Machiavelli caution on Social Engineering

Machiavelli cautions the Prince:

          It should be borne in mind that there is nothing more difficult to arrange, more doubtful of success, and more dangerous to carry through than initiating change.  The innovator makes enemies of all those who prospered under the old order, and only lukewarm support is forthcoming from those who would prosper under the new.--Machiavelli, The Prince

 

Translation:  The people with something to lose will fight harder to keep the status quo than the reformers will fight to make and retain a change.

 

A modest corollary is, 

  Without a sustained investment in the accomplishment, the opposition will double down on its effort to recapture lost advantages.

 

President Trump's campaign and actions since election have been to reverse change backed by a very solid base of supporters.  The  President has masterfully conjoined reversing change with nurturing his base. 

 

Examples of change without sustained investment are found in domestic, environmental, and international policies. 

Domestic Change Reversal
Abortion and a woman's right to choose is an excellent example.  Rather than looking for reconciliation and showing the benefits of choice, the "winners" have been smug and brittle.  The brewing resentment manifested first in the Tea Party and now the cult of Trump.

Environmental Regulation
Except for the Los Angeles basin citizens, most Americans do not appreciate the value of environmental regulation in increasing the quality of life and even economic growth.

International Policy

We walked away from Afghanistan in the late 80's, from Iraq in 2011, and more than once from Afghanistan in more recent years.  Without a sustained investment in the accomplishment, the opposition will double down on its effort to recapture lost advantages. 

The Paris accord and Iran nuclear agreement (not a treaty) were not explained to the American people making these initiatives easily reversible by a President more interested in discrediting his predecessor than in good policy.  And the ability to readily link the nuclear agreement to Iran's increased role in promoting instability in the Middle East made reversal of the Obama-era agreement easy pickings. 

Imposing what is "right" without nurturing acceptance is a brittle foundation on which to build a more enlightened society. 

 

Stop Obsessing on Trump!!

Stop Obsessing on Trump

Democrats need to stop obsessing on Trump and focus on their own problems.  The American people have little interest in what the Democrats say about Trump until the Democrats clean their own house first.  The housecleaning starts with replacing Nancy Pelosi.  The Democrats need to sever ties with the politicians who peaked ten years ago.  Next the Dems need to explain issues to the flyover state voters in terms of financial security, pride in  America, and opportunities for their children.  

Re-establish Trust
The roadmap to stop the bleeding and begin to establish trust with those in the middle who want to pivot away from expressing frustration to expressing direction includes:
Apologize to the American people:  acknowledge that the working middle class was ignored the past eight years; recognize that Obama is perceived as aloof, as talking down, as m ore interested in the civil rights of those on the fringe than the economic security of those who had worked to earn the benefits of the American dream.

Pick New Leaders
Sure, Pelosi was picked by a majority of the remaining Democrats in the House.  That is the point: she is the pick of those that remain; she is not the pick of the those who could pose challenging races in districts where democrats could have a chance in the next two election cycles.  The Democrats continue to apply Windex to the rear window of their bus while they ignore the bugs and blizzard hitting the windshield.

Middle Class
The Republicans control 33 state houses: a dual threat.  The Republicans are building the farm team to field future candidates in a well-articulated succession planning strategy.  They are also poised to control the next decade's re-districting proccess which will only further enhance their control of State legislatures and the Congress.  Clearly, the Democrats need new leadership that begins the process of gaining support of the middle class and those who want to be in the middle of the road.
Keep Sanders inside the Tent
finding a way to balance the left wing galvanized by Sanders and the moderates in flyover states is tricky.

Recognize Trump and Koch are Playing the Long Game
Gloating over the Congress inability to change Obamacare was a necessary but very short-lived event.  President Trump has artfully gutted Obamacare by eliminating the individual mandate.  This will inevitably lead to massive increases in insurance rates, mass defections, and a chance for Trump to say "I told you so" and offer a desperate middle class an even worse proposal than was just rejected.  The President is playing the long game; Pelosi is the one distracting her people from reality.

Specific legislative actions might include:
Fix Obamacare: Insurance means paying even when you dont use it
Tax Reform: No more Trickle-Down; General Electric hasnt paid corporate taxes in a decade so let's be real
Infrastructure: Find compromise between spending dollars and spending Tax Credits for private initiatives
Regulation: Highlight where deregulation impacts mainstream Americans:  groundwater pollution

Difficult Topics
The abortion topic was dormant for a couple of years but has returned in a way that gives middle American pause on the morality of a woman's right to choose.  The leadership needs to focus on economic issues to attract the middle class.  This means figuring out how to take the wind out of the right to life sails.  Telling lifers they are wrong hasnt worked.  Maybe now is the time for Democrats to talk about individual responsibility; about some type of consequence for the abortion decision; showing respect for their concern for life.  Religious organizations should have every opportunity to use tax deductible money to recruit members; but recruitment cannot extend to imposing their will on civil government.  

Make Healthy People Buy Health Insurance

Auto insurance is one of the worst investments I've ever made:  about $100,000 paid in and less than $5,000 recovered.   As investments go, my health insurance is absolutely the worst use of money I've ever made.  

The best health-related investments have been for exercise, green vegetables, and vacations that involve backpacking.  Ironically, the government requires me to pay taxes on the money that goes for exercise but allows me to deduct the cost of health insurance.  Hmmm.

So how do we get people under age 35, especially those without children, to buy health insurance??  They buy automobile insurance because the car finance company makes them to protect their investment and the State wont let anyone drive without insurance whether they owe money on the car or not.  

So how do you motivate or compel healthy people to pay for health insurance?

Some possibilities just to promote conversation (no endorsement intended) include:

1. Require health insurance as a condition of getting a job--a requirement already exists to show citizenship or a work authorization.
2. Eliminate the requirement that hospitals accept people who lack health insurance.
3. Make proof of health insurance a condition for a driver's license or to register a car.
4. Require health insurance to attend a rave, do on-line betting, use a public basketball court.  
5. Redeploy ICE (border patrol) to sweeps of coffee houses, public places and work places and round up people who can't prove they have health insurance.
6. Require health insurance identification in order to download music from Apple or Spotify.

Alan Greenspan: Political Tool

Alan Greenspan was the world's chief executive officer for economic growth and stability as Chair of the Federal Reserve Board for nearly twenty years from the mid-1980's until the crash of every international market due starting in 2007.  Republicans deified Greenspan crediting him with economic prosperity through sound monetary policy that enabled successfully balancing the federal budget in the Clinton years.

But when asked to explain the housing bubble and the collapse of financial markets for which he was the chief overseer, Greenspan acts as innocent as the little kid surrounded by pieces of the broken cookie jar when asked what happened.

Greenspan says he didn't believe governments should avoid intefering with the choices people make in open markets.  Better to trust financial institutions in their measurement of risk than to insert government regulation.  True enough.

But how does Greenspan explain  the behavior of businesses responsible for evaluating the risk of mortgage-backed securities?  Fitch, et al assigned the same AAA rating to mortgage-backed securities for liar loans as they had previously given to the rating of mortgages for loans that previously required a substantial down payment and conservative ratios for borrower income to debt.  The rating agencies explained they had no historical data on which to assess the risk associated with loans that had no down payment or verification of income.  Therefore the rating agencies explained they had no choice but to give the same AAA rating.  Investment bankers such as Citibank used the AAA rating dubiously assigned by the rating agencies to make huge profits in packaging the questionable loans at the same price as loans previously adhering to more conservating underwriting practices.

Curiously, the Federal Reserve under Greenspan never bothered to challenge the assignment of AAA ratings or examine how an overheated housing market was fueling the overall American economy.

At the same time every American was given the chance to claim any income without proof in order to buy a house, President Bush was assuring the American public that closing factories and sending our manufacturing overseas was creating a chance to re-invent the American worker.  And President Bush could point to a strong economy as proof new jobs were right around the corner for the middle class workers displaced by closing businesses.

In reality, the housing boom was masking the gutting of the American economic engine.  When the housing bubble finally burst there were no jobs to shift to in the new American economy.  The American economy was actually dependent upon housing construction, real estate sales, mortgage brokers, escrow companies and the housing construction after market:  the companies and jobs related to furnishing houses and landscaping the yards.

Greenspan didnt want to do anything to slow down the housing bubble because the artificial economic stimulus served the purposes of the Bush Administration.  Greenspan is turns out was little more than a very bright but disingenuous tool of Republican right.  Bush was able to fuel the economy and in turn his wars in the Middle East with taxes from the housing bubble.  Given the shift of so many businesses overseas combined with tax breaks for the remaining big businesses, the housing bubble became a key source of jobs and tax revenue.

Koch, Trump and Refining the Formula for Fascism

Calibrating the Formula for Fascism

Trump’s pandering populist rhetoric may test the boundary of what our democracy can tolerate in the way of diverse points of view.  The National Review says of Trump,

“ Trump is a philosophically unmoored political opportunist who would trash the broad conservative consensus within the GOV in favor of a free-floating populism with strong-man overtones.”

The cynical view is Obama has said little and done less over seven years to show respect for people who have a work ethic, believe in God, and value patriotism.  The really cynical view is that he has done this to allow a demagogue to peel off a portion of this group to join the extreme right to achieve the critical mass for a third party candidate.  This third party candidate would vote at the expense of the Republican mainstream.  The Democrats would then have certain victory in the next Presidential election.

The Republican Party is trying to figure out how to keep Trump from using his populist base to  start a third party.  That third party candidancy would make Clinton a shoe-in as our next President. 

Sounds clever.  But at what cost?  Trump may lose interest in serving as the spokesperson for the large mass of people looking for simplistic explanations in a complex world. 

Unlike the George Wallace era, we now have the Koch Brothers able to do real-time and long term behavioral response surveys to help find-tune their messaging.  They have already gone through at least four transitions:

·         Christian (Pretentious) Fundamentalism

·         Soccer Moms

·         Tea Party

·         Trump’s nascent formulation of a Fascist Party.

With each new phase the Koch Brothers have expanded their base.  But perhaps more ominous they have reduced the American people’s alarm at the notion of a fascist state.

So we may be certain that Trump wont be the Republican candidate and that a third-party candidacy is certain to fail.  But that is not cause for celebration.  The Koch Brothers will not see this as a setback.  Trump is simply the next iteration toward calibrating the formula to Fascism. 

21st Century Guide to the New Laws of Economics

Am going to edit the first edition of "21st Century Guide to the New Laws of Economics" should the Supreme Court overturn Health Care Reform Law. New economic theory will be required to explain how to pay for health care that includes pre-existing conditions and universal emergency room services when people can choose not to have coverage. Please share any suggestions on topics to address in the new economics.

Topics might include:
"How the Bush tax cuts provided sustained economic growth"
"Why hedge fund profits deserve capital gains tax treatment?"

“Citizens United gave corporations political free speech, now let’s give them the vote!”

“If a slave was worth 3/5 of a person 200 years ago, why should the middle class be worth any more than that today?"

"How should corporations be weighted in reapportionment?”

“Bailing out AIG to protect wall street gambling is good economics, bailing out underwater mortgage holders is not”

“Why banks should not have to lend money to stimulate the economy in exchange for government bailouts”

“Why bonuses to AIG executives were necessary”

“How Geitner acted differently than Paulson” - er, never mind on that one.

Greenspan replaces Adam Smith as the father of 21st Century Economics. It was Greenspan who guided the late 20th century increases in social security payroll taxes on the lowest income earners and then advocated Bush tax cuts on the wealthest Americans.

Career Planning and Neural Networks

Career planning traditionally meant starting with an entry level skill and then either doing a deeper dive over time in the specialty or climbing the supervisory or management ladder. These both represent a "linear" approach to career growth.
In recent years we've expressed fascination with the recognition that we may have up to seven careers in our employed lifetime. Careers are viewed as distinct phases in our work life that may shift focus back and forth from technical specialist, to manager, to industry-focused, to the information management aspect of the technical specialty or industry, or the ultimate abstraction: the life coach.
Going forward we must change the paradigm from occupation or career to pathways through a neural network.