Category: Uncategorized

As we bid the EU our goodbye

We’re taking some time to say why.

While it’s been a nice trip

We prefer fish and chips

High tea, and big gray English skies.

So now we confront the day after.

For the EU, the vote’s a disaster.

The market’s way down.

Trump sounds like a clown.

From Russia and France I hear laughter.

Brexit was truly an event with world-wide consequences.  Here is my analysis:

Winners:

1.  Boris Johnson:  His chances of becoming the next Prime Minister just rose substantially, although it is far from a sure thing.

2.  Nicola Sturgeon:  The second referendum on Scottish independence is now inevitable, and this time, it will probably pass.

3.  Vladimir Putin:  Maintaining a united European front against Russian aggression will become more difficult.

4.  Marine LePen:  The French only support the EU when it acts as their poodle.  Today, it’s a German Shepherd.  Frexit will be on the table in 2017.

5.  Hillary Clinton:  The reactions of the markets to Brexit are a cautionary tale for a Trump victory in November.  I will have more on this when my Trump moratorium expires next week.

6.  Your UK vacation:  It just got a lot cheaper.

 

Losers:

1.  The UK:  Your country just got a lot poorer, less powerful, and less stable.  Scottish independence is on the way.

2.  David Cameron:  He put his party before his country by promising the referendum and paid the price for it.

3.  George Osborne:  He was once almost assured to be Cameron’s successor, but now that is up in the air.

4.  The Conservative Party:  The divisions and wounds will be difficult to heal.

5.  Angela Merkel:  Without clear vision and strong leadership, the EU will devolve into a bickering, protectionist mess.  Losing the UK won’t help.

6.  Expats:  No elaboration necessary.

7.  Your 401(k):  Look at what the markets are doing this morning.

 

 

It was a childish piece of political theater suitable for a banana republic.  The Democrats are supposed to be running as the party of responsible adults; how, exactly, did this help?

Historically, moving people and goods by water has been much faster than by land, which leads to a bit of a paradox:  coastal areas of island nations tend to be very cosmopolitan, while more remote areas can be very insular.

The Brexit vote will probably reflect that fact.  I expect the Greater London area to go heavily for Remain and the hinterlands for Leave.  For an American, this sounds a great deal like the familiar red state/blue state dichotomy, and some of the arguments made by the proponents of Leave could come from the mouth of Donald Trump.

The UK, the US, and the world all have plenty riding on the outcome of today’s vote.  I will post my reactions tomorrow.

The UK Prime Minister Dave.

The EU connection he’d save.

If the Brexiteers win

A new era begins.

I wish they’d crawl back in their cave.

Democrats view health care in the following ways:

1.  Health care is a right, not a privilege.  For both moral and economic reasons, coverage should be universal.

2.  The market in health care, due in part to its unusual flaws, will never provide coverage that is either cost-effective or universal.  Part of this, of course, is due to the normal workings of the market, which doesn’t provide every poor person with a Lexus, either.  However, the health care market is unique in that:  it is frequently dominated by local monopolies, at least for hospitals;  there is a profound imbalance of knowledge between producers and consumers; and consumers of health care services typically are in no condition to bargain on price.

3.  Poor health is frequently the result of bad luck, not bad choices.  Random events and genetics play a huge role here.  Society has an obligation to step in to assist the unfortunate.

4.  Political action is needed to overcome the flaws in the market and keep prices down.  The best way to deal with market failure is to create consumer cartels.  Where that isn’t possible, for political reasons, redistribute wealth through regulation (e.g., community rating), taxing, and spending in order to provide universal coverage, or something as close to it as possible.

The GOP responds as follows:

1.  While we begrudgingly accept that some minimal level of health care is a right, mostly it is a consumer good just like any other.  Logically, the GOP should support the abolition of Medicare and Medicaid and the elimination of the legal requirement that ERs provide care to those who can’t pay, but that is politically unpalatable, so they instead propose “premium support” in lieu of Medicare and a rollback of Medicaid.

2.  The market is the best mechanism to hold down health care costs.   If you compare the American system to any European country, or even Medicare to private insurance, you will find it difficult to accept this proposition.  Experience makes it clear that, if Medicare is deprived of its monopoly, costs will escalate dramatically, and either the taxpayers or consumers (more likely the latter) will be left holding the bag.

3.  Poor health is the usually the result of poor lifestyle choices.  Why should I subsidize your bad choices?  That makes sense, except that it ignores the role of random events, the genetic lottery, and age.

4. All redistributions of wealth are inefficient and immoral.  This is the principal evil of Obamacare, and must be eliminated.  To the extent that political reality has to be accommodated, they would do it in the least intrusive way possible: hence, equal tax credits for the rich and poor instead of subsidies, and the watering down of community rating, which is essentially a subsidy from the young and healthy to the old, poor, and unhealthy.

Comparing the House Republican plan to ACA, therefore, you wind up with a system that is friendlier to providers, the wealthy, and healthy young people who don’t want to buy insurance.  The cost of insurance for older people and people with pre-existing conditions would skyrocket, and millions of poor people would lose their coverage altogether.

To a proponent of Leave, Brexit is intended to recreate a highly cleaned up version of Victorian England–a green and pleasant land filled with sheep, stone churches, thriving high streets, and picturesque villages.  In the eyes of these people, a vote for Remain will result in a nightmare version of the status quo:  a land overrun by immigrants, some of them terrorists, run in the interests of vampire squid London bankers and grasping Brussels bureaucrats.

To a Remain supporter, the defeat of Brexit means that England will continue on its current path to become a wealthy, dynamic, cosmopolitan, multi-cultural nation.  If Brexit passes, England will decay into a stodgy, dull, and less prosperous monoculture–think of a more secular version of the Republic of Ireland in the middle of the 20th Century.

The Leave vision is easier to sell and grasp, particularly for the elderly and people living outside of the Greater London area.  I suspect that is why Brexit could pass in spite of the fact that there is no reasonable economic case for it.

  The Fool on the Hill

Day after day

Up high on the Hill

The man with the hound dog face

Keeps the Senate perfectly still.

Obama doesn’t seem to like him.

The feeling is mutual, too.

And he never holds a hearing.

 

But the fool on the Hill

Sees that Trump is a clown

And he’s left now to hope

The GOP won’t go down.

 

Well on the way

Disaster is near

The man with the owlish eyes

Is filled with partisan fear.

But Cleveland is fast approaching

And there’s nothing that he can do.

He doesn’t have an answer.

 

But the fool on the Hill

Sees that Trump is a clown

And he’s left now to hope

The GOP won’t go down.

 

Parody of “The Fool on the Hill” by Lennon/McCartney.

The longstanding bridesmaid named Dustin.

300 yard drives he was bustin’.

He finally made putts

And showed plenty of guts.

Our views of him need some adjustin’.

 

So let us all praise LeBron James.

And bow upon hearing his name.

By force of his will

The Cavs climbed a steep hill

And earned him his hard-gotten fame.

Two program notes:

1.  I’m a bit tired of writing about Trump for the moment, so Cromwell, for this week, will be a Trump-free zone.  Don’t worry; he’ll be back next week.
2.  This marks the inauguration of a new feature:  Pop Music Monday.  It will last until I exhaust it.

While the British Invasion took place over fifty years ago, it is still very arguable that The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, and the The Who remain the most important and influential bands in rock history.  How do they stack up against their classical equivalents?

1. The Beatles:  If you don’t believe The Beatles were a miracle, consider this: George Harrison, a brilliant lead guitarist and songwriter who is in the Hall of Fame in his own right, was the third most important member of the band.  How can you account for that?   I can’t, and you can’t, either.

The Beatles were terrific musicians and excellent lyric writers.  Their ability to combine a stunningly wide range of musical influences and modern technology, with the assistance of George Martin, was off the charts.  To me, however, the most impressive thing about them is that they never wrote bad songs, and they made it look easy.  Take any Beatles song you want, and you would probably be happy singing it in the shower.

Classical equivalent:  Mozart

2.  The Rolling Stones:  The Stones created a sound grounded in American blues and stuck with it throughout the decades.  Their formula consists of a rock solid rhythm section, two guitarists who manage to play off each other in a way that no other band has been able to emulate, and a lead singer with a dynamic presence and an exquisite sense of rhythm.  A Stones song from the sixties and the nineties sound pretty much the same, and they’ll both be great.

Classical equivalent:  Bach

3.  The Who:  Pete Townshend essentially invented the soaring, operatic form of rock and roll, and was clever enough to mesh it with contemporary youth culture. Without The Who, it is difficult to imagine Bruce Springsteen, U2, and Florence + The Machine.

Unlike The Beatles, Townshend wrote plenty of crappy songs.  There are times when you can practically hear him straining to fit the lyrics in the music.  At their best, however, Who songs have an unmatched emotional resonance that will live on for a very long time.

Classical equivalent:  Beethoven

History shows us that after eight years of rule by one party or the other, the electorate is generally pretty bored and dissatisfied, regardless of the performance of the incumbent, and leans towards a change.  It thus behooves the party out of power to pick someone who is as inoffensive as possible in order to take advantage of the odds.

2000 is a good example.  While it may seem quaint now, George W. Bush ran as a “compassionate conservative” with a “humble” foreign policy.  Never mind what we actually got; this was a message that had plenty of appeal to the center.

In 2016, the GOP is set to nominate Donald Trump. So much for learning the lessons of history.

Hey, nobody said these guys were smart.

In 2008, Obama won the nomination with a coalition of African-Americans and young white liberals. Clinton tended to win the states with a high concentration of older white people.  In 2016, Clinton largely flipped the switch by winning an extremely high percentage of the African-American vote, just as Obama had in 2008.  While the most visible Sanders supporters were young white liberals, Bernie also did very well in states in which the electorate was predominantly older white people.  The best example of this phenomenon is West Virginia; it went overwhelmingly to Clinton in 2008 and to Sanders in 2016.

What is going on here, and what does it mean?

It means that there is still a right-wing component of the Democratic Party that engages in white male identity politics in some of our red states.  It also means that there is less support for Bernie’s left-wing agenda throughout the country than you would think when you watch the news and see video of his young, idealistic supporters.  And, therefore, it should not be assumed that the Democratic Party would adopt Bernie’s platform in 2020 if Clinton loses in 2016.

Throughout most of the middle of the 19th Century, the UK was able to stand alone, as there was a rough balance of power on the continent, and the strength of its navy was unrivaled.  This was referred to as “splendid isolation.”  The rise of Germany and the growth of its navy after 1870, however, upset the balance of power and made the UK much more vulnerable.  Upon belatedly discovering that it had no allies on which to rely for help with colonial disputes in particular, the British government was compelled to edge towards, and ultimately join, the alliance that became known as the Triple Entente.

You might well say that conditions are different now, because, even after Brexit, the UK would be protected by NATO and its own nuclear weapons, and that there is no military threat analogous to that of the German army and navy.  I would agree with that, but the present state of affairs promises its own difficulties.  The UK may well break up if Brexit passes.  Trade with Europe figures to become substantially more difficult, as will relations with the Republic of Ireland.  And the UK’s leverage on trade issues with the unfriendly nations of Russia and China will be much diminished.  All this to keep out a few Polish plumbers.  Is it really worth it?

“Splendid” isolation, indeed.

For citizens of my home state,

The last week was much less than great.

From shootings to gators

The foul deeds of haters

Will a hurricane next be our fate?