A Year Later

Dave Davis Uncategorized

A year ago, I posted “Topping Out?,” where, even though Trump seemed triumphant to many, I opined that he was at the apogee of his second term and that the path forward was downhill. He might never again be as popular, or appear as powerful. A year later, the problems and policies I pointed out contributed significantly to his present low standing:

Strutting up to any cameras available, Trump told us at the time that his tariffs had made us richer, and nations all over the world would invest trillions in our country. He blasted then Fed Chairman Powell for not lowering interest rates. Trump claimed inflation would go away under his policies; Powell was blocking the Trump boom. He had to go. While rates didn’t go down, the Fed may have been discouraged from raising them. The “Great Big Beautiful Bill had recently passed. Trump was making his mark on the world like nothing ever seen before.

It’s hard to remember how strong and dominant the President appeared just a year ago. Yet the seeds of downturn were present at the time. Most of his cornerstone tariff policy had already been declared unconstitutional by the Court of International Trade (CIT). Though few did, any reading of the court’s decision could only alert one to the trouble the policy was in.

Rather than receding, prices were still stubbornly high last August. At just under 3%, the rate of inflation was well above the Fed’s 2% goal. Trump’s tariffs were adding to price pressures. The President’s demand for lower interest rates seemed at cross purposes with low prices.

A year later, any supply-side gains from “the Big beautiful Bill,” were offset by tariffs and spending, leaving inflation high throughout the year:

The Appeals and Supreme Court upheld the CIT decision, forcing refunds under the original law relied on. The administration imposed more widespread tariffs under another, but short-term, law, which just expired. Now we have a third legal rationale underlying broader tariffs. The later tariffs are in court; the CIT already declared the recently expired ones unconstitutional, but they are under appeal.

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AI BIAS?

Dave Davis Commentary, Policy, Uncategorized , , , ,

I was checking factual information on some points about the similarities between the progressive reaction to today’s technological age and the progressive reaction to the Gilded Age for a recent post. A simple AI inquiry: “Did the Gilded Age see the greatest leap in living standards in history?” Google qualified the statement with “it’s debated because it also featured severe poverty and extreme wealth inequality.” The summary goes on to spell out social costs of deep inequality, crowded cities, and harsh labor:

The Gilded Age is generally thought to have begun with the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad in 1869 and extended to WWI.

These qualifiers seemed strange first because I didn’t mention social conditions, just the economic advancement, and they’re at odds with the rest of the summary. In the next sentence, after it mentions the inequality and poverty, it states that real wages for nonfarm workers grew by about 53%. It goes on to confirm the Gilded Age’s Leap: with falling prices, things became more affordable to the average person, life expectancy went up, and the new technologies transformed daily life.

Adding in downbeat notes seems at odds with the rest of the findings. If things were so awful, why did millions leave farms, or come from other nations? People don’t migrate to have less. With all those people coming to our cities to take higher-paying jobs, of course there’s a housing shortage.  

Curious, I put the same statement to Microsoft’s Copilot. Its conclusion: The Gilded Age produced the fastest sustained improvement in material living conditions ever recorded for a large population,” confirmed my understanding. Yet it had to echo Google about inequality and bad labor conditions, while adding corruption and racial divisions. “Jim Crow hardened, immigration tensions rose, Native Americans suffered catastrophic losses.” But all of these problems existed before the Gilded Age. What did the Gilded Age have to do with Jim Crow? Again, these nuances are at odds with the rest of the summary.

My curiosity about AI adding extraneous and contradictory information was further piqued when I wondered about the widespread Genocide accusation leveled against Israel. In the modern world, the concept of Genocide goes back to approximately 60% to 65% (or roughly 1.5 million out of an estimated 2 to 2.5 million) of the Armenian population in the Ottoman Empire who died during the Armenian Genocide between 1915 and 1923.

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They’re Back!

Dave Davis Commentary, Policy, Uncategorized , ,

It’s as if we passed the graveyard of discarded ideas, and we heard murmurs. Ideas that failed to work in the modern world, or sounded great but failed horribly in practice. Thought dead and buried, they seemingly are rising from their graves, or are already at the graveyard’s gate:

Walking haltingly, Marxism, mercantilism, anti-semitism, and Ludism, nevertheless, are rising and walking among us. While some are horrified, many have no comprehension of the harm these zombies of the past did when they were ascendant on Earth and believe they present the way forward.

Most of the fans of these living dead are too young to remember the millions who paid with their lives at the hands of the believers. Even though many are college graduates, few seem aware of the thousands of years of slow human progress under elites controlling from the top down. organization. Everyone below owed the aristocracy, mandarins, or Brahmans, but little obligation moved downward to the bulk of the people.

Yet, what these young people advocate would reinstall systems incompatible with a modern, advancing nation. The Democratic Socialists of America’s (DSA) platform calls for eliminating the Senate and the Electoral College. Congress would appoint the President and control the judiciary. In effect, they would trash our Constitution.

Why dump a system that has made us the longest-surviving and most prosperous Republic ever? A New York State DSA spokesman, when asked this very question, replied, “to be more Democratic.” Sadly, the questioner failed to point out that our founders weren’t fans of direct democracy.

Charismatic leaders could rouse the populace to take momentarily popular actions that are detrimental in the longer term. Much of what the new populists on both the left and the right propose follows what William Graham Sumner saw when he talked about the “Forgotten Man” in 1881. In the present parlance, Politician A perceives that more numerous Bs want more, and conspires with them to take from the fewer but more prosperous Cs. Through B’s votes, A gains control of the Government.

At first, this situation may seem to work. The Cs get some more. Inevitably, as Margaret Thatcher pointed out, “You run out of other people’s money,” or the Cs leave. Then, A has to oppress the Bs to maintain the lifestyle of the ruling regime.

Today’s populists only have to look at countries such as Cuba, Venezuela, and North Korea. The people remaining in them live in the end stage of what began as mob rule, expressed through direct democracy. How many of these “idealists” will pack up and move to these “workers’ paradises?”

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As The World Turns

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Back in March of 2023, I questioned in the post “Out of the Jaws” whether Ukraine could ever win its war with the Russian invader without the ability to shoot back. Though the Ukrainians had halted the invasion, they could never win if they couldn’t hit back at the Russian war machine’s homeland infrastructure. While the Russians hammered every military or civilian target they could, the Biden administration allowed the use of U.S. weapons only close to the battlefield. Only in 2024, in response to Russia’s use of North Korean troops, did it slightly extend the range.

Russian territory was largely exempt. Biden reasoned it was best to limit the scope of the war. Fearing that hits on Moscow or St Petersburg like those on Kyiv, the Russians might use nuclear weapons or attack NATO nations. As unlikely as either of these Russian reactions is, the Biden Administration must have believed in them, as they slow-walked arms to Ukraine.

This policy led the Biden administration to push Ukraine into an ill-fated offensive without air superiority or the longer-range weapons Ukrainians had requested. Without the means to cut off supplies to the well-dug-in Russians, the attack was doomed before it even started.

The U.S. military doctrine says it must have air superiority before a major offensive, yet where were the F-16s the Ukrainians asked for?

Things didn’t improve under Trump. While keeping many of the range restrictions in place, his administration taunted Ukrainian President Zelensky, saying he had no cards and should give in to Russian demands. It never seemed to dawn on them that Ukraine might have cards, but the U.S. prevented them from playing them.

If Russians felt no pain at home, they had little reason to oppose the war. Yes, troops were maimed or dying, but drafted from rural areas, criminals, or recruited foreigners; the horror of war didn’t touch Russian elites. Life in Moscow or St. Petersburg went on as usual—some inflation, but nothing aimed at them.

Instead of folding, the brave Ukrainians fought on. The same imagination and ingenuity that stopped the initial massive Russian attack, the Ukrainians applied to the modern battlefield. High-tech is increasingly used to gain an edge, especially in the new drone warfare. Rapidly updating design, software, command, and tactics, allowing them to blunt the Russian manpower and equipment advantage.

If the U.S. wasn’t going to provide the longer-range weapons sorely needed to isolate the battlefield and attack Russia’s war infrastructure deep in that vast nation, Russia lacked any incentive to make peace. Yet, when asked, the U.S. turned down Ukraine’s request for Tomahawk long-range missiles.

It was left up to the Ukrainians to develop the weapons they needed. These freedom-loving people rose to the challenge, especially with long-range drones. Residents in Moscow and St. Petersburg find themselves treated to towering smoke plumes rising from their major oil facilities;

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Recalling a Similar Time

Dave Davis Commentary, Policy, Uncategorized , , , ,

Celebrating our 250th birthday over the weekend brought back memories of our Bicentennial in 1976 and the similarities between then and now. The fall of Saigon marked the humiliating end of the Vietnam War. We maintained something of a detante with what many thought was an ascendant Soviet Union, with us in decline. We were suffering from stagflation, a stagnant economy with ever-increasing prices. Many were pushed into higher tax brackets, while their income bought less.  

After Watergate and President Nixon’s resignation, we were looking forward to the less-than-thrilling choice between Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter for President. I hoped that Ronald Reagan would somehow prevail at the Republican Convention the following month, but it wasn’t to be. It was the period that caused Jimmy Carter, as President, to give his “malaise ” speech.

President Ford’s “Whip Inflation Now” Campaign, with its WIN buttons and voluntary appeals to save rather than spend, plant gardens, turn down the thermostat, and carpool, summed up his policy. After the progressive McGovern fiasco, the Democrats turned to a Georgia peanut farmer about whom nobody knew much, especially what he’d do.

We celebrated our birthday, but we wished we could be more upbeat about the future. Maybe those prophecies of gloom and doom were right, and we were in decline.

I thought we had all this behind us, but Déjà vu, here we are at 250 with many of the same or similar problems. A war gone awry, with humiliation in the wings, inflation refusing to go away, and most people having little faith in the abilities and policies of our two major parties. Again, maybe we’re in decline, and the American dream is gone for good. Some share New York Mayor Mandani’s dark view of America, where the wealthy oppress working people.

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