A Non-Sokratic Dialogue with Brad DeLong and Claudia Sahm

 From Brad DeLong's substack, originally a Twitter thread started by Claudia Sahm, in which I have a vivid recollection from a 2008 University of Chicago conference where John Cochrane made a keynote speech:

This is your new edition of Grasping Reality—The SubStack Newsletter, by Brad DeLong: A Non-Socratic Dialogue on the Decline of Milton Friedman's Influence; & BRIEFLY NOTED: For 2021-05-22 Sa Things that went whizzing by that I want to remember...   Brad DeLong May 22 Subscribe now First: A Non-Socratic Dialogue: Milton Friedman’s Influence Kept Right-Wing Economists from Reverting to Full Crazed Liquidationist Nutjobs for 60 Years. But Why Did It Then Decline So Fast in the Decade of the 2000s? Claudia Sahm: "We should have a recession,” John H. Cochrane said in November [2008], speaking to students and investors. “People who spend their lives pounding nails in Nevada need something else to do.” #yikes <https://t.co/vbSKhIRMtR> by @delong <https://braddelong.substack.com/p/reading-john-lippert-on-the-idiocy> Scott Gosnell: I was there. I may even have a recording down in the archives and may have sprained my eyes I rolled them so hard. Brad DeLong: What! Really? Tell me more… I mean, private housing construction as a share of GDP had crashed from its peak of 5.0% of GDP in 2005Q4 through its historical average of 3.4% in 2007Q2, and had bottomed all the way down to 2.1% by 2008Q4, when Cochrane was opining about too many people pounding nails in Nevada: How was it possible to say such a thing? How could he avoid looking at graphs like this one, and noticing that residential construction employment had already fallen from 150% to 60% of its normal share even as he spoke? And how did the audience react? Joe Marshall: Holy hell. What the f—- was wrong with these people? Scott Gosnell: I went to all of those econ talks at Gleacher while I lived in Chicago. The noticeable thing about Cochrane was that he was very good at financial economics, but fell apart when he tried to jump to macro. But of course faculty could say all kinds of things without getting much skepticism. Being a Mellon-style liquidationist was sort of edgy and cool among the Republican-leaning economists at the time. Brad DeLong: Touché... One question I always ask Paul Krugman and company is: what happened to the influence of Milton Friedman? No one was a stronger anti-liquidationist than Milton Friedman.… The shift to "liquidationism" as the default policy view of a Republican economist (when Republicans were out of power, at least), seems to have happened remarkably quickly in one decade, the 2000s, and without analysis and without argument. How and why did this happen, that being a full-fledged Mellonian became "edgy" and "cool"? Scott Gosnell: I think it came swift on the heels of a Randian political moment. Where before, Austrian economics would get you a glance askance, in 2008, it would get you a $300+ bottle of wine at dinner with Paul Ryan. Brad DeLong: Touché... The Hayek-Hoover-Mellon-Marx axis was a remarkable thing among Republican economists... especially since nobody has ever been able to write down a coherent overinvestment business-cycle model... Paul Krugman: Hey, I answered that question at length some years back <https://t.co/MCuyiMwXCg>: Friedman tried to save free-market economics from itself, admitting that the economy wasn’t self-correcting but arguing that a rule that didn’t sound Keynesian would let conservative avoid thinking about that…. But ultimately free-market Keynesian, even disguised with a monetarist mask, wasn’t sustainable. Jim Beller: Having his disciples throwing people out of airplanes was a bad look. Brad DeLong: But, Paul, as you note, Bernanke in 2002 and Mankiw in 2006 still saw Friedman as “the economist of the century” <https://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2006/11/milton-friedman.html> <https://federalreserve.gov/BOARDDOCS/SPEECHES/2002/20021108/>. They were fine with the “government should not interfere with the economy” and “whatever is the monetary policy that happens to stabilize aggregate demand is the true non-interfering ‘neutral’ monetary policy”. It was a con, yes, but it was a successful con. And it is not clear that it was wrong as a practical policy position…. JM Keynes (macro)-Henry Simons (antitrust)-AC Pigou (externalities) is not that far from what you or I believe, or what Milton Friedman believed—or, at least, would graciously concede in his old age in outdoor lunch in North Beach if I could get him off of his hobbyhorses of ‘k% rule’ & ‘government failure is almost always certain to be worse than market failure.’ The way you put it in your 2013 piece is like this: If markets can go so wrong that they cause Great Depressions, how can you be a free-market true believer on everything except macro? And as American conservatism moved ever further right, it had no room for any kind of interventionism, not even the sterilized, clean-room interventionism of Friedman’s monetarism”. I think that is (a) right, (b) much too compressed, but (c) ignores the problem of “where do you stop?” Having the government establish & maintain a property-rights order & enforce contracts is, after all, a form of “interference” to the anarcho-capitalists. And while there are some ACs who want a contract dispute between you and me resolved by me “hiring” my police force and you “hiring” ours and the two settling the dispute by the Final Argument of Kings—thus going all the way back to full feudalism as society’s organizing principle—most do not. Most stop being happy with police & courts. So why is police & courts acceptable, while police & courts & demand management is not? I think it has something to do with Schumpeter, von Hayek, and von Mises; the context of early–20th center Vienna; the idea that humans are individuals for whom private property and one-shot exchange are “natural” (as opposed to creatures that establish and cement societal bonds via ongoing reciprocal gift-exchange relationships); the philosophical position that all is for the best in this the best of all possible worlds; and the resulting theological belief that: the market giveth; the market taketh away; blessed be the name of the market… In short, I think you are right, but I do not understand why you are right. And here I know I am out of my depth, and I want to call for people like Emma Rothschild and Glory Liu who are trained professionals to help here, for they she might be able to teacheth me the lesson… Share One Video: Sophie Wilson: The Future of Microprocessors <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lOnpQgn-9s> Very Briefly Noted: Andrew Chaming: ‘I Was Looking at the Bones of Great Beasts’: Astounding Discovery Made in Calif. Valley<https://www.sfgate.com/local/article/fossil-find-california-ebmud-mastodon-bones-16192070.php> J. Bradford DeLong: America’s Peacetime Inflation: The 1970s <https://www.nber.org/system/files/chapters/c8886/c8886.pdf> Jonothon Hazell, Juan Herreno, Emi Nakamura & John Steinnson: The Slope of the Phillips Curve: Evidence from U.S. States <https://eml.berkeley.edu/~enakamura/papers/StateLevelCPIs.pdf> <https://economics.princeton.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Combined.pdf> <https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuXm5CqchclBLnd_kH9YNNQ> Ragnar Nurkse: International Currency Experience: Lessons from the Interwar Period <https://books.google.com/books?id=0w1IAQAAIAAJ> Wikipedia: Jing-Jin-Ji<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jing-Jin-Ji#/media/File:Tianjin_and_Beijing_ISS026-E-010155_lrg.jpg> Conor Sen: The Strongest Sign Yet That Inflation Is Transitory: ‘After a year of soaring prices, some builders — and homebuyers — are beginning to step back. The rest of the economy may follow suit… <https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-05-20/the-strongest-sign-yet-that-inflation-is-transitory> Duncan Black: I Am So Tired Of Arguing With You People: ‘II admit sometimes I just can’t quite get myself to argue, yet again, about some dumb thing that “we” definitely resolved in 2004. Of course nothing is ever resolved like that, but resolved in the sense that everything that could possibly be said about it was said, but then, like the cicadas, here it is again… <https://www.eschatonblog.com/2021/05/i-am-so-tired-of-arguing-with-you-people.html> Nick Rowe: Why There’s so Little Good Evidence that Fiscal (or Monetary) Policy Works: ‘Suppose a fiscal authority is using F to try to keep Y at some target level…. There will be zero correlation between Y and F…. Even a moderate degree of incompetence… doesn’t help us…. We will see correlations…. But these correlations will not tell us what we want to know. All they tell us is whether the fiscal authorities are systematically under- or over-reacting… <https://worthwhile.typepad.com/worthwhile_canadian_initi/2009/01/why-theres-so-little-good-evidence-that-fiscal-or-monetary-policy-works.html> John Maynard Keynes: The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money: ‘If the State is able to determine the aggregate amount of resources devoted to augmenting the instruments and the basic rate of reward to those who own them, it will have accomplished all that is necessary… <https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/economics/keynes/general-theory/ch24.htm> Share Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality Paragraphs: Jiwon Choi, Ilyana Kuziemko, Ebonya Washington, & Gavin Wright: Local Economic and Political Effects of Trade Deals: Evidence from NAFT: ‘Counties whose 1990 employment depended on industries vulnerable to Mexican import competition via the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) suffer large employment losses (relative to the bottom quartile of counties, counties in the top quartile of NAFTA exposure see 5–8 log-point declines in employ- ment by 2000). Despite large employment losses, we can reject even modest population declines. Trade-adjustment-aid relief rises, but covers a tiny share of the job losses we document, and Disability Insurance in fact displays a much larger response. Exposed counties (many in the upper South) begin the period more Democratic in terms of votes in House elections, but as NAFTA is debated in 1992–1994 they shift in the Republican direction and by 2000 vote majority-Republican in House elections. We show with a variety of microdata, including 1992–1994 respondent-level panel data, that opposition to free trade predicts shifts towards Republican party identification…  LINK: <https://www.iq.harvard.edu/files/harvard-iqss/files/choi-kuziemko-washington-wright_nafta_politics_8dec2020.pdf> Matthew Yglesias: Seventeen Points on Israel & Palestine : ‘As Joe Biden says, America is an idea…. not an ethnostate…. The worst moments in our history trace specifically to the politics of ethnic exclusion…. This is the greatest country on earth…. The best country Jewish people have ever had in history…. The current iteration of the Zionist project appeals mostly to believers in ethnic nationalism. Ethnic nationalism is, as they say, Bad For The Jews…. I am a Jewish American who likes his cosmopolitan liberalism, thank you very much. I find it incredibly regrettable that hard nationalism is on the rise globally, and think that it is leading to pain and misery that will only get worse if it continues to gain steam…. The Israel-Palestine situation has its own unique features, but it is also part of a fairly general trend toward hardening sovereignty claims and deploying nationalism to mask official corruption… LINK: <https://www.slowboring.com/p/israel> Dan Nexon: Against Great Power Competition: ‘Biden underscored his intention to “work with Beijing when it’s in America’s interests to do so,” but days later noted the likelihood of “extreme competition” with China…. [Moreover,] Republicans are certain to criticize the administration for being weak and ineffective in the face of international challenges…. This is unfortunate. For all the concept’s influence in recent years, great-power competition is not a coherent framework for U.S. foreign policy…. Rivalries between leading states exist in every international system…. With Washington’s unipolar status now on the wane, powers such as China and Russia find it easier than they once did to challenge U.S. leadership…. It is one thing, though, for Washington to observe increasing competition among great powers and adjust to a world in which it enjoys less influence than it once did. It is another entirely to elevate competition itself to the guiding paradigm of U.S. foreign policy—as the Trump administration proposed and Biden may wind up doing…. When adopted as a foundational paradigm of foreign relations, great-power competition relegates collaboration to an afterthought or, worse, dismisses it as naive… LINK: <https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2021-02-15/against-great-power-competition> Leave a comment (Remember: You can subscribe to this… weblog-like newsletter… here:  Subscribe now There’s a free email list. There’s a paid-subscription list with (at the moment, only a few) extras too.) You’re on the free list for Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality. For the full experience, become a paying subscriber. Subscribe © 2021 Brad DeLong Unsubscribe 2828 Webster St., Berkeley, CA 904705

Why Is Economic Inequality Bad For Society?

 ANAND [GIRIDHARADAS]: Should billionaires exist?

DJAFFAR [SCHALCHI]: In a well-regulated, well-managed, and thriving economy without monopolies, they wouldn’t. Wealth is like manure: spread it, and it makes everything grow; pile it up, and it stinks.

(https://the.ink/p/the-american-dream-is-now-in-denmark)

The first problem with gross economic inequality is that it is unjust. Whether you are trying to create a society that offers the greatest good to the greatest number (Utilitarianism), or designing a society such that you would choose to live in it as a member without knowing what your role in that society would be (Rawls), or even just a free society in which we have mutual benefit and self-interest rightly understood (Locke, Mill, et al), we have no reason to favor me over you simply because I have greater wealth, or because of who my parents happen to be, or any other random thing. As it should be with society, so it should be with the markets, which are structures within society.

Now, we might have reasons not to make everyone exactly equal. For example, economic growth tends to be greater when there are incentives for doing economically productive things. The enforcement or transaction costs might be very high. The benefits of corruptly evading these rules of equality would also grow very large.

What’s interesting is that these same costs show up at the other end of the economic distribution scale. If we have an incremental $1000 to incentivize someone to work harder to generate economic goods, we should not send it to a billionaire (who will not notice it), but to someone at the lower end of the income distribution (for whom it will make an enormous difference). If there are a few wealthy oligarchs and a lot of starving serfs, the oligarchs are going to have to hire a lot of guards and police to protect their estates. The Panama Papers showed trillions of wealth funneled through offshore shell corporations to avoid taxes.

The second problem with extreme inequality is that it is inefficient. For the reasons outlined above, it results in worse overall outcomes and in slower growth. In addition, the ability to claim all or even most of the gains to productivity can only result when there is unequal market power. As Schalchi says in the quote above, “ Wealth is like manure: spread it, and it makes everything grow; pile it up, and it stinks.” To have billionaires and paupers in the same society, you must have monopolies/oligopolies/cartels controlling large sectors of the economy, rather than having many small firms that perform slightly better or worse than one another, as in perfect competition or monopolistic competition (variegated production). Monopolies are inherently inefficient, creating deadweight loss by underproducing and overcharging relative to competitive companies. Many monopolies are also monopsonies, underpaying and underbuying labor and other inputs. All of this is just classic free market economics.

Third, the “trickle down” justification for giving tax cuts to the rich and corporations has failed. The LSE study linked below and summarized in the CBS article shows that across the OECD countries, tax cuts for the wealthy have produced zero benefit.

Beginning in 1974 and accelerating in 1980, the relationship between productivity and median household income broke down, coincident with the advent of large tax cuts for the wealthy and the decline of labor power. All of the gains gravitated to the top of the income distribution.

Lower taxes did not produce the boost to growth rates that was promised, or any additional growth at all for most people. The benefit was eaten up by the shareholding class — that’s me, not you.

Looking at the Rand study linked below, you can find out what your income would be, if the United States were only as unequal in 2018 as it was in 1974:

Would you have been better off? Almost certainly. Calculate how much our gross wealth inequality costs your family in particular every year, by looking at that counterfactual column and subtracting your income for 2018.

Would you be better off going forward if we took steps to reverse the concentration of wealth at the very top, by making government policies lift up the average and below? Almost certainly.

So, what’s your argument in favor of the current system and against a more equitable one again?

Rand Study: U.S. Economic Growth Has Not Been Shared Evenly Since 1974

50 years of tax cuts for the rich failed to trickle down, economics study says — CBS News

Working Paper 55 (lse.ac.uk) Economic Consequences of Major Tax Cuts

Links for Later 3-7-2021

1.  50 years of tax cuts for the rich failed to trickle down; the journal article.

2. U.S. Economic Growth Has Not Been Shared Evenly Since 1974

3. ANAND [GIRIDHARADAS]: Should billionaires exist?

   DJAFFAR [SCHALCHI]: In a well-regulated, well-managed, and thriving economy without monopolies, they wouldn’t. Wealth is like manure: spread it, and it makes everything grow; pile it up, and it stinks.

   The American dream is now in Denmark - The.Ink

William Gibson & Cory Doctorow in Conversation about Agency & Peripheral

 

Lyle's lesson on envy

 

       “You burn to have your photograph in a tennis magazine.”

“I’m afraid so.”

“Why again exactly, now?”

“I guess to be felt about as I feel about those players with their pictures in magazines.”

“Why?”

“Why? I guess to give my life some sort of meaning, Lyle.”

“And how would this do this again?”

“Lyle, I don’t know. I do not know. It just does. Would. Why else would I burn like this, clip secret pictures, not take risks, not sleep or pee?”

“You feel these men with their photographs in magazines care deeply about having their photographs in magazines. Derive immense meaning.”

“I do. They must. I would. Else why would I burn like this to feel as they feel?”

“The meaning they feel, you mean. From the fame.”

“Lyle, don’t they?”

“LaMont, perhaps they did at first. The first photograph, the first magazine, the gratified surge, the seeing themselves as others see them, the hagiography of image, perhaps. Perhaps the first time: enjoyment. After that, do you trust me, trust me: they do not feel what you burn for. After the first surge, they care only that their photographs seem awkward or unflattering, or untrue, or that their privacy, this thing you burn to escape, what they call their privacy is being violated. Something changes. After the first photograph has been in a magazine, the famous men do not enjoy their photographs in magazines so much as they fear that their photographs will cease to appear in magazines. They are trapped, just as you are.”

“Is this supposed to be good news? This is awful news.”

“LaMont, are you willing to listen to a Remark about what is true?”

“Okey-dokey.”

“The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you.”

“Maybe I ought to be getting back.”

“LaMont, the world is very old. You have been snared by something untrue. You are deluded. But this is good news. You have been snared by the delusion that envy has a reciprocal. You assume that there is a flip-side to your painful envy of Michael Chang: namely Michael Chang’s enjoyable feeling of being-envied-by-LaMont-Chu. No such animal.”

“Animal?”

“You burn with hunger for food that does not exist.”

“This is good news?”

“It is the truth. To be envied, admired, is not a feeling. Nor is fame a feeling. There are feelings associated with fame, but few of them are any more enjoyable than the feelings associated with envy of fame.”

“The burning doesn’t go away?”

“What fire dies when you feed it? It is not fame itself they wish to deny you here. Trust them. There is much fear in fame. Terrible and heavy fear to be pulled and held, carried. Perhaps they want only to keep it off you until you weigh enough to pull toward yourself.”

“Would I sound ungrateful if I said this doesn’t make me feel very much better at all?”

“LaMont, the truth is that the world is incredibly, incredibly, unbelievably old. You suffer with the stunted desire caused by one of its oldest lies. Do not believe the photographs. Fame is not the exit from any cage.”

“So I’m stuck in the cage from either side. Fame or tortured envy of fame. There’s no way out.”

“You might consider how escape from a cage must surely require, foremost, awareness of the fact of the cage.”

― David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest

The Books of 2020

 

Coronavirus Dashboard

Useful links for COVID-19 outbreak

Spreadsheet of US coronavirus numbers by state: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/18oVRrHj3c183mHmq3m89_163yuYltLNlOmPerQ18E8w/htmlview?sle=true# from https://covidtracking.com/

Johns Hopkins tracking map: https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html

What's the Point of Continuing the Shutdown?

Over on Facebook, Kathy asks:

Since "flattening the curve" was always about not overwhelming the hospitals and never about preventing the incidence of the disease, then what are we doing now? Put another way, how is opening gradually different than opening suddenly, if the end result is that we'll all eventually end up out in stores and restaurants anyhow while the disease is just as present and threatening? Seems like the only different outcome of a slower opening is further destruction of the economy. What am I missing?

During March, COVID infections were doubling rapidly and at an increasing rate (7 days, 5 days, 3 days), with ~20% needing hospitalization, and killing ~1-2%. That would have overwhelmed ICU/hospital capacity within a few weeks and resulted in ~1,000,000 dead in the US if nothing were done. So we did something: the shutdown. And so far, it's kept infection down within capacity almost everywhere (and spare capacity could be shuffled around).
That plateau also means the R0 number dropped to somewhere between 1.2 and 0.9 in the country as a whole because of the whole social distancing + Stay At Home program. Under local conditions where it's much higher, such as in institutions where distancing isn't possible (prisons, nursing homes, meat packing plants), once the virus gets inside the building, we get a cluster like the 2,000 at the prison in Marion. (This is why large gatherings will be the last to come back.)
Now, we can either loosen up or try for a "suppression strategy". If we had 100% compliance everywhere, infections would have gone to zero in 2-4 weeks, and we would be done. Wuhan managed it in about 35 days from peak, or about 80 days from start of lockdown If we get good (~60-80%) compliance, the R0 goes below 0.9 and the virus can't reproduce fast enough and dies slowly. If you loosen up a little, you may be able to stay under 1.2 and the virus will continue as it is; more than that, and you'll soon lose your grip on it entirely.
In the original models I looked at, that would take the US good compliance and coordination from March through June, at minimum.
If you can't keep everything closed up until the virus dies altogether, you can suppress it until it gets rare enough that you can test everybody and then track contacts. Only infected people would then have to be isolated, and then only until they're no longer infectious. Germany and New Zealand are at or near this stage now.
On the economic side, the thing to realize is that consumer/household consumption drives the economy. Shutting down businesses that would not have consumers, and those whose workers would soon become sick if not at home, is essentially a protective maneuver, putting the businesses in suspended animation rather than allowing them to fail. Paying people not to work under these conditions is a form of social insurance, just like paying people laid off due to flooding or a tornado that destroyed their workplace. It has the additional benefit of keeping money flowing through the economy, so there's demand. Where there's demand, there will eventually be supply to meet it. It doesn't work well the other way around (keeping supply high, but letting demand stay low) because the companies would have no one to sell to.

How and Why to Save the Post Office

As many of you know, the Post Office is in dire straits due to the quarantine shutdown reducing their letter & package volume by 50%. As you may not know, they've been in dire straits for a while due to the 2006 PAEA bill that requires them to prefund retirement benefits for all their employees for the next 70 YEARS, two to three times as long as most pension funds do.
As a result, if something is not done to help, the Post Office will have to shut down in June 2020. Many of you are dependent on the Postal Service to deliver medicine, food, and other necessities. For small businesses, postal delivery is the only viable link they have to deliver to customers, and postal delivery completes the eCommerce loop for every online business in America. For many rural communities, no commercial package delivery service can profitably offer last mile delivery to and from your doorstep.
The President and Senate Majority Leader have blocked funding to keep the Post Office running during this time of crisis.
It was part of the Coronavirus Recovery Package that found Boeing important enough to bail out, but not the government run Post Office.
So here's a three point plan to Save the Post Office:

1. Buy some stamps at usps.com
2. Send your Congressperson and Senators a postcard or letter each, telling them why you like the Post Office and how you depend on its service. Recommend that they fund the Post Office rescue and repeal the 2006 PAEA pension requirements. Do this once a week until it happens.
3. Send a postcard or letter to your friends, sharing something about your life during quarantine or just reaching out to them, and asking them to participate in this effort to save the Post Office, if they happen to like getting and sending mail and packages like this. (Most people do.)

A Time-Traveller's Letter

Hello to the me who is just about to graduate from high school. This is your older self from 2020. I am writing this letter as part of a time travel experiment that resets my timeline to this date; although you should retain all of my memories if all goes according to plan, this letter is a backup. Diagrams and instructions for how to build the time machine and repeat the experiment are appended to this letter, in case you need to reboot your life again and this timeline doesn’t work out.

Also enclosed, find a picture of us at my age, holding a picture of us at your age, located in front of a building that does not exist in your time, both as verification that I am the future you, and just for the general wow factor. As further verification, in the next few months, the Berlin Wall and the rest of the Iron Curtain will fall, at about the time that your hallmates are playing the Indigo Girls’ “Closer to Fine”, which has not yet been released. A condensed personal and general history of the future follows […].

Here are thirty people close to you whose lives you can save or who you can spare from years of suffering with ten minutes or less of effort at the right time […] If you’re not worried about altering the timeline in big ways, here are ten points at which a small change could have produced a big change for the better[…]

Be on the lookout for other opportunities to help other people in a simple way, especially when you are in a rush to do something else. It is better to be kind and useful than to appear clever or funny or cool. There will be many more opportunities for the latter than the former in this life.

Someone needs to help, and you are someone. If something needs to be done, and you cannot find anyone else to do it, you have just volunteered.

Run toward what you fear. You fear will shrink and you will grow.

Procrastination, writer’s block, and general inertia will eat up an unconscionable amount of your life until you realize that these are just illusory. There’s nothing to them but what you pretend is there. There is always a best thing that needs to be done at this time, so do that, and then do the next thing.

Start keeping a journal. Take more photos. Write a targeted number of words every day—1000 words a day will stack like bricks into a book. You’re a good writer, but if you revise your writing, then B papers will become A papers. Start writing earlier to allocate time for that. Editing is like Photoshop or darkroom work—it will allow you to pull things into focus or blur them, dodge and burn, until the work looks like what you want it to.

You’re naturally cautious, so you should generally say yes to every opportunity. You’re generally cooperative, so you should generally say no to sales pitches. The harder someone tries to sell you, the less worthwhile the product. Learn how to sell gently.

You like to pretend to be uptight, to the point where you forget it’s an act sometimes. Pretend to be extremely laid-back and mellow instead and see how that goes.

Take the harder class; it’s easier. Take the better-paying job; it’s no harder.

If someone is better at something you have been doing a long time, that’s not a reason to stop doing it, thinking you’ll never be as good as they are. It’s an opportunity to shortcut by dissecting what they’re doing or to collaborate with them. A lot of the time, you can just ask them to show you how they do it or what you’re doing wrong. Deliberate practice with a goal will get you past the plateaus you’re currently experiencing in e.g., your performance in tennis or musical instruments. Anybody who’s great at anything started out sucking at it, probably worse than you.

Also, find a way to learn all of that trade school/shop class stuff. It’s unconscionable not to know how to repair or build things, and it will teach you the importance of good craftsmanship.

All of your athletic problems boil down to three things. When you do something, you must turn your whole body to it. When you swim, turn your whole body and not just your neck to breathe. When you serve or hit a forehand, twist your whole body. When you punch or kick, turn your whole body’s weight to it like a spring. Second, you are uncomfortable having your hips above your head or falling in any way. Practice those things a thousand times, or until that concern disappears. A thousand dives off the high dive. A thousand headstands. A thousand trust falls. Third, an hour of yoga very week will fix that problem with your knees and the tightness in your back.

In the next couple of years, you are on course to make three small mistakes that are very costly: failing to take the seminar with your advisors and instead taking one with the hostile guy, going to grad school in Ohio rather than California, and failing to build up an immunity to iocaine powder prior to getting in a death match with the Sicilian. At least you don’t get embroiled in a land war in Asia, though the country does.

I hope this helps and wish you (me) the best of all timelines.

Originally posted on Quora here: https://www.quora.com/You-get-to-restart-your-life-at-any-age-however-you-would-have-no-recollection-of-being-any-older-All-you-will-be-allowed-to-bring-with-you-is-a-letter-What-will-you-write-in-that-letter/answer/Scott-Gosnell

Some thoughts on the pandemic and panic

1. Fear and anxiety work on a bell curve. Up to a point, you're more and more likely to take action. Above that point, you're less and less likely to do so. It's good to ride the peak of that wave without going over.

2. This is going to last longer than you think it will. For the US, the pandemic clock started ticking on or around March 1st. We're currently in Week 2. If we're lucky, we have about 10 weeks to go for the peak of this. Do the things that you are able to sustain for 10+ weeks.

3. Those safety measures need to be done at a hygienic level. You don't have to go off-grid or live in a biocontainment suit. You need to wash your hands as well and as often as you should have been doing all along (but who does that in normal times, really?), stop going to public events, and live quietly at home for a while.

4. If you're under the age of 50, are not a healthcare worker, and are not immunocompromised, there's little threat to your life individually, nor to the lives of your children. Even if you are in one of the three high-risk groups above, you are more likely than not to survive coronavirus.

5. There is, however, an enormous threat to the lives of the surrounding community. It's not an epidemic they'll be talking about in 1000 years, like the Black Plague, which killed 1/3rd of Europe, but it's like the 1918 flu, which killed 2% and which we're still talking about 100 years later. Do not fool around.

6. The disease is enormously contagious, and is most contagious before symptoms hit. This is what makes it a systemic or community risk, rather than an idiosyncratic or individualized risk.

7. We're going to get through this one way or another. We will get through it best if we can all be rational and thoughtful about our neighbors and our community (oh no).

8. A mediocre effort sustained for 10 weeks beats a maximum effort of 1 week followed by 9 weeks of neglect. Individually mediocre efforts coupled with an excellent national and community effort will see us through.

BONUS: This is going to happen again, sooner rather than later, so maybe give Medicare for All or another universal health care program a bit of a push through Congress, so we're better prepared next time.

Election 2020: The Democratic Primaries

I'll reiterate here what I've been saying everywhere else, which is that the only way you're going to find the strongest candidate is to have all the possible nominees fight it out until one of them wins the majority of votes. That's the traditional method, and it's the method that works.

Beyond that, everything is just supposition and conjecture and hot air. Nobody knows anything.

I'm hoping enough voters start picking Elizabeth Warren to make her the frontrunner again, because I think she's the best person for the job, but you may have a different opinion. That's fine.

All of the remaining candidates beat Trump in head-to-head matchups. He's upside down in popularity numbers. Could he win if we're not careful? Sure, but I'd rather be where we are now, winning by ten points than vice versa.

Right now, there are many, many pundits saying that "Bernie can't win" or "a centrist can't win", either or both of which actually mean that the pundit could not imagine voting for such a candidate. I tell you, it's the same every time. When your guy or gal is in the lead, it's "Vote Blue No Matter Who" and when your guy or gal loses, it's "Screw you guys, I'm going home." 

At the same time, we're working on social media time, where snap judgments are the rule of the day. People want this process to be over so they can get on with dumping Trump out of office. 

Everybody's going to have to calm down and let the process work itself out. We're going to have a much better idea of where things stand by the end of March. Worst case, we've got another three months of wrangling to do until the convention in June.

Whatever happens, there's local work to be done. Vote in the primaries. Vote in the general. Work on behalf of the downticket candidates. 

And engage in some self-care now so you're ready for the general.

Links for Later 6-23-19

1. Why the band The National are Big Divorced Energy.
2. Laurie Anderson on Reality and Non-Reality.

Right now I’m writing something, and people are asking, “Is it fiction or is it real?” I was like: “Well, I’m really not sure where that line goes.” And I’m really not. And, being an artist is what? Real or fantasy or…? Even when I’ve tried to work in the real world, it seems more deeply fantastical than anything I could make up. The fact that it happened, does it make it less fictional than if it never happened? I’m not sure. It’s the same in VR.

Recently, I spent time in a pyramid in the Yucatan—in a secret pyramid by James Turrell. Jim built a huge pyramid with a lake on top and a viewing device. It’s over Cenote, an underground lake, which are all over the Yucatan. They were made maybe a billion years ago or something. Meteors punched through the crust and made these underground lakes. They’re all connected: If you drop a note down in one of them, it will show up in another. They’re all connected by lakes. 

Me and three other people were there to talk about the future of the planet. We didn’t come up with anything, I have to say, but we had a really good time. One of the things that reminded me of this was that you looked up at the sky through an ellipse shaped hole; you looked at the sky all night. Around this hole was another ring of light, which always was shifting. It wasn’t like camping and looking at the night sky; it was like looking at yourself looking at the night sky. Your interpretation of what black is always influenced by, “Is it surrounded by lime green or baby pink?” As the sun rises and the sky goes through every single phase that it could, from black to blue, including pink and red, you realize that even so called, “Seeing things,” is an act of comparison, memory, labeling and, fiction. It was never that as clear to me before as that. I’ve thought, “Oh, the sky is green!” I said, “Because it’s ringed with pink.” “Oh my, it’s brown!” “Because it’s against dark blue.” 

We talked in this desultory way about what we could do. And, I mean… I’ve missed the thinkers in the last year. I haven’t heard from very many thinkers. The level of discussion has sunk to the rock bottom. Although, just when you think you’ve found a rock, you might find something else, like the slime beneath it. I’m fairly terrified and trying to not be; I’m trying to be an informed person who’s getting a lot of energy from a terrible situation. I largely blame myself for not seeing that we just very slowly didn’t seem to have a middle class anymore. I thought, “Where have I been?”

3. Oral History of Bennington College in the 80's

African-American Graveyard Buried Under Upper Arlington High School

An African-American graveyard was established by a freed slave and blacksmith named Pleasant Litchford on the site where Upper Arlington High School currently stands. While some of the graves were moved when the school was built in 1955, it is unclear whether all of the graves were properly relocated.

From WOSU:

Upper Arlington School District will study whether remains may still lie beneath the high school’s campus. Superintendent Paul Imhoff said they are working with an archaeologist and plan to conduct a scan of the area to identify any graves that may not have already been cleared.

Construction of the first high school revealed the cemetery in 1955. The district moved remains they found, but it built a parking lot and possibly part of the building over the area.

Upper Arlington resident Mike Renz has encouraged the city and school district to further explore the cemetery, and he said construction of the current high school above the cemetery illustrated the community’s segregation at that time.

“You don’t handle human remains in such a casual way,” Renz said. “You don’t build buildings or parking lots over graves no matter who they belong to.”

Now, the district wants to address its previous mistakes and respectfully manage the cemetery as it tears down the old high school, Imhoff said.

“This is not a proud part of our history, but it is a part of our history, and we feel strongly that we are not going to hide from that. We’re not going to pretend like it didn’t happen,” Imhoff said. “We’re still in the process of determining what (the right thing) is, but we’re certainly dedicated to doing the right thing and honoring these people whose final resting place was on that site.”

In addition to searching for more remains, Imhoff says he expects some kind of memorial to be placed on the cemetery’s site.

Pleasant Litchford, a freed slave who came to Columbus from Virginia in 1828, established the cemetery in the 1800s. As a blacksmith, he started buying land in what is now Upper Arlington, and founded the cemetery for his family and other African-Americans who were excluded from white cemeteries.

Goodbye, Dad

William Gosnell 1931-2019

GOSNELL William Francis Gosnell, 87, of Upper Arlington, passed away at home Sunday, January 20, 2019, after a long illness. He was preceded in death by his parents, Dr. Francis and Katherine Gosnell and his sister, Mariana Gosnell. He is survived by his wife, Norma L. Gosnell, son, Scott Gosnell, sister, Molly Rudy, sister-in-law Irma Pinkerton and brothers-in-law Bill (Gayle) and Jack (Sophie) Hall. He was a devoted uncle to his nephews and nieces, Doug, Steve, and Kathy; Jimmy, Tommy, Shirley, Silvia, Kelly, Karen, Steve, Cathy, Danielle and Kim; their spouses and partners; and a great-uncle to his many grand nephews and nieces.

William was a 1949 graduate of Upper Arlington High School. He went on to receive both his Bachelors and Masters of Arts from the Ohio State University. He served two years in the United States Marine Corps during the Korean War before resuming his studies. Following college, he taught History, Government, Psychology and Sociology for forty-two years at Northland High School, and was awarded Teacher of the Year in 1993. He was constantly amazed and delighted to see his students grow and develop as people.

William met his wife Norma when both became members of the recently opened Swim and Racquet Tennis Club; they would go on to become club champions in mixed doubles, to remain lifelong partners in tennis and in life, to celebrate the birth of their son, Scott, and to celebrate their fiftieth wedding anniversary. He described himself as “a good egg, slightly cracked,” but will be remembered for his kindness, interest in everyone he met, capacity to generate a lecture on any topic at any length at the drop of a hat, boundless curiosity and thirst for knowledge, and his belief in treating everyone among us with dignity and justice. His favorite advice was from the movie Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure: “Be excellent to each other.”

He was a sixty-eight-year member of First Community Church in Marble Cliff, where the memorial service will be held on January 30, 2019 at 11AM, despite his previously stated preference for “a traditional Viking funeral with burning ship and so forth,” “to be set adrift on an ice floe,” or “to be shot bodily into orbit from a large cannon.” We will miss him terribly.

Service will be held in Burkhart Chapel at the South Campus of First Community Church, 1320 Cambridge Ave. 43212, at 11AM, January 30, 2019. In lieu of flowers, please make a donation to the educational charity of your choice.

Links for Later 9-11-18

1. The dye from the murex snail was responsible for both Tyrian purple, used in Imperial robes and tekhelet, the "perfect" blue dye of Hebrew prayer shawls.
2. Antitrust legislation rises from the dead, thanks to Lina Khan and others like her.
3. Harvard started paying its workers a living wage. Could other companies do the same?

State of the OH15 House Race

Collecting and reposting my state of the election notes from https://www.facebook.com/groups/IndivisibleOHDist15/permalink/505002666610097/

The polling from the week before the 12th's special election showed Rep. Stivers about 7-9 points ahead. The 15 point lead predicted by 538's "standard" model is likely an overreaction to the narrow R win in the 12th.

He has much better name recognition and is currently running an unopposed air campaign (TV/radio/internet ads), plus an incumbent advantage. He's also one of the Republicans' top fundraisers.

Against all that, this is going to be a blue wave year, with about a +10 advantage for the Democrats. Neal's fundraising has been much more vigorous than usual for the district, though to get up to par would require a massive surge. The Senate and Governor's races may provide some additional coattails.

Based on the distribution of votes from the past couple of elections, the Democrats need to bank large leads in Franklin County and Athens, and reduce the Republican lead in Madison and Fairfield (Lancaster area).

Franklin is a game of suburbs: Upper Arlington, Hilliard, Grove City, Obetz. (going from D-->R strength).

To win, the Democrats must have both an excellent ground game (GOTV), which I think they have, and an impactful and constant air campaign (TV/radio/internet). While I've tweaked Rick Neal about this on a semi-regular basis, it's really an area where ODP has fallen down, and the bulk of the criticism needs to fall on them. Failure to market on air leads to poor fundraising numbers and poor turnout. Failure to get on air in the summer allows their opponents to set the terms of the debate.

Absent a compelling purchased ad campaign, I'd expect that every down-ballot Democrat should be throwing themselves in front of every camera and microphone in the world, acting as if they've already won and are just waiting to be sworn in. Earned media can make the difference.