Maggie's Farm

There are many reasons that the liberal meme about the unfairness of income inequality is misleading. Still, there is income inequality, and one of the largest causes of income inequality is the difference in rewards to those trained in technologies and those not. See this graphic of the difference in pay among those in hi-tech jobs and those in service jobs. Those with technical skills, also, go on to build successful businesses of their own and get wealthier. As the CBO report on income inequality points out, an increased proportion of the wealthier are those applying skills rather than clipping coupons or withdrawals from trust funds. This News Hour interview nails it.

Our 4-year (yeah, I know, for many it’s 5 or 6 years) colleges do not produce enough graduates in the sciences, nor for that matter do they offer much training in the supporting tech vocational skills. As a result, we import immigrants with hi-tech skills and innovate to transfer more work to machines. Both of these do add to the nation’s productivity and wealth, to some extent benefiting the poor through funding government welfare programs and to some extent benefiting the non-tech middle class through added comforts and medical breakthroughs. But, still left behind are the earnings of those without hi-tech skills.

Our colleges serve their faculty with jobs for those in the humanities. Our colleges serve students with perhaps interesting courses, and delayed adult responsibilities, who do not acquire marketable skills. The opportunity costs are enormous of college enclaves buffered from the laws of supply and demand.

Community (2-year) colleges have many vocational and certificate programs of value to businesses, many allied with local businesses, and offer many entry-level courses for matriculation into 4-year colleges and at lesser tuition. But, they also offer wide-panoplies of fun courses for the young and for adults, courses that detour spending away from vocational curriculums and away from hiring higher-paid, more competent faculty. Private technical schools and vocational colleges do partly fill the gaps in training, the well-motivated with adaptive attitudes and sufficient intelligence getting better paid and more secure jobs. However, most of the brightest are blindly steered into conventional colleges’ humanities degrees (including various “diversity” degrees) where they do not acquire marketable skills. One could argue that most of them, however, lack the interest and application to be successful in technical degree programs anyway.

Estimates of the costs to the US of 9/11 range up to $5 trillion, from a left-leaning source. The September 2011 New York Times survey of estimates balances at $3.3 trillion, noting that “this total equals one-fifth of the current national debt.” Much of those costs could have been avoided if the US had a more alert, focused and muscular foreign policy in the 1990s. Much of future such costs of the US being dragged by events into future conflicts may be avoided if there were more attention by US politicians and public. In 1996, Republican pollster Frank Luntz said Americans were unintersted in hearing about foreign policy challenges, and is repeating that now. We paid for it then and will pay for it again. Luntz' polling is dangerously misleading to politicians with finger-in-the-wind that invites fists in America's eyes.

Given the varying opportunistic rationales over the years by Osama bin Laden for attacking the West, and similar from other Islamist foes, it is reasonable to assume that one way or another attacks on the US – absent 9/11 – would have occurred anyway. They did, but not of the scale and shock of 9/11. But, in Islamist foes’ own words, their perception of US weakness of reaction and resolve throughout the 1980s and 1990s encouraged them to step up their attacks. However, these attacks didn’t rouse the US before 9/11, so the $3.3 trillion, or some cost lower or higher can justifiably be connected to 9/11, which by the way cost al Quaeda about $500,000.

Some of that $3.3 trillion represents improving our domestic defenses, much of which can be seen as plugging holes that weren’t paid attention to before 9/11, much else of which can be seen as misspent or over-reaction: $360 billion for Homeland Security, $110 billion for domestic expenses of National Intelligence, $100 billion for lost time at airports, extra driving to avoid flight-boarding delays resulting in $19 billion in car accidents. A bigger amount, $1.6 trillion, went to military related costs ($1.2 billion directly in Iraq and Afghanistan). Up to $1 billion will go to future costs of veterans and wounded.

One can argue retrospectively that both or either Iraq and Afghanistan were avoidable choices, including not having sufficient military forces for the required occupations. That would require avoiding realities of threats and the best intelligence available at the time, and avoiding that the 1990s drawdown of our military left us ill-prepared. One can argue prospectively that the dysfunctional Iraqi and Afghan governance should be avoided by our non-involvement. That would require a neo-isolationist avoidance of facing up to the likely worse results there, in their regions, and for the US.

There’s no mistaking that most Americans want out of such frustrating, protracted entanglements. There’s also no mistaking that the erratic and incoherent foreign policies pursued by the Obama administration have failed to provide Americans with leadership, explanation or guidance as to why the US should be engaged abroad. There’s, as well, no mistaking that the potential Republican 2012 candidates have not  presented nor emphasized the details of a more forthright, focused and muscular foreign policy for Americans. Democrats and Republicans read similar polls about most Americans properly putting our domestic concerns and angst above all. But, they also fail to provide credible leadership.

It is uniquely the job of the President to inform and lead American public opinion about issues that are not part of their daily lives and preoccupations, and to exert himself to protect American interests and security. Regardless of the lack of knowledge or interest or agreement by US media, the leadership of the President is essential to raise the salience, importance, of such issues via the media to provide Americans with better information from which to assess priorities and feedback choices to our political class. Otherwise we Americans are cast adrift in too late reactiveness that soon fades or is pained by costs for which we are unprepared.

Hasty and excessive withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan, coupled with huge slashes of our military, plus acquiescing to Russian and Chinese expansionism, are an easy path now, but will very likely require far more expenditures of US influence, US lives, and US treasure than the leadership path. Republican candidates must present the details of a surer and less expensive future, not just one-liners, or be complicit in those present and future catastrophic costs. Another $3.3 trillion or far less now for preparedness is only the financial equation. Our very future is the higher and more pressing cost that must be paid for or suffer the consequences. Better to spend some budget and political capital than be doomed to repeat the past decade or worse.

Normally I'd leave this link for the morning compendium, but this is too important to be mixed in with others.

After 9-years of US sacrifices, President Obama's rush for the exits in Iraq and the incompetence of his administration is seen again, with very probable bad consequences for Iraq's ability to withstand internal discord and external influence from Iran. The US is left with little but a likely buffer protecting Iranian interests and a sanctions evasion route that allows Iran greater freedom from Western pressure. Once again, each time over and over, Obama blows US interests into the crapper.

Read it and weep. How the Obama administration bungled the Iraq withdrawal negotiations. Also, read Obama abandons Iraq.

Morning Postscript: Carl Cannon makes the case that "The Obama Doctrine, Made Plain at Last in Libya, Iraq": The administration "They preferred to frame the events of the week in ways that play into a domestic, election-season narrative: Namely, Barack Obama made promises regarding foreign policy, and kept them....Distilled to its essence, this approach envisioned an American foreign policy that was less militaristic, less confrontational, and less-unilateral than that of his predecessor."

Fred and Kimberly Kagan, however, call it "Retreat With Our Heads Held High", as the Obama administration's veil for failure to meet even newly President Obama's criteria for US goals in Iraq, citing his speech of February 2009. I'll quote them at length to see how Obama or his defenders should hang their heads in shame:

The humiliation of this retreat is compounded by the dishonesty of its presentation....

Have any of these conditions been met? Such sovereignty as Iraq has is gravely marred by the continuous efforts of Iran to direct the course of its internal politics through armed means and otherwise. Iraq is not stable. The Iraqi government has still not been completely formed, and the parties contesting the parliamentary election of early 2010 have not yet come to an agreement on how the state will be run or who will run it. Iraq is not self-reliant. In fact, it will not be able to protect its territory or its airspace. Its government is not “just, representative, and accountable,” but rather heading toward a new authoritarian structure at a time when many Arab states are convulsed by resistance to authoritarianism. The U.S. has not helped Iraq build ties of trade or commerce. Above all, today’s announcement is the definitive renunciation of any attempt to “forge a partnership with the people and government of Iraq.” In other words, the president has failed to achieve any of the objectives that he established as his own policy in February 2009—apart, of course, from withdrawing U.S. military forces.

This failure was not inevitable. When President Obama took office, the U.S. had more than 100,000 troops in Iraq who had just completed, together with the Iraqi Security Forces, driving off Iranian militias and clearing the last bastions of al Qaeda in Iraq and Sunni resistance forces. As he noted in that February 2009 speech, Iraq had just completed provincial elections that were, in fact, “just, representative, and accountable,” and that laid a solid foundation for the transition to a successful Iraqi parliamentary democracy. And, in fact, the parliamentary elections of early 2010 were also in many respects remarkably successful—they were peaceful, heavily-contested, with high participation, and produced the potential for a new political balance in which forces of secularism and cross-sectarianism might well have succeeded. Had the U.S. pursued a determined strategy, using all of the considerable leverage at our disposal, to support the formation of an Iraqi government harnessing that potential, then Iraq’s path could have been very different.

But the Obama administration did not focus on helping Iraq move forward to seize this opportunity, but rather focused on prodding the Iraqis to form a coalition government as rapidly as possible—in order to negotiate a new agreement that would allow American forces to remain in Iraq after the end of this year. In other words, the administration threw away the chance of political progress in Iraq in pursuit of something it has now decided it never wanted to begin with.

Observers of U.S. policy could have been excused for finding all of this rather confusing, but today’s speech resolves any lack of clarity. The president has enunciated the Obama Doctrine: American retreat.

If there's any multilateralism buried in the manure, it is that of widespread burying heads in it to avoid facing the reality of a contra-Western interests Middle East that we will see in Iraq and Libya, as we've seen in Egypt, while Iran and its proxies are encouraged as was al-Quaeda by prior US weaknesses and excuses.

BTW: Obama Ignores That U.S. Won in Iraq -- Twice

The saying, “charity begins at home”, gets at many issues at the heart of most learned discussions of the charitable deduction from income tax, but also raises a core issue that is too often missed. The income tax is not about charity and should not be given equivalency to charity, and even if many government programs are charitable individual choices to either give charity or not is preferable in most cases and should not be discouraged or dictated by government.

Charity should not begin, or end, wherever government says so. Government should begin or end wherever citizens say so. There's room between but to place government above private choice and enterprise is to misplace priorities and public good and benefits.

The US Senate Finance Committee just held hearings about the charitable deduction that mirrored the arguments that have been raised since the inception of the deduction with the federal income tax during World War I. The questions revolve, and revolve and revolve, around should there be a deduction or other scheme, how much should be allowed, by whom, to which type of organization. Reading a brief history of hearings on the deduction, there is an underlying premise that all of income is subject to government priorities.

I won’t argue for the most selfish interpretation of “charity begins at home”, that all of one’s means should be kept within one’s walls. The Jewish conception of what in English is called charity, tzedakah, makes it a high personal obligation, and unlike the frequently cited 10% the Jewish Testament calls for more as can be afforded. Christians and others of good faith or morality think similarly and give similarly.

On the other hand (as any good Talmudic discussion goes) “charity begins at home” also raises that it is voluntary and one should not abuse one’s personal responsibilities. In other words, the fruits of one’s inheritance or labor are primarily one’s own to decide their use. On the other hand, again, in the social contract we enter into for the personal benefits of being part of a larger order, government, we accept that we are taxed for the general good. In a democracy, cumulatively we choose how much that tax may be and on what. Of course, that is not perfect as there are differing ideas of how much and on what. But, public engagement and elections are available to weigh in.

Throughout the years of government debates on the charitable deduction the incentive has been on raising government revenues, with differing theories of who should pay how much and the relative efficiencies of the schemes and their effects on differing types of recipients being the details.

No one denies, all should abhor, that there are many recipient organizations that abuse the laws and donors’ good intentions to profit insiders and not the public good. That calls for increased enforcement through public exposure, investigations and criminal prosecution. But, on the other hand, that still leaves many recipient organizations allowed by the tax code to commit other abuses of common understandings of charity, such as being mostly political or their proceeds benefiting other than the needy poor. After much outrage and years of mulling this, I still have to come down on the side of the argument that says our money is ours and that there is inadequate justification for giving it instead to government that too often does the same as non-charity charities, not to mention profiting politicians, revolving-door or job-protecting bureaucrats, and government cronies.

Washington, D.C. is the country’s wealthiest area, richer than Silicon Valley. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says “government jobs must take priority over private-sector jobs.” There are Republican and Democrat feeders at the government trough and who are profiting from crony capitalism. There is less to show from all their taxpayer expense than they would want us to believe. There is more to show in general public good from entrepreneurs, productive businesses, steering progress through private choices of what is needed or desirable.

Read "Nathan Glazer’s Warning: Social policy often does more harm than good"