Jeffrey Sachs Saves The World

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Jeffrey SachsThe Price of Civilization: Reawakening American Virtue and Prosperity

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Jeffrey Sachs

 

Says Jeffrey Sachs, economics professor at Columbia, “Economic theory indeed supports the view that high tax rates can actually spur, rather than hinder, work effort.”

Sachs wants government to impose higher taxes, particularly on business. He also wants more regulations on the same. It is his claim that taking more money from business and giving it to government officials to do with it what they will, that increasing the rules that businesses must follow to exist, while simultaneously increasing the size and scope of the bureaucracy to oversee these regulations, that businesses will thrive more so than they do today.

The people must sacrifice, too. Any household making over $50,000, which is to say half of us, “can make do with a little less take-home pay.” That take-home pay must become send-Washington pay, where at least some of it should be used to send abroad, given, Sachs says, our foreign aid policy is “stingy.”

Sachs, incidentally, has made a name for himself by advocating that rich countries redistribute their wealth to poor countries, even those poor countries staffed by dictators. It’s his theory that giving them free money improves the lot of all the citizens of these countries. In their new book, The Dictator’s Handbook, Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith agree in part: dumping money into the hands of dictators does improve the standard of living of the dictators—but it also increases the length of the rule.

Anyway, follow Sachs and not only will the economic sun begin to shine, chasing away the shadows, but increasing the restrictions on and decreasing the wallets of its people, Americans will, somehow, become more moral, more socially responsible, more mindful. More, that is, like Jeffrey Sachs.

Jeffrey Sachs, yes: he loves us. Because of that love, he says that is “deeply surprised and unnerved” that he must tell us, we lowly citizens, these ridiculously apparent truths. One imagines his heavy heart, the pen shaking in his hand, a tear poised, ever ready to fall, as he took on the deep burden of laying down the principles for achieving economic and social Bliss. No simple task!

Sachs acknowledges that a unilateral action by government to pick the pockets and chain the hands of business and citizens is not possible given our ancient system of government. That darn bicameral Congress, the friction that exists between the legislative and executive, guarantees gridlock. We are being held back from becoming just like Europe, that heaven of academics—places like the nearly bankrupt Greece, Spain, Ireland, Portugal, etc.—because of our darned Constitution.

Solution? Change it. Combine the legislative and executive branches. Grease the wheels of government so that the party in charge of it can pass anything they like without opposition. Just like our Congress did when all Democrats in the House, Senate, and White House, and not one member of the opposition, passed the “You’ll have to pass it to see what’s in it” health care bill.

Wouldn’t it be swell, asks Sachs, if we could have that kind of legislation all the time? Just think how big government could grow! Its halls will be a irresistible magnet, drawing those of Great Brain toward it, where these intelligent, Enlightened, disinterested, beneficent fellows will sit and ponder what is best for us.

This had better be the case, because the $8 to $12 trillion—that’s trillion with a ‘t’—of new taxes Sachs would impose will cause an increase in the size of government not seen since that other great experiment in enforced socialism began a century ago.

An ordinary mind might consider that the torrent of money into government would cause it to grow fat, lazy, crony-istic, and corrupt, a place where Kafka would feel at home; in a word, Greece. Sachs agrees but has a solution, “Yes, the federal government is incompetent and corrupt—but we need more, not less, of it.” How can you argue with that?

Yet consider the alternate view, provided by jurist Antonin Scalia and, incidentally, by those men who wrote and framed the Constitution (transcript from HotAir; listen here).

So, the real key to the distinctiveness of America is the structure of our government…There are very few countries in the world, for example, that have a bicameral legislature. England has a House of Lords, for the time being, but the House of Lords has no substantial power; they can just make the [House of] Commons pass a bill a second time. France has a senate; it’s honorific. Italy has a senate; it’s honorific. Very few countries have two separate bodies in the legislature equally powerful. That’s a lot of trouble, as you gentlemen doubtless know, to get the same language through two different bodies elected in a different fashion…

Unless Americans can appreciate that and learn to love the separation of powers, which means learning to love the gridlock which the Framers believed would be the main protector of minorities, [we lose] the main protection. If a bill is about to pass that really comes down hard on some minority [and] they think it’s terribly unfair, it doesn’t take much to throw a monkey wrench into this complex system. Americans should appreciate that; they should learn to love the gridlock. It’s there so the legislation that does get out is good legislation.

I would amend that last sentence to read that legislation passed is more likely good legislation.

The Framers used history as their guide: they collected example of “a civilization did this, that happened” to design the Constitution. They went with the empirical observation, “Power Corrupts.” Conclusion: keep power from concentrating onto any one group.

On what does Sachs rely for his prescriptions? Look again at the quotation which opened this review: “Economic theory supports the view that high tax rates spur work effort.” That is a true statement: economic theory does indeed say that big government, operating on Enlightened principles and staffed with the sinless, will lead to Utopia.

But Sachs in his glow has forgotten the old, sad, now bloodstained joke: it works in theory, but not in practice.

Fleet Week San Francisco

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Fleet Week Air ShowThis is the week the fleet meets under the Golden Gate. An astonishing site.

I’m in SF and saw the air show practice the past two days. The Blue Angels have one gag where three fly in level formation, a fourth plotting an intercept course at a right angle. A mere moment before collision, each group peels off.

From the ground, the chaser looks to come so close he could count the fillings of the pilots in front of him. From the cockpit, zipping along at a hundred-plus knots, the view must be harrowing.

There is quite a gathering of small ships—sailboats, day cruisers, and the like—that camp out in the bay. Mean looking Coast Guard vessels corral them into the center, where the Blue Angels take turns buzzing them. I’d swear they are so low that the blowback ruffles the sails.

The Canadian Snowbirds are also here. No, not the geriatrics who migrate each November to Florida to escape the white of the Great White North, and who must return one day less than six months later lest they lose their health insurance. I mean the pilots from the Canadian Military. They have pretty, friendly, polite looking red-and-white planes. And who are friendlier than Canadians?

Other spectacles are scheduled. The Coast Guard will drop a sailor, probably a marine, into the drink, after which, if all goes off without a hitch, the marine will be rescued by a man in a wet suit dropped into the sea from a helicopter. If there is a hitch; well, there are plenty of marines.

United Airlines will buzz the town with a 747. The rumors about them dropping wee bags of peanuts from the cargo hold are surely false.

Capping the show will be a lone USAF F-15 Strike Eagle. It only takes one, folks. This is the Air Force we’re talking about, not the Navy, which deals in bulk.

There will be plenty of ship tours, too. The storied USS Bonhomme Richard is one of them, the third naval ship of the same name. Advice: don’t remind the current sailors that first Richard sunk in battle. She still lay in waters off England. It is a sore point.

The Marine band will serenade Union Square, an area of town not coincidentally thick with pubs. And don’t forget parades.

The fog is already lifting. See you by the bay.

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Why Yom Kippur Is Sacred To This Priest — Guest Post by Father Brian Jordan

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Father Brian Jordan is a Roman Catholic priest, a Franciscan formerly of St. Francis of Assisi Church in New York City, where everybody, just everybody, knows him. He does most of his work in labor, particularly with immigrants. He is now a resident of Capitol City.

While growing up in Brooklyn during the late 50′s and 60′s, my siblings and I were taught at a young age to be never anti-Semitic. It was tough to do so while growing up in the Cypress Hills section near East New York, Brooklyn.

It seemed that the Jews were the common source of derision among the Irish, the Italian, the Polish, the African American and the new influx of Latinos in the neighborhood. You heard anti-Semitic comments walking back and forth from school—both parochial and public. You heard anti-Semitic comments in the subways, in the ice cream parlors and mostly heard these atrocious comments by people walking in and outside banks. You would think the Jewish people were literally holding everybody up and their life savings with these vicious diatribes!Father Brian Jordan

However, religious discrimination against the Jewish people was forbidden in my family household. Why? My maternal grandparents lived with us in a two story home on Nichols Avenue. They were married in 1915 and lived in an apartment on South 4th St. in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

For over 40 years, this Irish Catholic couple were the clear minority among the predominantly Orthodox Jewish residents. They felt so welcome and at home with their neighbors that they decided to stay and raise four children, among them my late mother Eileen. They shared meals together. They shared the Prohibition together (including some bathtub gin). They shared the Great Depression together. They shared the agony and the hope during World War II. They shared their great affection for the Brooklyn Dodgers. They shared social times together including the introduction of many Orthodox Jews to a hallowed Catholic practice called bingo due to the persistence of my grandmother.

My Irish grandmother convinced the local Catholic pastor to change Friday night bingo to Thursday night bingo. Why? So Grandma’s numerous Jewish neighbors can enjoy both bingo one night and then attend Holy Services such as Yom Kippur on Friday sundown to Saturday afternoon. Grandmother Murphy was way ahead of her time when it came to interfaith dialogue and the Vatican II document where Christians and Jews were called to be spiritual brethren and Catholics to be spiritual semites.

Back in Cypress Hills, our parents taught us to respect Jewish people because the Holy Family: Jesus, Mary and Joseph were born and raised Jewish. My mother recounted from her own upbringing that the Jewish people always shared with her family especially during the hard time of the Great Depression. She thanked them many times including inviting many from her old neighborhood for her wedding reception in 1948 which Grandfather guaranteed an equal amount of schnapps, matzo ball soup along with beer plus corned beef and cabbage.

My father recounted that after the war, it was the Jewish merchants who helped him the most while he was a Teamster truck driver on his bread route so he could provide for his wife and children. Later on, when he joined management, he was promoted due to his great rapport with his Jewish employers. Therefore, my mother and father did not submit to the constant anti-Semitic religious prejudice we heard as children. Rather, they challenged the buffoons who constantly harangued the Jews and asked them to look inside themselves for expiation.

During the years 1965-67, there was a great turnaround of antipathy towards Jews in my neighborhood. First in 1965, I vividly recall Catholic, Protestant and Jewish residents in Cypress Hills all chimed in with great respect and awe for Sandy Koufax, the Los Angeles Dodger pitching standout, who refused to pitch in a World Series game that year because it fell on the holiest day of the year on the Jewish liturgical calendar, Yom Kippur. My father opined that although the Dodgers left Brooklyn, Koufax never left his faith! Grandfather Murphy countered “That ain’t nothing!” he proudly smiled, “Hank Greenberg did the same thing in 1947 and he never got the praise Koufax is getting!”

In 1966, my father became the first Irish Catholic to receive the coveted B’nai B’rith award from the Jewish food merchants who comprised the influential Harvest Lodge of greater New York. This was formally announced on the day before Yom Kippur. Shock waves went though our neighborhood when a rabbi and members of Harvest Lodge came to our home and personally escorted my entire family to the then Statler Hilton Hotel in midtown Manhattan for this monumental occasion.

Finally in 1967, on the eve of Yom Kippur, my father took me and one of my brothers to a synagogue near Ocean Parkway in Brooklyn, to show solidarity with his beloved friend, David Karin of Waldbaum Supermarkets. We prayed with the Jewish community to give thanks to God that Israel led by Moshe Dayan, was victorious in the famous Six Day War.

Years later when I decided to become a Roman Catholic priest, it came at no surprise that 90 percent of the New Testament had roots in the Jewish Old Testament and that the Roman Catholic liturgy and priesthood has had many influences from the Jewish tradition. In fact, when I was ordained in 1983, one of my ordination gifts came from a dear Jewish friend. It was a coffee cup engraved with the saying “Jesus saves but Moses invests!” I still cherish that cup after all these years. From personal experience, I cannot emphasize enough that Jews and Catholics in New York have more in common that we care to admit.

Each year, I normally give up drinking alcohol for the season of Lent for reasons of abstinence and sacrifice. This year, I decided to give up alcohol during the high holydays from Rosh Hashanah to Yom Kippur for two reasons. First, for personal expiation of my past and present sins. Second, as a sign of solidarity with my Jewish sisters and brothers that the world will expiate itself of the social sin of anti-Semitism both here and abroad. Jesus Christ taught us to love both God and our neighbor. He was definitely influenced by the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur. The sobering reality is that this Day of Atonement is not only for Jews. Rather it is for all people to expiate their sins of hatred and prejudice!

Father Brian can be reached at stftheborder@aol.com.

Robert Heinlein And Evolving Probabilities

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Writer Stephen Dawson, a long-time participant at this blog, wrote and asked the following:

In his The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Robert Heinlein had his intelligent computer calculate the odds of a successful revolution for independence of the moon, which turned out to be a low number. The conspirators embarked on their quest and after a while, although successful to that point, were disheartened to find that the odds of ultimate success had fallen, and continued to fall. From memory, Mike, the computer, explained that there were various paths to success, but that selection of any one thereby eliminated alternatives, reducing the odds. As they proceeded, the odds continued to reduce.

Eventually, of course, they neared their goal sufficiently for the odds to begin increasing.

Completely putting aside the question of whether such a calculation could reasonably be made in the first place, this idea that making a choice from one of several mutually exclusive paths will lower the odds of success has always troubled me. Do you think that, wonderful as he was, Heinlein was wrong on this?

Heinlein was right. Here’s why. Moon is a Harsh Mistress

All statements of logic, including probability statements about the success of revolution, are conditional on certain evidence. Thus we cannot say, “The probability of showing a 5 spot on a die roll” is 1 in 6 without adding the evidence, “Given that we have a six-sided die, only one spot of which will show when tossed, and only one side of which is labeled 5.”

Keep that evidence in mind and consider this scenario, which we can call the revolution game: you will roll a die twice; if you roll at least a 5 on the first, you are allowed a second roll (else not), and if this second roll is a 6 you win.

What are the chances your revolution succeeds? Well, rolling at least a 5, given our evidence and game rules, is 2/6, and then rolling a 6 the second time is 1/6, so together the chance is 2/36 = 1/18. Not so high.

But once you “go down the path” of rolling a 5 or 6 on the first roll, then your chance of winning soars by three times to 6/36, or 1/6. Because, of course, your evidence that you use to compute the probability has changed based on what has happened.

This is no different than considering a situation where a mythical traveler is presented with several doorways, all but one of which open to his destination. If the traveler has more information than just the number of doorways, then he can increase his chance of arriving by applying that information. Perhaps, for instance, he has learned that the real doorway will be “hand crafted” and that the false will be machine made. That additional information changes the probability of succeeding, though perhaps not in a perfectly quantifiable way.

(One delusion to which we Moderns succumb is that quantification is always possible, usually to arbitrary precision.)

Or think of it this way. Suppose you want to operate on a fellow with an operable disease. Given our knowledge of surgery, what are the chances you save him? First consider that you haven’t gone to medical school. The odds of success are low. But after slogging through for four years of school, seven or eight years of residency and a fellowship—all choices you made—then the odds of a successful outcome increase dramatically. Because the evidence used to the compute that probability has changed.

Update I read the problem backwards; it should be a decreasing, not increasing, probability along a path, but one which turns into increasing probability. This is still possible.

I don’t want to include any complex drawing. But imagine in front of you are several paths. You take one and then learn, via Mike and given the information available, your probability of success has decreased; it would have increased or not decreased as much had you taken another path. Perhaps on this path, no matter what, you to win the lottery at least once to continue.

You take another path (already having progressed down the first) and learn that you now have to win the lottery twice. And so on.

If I have time later, I’ll include a numerical example.