Santows in Bologna (July 14th to August 7th, 2011)

Our main base during our 24 days in Italy was the city of Bologna, in the province of Emilia-Romagna, in northern Italy.  As you can see below, Bologna is not far from Florence or Venice.  It is also close to Pisa, Verona, Modena, and the Chianti region of Tuscany.  We visited all of these places before leaving for London on August 7th!

While Shana and I have both been to Italy before (we honeymooned there), neither of us has ever been to Bologna.  My UMD colleague Matt Sneider has traveled there many times on research over the years, and always waxed rhapsodic about it.  As you will see below, it is a lovely old city, and it is nicely situated for further explorations of other parts of the country.  Indeed, as we later realized, because it is a hub for Ryan Air, cheap travel to North Africa and the rest of Europe is at your fingertips!  The day we were flying out, we realized that we could have been in Marrakesh in just under 2 hours (how cool is that?).  Next time...

We decided early on that renting an apartment would be better than staying at a hotel.  It is of course cheaper, but it would also enable us to better immerse ourselves in daily life.  Since Bologna is renowned for its terrific locally-sourced markets, having a kitchen would allow us to make good use of them.  Our first choice was to swap places with an academic -- they would stay at our house in Providence, while we stayed at their apartment in Bologna.  To that end, we joined a couple of academic sabbatical websites.  While we didn't do a home exchange, what we did do worked out perfectly:  we found a wonderful family to rent our house, and a terrific apartment to rent in Bologna.  Mortgage and rent roughly canceled one another out...

Our apartment is right in the centro, near Piazza Maggiore, the heart of the medieval city.  Via Rizzoli, Via Ugo Bassi and Via dell'Indipendenza all meet at the Neptune Fountain, adjacent to the Piazza.  Via dell'Indipendenza leads right to the train station...and the rest of Europe, really.  Virtually all of the bus lines had stops on or near the Piazza, though the city is remarkably dense, and thus walkable.


In the map below, you will find the Piazza Maggiore roughly in the middle, just to the left of the two towers.  Our apartment is just south and west of the Piazza.

Even better, our apartment (with 3 bedrooms and a lovely little courtyard) is owned by an American photographer with two little kids, Elizabeth Garvey.  Elizabeth was a vital source of information, advice, and leads on babysitters!

Bologna sits at the foot of the Apennine mountains, in one of the richest regions in Italy.  It is also much less touristed (and thus somewhat less expensive) than Florence, Venice or Rome.


Do you like tortellini, lasagna, prosciutto, Parmesan cheese, and Bolognese sauce?


Then the Bologna region is your kind of place.


Do you like high-end shopping under shaded porticos?


Going home to rest between 1:00 and 4:00 pm, so you can eat, drink and chat late into the night?


Climbing ancient towers,  & finding extraordinary churches & public art in hidden piazzas?


Eating the best pasta, cured meat, and gelato in your life?


I thought so.


The first description one generally hears of Bologna is the following:


Bologna la Dotta:  the Learned -- it contains the oldest university in Europe
Bologna la Rossa:  the Red -- generally refers to the city's leftist politics, and its red-hued buildings
Bologna la Grossa:  the Fat -- because the city and region are obsessed with food


Is it any wonder that I was drawn to it?  Food, books, and leftist politics?  Sounds like heaven...and looks like it too, as all of Shana's photographs clearly convey below.

Santows in Venice, July 16 to 18, 2011

Bologna, of course, was to be our Italian home for just over 3 weeks.  But our first real destination after Paris was Venice -- for the Redentore festival.

The Redentore, like most Venetian celebrations, seems to combine the sacred and the profane (or, if you prefer, piety and party).  It honors the end of the plague of 1577, one of the city's worst.  In an age before clean water, contagion and public health were fully understood, cities were frequently devastated by plagues and outbreaks of disease.  This was true well into the 19th century, in the US and elsewhere.  Venice was particularly vulnerable, because it was an island, and it was so well connected to other places through trading ships.  The 1577 plague is believed to have been caused by flea-infested mice brought over on Venetian ships returning from Asia.  One popular story, perhaps true, is that the plague was brought to an end when hundreds of cats were brought in from Syria.  Many at the time (and since) think that constant public devotions by the survivors in Venice's many churches did the trick.

History aside, the Redentore is celebrated with a massive fireworks display, and a huge city-wide party, most of it taking place on a makeshift flotilla of boats loosely attached to one another.  What better way to celebrate the end of a plague than to drink and blow sh*t up?  How could we be in Italy, and miss that?

Shana, as always, captured the essence of Venice -- and our visit -- in photographs.  To see more pictures, go to

Our hotel, the Caneva, was a bed and breakfast near the Rialto and Piazza San Marco:

Maya, on our balcony over-looking a canal

A view from the lobby of our hotel

Venice, as I'm sure you know, is a remarkably unique city.  There are no streets, in the modern sense -- at least not any passable by cars.  Transportation is either on foot, or on boats.  It is also next to impossible to find your way around Venice without a map.  In my experience, most visitors just voluntarily lose themselves in the maze.  That's really the best way to see Venice, because there are constant surprises around every corner.   It is a heavily touristed city -- the permanent population is small, and getting smaller as the island sinks and the water rises -- but one can suddenly and inexplicably find yourself alone, if you wander far enough.

The Santows in Paris, July 7th to July 14th

Thursday July 7th: 


Our Eurostar arrived at Gare du Nord in Paris in the evening, and we took a cab to the apartment. While Mark was once capable of reading French philosophy and literature in the original language, his ability to actually speak the language -- which was never great to begin with -- was immediately tested.  If only I could just wave a copy of Camus' The Rebel at people, and smile stupidly...and have all of my thoughts and desires instantly conveyed.  Well, most of them, anyway.


Our apartment is well equipped, though very cozy.  The bedroom (which we gave to the kids) is light and comfortable.  Shana and I will sleep on the sofa bed in the living room/kitchen portion.  This will enable us to have access to the TV and fridge while the kids are sleeping.  We could also sneak out for a glass of wine around the corner too.


A few views of our Montmartre apartment, and its immediate surroundings, courtesy of Shana:

The kids, playing with Snickers and Rayna -- our constant stuffed companions on the trip (the animals, not the children)

The Santows in London

Day One:  London

We landed late last night (London time) after an uneventful flight.  We were greeted by rain (in London?  A tiger, in Africa?).

This morning...a private black taxi tour of Harry Potter's London!

Our tour guide and driver, a lovely chap named Dave, drove in from his home in Stratford-on-Avon just to show us around.  Among other things, we saw Sirius Black's house on Grimauld Place, the entrance to the Ministry of Magic, and of course Platform 9 3/4 (which is at King's Cross Station, a block or two from our hotel).

And just in case you think we Santows have an unhealthy obsession with all things Potter...there are already people camping out at Trafalgar Square for the red carpet premiere of the last Potter movie, which isn't until 4pm tomorrow!

Thoughts on Patriotism, from 2003, at the dawn of the Iraq war

A travel day for me, so I thought I'd give you the piece below, in honor of July 4th.  It is a talk I gave on March 26th, 2003 at St. Al's church at Gonzaga University, Spokane WA -- just as the invasion of Iraq was gearing up.  The occasion was a university-wide peace service.  I think most of it holds up pretty well, eh?

A 12 year-old school girl in Maine wrote the following essay last year for her 6th grade class:

“The American flag stands for the fact that cloth can be very important. It is against the law to let the flag touch the ground or to leave the flag flying when the weather is bad. The flag has to be treated with respect. You can tell just how important this cloth is because when you compare it to people, it gets much better treatment. Nobody cares if a homeless person touches the ground. A homeless person can lie all over the ground all night long without anyone picking him up, folding him neatly and sheltering him from the rain.

School children have to pledge loyalty to this piece of cloth every morning. No one has to pledge loyalty to justice and equality and human decency. No one has to promise that people will get a fair wage, or enough food to eat, or affordable medicine, or clean water, or air free of harmful chemicals. But we all have to promise to love a rectangle of red, white, and blue cloth.

Betsy Ross would be quite surprised to see how successful her creation has become. But Thomas Jefferson would be disappointed to see how little of the flag's real meaning remains.”

As an opponent of this war, and an American historian, I have spent a great deal of time recently agonizing over what patriotism demands of us. Like millions around this nation, my acts of protest before the war began have inspired accusations of disloyalty; even within the anti-war movement, many have said that all protests must stop once the first shots are fired – that patriotism demands that we support the troops, and unify behind our leaders and our soldiers. I do not agree. Or, at the very least, I do not share the same definition of patriotism, nor of ‘support.’ Indeed, it is my patriotism that drives me to speak louder now that the war has begun. The logic is simple. If it is right to oppose a wrong when it is being publicly contemplated, how much more important is it to do so when it is in the process of commission? “When a whole nation is roaring Patriotism at the top of its voice,” Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote, “I am fain to explore the cleanness of its hands and the purity of its heart.”

It is not those who protest the war who need to justify themselves. The burden of proof is on the makers of war. As former President Jimmy Carter said recently, “war is sometimes a necessary evil. But it is ALWAYS an evil.” I’d like to share my thoughts on war, patriotism and support of the troops with you this morning. This will not simply be a plea for peace; it will also be a plea to stop THIS war. I can’t help that. I apologize if this talk will seem strident to you, but I believe it is important for those who support this war, and those who oppose it, and those who aren’t sure, to understand how much in common we share.

Why do I oppose this war? There are many reasons, but among the most important is my belief as an American in the rule of law over the rule of force. Under the new Bush Doctrine, a bold military strategy of preemptive attacks–including the possibility of a unilateral nuclear first strike– is intended to prevent any state or group of states from challenging our preeminent role in the world. The war in Iraq is the first application of this doctrine. Preemptive war, however, is unequivocally illegal. This prohibition was incorporated into the United Nations Charter after WWII as the basis for a new system of collective security in which no state retained the unilateral right to attack another–with two specified exceptions: self defense and Security Council authorization.

All of us should consider whether this radical new strategy is good for our country and the world, and whether it best represents what this nation stands for. What would happen in a world stripped of the very laws designed half a century ago to protect humanity from the carnage of unrestrained force? Can pure military might really defend us from evil and secure our freedom at the same time? The passage of the USA-Patriot Act should tell us no.

Before it is too late, we would do well to heed Sir Thomas More’s advice on the rule of law in the play “A Man for All Seasons.”

And when the last law was cut down and the devil turned around on you,
where would you hide, the laws all being flat? Do you really think
that you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then?

Why do I believe that it is a patriotic act to protest against this war? There are two visions of America, I believe, with deep roots in our history. One precedes our founding fathers and finds its roots in the harshness of our puritan past. It is very suspicious of freedom, uncomfortable with diversity, unfriendly to reason, contemptuous of personal autonomy. It sees America exclusively as a religious nation. It views patriotism as akin to allegiance to God. It secretly adores coercion and conformity. Despite our Constitution, despite the legacy of the Enlightenment, it appeals to millions of Americans and threatens our freedom, in peace and wartime.

The other vision finds its roots in the spirit of our founding revolution, and in the words of the Declaration of Independence. It loves freedom, encourages diversity, embraces reason and affirms the dignity and rights of every individual. It sees America as a moral nation, neither completely religious nor completely secular. It defines patriotism neither as blind obedience to government, nor as submissive worship to flags and anthems, but rather as love of one's country and one's fellow citizens (all over the world), and as loyalty to the principles of justice and democracy.

The admirable obligation human beings feel to their neighbors, their loved ones, and their fellow citizens, all too often becomes confused with blind obedience to government. Most of the evils in world history have come from obedience, not disobedience; from conformity, not from dissent. Unity, stability and order are not the only desirable conditions of social life, even in wartime. There is also justice, meaning the fair treatment of all human beings, the equal right of all people to life, liberty and prosperity. Absolute obedience to law may bring order temporarily, but it may not bring justice. And when it does not, patriotism may require us to disobey the law; and citizens may protest, may rebel, may cause disorder, as the American revolutionaries did in the eighteenth century, as antislavery people did in the nineteenth century, as Chinese students did in the last century, and as anti-war protesters are doing now.

It is this second vision which is my vision, my patriotism. It is the vision of a free society. We must be bold enough to proclaim it, and strong enough to defend it against all its enemies, even during wartime. When he spoke out against the Vietnam war, Martin Luther King explained his protest simply: “I criticize America because I love her. I want her to stand as a moral example to the world.” If we do not speak out in protest, King continued, “we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.” With Dr. King, I claim, without pretense or apology, a place in the long and honorable tradition of those who demand that American ideals apply to all and oppose the efforts of those, from whatever quarter, who try to reserve them for privileged groups and ignoble causes. The most effective way to love our country, I submit, is to fight like hell to change it. Through most of U.S. history, this brand of patriotism was indispensable to the cause of social change. As the poet Langston Hughes wrote, "Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed. Let it be that great strong land of love where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme; that any man be crushed by one above."

Given this vision of patriotism, what does ‘support the troops’ mean to me?

First, 'supporting the troops' means preparing the nation as a whole to join with the soldiers in equally and justly sharing the burdens of a democratically declared war (though this is not, as of yet, a ‘declared’ war). This should include an ongoing public debate over the rightness, the wrongness, and the feasibility of this war. This means to me, among other things, following the precedent of WWII and initiating economic and fiscal policies that call on all of us to sacrifice, and that support the troops and their families. This would decidedly NOT include a series of tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, and punishing budget cuts in the programs which provide social and economic security for the American working and middle classes -- who provide most of the soldiers, and build most of our weapons.

Second, 'supporting our troops' means seeing to it that they have jobs, and the means to re-adjust to civilian life upon their de-mobilization. Recently, the Republican majority on the House Budget Committee voted for $25 billion in cuts in the Department of Veterans Affairs budget, and a $204 million cut in the Impact Aid program that supports the education of soldiers' children. 163,000 veterans of the Gulf War continue to suffer from largely unaddressed illnesses from exposure to the fall out from destroyed chemical weapons, ammunition depots, oil fires, depleted uranium and experimental drugs. I question where the compassionate conservative support for our troops will be in a few years time, when they come back home, and seek employment, a union contract, a safe workplace, a living wage, and a labor market and system of higher education free from racial discrimination. History (as well as the President’s budget) tells us the support of our troops will fall somewhat short of this, unless we speak up for them. Supporting the troops doesn’t mean abject silence. It means seeing them as real human beings, with families, with fears, with rights, with opinions, and with moral consciences which will be stretched to the limit by the nature of modern war. And as human beings who will hopefully live long lives upon their return.

Last, and most important: supporting the troops means speaking up on their behalf, and demanding that our elected representatives do so as well. The men and women in our armed forces are duty-bound to follow the orders of our commander-in-chief. That is their job; it is their citizenship duty, and they should be honored and respected for fulfilling it, in an age when too many of us see democracy as a spectator sport. I salute them for their sacrifice on behalf of our nation. I thank them for their willingness to risk their lives. Even as I praise our servicemen and women, however, I regret that the President of the United States has ordered them to start a preemptive war fought without international support. A preemptive, unilateral war is unworthy of the honor and tradition of the U.S. military. Our armed forces should not be invading and occupying other countries. In a democracy, it is we the people that send them to war; it is we, the people, who choose when to bring them home. They die in our name, and they kill in our name. To attempt to cut off public discussion once the war starts – or even to question whether the public has any legitimate say at all – both undermines our essential values, and jeopardizes our soldiers far more than any protest ever could. We cannot shirk this responsibility, nor can we allow others to fulfill it for us. We must speak up for the soldiers, regardless of what we think about the war itself. Do you want to know how to support the troops in wartime? Do not be a cheerleader. Be a citizen. Speak up for them, in all their diversity. When we silence any of us, we silence them as well.

The idea of 'support our troops' is troubling for those who oppose this war, because it is being used by many to hammer dissenting voices into silence. Given my definition of support above, I intend to get louder, not quieter, once the war begins. It is my patriotic duty to do so.

I would like to conclude with the words of Mark Twain:

“Each of you, for himself, by himself and on his own responsibility, must speak. And it is a solemn and weighty responsibility, and not lightly to be flung aside at the bullying of pulpit, press, government, or the empty catchphrases of politicians. Each must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, and which course is patriotic and which isn't. You cannot shirk this and be a man. To decide against your convictions is to be an unqualified and inexcusable traitor, both to yourself and to your country, let men label you as they may. If you alone of all the nation shall decide one way, and that way be the right way according to your convictions of the right, you have done your duty by yourself and by your country- hold up your head! You have nothing to be ashamed of.”

Cynicism, government, and subsidiarity

I cross-posted my piece on "Penny-wise and (Rand) Paul Foolish" on RIFuture.org yesterday.  The article below is a response to a commenter, who raised 2 points:

1.  Given the functioning of our public school system in recent decades, isn't my call for universal public pre-k overly optimistic, if not misinformed

2.  Rather than giving the IRS more authority -- since government does very few things well anyway -- should we just simplify the tax code? 

First, your point and mine with regard to the IRS aren't incompatible.  I'm all for simplifying the federal tax code.  It would cut down on abuse, and make enforcement easier.  Unfortunately, pols from across the political spectrum share the responsibility for having made the code so immensely complicated.  


Suzanne Mettler has a really important article in the latest issue of the Washington Monthly, in which she points out how tax expenditures and credits have essentially substituted for other forms of policy in recent decades.  My sense is that my fellow liberals are particularly guilty of this.  Unable to win the argument politically for a stronger and more expensive social safety net, or more authoritative regulations, tweaking the tax code seems to have become the apparently 'cost-free' way to make policy that liberals, moderates and many conservatives can agree on.  The problem, of course, is that writing the tax code with a dry erase marker means that someone else can re-write it...and when regs and codes get re-written, it is usually to the benefit of the privileged, outside of the light of public scrutiny.  The tax code is also an awkward and often inefficient tool for making social policy.

 If we simplify -- and lord knows there are lots of ways to do that -- we can return the tax code to its primary purpose, which is of course to raise revenue.  I don't think all purposeful taxes are bad, far from it (I like the estate tax, and a carbon tax, and many others), but simpler would be better...as long as the system retains its progressive nature.  Right now, in terms of actual taxes paid, the American tax system (federal income, payroll, state, property) has lost most of its progressivity.  This is in part responsible for the massive expansion of inequality in this country in recent decades.

Second, your cynicism about government (can we pull off public pre-k; govt spending is nearly always wasteful) was precisely what I was aiming at in my post.  I see the same sentiment from all sides of the political spectrum.  I think that kind of cynicism about government is factually inaccurate, politically dangerous, and -- to be frank -- intellectually lazy.  I don't want to get into public education too much here, but one gets a little tired of the constant laments about the poor quality of the system from liberals and conservatives alike.  The fact of the matter is that the system works well for the vast majority of American school kids.  Where it falls short is in the education of the poor, and students of color.  While obviously some of that is connected to flaws in how we've structured school governance and finance (particularly in cities), as much if not more of it stems from the fact that we have a lot of child poverty in this country, and that we geographically concentrate so much of that poverty, particularly among people of color.  The failures of our public schools are failures of political will, more than they are failures of government as such (in other words, the 'public' part of 'public schools' isn't the issue).

So much of our public discourse has shifted in this direction in recent decades.  One consequence, which I lament even if you don't, is the virtual elimination of liberalism from mainstream political reality.  Another, which we are discovering right now on the debt ceiling, the deficit, the Great Recession, global warming, etc, is that we have rendered ourselves incapable as a nation of grappling with the biggest issues we face.  Other than Obama's health care bill, I find it hard to name any large-scale issue that our federal government has fully addressed since the early 70s environmental legislation.  My point, in the end, was that people across the political spectrum should be able to agree on a basic point (one finds this consensus in other wealthy countries):  that government has certain basic responsibilities, and that progressive forms of taxation are the best way to pay for them. 

Personally, I'm one of those rare left-liberals who finds the Catholic notion of 'subsidiarity' convincing.  American conservatives often argue that subsidiarity is simply a call for smaller government, and more room for the marketplace.  I'm no theologian (I'm not even Catholic), but I think this is a misunderstanding.  It does insist that as many decisions as possible should be left to the local level, where citizens are more likely to be directly engaged.  But at its core is an ethical imperative for communal, institutional or governmental action to create the social conditions necessary to the full development of the individual, family and community.  That means larger and more interventionist government where its appropriate, with a preference for decentralization...but only if that best serves the ethical imperative. 

If American conservatives want to criticize poor government, fine -- I'm with them on that.  But when it slides into criticism of governance itself, they lose me. 

Wisdom on inequality from the belly of the beast

This, from Bloomberg today:


Federal Reserve Governor Sarah Bloom Raskin told the New America Foundation that economic inequality, caused by stagnating incomes for most Americans and rapid growth in wealth for the richest 1 percent, is hindering the U.S. economic recovery. She described income inequality as "destabilizing," because it "undermines the ability of the economy to grow sustainably and efficiently." “Finding ways to help more Americans safely grow their incomes and net worth in real terms arguably diminishes the destructive influence of income inequality by giving everyone a more secure footing in the economy and the same kind of flexibility and choice available to the more affluent,” Raskin said.


Raskin is hardly the first mainstream economist to see a connection between inequality and today's economic stagnation (Raghuram Rajan got there first) but she is the first one in a policy-making position that I've seen. Wage stagnation, income inequality and economic insecurity have of course dominated the lives of most American families for decades now, long before the Great Recession.  Indeed, one could argue (as Rajan and Robert Reich have) that the inequality may have played a major role in causing the economic downturn.  There is little doubt, however, that it continues to hamper our ability to get out of it.


Unfortunately, the best responses to the effects of inequality and income stagnation on economic demand -- Keynesian fiscal policy, a strengthened safety net, a revived labor movement, and so forth -- are unavailable in the present political environment.  The Fed can do little on its own, though one hopes that Raskin's clarion call is heard over on Capitol Hill...and in the White House, as the days tick down toward debt ceiling day.

Penny-wise, (Rand) Paul foolish -- or, why government often matters

It appears, at times, that American conservatives seem to even deny the possibility that government spending or regulation might actually save money -- either save the government money (a secondary consideration) or save the country money (presumably, the primary goal).  As I noted yesterday, there is now ample empirical evidence that environmental regulation (along with Medicaid) has decreased infant mortality; for decades now, scholars have argued that the 1944 G.I. Bill more than paid for itself as well.  Spending large sums of public money on high quality universal pre-school would reduce all sorts of other economic and social costs, both for the government and for the nation as a whole.  There are, of course, far too many other examples to recount here.

It should be said that cost-benefit analysis should not be the only rubric for measuring whether a government program, tax or regulation is worthwhile.  Take the estate tax, for example:  as Andrew Carnegie and Theodore Roosevelt argued early in the 20th century, the goal was in large part to break up concentrated wealth.  "The man of great wealth owes a particular obligation to the State because he derives special advantages from the mere existence of government," Roosevelt told Congress in 1906.  "The prime object should be to put a constantly increasing burden on the inheritance of those swollen fortunes which it is certainly of no benefit to this country to perpetuate."  The revenue it generated was a side benefit.  It is important for liberals to continue to stress that in most cases, most of the time, government works.  Post-New Deal liberalism was founded on 2 core ideas, both of which made sense to many Americans who came of age in the 30s, 40s and 50s:

1)  that disaster (economic, natural, medical) can strike any of us at any time, so we should be willing to share or pool risks; and

 2) that we can and should collectively build and maintain common institutions and goods through the instrument of government.  Like American liberalism more generally, these two assumptions are as conservative as they are liberal -- this explains much of their appeal, in fact.

While one can translate those two core ideas into a purely economic calculus, I think this misunderstands them.  More to the point, it ignores the fact that there are other justifications for government action that are valid as well:  justice, for example.  Public or common goods must be created, protected and enhanced, since private action is unlikely to do so.  And this must be done even if we cannot sufficiently calculate or determine a monetary benefit.  There is a danger, a slippery slope for liberals (and the country) in arguing that only a 'return on investment' constitutes a valid rationale for state action.  For one, if a healthy return cannot be demonstrated, it feeds public resentment of taxation (see my taxaphobia post of a few days ago).

One result has been a surprisingly bi-partisan denigration (and de-funding) of the IRS over the past decade or so.  Little money has been or can be saved by trimming the IRS budget.  Indeed, one can convincingly argue that a big chunk of the present deficit could be erased simply by beefing up IRS capacity, so it can go after individuals and corporations that aren't paying their fair share.   The Government Accounting Office (GAO) recently estimated that approximately $330 billion in federal taxes had never been paid as of the end of fiscal year 2010.  A good chunk of the tax evaders are individuals with "substantial personal assets" including multi-million-dollar homes and luxury cars, the GAO reported.   For every dollar the IRS spends on audits, liens, and property seizures, the government brings in more than $10.  If we spend less on IRS enforcement, as Republicans demand (and to which Democrats too often acquiesce), it costs us.  Obviously it costs our government revenue, but there is another cost, too:  it slowly undermines public faith in the rule of law.  Surely this is an odd position for conservatives to take.  A society that cannot tax itself, and that undermines popular belief in the effectiveness of government, will generate a politics that slowly devours itself -- like an autoimmune disease.  We have certainly reached this point now, haven't we?

The common assumption that any dollar spent by government is inherently wasteful simply flies in the face of evidence, historical and contemporary.

In keeping with this theme, Steven Benen of Washington Monthly usefully points us toward an exchange between Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) and Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) earlier this week, during a subcommittee hearing on funding the existing Older Americans Act.  Sanders made the point that spending $2 billion to prevent hunger among the elderly should be considered an investment, because it would ultimately save money (for the feds, and overall) on health care and nursing home costs.

Paul was incredulous that any federal program or regulation could be considered an investment.  "It's curious that only in Washington can you spend $2 billion and claim that you're saving money.  The idea or notion that spending money in Washington is somehow saving money really flies past most of the taxpayers."

The brief exchange is worth watching:

how inequality reproduces itself, and why policy matters

Nancy Folbre, economist at UMass-Amherst, has a thought-provoking piece on yesterday's NY Times Economix Blog, "Born to Lose: Health Inequality at Birth."

In the post, she summarizes some of the work by Princeton's Janet Currie and others, on the relationship between health disadvantages at birth, and future economic well-being and educational achievement.  


One of the most fascinating and important interdisciplinary research agendas of the last decade has been the effort by economists, sociologists and epidemiologists to understand how inequality is reproduced in the developed world, and how/why inequality matters.  To the extent that I have any optimism left about the possibility of a more just America, it is based on my reading of this literature.  Of course, as a theoretical and empirical matter this question (inequality) is hardly new; the reproduction of capitalist class relations has generated some of the most insightful intellectual work of the past 150 years, starting with Marx.


But this work -- typified for me by the vital work of Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett in Great Britain, and James Heckman, Thomas Shapiro/Melvin Oliver, and Annette Lareau in the US -- is different.  It isn't theoretical, at least not primarily.  Rather, it seeks to understand how inequality is partly rooted in such things as pre-natal and and infant health, the environmental factors shaping cognitive development, social capital, nutrition, exposure to violence, the correlation of all of these things with place, and the overall income and wealth inequality in the society in which children are raised.  It acknowledges the vital importance of resources, of course (family income and wealth), and the power that shapes their distribution.  But it also attempts to show us why and how a lack of wealth and income matters -- how it shapes places, families, bodies, minds, and ways of seeing the world.  In the context of the US, as I have argued elsewhere (and will argue further here in the future), the ubiquity of racial and economic segregation also appears to profoundly shape all of these things, and thus the distribution of primary social goods.  It is (and will be) my contention that untying the knot of metropolitan segregation is likely to unravel many more things.  But more on that later.


I see 3 absolutely vital (and interrelated) insights coming from this stuff:
1.    International comparisons (see Wilkinson's work with Kate Pickett) reveal that income inequality within  developed societies tends to have enormous impacts on health, culture and quality of life for all citizens, not just the least privileged.  In other words, citizens living in societies with great inequalities of income tend to have worse outcomes in terms of mental health, obesity, social trust, exposure to violence, life expectancy, and social mobility.  The statistical correlations are simply too strong and consistent not to be at least in part causative.  The graph below comes from Wilkinson and Pickett, and can be found on their website.  Note the strong relationship between income inequality and infant mortality, which appears to be recursive -- in other words, inequality leads to high infant mortality rates, which tends to reproduce inequality, etc.





2.  Policy matters, because those developed nations with less inequality (and the improved quality of life that seems to stem from it) are more equal because they have chosen it -- its not culture that matters here, or economic growth.  And just as the circle of inequality is vicious, the circle of equality is virtuous:  in so far as a society chooses to be more equal, it tends to be more willing to make decisions (even sacrifices) that will benefit the collective good.

Stories from the Kitchen Table

The US Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, chaired by Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA), gathered some fascinating testimony yesterday.

As part of an ongoing series of hearings on "Stories from the Kitchen Table: How Middle Class Families Are Struggling to Make Ends Meet," Harkin gathered together experts and ordinary folks to talk about the economic insecurity dominates the lives of so many American households.

You can watch the testimony (its about an hour long) here, and get written versions of the testimony.  The testimony of Jared Bernstein (Joe Biden's former economic adviser) is particularly worthwhile -- its one of the best short and sweet summaries of the economic predicament of the American middle class I've seen.

Conservatism, taxes and the defense of inequality

As Ezra Klein points out today, GOP leadership in Congress continues to stubbornly resist tax increases as a legitimate part of any bi-partisan deficit reduction package.  "President Obama needs to decide between his goal of raising taxes, or a bipartisan plan to address our deficit," said Senators McConnell and Kyl in a joint statement. 


One wonder where all of this will wind up.  The GOP appears to be wrong on both the politics and policy. Polls consistently show that most Americans accept that any deficit reduction package will have to include cuts and revenue increases -- with the overwhelmingly majority of them favoring increased taxes on the wealthy.  It is hard not to think that the GOP's baseline position is defined not by fiscal austerity or a philosophical commitment to small government, but by opposition to wealth redistribution and the desire to protect the economics interests of the privileged.  


In a must read article in Democracy, Jonathan Chait dug deeply into the 'taxophobia' that seems to uniquely define American conservatism in this historical moment.  The conservative movement's 

embrace of taxophobia is probably the most important development in American political life over the last three decades. It is the one quality that most distinguishes American conservative elites from conservative elites in other countries. They’re more likely to question climate science, more sanguine about people dying for lack of health insurance, and less xenophobic (which is rather nice). But above all—far above all—they hate taxes.

Political science research indicates that this taxophobia has been the prime driver of the growing partisanship on economic and redistribution issues among our political elites.  More profoundly, Chait argues, conservative taxophobia has redefined the terms of the political debate.  Democrats are the new fiscal conservatives, while the old fiscal (Keynesian) liberalism stands at the fringes of our economic discourse.  Despite three decades of evidence contradicting supply-side economics, its hold on the Republican Party has only strengthened.


Chait again:

The Republican Party inhabits an otherworldly new realm that even the staunchest right-wingers of a generation before could scarcely have imagined. As the two parties trade power back and forth, the ideological basis for economic policy ping-pongs between the old right and a loopy kind of far-right. Periods of Republican governance have grown increasingly disastrous, while periods of Democratic governance are largely consumed with staving off fiscal collapse.

Clearly taxophobia in the GOP persists despite the empirical evidence.  Outside the rarified air of the Republican leadership, there is little questioning of the role that tax cuts have played in getting us to this point.  As Lori Montgomery wrote when analyzing the component parts of our shift from surpluses to deficits, "the biggest culprit, by far, has been an erosion of tax revenue triggered largely by two recessions and multiple rounds of tax cuts. Together, the economy and the tax bills enacted under former president George W. Bush, and to a lesser extent by President Obama, wiped out $6.3 trillion in anticipated revenue."  Simply letting the Bush tax cuts expire on schedule (or paying for any portions that policymakers decide to extend) would stabilize the debt-to-GDP ratio for the next decade.  The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities provides us with this useful chart:

 


Clearly, there is a political and ideological commitment to taxophobia in today's GOP, quite distinct from whether there is any evidence for its effectiveness as policy -- indeed, policy may very be irrelevant.  It is hard for anyone with even a basic knowledge of the economic history of the US in the past 3 decades to maintain -- as the GOP does today -- that tax cuts will both generate revenue and put a cap on government expenditures.  So why the taxophobia?  Other than in the early 80s, perhaps, one cannot argue that pure vote pandering is the cause, particularly because the sorts of tax cuts the Republicans have consistently favored (and enacted) have been heavily skewed toward the top of the income ladder. 

the Cry Wolf Project

If you haven't heard about this yet, I strongly suggest you check it out:  The Cry Wolf Project is a network of advocates, researchers and scholars dedicated to demonstrating that, in fact, conservatives and business groups are only "crying wolf" to delay, prevent and weaken important and common sense regulations that save lives, clean our environment and make our families more secure.  The Project is assembling an amazing data bank of historical quotes from opponents of regulatory reforms and social justice measures.  As a historian, I can tell you that many of the fallacious arguments one hears today have a long pedigree; knowing this, and familiarizing oneself both with historical counter-arguments and evidence, is vital to creating a more just and equal America.

Good news for American workers

Some welcome news yesterday from the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), courtesy of the AFL-CIO Blog:  the Board released proposed changes in the way union representation elections are conducted that it says will “reduce unnecessary barriers to the fair and expeditious resolution of questions concerning representation.”


The changes are minor, of course.  American labor law desperately needs to be updated, with card check and other reforms.  Recent events in Wisconsin and elsewhere have made it abundantly clear that the decline of the American labor movement over the past 3 decades has not been the inevitable result of structural and global economic shifts, though these things have played a part.  Rather, it has political (and legal) roots.  One has only to look at union density numbers for other wealthy nations to see this.  While many other countries have experienced declines too, the drop has been particularly sharp in the United States.  Canada, which has different labor laws than we do, retains a union density of over 30%.  And union density closely correlates with rates of income inequality...which is itself strongly related to other seemingly unconnected social measures like infant mortality, life expectancy, mental illness, violence, social capital, obesity, and so forth.


But for those of you on the left who continue to insist that there is little daylight between the two parties, yesterday's rule changes should make it clear that the occupant of the White House matters enormously.  Where do you think the countervailing power to financial capital is supposed to come from?  Bloggers?

30 years of stagnation in 2 minutes

Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich sums up the implosion of the American Dream in two minutes...

My hovercraft is full of eels

Looking forward to using an Italian version of this phrasebook on our trip...

No 'El Bulli' for me, alas

The World's Greatest Restaurant, Barcelona's "El Bulli," will apparently close at the end of July.

I've never eaten there, and apparently never will.

For me this is somewhat akin to the Beatles breaking up, before I was old enough to see them.

C'mon, Ferran Adrià -- just a year or two more?

Ah well. At least I can watch Anthony Bourdain at El Bulli:

Peter Gabriel, me, and the anti-apartheid movement

I will be joining my best and oldest brother Dennis at a Peter Gabriel concert next Friday. Gabriel is of course an enormous talent, but no song has meant more to me than 'Biko.' Biko, as you may know, was a black nationalist student activist in South Africa. He was killed by the apartheid regime in the late 70s.

As a college student in the mid/late 80s, my life was consumed by the anti-apartheid movement. My friends and I struggled mightily to get my school -- Vanderbilt University -- to divest from companies doing business in apartheid South Africa. We built shanties; I addressed the Board of Trustees; I went on a hunger strike; we raised money for the ANC. While we failed, subsequent events proved us right.

During my junior year, I had the good fortune to be a student delegate to an anti-apartheid conference at the United Nations. There, I gave a speech about the student movement. I ended it with a quote from Gabriel's song "Biko":

You can blow out a candle
But you can't blow out a fire
Once the flames begin to catch
The wind will blow it higher

Enjoy!

Countdown to our European trip!!!!

The Santows will be departing for Europe in less than 20 days!

In the meantime, a little teaser:  Bologna!

Crowding out the Confidence Fairies

David Dayen wrote a nice -- and depressing -- piece on the state of our national economic discourse this past Monday in the American Prospect, I Ruined the Economy and All I Got Were These Lousy Tax Cuts.


The takeaway:
“Curtailing the one major consumer [the federal government] that is continuing to consume—it’s just a terrible idea, especially when you have a major demand gap,” says Michael Linden of the Center for American Progress.  Unfortunately, Dayen concludes, the Obama administration seems to have conceded that terrible idea; what remains is a negotiation over how 'terrible' to make it.


When the debt ceiling deal is done (or even if it isn't), it appears we are about to disappear into a Japan-style economic black hole.  One possible result of this might be a political re-alignment that brings to the foreground all the critical issues about our political economy that we have neglected for so long -- sustainability, inequality, etc.  A more likely outcome is that the American voters will respond by giving more power to those portions of the GOP that dug the hole in the first place, and who promise to keep digging.  The Democrats will promise to dig with a smaller shovel.  The shovel will be sold by an American corporation, but manufactured abroad.  We will buy it with a credit card.


The GOP leadership routinely uses the phrase 'job-killing government spending,' claiming that that spending crowds out private investment, thus destroying jobs.  Obviously the flip-side of this argument is that employment will soar with massive cuts in public spending -- essentially giving us the Republican position on the debt and deficit at the moment.  Of course, it is entirely reasonable for conservatives to question the size of government.  They believe that there is an inverse relationship between big government and individual freedom (and a robust civil society).  While I think this view is ill-informed in a modern economy -- it misunderstands the material preconditions of both individual liberty and community viability -- I don't want to dispute it here.  Clearly the conservative view creates a predisposition against public spending.  That predisposition plays a valuable role in public discourse.  Indeed, one hopes that people from all parts of the political spectrum desire government intervention to be efficient, effective, and only as big and enduring as is necessary.


But what is going on right now is not a debate about the size of government.  It has been said many times that budgets are philosophical documents; embedded within them are assumptions about both 'is' and 'ought,' and a path from one to the other.  David Leonhardt puts it well:

The goal of deficit reduction can’t simply be arithmetic. It has to be philosophical, as well. In what ways is the private sector incapable of planting the seeds of future economic growth — and what, therefore, must the government do? What’s the least amount of spending needed to ensure a decent life for even the most vulnerable citizens? Who is in the best position to pay that money? 

As I argue below, I think the present emphasis of our political elite on reducing the deficit is misplaced, particularly if we refuse to understand its sources, the logical remedies, and the vital role that addressing the present downturn aggressively must play in future deficit reduction.  Republicans are making a series of empirical claims that are demonstrably false.  Democrats -- the White House in particular -- has failed to challenge these claims.  Leonhardt makes a useful distinction between the "deficit we have" and the "deficit we imagine."  The one we 'imagine' is a deficit caused by "waste, fraud, abuse, foreign aid, oil industry subsidies and vague out-of-control public spending."  This view is fueled by the hyperbolic (and false) claims of the Tea Party wing of the GOP that President Obama has massively expanded the size of government, threatening the very existence of American capitalism.  The 'deficit we have' is caused by the world’s highest health costs (by far), the world’s largest military (by far), irresponsible tax cuts — and "to pay for it all, the lowest tax rates in decades."  One might also add in decades of wage stagnation for most American families.


The end result is that we continue to avoid the philosophical issues raised above, relying instead on demonstrably false assumptions about government spending, taxation, job growth, and the relationships between them.


Of course, we could just do nothing, too, couldn't we?  Take a look at the CBO's long-term budget outlook, below:





If Congress lets the Bush tax cuts expire (or offsets their extension in some way), implements the Affordable Care Act as scheduled, and makes or offset the Medicare cuts prescribed by the 1997 Balanced Budget Act — which CBO calls the “extended baseline scenario” — the national debt will be totally manageable, as Ezra Klein points out.  If Congress extends the Bush tax cuts with no offsets, repeals ACA and its cost controls, and protects doctors from Medicare cuts without making up the savings elsewhere (the 'alternative fiscal scenario'), then the national debt goes out of control.


Is government spending killing jobs, as Rep. Boehner and others assert?   If public spending were financed by large tax increases or high interest rates, this position might be reasonable.  But the Obama stimuli have involved deficit spending, with interest rates up against the zero-bound.  Given that, there is no reason to think that government purchases of equipment (or labor) destroy jobs, while private purchases don't.  As Alan Blinder has recently pointed out, business investment in equipment and software has been booming, not sagging.  While real GDP grew only 2.3% over the last 4 quarters, business spending on equipment and software jumped 14.7%.  There is no 'crowding out.'  Indeed, the more reasonable position -- take a look at the retraction of spending at the state and local level -- is that in the present environment, budget cuts are killing jobs.  In this environment, the 'crowding out' argument isn't relevant; it seems to be based on ideology rather than evidence.  Worse, the budget cuts open for discussion at the moment tend be from those (discretionary) parts of the government with the best track record of "turning today’s spending into tomorrow’s economic growth," as Leonhardt puts it.  But if one assumes that all public spending is wasteful, we force ourselves to wait (how long?) for some other force to magically generate economic growth.


Republicans argue that cutting the deficit in the near term (exclusively through budget cuts, it appears) will cue the Confidence Fairies, spurring investment, economic growth and job creation all by itself.  Of course, there are plenty of good reasons to doubt this ”expanding by contracting” theory.  David Cameron's Britain cut $180 billion from its budget last year; the economy shrank, and real household income dipped to its lowest level since the 1930s.  We don't have to cross the Atlantic for case studies, however.  Just take a look at our state governments, most of which are forced by their constitutions to maintain balanced budgets.  As study after study has indicated, state-level layoffs and cuts have deepened and prolonged the recession, overwhelming Obama's inadequate stimulus.  At a time when government at all levels needs to jump into the demand breach -- or at least not exacerbate it -- we have seen nothing of the kind.  Dubious GOP complaints of a massive expansion of government under Obama notwithstanding, our problem is very much the opposite.


Bond trader Bill Gross of PIMCO -- hardly a liberal -- essentially made the same case the other day, in a mid-month note to his investors.  Gross criticized the “anti-Keynesians” in both parties who believe “that fiscal conservatism equates to job growth.”  The truth, he says, is just the opposite. “Fiscal balance alone will not likely produce 20 million jobs over the next decade. The move towards it, in fact, if implemented too quickly, could stultify economic growth.”  What is needed, rather, is for government to "temporarily assume a bigger, not a smaller, role in this economy, if only because other countries are dominating job creation with kick-start policies that eventually dominate global markets.”  Deficit reduction "can wait for a stronger economy and lower unemployment. Jobs are today’s and tomorrow’s immediate problem.”


Deficits matter in the long run, but first we must survive the short run.  As Keynes once put it, "in the long run, we are all dead."


One wonders where the GOP thinks employment will come from?  Presumably we can all find work drowning the government in Grover Norquist's bathtub?  Perhaps this is what Schumpeter meant by 'creative destruction.'  Let's burn down the house, and groove on the ruins, man.  Sometime I wonder if they hope that the economic apocalypse that may result from debt default will itself stimulate demand, by causing all of us to party like there is no tomorrow in anticipation of the impending (Ayn) Randian rapture...


Sadly, the Obama Administration appears to have swallowed the idea that the Austerity Angels will soon descend, if only we give them the proper burnt offering.  Last week, several White House officials, including Director of the National Economic Council Gene Sperling, stressed deficit reduction as the primary component of their economic-growth strategy, and repeatedly claimed that reducing the deficit would generate “confidence."


It isn't entirely clear how 'confidence' is supposed to lead to job creation -- particularly when business surveys leave little doubt that hiring is presently limited by a lack of demand, not fears of regulation, taxation, and government spending.  The most recent National Federation of Small Business Confidence Survey starts out like this:

“The proximate cause [of the decline in small biz optimism] is the fact that 1 in 4 owners still reports weak sales as their top business problem. Consumer spending is weak, especially for “services,” a sector dominated by small businesses.”

Dayen usefully points out that since Larry Summers left, Obama's economic team is now fully controlled by financiers and political operatives.  The former, not surprisingly, fear bondholders more than they fear voters; the latter seem to view debt and deficits through a moral lens (rather than an empirical and long-term one), and believe that independents will only respect Democratic administrations that model 'toughness.'  I believe it was Groucho Marx who once described politics as "the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies."  Obviously we have profound long-term deficit and debt issues.  It is unclear to me how near-term austerity -- which will assure us anemic economic growth for years, while limiting our ability to investment in infrastructure and human capital -- can address this.  Indeed, cuts now will make it harder for us to address these issues, not easier.


I still maintain that this crisis has presented us with a great opportunity, a chance to plant the seeds for a new political economy, one that is sustainable in every sense (economically, political, ecologically, morally).  There’s a lot of slack in the economy and borrowing costs are historically low -- if the government financed this borrowing at the 30-year TIPS rates, we’d be looking at an interest rate of 1.79% as of last Friday!


What would those 'seeds' look like?  I'll say a lot more about this in a future post, but for starters:


*  Massive investment in public, universal and high quality early childhood education
*  An infrastructure bank, as Senator John Kerry has proposed
*  Investment in and modernization of our public health infrastructure
*  Real financial reform (see Simon Johnson and Elizabeth Warren)
*  Using tax incentives, regulations and the federal purse to expand the rental and cooperative sectors of the housing market
*  Moving away from sprawl, and racial/economic segregation in our metropolitan areas 


Do you hear that crunching?  That's your political elite, eating your seed corn.