Greg Sanders

The Marshall plan as a U.S. counter-mercantile policy

Excerpt from an interesting piece by David Brin who argues that a key differentiator of Pax Americana has been encouraging actual trade rather than mercantilism:

Look, lest there be any misunderstanding, I am not downplaying the importance of Japanese, Korean, Malaysian, Chinese and Indian efforts to uplift themselves through the hard work of hundreds of millions who labored in sweatshops making toys and clothes for U.S. consumers.  Without any doubt, those workers... (like the generations who built America, before 1950,  in the sooty factories of Detroit and Pittsburgh)... and their innovative managers, were far more heroic and directly responsible for the last six decades of world development than American consumers, pushing overflowing carts through WalMart. 

Nevertheless, those consumers —plus the trade policies that made the WalMart Tsunami possible, plus a fantastically generous and nearly unrestricted flow of intellectual capital from west to east — all played crucial roles in this process that lifted billions of people out of grinding, hopeless poverty.  Moreover, it now seems long past time to realize how unique all of this was, in the sad litany of human civilization.

This roughly aligns with my view, although it only worked out this way in parts of the world. Resource rich countries tend not to be so lucky.

I wonder if the counter-mercantile approach was more possible because of advances in the understanding of economics or because of shifts in the rewards for the elites of powerful countries.  Remember that Adam Smith was a vehement critic of mercantilist policies.  I do think the original choices in the Marshall plan and other points mentioned by Brin played a critical role in putting us down this road, but it would have been unlikely to have been sustained if it weren’t fairly beneficial to a range of groups with a lot of political clout.

A good portion of Americans aren’t particularly happy with this deal.  Other developed countries, classically Germany, have done a better job of protecting and promoting their manufacturing base.  I also wonder whether pursuit of intellectual property protections as a top priority has undermined our ability to get concessions elsewhere.The path we chose probably wasn’t the only workable option.  I do hope that offering a solid safety net and ramping up Green job industries will help ease some of the issues around trade.  The world still has got at least a billion people to lift out of absolute poverty.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone

I’m rather grateful to have the chance to spend my time as a research and analyst, to get to write about, and to have many interesting friends, not to mention a geeky wife, to talk and play with.  Given recent years, I’m especially glad to be able to do all this in good health.

I’ve always had a rather privileged life, I’ll consider it to have been a good life if I can help spread the privileges I’ve enjoyed to a wider swath of humanity.

Taking Conor Friedersdorf's bet on the [deficit] neutrality of health care

Conor Friedersdorf has a post despairing over our country's fiscal situation as part of it, he raises the fiscal issue again.  

Does anyone who argues it’ll all be deficit neutral in the end, or that costs will go down, want to wager on that proposition? (Update on the prior paragraph: I’m told that any talk of costs going down is actually shorthand for slowing the rate of increase.)

I expect the Congress will keep putting off the Medicare cuts from before the bill, but that's the status quo.  In all other senses, yeah, I think it will be deficit neutral and I'd bet at dinner at a reasonably nice D.C. restaurant (assuming Conor hasn't escaped DC by then) on the credibility of the CBO estimates and the Democratic Congress's willingness to not repeal key sections of the bill.  It will be tricky to adjudicate the exact details here since healthcare reform is a multi-round process, but I'm flexible on the definition of terms.  [I'm even willing to make this a one-sided bet.  If I win I can make my self a nice curry to celebrate the improved fiscal situation and universal healthcare of America of the future.]

Why am I confident?  See my post analyzing the political viability of the CBO analysis.

Side note on the term broke: the vast majority of our debt is held in U.S. dollars and the bonds are inflation adjusted. That's a privilege not shared by countries that go into default, the risk is that we'll be cut off, not that we can't pay off what we owe now.  However, as Yglesias points out, bond rates are at nigh record lows, so it doesn't look like we'll be cut off anytime soon.  This doesn't mean we don't need to worry about long term fiscal sustainability, it does mean that we are not in a debt crisis.  The NY Times article is focused on the fact that interest rates will doubtless go up at some point, this is true, but that points to the important of deficit reduction in the mid-term.  Spending money now to deal with record unemployment makes sense, so long as we organize the programs in such a way that don't require us to take on more debt as the economy improves.  This is quite different than what happens with home owners in the crisis because they had adjustable rate mortgages.  That's very different, it means that not just is your new debt at a higher rate, it also changes your old debt.

[Addendum: Jamelle over at the League of Ordinary Gentlemen also takes on Conor's piece.

The reflexive, evidence-free dismissal of the CBO scores (High Broderism at its finest) at the beginning of Conor’s post is enough to convince me that he isn’t actually interested in hearing liberal ideas for bringing the United States back on a firm fiscal footing. That said, it’s worth reminding Conor that in the three decades since the Republican Party became the dominant political coalition in American politics, the deficit has been reduced exactly once, and that was during Bill Clinton’s presidency. All three Republican presidents of the “conservative era” – Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush – were responsible for significant increases in the deficit, and in the case of the latter, a tremendous increase in the overall national debt.

He's got a good graph to illustrate the point.]

[Update: Embarrassing title typo fixed]

A defense of the fiscal responsibility of the Senate Health bill

Tyler Cowen attacks those of us who support the bill claiming we retreat into the relative.  In short, he doesn’t believe the various automatic cuts will happen and is unsatisfied with our defenses of those cuts.

This fight gets more into political science than economics as such.  The economics of the bill as written are covered by the CBO, the question is whether the politics of the bill are sustainable.

Here’s why I think they are:

1. Assuming no changes to the filibuster as implemented in the 21st century, post-passage it will be possible to defend the fiscal responsibility of the bill with 41 votes rather than the 60 votes otherwise required (or 51 votes and luck of the draw if using reconciliation).
2. People with expensive health plans are elite, but they lack the organizational infrastructure and natural ties held by the doctors and elderly who have blocked automatic Medicare cuts.  Their negotiating clout is undercut by the fact that the group contains natural enemies: union workers and corporate execs.  Further, their numbers will be decreased by many companies choosing to simply avoid the health care excise by giving more taxable income.
3. Democrats, under the prior Democratic president, managed to balance the budget.  The good economic times of the 90s were certainly critical to that happening, but we managed it nonetheless largely due to the revenue raising that helped lose us the Congress.  Why would we do it again after losing the Congress the last time?  I don’t believe in politician fiscal hawks, but I do believe that your average Democratic Representative and Senator faces more elite pressure to do something about the deficit than expand health benefits.  Universal Healthcare does address a core middle class concern, but things like the level of subsidies and the benefits of the bronze plan are going to be lower priority for Democratic leadership than being described by the media as fiscally responsible.  If this wasn’t the case, then why did the Reid bill come it at $856B rather than maxing out the $900B the President suggested.  Liberal bloggers, such as myself, won’t get their in a better world cost reductions but we also won’t get our better world benefits for the poor.
4. This will make it easier to raise the eligibility age for Medicare once universal healthcare is in place.  We can do something sensible like index it to the expected lifespan.  Obviously this will be grandfathered in due to the political clout of the elderly, but those who aren’t that near receiving benefits are a larger group that won’t be as motivated.
5. Some of the bloggers Tyler is critiquing are willing to say that the new mammogram guidelines could well be a good idea and that critics should provide counter arguments based on science.  There may well be strong counterarguments, I’d be curious if the false positive downsides still outweighed the detection upsides if we’re talking African American and/or lower income women, but I need to see that data before I go along with the critique. Furthermore, when it comes to things like mammograms, many people are averse to getting tests in the first place, stopping government encouragement for those under 50 without special risk factors, even if coverage is maintained, should make a difference in usage.  I will concede that this up roar and HHS concessions does bad for us, but the strength of the response on breast cancer is the exception as advocates for breast cancer patients are highly organized and feminist groups are on edge after being backstabbed in the House.  There was not a political response of the same magnitude of recommendations on prostate cancer screens.  Interestingly enough, the American Cancer Society didn’t object to those, so I think their critique on changing mammogram standards should certainly get a fair hearing.  Also, I’ll note the fact that the timing of this release shows the scientific independence of the review process, the timing was awful.

40-40K more troops may be all that’s [potentially] available for Afghanistan

Spencer Ackerman has some detailed reporting on how many troops would be available for an Afghan surge given current policies.  Via the Armchair Generalist I’ve also got a clip of him discussing it on Rachel Maddow.

This makes sense.  After all, troops have been fairly slow to leave Iraq and extended deployments showed that we were already at capacity.  None of this is to say that we couldn’t leave Iraq faster or consider pulling back from some of our other global bases, I think either could be done responsibly.  Alternately we could decrease the dwell time troops get at home or call up more reserves, which I think would be a terrible idea.

Since I do try to run a datablog here, I’d like to highlight two terrific charts on Ackerman’s piece.  He’s got a breakdown of Army National Guard and Army combat brigade deployment data.  I think he really raises the bar with those tables, check them out.

[Update: Clarified headline to signify that I’m discussing what Obama could send, not how many troops he’s likely to send.]

Help Afghan governance, keep the Afghan police from burning detainees with hot oil

Just read a Foreign Affairs article [by Mark Moyar] on legitimacy in Afghanistan. The broad takeaway was that performance, not elections brings legitimacy. That's probably true to an extent. The strong point of elections is more removing inept leaders than in selecting skilled ones.

That said, this bit gave me pause:

Placing American combat advisers and troops alongside the Afghans will help address the governance problem as well. In provinces where U.S. troops go everywhere with the Afghan National Police, the American presence deters the police from setting up the roadside checkpoints they have customarily used to shake down passers-by. The Americans do not allow the Afghan policemen to beat civilians over the head with rocks or burn detainees with hot oil, which they have been known to do elsewhere.

It's one thing to act to leverage the power of the police and help them accomplish their missions. It's quite another to have our job be to keep them from going completely out of control.

Preview of coming numbers

I'm fairly exhausted tonight, so I'm posting from the phone. Sadly I haven't figured out an efficient way to post links so this will just mention good posts but not link to them at this time. Maybe I need to master post by email, I think several apps have options to share things vkia email.

Regardless, I've seen three bits of security data I want to post about.
1 total cost of the wars to date, from CRS via Yglesias.
2 number of troops available to surge in Afghanistan. Apparently absent accelerated withdrawal from Iraq, 40k is the max, data from Ackerman.
3 Unintentional civilian deaths outnumbering intentional deaths. Multiple sources on that.

Quick comments on EA Sports Active Life

Doing a proper review seems a bit pointless since the new version is out.  Let’s just say that the general consensus: Wii Fit is good for exergaming, Activelife is good for exercising, seems about on the money.  Comparing calorie counts with Wii Fit plus, the 30 day challenge seems to burn about 50%-100% more calories, minute per minute, than a reasonably strenuous mix of wii fit activities.  Active Life Routines also help you get those 30 minutes done with less interruptions.

I actually do miss a lot of the cute features in Wii Fit: neat island backdrop, seeing friend’s Miis, and some of the games.  Active Life is a bit more tethered to reality in ways that I don’t think are necessary to be an effective exercise program but may be better suited to the target audience.

I’m currently working my way through the 30 day challenge.  It’s a great feature, it handles your routine picking for you and lets you pick a difficulty.  Hard is rather hard, I’ve kept with it for now but may need to drop to medium before the end.  One annoyance though, if you end after midnight, the whole thing counts as the next day.  Since you only get a new 30 day challenge the day after completing the previous one, this rather breaks up the schedule a bit.

One other slight note of annoyance: the directing on the videos is bad.  They do a good job showing the exercises, but it’s not necessary to smile constantly while doing so.  That creeps me out a little.  Also I’m terrible at inline skating but slowly figuring out the tricks.

One bit of tech synergy that might work well with exercise gaming: picture in a picture television.  Active life uses the picture in a picture concept, but I don’t see any reason it couldn’t be combine with watching another show entirely rather than watching an avatar duplicate the exercise.  Unlike wii fit, you don’t really have single exercise 30 minutes options, probably for the best, so dual-gaming is likely out, but I wouldn’t mind working through my DVD backlog.

Would staggered regional elections help with post conflict reconstruction?

Elections can lead to more violence for a range of reasons, but it can't help that monitors and security forces have to cover the whole country. This likely wouldn't work for general presidential elections but could work for the legislature. I don't think staggered terms are part of the problem with our Senate. I'm not sure if it would be better to have regional blocks or just a mix of elections throughout the country. Blocksb would be easier to administer but they may throw off the politics by varying the importance if regions.

Progress on Guantanamo bay

It took long enough, but it appears that the administration is finding ways to deal with the detainees at Guantanamo.  A few of the big names are being transferred to federal court to await trial and apparently there’s a nigh empty prison in Illinois that may end up taking even more (hat tip, James Lamond of Democracy Arsenal).  From the the story, the admin still isn’t committing to much and there’s a law to deal with.

I am not happy about the restrictions on transferring detainees Stateside.  It is nothing but rank cowardice and foolishness, they aren’t super powered mutants nor are they leaders of cartels that can effectively lead operations from prison.  The public relations debacle that is Guantanamo Bay drives enemy recruitment, the consequences for that are real and deadly, but the illusion of a homeland that can be completely isolated from the world seems to drive willingness to but deployed troops at risk to protect against non-existent dangers at home.