…And would the Russian Invasion of Ukraine be taking place if he was still in office? This essay was written as a response to a preface on an article by David French:
The argument that Donald Trump was an authoritarian doesn’t really hold water, although he was often effusive in his praise of authoritarian leaders and remarked upon his enthusiasm for certain authoritarian trappings (like military parades). But make no mistakes, behind the scenes he was quite a bit tougher than previous presidents in matters of policy. He penalised Russians over cyberattacks and election meddling, despite his rhetoric on the subject, he withdrew the US from the INF treaty- something previous administrations had been loathe to do, despite clear and ongoing violations by America’s principal antagonists, he imposed harsh penalties on Russia for evasions of sanctions against North Korea, Syria, Iran, and Venezuela and he placed strong sanctions on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, warning Germany and other nations about the dangers of relying on Russian energy.
Yet at home, despite his often tough talking rhetoric he was anything but an authoritarian. He left most decisions to the states, which is what an American president is for the most part supposed to do- even though during his watch over $2 billion in damages was caused by BLM and Antifa riots- when almost all previous Republican presidents and many Democrat ones would have sent in the National Guard. He avoided vaccine mandates and vaccine passports, letting the states decide policy for themselves. It’s one of the reasons why we now know masks, social distancing and lockdowns were mostly ineffective (with the exception of two countries with the unusual option of stopping Covid at the border, at least with the earlier variants), despite the fact that many people who were against them ultimately turned out to be against the one thing proven to prevent hospitalisations and death- vaccinations as a means of mitigating personal risks.
But even on vaccines there were myths, legends and outright lies. We know that with the advent of Delta vaccination only reduced the risk of catching and spreading Delta to others by about 40% (WHO source)- which given the infectiousness of the pathogen and its ability to circumvent human barriers to infect the immunologically vulnerable, was about as useful as a chocolate fireguard for the purposes of herd immunity.
By contrast Biden has been far more authoritarian and dictatorial. Mandating vaccines at the threat of people losing their jobs was a humanitarian violation of the first order, given we knew at the time the people who were dying from Covid were also overwhelmingly those who had refused the vaccine. It is a core tenet of medical ethics that one never forces treatment upon a patient if they refuse it, and for the most part this is something which our courts have upheld. But this is the type of cosmopolitan paternalism accomplished through the proxy mechanism of irrational fears for oneself (whilst virtue signalling concern for others), which typified the thinking of the 10% to 20% of Western populations whose opinions were the only ones which mattered.
But it shouldn’t surprise us. There has long been a well-established phenomenon which we’ve seen in less sophisticated cultures around the world- and unlike the whole mass formation psychosis fiasco, it is not some tenuous academic theory- it has been proven to exist through the study of various cultures around the world. It’s called Parasite Stress and has a proven link with nascent authoritarianism. We thought it was a superstition which we had put behind us, but it would appear that even the smartest and most educated cling to established anchor biases when said biases provide them with the self-comforting illusion of safety- and most especially clinging to obsolete notions when circumstances change. Many experts were loathe to admit, even to the themselves, that with the advent of Delta almost all levels of restriction were inevitably doomed to fail. Further, they didn’t stop to think that personal vaccination actually protected the overwhelming majority of people who had actually chosen to take the shots.
But the really bizarre thing is that had Donald Trump won the 2020 presidential election, then it is highly unlikely that Putin would have dared invade Ukraine. Don’t take my word for it though- let’s here from a British citizen who also happens to to be a Russian expat and has family in Ukraine. He has been right about every aspect of Russian aggression and the Ukraine invasion (and out-predicted leading experts in the field), Konstantine Kisin:
(7.20) Kudos to Megyn Kelly for crediting a man who single-handedly inspired an entire stalking and harassment campaign against her.
Of course, I would argue (along with Megyn Kelly) that Trump’s strength wasn’t anything to do with his ability, his acumen of any grand strategy on his part- but rather that his erratic and unpredictable nature, often deferring to whatever the talking heads on Fox had to say on any particular issue, precluded any Russian aggression against Ukraine. One doesn’t give the order to execute a military campaign when the man in the White House might decide to bomb your troops simply because Fox encouraged him to do it.
I do find it ironic, though, that David French chooses to focus upon the Russian nationalist desire to overthrow the Western liberal order, when both Ukraine’s desire to assert their independence from the Russian sphere of influence and the very reason why they are resisting so fiercely is also borne of a nationalistic instinct.
One wonders whether if Steve Bannon had called it economic patriotism rather than economic nationalism, the whole concept might have been less thoroughly tarnished- but quite divisively, the Bannon strategy always revolved around using provocative language and political theatre to bring the crazy out of the Democratic Party. As a strategy it may well have proved successful (the numbers show that both independents and Democrats have been reregistering as Republicans in large numbers for some time)- causing the activist branch to create unforced errors for the Democrats with which the American people have little sympathy- but few can doubt that is has ultimately been corrosive to the American system of governance and established norms.
Populism was always going to happen. Although the neoliberal order was an absolute boon for the Developing world, raising over a billion people out of absolute poverty between 2000 and 2012, there can also be little doubt that it disenfranchised most blue collar workers in Western countries. It is why Trump-like populism is a feature throughout the West- with populist parties gaining ground at the expense of the cosmopolitan centre Left, throughout Europe and beyond. Quite often the populism manifests as Left populism, but it is a feature not a bug of neoliberalism- too many people have been left out in the cold as a result of societal labour shifts.
On a recent visit to Sweden, for my brother’s wedding, I was surprised to find that Sweden’s Nordic model had adopted an Australian-style point system for immigration. I wouldn’t even know about it- were it not for that fact that he plans to arrange a work visa, once he has finished learning Swedish, and happens to be lucky enough to score well in their somewhat newly introduced version of Australia’s Priority Migration Skilled Occupation List. The changes were introduced in mid-2016- at right around the time Trump was running for office and the rest of Europe was under siege from populist parties.
Trump was always the symptom not the disease. Australia stands alone as an example of an immigration system which can cope with a population which is compromised of 30% foreign-born citizens, where in most countries populism begins to rear its head at around the 14% mark. The key is in preserving blue collar interests- Australia was successful as a model because it prevented migrants from taking the types of blue collar labour jobs from those native-born kids who don’t do well at school. Tensions are particular acute when labour competition exists for coveted trade professional jobs (for which many migrants posses the off-the-shelf skills, learned in their own countries, which employers cannot resist- compared to the socially more beneficial apprenticeship route).
A more selective migration system in turn prevents the wage dilution and labour displacement which has long been proven by economic analysis of the socio-economic spectrum. Australia also benefits from the fact that people migrating into a country further up the socio-economic spectrum tend to self-sort by interest, income and occupation, rather than self-segregate (which only causes cultural friction). This in turn is a great aid to integration. There are plenty of jobs in the service sector which the blue collar class neither wants or needs- a more cogent system is the key to banishing populism for the foreseeable future, and it does so by addressing the concerns of so many who turned to Trump out of sheer frustration with the established political order.
Talk of minimum wages does little to help this largely unsung and underrepresented social class. If you are a roofer earning $22 an hour, when, without labour competition from migrants, you could easily be earning $30 an hours, then minimum wages are worse than an irrelevancy. It makes restaurant meals more more expensive and means that the wait staff lose more in tips than they earn through pay rises… Tipping makes people feel generous and appreciative, higher prices don’t.
To be clear - the correlation between vaccine status and death is an artifact of policy, not medical inevitability. Had effective, cheap, and widely available treatments, administered in the early stages of COVID during viral replication, been allowed and not punished as per de facto policy, the vaccine would not have been necessary and many hundreds of thousands of people, in the US alone, would still be alive.
But then a handful of oligarchs would not have made billions and pushed the world further towards their power-obsessed goal of one world governance.
I had heard too much contradictory evidence from different sources to make any sort of sound judgement on your claims. I am by no means a medical expert, although I have found myself reading a lot of studies on the subject over the past two years.
I know that Japan had a good degree of success with the treatments you advocate (or at least that's what the data suggests), but I have also been following the scientists who were the principal architects of the Great Barrington Declaration. Professor Sunetra Gupta, the UK's answer to Doctor Jay Bhattacharya, has put forward the notion that the waves of infections we have seen are largely the product of herd immunity and have little to do with any form of human interventions. In the case of Japan, the introduction of the treatments you mention was also timed to exactly the point at which Japan should have expected a huge remission in case numbers through the virus exhausting it's natural food supply.
So there are plausible alternate theories of events out there which don't rely upon the MSM narratives. Personally, I try to keep an open mind. Scepticism is just as much about not rejecting theories out of hand as it is about subjecting them to empirical scrutiny and the falsifiability acid test.
Early on it became clear to me that something was very "wrong" with the US response led by Pence, Fauci, and Birx. In any crisis you do two things pretty quickly. You prioritize risks and you talk to the folks dealing with the problem "on the front lines". The first allows you to allocate resources where they are needed most, and the second will give you a first view on what works and what doesn't. Neither was done for COVID. In fact, the negative of the second was done - specifically exclude people who know what's going on and silence them when they do speak up.
It was also, at best, negligent to tell people with symptoms they can't be treated until they are in serious enough condition to be hospitalized.
I think there are 3 points that need to be dealt with that seriously impact on the supposition that Trump would have prevented a Ukrainian invasion. The first of these and perhaps the most important is Putin as an autonomous agent. Putin has his own worldview and opinions and it is very unlikely that Trump causes him any fear. If, as seems likely, his mindset is apolyptic (whether due to Parkinson's or not) then Trump's threats or actions would only bring WW3 closer. Putin has the view that the Western democracies are weak and despises weakness. He certainly pegged Trump as a braggart and would have factored that into his calculations.
The second objection relates to Trump. If you recall, he tried to blackmail Zelinsky into giving him dirt on Hunter Biden by witholding military aid. He was impeached over this and will remember the slight. Trump holds grudges and on evidence of past behaviour will take revenge. It is all too easy to see Trump washing his hands of the invasion and designating it 'an internal affair'.
The final point to look at is Trump's relationship with the rest of NATO. Here though it is more ambiguous. Would the NATO countries have rushed to help or increased their defence spending as quickly?
Once Putin decided to invade the West's options were strictly limited. To introduce sanctions earlier would have precipitated an earlier invasion and divided NATO. To oppose Putin with troops or a no fly zone would cause escalation. There really was only the option of diplomacy. Putin has no regard for democracies and Trump would have been included in this and what is more come under the classification of a 'useful fool'. Much as I hate to admit it Biden has played this limited hand very well. This really is an issue where political experience is essential.
You raise some good points, but I still think Trump's complete unpredictability and erratic nature would have at least delayed the Ukrainian invasion. It highly likely that Putin has been planning this for decades and he has chosen the battlefield- people forget that this necessarily entails choosing exactly the right moment to strike.
I actually agree with Biden's decision to exit Afghanistan, but would caveat that the manner of its handling, especially in terms of the untimely withdrawal of air support, was a humiliating disaster. This political intrusion into the theatre of operations would have been first and foremost in Putin's mind when deciding to push the 'go' button on the Ukrainian Invasion.
Trump might have made the same mistake, but he would have reversed his support on air support in Afghanistan within 24 hours of the first setback, possibly repairing the situation- in order to facilitate a more dignified exit.
In retrospect it is highly likely that Putin's original plan was to highlight the neo-Nazi and fascist movements within Ukraine (which is unfortunately true, but not to the extent that it taints Ukraine's leadership) with a view to delegitimating the Ukrainian government. The most likely scenario would have entailed using talks about EU membership as a pretext for a swift and massive managed escalation and as a pretext for pre-emptive invasion. These conditions simply wouldn't have happened under Trump- he wouldn't have given a shit about Ukraine joining the EU (unlike the Washington Foreign Policy Establishment, for whom it was always an intermediate goal) and he was dubious about NATO.
But Putin isn't one to look a gift horse in the mouth. Because of the pandemic and scenting Biden's weakness, he has obviously brought forward his plans. But the most important factor has nothing to do with the world of politics. Simply put, oil interests in the West took a massive bath in 2020, losing a shitload of money. Nothing evinces this more than the idle drilling licenses which currently sit untapped in the US, the UK and other places as oil prices soar. Wall Street and the City of London want their money back and they are quite happy to sit back, watch the prices hit record highs and reap their profits, whilst potential oil wells remain unutilised.
The same thing can be said of the Saudis and the Emirates. Did you hear that the Saudis refused Joe Biden's call recently, and have a laundry list of demands including Legal Immunity for MBS and an escalation in the sale of arms for the Yemen conflict? It's funny, I highlighted the need to immediately reverse the American position on the Jamal Khashoggi incident even before the Ukraine invasion. It was one thing I got right. No doubt Putin has been paying attention as well, seeing the schism between Washington and the Saudis as a golden opportunity. One notes the Saudis had no issue taking Putin's call only last week.
I am beginning to think that this was a 'brought forward' operation- long planned, but hastily brought into action because of the winds of fortune. Apparently there is a piece of 2010 American legislation which never made it to a vote. It entails the penalising of oil and gas companies which let drilling licences sit idle. A savvy operator would be dusting off the paperwork with a view to enacting it forthwith, but it important to remember that finance is by far the most powerful lobby in Washington, as it is in London- the brokers want their money back and are likely to dig their heels in.
Trump is actually very predictable. Praise him and lay it on with a trowl and that's it. All Putin needed to do would have been to call Trump, spin him a line and Trump would have lapped it up. Remember, this is a guy not given to reading detailed analysis and understanding the situation. Sound regretful but emphasize the necessity to eliminate the neo-Nazis. Putin is a strong man (a type of politician Trump admires and aspires to be) and flattery from a strong man will go an awfully long way.
The Saudi situation is interesting. Maybe a bit too much focus on the economic side of things. Everything about this war says emotion not economics. The Saudis because of their oil and 1973 like to believe they are a major player. This is not quite the case. The incredibly stupid murder of Kashoggi is an excellent example of this. The only positive is that it shows the amateur spirit is not dead. MBS is overplaying his hand.
I totally agree that it was Putin's long term intention to reunite Ukraine with Russia. However, I suspect health and emotional issues are very much to the fore here. Putin's justifications are not rational and because of this factor it really wouldn't matter who was president at the time. Where the difference lies would be the response and here Trump couldn't have done half of what Biden has done.
This doesn't make me a Biden fan; experience counts and one sees the difference between a real politician and someone who pretends to be one through vanity and meglomania.
So I was against Biden’s vaccine mandate - yet another executive overreach in a line of unconstitutional presidential actions going back to Clinton (and including every president in between) - but I don’t buy the “medical freedom” arguments from the new anti-vaxxers. I’m against government vaccine mandates (except for government employees - nobody has a right to a government job), but I also don’t lose sleep over them. Also SCOTUS overturned the OSHA mandate anyway so it’s not an issue anymore.
I disagree on Trump. I never bought the wild claims about how he was lord Voldemort in the flesh and all (you know, “democracy dies in darkness…”). If he really had been a fascist, I would have taken up arms to oppose his regime, but obviously we weren’t in that territory.
BUT, he did have authoritarian tendencies. Call it tyranny-light. He liked autocrats and liked the idea of being in charge. He wasn’t an autocrat. But he liked the idea of having power. The reason he wasn’t a fascist was that he liked the idea of power more than using power. He likes the trappings of success and power without any of the work that either require. The other main reason he wasn’t an authoritarian was that he lacked the intelligence, the wherewithal, the competence, and the will. Not that he wouldn’t have enjoyed it - he was just too weak to ever actually do what it took to be a leader.
I always scorned the “Trump’s an authoritarian” arguments until the 2020 election aftermath and January 6th and his call with Raffensberger. Those were all things I told people would never happen and I was wrong. Trump’s idiotic election fraud claims and subsequent attempts to actually steal the election proved he had authoritarian leanings. And as much as I think the guy was an idiot, he could be dumb like the fox so to speak. That speech he gave at the J6 rally - “march peacefully down to the capitol” - came off as a clever and successful attempt to try to get a riot without crossing the legal definition of incitement. He didn’t incite a riot. But he invited it. To paraphrase something I read at the time, if someone says, “don’t be naive - Trump clearly said he didn’t want a riot,” the response is, “now who’s being naive.”
I see the Capitol Riots as the unintended consequences of Kayfabe- Trump's chance to get revenge for all those 'Not My Prez' protests. I also think he was still smarting over the size of his crowd at his inauguration and wanted to prove his support was more widespread. But when it comes to evaluating whether Jan 6th was an attempt at Insurrection, we have to remember that as a coup it had zero chances of success, and EVEN Trump would have known that. In reality, I think he was simply trying to fire up his support base with a view to running in 2024.
In his narcissistic mind, he would have seen the pandemic as the main reason why he lost, and he has a point on that score. It is highly unlikely Joe Biden would be president if not for Covid. Trump lost ground particularly with the over 65s who were also those most likely to have been scared shitless by the cable news fear porn which was being mobilised. On the subject of stolen election, he might think 'they cheated' but most of the arguments have since been dismissed as implausible on the basis of scale. The two exceptions are mail-in ballots and the voter operations funded by Facebook.
I recently has an online debate with a liberal professor on the subject of the former. One of the links he furnished was a study purporting to show that mail-ins didn't significantly alter the election- yet having done my due diligence and read the research thoroughly, I found that one of the appendices held a footnote which stated that mail-ins had shifted the demographic of who voted by 1.5% away from the 65s and towards the young! That is a significant swing in Battleground States. Neither political party has a particularly strong moral leg to stand on with this subject- because be both know that if positions were reversed it would be Democrats arguing against mail-in ballots and the Republicans arguing for.
The courts will likely soon rule on the legality of constitutionally inappropriate authorities changing election systems and it is unlikely to go in favour of the Democrats. In general the courts hate ruling on anything which might throw an election into doubt and instead tend to adjudicate such matters in the periods where elections are on the backburners- when it won't throw the electoral process into doubt.
I don't think Trump wanted a riot. I think he was an idiot. I don't think he understood the levels of emotions he was stirring up within his base. I think he was relying upon the fact that throughout the Tea Party movement and with all the 1A protests conservative protestors has long had a reputation for being peaceful and law abiding protesters. What he failed to account for is that when people honestly feel as though their side is being cheated and have been told that the other side is an existential threat, they will abandon a lifetime of following the rules in a heartbeat. One only has to look at societies in the process of breaking down to see how previously orderly people can become a violent mob.
He wasn't the only one who got caught with his pants down- the Mayor of Washington deserves a portion of the blame for not ensuring an adequate police presence- but then this just show the cognitive dissonance- nobody really expected it to happen, but of course they can't use it as an excuse now, because it would expose the disingenuity of the narrative.
I have always been in that small group of people who saw Trump as neither a threat to democracy nor a monster, whilst also feeling that he fell far short of the legend in his own mind. I think he was completely irresponsible in his failure to concede the election result. A part of an outgoing president's job is to console his supporters and ensure the peaceful transition of power.
But I have always believed that Trump is a narcissist- we saw it when he went to the bedsides of soldiers and talked about himself. His vanity couldn't allowed him to admit that he had lost, and he instead chose to focus upon those aspects of the election which, to him, seemed unfair. Although he really did have some successes during his presidency, most notably in the Middle East, he complete misjudgement of the lead up to Jan 6th really does expose the lacklustre calibre of the mind we are talking about. Don't get wrong- it isn't as though he isn't smart (though certainly no genius) but a deficit in character has been the downfall of many of the supposedly bright.
I will leave you with my favourite Robert Hanlon quote, which is, incidentally called Hanlon's Razor- "never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." More than anything else it the story of American politics since at least the sixties and probably earlier, notwithstanding the rare exception of Dwight D. Eisenhower. Trump was incredibly stupid- but when weighing the possibility of whether Jan 6th was a real attempt at insurrection we have to weigh what the prospects of success were- and even the most cursory examination reveals the chances to be nil from the outset.
Even Trump isn't that stupid, although his subsequent course of action dictates that he was an altogether different type of fool, and a dangerous one at that.
Yes, I agree with most of that. Especially Hanlon’s razor. But while you’re right that it wasn’t really a coup attempt, I do think Trump wanted the riot.
You’re right about COVID likely being the deciding factor that helped Joe Biden. But courts have basically ruled at this point that states changing election laws to accommodate the pandemic needed to be challenged before the election, not after. No court is going to invalidate a past election unless there was actual fraud. The main question going forward is what to do about the next elections. I would note that Trump legitimately thinks (or acts like he does) that the election was stolen via rampant fraud. Also, his call with Brad Raffensberger where he asked him to come up with thousands of votes was an attempt at stealing an election. He wanted Raffensberger to change ballots or make up new ones to alter the Georgia results.
“ Neither political party has a particularly strong moral leg to stand on with this subject- because be both know that if positions were reversed it would be Democrats arguing against mail-in ballots and the Republicans arguing for.”
True. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a right answer. The time to decide on the legality of changing state election laws to allow more mail in ballots is before an election, not after.
“ I have always been in that small group of people who saw Trump as neither a threat to democracy nor a monster, whilst also feeling that he fell far short of the legend in his own mind. I think he was completely irresponsible in his failure to concede the election result.”
I would generally say I’m in that camp. I’ve moved more in the direction of thinking he’s dangerous in the post 2020 election period. But J6 wasn’t Kristilnact and Trump isn’t Hitler. Maybe a Clodius or Milo along America’s decline towards a Caesar (hopefully not!). Trumps more of a bully than an autocrat.
“ But I have always believed that Trump is a narcissist- we saw it when he went to the bedsides of soldiers and talked about himself. His vanity couldn't allowed him to admit that he had lost, and he instead chose to focus upon those aspects of the election which, to him, seemed unfair. ”
I agree. And you’re right that Mayor Bowser also deserves some blame as well as others for not ensuring proper security. But that doesn’t absolve Trump in my mind.
“ Even Trump isn't that stupid, although his subsequent course of action dictates that he was an altogether different type of fool, and a dangerous one at that.”
Right. J6 was never going to successfully overthrow the government or any of that crap. But it was a sad moment for the country and it was a real moral stain. It could have resulted in the deaths of a few senators or a hostage situation. But I never thought we were moments away from “the end of America” as some in the liberal media would have it.
Actually, America's legal immigration system, outside of the influence illegal immigration has had on it, doesn't look that much different than how you describe Australia's current system. That is why some minority groups -- primarily those who arrived recently and legally -- are among the most economically successful demographics in the country. South Indians, Persians, Nigerians, etc.
Well, that's good to know. Of course, Australia does have a natural advantage when dealing with the other less beneficial kind of migration- but don't you guys also have a lottery? I also heard that it was heavily dependent on the size of the country of the applicant. No country produces enough of certain types of engineering, because these roles generally require the degree qualified to be in the top 8% of the cognitive range, and this also happens to be the part of spectrum where those who happen to be born with this advantage have unlimited choices in terms of career.
India has a population of 1.38 billion, yet there are only 2.6 million Indian-origin citizens in the US. Meanwhile, the population of El Salvador is 6.5 million, yet there are 1.4 million citizens who can trace their origins to El Salvador. It doesn't seem, in practical terms, as though the US is living up to the Australian model. Does this have something to do with the Reagan amnesty, where Congress subsequently failed to follow through on the immigration reforms which were promised?
Yeah, about half of the "immigration" into the U.S. each year is illegal, and between periodic amnesties which then trigger chain family-based migration and various other ways that undocumented immigrants end up legal, it's probably safe to say that almost 3/4 of our immigration is essentially out of our control. We do have a small "diversity" lottery that brings in people from all kind of different places, but then the remainder of our immigrants, still a large raw number because we take in a lot of immigrants in the states, are qualifying based on market need, which is where you get all of the Indian engineers and Nigerian doctors. My comment was not at all a justification of our existing system (it's a travesty generally), but just to reinforce the point that a controlled immigration system that prioritized minimizing competition between immigrants and native-born people for jobs, housing, services, etc., does indeed "work", even in the famously dysfunctional American immigration system.
Great comment. My broader point was that Australia proves that it is possible to have a 'best of both worlds' scenario, in which countries bring in the talented people they need and in which a more thorough integration is a healthy by-product- but the absolutely essential ingredient is to eliminate friction between the blue collar class and the migration system, mainly through making sure that the types of aspirational blue collar jobs which really represent the best option for native-born kids who don't do well at school are effectively reserved occupations.
That means no foreign plumbers, electricians, construction workers, local drivers, telecom engineers or maintenance types of any kind, or manufacturing work apart from a few outliers like garment manufacture. There seems to be vague idea on the part of many that if people are brought in to fill lower value jobs then everybody else will move up- when counter-intuitively the reverse is almost entirely true. Flooding the market with unlimited labour pushes people down, especially their kids- because with the mass influx of net negative tax contributors, it becomes all but certain that the societal resources which can be deployed to raise the next generation up are necessarily diluted on a per child basis.
Exactly right, and I don't really think that in any open and honest debate, this is where things will settle. We don't have that in the U.S., we have an uncontrolled border, exploitation of "rights-less" undocumented immigrants, and a general deterioration in quality of life for native-born and recent legal immigrants at the bottom rungs (and improvement of quality of life for the educated and affluent, both native-born and immigrant).
Were most blue collar jobs in the US lost to immigrants? I think not, but I've not studied it. Seems like comparative advantage took over once goods and money could easily flow over borders while people simply could not, including moves within the country that took from one group of blue collar workers and gave it to another set (like Boeing's move).
No, but their negotiating was fatally compromised , their wages were diluted and they had to constantly deal with the threat of job insecurity. It only takes a 1% change in the supply of any commodity to cause significant disruptions- and if we take construction as an example then a 12% increase in the supply of labour from foreign sources equals a major disruption.
Taking the UK as an example. When Eastern Europeans were allowed into the freedom of movement conditions of the EU it wasn't at all uncommon for workers to go from £13 an hour to £6 an hour, with only the twelve week statutory period of waiting for them to move from their old conditions of employment to the new.
Granted, the American situation was far more gradual and occurred over time- rather like the proverbial boiled frog, with labour the main course.
Comparative advantage is one thing, but where any shot at a decent living is at stake for anyone who wasn't blessed by the gift of high intelligence, one has to wonder whether capital's interest in unlimited labour doesn't isn't simply a race to the bottom.
The ideal number of employees for a business is one, and the ideal salary is zero dollars. A lot of entrepreneurs have gone through the early period of a new enterprise where this happens to be the case, but then again most workers don't ever have the potential to make it big.
Offshoring is by no means limited to manufacturing--it is happening in services and in software development, and the Remote Work experiences of the pandemic are likely to give it an additional push. See my 2019 post Telemigration:
A question with tremendous implications: In a world with global and highly-efficient transportation and communications…and billions of people who are accustomed to low wages…is it possible for a country such as the United States to maintain its accustomed high standards of living for the large majority of its people?…and, if so, what are the key policy elements required to do this?
A couple of immediate policy requirements spring to mind. The first is the externalisation of healthcare costs away from employers. The American system is a legacy of employers being punished with high taxes during the Big Government era and is anachronistic. Consumption taxes like VAT, which most other advanced economies utilise, would be the primary contender for how to finance some form of free market commission system, part-taxpayer funded, minimal healthcare system which might encourage people to take out private healthcare coverage far earlier in their careers.
The second is tort reform. No other advanced economy in the world carries such high legal costs as the cost of doing business. Don't get me wrong, civil liability is an important pillar of the protection of property rights, but most civil systems don't really allow for the awarding of punitive damages, instead tending to focus on actual damages materially or in terms of reputation.
Many in America blame the EPA for the decline in American manufacturing, but it would be more accurate to say that the legions of lawyers inspired by Ralph Nader to pick at American companies like crows were more directly responsible for the decline in American industry.
The other thing to consider is some form of reform of financialised economics. Don't get me wrong- financialising an economy almost always creates a boom when it's initially introduced, releasing capital and freeing up labour from more inefficient businesses in the economy. But there is an extent to which after a decade or so, it begins to feed on the healthy tissue of an economy, rather than the fat- which it has by then exhausted.
If we look at the history of the British Empire for the likely course of financialised economies over time, then we can see that financialisation seems to erode productive economics over time. This is because of the asymmetry involved, it is relatively easy to release capital through creative destruction, but turning capital into productive economics seems to have finite scope within any economy- as witnessed by the fact that venture capital, beyond certain scale thresholds, has been saturated for some time.
This is what has caused the growth of private equity firms, and especially their move into asset classes, instead of creating value in underutilised and undervalued existing businesses. With the latter they tend to perform quite well, but the movement into particular types of assets, particularly building land or residential housing is fundamentally unhealthy and has the potential to create a new Gilded Age with its rentier economics.
And the new frontier for this Brave New World? In a word, pricing. It's the subject being discussed as the new capital growth and income stream within the industry. In some instances adding value can be synonymous with higher prices- but not always. When added price comes without added value to anyone other than the investor, then another phrase for it is price-gouging.
Healthcare that is paid by employers is fully deductible (in the US) on their corporate tax returns...individuals can also deduct healthcare costs, *but* only if this and their other deductions exceed the standard deduction, which is $21500. It should be possible to establish a scheme which phases allows individual deductions from dollar one as long as there is not a double count by also applying the corporate deduction.
To be clear - the correlation between vaccine status and death is an artifact of policy, not medical inevitability. Had effective, cheap, and widely available treatments, administered in the early stages of COVID during viral replication, been allowed and not punished as per de facto policy, the vaccine would not have been necessary and many hundreds of thousands of people, in the US alone, would still be alive.
But then a handful of oligarchs would not have made billions and pushed the world further towards their power-obsessed goal of one world governance.
I had heard too much contradictory evidence from different sources to make any sort of sound judgement on your claims. I am by no means a medical expert, although I have found myself reading a lot of studies on the subject over the past two years.
I know that Japan had a good degree of success with the treatments you advocate (or at least that's what the data suggests), but I have also been following the scientists who were the principal architects of the Great Barrington Declaration. Professor Sunetra Gupta, the UK's answer to Doctor Jay Bhattacharya, has put forward the notion that the waves of infections we have seen are largely the product of herd immunity and have little to do with any form of human interventions. In the case of Japan, the introduction of the treatments you mention was also timed to exactly the point at which Japan should have expected a huge remission in case numbers through the virus exhausting it's natural food supply.
So there are plausible alternate theories of events out there which don't rely upon the MSM narratives. Personally, I try to keep an open mind. Scepticism is just as much about not rejecting theories out of hand as it is about subjecting them to empirical scrutiny and the falsifiability acid test.
Early on it became clear to me that something was very "wrong" with the US response led by Pence, Fauci, and Birx. In any crisis you do two things pretty quickly. You prioritize risks and you talk to the folks dealing with the problem "on the front lines". The first allows you to allocate resources where they are needed most, and the second will give you a first view on what works and what doesn't. Neither was done for COVID. In fact, the negative of the second was done - specifically exclude people who know what's going on and silence them when they do speak up.
It was also, at best, negligent to tell people with symptoms they can't be treated until they are in serious enough condition to be hospitalized.
INSERT (apart from vaccines) after human interventions.
I think there are 3 points that need to be dealt with that seriously impact on the supposition that Trump would have prevented a Ukrainian invasion. The first of these and perhaps the most important is Putin as an autonomous agent. Putin has his own worldview and opinions and it is very unlikely that Trump causes him any fear. If, as seems likely, his mindset is apolyptic (whether due to Parkinson's or not) then Trump's threats or actions would only bring WW3 closer. Putin has the view that the Western democracies are weak and despises weakness. He certainly pegged Trump as a braggart and would have factored that into his calculations.
The second objection relates to Trump. If you recall, he tried to blackmail Zelinsky into giving him dirt on Hunter Biden by witholding military aid. He was impeached over this and will remember the slight. Trump holds grudges and on evidence of past behaviour will take revenge. It is all too easy to see Trump washing his hands of the invasion and designating it 'an internal affair'.
The final point to look at is Trump's relationship with the rest of NATO. Here though it is more ambiguous. Would the NATO countries have rushed to help or increased their defence spending as quickly?
Once Putin decided to invade the West's options were strictly limited. To introduce sanctions earlier would have precipitated an earlier invasion and divided NATO. To oppose Putin with troops or a no fly zone would cause escalation. There really was only the option of diplomacy. Putin has no regard for democracies and Trump would have been included in this and what is more come under the classification of a 'useful fool'. Much as I hate to admit it Biden has played this limited hand very well. This really is an issue where political experience is essential.
You raise some good points, but I still think Trump's complete unpredictability and erratic nature would have at least delayed the Ukrainian invasion. It highly likely that Putin has been planning this for decades and he has chosen the battlefield- people forget that this necessarily entails choosing exactly the right moment to strike.
I actually agree with Biden's decision to exit Afghanistan, but would caveat that the manner of its handling, especially in terms of the untimely withdrawal of air support, was a humiliating disaster. This political intrusion into the theatre of operations would have been first and foremost in Putin's mind when deciding to push the 'go' button on the Ukrainian Invasion.
Trump might have made the same mistake, but he would have reversed his support on air support in Afghanistan within 24 hours of the first setback, possibly repairing the situation- in order to facilitate a more dignified exit.
In retrospect it is highly likely that Putin's original plan was to highlight the neo-Nazi and fascist movements within Ukraine (which is unfortunately true, but not to the extent that it taints Ukraine's leadership) with a view to delegitimating the Ukrainian government. The most likely scenario would have entailed using talks about EU membership as a pretext for a swift and massive managed escalation and as a pretext for pre-emptive invasion. These conditions simply wouldn't have happened under Trump- he wouldn't have given a shit about Ukraine joining the EU (unlike the Washington Foreign Policy Establishment, for whom it was always an intermediate goal) and he was dubious about NATO.
But Putin isn't one to look a gift horse in the mouth. Because of the pandemic and scenting Biden's weakness, he has obviously brought forward his plans. But the most important factor has nothing to do with the world of politics. Simply put, oil interests in the West took a massive bath in 2020, losing a shitload of money. Nothing evinces this more than the idle drilling licenses which currently sit untapped in the US, the UK and other places as oil prices soar. Wall Street and the City of London want their money back and they are quite happy to sit back, watch the prices hit record highs and reap their profits, whilst potential oil wells remain unutilised.
The same thing can be said of the Saudis and the Emirates. Did you hear that the Saudis refused Joe Biden's call recently, and have a laundry list of demands including Legal Immunity for MBS and an escalation in the sale of arms for the Yemen conflict? It's funny, I highlighted the need to immediately reverse the American position on the Jamal Khashoggi incident even before the Ukraine invasion. It was one thing I got right. No doubt Putin has been paying attention as well, seeing the schism between Washington and the Saudis as a golden opportunity. One notes the Saudis had no issue taking Putin's call only last week.
I am beginning to think that this was a 'brought forward' operation- long planned, but hastily brought into action because of the winds of fortune. Apparently there is a piece of 2010 American legislation which never made it to a vote. It entails the penalising of oil and gas companies which let drilling licences sit idle. A savvy operator would be dusting off the paperwork with a view to enacting it forthwith, but it important to remember that finance is by far the most powerful lobby in Washington, as it is in London- the brokers want their money back and are likely to dig their heels in.
Trump is actually very predictable. Praise him and lay it on with a trowl and that's it. All Putin needed to do would have been to call Trump, spin him a line and Trump would have lapped it up. Remember, this is a guy not given to reading detailed analysis and understanding the situation. Sound regretful but emphasize the necessity to eliminate the neo-Nazis. Putin is a strong man (a type of politician Trump admires and aspires to be) and flattery from a strong man will go an awfully long way.
The Saudi situation is interesting. Maybe a bit too much focus on the economic side of things. Everything about this war says emotion not economics. The Saudis because of their oil and 1973 like to believe they are a major player. This is not quite the case. The incredibly stupid murder of Kashoggi is an excellent example of this. The only positive is that it shows the amateur spirit is not dead. MBS is overplaying his hand.
I totally agree that it was Putin's long term intention to reunite Ukraine with Russia. However, I suspect health and emotional issues are very much to the fore here. Putin's justifications are not rational and because of this factor it really wouldn't matter who was president at the time. Where the difference lies would be the response and here Trump couldn't have done half of what Biden has done.
This doesn't make me a Biden fan; experience counts and one sees the difference between a real politician and someone who pretends to be one through vanity and meglomania.
So I was against Biden’s vaccine mandate - yet another executive overreach in a line of unconstitutional presidential actions going back to Clinton (and including every president in between) - but I don’t buy the “medical freedom” arguments from the new anti-vaxxers. I’m against government vaccine mandates (except for government employees - nobody has a right to a government job), but I also don’t lose sleep over them. Also SCOTUS overturned the OSHA mandate anyway so it’s not an issue anymore.
I disagree on Trump. I never bought the wild claims about how he was lord Voldemort in the flesh and all (you know, “democracy dies in darkness…”). If he really had been a fascist, I would have taken up arms to oppose his regime, but obviously we weren’t in that territory.
BUT, he did have authoritarian tendencies. Call it tyranny-light. He liked autocrats and liked the idea of being in charge. He wasn’t an autocrat. But he liked the idea of having power. The reason he wasn’t a fascist was that he liked the idea of power more than using power. He likes the trappings of success and power without any of the work that either require. The other main reason he wasn’t an authoritarian was that he lacked the intelligence, the wherewithal, the competence, and the will. Not that he wouldn’t have enjoyed it - he was just too weak to ever actually do what it took to be a leader.
I always scorned the “Trump’s an authoritarian” arguments until the 2020 election aftermath and January 6th and his call with Raffensberger. Those were all things I told people would never happen and I was wrong. Trump’s idiotic election fraud claims and subsequent attempts to actually steal the election proved he had authoritarian leanings. And as much as I think the guy was an idiot, he could be dumb like the fox so to speak. That speech he gave at the J6 rally - “march peacefully down to the capitol” - came off as a clever and successful attempt to try to get a riot without crossing the legal definition of incitement. He didn’t incite a riot. But he invited it. To paraphrase something I read at the time, if someone says, “don’t be naive - Trump clearly said he didn’t want a riot,” the response is, “now who’s being naive.”
I see the Capitol Riots as the unintended consequences of Kayfabe- Trump's chance to get revenge for all those 'Not My Prez' protests. I also think he was still smarting over the size of his crowd at his inauguration and wanted to prove his support was more widespread. But when it comes to evaluating whether Jan 6th was an attempt at Insurrection, we have to remember that as a coup it had zero chances of success, and EVEN Trump would have known that. In reality, I think he was simply trying to fire up his support base with a view to running in 2024.
In his narcissistic mind, he would have seen the pandemic as the main reason why he lost, and he has a point on that score. It is highly unlikely Joe Biden would be president if not for Covid. Trump lost ground particularly with the over 65s who were also those most likely to have been scared shitless by the cable news fear porn which was being mobilised. On the subject of stolen election, he might think 'they cheated' but most of the arguments have since been dismissed as implausible on the basis of scale. The two exceptions are mail-in ballots and the voter operations funded by Facebook.
I recently has an online debate with a liberal professor on the subject of the former. One of the links he furnished was a study purporting to show that mail-ins didn't significantly alter the election- yet having done my due diligence and read the research thoroughly, I found that one of the appendices held a footnote which stated that mail-ins had shifted the demographic of who voted by 1.5% away from the 65s and towards the young! That is a significant swing in Battleground States. Neither political party has a particularly strong moral leg to stand on with this subject- because be both know that if positions were reversed it would be Democrats arguing against mail-in ballots and the Republicans arguing for.
The courts will likely soon rule on the legality of constitutionally inappropriate authorities changing election systems and it is unlikely to go in favour of the Democrats. In general the courts hate ruling on anything which might throw an election into doubt and instead tend to adjudicate such matters in the periods where elections are on the backburners- when it won't throw the electoral process into doubt.
I don't think Trump wanted a riot. I think he was an idiot. I don't think he understood the levels of emotions he was stirring up within his base. I think he was relying upon the fact that throughout the Tea Party movement and with all the 1A protests conservative protestors has long had a reputation for being peaceful and law abiding protesters. What he failed to account for is that when people honestly feel as though their side is being cheated and have been told that the other side is an existential threat, they will abandon a lifetime of following the rules in a heartbeat. One only has to look at societies in the process of breaking down to see how previously orderly people can become a violent mob.
He wasn't the only one who got caught with his pants down- the Mayor of Washington deserves a portion of the blame for not ensuring an adequate police presence- but then this just show the cognitive dissonance- nobody really expected it to happen, but of course they can't use it as an excuse now, because it would expose the disingenuity of the narrative.
I have always been in that small group of people who saw Trump as neither a threat to democracy nor a monster, whilst also feeling that he fell far short of the legend in his own mind. I think he was completely irresponsible in his failure to concede the election result. A part of an outgoing president's job is to console his supporters and ensure the peaceful transition of power.
But I have always believed that Trump is a narcissist- we saw it when he went to the bedsides of soldiers and talked about himself. His vanity couldn't allowed him to admit that he had lost, and he instead chose to focus upon those aspects of the election which, to him, seemed unfair. Although he really did have some successes during his presidency, most notably in the Middle East, he complete misjudgement of the lead up to Jan 6th really does expose the lacklustre calibre of the mind we are talking about. Don't get wrong- it isn't as though he isn't smart (though certainly no genius) but a deficit in character has been the downfall of many of the supposedly bright.
I will leave you with my favourite Robert Hanlon quote, which is, incidentally called Hanlon's Razor- "never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." More than anything else it the story of American politics since at least the sixties and probably earlier, notwithstanding the rare exception of Dwight D. Eisenhower. Trump was incredibly stupid- but when weighing the possibility of whether Jan 6th was a real attempt at insurrection we have to weigh what the prospects of success were- and even the most cursory examination reveals the chances to be nil from the outset.
Even Trump isn't that stupid, although his subsequent course of action dictates that he was an altogether different type of fool, and a dangerous one at that.
Yes, I agree with most of that. Especially Hanlon’s razor. But while you’re right that it wasn’t really a coup attempt, I do think Trump wanted the riot.
You’re right about COVID likely being the deciding factor that helped Joe Biden. But courts have basically ruled at this point that states changing election laws to accommodate the pandemic needed to be challenged before the election, not after. No court is going to invalidate a past election unless there was actual fraud. The main question going forward is what to do about the next elections. I would note that Trump legitimately thinks (or acts like he does) that the election was stolen via rampant fraud. Also, his call with Brad Raffensberger where he asked him to come up with thousands of votes was an attempt at stealing an election. He wanted Raffensberger to change ballots or make up new ones to alter the Georgia results.
“ Neither political party has a particularly strong moral leg to stand on with this subject- because be both know that if positions were reversed it would be Democrats arguing against mail-in ballots and the Republicans arguing for.”
True. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a right answer. The time to decide on the legality of changing state election laws to allow more mail in ballots is before an election, not after.
“ I have always been in that small group of people who saw Trump as neither a threat to democracy nor a monster, whilst also feeling that he fell far short of the legend in his own mind. I think he was completely irresponsible in his failure to concede the election result.”
I would generally say I’m in that camp. I’ve moved more in the direction of thinking he’s dangerous in the post 2020 election period. But J6 wasn’t Kristilnact and Trump isn’t Hitler. Maybe a Clodius or Milo along America’s decline towards a Caesar (hopefully not!). Trumps more of a bully than an autocrat.
“ But I have always believed that Trump is a narcissist- we saw it when he went to the bedsides of soldiers and talked about himself. His vanity couldn't allowed him to admit that he had lost, and he instead chose to focus upon those aspects of the election which, to him, seemed unfair. ”
I agree. And you’re right that Mayor Bowser also deserves some blame as well as others for not ensuring proper security. But that doesn’t absolve Trump in my mind.
“ Even Trump isn't that stupid, although his subsequent course of action dictates that he was an altogether different type of fool, and a dangerous one at that.”
Right. J6 was never going to successfully overthrow the government or any of that crap. But it was a sad moment for the country and it was a real moral stain. It could have resulted in the deaths of a few senators or a hostage situation. But I never thought we were moments away from “the end of America” as some in the liberal media would have it.
You range around a bit there Geary, I like it. Your focused essays are always good, but this more conversational piece was nice too.
Cheers mate!
Actually, America's legal immigration system, outside of the influence illegal immigration has had on it, doesn't look that much different than how you describe Australia's current system. That is why some minority groups -- primarily those who arrived recently and legally -- are among the most economically successful demographics in the country. South Indians, Persians, Nigerians, etc.
Well, that's good to know. Of course, Australia does have a natural advantage when dealing with the other less beneficial kind of migration- but don't you guys also have a lottery? I also heard that it was heavily dependent on the size of the country of the applicant. No country produces enough of certain types of engineering, because these roles generally require the degree qualified to be in the top 8% of the cognitive range, and this also happens to be the part of spectrum where those who happen to be born with this advantage have unlimited choices in terms of career.
India has a population of 1.38 billion, yet there are only 2.6 million Indian-origin citizens in the US. Meanwhile, the population of El Salvador is 6.5 million, yet there are 1.4 million citizens who can trace their origins to El Salvador. It doesn't seem, in practical terms, as though the US is living up to the Australian model. Does this have something to do with the Reagan amnesty, where Congress subsequently failed to follow through on the immigration reforms which were promised?
Yeah, about half of the "immigration" into the U.S. each year is illegal, and between periodic amnesties which then trigger chain family-based migration and various other ways that undocumented immigrants end up legal, it's probably safe to say that almost 3/4 of our immigration is essentially out of our control. We do have a small "diversity" lottery that brings in people from all kind of different places, but then the remainder of our immigrants, still a large raw number because we take in a lot of immigrants in the states, are qualifying based on market need, which is where you get all of the Indian engineers and Nigerian doctors. My comment was not at all a justification of our existing system (it's a travesty generally), but just to reinforce the point that a controlled immigration system that prioritized minimizing competition between immigrants and native-born people for jobs, housing, services, etc., does indeed "work", even in the famously dysfunctional American immigration system.
Great comment. My broader point was that Australia proves that it is possible to have a 'best of both worlds' scenario, in which countries bring in the talented people they need and in which a more thorough integration is a healthy by-product- but the absolutely essential ingredient is to eliminate friction between the blue collar class and the migration system, mainly through making sure that the types of aspirational blue collar jobs which really represent the best option for native-born kids who don't do well at school are effectively reserved occupations.
That means no foreign plumbers, electricians, construction workers, local drivers, telecom engineers or maintenance types of any kind, or manufacturing work apart from a few outliers like garment manufacture. There seems to be vague idea on the part of many that if people are brought in to fill lower value jobs then everybody else will move up- when counter-intuitively the reverse is almost entirely true. Flooding the market with unlimited labour pushes people down, especially their kids- because with the mass influx of net negative tax contributors, it becomes all but certain that the societal resources which can be deployed to raise the next generation up are necessarily diluted on a per child basis.
Exactly right, and I don't really think that in any open and honest debate, this is where things will settle. We don't have that in the U.S., we have an uncontrolled border, exploitation of "rights-less" undocumented immigrants, and a general deterioration in quality of life for native-born and recent legal immigrants at the bottom rungs (and improvement of quality of life for the educated and affluent, both native-born and immigrant).
Were most blue collar jobs in the US lost to immigrants? I think not, but I've not studied it. Seems like comparative advantage took over once goods and money could easily flow over borders while people simply could not, including moves within the country that took from one group of blue collar workers and gave it to another set (like Boeing's move).
No, but their negotiating was fatally compromised , their wages were diluted and they had to constantly deal with the threat of job insecurity. It only takes a 1% change in the supply of any commodity to cause significant disruptions- and if we take construction as an example then a 12% increase in the supply of labour from foreign sources equals a major disruption.
Taking the UK as an example. When Eastern Europeans were allowed into the freedom of movement conditions of the EU it wasn't at all uncommon for workers to go from £13 an hour to £6 an hour, with only the twelve week statutory period of waiting for them to move from their old conditions of employment to the new.
Granted, the American situation was far more gradual and occurred over time- rather like the proverbial boiled frog, with labour the main course.
Comparative advantage is one thing, but where any shot at a decent living is at stake for anyone who wasn't blessed by the gift of high intelligence, one has to wonder whether capital's interest in unlimited labour doesn't isn't simply a race to the bottom.
The ideal number of employees for a business is one, and the ideal salary is zero dollars. A lot of entrepreneurs have gone through the early period of a new enterprise where this happens to be the case, but then again most workers don't ever have the potential to make it big.
Offshoring is by no means limited to manufacturing--it is happening in services and in software development, and the Remote Work experiences of the pandemic are likely to give it an additional push. See my 2019 post Telemigration:
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/59860.html
A question with tremendous implications: In a world with global and highly-efficient transportation and communications…and billions of people who are accustomed to low wages…is it possible for a country such as the United States to maintain its accustomed high standards of living for the large majority of its people?…and, if so, what are the key policy elements required to do this?
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/66613.html
A couple of immediate policy requirements spring to mind. The first is the externalisation of healthcare costs away from employers. The American system is a legacy of employers being punished with high taxes during the Big Government era and is anachronistic. Consumption taxes like VAT, which most other advanced economies utilise, would be the primary contender for how to finance some form of free market commission system, part-taxpayer funded, minimal healthcare system which might encourage people to take out private healthcare coverage far earlier in their careers.
The second is tort reform. No other advanced economy in the world carries such high legal costs as the cost of doing business. Don't get me wrong, civil liability is an important pillar of the protection of property rights, but most civil systems don't really allow for the awarding of punitive damages, instead tending to focus on actual damages materially or in terms of reputation.
Many in America blame the EPA for the decline in American manufacturing, but it would be more accurate to say that the legions of lawyers inspired by Ralph Nader to pick at American companies like crows were more directly responsible for the decline in American industry.
The other thing to consider is some form of reform of financialised economics. Don't get me wrong- financialising an economy almost always creates a boom when it's initially introduced, releasing capital and freeing up labour from more inefficient businesses in the economy. But there is an extent to which after a decade or so, it begins to feed on the healthy tissue of an economy, rather than the fat- which it has by then exhausted.
If we look at the history of the British Empire for the likely course of financialised economies over time, then we can see that financialisation seems to erode productive economics over time. This is because of the asymmetry involved, it is relatively easy to release capital through creative destruction, but turning capital into productive economics seems to have finite scope within any economy- as witnessed by the fact that venture capital, beyond certain scale thresholds, has been saturated for some time.
This is what has caused the growth of private equity firms, and especially their move into asset classes, instead of creating value in underutilised and undervalued existing businesses. With the latter they tend to perform quite well, but the movement into particular types of assets, particularly building land or residential housing is fundamentally unhealthy and has the potential to create a new Gilded Age with its rentier economics.
And the new frontier for this Brave New World? In a word, pricing. It's the subject being discussed as the new capital growth and income stream within the industry. In some instances adding value can be synonymous with higher prices- but not always. When added price comes without added value to anyone other than the investor, then another phrase for it is price-gouging.
Healthcare that is paid by employers is fully deductible (in the US) on their corporate tax returns...individuals can also deduct healthcare costs, *but* only if this and their other deductions exceed the standard deduction, which is $21500. It should be possible to establish a scheme which phases allows individual deductions from dollar one as long as there is not a double count by also applying the corporate deduction.