Sunday, May 28, 2023
Saturday, May 27, 2023
How Countries Provide for Their Citizens: America Ranks 31st
HOW WELL off is humanity? Which countries’ citizens are thriving and which are languishing? Where are people making progress and where are they sliding back? Often the answers to such questions come from examining their economies. GDP per person, however, can only show so much. More important is how prosperity translates into well-being. A dataset published on May 24th by the Social Progress Imperative, a non-profit organisation, aims to show that. It ranks 170 countries on how well they have provided for their citizens, using metrics other than wealth.
[I]t tracks 52 indicators and groups them into three categories, to which it gives equal weight: basic human needs (such as food and water), the foundations for long-term development (education and health care) and “opportunity” (including personal rights and freedoms).
The results still suggest a link between wealth and well-being: the richest countries are often the ones where citizens thrive. Conditions are worst in the poorest. But the data also show that countries that have made great progress in some areas, such as meeting basic needs, let their citizens down in others, especially in protecting and expanding their freedoms.
The SPI’s findings for 2022 put Norway top, with a score of 90.7. South Sudan came last. In general wealthy European countries are among the highest-ranked whereas countries in sub-Saharan Africa are the lowest.
In a separate analysis, the SPI shows how scores have changed between 1990 and 2020 . . . After rapid progress in the 1980s and 1990s, improvements in human welfare seem to have slowed. Progress in some regions, such as Latin America, has stalled. The United States, meanwhile, is going backwards.
The region that experienced the greatest increase in well-being is East Asia and the Pacific. Taken together, countries there improved their SPI score by an average of 18 points between 1990 and 2020. Much of that was driven by the rise of China’s middle class, which showed up in higher scores on indicators for health education and provision of basic needs.
South Asia has also seen significant progress. India’s SPI score, for example, increased by 16 points over the three decades. But it is tiny Bhutan, sandwiched between India and China, that advanced the most among the 170 countries. Its score jumped by 30 points as it greatly increased its provisions for meeting basic human needs.
Paired with data on GDP, the SPI rankings show that economic growth is important, but not the sole determinant for social progress . . . . China’s GDP per person increased 11-fold between 1990 and 2010; over the same period its SPI score increased by 45%. India achieved a similar jump in its score, from a slightly lower base, with a third of China’s economic growth.
America is another country where economic success is accompanied by deterioration in other areas. Despite having the richest citizens in the G7, a club of rich democracies, its SPI score, of 87.6, is the lowest in that group. Since 2016 America’s SPI score has gone steadily downwards even though its economy has grown faster than those of other rich countries. That is largely because of worse scores in the “opportunity” category, which includes measures of discrimination and access to advanced education. Worryingly, America’s performance reflects a trend: progress on personal rights is stalling around the world. Money, it seems, is not the root of all good.
Friday, May 26, 2023
Circumventing Republican Economic Terrorism
The prospect that the U.S. government will default on its payments because Republicans refuse to raise the debt ceiling is now real and imminent. In fact, bonds issued by some corporations are yielding less than Treasuries, indicating that investors now consider, say, Microsoft a more reliable debtor than the federal government.
As disaster looms, it’s important to keep in mind that Republicans are the villains here: They’re the ones engaged in extortion.
The reason I say this is that progressives are feeling a lot of rage against the Biden administration for refusing to take action to avoid this crisis. And at least some people in or close to the administration seem more dedicated to rejecting proposed ways out of the trap than they are to solving the problem. There’s a definite Stockholm syndrome vibe, in which the hostages seem angrier at their would-be rescuers than they are at their kidnappers.
There are at least three ways the administration could, in principle, bypass the debt ceiling. The objections to these options purport to be technocratic or legal, or both, but when you dig a bit you realize that they’re really political.
The first possible strategy is simply to ignore the debt limit, declaring it unconstitutional. The 14th Amendment, which says that the validity of U.S. debt “shall not be questioned,” has been getting a lot of attention. But more broadly, the debt ceiling impasse has put the administration in a position where it must break some laws — either the laws that specify federal spending or the law limiting government borrowing. In such a position, the president must choose which laws to obey; why should the debt ceiling take priority?
I don’t find the case against the constitutional option persuasive. Some have said default wouldn’t violate the 14th Amendment, because the debt would still be valid — we just wouldn’t be honoring it. It’s also been argued that the merits of the case are largely irrelevant because of the Supreme Court’s partisanship. So it isn’t really about the law — it’s about the politics.
A second strategy would be to exploit a peculiar legal provision that allows the Treasury to mint platinum coins of any value it chooses. These coins could be deposited at the Federal Reserve, and the government could then draw cash from its account to continue paying its bills. . . . . the Fed could and would offset any effect on the money supply by selling off some of its huge portfolio of U.S. bonds. And because selling those bonds would reduce the earnings the Fed remits to the Treasury, it would have the same fiscal impact as direct bond sales. Essentially, it would be normal borrowing through a back door.
A third option would be to issue perpetual bonds — bonds that pay interest forever but no principal, and hence have no face value. Since the ceiling is defined in terms of the face value of U.S. debt, not its fluctuating market value, it’s hard to see how the ceiling can apply. This isn’t a radical idea — it has a long history, especially in Britain, but has also been used in the United States.
Crucially, all these options are completely innocuous from an economic point of view, amounting to nothing more than workarounds that would allow the government to continue spending duly authorized by Congress.
The arguments against these options all boil down to political guesses. Maybe a partisan Supreme Court will reject the constitutional option. Maybe it will find some way to reject the seemingly clear language authorizing the coin, or the Fed will refuse to accept the coin if minted. Maybe the Supremes will come up with a novel definition of the debt limit (hard to see it, but who knows) that rules out perpetual bonds. Or maybe the Biden administration will be punished by voters if it is seen — or portrayed by the news media — as doing something unorthodox and shifty.
But these are only guesses. . . . the Biden administration’s political judgment on the debt limit has been disastrously wrong every step of the way. Officials reportedly thought that by rejecting any workarounds, they would get centrists and business groups to intervene and force Republicans to raise the ceiling. It didn’t happen. They ignored warnings that insisting that there were no options would just embolden G.O.P. extremists; it did.
My guess is that if push comes to shove, even a partisan Supreme Court won’t be willing either to burn down the world economy or to order President Biden to break the law by disregarding existing spending legislation. Yes, that’s a risky bet — and unorthodox actions might still leave markets nervous. But there are no riskless options at this point.
I don’t expect it to take any of these actions until or unless the debt limit has actually been breached and the crisis is fully upon us. But I hope someone inside the Treasury is quietly preparing to do whatever it takes. If not, God help us all.
Thursday, May 25, 2023
The DeSantis Delusion
The Florida governor announced his presidential campaign on Twitter Spaces, in an appearance meant to be a veritable launch hosted by an actual rocket man.
But within seconds, it was clear that Tallahassee had a problem. The feed broke, connections got cut off, the hosts seemed confused. It was inauspicious. It also was a black mark on the candidate’s supposed trademarks — expert organization and a comfort with the vanguard of modern media.
“It was bold. It turned out to be a mistake,” radio host Erick Erickson emailed supporters about the mishap. “It is recoverable. But it is a reminder that some things should be under full control of the candidate, particularly the launch day.”
The risk for DeSantis is the prospect of the botched rollout forming a narrative and cutting against the very argument he is making to Republican primary voters — that he is a competent alternative to the chaotic presidency of former President Donald Trump. . . . But on Wednesday, DeSantis — who fiercely values control — was the picture of disorder. . . . in corners of the conservative press, including outlets pining for an alternative to Trump, there was little willingness to sidestep the face plant. The National Review’s Philip Klein called it a “disaster.”
Frankly, the disaster could not happen to a more deserving individual and one can only hope DeSantis has a hard time escaping from the negative narrative. The debacle is emblematic of much of DeSantis' campaign to date which has sought to thrill and excite the ugliest elements of the Republican Party base but seems to have no vision of how his authoritarian, racist, homophobic and censorship filled agenda can shift to appeal to general election voters. A column in the New York Times looks at an issue which hopefully will smother DeSantis early on in his formal campaign. Here are excerpts:
If Ron DeSantis is supposed to be more electable than Donald Trump, why did he sign a ban on most abortions in Florida after six weeks of pregnancy? That’s manna for the Christian conservatives who matter in Republican primaries, but it’s a liability with the moderates and independents who matter after that point. It steps hard on DeSantis’s argument that he’s the version of Trump who can actually beat President Biden. It flattens that pitch into a sad little pancake.
If DeSantis is supposed to be Trump minus the unnecessary drama, why did he stumble into a prolonged and serially mortifying dust-up with Disney? Yes, the corporation publicly opposed his “Don’t Say Gay” bill, and that must have annoyed him. He’s easily annoyed. But the legislation was always going to pass anyway, and he indeed got what he substantively wanted, so there was no need to try to punish Disney and supercharge the conflict — except that he wanted to make a big, manly show of his contempt for the mighty Mouse. He wanted, well, drama. So there goes that rationale as well.
And if DeSantis, 44, is supposed to be tomorrow’s Trump, a youthful refurbishment of the 76-year-old former president, why does he seem so yesteryear? From his style of hair to his dearth of flair, from his emotional remove to his fugitive groove, there’s something jarringly anti-modern about the Florida governor.
On Wednesday he’s expected to rev his engine and make the official, anticlimactic announcement of his candidacy for the presidency. I just don’t get it. Oh, I get that he wants to be the boss of all bosses — that fits. But the marketing of DeSantis and the fact of DeSantis don’t square. Team DeSantis’s theory of the case and the case itself diverge. In many ways, he cancels himself out. His is a deeply, deeply puzzling campaign.
But do Republican voters want an alternative to Trump at all? The polls don’t say so. According to the current Real Clear Politics average of such surveys, Trump’s support is above 55 percent — which puts him more than 35 percentage points ahead of DeSantis. Mike Pence, in third place, is roughly another 15 percentage points behind DeSantis.
There’s an argument that Trump’s legal troubles will at some point catch up to him. . . [but] genius of his shameless shtick — that the system is rigged, that everyone who targets him is an unscrupulous political hack and that he’s a martyr, his torture a symbol of the contempt to which his supporters are also subjected — lies in its boundless application and timeless utility. It has worked for him to this point. Why would that stop anytime soon?
But if, between now and the Iowa caucuses, Republican voters do somehow develop an appetite for an entree less beefy and hammy than Trump, would DeSantis necessarily be that Filet-O-Fish? . . . Despite DeSantis’s braggartly talk about being the only credible presidential candidate beyond Biden and Trump, the number of contenders keeps expanding.
Most of these candidates are in a pickle similar to DeSantis’s. It’s what makes the whole contest so borderline incoherent. Implicitly and explicitly, they’re sending the message that Republicans would be better served by a nominee other than Trump, but they’re saying that to a party so entirely transformed by him and so wholly in thrall to his populist rants, autocratic impulses, rightward lunges and all-purpose rage that they’re loath to establish too much separation from him. They’re trying to beat him without alienating his enormous base of support by beating up on him. The circus of him has them walking tightropes of their own.
In trying to show the right wing of the Republican Party how aggressive and effective he can be, he has rendered himself nearly as scary to less conservative Americans as Trump is.
And as mean. The genius of Scott’s announcement was its emphasis on optimism instead of ire as a point of contrast with Trump, in the unlikely event that such a contrast is consequential. . . . . But DeSantis is all about grievance and retribution, and he’s oh so grim. He sent two planeloads of migrants to Martha’s Vineyard. He exults that Florida is “where woke goes to die.” How sunny! It’s the Trump negativity minus the Trump electricity.
His assertion that he wants to end Republicans’ “culture of losing” is an anagram for the accusation that Trump has prevented the party from winning, but I doubt the dig will resonate strongly with the Republican base. As Ramesh Ponnuru sagely observed in The Washington Post recently, Trump’s supposed toxicity is a longstanding part of his story and his brand.
The campaigns of DeSantis and the other would-be Trump slayers rest on the usual mix of outsize vanity, uncommon ambition and stubborn hopefulness in politicians who reach for the upper rungs.
But their bids rest on something else, too — something I share, something so many of us do, something that flies in the face of all we’ve seen and learned over the eight years since Trump came down that escalator, something we just can’t shake: the belief that a liar, narcissist and nihilist of his mammoth dimensions cannot possibly endure, and that the forces of reason and caution will at long last put an end to his perverse dominance.
DeSantis is betting on that without fully and boldly betting on that. It’s a hedged affair, reflecting the fact that it may be a doomed one.
Wednesday, May 24, 2023
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