The View from Right Field

Remember Covid? Well, We Need To.

Remember just four years ago:  We didn’t have an approved vaccine for Covid.  Many schools were closed.  Lots of people were working from home.  Those who couldn’t work from home worried as they went to their jobs.  It was a scary time.  Lots of different policies were tried.  Some of them worked well.  Others, not so well.  Which is the point here.

New Zealand is in the middle of a Royal Commission into its response to Covid: what it did and what it didn’t do; what worked and what didn’t work.  The first part of the Commission’s report has been published¹, and more is to come.  Other countries are doing similar things.

But I haven’t seen anything like this in the US.  Obviously, we can’t have a Royal Commission; we fought a revolution to get rid of royals.  But we haven’t had any broad-based commission or other review trying to identify what worked and what didn’t work in our responses to Covid.  A lot of that may be because Covid became so politicized.  Which is unfortunate.  In one way, we were really lucky with Covid.  It was bad, but it could have been so much worse.  If the fatality rate had been higher, we could have had many times the number of people dying.  What we had was bad; what could have happened, and what could happen next time, could be much worse.  Which is why we need to learn the lessons of Covid; so we have a better idea of what to do next time.

Why I Hope Republicans Will Mostly Win on November 8

I vote for Republicans almost all the time, so why should anybody be surprise by the headline of this post?  Probably no reason other than I haven’t voted for a Republican candidate for President since Mitt Romney in 2012¹ and the Republicans have some truly abysmal candidates this year.

Some swing voters are understandably hesitant to vote Republican this year because the Republican Party is in such disarray and, as I said, it has some really bad candidates.  Consider Herschel Walker, running for Senate in Georgia.  And others, including Darren Bailey, Republican candidate for governor here in Illinois.  Many of these people won because of Donald Trump’s endorsement or believe his lie about the 2020 presidential election being stolen – or both.

Questions Re Joe Biden’s Student Loan Bribe

Obviously, President Biden’s student debt cancellation plan is a campaign bribe.  That’s not a question.  My question is: how is it supposed to work?  Is the idea that the people getting the bribe (i.e., getting some part of their student loan forgiven) will vote Democratic in November, as a thank you to the President, when they would have otherwise voted Republican/other?   Or is it that people will come out to vote, once again, as a thank you for the bribe, when they otherwise would not have voted?

Also, I wonder what the expected return is on the bribe.  In other words, what’s the cost of each additional vote, whether from somebody who would have otherwise voted Republican/other or somebody who wouldn’t have voted at all but for the bribe?  Given that the Penn Wharton Budget Model projects that the President’s plan could cost up to $300 billion, it would seem that these could be some pretty expensive votes.   

Other Countries Can Get Competent Leaders. Why Can’t We?

You would think that a country as big as the United States, with as many people as we have, could have really good people at the top of its government.  But look at our current president and his predecessor.  They are both embarrassing.

Compare them, either of them, with Sir John Key, former Prime Minister of New Zealand (from 2008-2016), who spoke on “Walking the path to the next global financial crisis” in this panel discussion hosted by The New Zealand Initiative:

“Treat Them Mean, Keep Them Lean” Is Terrible Advice for Any Situation – Political, Economic, or Personal

A week ago, Chris Giles wrote in the Financial Times about the belief, fashionable in both politics and economics, “that companies respond best to a ‘treat them mean, keep them lean’ approach.”¹  Mr. Giles concluded his piece:

“While there are some exceptions, making life difficult for business does not improve corporate performance.  ‘Treat them mean, keep them lean’ is terrible advice for healthy relationships.  It is just as bad in economic policy.”

Which I agreed with in a letter than was published in Tuesday’s FT, making a point I have made before (since FT has a very high paywall, here is the letter, as published):

Vaccine Equity

It’s interesting how ideas bounce around the world.  Back in February and March, the stories in the United States were about how hard it was to get the vaccine and whether shots were being distributed “equitably”.  There were complaints that minority communities were not getting their fair share of vaccines and that whites were getting shots that “belonged” to minorities.

Much the same thing happened earlier this month in New Zealand.  David Seymour, the head of ACT New Zealand, a right/libertarian party, got in trouble for publishing a “Priority Access Code for Maori” for Covid vaccinations.  But as Mr. Seymour explained, his publishing of the code had no practical effect.  The code wasn’t private; other people knew it; and the people giving the shots were vaccinating anybody who showed up anyway.  Plus, New Zealand has had fewer than 2,000 cases of Covid and just two deaths since January 1, so it really doesn’t matter the exact order in which people get shots.  The key is getting them vaccinated.

Getting Ready for the Next Pandemic. Will We?

With vaccines on the way, it looks like we may be able to see the end of the pandemic.  It is still a ways off, but, unlike in April and May, we can see an end coming.  The question is, though: What about the next one?  Will we be prepared for it?  I talked about this in April.  I won’t repeat what I said there, other than to quote from my conclusion:

“Robustness.  Resiliency.  Nimbleness.  These are what we need if we are to be ready for the emergencies and disasters that will happen, though we don’t know which ones or when.” 

Honesty In Taxes: We All Have to Pay

There is a trend in tax increase proposals around the world.  Voters in Illinois this November will vote on a “Fair Tax,” i.e., a constitutional amendment to allow the Illinois legislature to pass a progressive income tax.  The key selling point in the campaign for the amendment, other than the name that the PR people gave to it is that only 3% of the people in Illinois will pay a higher tax.  Everybody else will pay less.

In New Zealand, which had an election last weekend, the Green Party proposed a wealth tax, but said it would only apply to the top 6% of people.  The center-left Labour Party rejected the wealth tax idea, but they did propose increasing the tax on income above NZ$180,000, which includes about 2% of taxpayers, from 33% to 39%.

China, WHO, and the Next Time

In a conversation with the Chicago Council on Global Affairs last week, former New Zealand Prime Minister and former head of the United Nations Development Programme¹ Helen Clark said that, at the multilateral level, the world has not risen to the challenge of Covid-19.  She noted that, in 2014, the UN Security Council declared a public health emergency with respect to Ebola, but this time, the Security Council has done nothing.  As to why, she says it relates to the toxic nature of international politics.

Which is true.  But it seems to me the reason is more specific than that.  While Donald Trump does not believe in multilateral organizations and is, in my opinion, a terrible president in terms of foreign relations,² the biggest reason there has been no coordinated international action on Covid-19 is simple.  It’s China.  It appears China screwed up big time on Covid-19.  The best information is that Covid-19 started in Wuhan, China.  But for some reason China did not get on top of it right away (or at least didn’t do enough).  There are a number of possible reasons (and there needs to be an investigation), but regardless of the reason(s), at this point it looks like China had a chance to stop or contain this virus before it spread.  But it didn’t, and now it’s killing people all over the world.³  And the problem with a coordinated international response, from China’s part of view, is that part of such a response would be an investigation that would make China’s failings more difficult to hide.

Leaders Taking a Pay Cut Like the People They Lead. That’s Leadership.

I realize I write a lot about New Zealand, but when they get things right, why not.  Here’s another thing the leaders in New Zealand got right.  Last Wednesday, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced that she and the ministers in her government would take a 20% pay cut for the next six months in recognition of "New Zealanders who are reliant on wage subsidies, taking pay cuts and losing their jobs as a result of the COVID-19 global pandemic."  Simon Bridges, the leader of the opposition National Party, said he would do the same.

It's not like these pay cuts are going to save lots of money for the government or pay for the extra spending the New Zealand government is doing.  Rather, it is a matter of leaders showing solidarity with the people: people who have lost jobs, have had their hours cut, or are just having a hard time during the pandemic.

It’s empathy.  It’s caring.  It’s not politics as usual.  I wish we could have some of that here.