I'll keep this short. I noticed that "tipping" was trending on Twitter today. I shouldn't really have to write what I'm about to write, and I'm sure most people reading this will agree with I'm about to write and have expressed similar thoughts to their friend and colleagues. However, based on what I'm seeing on Twitter today, it seems there is a non-zero chance that somebody reading this needs to see the following message.
If you don't tip your server at least 20% at a restaurant, you're an asshole.
Actually, that's not completely fair to say, because some of you reading this might not know the following fact.
The federal minimum wage for tipped workers is $2.13 an hour.
So, let's start again. Now that you know the information above ...
If you don't tip your servers at least 20% going forward, you're an asshole.
Those of us that go out to eat, are responsible for making sure that the people that serve us have enough to eat. We are responsible for making sure they have a roof over their head and can take care of their children. Nobody can live on $2.13 an hour, so those of us that go out to eat are responsible for bringing that $2.13 an hour up to a living wage.
I understand that the entire American system of tipping is stupid and it would be far better if restaurants across the country uniformly paid servers living wages and the practice of tipping was elminated. I'd happily accept higher prices on the menu at restaurants if I knew servers were being paid a steady living wage that did not depend on the tipping habits of the people they happened to serve on a given night. However, that's not the way things work in this country, and until the restaurant business does change, we need to keep tipping generously. I'll admit that it sometime feels unfair that people who tip generously wind up paying more for the same food/service at a restaurant than people who don't tip much, but I'm going to continue to tip generously, because I'm not an asshole.
Rich
Tuesday, July 31, 2018
Saturday, June 30, 2018
We Told You So
There were a lot a things I wanted to write about this month, but that will have to wait until later, because I've been pretty furious about the Anthony Kennedy news and I need to vent. I know it's pointless to vent, and I should really be spending my time doing something more constructive, but I don't think I'm going to be able to write about anything else until I get all my feelings about the 2016 election off my chest.
I was planning to name this post "I Told You So", but then I realized this would vastly understate the stupidity and the culpability of everyone who allowed the Trump presidency to happen. It would be understandable if so many liberals made the wrong decisions that allowed Trump to become president if I was the only person warning everybody. However, I wasn't the only one sounding warning bells - there were millions of us making the same arguments, and too many people simply did not listen.
Before I start ripping in to those on the left who allowed the Trump presidency to happen, I'd to address a post of mine that some of you might come across if you look at my archives. The title of that post was "Liberals for Trump". The title may be a bit misleading, so I want to make is clear that the point of that post ( written in January 2016 ) was that liberals should have been rooting for Trump to win in the primaries because he'd be an easier candidate for Democrats to beat than some of his more moderate and less crazy competitors in the 2016 Republican primaries. I still stand by this assertion, and the results from 2012 and 2016 back this up.
2012 Results
2016 Results
As you can see from the charts above Trump got a lower percentage of the vote ( 45.93 % ) than Romney ( 47.32 % ) got in 2012, despite the fact the Romney was running against charismatic politician with a net positive approval rating ( Obama ) while Trump was running against a politician with net negative approval ratings ( Clinton ). I'm certain that Romney would have improved on that 47.32% if he had been running against Clinton and Trump would have done worse than 45.93% percent if he had been running against Obama. I'll believe to my dying day that Donald Trump was the only major candidate in the 2016 Republican primaries that Hillary Clinton had any chance of beating.
This brings me to the first group of people I'd like to say "We told you so" to. The DNC and anyone who supported Hillary Clinton in the primaries should have realized that Hillary Clinton was a fatally flawed candidate. I've recently seen a argument on Facebook that Clinton was not a weak candidate because it took the intervention of the RNC, Russia, Wikileaks, and the FBI to take her down. Specifically, I saw this image ...
Well, I would counter that the RNC, Wikileaks, the FBI, and Russia would not have been able to take her down if Hillary has not given them so much ammunition. Anyone who makes a "but her emails" joke needs to realize the Hillary's email issue should have been recognized as a fatal flaw long before the first 2016 Democratic primary. This risk was as plain as day. I pointed this out in this post from March 2015. That's March 2015 folks, more than 10 months before the 2016 Iowa Caucus. There was plenty of time for Democratic establishment to point out Hillary's flaws and back another candidate that was actually - you know - electable. Instead the DNC, the Democratic establishment, and pro-Hillary Democrats continued on this Hillary-led march of doom that led us to children being separated from their parents at the border and at least two ultra-conservative Supreme Court justices for the next 30-40 years.
However, as upset as I am about 2016 Hillary supporters, my disappointment is tempered by the fact that I know almost all of them would have done the right thing and voted for Bernie in November if he had won the nomination, just like almost all the them voted for Obama in 2008.
The same cannot be said for many of the "Bernie-or-Bust" people who stayed home on Election Day 2016 or voted for Stein/Johnson. I tried my best to make it clear to anti-Hillary Democrats that they needed to support Clinton in the general election. In the the anti-Hillary post I linked to above, I wrote "this isn't going to stop me from voting for Hillary if she runs against any Republican", and when it became clear that Hillary was going to beat Bernie in the primary race, I wrote a blog post called "Bernie Fans for Hillary" urging all Bernie Sanders supporters to get behind Hillary Clinton. Unfortunately most anti-Hillary liberals had no intention of listening to me or any other sensible voices on the left. Because I like to think the best of people, I hope the most of the people I argued with ultimately decided to fight against Trump's agenda by voting for Hillary on Election Day, but it seems like too many of then wound up staying home or voting for Johnson or Stein.
BTW, if you were a Stein voter, I hope you noticed the photo I posted at the top of this blog post. That's Jill Stein sitting at a table with Vladimir Putin and Michael Flynn in December 2015. Congratulations, you've been duped!
While I was having vicious arguments with Stein voters on the day after Election Day 2016 ( vicious on their side - they called me Hitler and suggested I wanted to put Stein voters in gas chamber when I suggested that Stein voters were responsible for the Trump presidency ), they claimed that Hillary lost by so much that Stein voters would not have made a difference. Well, the statistics tell a different story.
In you are concerned that this guy just made up his numbers, you can see the full MI, PA, and WI results in the links below:
MI
PA
WI
All you Johnson voters don't get off easy either considering that Johnson got far more votes that Stein in those states.
Of course, if you voted for Stein/Johnson and didn't live in one of those 3 states, you can tell yourself that your vote didn't count anyway, but I believe if you contributed to the anti-Hillary climate in any way leading up the the 2016 general election, you are partly responsible for this Trump presidency.
I know I'm just probably wasting my time, because I can't change what happened, but I just can't shake this profound feeling of frustration with some of my fellow liberals. If just a small number of idealistic liberal Nader/Stein voters had done the right thing and had voted for Al Gore in 2000 and Hillary Clinton in 2016, President Hillary Clinton would in the process of nominating a Supreme Court Justice that would give liberals an 8-1 majority on the Supreme Court. Roberts wouldn't be on the Supreme Court, Alito would not be there, Gorsuch would not be there, and whatever ultra-conservative judge Trump is thinking of nominating would not be on the Supreme Court. If Nader/Stein voters had voted in the best interest of their fellow citizens instead of casting a vote to make themselves feels even more sefl-righteous than they already are, the Supreme Court would soon consists of Clarence Thomas and 8 liberals. Just think of all the good an 8-1 liberal Supreme Court could do. Instead, we are going to be stuck with an 5-4 conservative that could become a 6-3 conservative court soon if Breyer ( 79 years old ) or Ginsburg ( 85 ) have any health issues. Heck, it could even conceivably be a 7-2 conservative court; I did not realize Breyer was already 79 until I looked it up a few minutes ago.
I'm almost too depressed to write anymore when I consider the damage the Supreme Court could do in the years to come and potentially over the rest of my life. I guess all we can do now is make every effort to make sure we don't repeat the mistakes of 2000/2016 in 2020. If you are reading this, and have far-left family/friends who tend not to vote for mainstream Democrats, please start talking to them now to try to convince them to vote for the Democratic nominee in 2020 if their preferred candidate does not win the Democratic nomination. Those of us on the left may have our differences, but it is vital that we all get under one big tent over the next two years and show up in November 2020.
Rich
Wednesday, May 30, 2018
Mild-mannered
I had a revelation the other day while I was thinking about the 1950's Superman TV series. The original run of the show was way before my time, but reruns of the show were in heavy rotation on one of the local New York TV stations when I was a small child in the early and mid 70's. I loved that show as a child and still take pride in the fact that I can still recite the intro to the show word-for-word today.
I was repeating the lines of that intro to myself a few days ago ( something had reminded my of Superman ) when I started to thing about the term "mild-mannered" from the intro. Clark Kent was described as a "mild-mannered reporter", not only in the TV intro from the 50's but also in Max Fleischer cartoons from the 40s, and in many other depictions of Clark Kent in that era and the years to come.
As I'm sure everyone reading this knows, Clark Kent is Superman's secret identify. While it is an absolutely ridiculous idea that glasses could be an effective disguise, it has always been understood the the effectiveness of the Clark Kent secret identity relies more on Clark's personality than his glasses. After all, Clark is "mild-mannered", and nobody would ever suspect that somebody as mild-mannered as Clark Kent could be the same person as the heroic Superman. As I thought about this, it occurred to me that the Superman mythos that was cemented in the 40's and 50's is asserting that "mild-mannered" is the opposite of "hero".
I then started to think of how the idea of using "mild-mannered" as a slightly pejorative term was very much a product of the era of the 40's and 50's, and how the concept of masculinity was very different in that era than it is today. I'd like to think that plenty of people today would no longer consider "mild-mannered" to be the opposite of "heroic". To be sure, a lot of people still do, and it's unfortunate that a lot of people with 1950's conceptions of masculinity are still holding on to so much power and influence in society today. We need to work to change those kinds of attitudes in the years to come, because if there is one thing the world needs more of, it is kind, patient, and mild-mannered people. After all anybody who grew up with the mild-mannered guy below knows he was the real Superman.
Rich
Monday, April 30, 2018
We (not) jammin'
This weekend, I came to grips with something that I probably should have accepted at least 15 years ago.
My dunking days are over and they are never coming back.
To be honest, it's probably a bit of an overstatement to say I ever had "dunking days". It's not as if I was going to the playground and throwing down monsters dunks on people in my youth. To be honest, I never dunked on anybody, and I never dunked in a competitive game. However, I did occasionally dunk on 10 foot regulation rims while practicing. Sure I was successful in only about one of every 100 dunk attempts, but in my, mind each one of those dunks was glorious, and was perfectly willing to make 100 or more attempts in an afternoon until I threw one down ( but I would never try in a game, because I wanted to win every game I played, and I wasn't about to pass up a 99% percent shot ( layup ) for a 1% chance at a dunk ).
So, I wasn't a great dunker; I wasn't a good dunker or even a fair dunker, but the fact that I was 6' 1" and could occasionally dunk filled me with pride, and gave a naturally unassertive kid like me a little bit of irrational confidence that helped me with many aspects of my life. I'm gonna be honest, - if I had never dunked in my life, and don't think I would have ever asked a girl out to this day.
In any case, because being a "dunker" was such an important part of my self image, that it was hard for me to accept the idea that dunking was no longer in the cards when I got older. Back in 2008 when I was 38, I found myself in gym with Michael waiting for his youth basketball class to start. I instinctively ran to the rim and tried to to grab it. On my first attempt, my fingers barely grazed the bottom of the rim, so I tried again and again until I started to touch the rim with the part of my hand where the base of finger meet the top of the palm. Michael's class started after that, so I didn't make anymore attempts, but I tried to convince myself that if I'd had the chance to warm up a little bit longer I would have eventually gotten my hand up to dunking level ( with my wrist touching the rim ).
Anyway, I could barely walk the next day, and I was limping around with a pulled groin in both legs for about a week after that.
As you might imaging, despite my best efforts to stay fit, my leaping ability has deteriorated quite a bit in the last 10 years. My leg strength really hasn't declined at all, but my flexibility ( which never good to begin with ) is terrible, and I feel absolutely no springiness in my legs. What worse, I now seem to have a fear of putting 100% effort into each leap, because feel like one of my tight muscle/tendons/ligaments is ready to snap at any second.
This all hit home yesterday when I was playing in the driveway with my kids with the rim set at 9-feet. I was able dunk a 9-foot rim will relative ease as recently as last year, but yesterday I found my dunk attempts being rejected by the front of the rim over an over again. Eventually, after about 20 semi-tentative attempts, I foolishly risked snapping a ligament, focused all my jumping power with a loud martial arts kiai, and barely manage to get a successful dunk on the 9-foot rim. So, I guess I had a small victory, but it was a pretty pathetic victory, considering it was now just as hard for me to dunk on a 9-foot rim as it had been for me to dunk on a 10-foot rim in my prime. I came to the realization that I had lost entire foot on my vertical leap since my youth.
Of course, I really shouldn't be complaining. I'm been blessed with better health than most people my age, and I still don't feel my age at all when I engage in activities like hiking, lifting weights, or running on my treadmill. Still it's a little bit scary to consider the implications of our inevitable physical decline. After all, no matter how hard we work to stay fit, we all slow down, we all start to lose our ability to do things, and eventually we all ...
You know what? Fuck it - let's not ever discuss this again. How about that Infinity War movie, guys!
Rich
My dunking days are over and they are never coming back.
To be honest, it's probably a bit of an overstatement to say I ever had "dunking days". It's not as if I was going to the playground and throwing down monsters dunks on people in my youth. To be honest, I never dunked on anybody, and I never dunked in a competitive game. However, I did occasionally dunk on 10 foot regulation rims while practicing. Sure I was successful in only about one of every 100 dunk attempts, but in my, mind each one of those dunks was glorious, and was perfectly willing to make 100 or more attempts in an afternoon until I threw one down ( but I would never try in a game, because I wanted to win every game I played, and I wasn't about to pass up a 99% percent shot ( layup ) for a 1% chance at a dunk ).
So, I wasn't a great dunker; I wasn't a good dunker or even a fair dunker, but the fact that I was 6' 1" and could occasionally dunk filled me with pride, and gave a naturally unassertive kid like me a little bit of irrational confidence that helped me with many aspects of my life. I'm gonna be honest, - if I had never dunked in my life, and don't think I would have ever asked a girl out to this day.
In any case, because being a "dunker" was such an important part of my self image, that it was hard for me to accept the idea that dunking was no longer in the cards when I got older. Back in 2008 when I was 38, I found myself in gym with Michael waiting for his youth basketball class to start. I instinctively ran to the rim and tried to to grab it. On my first attempt, my fingers barely grazed the bottom of the rim, so I tried again and again until I started to touch the rim with the part of my hand where the base of finger meet the top of the palm. Michael's class started after that, so I didn't make anymore attempts, but I tried to convince myself that if I'd had the chance to warm up a little bit longer I would have eventually gotten my hand up to dunking level ( with my wrist touching the rim ).
Anyway, I could barely walk the next day, and I was limping around with a pulled groin in both legs for about a week after that.
As you might imaging, despite my best efforts to stay fit, my leaping ability has deteriorated quite a bit in the last 10 years. My leg strength really hasn't declined at all, but my flexibility ( which never good to begin with ) is terrible, and I feel absolutely no springiness in my legs. What worse, I now seem to have a fear of putting 100% effort into each leap, because feel like one of my tight muscle/tendons/ligaments is ready to snap at any second.
This all hit home yesterday when I was playing in the driveway with my kids with the rim set at 9-feet. I was able dunk a 9-foot rim will relative ease as recently as last year, but yesterday I found my dunk attempts being rejected by the front of the rim over an over again. Eventually, after about 20 semi-tentative attempts, I foolishly risked snapping a ligament, focused all my jumping power with a loud martial arts kiai, and barely manage to get a successful dunk on the 9-foot rim. So, I guess I had a small victory, but it was a pretty pathetic victory, considering it was now just as hard for me to dunk on a 9-foot rim as it had been for me to dunk on a 10-foot rim in my prime. I came to the realization that I had lost entire foot on my vertical leap since my youth.
Of course, I really shouldn't be complaining. I'm been blessed with better health than most people my age, and I still don't feel my age at all when I engage in activities like hiking, lifting weights, or running on my treadmill. Still it's a little bit scary to consider the implications of our inevitable physical decline. After all, no matter how hard we work to stay fit, we all slow down, we all start to lose our ability to do things, and eventually we all ...
You know what? Fuck it - let's not ever discuss this again. How about that Infinity War movie, guys!
Rich
Saturday, March 31, 2018
Trump's Tariffs
If you are a regular reader of my blog posts, you've probably noticed that I haven't written a decent blog post in quite some time. I don't think I've written anything that I'm remotely proud of since my post about California more than a year ago. I can't really promise that the post I'm writing now is going to be any good either, but I can promise you it will be unique. The subject of this blog post is going to be uniquely boring. I'm about to write about tariffs.
That last sentence may have lost about half my readers, but if you are still reading this please stick around, because tariffs are pretty important. As you might have noticed, the stock market has been tanking since Trump announced his tariffs on steel and aluminum, and I wouldn't be surprised if the economy as a whole starts to slump as a result of these tariffs.
Before going on, I want to make it clear that my opposition to Trump's tariffs have nothing to do with my general opposition to Trump. I've always been opposed to tariffs of any kind. I've always been in favor of free trade, which puts me very much in opposition to many of my fellow liberals. While I've never voted for a Republican, I've generally been happy with the trade policies of Republicans prior to Trump. The fact that Trump is going against the typical Republican position on tariffs, and Bernie Sanders supported tariffs in the 2016 campaign lends credence to the idea that tariffs do not need to be a politically partisan issue. Whether you are a Trump-loving conservative or a WTO-hating liberal, I'm hoping this post will help convince you that Trump's tariffs are a terrible idea.
Just to make sure we are all on the same page, I'm going to start by defining what a tariff actually is. A tariff is a tax on the importer of a particular good needs to pay to the customs authority of the country imposing the tariff. However, it is also possible the importer and exporter can reach an agreement for the exporter to pay the tariff or part of the tariff via a Delivered Duty Paid agreement. Regardless of whether the importer or exporter pays the tariff the importer will general have to pay my money to procure a product a tariff is being imposed on. Let's say an exporter in a country outside the USA acquires rubber balls for the equivalent of 89 US cents and sells them to an American importer for 1 dollar in the absence of any tariff. If the USA were to impose a 10% tariff on rubber balls, the importer is likely to spend more than 1 dollar per ball going forward even if the exporter agrees to pay all of the tariff. If the exporter was making a 11 cents per ball profit before the tariff, it's unlikely that the exporter could afford to make only a 1 cent profit per ball after the paying the 10 cent tariff per ball. It's likely that the exporter will raise their price a bit to more than 1 dollar per ball, which would effectively make the importer absorb some of the price of the tariff even if the exporter is officially paying all of the tariff.
In any case, the bottom line is that tariffs on a given product will generally increase the amount of money an importer will have to spend to acquire a given amount of that product. If the importer needs to pay more for the product, retailers generally need to pay more for the product, and most people would argue that this mean the cost of a tariff is ultimately passed on to the consumer.
In fact, the argument that "tariffs are passed on the consumer" is the most common argument I've heard from people who are opposed to tariffs. However, while this is certainly an argument I would often make against tariffs, I don't want the make a blanket statement that the costs of tariffs are always passed down to the consumer, because I can think of scenarios where this might not be true. I say that because a retailer will not always respond to rising expenses by raising prices.
One of the most simple examples of this how the owners of sports teams set ticket prices. For years, I've heard sports fan blame the players for rising ticket prices. They'll say something like, "If those greedy players didn't demand such high salaries, ticket prices wouldn't be so high." However, that's simply not true. Consider what would happen if the the salaries of all baseball players, were magically reduced by 90%. Would the baseball owners cut ticket prices by 90%? Would the baseball owners cut ticket prices by even 1%. No, they wouldn't, because there would be no rational reason for the baseball owners to give up any revenue. Sports team set ticket prices to maximize revenue. They will try to maximize revenue regardless of how high or low their expenses are. More specifically, they try to set their ticket prices in such a way to maximizes the value of ticket revenue in the following formula ...
Ticket Revenue = (Average Ticket Price) x (Number of Tickets Sold)
Clearly, lowering the Average Ticket Price ( ATP ) will raise the Number of Tickets Sold ( NTS ) and raising the ATP will lower the NTS. So, teams simply can't raise ticket revenue by raising ticket prices. There are times that raising ticket prices might reduce ticket sales so much that ticket revenue would fall. Conversely, there are times that reducing ticket prices might boost ticket sales so much that ticket revenue would increase. My point here is that sports team probably employ groups of really smart people to figure out the optimal ticket prices to maximize revenue, and those people have no reason to take player salaries into account, because the process of maximizing ticket revenue has nothing to do with the expense of player salaries.
Just like rising player salaries don't lead to high ticket prices, tariffs that lead to higher costs for retailers won't always lead to higher prices for consumers. However, they usually will, because retailer need to focus on the total profit they make from sales rather than the total revenue. For example, let's say a New York store owner sells 100 Mets caps a month at a price of $10. Well, in this case, the store makes $1000 in revenue from Mets caps each month. Let's say the owner is aware of market research that suggest that the store could sell 200 Mets caps a month if the price dropped to $7.50 per cat. While dropping the price of the cap to $7.50 would raise the revenue to $1500 a month, it may not be a good idea. If it cost the store owner $8 to get each Mets cap, then dropping the retail price of the cap to $7.50 would obviously be a terrible idea, because the store owner would be losing 50 cents for each hat sold. So while owner of sports teams try to set prices in a way that will maximize revenue, retailers try to set prices to maximize profit made for each product is a given amount of time. In other words, a retailer tries to maximize Profit from Product in the formula below ....
Profit from Product =
( (Retail Price of Product) - (Cost of Product to Retailer) ) * ( Units of Product Sold )
A tariff on a product will almost always increase the "Cost of Product to Retailer" for a given product. In the absence of any change in the retail price of the product, an increase in the cost of he product to the retailer will decrease the profit for the retailer. In most cases, the retailer will increase the retail price in order to get back some of the lost profit, but this won't always be the case. It's possible that the consumers of the product might be very sensitive to any price change. It's possible that even a tiny increase in the price of the product might push consumers to by a similar yet cheaper product. In that case, the retailer might not have any choice but to keep the price of the product the same and accept the lower profits. Conversely, it might be the case that the product is something that consumers find essential and many would be willing to pay more for. In that case, retailers could increase the retail price of a product after a tariff is imposed on it and make more profit than they would have made by keeping the retail price of the product static.
In any case, I'm not quite sure why I spent all this time writing about why tariffs won't necessarly lead to higher prices for consumers ( aside from the fact that I've always been annoyed by people who blame high-paid athletes for high ticket prices, and I wanted to prove them wrong ) because I'm undermining my position that tariffs will usually lead to higher prices. It will usually make sense for a retailer to raise prices after a tariff raises their costs, because when profit margins are low ( which they often are in retail ), the profit-per-unit gained by raising prices after a tariff will outweigh the profits lost by losing sales. For example, consider the example of the Mets cap I brought up earlier. If the 100 caps are sold a month at a price of $10 and each cap cost the store 8 dollars to acquire, the store would be making $200 a month of profit on the Mets caps. If a tariff is placed on Mets caps ( I know that's a stretch, but if Rudy Giuliani's campaign for president has been successful 10 years ago, and I guarantee you there would have been tariffs on Mets everything, regardless of whether the items were imported or not. ) and the cost of Mets caps for retailers becomes $9 after a tariff, the store owner's profits on Mets caps would drop to $100 a month if the retail price of the Mets cap was not changed. In this case, I think the owner could expect profits to go up if the retail price of the Mets cap was raise from $10 to $11, because raising the price to $11 dollars would double the per-cap profit from $1 to $2, and it is unlikely that sales of the cap would drop more than 50% if the retail price was raised from $10 to $11. Even if raising the price of the Mets cap from $10 to $11 dollars made sales go down by 40%, the store owner would make $120 dollars a month on Mets caps ( $2 profit/cap x 60 caps/month ) verses the $100 a month on Mets cap ( $1 profit/cap x 100 caps/month ) the store owner would have made if the retail price of the caps had remained at $10.
Still a profit of $120 a month isn't as good as the pre-tariff profit of $200 a month ( nor would a profit of $198 a month be as good as $200 a month if sales of Mets caps caps had only fallen to 99 caps a month after the retail price of the cap was raised to $11. I think it reasonable to expect some loss in sales for any price increase, so the store owner would not be able to recoup lost profit simply by trying to pass the entire cost of the tariff on the consumer ). The store owner would definitely be worse off after the tariff was imposed, as would the consumers who would now be paying $11 for Mets caps rather than $10. And that brings me to the main point I'm trying to make; tariffs hurt almost everybody. They hurt both retails and consumers, not to mention anyone in the import/export business. They only people who are helped by tariffs are the people in the USA who make the product a tariff is being imposed on. However, I would content a lot more people are hurt than are helped by tariffs. Take Trump's steel tariffs for instance. According to Moody's Investor's Services, there are 6.5 millions Americans who work in industries that consume steel, and only 140,000 Americans who work in the steel industry. Not only will these tariffs on steel and aluminum hurt a lot more workers than they will help, but they go against some of basic principals of capitalism the President Trump's party is supposed to be in favor of. Republicans have historically believed that the government should leave private businesses alone, but tariffs do the opposite of that. When a government imposes a tariff, it is picking winners and losers in the economy instead of letting the invisible hand of the market choose winners and losers. Trump's steel and aluminum tariffs are making winners out pf American steel and aluminum companies, and making losers out of the auto industry, beverage companies, and all other American industries that benefit by getting imported steel and aluminum at low prices. For that reason, I'm sure Ayn Rand's long-lost grandson Paul Ryan hates the idea of these steel and aluminum tariffs, but he'll ultimately cave-in and support Trump's tariff policies, because like almost all Republicans he'd rather abandon his principles to support a terrible Trump policy than face the wrath of Trump-loving voters in a Republican primary.
This is unfortunate, because if enough Republicans in Congress found the political courage to do so, they could team up with Democrats to take Trump's power to impose tariffs away I should emphasize that if Congress did take action to reduce the power of the president to impose tariff, it would not just affect President Trump, but all future presidents. This would be a good thing, because something that could affect as American lives as tariffs should not be in the hands of a single person. I know that very few ( if any ) Republicans read my blog posts on a regular basis, but if you are a Republican or are a constituent of a Republican member of the House or Senate, please considering letting that congressperson know you believe Trump's tariffs are a terrible idea for our country. I know it probably won't any difference at all, but there's zero chance these tariffs will be stopped if Republicans don't speak out against it. C'mon, there are probably more Republicans who believe in free trade than Democrats who do, so if these tariffs are going to be stopped, its the Republicans who are going to have to do it.
Rich
In any case, the bottom line is that tariffs on a given product will generally increase the amount of money an importer will have to spend to acquire a given amount of that product. If the importer needs to pay more for the product, retailers generally need to pay more for the product, and most people would argue that this mean the cost of a tariff is ultimately passed on to the consumer.
In fact, the argument that "tariffs are passed on the consumer" is the most common argument I've heard from people who are opposed to tariffs. However, while this is certainly an argument I would often make against tariffs, I don't want the make a blanket statement that the costs of tariffs are always passed down to the consumer, because I can think of scenarios where this might not be true. I say that because a retailer will not always respond to rising expenses by raising prices.
One of the most simple examples of this how the owners of sports teams set ticket prices. For years, I've heard sports fan blame the players for rising ticket prices. They'll say something like, "If those greedy players didn't demand such high salaries, ticket prices wouldn't be so high." However, that's simply not true. Consider what would happen if the the salaries of all baseball players, were magically reduced by 90%. Would the baseball owners cut ticket prices by 90%? Would the baseball owners cut ticket prices by even 1%. No, they wouldn't, because there would be no rational reason for the baseball owners to give up any revenue. Sports team set ticket prices to maximize revenue. They will try to maximize revenue regardless of how high or low their expenses are. More specifically, they try to set their ticket prices in such a way to maximizes the value of ticket revenue in the following formula ...
Ticket Revenue = (Average Ticket Price) x (Number of Tickets Sold)
Clearly, lowering the Average Ticket Price ( ATP ) will raise the Number of Tickets Sold ( NTS ) and raising the ATP will lower the NTS. So, teams simply can't raise ticket revenue by raising ticket prices. There are times that raising ticket prices might reduce ticket sales so much that ticket revenue would fall. Conversely, there are times that reducing ticket prices might boost ticket sales so much that ticket revenue would increase. My point here is that sports team probably employ groups of really smart people to figure out the optimal ticket prices to maximize revenue, and those people have no reason to take player salaries into account, because the process of maximizing ticket revenue has nothing to do with the expense of player salaries.
Just like rising player salaries don't lead to high ticket prices, tariffs that lead to higher costs for retailers won't always lead to higher prices for consumers. However, they usually will, because retailer need to focus on the total profit they make from sales rather than the total revenue. For example, let's say a New York store owner sells 100 Mets caps a month at a price of $10. Well, in this case, the store makes $1000 in revenue from Mets caps each month. Let's say the owner is aware of market research that suggest that the store could sell 200 Mets caps a month if the price dropped to $7.50 per cat. While dropping the price of the cap to $7.50 would raise the revenue to $1500 a month, it may not be a good idea. If it cost the store owner $8 to get each Mets cap, then dropping the retail price of the cap to $7.50 would obviously be a terrible idea, because the store owner would be losing 50 cents for each hat sold. So while owner of sports teams try to set prices in a way that will maximize revenue, retailers try to set prices to maximize profit made for each product is a given amount of time. In other words, a retailer tries to maximize Profit from Product in the formula below ....
Profit from Product =
( (Retail Price of Product) - (Cost of Product to Retailer) ) * ( Units of Product Sold )
A tariff on a product will almost always increase the "Cost of Product to Retailer" for a given product. In the absence of any change in the retail price of the product, an increase in the cost of he product to the retailer will decrease the profit for the retailer. In most cases, the retailer will increase the retail price in order to get back some of the lost profit, but this won't always be the case. It's possible that the consumers of the product might be very sensitive to any price change. It's possible that even a tiny increase in the price of the product might push consumers to by a similar yet cheaper product. In that case, the retailer might not have any choice but to keep the price of the product the same and accept the lower profits. Conversely, it might be the case that the product is something that consumers find essential and many would be willing to pay more for. In that case, retailers could increase the retail price of a product after a tariff is imposed on it and make more profit than they would have made by keeping the retail price of the product static.
In any case, I'm not quite sure why I spent all this time writing about why tariffs won't necessarly lead to higher prices for consumers ( aside from the fact that I've always been annoyed by people who blame high-paid athletes for high ticket prices, and I wanted to prove them wrong ) because I'm undermining my position that tariffs will usually lead to higher prices. It will usually make sense for a retailer to raise prices after a tariff raises their costs, because when profit margins are low ( which they often are in retail ), the profit-per-unit gained by raising prices after a tariff will outweigh the profits lost by losing sales. For example, consider the example of the Mets cap I brought up earlier. If the 100 caps are sold a month at a price of $10 and each cap cost the store 8 dollars to acquire, the store would be making $200 a month of profit on the Mets caps. If a tariff is placed on Mets caps ( I know that's a stretch, but if Rudy Giuliani's campaign for president has been successful 10 years ago, and I guarantee you there would have been tariffs on Mets everything, regardless of whether the items were imported or not. ) and the cost of Mets caps for retailers becomes $9 after a tariff, the store owner's profits on Mets caps would drop to $100 a month if the retail price of the Mets cap was not changed. In this case, I think the owner could expect profits to go up if the retail price of the Mets cap was raise from $10 to $11, because raising the price to $11 dollars would double the per-cap profit from $1 to $2, and it is unlikely that sales of the cap would drop more than 50% if the retail price was raised from $10 to $11. Even if raising the price of the Mets cap from $10 to $11 dollars made sales go down by 40%, the store owner would make $120 dollars a month on Mets caps ( $2 profit/cap x 60 caps/month ) verses the $100 a month on Mets cap ( $1 profit/cap x 100 caps/month ) the store owner would have made if the retail price of the caps had remained at $10.
Still a profit of $120 a month isn't as good as the pre-tariff profit of $200 a month ( nor would a profit of $198 a month be as good as $200 a month if sales of Mets caps caps had only fallen to 99 caps a month after the retail price of the cap was raised to $11. I think it reasonable to expect some loss in sales for any price increase, so the store owner would not be able to recoup lost profit simply by trying to pass the entire cost of the tariff on the consumer ). The store owner would definitely be worse off after the tariff was imposed, as would the consumers who would now be paying $11 for Mets caps rather than $10. And that brings me to the main point I'm trying to make; tariffs hurt almost everybody. They hurt both retails and consumers, not to mention anyone in the import/export business. They only people who are helped by tariffs are the people in the USA who make the product a tariff is being imposed on. However, I would content a lot more people are hurt than are helped by tariffs. Take Trump's steel tariffs for instance. According to Moody's Investor's Services, there are 6.5 millions Americans who work in industries that consume steel, and only 140,000 Americans who work in the steel industry. Not only will these tariffs on steel and aluminum hurt a lot more workers than they will help, but they go against some of basic principals of capitalism the President Trump's party is supposed to be in favor of. Republicans have historically believed that the government should leave private businesses alone, but tariffs do the opposite of that. When a government imposes a tariff, it is picking winners and losers in the economy instead of letting the invisible hand of the market choose winners and losers. Trump's steel and aluminum tariffs are making winners out pf American steel and aluminum companies, and making losers out of the auto industry, beverage companies, and all other American industries that benefit by getting imported steel and aluminum at low prices. For that reason, I'm sure Ayn Rand's long-lost grandson Paul Ryan hates the idea of these steel and aluminum tariffs, but he'll ultimately cave-in and support Trump's tariff policies, because like almost all Republicans he'd rather abandon his principles to support a terrible Trump policy than face the wrath of Trump-loving voters in a Republican primary.
This is unfortunate, because if enough Republicans in Congress found the political courage to do so, they could team up with Democrats to take Trump's power to impose tariffs away I should emphasize that if Congress did take action to reduce the power of the president to impose tariff, it would not just affect President Trump, but all future presidents. This would be a good thing, because something that could affect as American lives as tariffs should not be in the hands of a single person. I know that very few ( if any ) Republicans read my blog posts on a regular basis, but if you are a Republican or are a constituent of a Republican member of the House or Senate, please considering letting that congressperson know you believe Trump's tariffs are a terrible idea for our country. I know it probably won't any difference at all, but there's zero chance these tariffs will be stopped if Republicans don't speak out against it. C'mon, there are probably more Republicans who believe in free trade than Democrats who do, so if these tariffs are going to be stopped, its the Republicans who are going to have to do it.
Rich
Tuesday, February 27, 2018
Guns Again
I've written about a mass shooting at least once before in the past, but I haven't written about it in many years, because frankly, it's a depressing thing to write about, and the aftermath of each incident always plays out in the same depressingly predictable way; parents and friends of the victims call for more gun control, Democrats and liberals echo those calls, the NRA and Republicans oppose any gun control, blame the mental health of shooter ( if the shooter is white ) or call for more immigration restrictions ( if the shooter is an immigrant ) , and suggest that more guns ( in the hand of "good guys ) are the answer to the underlying problem of mass shootings. In the end, Congress takes no action, the NRA receives more donations, gun sales go up, and the next mass shooting in just around the corner.
Just about all of that happened after the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting ( with the one extra element of the GOP blaming the FBI, because the GOP has been anti-FBI since the FBI started to investigate Donald Trump ), but something else has happened too. The fellow students of the Stoneman Douglas victims have started to organize in a way the families/friends of mass shooting victims have never organized before. It is easy to be cynical about the chances these kids have to make any lasting impact on the gun debate in the USA, but one can't deny that some unprecedented progress has been made in the last week. Until a week or so ago, most people were not aware that lots of companies offer NRA discounts, much in the way companies offer AAA discounts. Thanks to these Stoneman Douglas kids, many more people became aware of these NRA discounts, voiced there displeasure to these companies, and many of these companies ended their NRA discount programs.* For example, last week I learned that every major rental car company offered NRA discounts, and now all of them are ending their NRA discount programs. I know that may seem like a really small thing, but it could potentially be one of first steps forward in changing the gun culture in America. When all those companies ended their NRA discounts, they were well aware that they would be alienating the NRA and many members of the NRA. They knew they were risking losing the business of NRA members. However, they are apparently believed that the risk of losing the business of people who despise the NRA was greater than the risk of losing the business of NRA members. In other words, these companies were more afraid of gun control advocates than they were of the NRA. If we can get members of Congress to feel the same way, we can really start to make progress in the fight for gun control in this country.
Of course, it could still be a long time before we can get Congress to feel the same way, because GOP members of congress seem to joined at the hip with the toxic narratives put forward by the NRA after every one of these mass shootings. I'd like to spend a little bit of time addressing some of those narratives.
"Guns don't kill people; people kill people"
I can't deny that if somebody wants to kill another person, there are plenty of ways to do it. Somebody could build a bomb, or stab a person, or start driving on the sidewalk to run down people. However, while there are many ways to kill a lot of people, there really isn't an easier way to kill a lot of people than by using a semi-automatic assault weapon. Building a bomb takes technical knowledge most people don't have, a knife or sword can't be used to kill people from distance, and a car is a tool that is not designed to murder people. A car could be used to murder lots of people if enough people are in close proximity, but the main purpose of a car is transportation. The main purpose of an assault weapon is to kill many things in a short amount of time. Yes, people do kill people, but with that in mind, why they hell would we every want to make it easier for people to kill other people?
"The real problem is mental illness, not guns"
This argument always makes me think of a cartoon I saw taped to one of my professor's door back in my college days. The cartoon had two panels. The first panel had the title "Crazy person with a gun", and showed a crazy-eyed man with an assault weapon firing multiple shots. The second panel has the title "Crazy person without a gun", and showed a crazy-eyed man with his fingers in the shape of a gun shouting "BANG! BANG! BANG!".
"If you outlaw guns, only the outlaws will have guns"
Well, first of all, most people in favor of gun control are not in favor of outlawing all guns. Many gun control advocates would like assault weapons like AR-15s banned. Presented with that fact, I think that many advocates for gun rights might responds with a quote like "If you outlaw AR-15s, only outlaws will have AR-15s". However that revised quote would not be accurate either, because if AR-15s were outlawed, police SWAT teams and the armed forces would still have access to AR-15s and guns with far more firepower than AR-15s.". I know that some people feel they need an AR-15 for home-protection, but feel like guns like that should be left in the hands of trained professionals ( I'll comment more on this in the "good guy with a gun" section below ).
The second point I want to make here is that every single illegal gun on the street was originally a legal gun ( There could be an extremely rare exception of a criminal who crafts guns from scratch, but c'mon, I don't see why a criminal would do that when so many gun are in circulation ). A certain percentage of legal guns manufactured get bought/sold/stolen illegally and become illegal guns. If the gun industry keeps manufacturinglegal guns at the pace they are making them, there will inevitably be more illegal guns on the street. Outlawing sales of assault weapons to civilians won't take assault weapons out of the hands of criminal, but it help dry up the supply of illegal assault weapons for criminals. Why wouldn't we want to dry up the supply of illegal assault weapons and give our law enforcement officers ( who would still have legal access to assault weapons ) a fighting chance?
"The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun."
We've been hearing variations of this one a lot lately. People have called for arming school security guards, and Donald Trump has suggested that school shootings could be prevented by arming a certain percentage of teachers.
There are so many problems with the "good guy with a gun" idea, that I barely know where to begin.
Let me start by conceding there are certain isolated scenarios in which a teacher or a security guard with a gun could save the lives of students. For example, if a teacher and students were cornered by a school shooter, and there was no way to escape, I'm sure that a teacher with a gun would have a better chance to save students than a teacher without a gun. However, the benefit of having guns for self-defense in schools in that very specific scenario is far outweighed by the dangers posed by having guns in schools on a daily basis.
While an armed teacher or a security guard could potentially save students in a school shooting situation, it is far more likely that the "good guy with a gun" is going to wind up getting more people killed. If you look up statistics on "friendly fire" in the military or statistics on shooting accuracy for police ( This study indicates that police only hit their targets 18% of the time in a gunfight ), you'll see that even trained professions have a hard time hitting their targets in high stress situations. In a school shooting situations, it is reasonable to expect that teachers or security guards wielding guns would have terrible accuracy. There is a great chance that more children would die in the crossfire if a teacher or security guard tried to play Rambo, and even a greater chance that a teacher or security guard trying to be a hero would be gunned down by the first police officer who saw them wandering the halls with a gun in a school shooting scenario.
In addition to the issues that would be introduced by additional gun-firing individuals in a school shooting situation, having guns in schools on a daily basis will almost certainly lead to additional shooting incidents in schools. Teachers and security guards are human being with human flaws. They have the potential to lose their temper or become mentally unstable. There also have the potential to get an "itchy trigger finger" and shoot people when they mistake minor problems for serious threats. There are already far too many unarmed people shot each year by trained law enforcement professionals. I'd hate to think about how many people could be shot in schools by teacher of security guards who are asked to "play cop" without the training a cop receives.
I hear the next two narratives a lot when a Democrat happens to be in a Oval Office. For the next two narratives, I'm going to address the people who hold these view directly in blue text.
"I need guns to protect me from government tyranny"
The federal government has far more powerful guns than the ones you might have stashed in your basement. The federal government also has tanks, fighter jets, Apache Helicopters, drones, and various bombs and missiles at its disposal. Your private stash of guns is not going to be able to protect you from any of that. If the federal governments wants to impose their will on you, you will not be able to stop. If the federal government wanted you dead, you would have been dead yesterday. When it comes to stopping tyranny, a ballot in your hand is a far more effective tool than a gun in your hand..
"I'll give ups my guns when the President gives up his Secret Service protection"
The President needs armed Secret Service protection because there are millions of people all over the world who would like to kill him.
Nobody wants to murder your sorry ass.
"The government can't regulate my guns because of the 2nd Amendment"
2nd Amendment : A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
Rich
* I don't know if any of the Stoneman Douglas kids were directly responsible for spreading the word about NRA discount programs, but I'm sure that information would not been publicized last week if the Stoneman Douglas kids had not shined a light on the NRA.
Just about all of that happened after the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting ( with the one extra element of the GOP blaming the FBI, because the GOP has been anti-FBI since the FBI started to investigate Donald Trump ), but something else has happened too. The fellow students of the Stoneman Douglas victims have started to organize in a way the families/friends of mass shooting victims have never organized before. It is easy to be cynical about the chances these kids have to make any lasting impact on the gun debate in the USA, but one can't deny that some unprecedented progress has been made in the last week. Until a week or so ago, most people were not aware that lots of companies offer NRA discounts, much in the way companies offer AAA discounts. Thanks to these Stoneman Douglas kids, many more people became aware of these NRA discounts, voiced there displeasure to these companies, and many of these companies ended their NRA discount programs.* For example, last week I learned that every major rental car company offered NRA discounts, and now all of them are ending their NRA discount programs. I know that may seem like a really small thing, but it could potentially be one of first steps forward in changing the gun culture in America. When all those companies ended their NRA discounts, they were well aware that they would be alienating the NRA and many members of the NRA. They knew they were risking losing the business of NRA members. However, they are apparently believed that the risk of losing the business of people who despise the NRA was greater than the risk of losing the business of NRA members. In other words, these companies were more afraid of gun control advocates than they were of the NRA. If we can get members of Congress to feel the same way, we can really start to make progress in the fight for gun control in this country.
Of course, it could still be a long time before we can get Congress to feel the same way, because GOP members of congress seem to joined at the hip with the toxic narratives put forward by the NRA after every one of these mass shootings. I'd like to spend a little bit of time addressing some of those narratives.
"Guns don't kill people; people kill people"
I can't deny that if somebody wants to kill another person, there are plenty of ways to do it. Somebody could build a bomb, or stab a person, or start driving on the sidewalk to run down people. However, while there are many ways to kill a lot of people, there really isn't an easier way to kill a lot of people than by using a semi-automatic assault weapon. Building a bomb takes technical knowledge most people don't have, a knife or sword can't be used to kill people from distance, and a car is a tool that is not designed to murder people. A car could be used to murder lots of people if enough people are in close proximity, but the main purpose of a car is transportation. The main purpose of an assault weapon is to kill many things in a short amount of time. Yes, people do kill people, but with that in mind, why they hell would we every want to make it easier for people to kill other people?
"The real problem is mental illness, not guns"
This argument always makes me think of a cartoon I saw taped to one of my professor's door back in my college days. The cartoon had two panels. The first panel had the title "Crazy person with a gun", and showed a crazy-eyed man with an assault weapon firing multiple shots. The second panel has the title "Crazy person without a gun", and showed a crazy-eyed man with his fingers in the shape of a gun shouting "BANG! BANG! BANG!".
"If you outlaw guns, only the outlaws will have guns"
Well, first of all, most people in favor of gun control are not in favor of outlawing all guns. Many gun control advocates would like assault weapons like AR-15s banned. Presented with that fact, I think that many advocates for gun rights might responds with a quote like "If you outlaw AR-15s, only outlaws will have AR-15s". However that revised quote would not be accurate either, because if AR-15s were outlawed, police SWAT teams and the armed forces would still have access to AR-15s and guns with far more firepower than AR-15s.". I know that some people feel they need an AR-15 for home-protection, but feel like guns like that should be left in the hands of trained professionals ( I'll comment more on this in the "good guy with a gun" section below ).
The second point I want to make here is that every single illegal gun on the street was originally a legal gun ( There could be an extremely rare exception of a criminal who crafts guns from scratch, but c'mon, I don't see why a criminal would do that when so many gun are in circulation ). A certain percentage of legal guns manufactured get bought/sold/stolen illegally and become illegal guns. If the gun industry keeps manufacturinglegal guns at the pace they are making them, there will inevitably be more illegal guns on the street. Outlawing sales of assault weapons to civilians won't take assault weapons out of the hands of criminal, but it help dry up the supply of illegal assault weapons for criminals. Why wouldn't we want to dry up the supply of illegal assault weapons and give our law enforcement officers ( who would still have legal access to assault weapons ) a fighting chance?
"The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun."
We've been hearing variations of this one a lot lately. People have called for arming school security guards, and Donald Trump has suggested that school shootings could be prevented by arming a certain percentage of teachers.
There are so many problems with the "good guy with a gun" idea, that I barely know where to begin.
Let me start by conceding there are certain isolated scenarios in which a teacher or a security guard with a gun could save the lives of students. For example, if a teacher and students were cornered by a school shooter, and there was no way to escape, I'm sure that a teacher with a gun would have a better chance to save students than a teacher without a gun. However, the benefit of having guns for self-defense in schools in that very specific scenario is far outweighed by the dangers posed by having guns in schools on a daily basis.
While an armed teacher or a security guard could potentially save students in a school shooting situation, it is far more likely that the "good guy with a gun" is going to wind up getting more people killed. If you look up statistics on "friendly fire" in the military or statistics on shooting accuracy for police ( This study indicates that police only hit their targets 18% of the time in a gunfight ), you'll see that even trained professions have a hard time hitting their targets in high stress situations. In a school shooting situations, it is reasonable to expect that teachers or security guards wielding guns would have terrible accuracy. There is a great chance that more children would die in the crossfire if a teacher or security guard tried to play Rambo, and even a greater chance that a teacher or security guard trying to be a hero would be gunned down by the first police officer who saw them wandering the halls with a gun in a school shooting scenario.
In addition to the issues that would be introduced by additional gun-firing individuals in a school shooting situation, having guns in schools on a daily basis will almost certainly lead to additional shooting incidents in schools. Teachers and security guards are human being with human flaws. They have the potential to lose their temper or become mentally unstable. There also have the potential to get an "itchy trigger finger" and shoot people when they mistake minor problems for serious threats. There are already far too many unarmed people shot each year by trained law enforcement professionals. I'd hate to think about how many people could be shot in schools by teacher of security guards who are asked to "play cop" without the training a cop receives.
I hear the next two narratives a lot when a Democrat happens to be in a Oval Office. For the next two narratives, I'm going to address the people who hold these view directly in blue text.
"I need guns to protect me from government tyranny"
The federal government has far more powerful guns than the ones you might have stashed in your basement. The federal government also has tanks, fighter jets, Apache Helicopters, drones, and various bombs and missiles at its disposal. Your private stash of guns is not going to be able to protect you from any of that. If the federal governments wants to impose their will on you, you will not be able to stop. If the federal government wanted you dead, you would have been dead yesterday. When it comes to stopping tyranny, a ballot in your hand is a far more effective tool than a gun in your hand..
"I'll give ups my guns when the President gives up his Secret Service protection"
The President needs armed Secret Service protection because there are millions of people all over the world who would like to kill him.
Nobody wants to murder your sorry ass.
"The government can't regulate my guns because of the 2nd Amendment"
2nd Amendment : A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
Rich
* I don't know if any of the Stoneman Douglas kids were directly responsible for spreading the word about NRA discount programs, but I'm sure that information would not been publicized last week if the Stoneman Douglas kids had not shined a light on the NRA.
Tuesday, January 30, 2018
What is America?
I've been writing at least one blog post a month for nearly a decade now, and it has generally been a joy to write each post. However, that has really changed over the last year. I like to write stuff related to current events, but current events have just been so damned dreary lately. With that in mind, I've decided to write about something positive this month. So instead of commenting on current events this month, I'm just going to attempt to answer the question below.
What is America?
Before attempting to answer this question, let me make it clear that in the context of this question, "America" represents the United States of America.
So, that being said, in the most literal sense, one could define America to simply be the land mass consisting of the 50 states. However, I've never considered America to be defined by its territory, or the by people who live within its boarders at any given time. I've always considered America to be an idea.
America is the idea that anyone in the world can be an American. Well, I guess that's not entirely true, but to paraphrase Anton Ego, not everyone can become an American, but a great American can come from anywhere. I know a lot of people in Trump's America believe immigration dilutes America's greatness, but I believe immigration is the engine that drives American greatness. I feel that nobody is more American than somebody who is willing to uproot their lives in another country to come to America. Natural born American citizens often take citizenship for granted because they never made a conscious choice to be American. I'm not saying that natural born American don't love America, but is it a different kind of love than the love immigrants have. A natural born American loves America the way a child loves a parent. An American immigrant loves America with the kind of passion one might feel for a sweetheart. I'm not saying that people who were born in the USA don't love their native country deeply, but the love you choose always comes with more passion. For our country to stay strong, we need new immigrants that have a passion for the country they chose.
I firmly believe that other the nations with largely homogeneous populations and cultures will never be able to match the the greatness of America's diverse population. As long as the United States continues to encourage a diverse population of immigrants to come to the USA, the United States will be drawing from a larger talent pool than the rest of the world. When a difficult problems needs to be solved, Germany can tackle that problem with the most talented German people, Japan can tackle that problem with the most talented Japanese people, India can tackle the problem with the most talented Indian people, and China can tackle the problem with the most talented Chinese people. However, America can tackle the problem with talented and daring immigrants who came from Germany, Japan, India, and China, along with native born Americans and immigrants from many other nations. There's a reason why Americans' keep winning Noble Prizes and that a disproportionate number of those Nobel Prize winners are America immigrants.
I also believe that America means the opportunity to achieve one's dreams. America doesn't always live up to the ideal of the America Dream ( consider how much discrimination there is and how much the laws favor the wealthy ), but the ideal is something the nation should always be striving for.
I know a lot of people who think we need to "Make America Great Again" ( MAGA ), don't agree with my definition of America or Americans. The "again" in MAGA implies that our nation's greatness lies in our past, while I believe that it lies in our future. Those who believe in MAGA feel that our nation will become less great if it becomes less Christian, less English-speaking, and less connected to Western culture ( which for some, means less white ). They feel that an America full of non-Christian, non-English-speaking, and non-Western people won't be America anymore. I couldn't disagree more. If America evolves into a largely Spanish-speaking nation in which white English-speaking Christian people are a distinct minority, it will still be America if the it lives up to the ideals or opportunity, freedom, and inclusiveness. If we are still a democratic nation in which political parties can argue the issues of the day without fear of repercussions from the government, we will still be America, regardless of the language the politicians are arguing in. If people are still free to worship ( or not worship ) they way they please, we will still be America regardless of whether most people are praying in a church, a mosque, a synagogue, or a temple. I'd agree with "Make America Great Again", if they dropped the "Again", and added an "er". I would hope that's something we could all agree with. We should all want to "Make America Greater". However, America won't became greater just because we want it to. It is going to take a lot of work, and we are not going to be able to do it until all of us are willing to work together. Those who want to shun our newest wave of immigrants would should remember our nation's founding motto.
E pluribus unum ( Out of many, one )
Rich
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