Monday, November 30, 2020

Why thoughtful conservatives should read Krugman

As a college student many years ago I worked as a proofreader for the National Bureau of Economic Research. One of the papers we proofed argued that, contrary to news stories, there was no shortage of engineers in the U.S. The author had done extensive research into engineer salaries by specialty over time and found they either lagged or matched the rate of inflation.

As every student of economics knows, when there is a shortage of a commodity the price rises. Because engineer wages had not risen over time, the paper's author concluded there was no shortage of engineers. Then he went to a party and talked about his research and conclusions with an engineer—the first engineer with whom he'd actually discussed his work.

He learned that engineering wages did not follow the rule of supply and demand because engineers—at the time at least—were seldom able to change jobs. A company could not obtain engineering help by offering higher wages and engineers were paid well enough and they may have been non-compete agreements, which meant wages were stable. And there was a shortage of engineers in the U.S.

Short, incisive, thought-provoking

I was reminded of this ancient experience in reading Paul Krugman's Arguing With Zombies: Economics, Politics, and the Fight for a Better Future. The book is a collection of Krugman's New York Times newspaper columns and blog posts arranged by category (Social Security, Obamacare, economic bubbles, austerity, the Euro, and more), each introduced by a brief essay. The columns are short, incisive, and thought-provoking.

Krugman, who won the Nobel Prize in Economics for his work on international trade, began writing for the Times in 2000, and he published an earlier collection of columns in 2003, The Great Unraveling. He is unashamedly liberal; indeed published The Conscience of a Liberal in 2007. On the evidence of this book, he would have known to talk to an engineer before propounding his argument.

Because Krugman is a thoughtful liberal, conservatives should read his book so they can understand what one thoughtful liberal is saying. He says, for example, "Decades of conservative marketing have convinced Americans that government programs always create bloated bureaucracies, while the private sector is always lean and efficient. But when it comes to retirement security, the opposite is true. More than 99 percent of Social Security's revenues to go toward benefits, and less than 1 percent for overhead."

Why not better government programs

If we can develop an efficient, inexpensive government retirement program, why can't we also develop an efficient, inexpensive health care system? Or public higher education system? Or early childhood development system? 

Rather than create and improve programs that would help make American great(er), right-wingers believe it is better to, as Grover Norquist famously said, "My goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub." Rather than argue the benefits and drawbacks—i.e., use real information—right-wingers tend to call names: "It's socialism."

And so, Krugman writes, under Trump, "we now basically have an Environmental Protection Agency run on behalf of polluters, and Interior Department run by people who want to loot federal land, an Education Department run by the for-profit schools industry, and so on."

I thought the book was fascinating because Krugman not only outlines an economic or social or political issue but clearly and concisely explains why certain ideas are zombies that will not die. Ideas like Social Security is going to run out of money . . . the deficit will cause hyperinflation . . . austerity will lead to prosperity . . . tax cuts will spur economic growth  . . . climate change is beyond human control . . . crypto currency is the future of money. (Okay, maybe this last one hasn't been around long enough to be a zombie, but just wait.)

Reportedly the Scottish writer, essayist, and historian Thomas Carlyle identified economics as "the dismal science" because at the time it appeared that population growth would inevitably outpace food production. That hasn't happened. It may not happen. But whether it does or not, Arguing with Zombies is a useful and interesting guide to why.

Saturday, November 14, 2020

The City & The City: An Appreciation

I suppose this could be taken as a symptom of family dynamics—my family's dynamics. Midway through China Miéville's novel The City & The City I raved about this terrific book to my daughter. 

She told me she'd read it. She'd read it and loved it ten years ago when it first appeared. She'd read it, loved it, and clearly recalled recommending it to me ten years ago. 

I have no recollection of our conversation. I managed to be entirely oblivious to the book and the author, a well-known and prolific British fantasy (?), science fiction (?) writer, for ten years. Meanwhile. The Los Angeles Times, The Seattle Times, and Publishers Weekly named The City & The City a Best Novel of the Year. It won the World Fantasy Award, the Arthur C. Clarke Award, and the Hugo Award for best novel.  

What took me so long to catch up? My only excuse is that the world is full of terrific books and you never know where or when you'll find one. And, again, this is one.

I came to The City & The City via a four-part BBC mini series of the same name. It's a police procedural in which a young woman's body is discovered dumped in a trash heap and Inspector Tyador Borlú of the Extreme Crime Squad is on the case. But we're in Beszel, a city that looks like a decaying Eastern European city. We learn almost immediately the woman is American and was actually killed in Ul Qoma, another country. And now things become interesting.

Imagine a city like Berlin before the wall came down. East Berlin is poor, grubby, and decrepit—that's Beszel. West Berlin prosperous, thriving, all stainless steel and glass—that's Ul Qoma. Now imagine the residents speak two different languages (think Jerusalem), have entirely different histories, economies, customs, and do not like or trust the other. Finally, imagine the residents are taught from birth not to see the other country; the residents of Beszel literally cannot see the citizens or the buildings of Ul Qoma across the street.

The BBC The City & The City series is so well done and the setup so interesting, I bought a copy of the book. It's better. Had I read the book first, then seen the series, I'd have been disappointed by the changes the writers and producers had to make to convert the Beszel and Ul Qoma story into something that could be shown in four hours. The novel is richer, more complex, and ultimately more satisfying than the TV show.

It's more satisfying because Miéville is able to do things on the page that are difficult or impossible to do visually. Borlú is, in some ways, a stock police detective who has seen too much, is an honorable man in a corrupt world whether in Beszel or Ul Qoma (as a young officer he spent enough time in the country to have learned some of the language and the customs). He's dealing with (among others) nationalists who want to destroy the other city and unificationists who want to make the two cities one.

An important institution in the novel and the TV show is Breach, an all-seeing (think high-def video cameras with facial recognition software), all-powerful super secret police force that maintains the peaceful separation between the two cities. Violate Breach and you can disappear. Breach gives the story a dark and threatening ground because a citizen in either city can breach the separation between the two inadvertently.

So what starts as a relatively straightforward murder mystery opens up into a meditation on what we know, what we can know, how to pass from one reality to another, and how to make sense of it all. And with all this, Miéville never loses control of the language or the story. If you've managed to miss The City & The City for the last ten years, look up the BBC series, then read the book. Trust me—and my daughter—on this one. 

Wednesday, November 4, 2020

An abused wife tries to escape her brutal spouse

Rebecca Quinn, with a black eye and a battered body, awakens in an unfamiliar room. She is in the Salt River Inn, owned and run by Gaby, her aunt's former college roommate. We learn that Becca has escaped from her abusive husband back in New Jersey. Thus begins Wild Horses on the Salt by Anne Montgomery.

Montgomery's earlier novels are The Scent of Rain and A Light in the Desert. As a freelance or staff reporter on six publications she's written features, movie reviews, archeological pieces, and about sports. She taught communications and journalism in a Phoenix high school for 20 years. 

The Salt River Inn on—what else?—the Salt River is surrounded by the Tonto National Forest, east of Phoenix. It's the fifth largest national forest in the United States offering mountains, the Sonoran Desert, and to the north the Mogollon Rim. A wild and stunning land. The Salt River, because it is relatively close to Phoenix, is a popular rafting and boating river; the four dams on the river have formed lakes that are also popular for boating and fishing.

Among the Forest's wildlife—desert raccoons, black bears, coyotes, Arizona skunks, bobcats, white-tailed deer, desert mule deer, ring-tailed cats, pronghorns, javelinas, roadrunners, prairie falcons, bald eagles, long-eared owls, Western red-tailed hawks, great blue herons, North American cougars, barn owls, and kestrels (birdwatching plays a part in the novel)—wild horses are both an attraction and a nuisance. They get on the road, they get into farmers' fields; they are targets for gun-happy delinquents. 

Early in the novel, a careless driver hits a wild stallion who is injured. The "Salt River Wild Horse Volunteers" capture the stallion, have a vet treat him, and bring him to Noah's ranch to recover. The stallion escapes from Noah's corral and as thread through the book follows the stallion's adventures as he seeks to rejoin his band of mares. 

(By the way, it's possible to volunteer for the Salt River Wild Horse Management Group which raises money, monitors horses on the river, fixes fences to keep horses off the roads, and more. Just one of the elements that roots Montgomery's novel in a real place.)

Becca, suffering from post-traumatic syndrome, meets the rest of the novel's cast: Noah, a youngish, single, beekeeper/rancher/hydrologist (a big deal in arid Arizona) . . . Walt, a middle-aged blacksmith-sculptor/cook/handyman and Gaby's significant other . . . and Oscar, a retired psychiatrist and avid birdwatcher.

Back in New Jersey, Becca had grown up in a home filled with abuse as her father knocked her mother around, frightening young Becca. When Becca's lawyer husband begins abusing her, she takes it as almost expected. She lies to friends and excuses her husband. Although she found art the most rewarding subject in college, she submitted to her parents' wishes and is herself a lawyer working in her father's firm

Surrounded by desert and mountains, protected by Gaby and Walt, and rediscovering her love of—and talent for—painting and watercolor, Becca's physical bruises heal. The psychic bruises are taking longer however and when, as the reader has to suspect from page 2, her estranged, psychotic husband shows up at the Inn Becca has to make some serious choices.

Wild Horses on the Salt paints a picture of the land, the flora and the fauna attractive enough that it sent me to look up the Tonto National Forest and the Salt River. The Salt River Inn may not exist in Arizona (there is one in Missouri), but my search found a number of appealing places to stay along the river. Perhaps when Covid-19 has passed into history . . . . Meanwhile, we have the novel.