I don't generally like to go back and forth on a single argument too much. After both sides have had a couple of chances to have their say, I usually feel like that's enough. Further bickering just ends up going down a rabbit hole.
But today is an exception because it gives me a chance to make a broader point. Bob Somerby agrees with Donald Trump that our country has become incapable of solving even the smallest problems. By contrast, I think the United States, even now, is a problem solving machine. Here is Bob for a second go-around:
It's hard not to be briefly angry about some of what Kevin wrote. Murder rates, inequality, medical costs? The southern border and its spread into overwhelmed northern cities? The young female medical workers we overheard this Tuesday morning talking about the ways their relatives have dealt with various carjackings? When are we going to solve the nagging problem afflicting them and their family and friends?
It can be hard to avoid being briefly angry when Pollyanna arrives on the scene, saying we just haven't managed to solve that one yet. That's especially true when the whole blue world is warning us that our democracy will be taken away if Trump returns to the White House next year, as polling suggests he may do.
We're big fans of Kevin's work, though we think he's become a bit too sure of the idea that Nothing Much Is Actually Wrong and that every question can be settled through the use of statistical measures. (Needless to say, he may be right on both points!)
The big dilemma here is how to keep two thoughts in our heads at the same time:
- The United States (and the world) have a lot of big problems.
- There are always a lot of big problems. We don't have any more than usual, and probably even fewer.
I believe that both these things are true. This is decidedly not because I'm temperamentally cheerful. I'm chronically depressed (thanks Effexor!) and chronically fatigued (thanks chemotherapy!). I mostly think the moral character of the human race has only barely improved since we were fighting over bananas in the treetops.
So why do I believe that things are pretty good these days? It's partly because I'm interested in history—which, admittedly, can be a two-edged sword. On the one hand, it provides perspective, which can be a calming influence against the doomsayers. On the other hand, it can produce a world-weary belief that nothing is ever new. It's a needle you just have to do your best to thread.
It's also partly because I'm interested in numbers. Again, admittedly, I'm keenly aware of the dangers of impersonal, data-driven analysis. There are straightforward technical issues to be aware of, like reliance on averages that don't pick up on growing extremes. And there are fuzzier issues to be aware of, like missing out on emotionally-charged trends that will never show up in data tables.
At the same time, you can be deeply misled by ignoring numbers. We humans like to believe whatever we like to believe. But if you want to evaluate the world honestly, you need something to test your beliefs against. Like it or not, your best bet for that is a cool, evenhanded look at the strongest data you can find.
Right now, for example, inflation is about back to normal. It just is, but the only way to know that is to look at the numbers. Does that mean anger over inflation is gone? Of course not. But that anger, as real as it is, doesn't affect the ground truth that our recent inflationary surge was relatively short and mild. You can believe both things at once. You don't have to let the anger prompt you into a denial of reality.
Now back to problem solving. Bob mentions the current threat to democracy as an example of our inability to solve problems. It's true that people on both sides are screaming about this, but it's always been overblown. The Supreme Court handing down decisions you dislike is not a threat to democracy. The Electoral College—now in its 236th year—is not a threat to democracy. Joe Biden winning the presidency is not a threat to democracy. Electoral fraud—which is all but nonexistent—is not a threat to democracy. An attempted coup is a threat to democracy, but certainly less so when literally every branch of government summarily rejected it and Democrats have performed well in three consecutive elections. So while we haven't yet solved the democracy problem, we're surprisingly well along the way. Likewise, although right-wing populism remains a threat globally, the world has taken plenty of large steps toward rejecting it.
It is so, so easy to fall into despair. There are so many things we care about that we feel helpless to fight. There's so much human suffering, so much bigotry, so much war. In the political realm, the other side always seems powerful, monolithic, and relentless, while our side seems weak, divided, and uninspired. Both sides believe this. Add to this all our endless personal problems and our endless talking about them. It really can seem like things are falling apart.
But that needs to be tested against something. How much of it is the product of your day-to-day mood? Or spending too much time with Fox News? Or the general bias of the media toward the negative and sensational—which can fool you just as much as anyone? Or plain old recency bias? Problems today naturally seem worse than problems a century ago, and problems that affect you naturally seem worse than other people's problems. But do you really think America is a beaten giant? Have you even tried to overcome your personal mood and take a step back? Have you considered the fact that h. sapiens was practically designed to gripe constantly—so it means little that people have lots of complaints these days? Do those cold, impersonal numbers I post all the time sway you at least a little bit?
The lessons of history are hard because you have to remember history. Most of us don't, even from only a few years back. And the lessons of numbers are hard too, because for most of us they have no flavor. A hundred charts about crime aren't as persuasive as a single neighbor whose house was burglarized.
This is just human nature. None of us can overcome it. But we can at least try. And when you do, a whole new world opens up: You discover that an awful lot of things you believed aren't really true. Airplanes aren't falling out of the sky. Our educational system isn't a disaster. Crime isn't rampant. The economy doesn't suck. Social media doesn't turn our teens into suicidal wrecks. The world hasn't rejected democracy. Joe Biden isn't wildly unpopular. Electoral fraud isn't widespread. Young men aren't in crisis. The number of people who can't afford health insurance hasn't gone up. Remote learning didn't ruin our kids. The cost of college hasn't skyrocketed. The dollar isn't collapsing. Wages aren't going down. The poverty rate isn't going up. The safety net isn't in tatters. Income inequality isn't still widening. The carjacking rate hasn't gone up. Job satisfaction hasn't gone down. Bullying hasn't surged. Terrorism isn't increasing. Millennials aren't earning less than their parents. Democrats didn't steal the 2020 election. Discretionary federal spending isn't spiraling out of control. The startup rate of new businesses isn't going down. Teen pregnancies aren't rising.
Some things you think are bad really are. Only a fool would deny that. But not nearly as many as most people think. And there are lots and lots of positive developments to even things out. You just have to be willing to open your eyes and see them.
"But that anger, as real as it is, doesn't affect the ground truth that our recent inflationary surge was relatively short and mild."
Apparently Drum doesn't do his own grocery shopping.
Levels vs Rates for those who read graphs.
Non sequitur
Understanding the meaning of terms and the concepts they relate to is not a non sequitur.
You don’t follow much of anything tbh
i do my own grocery shopping, and the main thing I noticed is that prepackaged junk went way up but produce barely budged, with the exception of a few things like pineapple. Big sales on berries seem more infrequent but the price range overall all is the same. Brand name cereal went way up, but store brands didn't change much so I switched.
I saw a ton of profit taking by the big corporations but just switched to generics. I have heard meat went up and eggs, but I don't buy meat and I buy so few eggs that I have no idea what they regularly cost. My grocery bill remains in the same range it always has.
I get that my shopping list isn't the most common, but it's just not true that everything went up. A few things went up a lot, I am shocked when I see the price on a lot of junk food, but everything that went up is easily substituted around for anyone that cares to do so. Though I get that people find food habits hard to change. It just annoys me people treat this like a universal when that's just not true. I am a huge cheap skate that watches prices closely and none of my common purchases changed significantly.
at my local store broccoli went from $1.25/lb to $2.00/lb during the pandemic and it's stayed there
Mine has been stable at 1.69. Some weeks 20 cents more or less, everything fluctuates, but that's still the baseline. I have noticed apples are a bit more, but not pears. There's fluctuation, but in produce I didn't notice anything much different from the regular fluctuations.
Well that settles it. Food prices are up 60%.
I do all our grocery shopping. Things don't always stay the same. But we keep pushing each other and ourselves into doom loops:
https://www.mattball.org/2024/01/up-is-down-red-is-green-love-is-hate-we.html
The price of a gallon of milk in 1955 was 93 cents. That 93 cents would be worth $10.00 now. Inflation has been going on forever. What did cars cost then, $1500? What did houses cost, $20,000? $10,000 was a very solid salary and could support of family of four or six or eight, however big they were back then. The prices of things have always gone up over time.
In 1990 the starting list price for a Toyota Camry was $13,078. According to the CPI calculator that would amount to $31,488.42. The current starting list price for a Camry is $26,420. So auto prices have gone down quite a bit.
And gasoline per gallon is similarly in line with inflation - 35 cents in 1970 is $2.91 today. Add in the fact that most cars get 50 to 100 percent better mileage than they did in 1970 and driving is cheaper today probably than it has ever been.
A salary of $10,000 sure would support a family really well in 1955 - in large part because median income for a family back then was $4,400. Median household income didn't hit $10,000 until 1970.
Apparently you're too young to remember the inflation of the '70s and '80s. We had year after year of annual inflation rates over 10%. One year of 8% inflation is short and mild by comparison.
Right. I lived through the 1970's. We had an 8% mortgage rate on one of our houses.
And roboto (who else would use a font as their handle) punches himself in the back of his neck. Again.
Roboto is a typeface not a font. If you specificied Roboto 12 Pt italic, THAT is a font.
People who have been doing their own grocery shopping noticed higher prices and will continue to do so. But will they notice falling prices? Or the bump in wages?
I think you missed the point of this post, which is that experience which we take so seriously, is not nearly as good a guide as history and data, both of which we usually fail to take seriously, if we take them into account at all. In fact, our experience is deeply misleading. So doing your grocery shopping, while laudable, isn't going to provide you any insight into inflation, or even food prices generally.
I think what they won't notice is stagnant prices. Instead of comparing them YOY or MOM, they'll compare them to what they remembered from several years go. People sometimes seem to confuse less inflation with disinflation.
"There are always a lot of big problems." True. And there always will be. Because at any given time, a large percentage of human beings are just shitty people. Can't fix that. Just gotta keep it under 50%.
And, a whole lot of folks don't want to solve problems, nor do they know how. They would prefer someone else do it for them then stand around and bitch about what they have done. Folks are simply never all going to be pleased with most things.
I think that a decent way of thinking about this is to do a bit of a Rawlsian exercise:
If you were to be born randomly into a specific decade in human history, which decade would you choose?
I think that if you are being really honest, the only reason to not choose a very recent one is that, from the vantage of 2024, we don't know for sure that a supervolcano or an asteroid impact or other extinction level event is going to happen in the near-ish future, but we know those things didn't happen in the near-ish past.
Otherwise, this is actually a pretty good time to be a human* on earth. Which isn't, as Kevin notes, to say that there aren't major problems, just that for the moment things are better than they have been. And that if we want it to stay that way, we have a lot of work to do.
_________
*Of course, if the Rawlsian random birth extended to what _species_ you are born as, obviously some pre-human civilization decade is the way to go.
good time to be an american human; lots of other places not so much
Even in most other places, life is vastly better than it was in the past. There are reasons that life expectancy was in the 40s, because even a small injury could kill you. There are reasons women had a dozen children, because half of them died before you could put them to work on the farm. It's true that in much of the world, daily life is nowhere near as magnificent as it is here, in the richest country on earth . . .
. . . which gets us back to that wailing about grocery prices.
I take your point in a certain sense- there are very poor parts of the world that you wouldn't want to live in.
But at the same time, even the developing world is, in general, MUCH better off now than it was in the past. E.g., you'd certainly want to live in Peru now compared to any time in the country's history-- the economy is far, far better, the country is far richer, unemployment is lower, development has occurred, and while the political system is not stable, there are at least free and fair elections as compared to a succession of military leaders.
Yes I like to pose similar thought experiments. For instance: would you trade places with the richest person alive in the 19th century? The answer is: of course not. We middle-class Americans live better, longer, more fulfilling lives than John D. Rockefeller could ever dream about. One small example of many, JDR no doubt went to the best, most expensive dentist in NYC, but he was still a 19th century dentist.
Move that forward, and how many of us would want to turn back the clock even 30 or 50 years? No internet, no smartphones, no GPS, no streaming channels, no HD flatscreens, many medical procedures not nearly as good as they are today. Might be a tough choice. And back to the fifties or farther? No way.
Oh, and I almost forgot - no Viagra.
During the 60’s I was a big football fan and read Jerry Kramer’s book, Instant Replay. He briefly talked about black teammates being unable to stay in the same hotels as the white players in the South. Definitely not “the good old days”.
watched "maestro" last night. bernstein's wife dies of cancer. don't know what year it was, or even the decade, but the thought that went through my mind as she receives her diagnosis is the better treatment options in 2024 vs multiple decades ago. we take for granted so much that we have today.
Its likely that this thought experiment only shows that people prefer the known to the unknown.
Few people want to move around in location let alone time.
A good counterargument (?) would be that people choose to live in Texas. Or Eastern Oklahoma! Even Mississippi! Its easy to drive or take a bus and live somewhere else....but they dont. Life could be easier, safer, wealthier, better (?)....but they have little interest.
Theres no real reason to think that you are living a better life than JDR, or that you are any happier or more fulfilled than many of his compatriots.....just because its what you know doesnt mean its automatically better.
I think we are living better lives than anyone in the 19th century, no matter how rich, on objective criteria:
--Hugely better medical care - could write a book on that topic but I'll just say one word: antibiotics.
--Much better travel opportunities. As a middle-class American, I can afford to fly to Paris for a week. JDR could afford it, but it was a month long journey including two weeks at sea.
--Much better entertainment opportunities. I have a world of music and entertainment at my fingertips. JDR could go the theatre a lot and hire musicians for special occasions, but that was about it.
--I live in heated and air-conditioned comfort year-round.
--I have a fully electrically-lighted house, indoor plumbing that works, hot showers and clean clothes every day. Only a few of the very wealthy at the end of the 19th century had these things.
--The city I live in usually doesn't smell of sewage and animal dung.
I could go on, but I recommend the book called "The Good Old Days - They were Terrible." (available at the usual places)
People don’t relocate because they don’t want to expend the effort to learn what they would have to complain about in their new home.
Thanks for the comment about species.
I sometimes wonder about the level of "civilization" among the other clever animals on the planet. I don't think that the dolphins ever built cities or launched space telescopes or anything, of course, but our assessment of their social groups, language, potential culture, etc. is not only very limited but also based on their *current* populations, which we decimated before we started really studying them.
Imagine if aliens came down 10,000 years ago and killed 90% of humanity over the course of a century or two, and killed off most of the plants and animals we ate--imagine how much of our ancestor's culture and language and technology would be obliterated in that process. Would a second set of aliens arriving on the scene at the end of that apocalypse say of humanity "Oh, what an interesting pre-industrial people with a complex society" or would they say "look--some clever animals"?
Criminals went where the money was...and we can NOT have that!
It's very much the extension of the streets awash in guns. And poor policing--it's not like it is on TV where perpetrators are caught and convicted (all in one hour!).
Also--this middle age folks don't really remember how bad it was in the 90's. Any up tick is shocking. And if it's not bad locally, the local news will find something that is bad to show you.
I think the rise of security cameras has a part in this. So many crimes are recorded and thus make the news. And the local news nearly always conflates robbery, burglary and petty theft. So when there is a general story about a rise in theft they show past film of robberies in progress. Then they will show some politician saying this is due to the recent rise in the amount required to be stolen to make a theft a felony.
Back in the late 70’s I worked in juvenile hall in Los Angeles. The gang problem was really intense in those days. Drive by shootings, restaurant robberies, carjackings. The drug de jour was angel dust. People don’t remember those things.
I'm 74 years old, so I remember the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, and aughts. Every minute of every day, the world was crumbling before our eyes. Guess why? Because it sells.
I truly appreciate Kevin's skill with data because that is the best way to flush away the bullshit. Hail Kevin!
you're right, I don't remember how bad it was in the 90s. I'll give you high crime in the 70s and 80s, but that was receding in the 90s, which were pretty prosperous and the country hadn't gone insane because of 9/11. I would much rather be living through the 90s than the 2020s, which have been pretty crappy because COVID, if nothing else.
"There are straightforward technical issues to be aware of, like reliance on averages that don't pick up on growing extremes."
That's what the variance is for.
As for Somerby: the plural of anecdote isn't data.
Anecdotes ARE data. For research purposes they are not very good quality data, but they are often enough data to trigger a search for better.
The young female medical workers we overheard this Tuesday morning talking about the ways their relatives have dealt with various carjackings?
Does this Bob fellow not realize crime is sharply, greatly lower than it was 40 years ago (and lower than two years ago, too)? The problem of crime has been greatly mitigated over the years—not worsened. Anything further on crime reduction (in addition to picking up the low-hanging fruit of lead-soil abatement) requires adopting standard, rich country-style, common sense gun regulations. And for that, Democrats needs to win a lot more elections (in part to reshape the judiciary).
I barely know who this guy is, but reading out-of-touch drivel like the above makes me rather glad that's the case.
Is Bob Somersby living in the DC Area and maybe going to an appointment in DC? If so he's taking his local experience, and (yes car jackings in DC are waaaay up for complicated reasons even if crime is down most everywhere else.) and extrapolating to it being a national issue.
Just read through the Summerby excerpts again. This guy sounds like he's simply not in possession of an awareness of facts, or numbers, as Kevin says.
The only counter I'll offer is: If Trump wins, I really do think it's pretty likely we'll see a highly serious degradation of our democratic norms along Hungary lines, and maybe worse (Orban, after all, at least has the EU to contend with; what's Trump's moderating influence?). Hell, Trump's getting ready to hand Ukraine over to Putin on a silver platter, and he's not even the nominee yet, much less the president.
Now, inflation is finally subdued, and it looks pretty unlikely we'll go into recession over the next 6-7 months. And if that's correct Biden—despite all the angst in Democratic circles recently—is likely to be a reasonably strong favorite to win. Trump has to flip a lot of voters compared to his 2020 performance. Does he really do that with 2% inflation and 3.5% unemployment? I doubt it. AFAIK no party with a reasonably strong economy has failed to secure a second consecutive term controlling the executive branch going back to at least 1900.
But if Trump does win, people (Kevin included) are probably underestimating what will happen to our democracy, just like many of them underestimated how awful his first term would be.
(If Trump gets a trifecta, his obvious move is to lean on Senate Republicans to jettison the filibuster, then expand/pack the courts with MAGA loons, then he really is Orange Hitler. Or at least Franco).
One last point: in addition to Bob's worldview being fact-challenged, it's just a miserable way to go through life. I think most people underestimate the extent to which being a damp rag is a choice. Glass half empty isn't more accurate than glass half full.
Speaking of Orban, he has been blocking EU aid to Ukraine just as the Putin caucus has been doing in Congress. But his resistance appears to be weakening, and it looks like some aid from Europe may be on its way. Good news for Ukraine.
I think a lot of upper class American males of European heritage have a blind spot about things. If Trump is elected it will get very bad. It might get very bad even if Biden is reelected. Already we have the Governor of Texas practicing Nullification, it's like it's 1850 all over again or maybe even 1860.
I generally agree with KD's post--I come here for the data reality checks!--but I'm with Jasper in thinking he significantly underestimates the threat of Trump to democracy, here and abroad. I'd go farther. The electoral college is itself a threat, partly because it empowers candidates like Trump. Biden won in 2020 by 4.5% in the pop vote, but barely eked out an EC win; Hillary won by 2% and lost. In 2024, Biden could potentially win 52-46 and still lose. That is a serious distortion of democracy, and we shouldn't hand wave it away.
Similarly, SCOTUS is totally broken. It's not just that we Dems "dislike" a decision or two. The GOP has controlled the Court for 55 years! They now have a rabidly right-wing supermajority despite having lost the pop vote in 7 of the last 8 elections. They've gamed the system so that they might NEVER lose that, and this SCOTUS has shown it's willing to throw out Roe, the commerce clause, the Voting Rights Act (and the enforcement clause of the 15th amendment), reasonable gun regulations, environmental protections, possibly Chevron doctrine, maybe the supremacy clause. They are lawless partisans and reject precedent, text, and logical coherence. Basically, they want to make the federal government ungovernable for any Democratic administration ever. That's a BFD, as Joe would say. Kevin doesn't get constitutional law, though, so he's oblivious to the data.
This is a fantastic post, exactly why I come here every day. As you are aware, Mr. Drum, you are (very persuasively) arguing against human nature, so that will always be an uphill battle. But you’re obviously right on your points, especially about, er, human nature, and the requirement that humans engage their frontal lobes (Kahneman’s energy intensive, systematic, deliberative system 2) in order to overcome the imprecision and distortions of fast and efficient (and fun!) emotive thinking.
I’m going to play devil’s advocate here. I think the Bob Somerby’s of the world (which is to say, pretty much everybody) are indeed stuck in system 1 (for a lot of reasons I don’t want to go into), which is not a good place from which to assess complex phenomena or make difficult, demanding decisions. My take on the Bob Somerby’s is this: we do indeed have existential problems with the human race and our being and behavior on this planet that cannot be captured by any of the metrics noted in the post. These dimensions of the human (as you note) both predate civilization and are changed by it. I suspect that what Mr. Somerby senses with his system 1 thinking could be a a valid apprehension of existential and ontological, and highly problematic, dimensions of the human which he misattributes to proximate and easily identifiable, but wrong provenance. Those darn system 1 distortions.
What I mean is this. The human race is destroying the planet as we’ve know it for tens of millions of years; every biotic and abiotic planetary system - every single one - is in decline to steep decline. About this there is no debate; if anything official estimations significantly underestimate the speed and magnitude of the process. Will we solve this ‘problem,’ that is, the “problem’ of completely restructuring every human system - every single one of them, including our basic human nature - in order to not continue down the road to catastrophic collapse of Earth systems, a process we are currently well into? This isn’t WWII, where you ramp up existing production capacity and win a two front war against daunting but defeatable forces. This isn’t even about stopping climate change, which alone requires a complete rewiring of how humans - all humans - exist in the world. Big job, but theoretically - theoretically - doable. No - humans are destroying every dimension of the Earth’s systems, and show zero signs as a species of slowing down, never mind stopping . Key phrase - as a species, not as highly privileged members of incredibly wealthy societies. This is so well documented as this point as to be redundant. But it’s reality.
Even within this frame, I wonder about the basic assumptions of “progress” in terms of how humans actually live out their lives. What kind of a ’life’ is it to be staring into a screen eight hours (or more) a day? What kind of ‘life’ is it to live almost every minute of every day in sealed boxes where the temperature and humidity are controlled to a fraction of a a degree, where the ‘weather’ is always - always - “perfect”? What kind of a ‘life’ is it when people’s bodies - not just an unfortunate few, but except for a privileged elite almost all of them - become warehouses for cheap and overabundant and health destroying calories? What kind of a ‘life’ is it when the ‘freedoms’ of the dominant culture result in and equate to the destruction of everything non-human? What kind of a ‘life’ is it when dying humans are warehoused for years in dying pens, if you’re lucky well appointed with cheerful staff but regardless places of grinding, relentless, and isolated decay? What kind of a ‘life’ is it when people sit in otherwise empty apartments or houses in front of their TV’s hour after hour, day after day, and wait for death? What kind of a ‘life’ is it when the guiding principles of human existence, the ultimate goals, are comfort and convenience, no matter the cost to ourselves and, again, the non-human world? And I’m just getting started.
These aren’t “problems” to be solved. This is the human - again, all of us, the species, not just a select, privileged few - doing what it was genetically designed to do, as amplified by post-agricultural civilization, or in the current terms of “progress” working for the good of humanity. Yet after all that progress here is where we’ve landed. Which makes me wonder about the fundamental assumptions of “progress” and whether these assumptions, as system 2 as they are, miss something fundamental to not only what humans actually need, but to the real, lived effects of everything we accept and promote as “good.” And I wonder if humans have in their remarkable abilities gotten almost everything wrong. Just a thought.
sounds like we have a representative of 'crooked timber' here at mr. drum's establishment
The human race is destroying the planet as we’ve know it for tens of millions of years; every biotic and abiotic planetary system - every single one - is in decline to steep decline. About this there is no debate; if anything official estimations significantly underestimate the speed and magnitude of the process.
If the planet has been in decline for "tens of millions of years," let's not put the blame on humans. We're still working on our first million.
I put the blame on crickets. About this there should be no debate.
Can’t tell if you’re joking or really have the reading comprehension of a second grader? I’ll assume the studipidity, feels safer.
When I was applying for college in the 80s I did one of these alumni interviews which did me no good because the person I did the interview couldn't believe that I did not think this was the scariest time to be alive because of the threat of nuclear destruction from the Cold War. I made the argument Drum is making here, that everybody always thinks that now is the most significant time, but that the Cold War would probably fizzle because it was in nobodies interest for the USSR and USA to have a direct war. Being right didn't help me get into whatever Ivy league school he represented.
Today is a scary time for those on the left or center because a narcissistic sociopath has the admiration of at least 30% of the country and the support of another 12% on partisan grounds, and so a reasonable chance of being president again if things tip his way. We survived one term with only some damage, but another one sounds scary. Avoid that in an election this year and this looks like a pretty good time for America.
For many on the right this looks much worse, but for reasons that don't work as well in commercials and so we get the pointing to crime rates that are lower than in the 80s or 90s as if they are higher. But what really is getting worse from their perspective, and isn't likely to get better, is the acceptance of things that were not accepted until recently, like gay marriage, and abortion. Imagine their chagrin on learning that even transgender issues are at best a wash. It is only 20 years since Republicans got the gay marriage issue on every state ballot they could because it was a winning issue for them. Today, opposing gay marriage marks one as a bigot. For people who are old enough, and on that side of the issue going from something widely accepted to obviously bigoted must be disconcerting.
But at least here we have an issue where the right has it better than the left. While both are wrong that this is a particularly bad time to be alive, or to be an American, the right is at least correct that the things are moving away from them.
Well said. I do agree that the thing today that's unique is the fact that much of the country admires a vile man who is a fraud, an ignoramus, and a sociopath. Of course, this has happened many times before throughout history, but today we all have the tools to know better. And yet we're doing it again.
I'm not in the camp where I think the greatest danger is his "authoritarianism." It's the stultifying banality that worries me more.
At some point, the Electoral College, and of course, the Senate, will be a threat to democracy. The oversized power of states full of land but relatively few people will cross a threshold that will lead to some kind of revolution in this country. I do not know where this is, but it exists.
Currently the first-past-the-post elections for many positions withou ttransferable vote is much more serious problem, that really needs to be solved.
Gerrymandering is the secomnd most important problem for democracy.
The Senate and Electoral college are bad, but far less destructive then the lack of transferable vote, and not as bad as gerrymandering.
The lack of transferable vote causes the non-functional congress, which also allows the president to misbehave without worrying about impeachment, and judges to mess around.
Gerrymandering is bad both because the direct distortion of the vote, and because it cause non-democratic people in the gerrymandering party to have an advantage, so encourage non-democratic attitudes. That is true for other voter manipulations, but gerrymandering is the worst.
I think it is helpful to not base opinions on anecdotal evidence like people talking about car jackings (shoplift gangs talk was all out of proportion to the problem)
it is helpful to look at accomplishments by government , digby linked to https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/1/25/2219550/-What-Has-Biden-Done which shows what we can do...
Also sommerby is old and cranky
In any given year, tens of thousands of people are doing research on biology, medicine, energy storage, materials, and so on. The effect over time is a continuing improvement in human survival, living conditions, and overall knowledge. There is the continuing problem of global warming, but I don't see that being frantic is going to help, whereas a continuing serious attention might.
I went to the doctor yesterday.
As usual I am convinced I am near death.
The doctor could not have been happier with all my test results. I am in near perfect health.
That doesn't help. I could deal with existential crisis, but if there isn't any what do I do? There is nothing for me.
Nothing! It's a crisis of despair.
Really, this was my day yesterday.
dr google is not always your friend
It was a real live doctor I promise you, a human biological person physically present and actually there who palpated my abdomen.
"Unsolvable" problems are usually unsolvable because of too many conflicting constraints. You will only get solutions when you relax some of the constraints. Telling people that their constraints are the problem does not make you popular.
There are always constraints. For instance (not original to me) one way to rid a cat of fleas is to throw the cat in a furnace. However, most people are constrained by a desire not to harm the cat.
But, Kevin, given all that, things could be tremendously better than they are.
We know what they are and we know how to get there, but it seems none of it can ever happen.
Great post, Kevin, and I’d like to see you spread your wings like this more often.
I think you miss the generational vibe. We seem to be working our way through our own version of the 70’s. We’re afflicted with a can’t-do attitude. Or maybe it’s just a collective depression. Reusable rockets and a return to space, mRNA vaccines, electric cars, the Webb Telescope, AI. These are exciting times, or at least they should be. But somehow we don’t feel excited. We feel old and in need of a pick-me-up. Let’s see what the next ten years hold.
At times of the year the squirrels would gather out back and raid the bird feeders, spilling seed on the ground. A good feast for half a dozen, or sometimes ten or twenty, of the critters. I could watch from the window, but the moment I walked into the backyard the squirrels would run for the hedges or climb a tree or the fence. Except one or two, who knew as long as I stayed forty or fifty feet away I didn't pose a threat. For a while, they had all the seed to themselves.
Something about the evolution of squirrels made most of them skittish, even exaggerating threats. It's an important factor in how they survive. But some evolved to take more risks, even some they probably should have avoided, but they usually survived and reaped the reward.
We humans had our own evolution. Some are attuned to threats and that's all they see at times. Others ignore threats unless it's something imminent. There's some wisdom in each disposition, though too much one way or the other is a problem.
It's not a left or right thing. Take what's happening on the border in Texas. Some people see brown people coming into our country as a real and present danger. I think they're being ridiculous. On the other hand, I see Abbott defying federal authorities and the Supreme Court as a grave threat to the constitutional order and the country as we know it.
It's a weird time. I generally agree that we're in good times. We just ended a pandemic through the miracle of science. We have a greater shared prosperity than ever before. Ukraine, Gaza, and a few other hot spots aside, most of the world lives in relative peace. Yet we may be living in the last year of democracy as we know it. The trajectory of climate change remains pointed toward catastrophe. Nukes wait in their silos ready to launch at any second.
Why are the threats today frying our ability to cope? For one thing, we never before had the algorithms of mass and social media so finely tuned to make us freak out. But it's also about the stakes. We're not engaged in a great debate about the proper rate for taxes on capital gains. We're debating the fate of civilization.
I'd freak out more if I didn't think (and maybe it's wishing thinking) that we're going to make the right choice.
I think the algorithm issue is most critical.
Learning how to find and understand real information was key to my education. For most people today that seems not to be even a concept, the algorithms will simply keep feeding them whatever they already think about anything, or more variations on what they have already looked at, and the people least able to appreciate or care that they're being isolated like that are the most engaged with their own deception.
Paint it Black by Hildegard von Blingin',
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVCE6HqAPts
Learning to test your ideas against data is a huge lift for most people, including a lot of really smart people. It's surely extremely valuable. As in investing. That hot stock is almost certain to lead to ruin.
"At the same time, you can be deeply misled by ignoring numbers."
The theme of The Violence Paradox (PBS, Nova, S46:E22) is summarized in Steven Pinker's comment near the end of the episode: "We’ve done something right. Let’s figure out what it is and keep doing it."
The data he presents tell us that the homicide rate trended upward from the dawn of the Neolithic Age to the dawn of recorded history, and since then it has been trending downward.
The ignored data is the Paleolithic homicide rate when our ancestors were living in hunter-gatherer bands.
Our species emerged about 3,000 centuries ago. The dawn of the Neolithic Period was roughly 100 centuries ago.
My point is, if a person is using data to learn who we are, and they're ignoring 97% of the history of our species, is there a plausible argument that they are being deeply misled by ignoring numbers?
From what I can glean, the second lowest century-specific homicide rate in the last hundred centuries was the 20th century, and the lowest is the 21st century. Unless you look at the chart in that Nova episode that they flashed up on the screen for about a second where is shows a Paleolithic homicide rate that may be lower than the current rate, but it was definitely lower than any of the intervening 100 centuries.
Long story short, we are not naturally authoritarian. We are naturally egalitarian. We are a combination of nature and nurture. If our nature is egalitarian, which is what the all-in data set is telling us (I equate low homicide rate with more egalitarian), and nurture is based on an understanding of that nature, then our deliberate intent to pay attention to data is what we've done right, and the lesson is, Pinker is right to say, "keep doing it," except better.
Good points. Another data point where the 21st century is surpassing the 20th: aviation deaths. Yes, it's true that aviation deaths were zero for the first 3,000 - 1 centuries, but put that aside a moment.
In November 2001, two months after 9/11, a jet crashed in Queens, killing 265 people. It is the last commercial aircraft accident to kill more than 100 people in the US. In the decades prior, here are the number of such incidents:
1990s: 5
1980s: 4
1970s: 5
About 1 every other year back then. None in the past 22 years, during which only 7 incidents saw more than 10 people killed. Pretty remarkable improvement in safety.
Likewise, in construction projects. Canals and railroads were the worst. During the building of the Transcontinental Railroad, 1,200 workers died. During the Suez Canal construction, a staggering 120,000. In the world today, especially in democratic countries, we would not tolerate anything like it.
I had to google who this Somerby dude is. Short take, I'll stick with Kevin.
I'm cursed or blessed with a memory going back to the 1950's. I agree with Kevin, as I mostly do. Lots of problems then, lots of problems today.
At the risk of losing my liberal credentials, one vignette--Sen Scott and his fiance. You've no idea how unthinkable that entire vignette was in 1955.
Perhaps part of the problem is a shift in the nature of problems. The problems LBJ fixed with civil rights and Great Society laws had been around for years, decades, even centuries. Many of the problems we have today are newer and less defined. Give the country another couple decades for its institutions to come to grips with the internet, AI, and climate change and our society will be able to fix them as well. A day late, perhaps, and rather sloppily as we tend to do, but we will.
I think Kevin would like Hannah Ritchie's Not the End of the World
The Electoral College is not only a threat to democracy, it has actually thwarted democracy in five elections, two of them recent.
One of the hard things with data is that you can easily manipulate it by playing with dates or location. In the fights over whether or not we are headed for doom or living the best life ever, we risk missing real issues that could benefit from some interest in solving them.
Take murder rates, for example. Something is going on in many mid-size cities. While New York and other big cities saw smaller spikes, many mid-size cities have seen murders climb into rates similar (or worse) than the 1990s.
I happen to live in a mid-size city that is still dealing with record levels of murder. We had about double the murders last year as we had in the 2010's. It's even up about a third over 1995!
Portland, OR had almost twice as many murders in 2023 than it had in 1995. Minneapolis, which was called "Murderopolis" in the mid 90s, had 97 murders in 1995, their peak year. In 2021 they had 96. In 2023 it was 83. Back in 2013 it was only 39 (the bottom was 20 in 2009). St Louis had nearly as many murders in 2022 as in 1995 (200 vs 204).
I happen to think this is an important shift that should be looked at more closely. And when people in those states are concerned about murders, they aren't being ahistorical. They're not living in some weird outlier either - it's not a trend everywhere, but it does look like a pattern.
Maybe that's true for midsize cities. But large cities are not seeing smaller spikes on average. They're seeing declines in the numbers of murders.
https://www.axios.com/2023/12/28/us-murder-violent-crime-rates-drop
"Income inequality isn't still widening."
Yes it is. Wages are still not keeping up with GDP/cap or productivity:
https://www.skeptometrics.org/BLS_B8_Min_Pov.png
It's not as bad as the 70's and 80's, but the majority of gains in GDP (real or nominal) are still going to upper incomes (the path of the income of the 1% is way above the green line). Of course wages are back on the general trend they have been on since the 90's. In this respect things are absolutely not worse than they were during the Trump administration - in fact gains have been made in real wages. And of course they are far better in terms of growth of inequality than in the Reagan administration - "morning in America". This is the important thing politically, which the media have not been getting across in the face of lies by Trump and Republicans. In most respects people who think things are distinctly worse economically than before the pandemic are delusional, although there are always certain things that get worse, at the moment housing.
Political problem solving is episodic, depending on ascendancy in Congress. Big progress for the left was made in the Roosevelt and Johnson administrations when Democrats had supermajorities and racists had not switched parties. For the right some progress was made in the Reagan administration on the perpetual problem of corporations and rich people paying taxes (they still want more cuts). This was done without Republican supermajorities, but with the help of Democrats in Congress. Biden has actually done very well considering the slimness of the majorities and the opposition of Presidents Manchin and Sinema. But the non-cooperation of Republicans is worse than it has been for a very long time (pre-Civil War?). Progress could be made on several problems such as immigration if Republicans had good will.
As for the fate of humanity in the long term we still have the threat of nuclear annihilation, although it doesn't seem as immediate as it did in the 50's and 60's. But how can the problem of global warming be ignored? Probably the young, who are really going to have to face it, are more concerned than people Kevin's age. Kevin himself continually prophesies doom for workers because of AI, although this is because he is a Luddite. But nukes and global warming would not have been solved in any previous era, any more than the world wars were avoided.