Links to Consider, 6/16
Eli Lake on Jordan Neely; John Lloyd on France and decivilization; Rob Henderson on the Dark Triad traits in a victimhood culture; Lyn Alden on inflation
In the latest episode of Honestly, I moderate a conversation that explores a third narrative to explain the death of Jordan Neely. Here was a man suffering from severe mental illness, and who had been flagged by the city’s public health system. He was on the list of 50 New Yorkers of most concern to the police. At the time of his death, there was a warrant out for his arrest.
“Of most concern,” but at what priority? The government seems to put a lot more effort into other threats, including “misinformation.”
For me, this raises the issue of how threats are prioritized by government, elites, and the general public. My guess is that comparing the elites to the general public, the general public would prioritize someone like Neely as a greater threat than several of the people who have been given long sentences in the J6 protest. If this is so, is the general public right? Are they wrong? Right or wrong, in a democracy do they deserve to have the government’s priorities aligned with their own?
Jerome Fouquet, head of the main polling company IFOP, said that “tensions are increasing in every part of society” to such a degree that “a process of decivilisation is now under way.”
This is in France. Lloyd concludes
Macron, among the most active and ambitious of world leaders, was faced with the unforgiving reality of his own impotence, and that of all democratic leaders. If this is not to prove fatal to the rebuilding of global order, new forms of civilising activity must be created by those citizens who apprehend the need to halt decline.
Readers of The Three Languages of Politics will no doubt recognize the language as conservative.
A 2020 study found people who signal victimhood (and virtue) are more likely to have Dark Triad personality traits.
A couple years previously, two other authors published The Rise of Victimhood Culture. And Manning has a substack that I recommend.
People with Dark Triad traits will adapt their behavior to the cultural environment. If we did not have today’s victimhood culture, they could not use claims of victim status (Rachel Dolezal, Jussie Smollett) or virtue signaling (college presidents and other leaders of non-profit organizations) to obtain attention and resources.
If inflation is caused by runaway fiscal deficits, high interest rates do not really do much to stop that. A central bank and the commercial banking system in general is basically forced to finance its government’s runaway fiscal deficits anyway, so if they are printing money to help the government put more money into circulation than it removes, then changes in interest rates are going to be a distant second in terms of any impact they may have. It’s like giving someone Tylenol when they have a gunshot wound; what really needs to be done is to stop the bleeding.
…High interest rates on public debt will result in even bigger runaway deficits, because now they are dealing with ballooning interest payments on the debt, and this ironically pushes more money into the economy.
…So, does that mean the solution is to hold rates low? Is dovishness the answer?
Not necessarily, no. That’s the strategy that Turkey has been trying to do, and it hasn’t worked very well.
Substacks referenced above:
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If we are honest with ourselves we all know that entitlement reform isn't going to happen. We are going to continue down this path until a train wreck.
Rather than wasting political capital on the futile, people should recognize that the only real decision before us is how what remains of our wealth is going to be deployed while it's still here. I will make the case for directing it towards the item with the greatest moral and economic purpose, children. Specifically, cash transfers to parents for having children. When things collapse its the next generation that has to pick up the mess, best there be enough of them.
Pass bigger child tax credits. Make children add to the standard deduction. Have dependents lower % tax rates. Offer increased incentives for married vs single households.
Offer federal matching funds for any state that implements no strings school choice.
Eliminate the cap on SS & Medicare taxes (this is going to happen at some point anyway), but make the tax rate decline if you have more kids (this makes a lot of sense given the nature of the benefit).
If you can't pay for it, do it anyway. The other side will come along and spend what you don't spend. If an opportunity to cut bad spending or eliminate tax loopholes you don't like (SALT) comes up go right ahead, but recognize that entitlements are the only game in town and entitlements aren't getting cut.
Taxes have been around the same % of the economy forever, it's practically an economic law. You can redistribute the burden some from friends to enemies, but it isn't changing overall up or down.
The nice thing about spending on getting people to have children is it's really the only long term solution to the entitlement problem. It's also a national security issue (who has higher TFR will determine whether we or China dominate, and luckily they aren't very good at making kids).
I agree with Alden. To me, this is one of the great under appreciated realities of central bank activities. And that is that when push comes to shove, central bankers and their political comrads almost always resort to printing more money. Although this sounds counterintuitive to readers of this blog, that is what usually happens. I wouldn't have believed this, had I not been persuaded by Ray Dalio's extensive research on historical banking/currency crises. If you haven't already read his stuff, I'd encourage you to do so. Dalio also describes this effect in many of his interviews, which one can find on Youtube.