Month: November 2019

The final big complaint of millennials is that they suffered disproportionately from the Great Recession, and are inheriting an economy marked by slow growth and excessive inequality. They blame Boomers for this. Are they right?

This story is extremely complicated. As to slow growth, that is attributable to a wide range of factors, including demographic change, the end of the Cold War and the rise of China, international trade policy, a mysterious slowdown in innovation, and new technology, particularly in transportation and communications. These phenomena can be found throughout the world, and cannot be pinned on a single generation, much less a single cohort of Americans.

Inequality is a bit of a different story. It is fair to blame some of the GOP’s affection for regressive tax cuts and deregulation on Boomer libertarianism. On the other hand, Reagan and Thatcher were not Boomers, and my generation was hardly united behind the Reagan, Bush, and Trump tax cuts. I certainly didn’t support them, and I don’t think I should be blamed for them.

My verdict is mixed, but mostly not guilty. If Gen Z wants to improve our growth figures, they need to invent something more useful than social media.

Joe Biden wasn’t the first candidate to call Elizabeth Warren a dogmatic, out of touch elitist; that was Klobuchar and Mayor Pete. In addition, if Warren is the nominee, Trump is going to make the elitist argument one of the centerpieces of his campaign, so she needs to find an effective way to deal with it. It might as well be sooner than later.

That said, the dynamics of making the argument at this stage are very different than they are in the general election. Biden is running the risk of offending a substantial part of the blue base by making what, in this case, truly is a potential GOP talking point.

It makes me uneasy. He needs to calibrate this line of attack very carefully, or it could backfire in a big way, because Warren isn’t the only one who needs to expand her constituency in order to win in 2020.

Millennials are also much given to complaining about soaring housing costs. Is this problem attributable to Boomers?

Not really. If the idea is that Boomers drive up housing costs by selfishly suppressing supply through zoning regulations, I can assure you, based on decades of personal experience, that NIMBYism is not a peculiarly Boomer trait. To the extent that this is a generational issue, it is probably more due to Gen Z demands for housing with far more amenities than we enjoyed when we entered the market; however, I don’t really think it is a generational issue at all.

DEMOCRATS: The political system is rigged in favor of the wealthy. We need to limit their campaign contributions in order to maintain a reasonably fair and equal system.

SUPREME COURT: Political contributions are free speech under most circumstances. The more, the better. You can’t limit them in the manner you want.

DEMOCRATS: OK, if we can’t limit their contributions, we can reduce their spending indirectly by imposing a wealth tax. How ’bout them apples! If at first you don’t succeed, try something more extreme!

SUPREME COURT: That’s not constitutional, either. Tough luck, guys.

A number of right-wing commentators are calling on the Democrats to abandon impeachment and to settle for a censure resolution. Should they agree?

No, for two reasons:

1. It would send the message to Trump, and the rest of the world, that attempting to compel Ukraine to intervene in the 2020 election on his behalf was not a serious violation of our political norms. He would consequently continue to do it. We can’t have that.
2. From a purely partisan political perspective, it lets Collins, Romney, and Murkowski off the hook, which is why the right supports it. Why would the Democrats do that?

The issue is going to come up in any event during the trial. You can expect Collins and the rest to push Mitch McConnell for a censure motion in an effort to protect their image of independence if they vote to acquit. Trump, of course, will be completely opposed, since he maintains he did nothing wrong. Which way will Mitch go? We’ll see.

Millennials love to complain about their student debts, the levels of which, it must be admitted, can be pretty appalling. How serious is this problem, and are Boomers to blame?

This is a multi-layered issue, as follows:

1. At the highest level, student debts represent investments made willingly by millennials. If the investments didn’t turn out as expected, why should they be bailed out? The government didn’t pay my mortgage, after all.
2. Boomer parents frequently wind up shouldering large portions of the debt in one way or another.
3. Soaring levels of tuition are, to a large extent, a function of the shift to a knowledge-based economy. Colleges are charging more because they perceive a degree is much more valuable than it used to be. It is hard to blame Boomers for following the laws of economics.
4. Tuition is also soaring because many colleges have changed their business model. The new plan is to provide high levels of aid for unusually worthy students, and to pay for it by attracting more affluent students with amenities the likes of which did not exist when I was in school. The model would not work if millennial students put more emphasis on low tuition than the quality of school amenities. Boomer administrators can be blamed for some of this, but millennial consumers are also at fault.

My verdict on this issue? Mostly not guilty.

Some left-wing pundits who see holes in the Warren plan nonetheless support it, because it will inspire the base and move the national conversation in the right direction. It isn’t going to become law in the foreseeable future, anyway. What harm can it do?

A lot, actually:

1. If completely revamping approximately 17 percent of our GDP is the Democrats’ position in 2020, that is what the election will be about, not Trump’s innumerable failures and weaknesses. The Warren plan will thus make it much more likely that Trump will prevail in an election we cannot afford to lose.
2. Making promises on which you cannot deliver will inevitably result in further division, cynicism, anger, and frustration within the Democratic Party and throughout the country. We already have one Freedom Caucus; we don’t need a left-wing version.
3. Every minute President Warren spends chasing an impossible dream is a minute she could be using doing something that will actually help the American people.

In short, we may at some level admire Don Quixote, but he is a fictional character, not our head of state. Electing him would be a mistake.

Millennials frequently accuse Boomers of selfishly trashing the planet. Are they right?

Unfortunately, yes. The basic science behind climate change has been known for decades. As I understand it, the government was on the verge of taking significant action to combat it nearly thirty years ago, but ideology and unenlightened self-interest intruded, and nothing was done. The results are already apparent, and will get worse over time.

Getting any electorate to support changing lifestyles when the benefit would inure mostly to future generations was always going to be a difficult task. You have to think, however, that the Boomers’ disdain for traditional values and emphasis on their own personal freedom made things worse.

The best argument that you can make for the Boomers is that the increase in greenhouse gas emissions during their lifetime is far more due to the largely unanticipated rise of China than anything they did on their own. That is true, but it feels inadequate. And so, the verdict must be, guilty as charged.

Sure, Archie was a reactionary. But, in his heart of hearts, everyone knew that he was a decent guy. He may have had issues with his family, but no one doubted that he cared about them. Most of all, he wasn’t angry or scared, and it never would have occurred to him to call himself a victim. He was an average American, and that was fine with him.

You couldn’t remake “All in the Family” the same way now. Today’s equivalent of Archie is a whining proto-fascist who would gladly sell out his country for some protection for his conservative social values. It’s hard to find anything lovable about him. That’s a big change, and not for the better.

I read two interesting things over the weekend:

1. The latest issue of The Economist has a page with a series of graphs which indicate that America is moving left on cultural issues, due almost entirely to demographic change. In other words, reactionaries are mostly old people who are dying off over time.
2. Only a tiny proportion of Biden’s support in Iowa comes from people under 45.

What does it mean for the general election? The truly elderly are generally reactionary Trump voters who cannot be reached by the left; Gen Z will vote for the Democrats regardless who the nominee is, but would be much more enthusiastic about Warren or Sanders; and the generational swing voters are people my age who despise Trump, but also dislike anything smacking of “the revolution.” We’re the Biden voters–the real conservatives in this country.

Technically, I’m a Boomer, but I never felt like one. I grew up in the seventies, not the sixties. My attitudes were shaped by Watergate, inflation, and the Iran hostage crisis, not Woodstock, Vietnam, and the Summer of Love. It’s not the same thing at all.

As a result, I think I’m fairly well qualified to mediate between Gen Z and my own generation. Over the next several days, I will be evaluating the merits of the claims Gen Z makes against the Boomers, some of which have considerable merit. In the meantime, however, I’m going to have a “get off my lawn” moment and get my prejudices against millennials out of the way:

1. OUR MUSIC WAS BETTER THAN YOURS: With a few very notable exceptions (Florence and the Machine; London Grammar), I find most popular millennial music to be thin, formulaic, and tiresome. A hundred years from now, people will be listening to our music, but not this stuff. I would bet the ranch on it.
2. YOUR MOVIES ARE LOUSY, TOO: Aren’t you going to run out of Marvel characters anytime soon?
3. GET YOUR NOSE OUT OF YOUR PHONE!: And stop texting naked pictures of yourself. That’s just stupid.
4. YOU DIDN’T INVENT GAY RIGHTS, RIGHTS FOR RACIAL MINORITIES, AND FEMINISM: Boomers put these causes in the mainstream, not you. You’re just taking them to another level.
5. TATTOOS ARE UGLY: Wait until you’re my age, and then you’ll understand.

There. I’ve done it. With that out of the way, I’ll start with climate change tomorrow.

Demonstrators are out in force in Lebanon and Iraq, with similar and justified complaints about ineffective and corrupt government. Could it be the beginning of a new Arab Spring?

I doubt it. Ineffective and corrupt government is the product of factions dividing the spoils. It is the price of peace in those two countries.

European history tells us that, over the long run, religious factions can be overcome by nationalism. It takes a long time, innumerable deaths, and stalemate, however. I don’t think either Lebanon or Iraq has reached that stage yet.

The harshest, and most truthful, thing you can say about Jeremy Corbyn is that he unites his enemies and divides his friends. The right will vote Conservative to keep him out; the moderate left is repelled by his ambivalence about Brexit and his anachronistic socialist views. Labour will likely pay the price for it next month.

But Corbyn has one big card to play in the election. You could even call it a trump card, because it comes in the form of the American president. Trump is the living embodiment of every negative British caricature of an American; he’s loud, crass, overbearing, materialistic, and ignorant. The British–even the traditionalist right–naturally despise him. BoJo, on the other hand, is clearly identified with him, and the Tories look more like a Trumpist party every passing day.

If I’m Corbyn, I would hammer on this issue every day on the campaign trail. It might even get some people to forget about his innumerable issues as a potential PM.

(In order to prove his point, Donald Trump shot a man on Fifth Avenue in broad daylight. The House has impeached him. The trial begins.)

CHIEF JUSTICE: How do you plead?

TRUMP: I am above the law. Impeachment is unconstitutional. I can only be removed from office by the vote of a majority of the true (meaning, white) citizens of America. That, of course, will never happen.

GOP SENATORS: We can’t go that far, but we say there is no evidence that Trump shot anyone.

DEMOCRATS: We have a hundred witnesses who saw him do it.

GOP SENATORS: Yeah, but they’re all Democrats. This is a purely partisan witch hunt.

DEMOCRATS: Half of them were Republicans.

GOP SENATORS: OK, so he did it, but it was fully justified. It was self-defense. The guy was a progressive. He could have been trying to shoot our beloved president.

DEMOCRATS: All of the witnesses will testify that the man was unarmed, and presented no threat to Trump.

GOP SENATORS: OK, so he did it, and it was unjustified, but the guy didn’t die. Trump doesn’t shoot well enough to kill him. That isn’t bad enough to justify removing him from office and undoing the results of the last election.

(They vote, and Trump is acquitted on those grounds, although he is fuming that the GOP senators didn’t accept his defense, and he is plotting his revenge.)

Bernie may be a left-wing troglodyte with a brain stuck in the 1960’s, but occasionally he gets well ahead of the curve. Medicare-for-all is an obvious example, but so is the American-backed Saudi war in Yemen, which Sanders opposed before it was cool. He deserves credit for that.

But Bernie goes too far when he puts the Saudis in the axis of authoritarians, and makes his opposition to their regime personal. Yes, I have a huge issue with giving a blank check to Saudi adventurism. No, I don’t see any big moral difference between the Saudi and Iranian regimes; that was true even before the Khashoggi murder. But Saudi Arabia is obviously a major player in both the Middle East and world oil markets, and its interests cannot be ignored. In addition, even though they are being imposed in an authoritarian way, the MBS reforms are popular at home and should be welcome here.

The bottom line is that the Middle East is a messy and complex place, lacking clearly defined saints and villains. In one way or another, we have to do business with all of them. Not writing blank checks for one side or the other is not the same as singling them out as an enemy.