middle-of-the-road legislation. They will simply work as a hive to turn America into Kansas. You remember Kansas, the state that has such a terrible record of job creation and economic growth? Kansas governor Republican Sam Brownback launched the orthodoxy of Grover Norquist and the Koch brothers on the state. And Brownback and Steven Moore who helped Brownback with his disastrous legislative agenda, are both economic advisors to Trump.

We have seen lots of hand-wringing about how to stand up to the Trump agenda that will begin raining down on America on January 20th. Most calls to action are from single-issue activist groups that lack the resources to get media attention, or to make a difference.

But there is a clear need for collective action on national, state and local levels. And that movement needs a leader.

How about an anti-president? Maybe Bernie Sanders? When Trump governs by tweet, he would be countered by the anti-president. Americans might come to know that, while Trump and company are cutting healthcare, the shadow government led by anti-president Sanders and vice president Warren are passing and signing a national healthcare bill.

When Trump cuts taxes on the rich and corporations, the shadow government is raising taxes on the rich and penalizing corporations that locate overseas to avoid paying tax at home.

When Trump appoints an anti-abortion, pro-Citizens United Supreme Court Justice, the shadow government appoints someone who is for social justice.

This can begin to build a consensus about what Trump is doing wrong.

We don’t have a parliamentary system, but, most Americans have no idea about political theory, or political facts. So, few will realize that a shadow government isn’t consistent with our Constitutional system!

And the new shadow government MUST not contain Pelosi, Schumer, or any of the geriatric Democrats in the House and Senate. That will de-legitimize the effort.

On New Year’s Day, Wrongo and Ms. Right attended a Baroque music concert at an old Congregational church in Washington CT that dates from 1741. Within a beautiful program, we heard a piece by the Italian composer, Domenico Zipoli. Zipoli has an interesting history. He studied with Scarlatti, he became a Jesuit, and worked as a missionary and died in 1726 in Argentina at age 38. Zipoli’s music was a revelation to us. Here is Zipoli’s “Elevazione” for oboe, violin, organ and cello. It was wonderful to hear it in a place with a good pipe organ.

The “elevation” is the point in the Catholic mass when the chalice and host are presented to the congregation. The performance lasts for eight+ minutes, much longer than what Wrongo prefers to present to you, but it is achingly beautiful, so please have patience.

It may be the perfect antidote to the shenanigans we will be seeing from the Trump administration, and we may need to watch it daily for a few months:

It begs the question, why was the 18th century blessed with so many great composers while the 21st century was given Justin Bieber?

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

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Wrongo’s Useless 2017 Predictions

“It’s tough to make predictions. Especially about the future.” – Yogi Berra

Since you have already plunged a stake into the heart of 2016, it is time for some predictions about 2017, which most likely, won’t happen. We can expect the following:

  1. There will be more global political and social turmoil:
    1. The EU could collapse. France is a Marine LePen government away from pursuing an exit from the EU, so there would be a Frexit to go along with Brexit.
    2. China’s economy is wobbling, and China’s president Xi has leaned into a populist message:

On this New Year, I am most concerned about the difficulties of the masses: how they eat, how they live, whether they can have a good New Year…

  1. The US will continue to lose influence globally despite “Mr. Unpredictable” becoming our Orange Overlord: Trump brags about winning when he negotiates. That has been undeniably true in his real estate and name brand licensing. He will find that when the other side doesn’t need access to his brand in order to succeed, he will have to resort to instilling fear. That may work once, but it will not work consistently.
  2. A corollary: Trump arrives in the Oval Office as an overconfident leader, the man with no plan but with a short attention span, and within six months, he will have his first major policy failure. Getting his hand burned will make him more subdued, more conservative and less populist thereafter.
  3. A second corollary: The triumvirate of Russia/Turkey/Iran will elbow the US firmly out of the Fertile Crescent, and secure friendly regimes in Damascus, Baghdad and Tehran. This will push American influence in the Middle East back to just the Gulf States, a weakened Saudi Arabia, and an increasingly isolated Israel.
  4. Domestically, drug abuse, suicide, and general self-destructive behavior will continue to climb and become impossible to ignore.
  5. The Trump stock market rally has already turned into the Santa Selloff. The Dow peaked on December 20 at 19,975, 25 points away from party-hat time. But since then, Dow 20,000 slipped through our fingers like sand. It closed the year at 19,719, down 281 points from 20k.
  6. Regarding the stock market, many people who want to sell stocks waited until 2017 in order to pay lower capital gains tax. Selling in January could lower prices further.
  7. The growing antibiotic resistance to main stream drugs will impact health in the US.

Meta Prediction: It is certain that few Trump voters will get the results they voted for. Some people who voted for Trump have incompatible outcomes in mind, so it’s a virtual guarantee that a sizable minority are going to feel cheated when they fail to get what they were promised.

OTOH, when Trump fails, most of his base will blame anyone but the Donald. The question is, when disillusionment sets in, will the reaction be a turning away, or a doubling down on the anger?

Wrongo thinks anger will win out.

The coming Trump administration will seem like a fractious family outing: Just under half of the family (the “landslide” segment) wanted to go out, but now, the whole family has to go. Those who wanted to stay home will sulk in the back seat while Daddy tells them to stop bitching.

Meanwhile, once we are out of the driveway, it dawns on everyone that Daddy hasn’t decided yet where to go. Everyone pipes up with suggestions, but Daddy again tells everyone to shut up, because it’s his decision alone. There will be the usual “are we there yet?” complaining, some motion sickness and incessant fighting over who is touching whom.

Daddy won’t reveal the destination, but insists everyone will love it once they get there, even those who wanted to stay home, those who wanted to go the beach, and those who wanted to head over the cliff like Thelma and Louise.

Time for our Monday Wake Up Call, “Wake Up Everybody”, originally by Harold Melvin and The Bluenotes, featuring Teddy Pendergrass. Teddy left the group for his solo career after this album.

But, today we will hear and watch John Legend’s cover of the tune, backed by the Roots Band along with Melanie Fiona, and Common. The song is as strong as it was 42 years ago when it was released:

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

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New Year’s Eve, 2016

Today is Wrongo’s birthday! We will spend the evening with close friends, great food, champagne and music. We will talk about how as 2016 draws to a close, America is a deeply unsettled nation.

We can’t decide about our national priorities. We hear from the pols and pundits that it should be jobs and the economy, but they also say it should be national security, or it must be to repeal Obamacare and lower the tax burden on the faux job creators. But they also say that we should remain the world’s policeman, so why weren’t we at the table for the Syrian cease-fire?

Tomorrow we are offered the “fresh slate” that the Universe sends our way each year, so here’s to pretending we’re going to be completely changed men and women in 2017!

Let’s get to some New Year’s music:

First, a snippet of the 2014 Vienna Philharmonic’s New Year’s concert, “The Radetzky March” by Johann Strauss. Daniel Barenboim conducts, but he mostly walks around the orchestra shaking hands with the players. He conducts the audience once or twice. Note the audience’s enthusiastic clapping. The Vienna Philharmonic’s New Year’s concert is broadcast live around the world to an audience of 50 million in 90 countries. The demand for tickets is so high that people pre-register one year in advance in order to participate in a drawing of tickets for seats the following year:

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

Second, it wouldn’t be New Year’s at the Mansion of Wrong without playing “What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve?” This year, we will be listening to the version by The Orioles from 1949. Formed in the late 1940s, The Orioles are generally acknowledged as R&B’s first vocal group. They were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lgtk79GQlA

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

The final tune for New Year’s is about sentimentality and hope for the future. It’s Barry Manilow’s “It’s Just Another New Year’s Eve” from the 1977 “Live” album.

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

Blogging will resume on January 2, 2017.

 

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How Do You Solve a Problem Like Ohio?

Our industrial heartland has withered away, in that there are fewer manufacturing jobs than ever, while manufacturing revenues have never been higher. Forty years of promises by politicians have come to nothing: These people are victims of a world order in which corporations have either exported or automated those jobs, with no responsibility to workers. It is left to the towns of Middle America and the federal government to clean up their mess.

This world order we live in today was born in 1980, with Thatcher and Reagan. According to Ian Welsh, the world order made a few core promises:

If the rich have more money, they will create more jobs.

Lower taxes will lead to more prosperity.

Increases in housing and stock market prices will increase prosperity for everyone.

Trade deals and globalization will make everyone better off.

Those promises were not kept, and in America’s Midwest, economic stress is now the order of the day. That stress has contributed to rising rates of drug addiction and falling life expectancy.

Understandably frustrated, Ohioans and other Midwesterners gave Donald Trump a victory in November. His win has refocused attention by pundits and pols on the plight of our failing de-industrialized areas. While we have economic growth, we also have growing inequality. Here is a graphic illustration of the problem, comparing the US with the EU:

The Economist reports that from 1880 to 1980, the incomes of poorer and richer American states tended to converge, at a rate of nearly 2% per year. The chart above shows that the pattern no longer exists. This causes us to ask if the shift of resources and people from places in decline to places that are growing is simply taking longer to adjust, or has the current world order failed our people? In econo-speak, the gains in some regions should compensate those regions and towns harmed by the shift, leaving everyone better off.

But that is a political and financial lie promulgated by the very corporations that benefited, and by their political and economist cheerleaders.

With economic decline, some towns and cities became poverty traps. A shrinking tax base means deterioration in local services (think Detroit). Public education that might provide the young with new skills and thus opportunities, fails. Those that remain are on government subsidies or hold low-wage service jobs, or both. It is impossible to tell these citizens that the decay of their home town is an acceptable cost of the rough-and-tumble of the global economy.

Politicians are short on solutions. Since housing costs have risen sharply in towns and cities that are growing, underemployed Americans are less likely to move, and those who do, are less likely to head for richer places. Enrico Moretti of the University of California, Berkeley and Chang-tai Hsieh of the University of Chicago argue that our GDP could be 13.5% higher if this wasn’t the situation in America.

But if moving isn’t an option, what can be done to improve the outlook for those who are left behind?

Would more government subsidies help? Prosperous tax payers already support poorer ones. Subsidies for health insurance costs with Obamacare, as well as industrial tax incentives provide some cushion, but they are not likely to deliver long-run economic recovery, and they have not stemmed the growth of populist political sentiment.

To be fair, many people in Ohio and elsewhere want good jobs, but without having to move too far to get them. That may be impossible.

In the 19th century, the federal government gave land to states, which they could sell to raise proceeds for “land-grant universities”. Those universities, including some that are among our finest, were given a practical task: to develop and disseminate new techniques in agriculture and engineering. They went on to become centers of advanced research and, in some cases, hubs of local innovation and economic growth.

Politicians and academic economists might disdain a modern-day version of the program, one that would train workers, foster new ideas, and strengthen weakened regional economies.

But if our politicians do not provide answers, our populist insurgents will.

Time for a Christmas song. Here is Elvis with “Santa Claus Is Back in Town & Blue Christmas”, from his comeback special on NBC. This was recorded over six days in June, 1968 and aired on December 1, 1968. Elvis flubs “Santa Claus is Back in Town”:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgLpMwkfOgw

Despite his flub, he does get this line right:

“You don’t see me comin in no big black Cadillac”

Kind of like out-of-work Ohioans.

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Sunday Cartoon Blogging – August 21, 2016

Although the Wrongologist cannot get newspapers, and only has occasional wifi, the news does not seem to have changed much in the past week. So, here are a few cartoons curated from the wilderness:

Aetna pulled out of Obamacare. Why are you surprised?

COW Aetna

Trump accused Democrats of exploiting Blacks at Minnesota Rally:

Clay Bennett, Chattanooga Times Free Press

Trump told CBS News:

I have seen them marching down the street essentially calling death to the police and I think we’re going to have to look into that…When you see something like that taking place – that’s really a threat, if you think about it. And when you see something like that taking place, we are going to have to perhaps talk with the Attorney General about it or do something.

He also painted the entire African American community as living in poverty with no jobs. Doesn’t that show he’s completely out of touch?

The Clinton Foundation’s practices continue to puzzle Clinton supporters:

COW Zip Line

Ryan Lochte and teammates entered the wrong event:

COW Lochte

Bonus cartoonage from Australia. They cover Trumpology:

Trumpology

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