In this blog, I write about the major issues facing the U.S. such as debt, inflation, slow economic growth, U.S. strength relative to the rest of the world, poverty, racial issues, etc.  I also write about important international issues such as global warming, democracy vs. autocracy, the rise of China, etc.  A quick scroll through the recent weekly blog posts will refer to many of these topics.

In recent years many people have questioned the strength of U.S. democracy, suggesting that democracy is in decline or that our democratic principles are weakening.  I believe this to be a false assessment.  In a free and open society like ours, things will inevitably happen which are shocking to society.  Opinions will be expressed by some that are widely denounced by others.  But for me, having a cacophony of ideas and actions in constant public churn is the very nature of a free and open society.  Consider:

• The fundamental strength of our democracy is the decentralized nature of our basic governmental structure. We are a republic, a collection of states, each with many rights and responsibilities of their own, as guaranteed by the 10^th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.  The states control many public functions within their borders such as education, responsibility for roads, law enforcement, election procedures, etc.  States will inevitably do things differently from each other, subject only to the requirements of national law and the U.S. Constitution.
• The national Congress consists of representatives from each of the fifty states, chosen at the state level. The President is selected through an electoral college that allots each state a specific number of votes depending primarily on population.
• The sanctity of the ballot box is of fundamental importance to public trust. Elections are regulated by the states and conducted at the county level.  Procedures for voter identification, mail-in and absentee voting are determined at the state level.  There are 3143 counties in the U.S.  Election fraud could only happen at the county level.  This makes it unlikely to happen and highly dispersed if it ever does.  Such local control of election procedures is a huge protector of the integrity of U.S. democracy.
• In the 2020 presidential election, there were a number of pandemic-related voting irregularities.  For example, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court extended the deadline for mail-in voting beyond election day, contrary to Pennsylvania state law.  Milwaukie WI election officials used drop boxes contrary to Wisconsin state law.  The U.S. Supreme Court has just recently heard arguments for the case of Moore vs Harper that should lead to a resolution of the issue of election authority within each state.
• President Donald Trump’s denialism about the outcome of the 2020 Presidential Election has presented a stress test for our democratic system that is being weathered very well, in my opinion. His campaign filed over 60 lawsuits to overturn the election results.   None of them were successful.  The January 6, 2021 break-in at the U.S. Capitol was disgraceful but had no effect on the election outcome.  Trump-supported election deniers in the 2022 midterm elections did very poorly overall and cost the Republicans control of the Senate for the upcoming session of Congress.  I believe that Trump was a successful President but now has become a great liability to the Republican Party.

Conclusion.  We have a thriving democratic system that is greatly admired around the world.  Its strength is based on its underlying decentralized nature, with the states in charge of many governmental functions and elections conducted at the individual county level.  Donald Trump has presented a stress test, but our democratic system has survived intact, and the appeal of Donald Trump has now been greatly diminished.

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I am very optimistic about the future of the United States.  Of course, we have serious problems to address such as recovery from the pandemic, global warming, poverty, inflation, and massive national debt.  I address all of these problems in much detail on this blog.

The main reason for my optimism for the future is that we have so many underlying strengths.  We are the strongest country in the world, both economically and militarily.  But, in addition, and perhaps most important of all, we are a free people with a superb democratic form of government which makes us the envy of the rest of the world.

We do have adversaries, of course, especially China, Russia, and Iran.  But note that all three of our main adversaries are autocracies that are struggling mightily with their own problems.  Consider:

• The Covid-19 pandemic began in Wuhan, China in late 2019.  China has attempted to address the pandemic with a strict nationwide lockdown zero-Covid policy, whereas the rest of the world has now essentially achieved herd immunity with a combination of widespread vaccination and locally imposed lockdowns and mask mandates.  This zero-Covid policy is causing severe economic disruption in China.  An even bigger problem for China, though, is that when it does eventually open back up to the world, the coronavirus is inevitably going to infiltrate back in and infect the mostly unprotected (unvaccinated) Chinese people.  This will likely become a devastating national emergency for China when it happens.
• Vladimir Putin’s disastrous decision to invade Ukraine has, first-of-all, turned Russia into an international pariah.  It is also going to lead eventually to great economic harm as the western-imposed financial and technology sanctions take stronger and stronger hold.  Russia badly needs a new political and economic system that works for its people.  Until such reform becomes possible, Russia will continue to deteriorate.
• Massive protests have broken out since the death of a 22-year-old Iranian woman for violating the Islamic Republic’s strict dress code.  More than 300 people have been killed in the protests so far.  Hopefully, this will eventually lead to major reforms for the quality of life of the Iranian people.

Conclusion.   As we address our own serious problems and continue to improve the quality of life for all Americans, we should never doubt that our free economy and democratic form of government will continue to thrive.  Our autocratic adversaries have much bigger problems than we do.  We cannot afford to become complacent but we should be confident about our ability to prevail over our autocratic rivals.

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In this blog, I write about the big issues facing our country and how well we are doing in addressing them.  There are always serious problems to be dealt with, some more urgent than others.   But I am an optimist in the sense that I think America will continue to prevail in the world, even as it makes occasional mistakes along the way.

Consider:

• Our biggest strength is that we have always been a nation of immigrants, and still are today.  Our ancestors came here for freedom and opportunity and created it in great abundance!

  

• Our founding fathers established a brilliant form of government. It is amazing that our Constitution is still in force, 234 years after its ratification in 1788. Major democratic stresses have been resolved over the years, mostly in a peaceful manner.  Even the latest stress, Donald Trump’s election denialism from 2020, appears to be on track for peaceful resolution.  Most of the Trump-endorsed election denial candidates in the 2022 Midterm elections were defeated.  The expected “red wave” turned into a “red ripple” as a result.  Republicans have been chastened in a transparent and democratic manner and will almost surely adapt for the better by 2024.
• America’s role in the world. We are still the strongest country by far, both economically and militarily.  Russia’s disastrous invasion of Ukraine will greatly diminish its super-power status.  China remains a strong challenger to U.S. world hegemony, but our superior political and economic system should continue to prevail for many years to come.
• America has just come through a hundred-year pandemic with great success. Our usual, approximately 3 million annual number of deaths, jumped to 3.3 million in 2020 and 3.4 million in 2021, an increase of 12% for two years, which is rapidly subsiding in 2022.  Our successful Covid defense is a result of American industry developing effective vaccines with “warp speed” (in less than a year).  Our decentralized approach to containment, with states deciding for themselves on such measures as lockdowns and mask mandates, has been a big factor in limiting economic damage.
• Global warming is a serious worldwide problem, of course. But developing countries are simply not going to slow down their economic growth by de-fossilizing.  What is needed instead is a worldwide policy of decarbonizing (carbon capture and storage, nuclear power, etc.).  As world leaders continue to recognize this and make a concerted effort to adopt a more effective strategy, global warming will be brought under control.
• Inflation and debt. The bright light here is that the inflation tripped off by our $5 trillion Covid stimulus spending is making our unsustainably rapid debt increase a much more visible problem.  The Federal Reserve has to raise interest rates to combat inflation but this, in turn, is already making our annual budget deficits much worse by increasing interest payments on the debt.  In short, the Fed can’t fix inflation by itself.  It needs help from Congress in the form of spending restraint.  This is becoming more and more apparent to the American public.  Let’s hope that the new Republican-controlled House of Representatives is up to the task of getting started on major spending cutbacks.

Conclusion.  The U.S. certainly has many problems, but it also has many strengths, which greatly improve our quality of life.  Just as we cannot afford to lose focus on the challenges ahead, let us be thankful for all the blessings we enjoy from living in the most prosperous, strongest and freest country on earth.

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Our national debt is very large and growing rapidly.  In addition, $5 trillion in pandemic stimulus payments over the past two years has also tripped off a new round of inflation.  The Federal Reserve fights inflation by raising short-term interest rates.  This will make our debt problem even more urgent by dramatically increasing interest payments on the debt.

As I have been saying repeatedly on this blog, we badly need the fiscal restraint  ( which only Congress and the President can provide.  Recently I outlined several spending and revenue measures, from the Congressional Budget Office, which will help put us back on the right track.  In short, it will require $7 trillion in budget savings over the next decade to stabilize our debt at the current (very) high level!

Today I summarize a plan, from the American Enterprise Institute, for implementing the needed changes in fiscal and social policy to get the job done.  Consider:

• The fiscal crisis we face today is entirely of its own making.  The good news is that we do not have to sacrifice the mission of our essential social programs to solve it. We can still have retirement and health security for all Americans, a vibrant safety net that helps people rise, and an economy that grows and increases the living standards of all citizens.
• The tax code for individuals would remain progressive with four tax rates, 10%, 20%, 30%, and 33%. For businesses, the tax burden on new investment would be eliminated.  A border adjustment tax on carbon would be implemented to help decarbonize the global economy.
• The duplicative, contradictory, and confusing programs making up our social safety net desperately need repair. The key to avoiding personal stagnation is a safety net focused on promoting work, family, and education while at the same time slowing the growth of safety net spending.  The purpose is to shift the emphasis from accommodating poverty to supporting the principles that will lead to family prosperity.
• Spending on the major healthcare programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, and the Affordable Care Act, along with Social Security, are Projected by the CBO to consume 15.2% of GDP by 2052. By the same year, interest payments on the national debt are projected to total 7.2% of GDP.  But the average costs of the entire federal government from m1972 to 2021 totaled 20.8% of GDP.  In other words, at the present rate of growth, the cost of just entitlement programs plus interest payments on the debt will eat up the entire federal budget in just 30 years!  Clearly, something must change!
• Looking at just Medicare alone (for now), the solution is to build on the popular Medicare Advantage Program with a premium support system that works like the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program. A means-testing feature would be included, whereby the wealthy will share more of the premium burden than low- and middle-income seniors do.

Conclusion.  “In this enormous economic challenge lies an opportunity of renewal.  If we stabilize our debt, revitalize our economy, and restore the promise of upward mobility, we will be the authors of a great new chapter in the remarkable American story.”

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The 2022 Midterm Elections are so stalemated that we don’t even know five days out which party will control the House of Representatives (the Democrats will keep control of the Senate).  What happened to the expected “red wave” considering the unpopularity of President Biden, the high rate of inflation, and the general dissatisfaction with the direction of the country?  To me, the answer is quite clear: Donald Trump’s denialism about the outcome of the 2020 presidential election has badly muddied the waters.  Consider:

• GOP governors running for re-election with a record of competent conservatism all won easily. This includes Brian Kemp in Georgia, Kim Reynolds in Iowa, Gregg Abbott in Texas, Mike DeWine in Ohio, Chris Sununu in New Hampshire, and Ron DeSantis in Florida.

  

• Senate candidates in New Hampshire, Arizona, and Pennsylvania, all Trump-endorsed MAGA election deniers, lost against vulnerable opponents. Trump-endorsed Senate candidate J.D. Vance in Ohio squeaked through with massive help from a Super Pac aligned with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, whom Donald Trump detests. Trump-endorsed Herschel Walker in Georgia was forced into a runoff with his Democratic opponent.
• Trump also helped defeat several House incumbents in GOP primaries because they voted to Impeach him after the January 6, 2021 Capitol break-in. These Trump-supported Primary winners then lost to their Democratic opponents in the general election.
• Trump sabotaged Georgia’s 2021 Senate runoff elections by blaming Georgia GOP leaders for not somehow overturning his 2020 defeat in Georgia. This gave Senate control to the Democrats in 2021 which led to the 2021 passage of the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan and the huge inflation which followed. This means that Mr. Trump has now flopped in four elections in a row, in 2018, 2020, 2021, and 2022
• Even most Trump-supported election deniers running for Secretary of State around the country were defeated.

  

Conclusion.  In spite of Donald Trump’s various policy successes as President (tax reform, deregulation, and three Supreme Court selections, for example), his 2020 re-election defeat denialism has now become a huge political liability for the Republican Party.  If he wins the Republican nomination for 2024, he will likely be soundly defeated in the general election.  Let us hope that he will be strongly challenged in the 2024 Republican primaries!

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As I have been saying for many weeks on this blog, see here, here, and here, the closely related problems of inflation and national debt are by far the biggest and most urgent problems facing our country.

Finally, there is a sensible and comprehensive plan to address these problems put together by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB).  It should be looked at carefully by everyone who realizes how dangerous our current fiscal situation now is.  The Plan is actually modest in that it doesn’t expect miracles.  But even to stabilize our current public debt (the $24 trillion on which we pay interest) at 98% of GDP over the next decade will require roughly $7 trillion in budget savings!

The Plan is a combination of revenue and spending changes – with savings from health care, tax reform, discretionary spending caps, energy reforms, and Social Security solvency, among other things.  Without major reforms such as these, our public debt will grow from 98% of GDP in Fiscal Year 2022 to 116% of GDP by FY 2032.  Here is a rough outline (to begin with!) of the CRFB Blueprint:

• Stabilize and reduce the debt as a share of the economy. Failing to do so means leaving us at increased risk of higher interest rates and slower growth with fewer tools to address future needs and crises.  A comprehensive plan should prevent debt from rising as a share of the economy.
• Support the Federal Reserve’s efforts to fight inflation. While the Fed is charged with fighting inflation, also using fiscal policy to help the Fed ensures that all policy is moving in the same direction, spreading the impact of inflation reduction across the economy, and reducing the likelihood and/or severity of recession.
• Secure the major trust funds to prevent insolvency. The major trust funds, Social Security, Medicare Hospital Insurance (Part A), and the Highway Trust Fund are all headed for insolvency within the next 12 years, which would require abrupt cuts in benefit spending.  A budget plan should restore long-term solvency to these funds.
• Promote long-term economic and income growth. Lower debt can help to grow the economy and specific policy reforms can further support work, promote investment, and reduce distortions.
• Support fairness and efficiency throughout the tax code and budget. A budget plan should consider how to structure the budget and tax code more efficiently to better target resources where they are needed and can do the most good.

The above-outlined fiscal policies help to fight inflation by tempering demand, boosting supply, and lowering prices. 

Conclusion.  We now have a very serious inflation problem and our national debt is growing rapidly.  These two problems are intimately related.  While the Federal Reserve has the primary responsibility of fixing inflation, Congress and the President can help immensely by implementing serious fiscal restraint.  That’s what the CRFB blueprint plan, as described above, is proposing. More details will follow soon!

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By far the biggest problem in our country right now is inflation, which reached an annual rate of 9.3% in June and is now at 8.2%.  I have been devoting a lot of time with this blog in discussing various aspects of this problem, see here, here, and here.

Let’s summarize the fundamentals of inflation, and how to fix it, as explained by the economist John Cochrane in the Wall Street Journal.  They are:

• Loose Fiscal Policy is the proximate cause of inflation, i.e. the most immediate cause. The government spent $5 trillion on Covid relief stimulus during 2020 and 2021 and thereby created huge spending deficits in those years (see chart).  These huge deficits created far more demand in the economy than could be quickly met and so prices started to increase.

  

• The Federal Reserve has only a blunt tool to reduce inflation, namely raising interest rates to slow down the economy which, of course, risks causing a recession. So far, the Fed has raised short-term interest rates by 3% and will almost certainly continue raising rates for many months to come, to get inflation back down to the desired rate of 2%.
• Interest Payments on our enormous $30 trillion accumulated debt have already started to increase rapidly because of the higher interest rates. This will, of course, make our already high annual deficits just that much worse.

  

• The Federal Government will be tempted to spend even more money to help people pay their bills during the recession which may have already started. This will, of course, just make deficit spending that much worse.
• Economic Growth is required for a favorable long-term outcome. This is what happened in the 1980s after the inflation of the 1970s.  Economic growth increases taxable income, and therefore taxes collected, which can be used to shrink annual deficit spending.  Along with economic growth is needed spending restraint, especially in the form of entitlement reform.
• The Good News is that our inflation problem can be solved by fiscal (congressional), monetary (Federal Reserve), and regulatory (Presidential) policy working together, if these three branches of government are committed to working together.

Conclusion.  We are now faced with a very serious inflation problem.  It can only be solved by the Federal Reserve, Congress, and the President working together, as described above.  We can be confident that the Fed will do its part.  Are President Biden and Congress up to doing their own parts?  Only time will tell if we come out of our current predicament in a relatively comfortable way (with only minor economic pain), or whether we have new, and much worse, fiscal and debt crises to deal with along the way.

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My two favorite topics recently on this blog are 1) our fundamental strengths as a nation, and 2) my great concern about the damaging effects of high inflation.  In short, we’re doing a good job of providing leadership in the free world, but poorly in letting high inflation get such a strong grip on our economy.

More specifically, our current President Joe Biden is doing a good job on foreign policy but a very poor job on the economy.  Consider:

• World Leadership. The Biden Administration’s new National Security Strategy Plan clearly identifies the challenges and opportunities facing the U.S. in dealing with our principal adversaries around the world: China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea.  In fact, the U.S. has many strengths to build on in dealing with these rogue countries.  U.S. companies are now, for example, responding to government incentives to withdraw from the Chinese Chip market.  In short, the Biden Administration is defending and further building on our strong record of supporting democracy and freedom around the world.
• The U.S. Economy. Here the situation is the reverse of the above.  When President Biden took office in January 2021, the U.S. inflation rate was 1.4% and the economy was already recovering strongly from the Covid lockdowns and their consequent unemployment.  Nevertheless, despite strong warnings from many prominent economists, including Larry Summers, Congress passed, and President Biden signed, the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan in March 2021.  Inflation immediately took off, reaching a high of 9.3% in June 2022 and now sitting at 8.2% for September 2022.  Based on our experience in the 1970s and 1980s, the Federal Reserve will have to keep raising interest rates for many months to come, in order to force inflation back to the desired 2% level.  In the meantime, inflation has spread around the world, and hundreds of millions of people will be feeling the pain of higher prices and slowing economies.  Understanding that there are many contributing factors to inflation, see here and here, by tripping off the current inflationary spiral, the Biden Administration and fellow Democrats are largely responsible for inflicting this pain, not only on the U.S., but on the rest of the world as well.

Conclusion.  Giving credit where credit is due, President Biden is strongly supporting U.S. interests, broadly construed, around the world.  But his economic policies have been disastrous, tripping off a huge surge of inflation at home and abroad.  The answer is to elect a Republican Congress next month to put the brakes on excessive federal spending, in order to help the Fed bring the inflation rate back down to normal levels.

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In recent posts, I have written that I am optimistic about the future of the U.S., but I am also quite concerned about the effects of the high inflation we are now experiencing.  In other words, we’re in overall good shape but there is going to be pain involved in getting inflation under control.  But compare our own strengths with the weaknesses of our main adversaries.

• U.S. strengths. Our fundamental strength is a free and open society and a democratic form of government.   A free society like ours will always have urgent problems to address.  But our democratic form of government assures that the people will ultimately decide, with free and fair elections, how to resolve our differences and move forward.  Another huge strength is the superiority of a free enterprise economy (see chart) which will always out-compete the socialist alternative.  Yet another enormous strength is our good relations with the many other democracies around the world.  Stable democracies work out their differences peacefully rather than through war.

  

• China’s weaknesses. China is basically a socialist country even though it has aspects of a free market.  It is not really free because the government arbitrarily controls its tech sector as well as its overbuilt real estate market.  And its zero-Covid policy is now creating huge economic problems at the same time as our own (democratic) decentralized response to Covid has pulled us out of the two-year pandemic.  China also has a huge demographic problem (its working-age population is shrinking) because of its previous one-child-per-woman policy.
• Russia’s weaknesses. Russia’s President, Vladimir Putin, has been a worldwide trouble maker for many years, and has now made the huge mistake of invading Ukraine.  With the help of the U.S. and its European allies, Ukraine is defending itself heroically and even starting to repel the Russian forces.  There is growing opposition to the Ukraine invasion and to Putin, himself, even within Russia.  However the Ukrainian war plays out in the end, Russia has been diminished as a superpower.

  

• Iran’s weakness. Starting with a young woman’s arrest and death over a head scarf, Iranians are protesting in droves fueled by middle-class anger over the country’s collapsing economy.  The mullahs running Iran are unwilling to enter a “longer and stronger” agreement with the U.S. to assure that Iran does not develop nuclear weapons.  Iran is now suffering from severe economic sanctions imposed by the West.

  

• North Korea. North Korea is a threat to the U.S. because it has nuclear missiles.  The best defense for the U.S. against North Korea is to keep improving our missile defense capabilities.

Conclusion.  The United States has huge underlying strengths in the struggle for world supremacy against our main adversaries of China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea.  We have a far superior economic and political system than our rivals.  We also outclass them in military strength.  We should be confident in our ability to remain the world’s leading power for many years to come.  At the same time, we should never become complacent about our advantages and let our guard down.  Especially right now, we must take very seriously our high rate of inflation, and exercise the necessary fiscal restraint needed to bring the inflation rate back down to the desired 2% level.

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As readers of this blog know, I am optimistic about the long-term future of our country,  because of our many fundamental strengths.  But I am also quite concerned about the effects of the high rate of inflation we are now experiencing, which is, first of all, driving up the cost of everyday living.

In the near term, the next few years, inflation is going to cause even more pain for millions of Americans.  Consider:

• What inflation costs workers.  In 2021 inflation reduced real wage gains by 2.4% (see chart).

  

• Mortgage rates surge.  The average mortgage rate is now 6.7%, the highest level since July 2007 (see chart). This adds pressure to the already cooling U.S. housing market.  Many would-be home buyers have given up, while many existing homeowners have become reluctant to sell.

  

• Likelihood of recession. According to the economist Larry Summers, there is a very substantial likelihood of a recession over the next two years.  This is suggested by the current inflation rate of 8.3%, along with the current low unemployment rate of 3.7%, and the clearly stated goal of Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell to raise interest rates as high as necessary to bring the inflation level back down to the desired 2% level.

  

• Interest payments on the national debt.  Rising interest rates are already dramatically increasing interest payments on our public debt of $24 trillion.  They hit $63 billion in August 2022 which computes to $756 billion on an annual basis.  Soon interest payments on the debt will exceed $1 trillion per year from the current level (in Fiscal 2022) of $400 billion per year.  Because of inflation, social security payouts will increase from $1.2 trillion per year to $1.3 trillion.  Federal healthcare costs (Medicare, Medicaid, etc.) which amounted to $915 billion in fiscal 2022, will grow by $163 billion next year.  If we do fall into a serious recession, federal tax revenue will erode.

Conclusion.   Workers falling further and further behind in the cost of living, prospective home buyers unable to afford to buy a house, a serious recession substantially raising the unemployment rate, and finally, huge increases in financing our growing debt coupled with recession-induced shrinking tax revenue, all these events will be very harmful to the economy.  Will this likely combined scenario put us into a “doom loop” of decline or “just” mire us in stagflation, draining growth potential from the national economy?  Either way, the whole process will be painful for tens of millions of Americans.

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