Author: Kevin Drum

This is Hilbert licking an unfortunate lizard in our backyard. I don't know why, since neither of our cats ever shows any interest in actually eating a lizard. They just like to play with them.

This one looks extremely dead, but no. After I hauled the cats indoors, he flipped over and made a getaway. It didn't last long since he was dumb enough to stick around and the cats found him again the next day, but I don't suppose lizards are known for their high IQ.

The deadline to raise the debt ceiling is getting closer, and investors are getting more jittery:

According to the Wall Street Journal's experts, the current cost of insuring treasury debt corresponds to a belief in a 2% chance of default. There are a whole lot of caveats about this, but the conclusion nonetheless is that things are getting dicey.

Meanwhile, Republicans fiddle while Washington DC burns.

Here at City of Hope, the hospital menu is pretty extensive and caters both to healthy eaters and to us normal people. They've got burgers and tuna melts. For breakfast you might want to try the French toast. You can have your sandwiches on white bread. Mayonnaise is liberally applied all over the place. They've got milkshakes and smoothies and fruit juice and coffee. Desserts include cookies, cake, ice cream, and pudding.

But one thing is a step too far:

All that other stuff is OK, but if you'd like a nice, cold Coca-Cola with lunch? Sorry. Apparently that's one unhealthy habit they can't bring themselves to endorse.

I wonder why? It's not the caffeine, since they have coffee on the menu. It's not the carbonation, since they have ginger-ale. It's not fake sugar since they have diet soda that's not colored brown. So what do you suppose is their objection to colas?

The decline of the US—or even of the West more generally—has been a persistent topic for years, and for some reason it's enjoying a mini-Renaissance right now. There is much talk, for example, that the dollar is losing its spot as the world's reserve currency. But it sure doesn't look like it:

The dollar lost a bit of influence during the Iraq War years, but that came to a hard stop in 2007, when the economy collapsed. There's nothing like a world crisis to remind people why they liked dollars in the first place, is there?

The value of the dollar is fundamentally backed by our economic performance. Let's take a look at both the level and growth of GDP in the best-performing countries:

The US has the highest GDP per capita in the world among large-ish countries¹ and the fastest growth rate aside from South Korea, which started from a very low base.² You really ought to sit back for a minute and contemplate just how remarkable this is.

So our economy is not just big, it's also growing fast. And I hardly need to point out the well-known fact that we have a huge military to protect this economy:

In fairness, despite the vast chasm between the US and China in military spending, it's an open question just how much it means. On the one hand, purchasing power parities and a cheap conscript-style army means China can field a lot more boots on the ground than we can. On the other hand, our technology is so far ahead of China's that we might outbulk them by more than 3:1 in real life. On the third hand, our military patrols the entire world while China's only has to patrol China itself and its nearby seas. On the fourth hand, the US potentially has all of NATO to call on in the case of a shooting war. On the fifth hand, it's not clear how vulnerable a classical navy like ours is to cheap, high tech drones and cruise missiles.

All this said, it mostly applies to a shooting war over, say, Taiwan, not a war on American territory. There's not much question that two big oceans and nearly a trillion dollars worth of military spending make us all but impregnable on our own territory. Short of a nuclear war, there's no safer place on earth.

Here's another thing to look at for the world's large economic powers: population growth.

Unlike many rich countries, the US is still growing at a brisk pace. Here's education:

Finally, I was intrigued by this tweet quoting Larry Summers:

``What we get from China is an airport. What we get from the US is a lecture." - Larry Summers, describing convo w/leader of developing country and the loss of US global influence, in intv w/@DavidWestin today#China #BeltandRoad #USdollar

— Gabrielle Coppola (@gablova) April 14, 2023

This might be true, but it's largely because we've given developing countries so many airports already and it hasn't worked out so well. China is discovering the same thing today with its Belt and Road initiative: eventually there comes a time when your clients can't pay back their loans, and then what? Write off the investment and never go back? Demand repayment and become the bad guy? In terms of influence this is a losing game.

Also, while it might not be politically correct to point this out, Africa and South America combined account for 8% of world GDP. Does it really matter who has more influence in these places?

In summary: The dollar remains the world's reserve currency and shows no signs of that turning around anytime soon. Our GDP is the largest among big countries and our growth rate is second highest. Our military spending is wildly higher than anyone in the world. Our population growth is among the highest among rich nations. We have the most highly and broadly educated workforce. And while we may or may not be losing influence in the global south, does it really matter either way except at the margins?

There are plenty of things you can nitpick here, and plenty of qualitative arguments you can make against American supremacy. It's also clear that China has every intention of trying to match the US as a global superpower. But it has a very long row to hoe before it gets there. And by the time it matters, everything is going to depend on leadership in AI anyway—which is yet another area where the US has a dominant position.

Anyway, this is the case for the US retaining its crown as by far the most powerful nation in the world for a good long time. Aesthetics aside—de gustibus, after all—it's hard to make an argument for any other country being a better place for a young person to live for the rest of their life.

¹I excluded petrostate countries from this list for obvious reasons, though it doesn't change things much anyway.

²South Korea's growth rate has slowed considerably since 2010 and is now only slightly higher than ours.

Bear claws in the sky! This was taken during an astrophotography session at Palomar Mountain. The lights in the distance are the city of Oceanside.

Responding to the recent cases of people being shot just for knocking on a door, Atrios wants to know what's going on. After all, it wasn't like this back when he was growing up:

Someone walking up the driveway wasn't threatening. Certainly pulling into a someone's drive to make a "u-turn" was standard practice.

Of course it's obscene that anyone is inspired to pull out a gun and start shooting over these things, but how did "someone at my door or in my driveway" start being seen as intrusive behavior at all?

I mean, people shouldn't be pulling out guns and shooting at every perceived threat, but how did these things start being seen as perceived threats?

I have a thought about this. Two thoughts, actually.

First, this might have been more common back in the day than Atrios thinks. Certainly we were all taught to be suspicious of strangers knocking on the door at night. And while I don't personally know of anyone being shot for this, that doesn't mean it never happened. Back then, before the rise of cable news and social media, this was the kind of local story that never went national.

More provocatively, though, I suspect there has been some change and it's largely due to a lagging effect of the great crime wave of the '70s and '80s. As that crime wave swelled, we steadily became acclimated to the idea that threats were everywhere. Eventually we became afraid of virtually any interaction with a young man (especially a young Black man), let alone a knock on the door late at night from one of these suspicious folks.

Over the past few decades this danger has largely abated. Crime is still around, of course, and it's still mostly the province of young men, but it's not much more common than it was in the '60s. We don't need to be reflexively scared of young men these days:¹

But we're scared regardless. Cops are. Families are. Teachers are. And when everyone is scared, bad things happen.

This is why I think the lead theory of crime is important. In one sense, it's strictly an explanation of past behavior: namely the rise and fall of crime between about 1965 and 2010. It's no help in explaining changes in crime rates today.

But it does explain why we should no longer be reflexively afraid of young men. It's because our original fear was driven by a generation of young men who were unusually aggressive and violent because they had been lead poisoned in childhood. Now, with the lead gone, they are back to normal and we don't have to be especially scared of them. It would be nice if people could truly internalize this.

¹The chart comes from Rick Nevin, and it's based on the latest data. More here.

Today is my first day at City of Hope in preparation for my CAR-T treatment next week. I'm getting a PICC line placed and undergoing a few tests, but no more. Tomorrow is officially Day -5, leading up to Day 0 on Tuesday when the CAR-T cells will be infused into my bloodstream.

The most appropriate picture I could find for this occasion was Les Invalides, the hospital built by Louis XIV for the care of soldiers hurt in his endless wars. It is also the home of Napoleon's tomb, which to this day I've still never seen. I've never quite figured out why I should bother.

The Washington Post brings us the latest from Florida:

Ron DeSantis is blowing it. Initially, his pitch was simple: I'm an anti-woke conservative but I'm not crazy like Donald Trump.

But that's evolved considerably over the past few months. DeSantis was doing fine as long as he attacked the soft underbelly of liberal sex, gender, and race politics: trans kids in sports; queer theory in AP classes; teaching gay acceptance to third graders; puberty blockers for adolescents; and so forth. These are all things that produce a fair bit of angst among not just MAGA conservatives, but also moderates and independents.

But banning discussion of gender identity completely? Taking over a public university because he didn't like its curriculum? Banning abortion at six weeks? Going to war with Disney as an act of state-sponsored revenge? Claiming that the Federal Reserve is trying to mount an economic coup using digital currency?

Some of these seem like transparent pandering. Some seem like dangerous extremism. Some are flat-out conspiracy theory lunacy. And some, like the Disney war, are scaring the business wing of the Republican Party, which tolerates the GOP's culture war agenda only as long as they're left out of it.

DeSantis is acting like the United States is just an extension of the most conservative parts of Florida. It's not, and DeSantis has put himself into a pickle. He's obviously too weak and insecure to deny anything to the MAGA cesspool, and this is ruining his chances of appealing to anyone else. He needed to appear strong enough to control the MAGA beast, not become its kept man.

India has officially surpassed China as the most populous nation on the planet. This is a bad thing, not a good one, and hardly the only problem India has. Here's one of the biggest:

As a point of comparison, this number is around 10% for the United States. India's rate of labor participation is also low in general, which is one of the reasons for this:

India's per capita GDP rose at about the same rate as China's up through 1980. After that, however, it lagged far behind. This chart goes only through 2010, but the numbers for 2022 are about $14,000 for China vs. $5,000 for India (compared to $80,000 for the US). In absolute terms India has enjoyed strong growth, but nowhere near enough to make it an economic giant like China.

PICC line installed!