The COVID-19 pandemic continues to amplify the growing wealth inequality in the US. The process seems to be fairly clear: low income earners have seen their jobs and their hours disappear while high income earners have enjoyed record gains in the value of their sticks. According to Bloomberg:
“The Fed estimates the top 10% of U.S. households hold 69% of the country’s wealth, or $77.3 trillion, up from 60.9% share at the end of the 1980s. The very richest Americans are almost entirely responsible for that gain. The top 1% held 30.5% of U.S. wealth in June, up from 23.7% in late 1989. The bottom half’s share, meanwhile, has fallen from 3.6% to 1.9%.”
The Huffington Post provides more detail:
“The rich got richer this year despite the COVID-19 pandemic — while people struggling financially found themselves in even more dire straits. COVID-19, which has killed more than 210,000 Americans, has disproportionally hurt people of color, older people, women and workers in low-paying jobs.
“The poorest 50% of Americans — about 165 million people — hold just $2.08 trillion of net worth, or 1.9% of all household wealth, according to Federal Reserve statistics.
“The wealthy and corporations were already sailing along thanks to a massive tax cut from the administration of President Donald Trump in 2017. As a result, the nation racked up a record deficit, which hit an all-time high of $3 trillion in the first 11 months of the current budget year.
The inequality has had a dramatic effect on the different generations in American society with the youngest cohort, the Millennials, facing the worst distribution of wealth in American history.
The implications of this divergence for the political system are ominous. The US Middle Class was the bedrock of what has been called the American Dream”–a metaphor for all in the world who aspired to a better life. Sadly, as the graph below from the Pew Research Center, the American Middle Class seems to be disappearing.
Thanks to a link from a former student, Megan van Frank, I read an essay in the Atlantic, by David Brooks, an analyst with whom I often disagree. The essay is entitled “America Is Having a Moral Convulsion“, a title which gave me the willies. But I trust Megan, who was a brilliant student, so I read the entire essay. There are many points in the essay where I took out the proverbial red pen, but, I will confess, that when I got to the end of the essay I found myself thinking furiously about Brooks’s argument that US citizens are going through an epidemic of mistrust.
“When you look back on it from the vantage of 2020, moral freedom, like the other dominant values of the time, contained within it a core assumption: If everybody does their own thing, then everything will work out for everybody. If everybody pursues their own economic self-interest, then the economy will thrive for all. If everybody chooses their own family style, then children will prosper. If each individual chooses his or her own moral code, then people will still feel solidarity with one another and be decent to one another. This was an ideology of maximum freedom and minimum sacrifice.
“It all looks naive now. We were naive about what the globalized economy would do to the working class, naive to think the internet would bring us together, naive to think the global mixing of people would breed harmony, naive to think the privileged wouldn’t pull up the ladders of opportunity behind them. We didn’t predict that oligarchs would steal entire nations, or that demagogues from Turkey to the U.S. would ignite ethnic hatreds. We didn’t see that a hyper-competitive global meritocracy would effectively turn all of childhood into elite travel sports where a few privileged performers get to play and everyone else gets left behind.
Brooks is myopic when he uses the word “we”. I, and many others, had no such illusions about the social, economic, and cultural impacts of what is loosely called “neoliberalism”. But misidentifying the audience does not vitiate the argument. In my own case, however, mistrust settled in before the age of neoliberalism which is usually associated with US President Reagan and British Prime Minister Thatcher in the 1980s. For me, the unwillingness of the political system to be truthful began with the assassinations of John and Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., Vietnam, and Watergate.
I do not think that we should assume that politicians should be truthful. But trust in a political system depends on the ability of the system to coerce truthfulness if necessary. For most of human history we depended on the concept of honor and oaths to provide truth. Apparently we no longer believe that truth is necessary.
Ron Suskind, writing in the New Yorker, quoted a George W. Bush Administration who justified the invasion of Iraq in 2003 in these terms: “The aide said that guys like me were ‘in what we call the reality-based community,’ which he defined as people who ‘believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.’ […] ‘That’s not the way the world really works anymore,’ he continued. ‘We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do’.”
We now dress up the celebration of lies with phrases such as “alternative” or “fake” news. The argument was best articulated by White House Advisor Kellyanne Conway with journalist Chuck Todd:
“This Kellyanne Conway exchange with Meet the Press host Chuck Todd, on whether Sean Spicer was lying yesterday when he said Trump’s inaugural was the most-watched ever, will dominate Twitter today.
“Conway: ‘You’re saying it’s a falsehood and Sean Spicer, our press secretary, gave alternative facts to that.’
“Todd: ‘Alternative facts are not facts. They are falsehoods.’
“Conway: ‘If we’re going to keep referring to the press secretary in those types of terms I think we’re going to have to rethink our relationship here.'”
The willful creation of ignorance seems to be a feature of life in the 20th century. It was perfected by the totalitarian regimes on the left and the right. It now seems to be a tactic of anyone who wishes to stay in power. Accepting this reality because of fatigue is an irresponsible act.
Armenia and Azerbaijan continue to fight over the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh. The problems revolves around the mostly Armenian population that lives in the province which is within the sovereign territory of Azerbaijan. The conflict highlights the difficulty of maintaining the fiction of the “nation-state”, the primary agent in the traditional study of international relations. The Armenians living in Nagorno-Karabakh consider themselves to be part of the Armenian nation but they live under the legal rule of the Azerbaijani state.
The fighting has been going on for 8 days and there is constant use of artillery shelling, including the use of the especially lethal cluster bombs, which is threatening large numbers of civilians. The conflict is drawing in Turkey on the side of Azerbaijan and Russia on the side of Armenia–Russia has a military base in Armenia. The conflict rests on the way both countries emerged from the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, although one could trace the conflict much further back in time. After the collapse, Nagorno-Karabakh declared its independence, which led to a war that is estimated to have killed 30,000 people and ultimately left the fate of the province within the territory of Azerbaijan.
Armenians constitute a well-organized political constituency in the US and there is considerable pressure on the US government to support Armenia in this conflict. And the fact that Turkey is supporting the Muslim-dominant state of Azerbaijan brings back the ugly memories of the Armenian genocide conducted by Turkey during World War I (a characterization that Turkey adamantly denies). But the US is not taking a stand in this conflict as it is preoccupied with the national election and the COVID-19 pandemic. Some European states are actively involved in trying to mediate the conflict, but I doubt that those efforts will yield much success. Interestingly, the US and Israel seem to be on different sides of this conflict, with Israel being a prime supplier of weaponry to Azerbaijan. According to Al-Monitor:
“According to reports, the scale of commercial ties — mainly arms deals — between Israel and Azerbaijan is colossal. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, in 2016 arms exports from Israel to Azerbaijan added up to $250 million and $136 million in 2017. The institute noted that from 2015 to 2019, “A total of 60% of Azerbaijan’s arms imports came from Israel and 31% from Russia.”
“Another sphere of commercial ties is energy, with Azerbaijan exporting to Israel as much as 40% of its local petrol consumption. The Azeri petrol reaches Turkey via pipelines and from there it is shipped to Israel on boats. Azerbaijan’s state oil company SOCAR is reportedly interested in buying shares in the Israeli Ashdod refinery.
“The strategic importance of Azerbaijan could explain Israel’s mild reaction to the Armenian accusations. Still, Jerusalem has been careful not to be publicly associated with the Azeri-Turkish camp. Jerusalem certainly does not consider Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan a friend, and Israel maintains good diplomatic relations with Armenia. The Russian support of the Armenians also complicates things. Throughout his years as prime minister, Netanyahu has made a point of establishing good, even friendly ties, with Russian President Vladimir Putin. He does not want to ruin them.”
The inability of the international community to effectively protect the civilians in this conflict is a travesty. And the inability and unwillingness of the US to use its good offices to mediate the crisis is a sobering measure of how much the US has disengaged from global politics.
The Pew Research Center has published the results of a poll it conducted on the attitudes of Americans toward racial and ethnic diversity. The poll indicates that most Americans are far more favorably disposed toward such diversity than was true in 2016:
“While these views have changed little since 2018, the public expresses more positive – and less negative – views of the long-term rise in racial and ethnic diversity than it did four years ago, during the last presidential campaign. Since then, the share saying a majority Black, Hispanic and Asian population is a good thing has increased by 10 percentage points, while there has been a comparable decline (11 points) in the share saying it is bad thing.”
The shift toward more favorable views is somewhat surprising given the steady stream of ethnic and racial vitriol since 2016 which infects some discussions about American politics. There is, however, a clear difference of opinion among Republicans and Democrats on the issue. The change in attitudes may reflect the changing demographics of US society. By 2044, the majority of Americans will be non-white.
Researchers associated with Cornell University have studied the sources of misinformation about the COVID-19 pandemic. The study was remarkable in the number of sources that were studied. According to the researchers:
“The study was performed using Cision Media’s Next Generation Communications Cloud platform, which aggregates content from 7 million-plus sources around the world. This database was queried with an English-language search string for misinformation topics in the context of COVID-19, using an iterative cycle of different keywords.
The study evaluated over 38 million pieces of content published by English-language, traditional media worldwide between January 1 and May 26, 2020.
It analyzed engagement with traditional media stories on social channels.
The study identified over 1.1 million news articles (2.9% of the whole COVID-19 conversation) that disseminated, amplified or reported on misinformation related to the pandemic.
The major findings of the study identify US President Trump as the source of almost 38% of all misinformation references.
“It is apparent from the data that mentions of President Trump within the context of COVID-19 misinformation comprise by far the largest single component of the “infodemic.” Trump mentions comprised 37.9% of the overall “infodemic.”
• However, a substantial proportion of other topics was also driven by the president’s comments, so some overlap can be expected. This strengthens the conclusion that the President of the United States was likely the largest driver of the COVID-19 misinformation “infodemic.”
• Only 16.4% of the misinformation conversation was “fact-checking” in nature, suggesting that the majority of COVID misinformation is conveyed by the media without question or correction.
The study identified 11 topics that were identified as misleading or false:
1 Miracle Cures 2 New World Order / Deep State 3 Democratic Party Hoax 4 Wuhan Lab / Bioweapon 5 Bill Gates 6 5G 7 Antisemitic Conspiracies 8 Population Control 9 Dr. Anthony Fauci 10 Plandemic 11 Bat Soup
I have not myself heard the rumors about bat soup but I likely skipped over those articles in self-defense. But the findings are rather extraordinary, testifying to the power of the “bully pulpit“, a phrase first used by US President Theodore Roosevelt. But the dissemination of false or misleading information in a pandemic is intrinsically dangerous. Writing in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, Herbert Lin and Harold Trinkunas point out all the problems engendered by false information. If one wishes to find reputable information about COVID-19, I would strongly recommend going to the website on the virus maintained by the Johns Hopkins University.
Armenia and Azerbaijan have had a long-standing dispute over the rights of people who live in the disputed region known as Nagorno-Karabakh. That dispute has broken out into open conflict. Armenia has a Christian majority population and Azerbaijan has a majority Muslim population. The population of Nagorno-Karabakh is majority Armenian, but it falls within the national territory of Azerbaijan. The Council on Foreign Relations gives a good background to the conflict:
“In the 1920’s, the Soviet government established the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region—where 95 percent of the population is ethnically Armenian—within Azerbaijan. Under Bolshevik rule, fighting between the two countries was kept in check, but as the Soviet Union began to collapse, so did its grip on Armenia and Azerbaijan. In 1988, Nagorno-Karabakh legislature passed a resolution to join Armenia despite the region’s legal location within Azerbaijan’s borders. As the Soviet Union was dissolving in 1991, the autonomous region officially declared independence. War erupted between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the region, leaving roughly 30,000 casualties and hundreds of thousands of refugees. By 1993, Armenia controlled Nagorno-Karabakh and occupied 20 percent of the surrounding Azerbaijani territory. In 1994, Russia brokered a cease-fire which has remained in place since.”
There have been many attempts by outsiders to mediate the conflict, most notably by the Helsinki Commission. Unfortunately, these efforts have not yielded fruit, and the recent outbreak in fighting has the potential to draw in outside powers. Russia has a defense treaty with Armenia and Turkey, a member of NATO, strongly supports Azerbaijan. Iran, a Shia Muslim state, seems to be more favorable to Armenia, largely because it fears the Turkic Azeri population even though they are Muslim, albeit Sunni Muslim. Unfortunately, outside powers are more than willing to sell weapons to both states, regardless of policy alignments. Both countries can ill-afford a sustained arms race.
The International Labour Organization (ILO) has issued a report entitled “COVID-19 leads to massive labour income losses worldwide” a not surprising finding. The stock market has increased in value during the pandemic, thanks largely to the favorable tax and monetary policies pursued by the Trump Administration.
While the owners of capital have prospered, the ones that only have their labor to sell have suffered. According to the ILO:
“Global labour income is estimated to have declined by 10.7 per cent, or US$ 3.5 trillion, in the first three quarters of 2020, compared with the same period in 2019. This figure excludes income support provided through government measures.
“The biggest drop was in lower-middle income countries, where the labour income losses reached 15.1 per cent, with the Americas the hardest hit region at 12.1 per cent.”
The ILO is also projecting that these losses will continue. The study suggests that there have been greater losses to labor from inactivity (reduced hours) than from unemployment, which represents a serious problem for recovery:
“This rise in inactivity has important policy implications. Experience from earlier crises shows that activating inactive people is even harder than re-employing the unemployed, so higher inactivity rates are likely to make the job recovery more difficult. Moreover, younger and older people have been hit particularly hard by the COVID‑19 crisis: since these two groups normally have a higher risk of becoming inactive, there is a danger that they will face long-term labour market disadvantages”
It may be the case that the rich are congratulating themselves for gaming the system to help them accumulate capital. At some point, however, there will be no one who will be able to buy the products that the rich produce. The continuing impoverishment of the lower income citizens will bring the economy to a stop, as happened in the 1930s.
US President Trump issued an Executive Order on 22 September entitled “Executive Order on Combating Race and Sex Stereotyping“. The order has not received any attention in the media–not surprising given the other news that we are processing. The misrepresentations in the order are breathtaking and, in many respects, terrifying. For example:
“Today, however, many people are pushing a different vision of America that is grounded in hierarchies based on collective social and political identities rather than in the inherent and equal dignity of every person as an individual. This ideology is rooted in the pernicious and false belief that America is an irredeemably racist and sexist country; that some people, simply on account of their race or sex, are oppressors; and that racial and sexual identities are more important than our common status as human beings and Americans.
“This destructive ideology is grounded in misrepresentations of our country’s history and its role in the world. Although presented as new and revolutionary, they resurrect the discredited notions of the nineteenth century’s apologists for slavery who, like President Lincoln’s rival Stephen A. Douglas, maintained that our government “was made on the white basis” “by white men, for the benefit of white men.” Our Founding documents rejected these racialized views of America, which were soundly defeated on the blood-stained battlefields of the Civil War. Yet they are now being repackaged and sold as cutting-edge insights. They are designed to divide us and to prevent us from uniting as one people in pursuit of one common destiny for our great country.”
I do not know how to process this tangle of straw men, flawed historical record, or the complete lack of awareness of the depth of debate about these issues among people who care deeply about the possible meanings of what living in a liberal society could imply.
I would recommend that we should read this document carefully to understand where the current Administration means to take us.
On Monday, the Trump Administration imposed what it called “snapback sanctions” on Iran for what it termed were violations of the 2015 nuclear program agreement signed between Iran and the 5 Permanent Members of the Security Council plus Germany (technically known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action [JCPOA]). The decision was based on the original terms of the Agreement in the event of Iranian non-compliance, but the US pulled out of the agreement in 2018. The US insists that it is named as a participant to the Agreement and therefore it retains the right to insist upon the terms of the agreement even though it is no longer bound by the Agreement.
Most countries, including all the signatories to the JCPOA, reject the US interpretation. The US demand–that all countries refrain from trading with Iran–would be meaningless except for the fact that the US also asserts the right to sanction other states, individuals, or entities that do engage in trade with Iran. So far, there has been little of substance from the US action. CNN reports:
“A total of 27 entities and individuals that the administration say are “connected to Iran’s proliferation networks” were hit with sanctions or export control restrictions on Monday.
“Eric Brewer, deputy director and senior fellow with the Project on Nuclear Issues at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told CNN that ‘so far, this is really all for show.’
“‘It looks like a lot of the new designations are individuals, sub-organizations, etc. of previously sanctioned entities. Also, these sanctions could have been done under existing executive orders without snapback,’ he said.
As Barbara Slavin, the director of the Future of Iran Initiative at the Atlantic Council, told CNN last week, ‘it is still illegal under US law for American companies to sell arms to Iran. There is a European arms embargo, which will continue until 2023.’
“”The rest of the world will wait for US presidential elections and then make its decision about whether or not to sell weapons to Iran,’ Slavin said.
The isolation of the US on the matter is profound (only the Dominican Republic voted in the Security Council in favor of the US resolution to enforce the sanctions). Iran has certainly made changes to its nuclear program that are ostensibly forbidden, but it has assiduously avoided making any changes that would dramatically alter its ability to make a bomb within a period of a year. The New York Times published an editorial which emphasized the shortsightedness of the US position:
“The tragedy of the Trump administration’s approach is that it has alienated European allies who share the common goal of curbing Iran’s most worrisome behavior. The United States once stood shoulder to shoulder with not only France, Germany and Britain, but also with Russia and China — to isolate Iran. Now, it is the United States that is isolated.
“The bigger question is whether the American efforts to invoke snapback will kill the nuclear deal, which the other parties have been trying desperately to keep alive. Iran had been widely seen as keeping its commitments under the deal until the U.S. exit. Afterward, it increased its production of fissile material, as a calibrated response to the American withdrawal.
“Now, the agreement is in tatters. If Mr. Trump is re-elected, the chances of reviving the accord are slim to none. Iran could walk away from the nuclear deal altogether and resume its previous levels of production of fissile material, which it claims will be used as fuel for a peaceful nuclear reactor. This will set Iran back on a collision course with the United States and Israel.”
“Trump’s maximal use of sanctions has become a policy overreach that has alarmed both U.S. allies and adversaries, prompting not just concerted diplomatic resistance, but investments in economic countermeasures aimed at circumventing the U.S. dollar’s supremacy in the global financial order. For instance, last month Beijing encouraged Chinese banks to reduce their reliance on the SWIFT network commonly used to conduct transactions, and which is susceptible to U.S. pressure. China is clearly looking to diminish the United States’ ability to pressure adversaries by denying them access to international financial networks. Mounting resistance to U.S. sanctions will make it more difficult for Washington to rally international support to pressure Iran. That would require fewer U.S. sanctions, not more.”
It may be the case that the US strategy has nothing at all to do with the Iranian nuclear program. The US may be building a case for attacking Iranian facilities although no other states, other than Israel, would be likely to support military action. But the Trump Administration may be paying attention to only US domestic political opinion.
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