Category: Economics

Covid Mandates and Firms Restricting Employee Speech Led Democrat to Invest in Tucker Carlson Media Venture

(p. A18) Five years ago, Omeed Malik was a self-described “run-of-the-mill corporate Democrat,” with a seat on the Council on Foreign Relations, a summer house in the Hamptons, and stints at Bank of America and white-shoe law firm Weil, Gotshal under his belt.

Then Covid happened. Chafing under government mandates he found illogical and corporate limits on speech that felt to him like censorship, he moved from Manhattan to Florida and began hanging out with Republican donors. He discovered a business opportunity in a so-called parallel economy of conservative-friendly companies.

Now, he is one of their financiers. Malik this year launched 1789 Capital, which aims to capitalize on the opportunities that it sees left open by the “wokeness” of more traditional sources of capital.

Its first fund, with a modest $150 million, made its initial investment Monday [Oct. 16, 2023], leading a $15 million seed round with other private investors into Tucker Carlson and Neil Patel’s new media company.

For the full story, see:

Keach Hagey. “1789 Invests in Carlson’s Media Firm.” The Wall Street Journal (Wednesday, Oct. 18, 2023): B1-B2.

(Note: bracketed date added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date October 17, 2023, and has the title “Tucker Carlson’s Media Company Secures Investment Led by ‘Anti-Woke’ Firm.”)

Did Robbie Fail to Be Oscar-Nominated for Barbie Due to a Powerful Patriarchy, or Might It Be Random, or Even Based on Merit?

(p. A24) And now there is a new Barbie cause to rally around: the Great Oscar Snub and what it all means — and why it is wrong. Neither Margot Robbie nor Greta Gerwig was nominated for her most prominent role: best actress or best director, respectively.

. . .

But hold on. Didn’t another woman, Justine Triet, get nominated for best director (for “Anatomy of a Fall”)? As for “Barbie,” didn’t Gerwig herself get nominated for best adapted screenplay and the always sublime America Ferrera get nominated for best supporting actress? A record three of the best picture nominees were directed by women. It’s not as if women were shut out.

Every time a woman fails to win an accolade doesn’t mean failure for womanhood. Surely women aren’t so pitiable as to need a participation certificate every time we try. We’re well beyond the point where a female artist can’t be criticized on the merits and can’t be expected to handle it as well as any man. (Which means it still hurts like hell for either sex — but not because of their sex.)

For the full commentary, see:

Pamela Paul. “‘Barbie’ Is Bad. There, I Said It.” The New York Times (Friday, January 26, 2024): A24.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date Jan. 24, 2024, and has the same title as the print version.)

Democratic Politicians Are More Tolerant of Illegal Immigration Than Are Democratic Voters

(p. A10) Before Trump ran for president, Democrats tended to combine passionate support for many forms of immigration with a belief in strong border security. But Trump’s harsh anti-immigration stance pushed the party toward the opposite end of the spectrum.

Today, many Democratic politicians are willing to accept high levels of undocumented immigration and oppose enforcement measures that the party once favored. Some Democrats, especially on the left, argue that the government doesn’t even have the power to reduce migration much.

This shift has created political vulnerabilities for Democrats — because most Americans are closer to the party’s old position than to its new one.

. . .

Even with all their current concerns, Americans are not opposed to immigration. Most say that legal immigrants strengthen the country, and many believe the U.S. should remain a haven for people fleeing repression. But most Americans also think that the country’s immigration laws should mean something and that citizens of other countries should not be able to enter this country simply because they want to.

For the full commentary, see:

David Leonhardt. “Democrats Are Out of Step With Public Opinion on Immigration.” The New York Times (Friday, January 19, 2024): A10.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date Jan. 17, 2024, and has the title “A 2024 Vulnerability; The Democrats are out of step with public opinion when it comes to immigration.”)

A Miraculous Machine in the Middle-Ages That Did Nothing to Improve the Lives of the Masses

Before the industrial revolution clever inventors sometimes devised elaborate and amazing machines. The Antikythera mechanism is a famous example. Though these machines amaze us, they usually did little to improve the lives of those who lived at the time of invention. Why? Maybe the answer is that just before the industrial revolution, entrepreneurs were encouraged and enabled (through property rights and patents) to apply amazing inventions to the betterment of the people.

(p. C9) What kind of a book do we have in “Miracles and Machines: A Sixteenth-Century Automaton and Its Legend”?

. . .

The authors call the book a “clockwork”; its many disparate parts are joined in scrupulous devotion to a 16th-century automaton—an object, they write, which is at once “a sculpture, a machine, an icon, and a messenger.”

The figure is of a Franciscan friar, about 16 inches tall, carved out of wood, cloaked in a modern replica of the garb he once wore. His 5-pound weight is due to an intricate iron mechanism that fits inside his wooden body; it is wound with a key.

. . .

Imagine, Ms. King and Mr. Todd suggest, what it would have been like to see this automaton at the time of its creation. He is placed upon a candlelit table. His feet take steps under his tunic—but he actually glides on three wheels, making his movement seem ethereal. He is deliberately slow. This is not a mechanism meant to thrill us with speed and virtuosity. His movements are graceful, solemn.

As he moves, the friar raises and lowers a cross in his left hand and strikes his chest with his right, as if declaring “mea culpa.” He also lifts the cross to his lips and fixes his gaze steadily, perhaps at an observer at the opposite end of the table. He looks down at the cross, up at the observer, and begins to turn: “You let out half a breath,” the authors tell us, “but as his full body pivots on the table, feet in motion, head forward, his eyes slide left in their sockets to stay fixed on you!” Then he changes direction, staring at what might be another observer. There is no doubt about his seriousness; the impact on believers, in the half-light, would have been considerable.

. . .

In seeking to learn more about the friar’s provenance, Ms. King contacted Servus Gieben, a Dutch-born Franciscan who served as the director of the Franciscan Museum in Rome. In his correspondence with Ms. King, Gieben, who died in 2014, reaffirmed his theory that it may have been commissioned by Philip for his son Carlos. In 1562, at the age of 17, Carlos fell down a flight of stairs and so gravely injured his skull that he was not expected to survive (either the injury or the era’s “treatments”).

. . . The corpse of a Franciscan friar, Diego de Alcalá (ca. 1400-63), had remained free of decay after his death that it was thought to have healing powers. And behold: Once it was laid upon the dying prince, Carlos soon began to recover. Philip II spent 26 years petitioning four consecutive popes to recognize the miracle and declare Diego a saint. (He ultimately was, as the city of San Diego now affirms.)

Gieben suggested that the facial resemblance between the automaton and Diego was evident. And what better way, he thought, for Philip to honor Diego than by providing his often wayward son with an admonitory reminder in the form of the penitential friar himself, created by the most brilliant clockmaker in the empire. As Don Carlos was brought back to life, so an inanimate automaton would turn animate.

Even today, the authors suggest, the friar remains “a small miracle. Or the image of a small miracle. Or the metaphor of a large miracle. Or an artificial miracle.”

For the full review see:

Edward Rothstein. “A Wonder of Another Age.” The Wall Street Journal (Saturday, December 23, 2023): C9.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the review has the date December 22, 2023, and has the title “‘Miracles and Machines’ Review: Mystery of the Clockwork Man.”)

The book under review is:

King, Elizabeth, and W. David Todd. Miracles and Machines: A Sixteenth-Century Automaton and Its Legend. Los Angeles: Getty Publications, 2023.

Economists’ Models of Growth and Inflation Predicted a Recession That Has Not Happened; So “Economists Can Learn a Huge, Healthy Dose of Humility”

(p. B1) Many economists spent early 2023 predicting a painful downturn, a view so widely held that some commentators started to treat it as a given. Inflation had spiked to the highest level in decades, and a range of forecasters thought that it would take a drop in demand and a prolonged jump in unemployment to wrestle it down.

Instead, the economy grew 3.1 percent last year, up from less than 1 percent in 2022 and faster than the average for the five years leading up to the pandemic.

. . .

(p. B3) . . . what is clear is that old models of how growth and inflation relate did not serve as accurate guides.

. . .

“It’s not like we understood the macro economy perfectly before, and this was a pretty unique time,” said Jason Furman, a Harvard economist and former Obama administration economic official who thought that lowering inflation would require higher unemployment. “Economists can learn a huge, healthy dose of humility.”

. . .

Many economists previously thought that a more marked slowdown was likely to be necessary to fully stamp out rapid inflation. Mr. Summers, for instance, predicted that it would take years of joblessness above 5 percent to wrestle price increases back under control.

“I was of the view that soft landings” were “the triumph of hope over experience,” Mr. Summers said. “This is looking like a case where hope has triumphed over experience.”

. . .

“I would have thought that it was an iron law that disinflation is painful,” said Laurence M. Ball, a Johns Hopkins economist who was an author of an influential 2022 paper that argued bringing down inflation would probably require driving up unemployment. “The broad lesson, which we never seem to completely learn, is that it’s very hard to forecast things and we shouldn’t be too confident, and especially when there’s a very weird, historic event like Covid.”

For the full story, see:

Jeanna Smialek and Ben Casselman. “How Experts Got It Wrong On Economy.” The New York Times (Saturday, January 27, 2024): B1 & B3.

(Note: ellipses, and bracketed date, added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date Jan. 26, 2024, and has the title “Economists Predicted a Recession. So Far They’ve Been Wrong.”)

Reagan’s “Dogged Support for Human Rights” Helped Advance Freedom and Peace

(p. C7) Reagan’s confidence that the Cold War could be won made him unusual. At the time, both Republicans and Democrats believed that America was in decline. Communism was on the march in Afghanistan, Africa, Central America and the Caribbean. Then, in 1980, President Jimmy Carter seemed hapless and ineffectual after he failed to rescue U.S. hostages in Iran. The CIA mistakenly believed that the Soviet economy was growing. The policies of arms control and détente —or direct negotiations—were ascendant.

William Inboden’s masterly diplomatic history “The Peacemaker: Ronald Reagan, the Cold War, and the World on the Brink” reveals the qualities that made Reagan an extraordinary president who established the conditions for the collapse of Soviet communism. . . .

At almost every juncture, Reagan rejected the advice of former president Richard Nixon, whose realist worldview privileged China over Japan, geopolitics over economics, equilibrium over victory, and stability over human rights. Reagan envisioned a future where high technology, a universal commitment to freedom and dignity, and a willingness to risk confrontation with the enemy resulted in a global democratic revolution and the eventual abolition of nuclear weapons.

. . .

Reagan’s horror of nuclear war led him to envision a world where nuclear weapons would be obsolete. Woven into Mr. Inboden’s story are the many times that Reagan saw the potential for nuclear catastrophe. In 1979 the commander of the North American Air Defense Command, or NORAD, told him that the U.S. had no defense against a Soviet missile strike. In 1981 he took a flight on a special Air Force One called the “Doomsday Plane” that had been made to withstand nuclear fallout. In 1982 he became the first president to participate in a continuity-of-government exercise, codenamed “Ivy League.” Reagan watched helplessly as a simulated nuclear exchange destroyed his beloved country.

The following spring Reagan proposed the development of technology that could intercept nuclear missiles before they hit their targets. Both his secretaries of defense and state were against his plans for a Strategic Defense Initiative. They were not alone. The many critics of Reagan’s antiballistic missile shield followed Sen. Edward M. Kennedy in calling it “Star Wars.”

Scientists said SDI wouldn’t work. Arms controllers said it would increase the chances of nuclear escalation. None of them understood that Reagan had redefined the arms race to America’s advantage. “It put the Soviets on the defensive,” writes Mr. Inboden, “fueling the Kremlin’s perennial fear of America’s technological prowess.”

. . .

Reagan’s opponents said that his dogged support for human rights and missile defense was both counterproductive and a distraction from good relations with the Soviets. Rather than conform to the accepted interpretation of reality, he sought to establish new facts on the ground that favored the expansion of freedom.

For the full review, see:

Matthew Continetti. “We Win and They Lose.” The Wall Street Journal (Saturday, Nov. 26, 2022): C7.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the review has the date November 25, 2022, and has the title “‘The Peacemaker’ Review: Ronald Reagan’s Cold War.”)

The book under review is:

Inboden, William. The Peacemaker: Ronald Reagan, the Cold War, and the World on the Brink. New York: Dutton, 2022.

Nazis Allowed Charitable Feeding of Enslaved Camp Inmates, to Increase Their Productivity

(p. A13) The remarkable story of Janina Mehlberg almost didn’t see the light of day. A Holocaust survivor and a mathematics professor in Chicago, Mehlberg stood out for making her way in an academic field dominated by men. But while teaching her students and giving conference papers, she was privately writing an account of her life’s most remarkable episode: her daring impersonation of a Polish aristocrat in World War II, a deception that allowed her to aid Poles who had been imprisoned by the Nazis.

. . .

The Majdanek camp held Polish prisoners forced into slave labor, Russian prisoners of war, and Jews who would be murdered either by being shot at close range or poisoned by gas.  . . .  As “the Countess,” Mehlberg served as the head of the Polish Main Welfare Council, visiting the camp regularly. The haughty, demanding countess negotiated ways to bring soup, bread, medicine—and hope—to a great many Polish prisoners. Betraying little emotion, this hidden Jew became a sort of patron saint by appearing again and again to witness their suffering and alleviate it as best she could. “Janina’s story is unique,” the authors assert. “She was a Jew who rescued non-Jews in the midst of the largest murder operation of the Holocaust.”

“The Counterfeit Countess,” too, is unsentimental. The writing is matter of fact; the authors include data about the numbers of meals served, the details of negotiations with Nazi officers, the changes in camp conditions as the war unfolded. Mehlberg recognized that the Germans were making trade-offs within their sick paradigm of racial superiority. Would it be more efficient to murder Poles or starve them while they worked? She persuaded Nazi higher-ups to let her organization provide thousands of tons of food to prisoners so that they could do the work that would feed the Nazi war machine. German commanders decided it served their interests to allow “the Countess” to continue providing food and medicine to enslaved workers.

For the full review see:

Michael S. Roth. “BOOKSHELF; Fake Title, Real Courage.” The Wall Street Journal (Thursday, Jan. 25, 2023): A13.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the review has the date January 24, 2023, and has the title “BOOKSHELF; ‘The Counterfeit Countess’ Review: Fake Title, Real Courage.”)

The book under review is:

White, Elizabeth B., and Joanna Sliwa. The Counterfeit Countess: The Jewish Woman Who Rescued Thousands of Poles During the Holocaust. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2024.

Zuckerberg Praises Musk for Not Being Too Shy to Reduce Staff at X

(p. R3) At the beginning of the year, many were quick with predictions of X’s demise, in part because of the dramatic staff cuts made by Musk.

. . .

Perhaps the biggest impact of Musk’s staff reductions was provoking a broader conversation about staffing needs and overall productivity throughout Silicon Valley.

Even rival Mark Zuckerberg praised Musk for removing layers of management. “I also think that it was probably good for the industry that he made those changes because my sense is that there were a lot of other people who thought that those were good changes but who may have been a little shy about doing them,” the Facebook co-founder said.

For the full commentary, see:

Tim Higgins. “Elon Musk as Technoking? More Like DramaKing.” The Wall Street Journal (Monday, Dec. 18, 2023): R3.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date December 16, 2023, and has the title “In the Year of a DramaKing: Elon Musk.”)

The Social Security Administration Is Badly Administered

(p. B1) Few government agencies touch the lives of more Americans than the Social Security Administration — the agency pays $1.4 trillion in benefits to more than 71 million people every year.

But Social Security has been grappling with a customer service mess that threatens to grow worse before it gets better. The problems include long wait times on the agency’s toll-free phone line, a large backlog in disability applications and a growing problem with overpayments to low-income beneficiaries.

. . .

Training new workers typically takes more than a year because Social Security rules are so complex.

. . .

The waiting time on S.S.A.’s phone line, which is crucial for people with questions about benefits or those applying for benefits, averages 36 minutes. Average wait times have fluctuated over the past decade, but in 2013 the average wait time was 10 minutes. The agency recently began using a modernized toll-free phone system, but noted that more trained employees will be needed to reduce wait times.

There is a backlog of more than one million people waiting an average of seven months for initial decisions on disability benefit applications — a process that has been slowed by staffing issues at the agency and in state governments, which receive S.S.A. funding to determine applicants’ eligibility at the local level.

The agency also is under fire over overpayments of benefits that have led the agency to claw back billions of dollars, with some people receiving notices that they owe tens of thousands to the S.S.A.

. . .

Earlier this year [2023], the Social Security Administration placed last in a ranking of the best places to work in the federal government — . . . .

For the full commentary, see:

Mark Miller. “Social Security’s Customer Service Struggle.” The New York Times, SundayBusiness Section (Sunday, December 3, 2023): 7.

(Note: ellipses, and bracketed years, added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date Dec. 2, 2023, and has the title “When You Call Social Security, Expect to Wait Even Longer.” In a couple of places where the online version is slightly longer than the print version, the passages quoted above follow the online version.)

Lower-Middle-Class Chinese Risk the Darién Gap to Seek Opportunity and Freedom in the U.S.

(p. B1) Mr. Gao said he felt he had no choice but to leave China.

“I think we will only be safe by coming to the U.S.,” he said, adding that he believed that Xi Jinping, China’s leader, could lead the country to famine and (p. B4) possibly war. “It’s a rare opportunity to protect me and my family,” he said.

A growing number of Chinese have entered the United States this year through the Darién Gap, exceeded only by Venezuelans, Ecuadoreans and Haitians, according to Panamanian immigration authorities.

. . .

Their flight is a referendum on the rule of Mr. Xi, now in his third five-year term. Boasting that “the East is rising while the West is declining,” he said in 2021 that China’s governance model had proved superior to Western democratic systems and that the center of gravity of the world economy was shifting “from West to East.”

Every immigrant I interviewed this year who passed through the Darién Gap — a journey known as zouxian, or walking the line, in Chinese — came from a lower middle-class background. They said that they feared falling into poverty if the Chinese economy worsened, and that they could no longer see a future for themselves or their children in their home country.

In Mr. Xi’s China, anyone could become a target of the state. You could get in trouble for being a Christian, Muslim, Uyghur, Tibetan or Mongolian. Or a worker who petitions for back pay, a homeowner who protests the delayed completion of an unfinished apartment, a student who uses a virtual private network for access to Instagram or a Communist Party cadre who is found with a copy of a banned book.

. . .

Another migrant I spoke with who crossed the Darién Gap, Mr. Zhong, who wanted to use only his family name for fear of retribution, has a background similar to Mr. Gao’s.

. . .

The trouble for Mr. Zhong, now in his early 30s, started last December [2022] when police officers stopped his car for a routine alcohol test and saw a copy of a Bible on the passenger seat. They told Mr. Zhong that he believed in an evil religion and tossed the Bible on the ground and stomped on it. The officers then took his phone and installed an app on it that turned out to have software that would track his movements.

On Christmas Day, four police officers broke into a home where Mr. Zhong and three fellow Christians were holding a prayer service. They were taken to the police station, beaten and interrogated.

Like Mr. Gao, Mr. Zhong came across social media posts about the Darién Gap. He borrowed about $10,000 and left home on Feb. 22 [2023].

. . .

Mr. Zhong soon moved to a town of 30,000 people in Alabama. He had grown up near Chengdu, a city of 20 (p. B5) million. Now he felt truly alone. He works at a Chinese restaurant 11 hours a day, he said, and is unwilling to take a day off. He has learned to cook General Tso’s chicken and other Chinese American dishes. The pay is much better than in China, and he can send more money home. Every Sunday, he joins an online religious service, hosted by a church in Brooklyn’s Sunset Park, another community with a large population of Chinese immigrants.

He told me a joke over the phone: “Why did you go to the United States?” someone asks a Chinese immigrant. “Aren’t you satisfied with your pay, your benefits and your life?” The immigrant responds: “Yes, I’m satisfied. But in the U.S., I will be allowed to say that I’m not satisfied.”

“I can live like a real human being in the U.S.,” he said.

. . .

. . . Mr. Gao got his work permit, bought a car and started delivering packages for an e-commerce company. He makes $2 per package. The more he delivers, the more he makes.

. . .

On one Wednesday in November [2023], Mr. Gao said, he woke at 4 a.m., delivered more than 100 packages and didn’t get home until after 9 p.m.

He took the next day off. When the motorcade of Mr. Xi, who was in San Francisco for a meeting with President Biden, drove by, Mr. Gao joined other protesters on the sidewalk, chanting in Chinese, “Xi Jinping, step down!”

For the full commentary, see:

Li Yuan. “THE NEW NEW WORLD; Why More Chinese Are Risking Danger in Southern Border Crossings to U.S.” The New York Times (Monday, December 4, 2023): B1 & B4-B5.

(Note: ellipses, and bracketed years, added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date Dec. 3, 2023, and has the same title as the print version.)

Slow Regulatory Approval Is “A Pretty Big Barrier to Entry” for Smaller and Safer Innovative Nuclear Reactors

(p. B1) . . ., the great hope for the future of nuclear power is to go small.

Nearly a dozen companies are developing reactors that are a fraction of the size of those at Vogtle, betting that they will be quicker and cheaper to build. As the United States looks to transition away from fossil fuels that have underpinned its economy for 150 years, nuclear power is getting renewed interest, billions of dollars from the Biden administration and support from Republicans.

One reason is that nuclear plants can run at all hours, in any season. To those looking to replace coal and gas with wind and solar energy, nuclear power can provide a vital backstop when the air is calm or the sky is cloudy.

“The United States is now committed to trying to accelerate the deployment of nuclear energy,” John Kerry, President Biden’s climate envoy, said in September. “It’s what we believe we absolutely need in order to win this battle.”

. . .

(p. B4) One recent Pew survey found that 57 percent of Americans favor more nuclear plants, up from 43 percent in 2016. Republicans have traditionally backed atomic energy, but the survey found rising support among Democrats.

While many environmental groups still oppose nuclear power, some skeptics are softening.

. . .

For nearly five decades, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has regulated large light-water reactors. Now it has to consider a dizzying array of new technologies and their safety characteristics.

The approval process can be slow. To date, the N.R.C. has certified only one small reactor design, developed by NuScale Power. NuScale’s light-water technology is similar to existing plants, but the company argued that smaller reactors required different safety rules, such as smaller evacuation zones in case of accidents. Securing approval took a decade and cost $500 million.

“It’s a pretty big barrier to entry,” said Jose Reyes, NuScale’s chief executive. “And this was for a technology that regulators are already familiar with.”

At a recent House hearing, Republicans and Democrats alike complained that a draft rule meant to help license advanced reactors was 1,173 pages long and largely unworkable.

“Everyone agrees that reactors need to be safe,” said Adam Stein, director of nuclear innovation at the Breakthrough Institute, a pronuclear research organization. “But it’s also possible for a regulator to be too conservative and too risk-averse.”

For the full story, see:

Brad Plumer and Ivan Penn. “Going Small to Confront a Big Problem.” The New York Times (Tuesday, Nov. 28, 2023): B1 & B4.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date Nov. 12 [sic], 2023, and has the title “U.S. Bets on Small Nuclear Reactors to Help Fix a Huge Climate Problem.”)