Let us acknowledge that there are many racial disparities in the United States today, from the academic achievement gap, to incarceration rates, to household incomes.  I personally do not consider racial disparities to be an indication of personal or systemic racism in our society but many people do.

For me, it is far more important for society to figure out how to eliminate, or at least greatly reduce, these major disparities.  In fact, much progress is being made along these lines, even though, of course, much remains to be done.

My last two posts discussed the book “Woke Racism” by John McWhorter, who believes that the antiracism movement has betrayed black America.

Today I discuss an essay, “Why Does Racial Inequality Persist?” by the social scientist, Glenn Loury.  According to Mr. Loury:

• There are two main narratives about the cause of racial inequality. The bias narrative holds that racism and white supremacy are the culprits and that blacks can’t get ahead until they end.  The development narrative holds that what is most essential is how a person comes to acquire the skills, traits, habits, and orientations that foster successful participation in American society.  This puts the onus of responsibility on African-Americans themselves to develop their own human potential.
• Some 70% of African-American children are born to a woman without a husband. Is this a good thing?  Is it due to anti-black racism?  It is implausible to imagine how this would be reversed by government policies.
• Young black men are killing one another at extraordinary rates. The young men taking one another’s lives on the streets of St. Louis, Baltimore and Chicago are exhibiting behavioral pathology.  Is this due to white racism?
• How about the “mass incarceration” of blacks. Is this due to white racism or because black men more often break the law and therefore violate the basic rules of civility?

  

• Of course, if teachers, principals, guidance counselors, and school-based police officers are discriminating by race when they discipline students, the Department of Education and the Department of Justice should get involved. But what if there is a racial disparity in the frequency of disruptive behavior which causes a difference in suspension statistics?  If behavior, not racism, is at the bottom of racially disparate suspension rates, think of all the disservice that is being done by not enforcing the rules.

Conclusion.  You cannot help the hand you were dealt, but you can decide how to play it.  To cast oneself as a helpless victim, to overlook what you have control over, while leaving the outcome to invisible, implacable historical forces: this is a self-defeating posture.
Take the poor central-city dwellers who make up about a quarter of the African-American population.  The dysfunctional behavior of many in this population accounts for much of their failure to progress.
While we cannot ignore the behavioral problems of this so-called black underclass, their fate is a national and not just communal disgrace.  We should discuss and react to these problems as if we were talking about our own children.  Our failure to do so is an American tragedy.  To progress will require adjusting ways of thinking on both sides of the racial divide.

Sign-up for my Email Newsletter
Follow me on Facebook
Follow me on Twitter

Racism, real and perceived, is one of the most contentious issues in America today.  I have devoted many posts to discussing this problem.  My basic view is that while there are remnants of our racist past in today’s society, America has made much progress in improving race relations in recent years, and systemic racism no longer exists.

Last week I presented John McWhorter’s view that there is now a new form of racism in America which he calls Woke Racism: how a new religion has betrayed black America.  Mr. McWhorter describes in great detail how Woke Racism has many characteristics in common with a religious movement.

Clearly, there are many different ways of discussing racism.  But, whatever it is, how should we be combatting it?  My own view is by achieving better educational outcomes for disadvantaged children and also by creating better job opportunities for them.

Mr. McWhorter is more specific:

• End the war on drugs. Because drugs are illegal there is a thriving black market for them.  Underserved black men often drift into this market, as an understandable choice when schools have failed them.  Any legal work would be better than selling drugs, which puts people at high risk of being killed or at least going to prison for long stretches.
  I understand what Mr. McWhorter is suggesting and why but I am opposed to drug legalization because this would increase drug use and drugs are unhealthy.  Perhaps there is an intermediate course, for example, decriminalizing drug use without making it legal.  Or perhaps turning over drug use enforcement to the states, so that regional differences are better respected.
• Teach reading properly. There are two ways of teaching a child to read.  Phonics (sounding out letters) is one way.  The whole word method (approaching words as chunks and guessing at their pronunciation) is the other way.  Since the 1960s, phonics has been unanimously demonstrated to be more effective for teaching poor kids to read.  Generations of black kids, disproportionally poor, have been sideswiped by inadequate reading instruction.  The impact on life trajectory is clear.
  Amen!  I entirely agree with Mr. McWhorter.

  

• Get past the idea that everybody must go to a four-year college. America needs to truly value working-class jobs.  We must instill a sense that vocational school – not just four-year college – is a valued option for people who want to get beyond what they grew up in.

Conclusion.  Americans differ strongly on how bad racism really is in America today.  But most of us will agree that society should address it in one way or another, perhaps in many different ways, by helping African/Americans achieve more academic and economic success.  John McWhorter’s new book helps not only to understand what racism is but how to address it most effectively by helping black Americans move up the social and economic ladders.  

Sign-up for my Email Newsletter
Follow me on Facebook
Follow me on Twitter

One of the issues I often discuss on this blog is racism, real and perceived, see here   and here.  My basic view is that while there are remnants of our racist past in today’s society, America has made much progress in improving race relations in recent years, and systemic racism no longer exists in our country.

I have just come across the new book, Woke Racism: how a new religion has betrayed black America, by John McWhorter, which adds a new perspective to this controversial issue.  According to Mr. McWhorter:

• There have been three waves of antiracism historically in our country.
• First Wave Antiracism battled both slavery and legalized segregation.
• Second Wave Antiracism, in the 1970s and ‘80s, battled racist attitudes and taught America that being racist is a moral flaw.
• Third Wave Antiracism, becoming mainstream in the 2010s, teaches that because racism is baked into the structure of society, whites “complicity” in living within it constitutes racism itself, while for black people, grappling with the racism surrounding them is the totality of experience and must condition exquisite sensitivity toward them. . .
• In other words, Third Wave Antiracism, in its laser focus on an oversimplified sense of what racism is and what one does about it, is content to harm black people in the name of what can only be called dogma. It exploits modern Americans’ fear of being thought racist to promulgate not just antiracism, but an obsessive, self-involved, totalitarian, and utterly unnecessary kind of cultural reprogramming.
• The author refers to these modern-day antiracists as the Elect. With the rise of third wave antiracism, we are witnessing the birth of a new religion.
• The Elect have superstition: when Elect white people at protests take a knee for extended periods to indicate general wokeness after George Floyd’s murder, it is a submission to Elect imperatives.
• The Elect have clergy: they are Ta-Nehisi Coates’ (“The Case for Reparations”), Robin DiAngelo (“White Fragility”), and Ibram Kendi (“How to Be an Antiracist”)
• The Elect have original sin: “white privilege.” White people are racist, and if they deny it, it proves that they are.
• The Elect are evangelical: just as fundamentalist Christians are bearers of a “Good News” which, if accepted, would create a perfect world, there is always a flock of unconverted heathen (white people) out there who don’t yet see the light.
• The Elect are apocalyptic: in 2021 America has become conscious of racism, within just a year, to a degree so extreme and so sincere that history offers no parallel. But to the Elect none of this matters.  The same people are saying the same things that America never “comes to terms” with race.
• The Elect ban the heretic. Since 2019 the Elect’s behavior has become known as “cancel culture.”  The Elect’s central moral duty is to battle racism and the racist.
• The Elect supplant older religions. The imperative to “dismantle our white supremacy culture” has virtually taken over the centuries-old now combined Unitarian/Universalist denomination, which happens (what consternation!) to be my own church!

Conclusion.  “America’s sense of what it is to be intellectual, moral or artistic, what it is to educate a child, what it is to foster justice, what it is to express oneself properly, and what it is to be a nation, is being re-founded upon a religion.  This is directly antithetical to the very foundations of the American experiment.”

Sign-up for my Email Newsletter
Follow me on Facebook
Follow me on Twitter

“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
10^th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, ratified 1791

Most of the time on this blog I write about major problems facing the United States as a whole such as economic, military, or foreign policy issues.  For example, in my last post, I discussed one of my favorite topics, our very large, and out-of-control, national debt.

However, one of the most important features of our republican form of government is its fundamentally decentralized nature, as described by the 10^th Amendment to the Constitution (see above).  It stipulates that many public issues must be resolved at the state and local levels.  This protects many of our most prized liberties from usurpation by a central authority.  For example:

• The Electoral College determines who wins a presidential election rather than the national popular vote. This establishes the authority of the states in a fundamental way.  A successful presidential candidate must have majority support in many different states rather than over-relying on huge majorities in just a few large states such as California or New York.
• Voting procedures are primarily determined at the state level (as guaranteed by the Constitution). Again, this increases the political authority of the states and prevents a federal bureaucrat or Congressional majority from dictating how states should regulate elections.
• Educational policy is primarily determined by the states with the exception of a few special needs programs such as Title I and Head Start. Likewise, state departments of education often cede policy control over controversial issues to local school boards. This assures that each local community has much authority over how and what its children will be taught in the public K-12 schools.
• Public health policy is largely under state control. This has been particularly evident during the Covid-19 pandemic where only state governors have the authority to impose state-wide mask mandates and business lockdowns.  The red states have done much better than the blue states in allowing businesses to stay open and thereby preserving more jobs.

  

• Other issues. It would make sense to let state governments determine gun control policy and drug law enforcement in their own states.  Such controversial issues as these would be more effectively resolved at the state level.

Conclusion.  The many individual liberties which Americans prize so highly are strongly protected by our decentralized form of government where many powers are given directly to the states (and ultimately to local government).  Such state and local control prevent remote federal Congressional majorities and bureaucracies from dictating how we should live our lives.  Americans often fail to appreciate this essential feature of our constitutional government.

Sign-up for my Email Newsletter
Follow me on Facebook
Follow me on Twitter

As readers of this blog well know, I write about what I consider to be the biggest and most serious problems our country faces.  And you probably also know what I consider to be the biggest problem of all:  our national debt.

As bad as our debt problem is, the practical problem is what should we do about it?  Of course, we need to restrain the growth of spending and/or raise taxes.  But what is a reasonable way to get this done?  I used to think that the best solution is to do a better job of controlling the growth of entitlement spending. This would still help a lot, of course, but such a strategy may not be enough because the problem is getting so much worse all the time.  Starting with George W. Bush, the debt problem has accelerated with each successive president: Bush, Obama, Trump, and now Biden.  It is discouraging and demoralizing to think that our debt problem is now so bad that it may be almost insolvable short of a huge crisis.

For all these reasons I am highly intrigued by an article in the current edition of National Affairs by Avik Roy, “Bitcoin and the U.S. Fiscal Reckoning.”  Mr. Roy says that soon “policymakers will face a Solomonic choice: either protect Americans from inflation (by raising interest rates) or protect the government’s ability to engage in deficit spending (by continually printing more money).  It will be impossible to do both.  Over time, this compounding problem will escalate the importance of Bitcoin.”

Here is a brief summary of his argument:

• When viewed through the lens of human history, free-floating global exchange rates (like we have at present) remain an unprecedented economic experiment – with one fatal flaw. They enable deficit spending.
• There are several reasons to believe that America’s fiscal profligacy cannot go on forever. Most importantly is the unanimous judgment of history: in every country and in every era, runaway deficits and skyrocketing debt have ended in economic stagnation or ruin.
• Indications that investors are growing increasingly concerned about the U.S. fiscal and monetary picture – and are in turn assigning more risk to “risk-free” Treasury bonds – are on the rise. Between 2010 and 2020, the share of U.S. securities owned by foreign entities fell from 47% to 32%.  As foreign investors reduce their purchase of U.S. government debt, the Fed is forced to increase its own bond purchases.
• Until and unless Congress reduces the trajectory of the federal debt, U.S. monetary policy has entered a vicious cycle from which there is no obvious escape.
• Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of Bitcoin, wrote in 2009, “the root problem with conventional currency is all the trust that’s required to make it work. The central bank must be trusted not to debase the currency, but the history of fiat currencies is full of breaches of that trust.
• Bitcoin has the same five important qualities as gold has: it is unforgeable, divisible, durable, fungible, and scarce. Furthermore, bitcoin is rarer, more portable, and more secure than gold.  And it cannot be censored (e.g. by China).
• Policymakers will be tempted to impose capital controls that restrict the ability of Americans to exchange dollars for bitcoin. This would be a huge mistake by confirming to the world that the United States no longer believes in the competitiveness of its currency.
• Instead, federal policymakers would do well to embrace the role of bitcoin as a geopolitically neutral reserve asset. In fact, the Treasury Department should consider replacing a fraction of its holdings – say 10% – with bitcoin, sending a positive signal to the innovative blockchain sector.
• Ideally, the rise of bitcoin will motivate the U.S. to mend its fiscal ways. But even if this doesn’t happen, ordinary Americans will have the opportunity to protect their savings from the federal government’s fiscal mismanagement.

Conclusion.  Bitcoin represents an enormous strategic opportunity for individual Americans and the U.S. as a whole.  The bitcoin currency and its underlying technology could become the next great driver of American growth.  But in order for this to happen, the changeover from the current fiat currency must begin to take place before the economy is decimated by drastic inflation.

Sign-up for my Email Newsletter
Follow me on Facebook
Follow me on Twitter

In the latest Quinnipiac Poll 38% of Americans rate President Joe Biden as competent and 53% as incompetent.

Here is the evidence so far:

• The Afghanistan withdrawal was a debacle. The President ignored his top military advisors who urged keeping a small residual force in place. The overall effect of our withdrawal is a boost to terrorism around the world.
• The disaster at our southern border. The Biden Administration 1) failed to complete border wall construction begun under Trump, 2) immediately canceled the Trump Administration’s Remain in Mexico (while asylum requests are being considered) program, and 3) terminated the Asylum Cooperative Agreements with several Central American countries which requires asylum seekers to request relief from the first safe country able to assist them. The overall effect is that 200,000 illegal immigrants are crossing the border each month and being released into the U.S.  It will be impossible to solve our illegal immigration problem until the southern border is effectively CLOSED to illegal entry.
• Where did all the workers go?  Although the unemployment rate dropped to 4.8% in September, there are still 11 million job openings in the U.S. even though wages are up 7.4% in the last year. The lack of workers has become a drag on the economy contributing to supply-side strains. The problem is caused by an easy monetary policy to boost demand coupled with squeezing the supply side with incentives not to work.

       

• The current inflation spike.  Currently, consumer price inflation is rising at over 5% annually with big spikes in food prices, housing costs. and energy prices.  Meantime the Biden Administration is pushing for trillions of dollars in new spending for both infrastructure and social programs which will make inflation even worse if enacted.

Conclusion.  It is not that President Biden is doing everything wrong but that he is making too many big mistakes that are adding up and becoming quite noticeable.  This is the reason for his plunging support in national polls.

Sign-up for my Email Newsletter
Follow me on Facebook
Follow me on Twitter

There is currently much pessimism about the strength of American democracy and our status in the world, see here and here.

Furthermore, my most recent posts, here and here, in defense of democracy and freedom, have received lots of negative comments on FaceBook.

But the Oracle of Omaha, Warren Buffett, says to “never bet against America” and I agree with him.

Consider:

• The Pandemic is largely under control in spite of the Delta variant of the coronavirus. Most of the recent deaths are of people who have not been vaccinated.  The drug company, Merck, has developed a pill that will protect against new high-risk infections.  Covid, in fact, will soon become endemic (i.e. manageable with annual flu shots) rather than epidemic.

  

• Most top world companies are located in the U.S.  It clearly shows that the U.S. dominates world industry, commerce, and innovation. This trend is likely to continue indefinitely because of our superior political and economic systems.

  Stop worrying about the rise of China. The Quad, made up of the Asian powers Australia, India, Japan, and also the U.S., is more than capable of working together to keep Chinese hegemonic ambitions under control.

• Debt and inflation. Debt is by far our largest problem at the present time and it could soon get much worse with the Biden Administration’s blowout spending plans. But inflation is continuing to rear its ugly head. It is inflation that will directly lead to higher interest rates, which will, in turn, set off our next debt-caused financial crisis.  If we’re lucky, the present rise of inflation will knock some common sense into the big spenders so deeply embedded in national government.

Conclusion.  The U.S. can certainly not afford to be complacent but our great strength, economic and military, as well as our superb democratic form of government, along with our highly prized personal freedoms, will all contribute to help us keep our dominant position among the nations of the world for many years to come.

Sign-up for my Email Newsletter
Follow me on Facebook
Follow me on Twitter

“The land of the free and the home of the brave”                         Francis Scott Key, 1814

I live in (Omaha) Nebraska, home of the “Good Life.”  I am an optimist by nature but also partly because of where I live.  The state unemployment rate is 2.2%, the lowest in the nation.  We have effective and efficient government at both the state and local levels.  The crime rate is low overall.  We do have some problems such as crowded prisons and a poor state foster child program, but they are being addressed in an open and transparent manner.

Perhaps it is partly because of my own secure and pleasant life that I am so optimistic about the future of our country.  My last post discussed the great strength of our country’s democratic traditions.  Today I elaborate on why I believe our country will continue to prosper socially and economically for many years to come.

Consider:

• The American Dream is alive and well.  Wages for the typical worker have grown (in real terms) by more than 20% in the last three decades. Most Americans in their 40s are doing better than their parents were during their 40s (see attached charts).
  
• America should not fear the rise of China. The U.S. rightly helped China emerge from its sluggish past and has recently been making rapid economic progress.  But China has a severe demographic problem.  The UN predicts that the number of working-age Chinese, between now and 2100, will fall by half while the number of working-age Americans will increase by 15%.  This leads to the further prediction that the Chinese economy (GDP), relative to America’s, will peak at 76% by 2040.
• The world’s largest companies.  Seven of the world’s ten largest companies are American and two are Chinese copycats.  This is a tribute to the initiative, inventiveness, and hard work of individual Americans.  Our immigrant forebears had to take initiative and personal risk to get to America.  We have clearly benefitted greatly from the “can do” spirit of those who came before us.
• Emphasis on personal freedom. In addition to our strong tradition of democratic government, we have a strong tradition of individual freedom.  Freedom is a tough concept because it means the freedom to fail as well as the freedom to succeed.  But our society strives (even if imperfectly) to provide equal opportunity for all, especially in terms of foundational education and equality under the law.  Ultimately, however, each of us has to take personal advantage of these opportunities in order to succeed in life.

Conclusion.  Of course, the United States should never take its premier world status for granted.  But we are “the land of the free and the home of the brave” for a good reason.  We are the descendants of immigrants and pioneers who wanted personal freedom and were willing to take great risks to obtain it.  Our brilliantly conceived democratic form of government has now lasted for 233 years (the U.S. Constitution was ratified in 1788). All we have to do, so to speak, is to strive to live up to the ideals of our predecessors.

Sign-up for my Email Newsletter
Follow me on Facebook
Follow me on Twitter

There is a great deal of anxiety in the U.S. these days.  The delta variant pandemic surge, worsening global warming, and the exploding national debt, for example.  All of these are serious problems which need lots of attention.

These real issues have engendered a great deal of pessimism about the capability of our political system to respond adequately to our biggest problems.  Liberal democracy and capitalism are under attack.  On the left, markets generate inequality and democracy works only when it achieves the right outcomes.  On the right, markets destroy traditional moral conventions and individual freedom encourages behavioral deviancies.  In short, the western model of individual liberty and religious neutrality is under political pressure.

But consider:

• Worldwide, freedom and democracy still strongly predominate.  According to Freedom House, even though there has been some slippage in recent years, the number of free countries greatly exceeds the number of partly free countries which, in turn, exceeds the number of not free countries.
• U.S. democracy had a huge stress test in Fall 2020 and passed with flying colors. The Trump organization filed more than 63 lawsuits claiming voter fraud in the 2020 Presidential Election and not a single lawsuit prevailed.
• Are we prepared for future emergencies like the pandemic?  Even though Covid-19 originated in China, China contained the coronavirus very effectively with a centralized and severe lockdown policy.  Our free and decentralized democratic system is unable, by design, to respond in the same way.  But U.S. drug companies produced several effective vaccines in record time and the pandemic is now essentially under control, in spite of the delta variant.  We should have confidence in our incredibly innovative economy to be able to deal with future crises in a similarly effective manner.
• Political polarization does not represent a breakdown of democracy. It is caused primarily by progressive-left identity politics and the strong reaction to it by the right. Identity politics will gradually fade away as the U.S. population becomes more and more racially amalgamated.

Conclusion.  Yes, the United States has very serious problems to address.  Yes, there are many people who are pessimistic that our democratic form of government, based on our 233-year-old constitution, no longer meets our current needs.  But we are so strong, both economically and militarily, with such vigorous democratic traditions, that we should be optimistic that our long and successful traditions will pull us through not only our current troubles but any new ones which come our way.

Sign-up for my Email Newsletter
Follow me on Facebook
Follow me on Twitter

“another form of bias: the soft bigotry of low expectations” President George Bush,2000

According to Critical Race Theory, the United States is dominated by white supremacy and systemic racism and CRT is now taught in many public school systems.

On the other hand, the Wall Street Journal columnist, William McGurn, asks “Is it okay that black eighth-graders aren’t proficient in math and reading?”  He examines 27 urban school districts listed in the Trial Urban District Assessment of the National Assessment of Educational Progress for 2019 (before Covid).

The top average reading score, in these 27 urban districts, for black 8^th graders, was 20% proficient for Boston MA.  The top average math score was 24% proficient for Charlotte NC.  Many cities had much lower scores.  For example, in Detroit MI, black achievement was an abysmal 4% proficient for math and 5% proficient for reading.  Some of these 27 districts have the highest annual spending per pupil in the country, for example, $28,004 for NYC, $25,653 for Boston, $22,406 for the District of Columbia, and $17,112 for Atlanta.

Let’s agree that Critical Race Theory and Black Lives Matter have increased public awareness of challenges faced by African-Americans in today’s society. There are indeed remnants of the systemic racism which existed before the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s.  But their primary challenge today is economic in the sense that average income is significantly less for blacks than for whites.

The best way to meet these challenges is to:

• First of all, recognize that African-Americans are already making much social and economic progress.

  

• Secondly, focus on the academic achievement gap by providing early childhood educational opportunities for all children from low-income families, to make sure that they are ready for school when they enter kindergarten.

  

• Thirdly, use government programs to improve economic opportunity for all members of the working class.

Conclusion.  Basic academic proficiency for African-American children is abysmal in many of our large urban school systems.  This is the worst form of structural racism still existing in the U.S.  It is holding back further black economic and social progress.  This huge problem can be addressed, however, if only national leaders would give it priority attention.

Sign-up for my Email Newsletter
Follow me on Facebook
Follow me on Twitter