Month: February 2019

Even Smart People Get It Wrong Sometimes

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Economist Art Laffer:

“China is a huge plus to the U.S. because without China there is no Walmart, and without Walmart there is no middle class or lower class prosperity in America.”

Actually, the US was known for broad-based prosperity long before either Walmart or China was a significant factor.  It was really only in the 1980s that Walmart’s expansion really took off…and it was then by no means as China-dependent as it has more recently become.  Indeed, starting in 1984 and extending at least through the early 1990s, Walmart was a strong supporter of the Crafted with Pride in the USA campaign, which was launched by textile entrepreneur Roger Milliken, among others.

China’s presence in the global marketplace was greatly expanded by the Permanent Normal Trade Relations bill, which was signed by President Clinton in October 2000, as well as by China’s own economic-liberalization policies.  (Some data on the growth of Chinese exports over time, here)

Real mean US household income, which is effectively a measure of price levels as well as wages/salaries, grew from $71773 in 1985 to $93887 in 2000.  Fifteen years later, in 2015, it had risen to only $95887.  (2017 dollars)

Real median household income  grew from $51455 in 1985 to $59938 in fifteen years later, in 2000. In 2015, this indicator had actually declined to $58476.  (It grew to $61372 by 2017)

There are a lot of factors that affect an economy, of course, and it would be unfair to conclude that the slowdown in American household income growth was caused by the vast expansion of trade with China.  Maybe it would have been even worse without Chinese imports and exports?

National Review writer Robet VerBruggen cites “research” suggesting that “consumers save hundreds of billions of dollars per year thanks to expanded trade with China, and six-figure sums for every manufacturing job lost.  (Tucker) Carlson may be right that cheap junk from China doesn’t make us happy in any fundamental way, but it would put serious strains on family budgets if all that junk got expensive again.”

Maybe. But I doubt if the strains would really be all that serious over time. If manufacturers did not have vast reservoirs of low-wage labor available for production of a particular product, then the incentives to improve productivity when making that product with high-wage labor would be greatly increased. Capital investment that makes no sense when you are paying workers $1.50/hour may make great sense when you have to pay $15/hour.  Furthermore, product designs themselves can often be changed in minor ways to make them more manufacturable; again, this would help reduce the cost impact of domestic or other high-wage-country manufacturing.

I doubt if the strains on family budgets resulting from such changes in production-labor costs would have anywhere near the impact that has resulted from dysfunctional public schools (resulting in a need to pay for private schooling or move to a pricier neighborhood), unreasonable constraints on home-building, and out-of-control administrative and facilities spending by universities, coupled with irresponsible marketing of degree programs and student loans by same.

One thing that has definitely been beneficial about China’s export trade is the drastic reduction in poverty in that country; this reduction is indeed something that we should all celebrate.  I suspect, however, that given economic liberalization, China could probably be doing just as well or almost as well with an economic approach that is not so extreme in its trade orientation but more focused on satisfying domestic demand…and this would probably be much more sustainable for them in the long run.

Also, here are some additional links on US wage trends for anyone who’s interested:

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Sometimes silence to a simple question is astounding

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I published a question on Quora.That’s not particularly unusual for me. What was more unusual that I got people following the question (they were interested) but nobody answered the question. That’s not an ordinary occurrence, answers are usually much higher than follows.

Here’s the question:

Does your state’s government adequately police against infanticide and how can you tell?

I would think with the legislation in NY and VA, this would be a question in the hearts and on the lips of pro-lifers everywhere. It’s not like it’s something that the police wouldn’t answer. But nobody seems to want to touch this with a ten-foot pole.

Why?

Minstrel Show

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Reprinted from 2013, because it is topical.

I have said I must be among the last people to have acted in blackface in a minstrel show.  I must have been about 6 or 7 years old, so make it 1959 or 1960. Looking into the matter, small communities in the northeast seem to have had minstrel shows for a few years after that; the latest I can find is 1965. I confess I have not looked into it deeply, so there may be many later ones I simply missed. But I think they lasted longest in places where there were vanishingly few black people, and that is not accidental.

I don’t think these were the bigoted travesties of racial prejudice second only to lynch mobs that they are now perceived to be. The minstrel show was but one variant of a style of entertainment that made fun of types. Just like we do today.  We just design our feelings of superiority along political and personality lines now.  We are no kinder. That particular variant brought into focus why all the other ethnic humors were wrong.  So we dumped that and turned our meanness elsewhere almost immediately.  “All In The Family” for example.
More meanness, but different targets.

My father was a community theater actor, usually but not always in comic roles.  I remember the show being performed at Chelmsford High School, but this is almost surely wrong.  I must be confusing it with “The Steadfast Tin Soldier,” which he played there another time. Yet I am certain it was a raised stage, with theatrical lighting enough to darken the audience to the players but not render them invisible.  It was something of a big deal.  I was in a silent skit, of a street bum or hobo trying to eat a sandwich on a park bench, but continually interrupted.  I, a sad boy looking hungrily at the sandwich, was one of the interruptions, the others being a thief, a policeman, and an attractive, parading woman. Decades later I learned that this latter was a stock minstrel character called the Yaller Gal. Very broad comedy, with double-takes and exaggerated expressions and gestures.  The Wyman wheelhouse, I now know.

I remember only that bit, and that the entire program was something of a variety show. It was all very similar to the other community variety shows I saw as a boy:  “Hicks In The Sticks” in 1966, in which I was the MC with stage whiskers and overalls, “Kiwanis Kapers” in 1969, which included that routine with guys’ stomachs painted like a face whistling while “Colonel Bogey’s March” was played – a laff riot, as always; skit nights at camp 1960-69; “Irish Eyes,” on the Central High stage in 1963 or 64, replete with early teens pretending to be sloshing ale and staggering about. People used bad accents and rank stereotypes a lot – German, Irish, Hillbilly, Texan, English, Southern, Italian, Mexican, French (but not French-Canadian, those were told privately), New Yorker, Chinese. It was just a traditional community performance which played up its old-fashionedness quite intentionally. It takes a while before people finally go “Y’know, we really shouldn’t be making fun of Negroes this way.  Even if there aren’t any within twenty miles and none of them will ever see it, it’s just kinda low and mean.”  And the next year, it would just be a variety show, with some stray German doctors or bowing Chinese for awhile, and then those would fall out too.

Not all of it was unkind, even when stereotyped.  More importantly, not all of it was stereotyped, even when unkind.  It was necessary only that somebody be the butt of a joke because they were stupid, for any reason.  That was what eventually pushed that penguin off the ice, I think. The scripts had gotten less racist over time, making fun of a generic stupid person on stage with the same lines that had been used since early burlesque (at least), but there was no getting around it.  Once you put on blackface (or a sombrero and serape) you were pretty much including the whole group in the accusation, even if there was nothing specifically Negro about the type of stupidity.

You can see both at work here: the blackface and accents are pretty rank. But the jokes themselves could be just anyone.

Notice that when people kept the format after 1967 or so, they could find only one group to be made fun of safely – Scandinavians.  Think Laugh-In’s Arte Johnson, the Muppet Show, Prairie Home Companion.  Other ethnic groups were mocked only in the gentlest manner, and most not at all.*  Relatedly, Foster Brooks – and Frank Fontaine as Crazy Guggenheim – dropped like a stone. Though Craze was something of a subtler type, showing innocent wisdom in his damaged thinking. You couldn’t do those routines now.

The petty meanness has not fled, only changed its costume.  We do think we are morally superior now, but it isn’t so. We just like congratulating ourselves on how we’re not racist – which we prove by finding racism in others. It’s a great disguise to keep us from looking at our own new and improved bigotries.

*There was a major exception, in being able to make fun of Hillbillies, but they often participated in same (Hee Haw, Minnie Pearl at the Grand
Old Opry).  That could turn mean, though, from other whites wanting to kick someone. Still does.

Crime and Credibility

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I see that the fallout from Covington is still falling – well, admittedly not on the front pages of the Establishment National Media (the ENM for short) – but I hear the echoes quite clearly still, especially among those of a conservative or libertarian inclination. Oh, not the encounter itself; it was still bleedingly obvious to most of us within days that the Covington Catholic schoolboys held up rather well in the face of blatantly racial and relentless barracking on the part of the Black Israelite nutters, and harassment by a drum-pounding professional “activist” whose account of the whole shenanigans afterwards bore only the most coincidental resemblance to those facts easily verified from the numberless videos available. That no one in the Establishment National Media has the least particle of interest in outing the Black Israelite nutters by name and number, or of asking Chief Reefer Ranger to account for the discrepancies in his own personal narrative would lead one to conclude that representatives of the ENM have forsaken impartiality in favor of the “narrative” which posits that MAGA-hat wearing, white, religiously-observant residents of Flyoverlandia are wicked, evil, non-persons, and Persons of Color/Minority – no matter what their conduct and words may be – are blameless and above all criticism.

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