Virtue Signaling

Among the privileged, celebrities, in particular, suffer from guilt. Most of them do not believe that they earned what they have and thus, Victor Davis Hanson explains, they cannot really enjoy it. (Via Maggie’s Farm) They are crippled by the fear that someone, some day is going to come along and take it all away.

When you do not feel that you earned what you have, when the extent of your wealth far outstrips the effort you put into accumulating it, you’re your wealth is grossly disproportionate to your contribution to society, you are going to feel like a fraud. You will feel guilty and you will, Hanson explains, diminish the guilt by doing some serious penance.

Who would not give up a little to save a lot?

If you feel guilty you will need protection. Hanson explains that hyperwealthy celebrities, from Beyonce to Colin Kaepernick to the Clintons to George Soros feel compelled to signal their consummate virtue by glomming on to trendy leftist causes. They try to obviate the implication that there is something suspicious in all the filthy lucre they have accumulated, that they did not earn it, but gamed the system. Thus, they have a special affinity for any ideology that suggests that the system is corrupt.

Almost by definition celebrities earn more than they contribute. But they also earn more than they deserve. Great actors and musicians—from Meryl Streep to YoYo Ma-- are not celebrities. Mediocre talents who fill the tabloid press are.

In the past people who amassed great fortunes tended to be humble about their wealth. They did not buy up entire neighborhoods in order to feel more secure. They did not flaunt their wealth by sailing on mammoth yachts or by spending absurd sums of money on whatever. They wanted to relate to other people, not to lord it over them. And they wanted to give back to society by setting an example of behavior that would produce more social harmony.

They understood that the conspicuous display of extravagant, and especially unearned wealth produces resentment. Most of them knew better than to be classed among the Robber Barons.

In the past, humility was a virtue, something to which others could aspire. It was, if I may say so, the antidote to narcissism. Today, the culture of celebrity values oversharing and vulgarity. Celebrities are a throwback to paganism; they function like gods who lead a variety of pagan cults. And like the gods of Olympus they set an example of bad behavior and encourage others to indulge the same vices. But since they were gods no one was going to judge them ill for their bad behavior. Thus did do they make of vice a virtue.

Almost by definition, celebrities can feel no shame. If they did they would not be making a living by making a spectacle of themselves.

They prefer to live their lives within a guilt/penance narrative. They transgress society’s rules, feel guilty about it and do penance to cleanse their souls. Once they have done so they can go out and sin again. Being virtuous means paying a price for transgression, and thus going out to misbehave again.

Hanson explained:

The wealthy, the influential, the intelligentsia, and the cultural elite all broadcast their virtues — usually at a cut-rate rhetorical price — to offset their own sense of sin (as defined by feelings of guilt), or in fear that their own lives are antithetical to the ideologies they espouse, or sometimes simply as a wise career move. Sin these days is mostly defined as race/class/gender thought crimes.

They are, Hanson suggests, wearing a mask of virtue because they could not otherwise enjoy their wealth. One might say that since this wealth was not really earned they do not feel that it is really theirs. If the wealth is not really theirs they have no right to enjoy it:

Wearing a mask of virtue is done not to save one’s soul for eternity but to still feel good about enjoying privilege. The sneakers, jeans, and T-shirts or mafia-black outfits of Silicon Valley billionaires can compensate for their robber-baron sins of outsourcing, offshoring, and tax avoidance or simply their preference for apartheid existence with the fellow rich; for George Soros (currency manipulator and European financial outlaw), it is funding leftists who hate capitalists and rank financial speculators like him. All that beats lashings and haircloth.

Hanson describes a number of virtue-signaling celebrities, but the greatest of them all—primus inter pares—must be Bill and Hillary Clinton. Among American presidents Bill Clinton stands out for having cashed in on the American presidency. No other president, before or since, has done the same:

A person from Mars who reviewed the long record of the Clintons – from the young women who fell into the lair of Bill’s predation, to the unapologetic greed from the 34-trillion-to-1 odds in Hillary’s cattle-futures con, to “Chancellor Bill” of Laureate University as the highest annually paid university head in education history, to the privileged lifestyle of huge estates and private jets, (some of it fueled by ensuring the Clinton Foundation would dispense only about 15 percent of its annual expenditures to charities) — would size up the couple as grasping Gilded Age plutocrats whose reactionary lifestyles reflected a lifelong counter-revolutionary self-obsession.

What will it take to put an end, not only to this virtue signaling, but to a culture that forgives just about anything as long as  you do not have a corrupt or sinful thought? Hanson suggests that’s time for a Reformation, and perhaps even a subsequent Counter Reformation:

The Reformation — and Counter Reformation — mostly ended the selling of penances. Only something similar will end our pathetic version, perhaps when the public tunes out at the tired boilerplate of “racist,” “sexist,” and “nativist”; or when we quit sending money to the “safe space,” “trigger warning,” “micro-aggression” Ivy League; or we flip the channel when NFL gladiators playact as robed philosophers; or we laugh off celebrity activists as the new John D. Rockefellers tossing out a few of their shiny new dimes.

Tampons in the Men's Restroom

Having long been a leader in political correctness, Brown University has found another way to embarrass itself and to alienate its alumni. (Among them, yours truly.)

Opening up a new frontier in sensitivity towards the transgendered, Brown has started placing tampon dispensers in men’s lavatories. And, they will be free. Apparently, these are needed by women who believe that they are men and who therefore will insist on using the men’s room. Will they also insist on using male urinals?

Someone might ask why it should be, if these women are really men, they still get their periods, but, trust me, when you enter the world of the politically correct you must leave your rational faculties at the restroom door.

At least, Brown has not yet banned male urinals. And it have not yet followed the Swedish example, wherein boys in public schools are told that they must pee sitting down… because if they pee standing up they are being sexist.

William Hicks reports on this compelling story for Heat St.:

Many have raised doubts about the masculinity of the men attending Brown University, but who knew the school’s administration did as well.

This school year, Brown provide free tampons in all nonresidential restrooms — men’s rooms included. The school explained the decision by saying they did not want to make transgender students feel excluded.

While some of these tampons in men’s restrooms may be used for their intended purpose, no doubt most will be lost to adolescent exploration. Young boys growing into men will learn what the hell … tampons actually are, whether they stop nosebleeds, or if that vodka trick from the news actually works. Fun fact: Tampons can also be used in the treatment of hemorrhoids.

Hicks highlights the point that young men are likely to make ill use these feminine hygiene objects. They are likely to turn them into objects of ridicule and use them for purposes for which they were not intended. Since they cannot use them for their intended purpose, what else is left? Of course, this kind of play will compromise women’s privacy and promote disrespect for women.

Clearly, Brown University administrators were not thinking when they made their decisions.

In truth, the more Brown chooses to place itself in the vanguard of this stupidity the less its alumni will be enticed to contribute. And that, I am certain, is a good thing. Better to starve the beast.

When Experts Get It Wrong

Surely, you recall that Chicken Little once ran around shouting that the sky was falling. Today, we have more adult versions of Chicken Little: they are called experts. They especially like to forecast future calamities for the markets and the economy. They do so with wild abandon, even though they are very often wrong.

Actually, it’s a good argument for free enterprise. Would you want the economy to be run by so-called experts who try to make a name for themselves forecasting the apocalypse? 

Case in point: expert opinion universally agreed that if British subjects voted to leave the European Union, the result would be: the sky would fall. It has not turned out that way, so the experts will move on to predict another catastrophe.

  

Josh Zumbrun analyzed the phenomenon in the Wall Street Journal:

It’s early, but data so far suggest the British decision to leave the European Union could be another example of a recurring phenomenon: expert predictions of dire consequences to political decisions that end up proving overheated.

Economists are good at digging into the forces behind inflation or productivity, or exploring the downsides of wealth inequality. But they face steeper challenges in extrapolating from political events, especially ones with few or any past corollaries.

“Forecasters often feel incentivized to pump up the probability of worst-case scenarios” said Philip Tetlock, an expert in political forecasting at the University of Pennsylvania. Forecasters may inflate the probability of disasters, as a way to increase the salience of a warning, or because they believe that proving prescient will be something they can boast about, while proving mistaken will be something most people forget. “Over time, this has some corrosive effect on trust in the expert community,” he said.

If people start doubting the expertise of experts it will not be coming a moment too soon. Tetlock does make a salient point: when experts are wrong people tend to forget very easily; when experts are right everyone recalls vividly what they have said. The risk/reward ratio for bad forecasts induces people to forecast calamity.

Amazingly, when experts look into their crystal balls they most often see nothing more than their fattened heads.

How has the Brexit vote worked out? Zumbrun explains:

It’s now been two months since British voters on June 23 cast their ballots to exit from the European Union, and it’s becoming unclear if the recession so many feared will materialize—at least in the near term.

It’s worth revisiting the level of concern prior to the vote. George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, said a vote for Brexit would cause a “DIY recession.” In the immediate aftermath of the vote, many market economists forecast recession would begin almost immediately.

In the days after the vote, global stock markets indeed fell sharply. Perhaps if it had been just a little bit worse, a broader panic would have sent things into a spiral. Instead, markets have rebounded. The FTSE 100 climbed to near-record levels by the middle of August.

So much for the experts. We recall their shrieking about the Brexit vote before and after it happened. In this case the general public seems to have known beter.

Zumbrun outlines other situations where experts have erred:

Some economists warned the U.S. congressional budget battles in 2013, which led to sharp spending cuts known as sequestration, could throw the economy back into recession. The economy grew 2.7% that year.

Then, in 2010 and 2012, some economists warned the Federal Reserve’s massive bond-buying program would cause hyperinflation, soaring commodity prices and a collapse of the dollar. Nothing of the sort occurred.

Warnings abounded in 2015 that if Greece rejected an international bailout, it could spark a sovereign default or a banking crisis or Greece being cast off the euro. Greece’s economy is far from a success story, but it hasn’t gone bankrupt. Its banking system has been battered and drained of deposits, but hasn’t collapsed. It remains in the euro.

Speaking of non-experts, yesterday Donald Trump declared that the stock market was in a bubble that was being engineered by the Federal Reserve Bank. The Fed wants to keep things looking rosy until after the election, Trump said, because it wants to ensure that Obama leaves office with his reputation intact.

If I had been called on to offer an opinion—I wasn’t—I would say that Trump is right about this. And that he is simply saying what many other savvy market watchers are saying in private but would not dare to say in public. It's not the first time I have heard this view.

Bloomberg reports:

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump repeated his criticism that the Federal Reserve has created a"bubble" and an "artificial stock market" through low rates that were designed to benefit President Obama.

"They're keeping the rates artificially low so that Obama can go out and play golf in January and say that he did a good job," Trump told reporters Monday aboard a flight to Youngstown, Ohio. "It's a very false economy."

The billionaire added that Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen has "done a political job" and responded to the possibility of a rate hike in September by saying the low-rate environment has been "created until January."

Trump earlier repeated that he "wouldn't be leading" if the unemployment rate was actually the 4.9 percent that the Department of Labor reports—a position he has taken since he led the Republican field, although he now falls behind Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton in many polls.

One might say that the economy is running on fumes. One might say that the rosy numbers are a mirage masking the economy’s underlying weakness. On these points and on the notion that he would not be doing so well in the polls if the economy was really as good as the media and the stock market suggest, Trump is most likely correct.

But then, if the Federal Reserve is going to raise interest rates after the election and take away the punch bowl, thus bursting of the bubble, why would Trump want to be president when this happens? Because you and I know that if Trump or any Republican is occupying the oval office when the bubble bursts, he will be blamed.

Rationing Health Care in Great Britain

Back in the day, in 2009 to be precise, Paul Krugman assured us that Great Britain’s National Health Service was well worth being emulated. As you know Krugman is a champion of government control over just about everything. To his so-called mind everything good comes to us from the government and from the Democratic Party. Everything bad comes form private enterprise and the Republican Party. If you know that you do not need to read any of his columns.

In 2009 Krugman wrote:

In Britain, the government itself runs the hospitals and employs the doctors. We’ve all heard scare stories about how that works in practice; these stories are false.

This absurd conclusion has been debunked so many times, here and elsewhere, that one questions the need to do so again. And yet, bad ideas die hard, so here are some new “scare stories” from Great Britain. They tell us that medical care is now being rationed, according to how overweight you are. If you fall within the category of obesity you will be deprived certain medical procedures. And you will also give up your right to certain kinds of medical care if you smoke.

The Telegraph reports:

Obese people will be routinely refused operations across the NHS, health service bosses have warned, after one authority said it would limit procedures on an unprecedented scale.

Hospital leaders in North Yorkshire said that patients with a body mass index (BMI) of 30 or above – as well as smokers – will be barred from most surgery for up to a year amid increasingly desperate measures to plug a funding black hole. The restrictions will apply to standard hip and knee operations.

The decision, described by the Royal College of Surgeons as the “most severe the modern NHS has ever seen”, led to warnings that other trusts will soon be forced to follow suit and rationing will become the norm if the current funding crisis continues.

Chris Hopson, the head of NHS Providers, which represents acute care, ambulance and community services, said: “I think we are going to see more and more decisions like this.

“It’s the only way providers are going to be able to balance their books, and in a way you have to applaud their honesty. You can see why they’re doing this – the service is bursting at the seams.” 

The announcement is the latest in a series of setbacks for patients who are facing rolling strikes by junior doctors that threaten to cripple the health service as winter approaches.

The decision by Vale of York Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) comes amid increasing limits across the NHS on surgery for cataracts as well as hip and knee operations.

Under the latest restrictions, patients in the catchment area who have a BMI of 30 or more will be barred from routine surgery for non-life-threatening conditions for a year, although they may secure a referral sooner if they shed 10 per cent of their weight.

What does it all mean? It means that the promise of free health care for everyone is crashing on the shoals of reality. It means that the National Health Service is going broke and that one of Great Britain’s proudest post war achievements—remember the ridiculous celebration  of the NHS at the London Olympics—is failing:

Reports of rationing have emerged after NHS England admitted in May that its provider sector overspent by £2.45 billion in 2015-16,  more than a threefold increase on the previous year.

The figure, which was described as conservative by think-tanks, prompted some hospital chief executives to question the future viability of free universal healthcare.

Mr Hopson called for a “realistic national conversation” about how much should be spent on the health service, and said that if procedures had to be restricted, the reduction should be managed on an NHS-wide basis.

See also Simon Heffer's analysis:

It also suffers from grotesque overmanning in non-medical staff, a lack of strategic planning to cope with demographic change, and many of the failures associated with the absence of an effective price mechanism. Without rethinking its whole purpose and method of operation, it will, within a decade or two, simply collapse.

Dropout Factories

In a detailed analysis Tamara Hiler and Lanae Erickson Hatalsk examine how well public colleges and universities have been educating students. They demonstrate that we have all been conned into thinking that going to college will guarantee everyone a better job, a higher income and greater social mobility. (Via Maggie’s Farm)

The authors find that most public institutions of higher learning fail at their appointed task. Graduation rates are scandalously low, and many of those who attend these institutions end up with student loan debt they cannot pay, along with salaries that are roughly equivalent of what they would have made if they had only graduated from high school.

In the article we see a monumental waste of money and with many promises betrayed. The authors do not consider how these institutions are run. They do not examine the role played by bloated administrations and do not ask whether the teachers know how to teach. They do not explain whether the students who attend these colleges are simply incapable of doing college level work or whether the schools themselves have become indoctrination mills.

The authors introduce the topic:

Public colleges and universities have long been beacons of hope for millions of Americans seeking to better their lives and improve their economic standing. Each year, they educate the largest proportion of bachelor’s degree-seeking students (about two-thirds of the college-going population), often offering a much more affordable education than their private, non-profit peers. Yet very little is understood about whether these institutions are actually fulfilling their promise to serve as engines of mobility for the 6.8 million students that walk through their doors each year.⁶ Specifically, how well are our country’s four-year public colleges and universities equipping students with a degree and the skills they need to obtain well-paying jobs in our modern economy?

After analyzing the data, the authors conclude:

Of the 535 four-year public colleges and universities for which data was available, we found that nearly 6 in 10 are failing to graduate a majority of their first-time, full-time students, dimming prospects for their future economic success. In addition, our results reveal that there is a wide divergence of quality in our public institutions, with the students who need higher education as an engine of mobility the most often concentrated at schools with the worst outcomes.

Why does the graduation rate matter?

n today’s economy, graduation rate is the most powerful indicator of whether or not a college is truly bringing value to a student’s life. Americans holding bachelor’s degrees have median weekly earnings that are more than $400 greater than their non-college educated peers, resulting in lifetime wages that are on average $1 million more over the course of a lifetime.”¹³ By contrast, students who do not earn a diploma are in many cases worse off than if they had never attended college at all—in large part because most non-completers will have taken on some form of debt yet will not be eligible for the higher paying jobs a degree would open up to help pay it off.¹⁴

Yet, at the average public institution, students have LESS THAN a 1 in 2 shot of graduating.

They continue:

The graduation rate for first time, full time students at the average four-year public institution is 48.3%.

At 6 in 10 of these institutions (57.6%), fewer than half of first-time, full-time students earn a degree.

Only 39 four-year public institutions (7.3%) boast a graduation rate higher than 75%.

We have passed beyond the notion that colleges are diploma mills. Today’s system of  higher education has produced dropout factories:

A shocking 85% of four-year public colleges and universities would be considered dropout factories if they were held to the same standards as our nation’s high schools.

And also:

One of the more astounding findings in this dataset is the reality that only 80 out of 535 four-year public institutions—or 15.0% of these schools—graduate more than two-thirds of their first-time, full-time students each year. That means that if the remaining 455 schools were a part of our country’s K-12 system, they would be considered “dropout factories” under the recent reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.¹⁸ Specifically, the federal government has recognized that if a high school fails to graduate more than two-thirds of their students (a status which describes approximately 5% of all high schools in the U.S.) they are required to put in place some sort of support plan to improve their outcomes or face possible closure.¹⁹

And while low graduation rates are a problem on their own, what is even more disconcerting is the fact that a number of these institutions have particularly damaging outcomes for students coming from low- and moderate-income families.

So, the great hope of using the university system to produce social mobility has been betrayed:

At the average four-year public institution, many students aren’t earning more than a high school graduate six years after enrollment.

They conclude that we are not going to fix the problem by making college free.

A Day in the Life of a German Immigration Worker

As you know by now, German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s political party suffered a stinging defeat in an election in her home district yesterday. As everyone understood, the people were repudiating her immigration policy.

To commemorate that event and to provide a picture of the everyday life of those Germans who are dealing with the refugee surge that Merkel engineered, I provide the YouTube video where a woman who works at the government refugee center testifies to her experience dealing with Merkel’s invading army. (hat tip to S/M)

The woman is speaking German, but the video is subtitled. The language is crude, but there is no other way to render the experience of being permanently assaulted (verbally and emotionally) by people who are supposedly seeking asylum and who have obviously never learned the meaning of gratitude.

So, here’s a day in the life:

Disrespecting America

Is America more or less respected in the Age of Obama? The issue has arisen in the presidential campaign. Donald Trump has said that America is less respected. The Pew Research Center believed that the question could only be answered by taking a poll. The results suggested that America is widely respected around the world today.

To obscure the question a reporter compared it all to brand loyalty. The American brand, he says, is like the Apple brand. The more people like you the more they buy your products.

But, is this about respect or popularity? And do the majority of people around the world respect America more because it is standing tall and proud or do they like it because it has diminished and demeaned itself. Do the world’s people like America more because it has been weakened or because it is stronger?

Just this morning, President Obama defended Colin Kaepernick’s right to disrespect the country.  He suggested that we need to have yet another conversation about race… as if we had been talking about anything else for the past eight or so years.

In a brilliant column Claudia Rosett shows that America has been profoundly disrespected and even damaged by the Obama presidency. She describes in detail what happened in China at the G-20 meetings. The world, and especially China, said good-bye to Barack Obama by treating him like a defeated enemy. 

It began with a gross insult:

President Obama took office in 2009 promising that his brand of engagement would yield global respect for the United States. We've since had more than seven years of leading from behind, standing "shoulder to shoulder" with the "international community," snubbing of allies, appeasing of enemies and cutting America down to size. As Obama makes what will likely be his final official visit to China, how's it going?

Well, China, as host of the current G-20 summit, rolled out the red carpet -- or at least the red-carpeted airplane stairs -- for the arriving leaders of such countries as Britain, Australia, Germany and Russia.

For President Obama, arriving yesterday on Air Force One, there was no such dignified reception. Instead, there was a shoving match with the press and a confrontation with National Security Adviser Susan Rice, in which a Chinese official shouted "This is our country. This is our airport." For lack of any portable stairs rolled to the front door of the presidential plane, Obama was left to jog down the aircraft's own stairs at the back.

Obama downplayed the insult, telling reporters "not to over-crank the significance."

Perhaps Obama did not want to make too much of a case about it, but, in trying to laugh it off he was saying that he accepted a diminished status, not only for him but for the nation.

Rosett continues:

Maybe that makes sense in the bubble-world of the Ben-Rhodes-foreign-policy narrative, where the tide of war is forever receding, the arc of history bends toward justice, the oceans rise and fall at the command of Obama's pen and phone, and the echo chamber, on cue, applauds.

But China's reception was an insult, pure and simple. No one need study the tea leaves to understand that this was a gesture of gross disrespect, seen around the world, putting the American president in his place -- especially as compared with the warm reception for Russia's President Vladimir Putin.

Symbolic gestures matter. They matter more than you think. They matter even more when they reflect shifting geopolitical realities.

In Rosett’s words:

While the missing red-carpeted staircase is mainly symbolic, the realities behind it are increasingly dangerous. Among them are China's territorial grabs at sea, provocations toward the U.S. Navy, cyber attacks, military exercises with Russia and evident tolerance  -- despite United Nations sanctions -- of illicit traffic that enables North Korea's continuing nuclear missile program.

We will not even mention how much Russia now respects the United States. Or about the Obama record in Syria and the Middle East.

Were you listening to Obama and media reports you would have thought that he accomplished a great thing by getting China to agree to a climate change agreement. We know that the agreement was not a treaty because the administration chose not to call it a treaty— just as ransom by any other name is not ransom—because that would have required Senate ratification. There was no chance that that was going to happen.

Rosett explains:

So the "ratification" document Obama brought with him to China was the product of one of his pen-and-phone executive actions, offering to the UN secretary-general a commitment Obama was not entitled to make, and which American voters had never agreed to.

Obama was acting in an extra-constitutional fashion, thus disrespecting the Constitution. He has, Rosett argues, diminished American democracy:

Following such stunts as the Iran nuclear deal (which Obama hustled to the UN for approval, but never submitted to the Senate as a treaty), this is becoming a new norm that is, in itself, profoundly dangerous to the foundations of the American republic. Obama's job, summed up in the oath he swore when taking office (twice), is to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." The Constitution requires that a president make treaties only with the "Advice and Consent of the Senate," where a two-thirds majority is required for ratification.

Of course, everyone loves Obama because, Rosett explains, he is kowtowing to the world. The world, especially Russia and China, like to see America on its knees in a submissive posture:

It's a good bet that to the rulers of China -- and Russia, and a great many others -- Obama's "ratification" of the Paris climate deal looks not like leadership, but like a kowtow.

In her words:

All the more so because in practice, this deal amounts to Americans paying tribute. Let's set aside for the moment the valid question -- in a debate not remotely "settled" -- of whether the climate of the planet can actually be fine-tuned, as the Paris accord proposes, to within two degrees celsius over coming decades by central planning to control carbon emissions. Whatever the science, the economic aspect of this deal amounts to an expanding web of regulations and wealth transfers, coordinated by a mix of international and federal bureaucrats.

For Americans, as Obama races during his final months in office to entrench this Paris deal (with pen-and-phone) in the domestic system, the result will be to increase the regulatory strictures already strangling an economy now growing at a dismal 1%. You, the American consumer, taxpayer, shunted-aside voter, will pay.

How one-sided was the deal?

For China, the cost is far less clear. As the state-controlled China Daily summarizes the arrangements, China has pledged to "peak" carbon emissions by 2030. Obama, by contrast, has promised that America will cut emissions by 28% by 2025, as compared to the year 2005.

In other words, small wonder China is happy to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Obama on this deal. Basically, especially with Obama in the cockpit, America starts paying now. China has 14 years to play around before the deal starts to bite. Plus, under China's despotic system, coupled with a treaty in which governments are effectively held accountable only by their own citizens, the rulers in Beijing have plenty of room to toss their international commitments right out the window.

It is not going to be easy to undo all of the damage Obama has caused.