PROTESTS IN 2024 & 1968

In such ugly times, the only true protest is beauty. ~ Phil Ochs  

Do 56 years make a difference? Perhaps. Despite the magnifying effects of social media, I do not believe the current 2024 pro-Palestinian protests at dozens of US college campuses will be nearly as consequential as the anti-Vietnam war protests that happened in 1968.

One recent count states that 90 colleges among the 5,999 in the nation have had protests with about 2,300 total arrests. Curiously, unlike prior ones the protests at UC/Berkeley have yet to draw many headlines. One recent example protest in the news involved some of the 663 full-time students at the Art Institute of Chicago.

Granted, the current protests are not finished and there is much talk about them continuing for another 100 days until the Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Chicago that begins on Aug. 19. Talk is far easier than undertaking the significant efforts needed to make that actually happen. It is more likely they will peter out in the next several weeks, and then attempt to re-assemble for the DNC in mid-August.

I wonder how these college-based protests can be sustained after commencement season that is now in full bloom and will end within a month. The challenges facing demonstration organizers include how they can keep students focused on a protest without schools in full session. Naturally, any time local gendarmes over-react at a protest, the activists become revitalized. Indeed police have at times over-reacted, including stationing combat-ready sharpshooters on the roofs of nearby campus buildings at one of my alma-maters.

Nevertheless, the media’s attention has already begun skidding behind the actual conflict in Gaza. Whatever they may be worth, recent polls indicate only one-quarter of American people support these protests. At this point these antiwar protests now seem to be slight compared to the big bang of anti-Vietnam protests that I played a very minor part in that befell our nation and the DNC in Chicago 56 years ago. The media’s attenuated comparisons between the far larger anti-Vietnam protests and the Gaza protests reflect slender similarities.  

The Gaza protests are focusing on tragic events in the Middle-East that were initiated by Hamas’ dastardly attacks in Israel on Oct. 7 and killed more than 1,200 Israelis and foreign nationals, including at least 35 US citizens. Hamas and other compatriot groups seized 253 hostages. A total of 112 hostages taken prisoner during the attacks now have been freed. The fates of the remaining 141 hostages remain a mystery because Hamas refuses access to them for anyone. The Israelis have forcefully retaliated causing significant destruction and loss of life, as shown below.  

Gaza destruction from Israeli shelling.

The Gaza protestors, like those at Columbia University, are demanding that their colleges divest from companies that “publicly or privately fund or invest in the perpetuation of Israeli apartheid and war crimes.” US firms that the protestors have cited for colleges to divest from include Amazon, Google, Hewlett-Packard, Starbucks and McDonalds.

What results do protestors desire from disinvesting specific equity holdings like Hewlett-Packard or McDonalds from a college endowment because it sells computers or Big Macs to Israel’s government and the Israeli Defense Force (IDF)? Is this act supposed to change the Israeli government’s actions against Gazans and Hamas? American college endowments cumulatively are sizeable, but represent just a shard of international financial assets. If a college were to sell its endowment’s positions in these stocks, how much influence would it then have to possibly persuade these firms to change their global strategy with respect to Israel? None.

What would be the next set of endowment holdings that other protestors would want removed? Perhaps US Treasury bonds because our government has provided significant financial aid to Israel. In fact, since the end of WWII Israel has received more US foreign aid than any other nation on Earth, $312 billion. Shouldn’t the protesters want such aid to stop, given that it has provided Israel with significant improvements for the IDF, among other things. Disinvestment has the theoretical appeal of capitalist debasement, but not for gaining influence with respect to some protesters’ fuzzy goals.

The cause for the State of Palestine has been made numerous times over an historically extensive time period. Most recently on May 10, when the UN General Assembly (UNGA) offered a vote to upgrade Palestine’s membership in the UN. The vote was 143-9 approving the upgrade for Palestine from “non-member/observer status” to “member status,” with 25 abstentions. There are currently 193 UN member states, thus apparently 16 member states did not formally vote or abstain on this motion.

This was the second time the UN considered including Palestine as a full member state. In 2011 Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas first delivered the Palestinian Authority's application for UN membership. It failed. The Palestinians did not receive the required minimum support from the UN Security Council (UNSC). Instead, Palestine received observer status in 2012. Palestine is one of two states that have observer (non-voting) status at the UN, the other is the Holy See/Vatican City.

The UNGA May 10 vote was entirely symbolic – something the UN habitually specializes in doing – because the inclusion of any national state into the UN requires prior approval for membership by the 15-member UNSC. A minimum of 9 of the 15 UNSC members must approve the request for full membership. As one of the 5 permanent members of the UNSC[1], the US retains veto rights on any measure put before the Council for a vote. The US vetoed the vote for Palestinian inclusion as a full UN member state.

Deputy US Ambassador to the UN, Robert Wood, told the General Assembly after the vote that unilateral measures at the UN and on the ground will not advance the US-preferred two-state solution. He stated, “Our vote does not reflect opposition to Palestinian statehood; we have been very clear that we support it and seek to advance it meaningfully. Instead, it is an acknowledgment that statehood will only come from a process that involves direct negotiations between the parties." Furthermore, the current Palestinian reality is there are 2 deeply rivalrous, ununified fragments to Palestine; the East Bank Palestine that is headed by Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestinian Authority and the Gaza authority that is headed by Hamas’s staunchly seclusive Yahya Sinwar.

The continuing diplomatic journey to establish a State of Palestine has navigated many twists and turns. In retrospect, mistakes have been made by every participant. The journey to Palestinian statehood was altered when the State of Israel was created in 1948, becoming a UN member in 1949. Since its beginning, the US has been a key ally of Israel. Both nations have benefited from this relationship. Nevertheless, this may be changing a bit under the strong right-wing control of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. President Biden recently threatened to halt some shipments of US offensive weapons if the Israelis move ahead with their invasion of Rafah.

Unlike the current Gaza protests the anti-Vietnam War protests throughout the US involved hundreds of thousands of Americans. There are several inter-related reasons why the Vietnam protests were so much broader than the Gaza protests. First, in the late 1960s all young American men between 19-25 years old were required register with the Selective Service System (aka, the draft) for military service. Second, President Lyndon Johnson made the tragically flawed decision to send large numbers of US combat personnel to aid South Vietnam’s fight against the invading North Vietnamese. President Johnson’s decision supported President John F. Kennedy’s previous 1961 decision that authorized smaller numbers of US military advisors to assist the South Vietnam government in developing strategy and tactics to combat North Vietnam’s raiding guerrilla troops.

The US Vietnam draft began in 1964. The US military conscripted 2.2 million American men during this period, which brought the Vietnam tragedy directly into families’ lives throughout the 50 states. The Vietnam War was never far from any American’s thoughts.

My Selective Service (draft status) card categorized me as 4-F, meaning I was legally registered but not qualified for military service. No, not because I had heel spurs like Donald Trump alleges. I was, and remain, a type 1 diabetic. Ironically, my having diabetes likely saved my life after my college deferment ended as a 21 year old B.A. degree holder.

About 2.7 million US troops fought in Vietnam for a decade, ending in 1973. An estimated 10,000 women also served in Vietnam, principally as nurses/medical staff as well as in administrative roles, military intelligence or air traffic control. More than 58,000 Americans died and more than 150,000 were wounded in Vietnam.

The estimated fiscal costs of the Vietnam conflict, that unequivocally pale in comparison to the human toll, exceeded $176 billion during 3 US presidencies: Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon. Retrospectively, the US’s entry into Vietnam’s civil war has been properly viewed as a giant military, political and cultural blunder of the first-order.

The Gazan conflict is significantly distinctive. Unlike Vietnam, there are no US armed forces fighting in Gaza. The scale of conflict is much slimmer. Perhaps more importantly and thankfully, there is no longer a draft requirement for young Americans to fight in the Middle East or anywhere else.

Comparisons between the protests in 1968 and 2024 have been made, but in a real sense the current protests about Gaza are incomparable to those that happened during the Vietnam War. The times are different, the politics are different and the public is different. The Gaza protests reflect these differences; many thousands of antiwar activists will not be marching in Washington DC towards the capitol with strong public support.

Although thoroughly despicable, Hamas’ strategy of hiding deeply underground within Gaza’s daily urban milieu is as outrageous as it is wretchedly shrewd. This strategy, together with Prime Minister Netanyahu’s scorched-earth tactics to improbably eradicate Hamas and its fighters, has resulted in immense damages to innocent Gazans’ lives. So far the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) has killed or injured more than 110,000 people living in Gaza, whose communities have been destroyed. Water, food, fuel and healthcare remain in desperately short supply in Gaza.

 Given these circumstances, what can the pro-Palestinian protests hope to achieve, other than expressing understandable exasperation and rage? Other than symbolism, somehow convincing college trustees to sell their endowments already-slender holdings of Israeli equities will have next to no actual remedial effect on Israel’s conduct in Gaza. Maybe symbolism is sufficient, although I doubt it. Trustees may be reluctant to do even this because it opens up future possibilities of having to unload other equities that upset another set of activists. More substantively, none of the Gaza protestors’ demands are aimed at getting Hamas to stop its staggeringly appalling tactics that precipitated Israel’s invasion. This is probably a purposeful oversight, but that bias limits the protestors’ broader support.

Although unlikely, the protestors should take as a victory President Biden’s latest public decision about the Prime Minister’s war tactics. The Gaza protests have encouraged the President to stop delivery of giant bombs and other over-the-top weaponry that the DOD calls “high-payload munitions.” Finally, I urge Gaza protesters to reconsider showing up in Chicago at the DNC. If they somehow disrupt the DNC’s proceedings – that the media will unfortunately happily support and emphasize no matter how inconsequential – they will only increase the odds that #45 will become our 47th President. That fate would be disastrous for far more people than the 2 million Gazans.

 

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[1] The 5 permanent members of the UNSC are: China, France, Russian Federation, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the USA. The 10 non-permanent members - 5 of which are elected each year by the General Assembly for a 2-year term - currently are: Algeria, Ecuador, Guyana, Japan, Malta, Mozambique, Sierra Leone, Slovenia, South Korea and Switzerland. 

 

IT’S ALL ABOUT MONEY

While money can’t buy happiness, it certainly lets you choose your own form of misery. ~ Groucho Marx  

Money makes the world go around. Money or currency is commonly defined as a generally accepted commodity used as a medium for making commercial transactions, a store of value and a means of stating prices, values and costs. Humans have used money in their daily lives long before the advent of written history. Archeological objects related to coinage have been found dating back over 100,000 years.

Long before 1869 when George Washington first graced his visage on our $1 bill, numerous items have served as money, including cowrie shells (Africa, Asia, Oceania, Europe), red ochre (Australia), wampum (Native Americans), whale teeth (Fiji) and very large carved limestone disks (Yap Island in Micronesia).

Sea shells have been used as a US currency far more recently. During the Great Depression, some drugstores in California provided change to customers in clam shells when cash was in short supply. Cowrie shells and Yap Island’s giant stone disks are shown below as examples of very old money. Cowrie shells may have been pocket change, Yap’s disks certainly were not. 

 Yap’s stoned money 

A fortune in cowrie shells

Economists classify currency in 2 distinct ways. First, as commodity money (like gold and silver coins, candy bars and cigarettes in WWII prisoner-of-war camps and peanut M&Ms for US troops in Afghanistan) are items that have intrinsic value in some other use. Precious-metal coins were initially used as money in several places about the same time, around 600-500 BCE; in China’s Yellow River valley, in India’s Ganges River valley and by the king of Lydia in western Asia Minor (modern Turkey).

Second, as fiat or token money that is an item designated as money by an acknowledged, trusted authority that is otherwise intrinsically worthless (like the “paper” we use for US bills composed of 75% cotton, 25% linen). Paper money banknotes first arose in China during the 7th century.

According to the Federal Reserve, the most recent value of all the currency in the US money supply is $5.8 trillion, which is almost 21% of our current GDP. The most valuable US banknote now in circulation is the $100 bill, otherwise known as the Benjamin because Benjamin Franklin’s face is on it. Over the past 5 years, Benjamins have become the most widely-circulated banknote, representing 34.3% of all circulating currency, overtaking the George (aka, $1 George Washington banknote). Circulation of the Andrew (aka, $20 Andrew Jackson banknote) increased significantly during the 1980’s when ATMs became broadly popular. The Andrew’s circulation is in third place, right behind the George.

What is the largest US banknote ever circulated? The Salmon P. Chase $10,000 banknote, first printed in 1918. It was never used much except for banks, given that its value was greater than the net worth of the average American for most of its history.

Mr. Chase was one impressive person: he was a governor and then senator from Ohio, served as Secretary of the Treasury under Abraham Lincoln, and became the 6th chief justice of the Supreme Court in 1864. He remains one of the few people to serve in all 3 branches of the federal government.

The Chase $10,000 banknote was purged from US currency in 1969, along with other large banknotes like the William McKinley $500, Grover Cleveland $1000 and James Madison $5000 bills. After this culling, the Benjamin became and remains the largest US banknote. 

Perhaps the most interesting coin produced by the US Mint is the silver dollar. The true “Silver Dollar” production began in 1794 and ended in 1935 as this was the last year that 90% silver coins were made for circulation. In 1975-76 the Bicentennial Dollar (with President Eisenhower on the face) was produced, but with a 40% silver content. In 2021 the mint began production of Peace Dollar coins, also with a 40% silver content.

Speaking of money, what is the most profitable US export? I think it is the $100 Benjamin banknote. Because there are 11 foreign nations that use either fully or partially US currency as their domestic currency, including Ecuador, El Salvador, Zimbabwe, Panama and Micronesia. That’s in addition to the 5 official US territories that use our currency: Puerto Rico, Guam, America Samoa, U.S. Virgin Islands, and Northern Marina Islands. 

Citizens in these 11 nations and their governments buy US banknotes at their face value, if not close to it. The US Treasury's cost to produce one $100 Benjamin is $0.086, which is an implied ”return” of 1,163 times its face value. Production costs for the $1 George are $0.028, an implied “return” of 35.7 times its face value. That's considerable "profit." 

According to the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, almost 80% of $100 US banknotes and more than 60% of all US banknotes are used overseas, a sizeable increase from roughly 30% in 1980. Such an increase in exported US banknotes is not only impressive, but likely quite profitable for the US Treasury. The Treasury’s foreign customers for US currency may soon include Argentina. Argentina’s new President Javier Milei campaigned to officially “dollarize” his nation. That may or may not happen, but if it only unofficially does, it could involve supplying South America’s second largest economy with more US currency’s fine crew lead by Benjamins, Andrews and Georges.

Money is said to be legal tender when the government requires it to be used in settlement of fiscal transactions, including tax payments. For example, you cannot settle your owed taxes with the IRS by paying in candy bars or shells, or for that matter with coins.^[1] Only US dollars will do via check, online payment or debit/credit card.

Congress established the US dollar as the basic unit of currency in 1792. The first coins were created in 1793 at the Philadelphia Mint and presented to Martha Washington. The US government did not issue paper money until 1861, when it helped finance the Union’s Civil War efforts.

Before our 1776 Declaration of Independence, the majority of currency used to conduct commerce in the American colonies was commodity money. Wheat is one example of a commodity currency that was used nearly 400 years ago in Massachusetts.

Before 1700, many students at Harvard College paid their tuition with wheat because hard currency – the British pound or Spanish real – was challenging to come by in the early colonies. The Massachusetts Bay Colony prices for standard items were stated in terms of bushels of wheat and corn, not British pounds or pence. Using such agricultural produce as a commodity currency in early America was not surprising. Throughout the 1700s, at least 90% of the American labor force was farmers.

No wonder paying with wheat made sense and cents at that time. Samuel Willis, Harvard class of 1653, its 13th graduating class, paid his tuition with wheat.

Here’s a current-day perspective about what a wheat-based Harvard tuition could be. Using a recent price of wheat together with Harvard’s 2023-24 tuition ($54,269 not including room and board), a student would need to provide Harvard College with 8,269 bushels of wheat for full tuition. This heavy tuition load of wheat would require a 167 acre farm to grow it and 2 big railroad hopper cars to transport it to Harvard’s Student Accounts Office in Cambridge. Surprise!

Wheat farmers have not been at all pleased with the market prices they are facing. Over the past year the average price of US wheat has dropped nearly 24%, which is not at all good if you’re paying tuition with your own-grown wheat, but no big deal if you are not a wheat farmer whose daughter is going to Harvard. Nevertheless, having to pay for tuition with 8,269 bushels of wheat would be inconvenient, to say the least.

All things considered it is very fortunate that Harvard, along with every other college and the rest of our economy, grew out of our 17th century wheat-as-commodity money habit. Hitching our fiscal wagons to fiat money’s US dollars makes sense.

 

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[1] Despite income tax protestors’ efforts, the IRS has successfully refused to accept tax payments with coins. So keep your pennies in your piggy bank, don’t include them with your 1040 form. 

 

REPARATIONS FOR K-12 STUDENTS

The Berkeley Unified School District’s (BUSD’s) Reparations Task Force (RTF) began meeting last April. The RTF has been tasked with determining how the BUSD could fund reparations, what form of reparations it would recommend to the BUSD Board and formulating a recommendation on how the Board could implement that program. No other school district in the US has taken it upon itself to cure the ravages of slavery. Berkeleyside, a local news periodical, recently published a story written by two RTF members, “Now is the time for reparations in Berkeley schools” attempting to justify their mission. I was not convinced.

Most school districts find it challenging enough just to keep their K-12 students educated in these challenging times of teacher and budget shortages. Nonetheless, other school districts are not located in Berkeley, California, a long-time nucleus for progressivism.

It is utterly unclear how the BUSD, or any local school district, is suitably equipped to remedy the damages caused by historical slavery. Most folks correctly understand people possibly affected by the ravages of past slavery are far more numerous than one community’s Black K-12 students.

From its outset, the RTF believed the BUSD has caused direct harms to some of its students from segregation, discriminatory policies and other legacies of chattel[1] slavery. Thus, it supports the district paying these students financial reparations for these harms.

Last year the State of California’s own pioneering reparations task force presented its assessment of the issue from a more apt, state-wide perspective. Its report recommended to the legislature that eligible, long-standing Black California residents each could be owed up to $1.2 million for repairing the damages of slavery and racism. Given the controversary surrounding reparations, this report seems to have been subsequently swept under Sacramento’s political rug. Neither the Legislature or the Governor have provided any meaningful public responses regarding paying for reparations.

The BUSD RTF has postponed until this summer making their recommendations about how to fund, plan and implement a reparations program in Berkeley’s schools. The RTF states that a majority of its members are descendants of individuals enslaved in the US. The RTF has undertaken one “community engagement survey” to solicit input on the types of reparations it should recommend. This survey seems to have been sent to 3 groups of people – descendants of enslaved Californians, students at BUSD schools and students’ caregivers. The reported RTF survey results published in Berkeleyside appear to be erratic, as shown in the chart below.

 

    Source: Berkeleyside, 3/23/2024 

This chart states there were 1,386 total respondents (All Respondents) for this question. But the sum of survey responses from the 3 groups – Descendant Families, Current/Former BUSD Students and Caregivers of Current/Former BUSD Students – adds up to 1,649 respondents, 263 more people than the total respondents. This makes no sense unless All Respondents includes none of the other groups. Or the RTF made a straightforward addition error. Or was there another group of 263 people who received the survey, but was not reported. If the All Respondents are a distinctly separate group, who are they? This inconsistency is a mystery.

The RTF has never stated that their survey was sent to people who were representative of Berkeley’s citizenry. It is thus unsurprising that an astounding 85% of all survey respondents said they were “in support of financial payments to students for educational purposes.” The surprise is that it was only 85%. 

These BUSD RTF results are very different from other reparations surveys. Past surveys have focused on possible remedies provided by the federal government, state governments or local governments. A 2021 Pew survey found that 75% of reparations supporters say the US federal government, not other government organizations like cash-strapped school districts, has all or most of the responsibility to repay descendants of enslaved people. Like other surveys, this Pew survey found that a large majority of Black adults (77%) think the descendants of people enslaved in the US should be repaid in some way and that only a slight minority (18%) of White adults agreed that reparation payments are appropriate. A 2023 poll by UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies showed California voters opposing reparations payments by a 2-to-1 margin.

The RTF will likely advocate to the BUSD that fiscal reparations are wholly justified for every Black student who attends K-12 schools. Using the most recent available data, there are 1,134 Black students in the district’s 17 schools. They probably also will promote reparation payments be made to former qualified BUSD students as well. The bigger the proposed total reparations payments are for the BUSD, the more satisfied the RTF will likely feel. The RTF may have a larger target in mind for the reparations amount per qualified Black student to out-progressive the efforts of both the ill-fated San Francisco Reparations Advisory Committee (that recommended $5 million per qualified person) and the aforementioned California Task Force to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans’ $1.2 million per qualified person.

So far, the RTF’s mandate apparently excludes addressing common-sense questions about why a local school district should even provide such reparations, or how the district could afford to pay such reparations, given its educational mandate. The latest Berkeleyside RTF story (March 27) mentions that they may recommend adopting a new Berkeley tax to provide funding.

The simple fact is neither Berkeley or the BUSD can afford direct financial reparations or other reparations-related expenditures. If the city and/or BUSD somehow decided to pay reparations, it would need to raise the needed substantial funding either through a new city tax or a public, general obligation (G.O.) bond. A new tax might only require a simple majority of voters to pass, the bond would likely require approval by at least two-thirds of voters.

No matter where funding would come from, getting Berkeley’s voters to pay for BUSD reparations would be a singularly fraught and divisive campaign. Currently, less than 8% of Berkeley’s population is Black/African-American, 12.5% of BUSD students are Black. Another possible, more politically-expedient option for the BUSD is to accept the RTF’s findings in June, then offer an honest, sincere apology for the harms to Black students it directly or indirectly created in the past, and say nothing with respect to financial reparations.

So far, this strategy seems to be what the California Legislature and Governor Newsom have adopted after the California Task Force submitted its 1,000 page report last May. Subsequently, public talk about state-funded reparations largely disappeared into Sacramento’s political ether. Also, San Francisco Mayor London Breed indirectly but publicly disagreed with her Committee’s direct reparations recommendations. Her office stated, “The Mayor does not believe that addressing the needs of the African American community requires adding more bureaucracy,” referring to the establishment of a proposed SF Office of Reparations.

Like many school districts, the BUSD is now facing mounting financial challenges because of continuing reduced student enrollment in Berkeley’s public schools. The BUSD’s fiscal future is cloudy, at best. In 2017, 10,340 students were enrolled in BUSD schools. In 2022, it was 9,073 students. That’s a 12% drop over the last 5 school-years. Making a similar calculation of the BUSD average student enrollment change during the last 3 school years, it’s a 7.8% drop. BUSD personnel have said that yes average student enrollment has fallen, but the rate of the drop is lessening. That’s true, but immaterial.

Reductions in student attendance presages diminished BUSD funding from the state because California expenditures for K-12 education are based on average daily student attendance in each district. Like other California school districts, it’s virtually certain that state education funding for BUSD will decline. In 2023 overall California state education funding shrank by $2.1 billion.

Last year the BUSD’s director of fiscal services cautioned that the coming 2024-25 school year could be a “reality check” for the district if the state’s funding formula for schools does not change. It’s California dreamin’ to believe this formula will change to benefit BUSD and other school districts. Why? Because last month California’s projected 2024-25 tax revenue deficit increased to a sizeable $73 billion. More state money going to school districts is an unlikely prospect, no matter how worthy.

Fortunately for the BUSD, last month Berkeley voters once again strongly supported the city’s Berkeley Schools Excellence Program (BSEP), a local property tax increase now responsible for 17% of the district’s budget. The district budget needs to continue rising. A growing proportion of the BUSD’s costs has been focused on providing support for “high-need” students. Evermore districts, like the BUSD, will be facing daunting “fiscal cliffs” due to 4 factors: no additional temporary Covid-related education funds are available now to school districts, shrinking K-12 student enrollments due to changing demographic trends, continuing inflation and appropriately-increased teacher/staff salaries. Because 83% of the BUSD’s budget are employee-related expenses, the impending fiscal cliff will result ultimately in school personnel reductions.

The RTF survey purposefully was not sent to a statistically-representative sample of Berkeley citizenry. It’s thus no wonder that an astonishing 85% of respondents said they were “in support of financial payments to students for educational purposes.” Do you think 85% of Berkeley voters will be willing to pay for cash reparations to the 12.5% of BUSD students who are Black? I doubt it.

The survey-based percentages presented by the RFT, as shown above, have nothing to do with whether all Berkeley residents believe it’s appropriate for the BUSD to pay reparations to K-12 students who have suffered from the impacts of chattel slavery and its legacy. Not being representative, the RTF survey results cannot characterize anything definitively beyond the survey subgroups’ respondents themselves.

Berkeley has been justifiably recognized as an honest-to-goodness mecca of progressive thought, but I question whether a majority of voters would say yes if asked to actually pay reparations to qualified Black BUSD students. After all, when the Berkeley City Council placed its biggest-ever bond measure (Measure L) on the ballot 2 years ago with hopes of funding a very broad array of activities, it went down in ignominious defeat.

The RTF’s public statements about school-based reparations payments confirms both their strong advocacy and that they hold an atypical worldview where providing sizeable direct reparations payments only to their small number of Black K-12 students will meet little resistance. Depending on the specifics, I can support indirect reparation remedies to qualified Black citizens. I cannot support the Berkeley school district providing direct reparation payments to its Black K-12 students.

 

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[1] Chattel refers to a human being considered to be property, an enslaved person. 

 

SWEET INFLATION

All the candy corn that was ever made, was made in 1911. ~ Lewis Black   

For a while I’ve seen headlines commenting on how citizens feel about our economy. They are predominantly not at all happy with what’s occurring in their economic lives. They’re upset that prices remain too high and employment opportunities are too restrained. That’s puzzling.

The latest annualized inflation rate in the US was a subdued 3.4%. December unemployment remained at a five-decade low of 3.7%. The US real (inflation-adjusted) GDP increased at a decent 3.3% annual growth rate in the fourth quarter of 2023. Wages grew 5.2%, a healthy clip. December’s retail sales increased 0.6%, flouting expectations. During the past year 2.7 million workers were added to total nonfarm employment. In January the economy unexpectedly added 353,000 jobs, about double what was anticipated. What’s not to like?

From an economic perspective, each of these macroeconomic changes is strictly positive, if not overdue. Especially when compared to the recent past, when inflation was flying twice as high and employment gains were largely declining.

How could people’s individual views be so distinctly different and glum from our macroeconomic performance? Ultimately, it’s because none of us live in the aggregated world of macroeconomic indicators like the Consumer Price Index (CPI) or the national unemployment rate. We live in real towns and cities, none of which exactly characterizes economists’ models of the entire macroeconomy.

The president’s re-election campaign is attempting to sell Joe to voters in terms of his successful efforts to protect liberal democracy from The Donald’s bombastic dark forces, his constructive legislative record and his management of the economy. Unfortunately, America’s likely voters seem far less moved by Joe’s protecting democracy than by improving their lives via quickly reducing their housing and food costs. This is a tall order that’s a hefty political challenge for the current and any future president. 

President Biden impressively has signed into law two beneficial pieces of legislation that authorized federal expenditures totaling a sizable $2.09 trillion. First was the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill of 2021 and then the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) of 2022. Many analysts believe these sizeable expenditures actually have contributed a bit to inflation, not reduced it. Despite its broad title, the IRA has begun to lessen rising prices only by capping a small number of prescription drug prices for Medicare recipients. That’s certainly a good thing, but doesn’t have broad impacts. The IRA’s primary goal has been to reduce the threatening effects of climate change.

Instead, inflation reduction has been largely accomplished by the Federal Reserve Bank’s program of raising the Federal Funds (interest) Rate. As mentioned, the inflation rate has lessened thankfully without inducing a recession so far, but folks unhappily keep seeing higher, rising prices. In a recent survey, more than two-thirds of voters said inflation has hit them hardest through higher food prices. That’s 50% greater than any other category of purchased goods.

Economists have suggested an explanation for the political conundrum of improved macroeconomic performance not being appreciated by many people. It’s an interesting and sweet one that involves Snickers candy bars. A friend alerted me to this idea (thanks Robert): we become more aware of goods’ price changes the more frequently we buy them. In addition to groceries, frequently-bought goods include convenience and impulse purchases, like candy and snacks. This helps explain why Snickers bars occupy primo grocery store real estate within easy reach of shoppers as they unload their carts at the checkout line.

Snickers bars for all

 In other words, one of the president’s challenges is there’s a world of difference between the increased price of items on grocery-stores’ aisles and statistical representations of the macroeconomy that he often cites in speeches.

Mars, Inc. domestically produces over 500 million Snickers bars each year. That’s an enormous quantity of chocolate-nougat-caramel-peanut candy that is frequently bought by legions of folks. With reason, Snickers is often cited as the king of the candy aisle. The very first Snickers bar was crafted 94 years ago by Frank C. Mars in Chicago. The Snickers bar, which was named after a favorite horse of the Mars family, originally sold for 5 cents. Unfortunately, there’s no annual time series of Snickers’ prices. Nevertheless the chart below shows the cost of the Snickers bars in various years since its introduction.

The Price of a Snickers bar  

Year	Price
1930	$0.05
1978	$0.25
1981	$0.30
1983	$0.50
2012	$1.00
2024	$1.79

There are two reasons for Snickers most recent, sizeable price increases: higher sugar and higher cocoa prices. First, it’s impossible to separate the price of Snickers bars from the price of sugar, its major ingredient. The US price of sugar increased nearly 9% last year. The domestic prices of sugar and sweets rose more than 2 ½ times higher than the overall CPI. Having a sweet tooth is evermore expensive. It’s no surprise that a majority of surveyed voters indicate that inflationary food prices, including sugar and candy, have hit them hardest.

Second, Snickers bars are covered in chocolate and have a fair amount of additional cocoa inside as well. The global price of cocoa rose a stratospheric 73% during the past year. Poor growing conditions in West Africa, where much of the world’s cocoa beans are grown, have shrunk cocoa powder production, hence prices have rocketed.

The domestically-produced sugar you may put into your morning coffee or taste in a Snickers bar is likely one of the most regulated of any consumer item, but not to consumers’ advantage. For over 50 years, domestic sugar producers have benefited from generous government policies. These economic policies include US import restrictions like high tariffs and strict quotas, as well as robust US production subsidies. Domestic sugarcane and sugar beet producers are well protected from cheaper imported sugar. These federal policies effectively restrict sugar imports to about 15% of the US market, which is a sizeable $13 billion. The relatively few, large domestic sugar producers act as a high-priced cartel buoyed by full government support.

Consequently, the price of American sugar towers well above the world price. In December the US price was 27% higher than the world sugar price. Domestic sugar producers taste sweet success. Sugar consumers and confectioners like Mars taste only bitterness. Accordingly, the cost of making sugar-intensive Snickers bars in Texas and other locations is considerably higher because of federal policy, with consumers picking up the added tab. That tastes expensive. Such increased prices easily make consumers feel that they remain too elevated. If such feelings endure, they will not help the president come November.

 

 

FUZZY DARK ENERGY AND POLITICS

People shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks… Isaiah 2:3-4 

I think by now the media’s unending focus on everything related to the upcoming activities transpiring on Nov. 5, 2024 would be satiated, at least outside the DC beltway. It’s apparently not. The media is only shifting out of first gear now that Iowans have finished their caucuses’ dances.

A meager 15% of Iowa’s Repubs managed to brave sub-zero temperatures and celebrate being caucus-goers last week. With no surprise whatsoever, Donald Trump was the caucuses’ winner. Naturally, The Donald is now beating his Iowa plowshares into political swords.

A timeworn plow, likely older than The Donald’s 77 years.  

This time around the Dems wisely abandoned caucusing for their presidential candidate after being gravely wounded by their grand mal caucus fiasco in 2020. It took 3 days for them to figure out that Pete Buttigieg barely beat Bernie Sanders. Congrats Pete that victory got you the Transportation Secretary’s job. In 2024, Iowa Dems instead are casting regular mail-in ballots from Jan. 12 through Mar. 5 (aka, Super Tuesday) to vote for their presidential candidate. Ho hum.  

But let’s not get too grounded in the Hawkeye state’s momentary quadrennial political glow. Instead, look above and beyond. There’s fascinating news about the heavens that has a connective thread to the presidential election. Dennis Overbye wrote an intriguing story about how our universe may have begun, way, way beyond Des Moines, Concord and even Washington, DC. Dennis is the New York Times’ “cosmic affairs correspondent.” I wonder what Dennis’ cosmic affairs beat does not include because ultimately there’s very little outside the realm of cosmic affairs, not even Cleopatra and Mark Antony, Richard and Liz or Taylor and Travis.  

Dennis’ story, “The Early Universe Was Bananas,” discusses results from a new astrophysical assessment about the birth of our universe. This investigation focuses on the astronomically short interlude of just half a billion years after the Big Bang, when time itself began. Mercifully, this birth was free from any medical interventions.

The study focuses on examining “newborn” galaxies in the firmament. Until now, standard cosmological theory has assumed that the newest galaxies would appear very similar to the prevailing inventory of about 2 trillion galaxies in the universe. Unexpectedly, after scrutinizing thousands of baby galaxies they appeared not at all like orbs or discs associated with older galaxies like our Milky Way. The newborn galaxies instead look more like bananas, pickles or surfboards shown in the image below. If confirmed, this surprising result may expand our sense of how dark energy-matter influences the universe.

 A baby banana galaxy.

 A fair amount of modern cosmological deliberation about the birth and life of our universe entails considering completely-invisible dark energy. Dark energy and its closely-related dark matter are estimated to constitute 95% of our universe’s total energy-mass content. Thus for thousands of years as we humans have gazed up into starry night skies what we’re seeing represents only 5% of the universe. This pervasive dark energy-matter is postulated to account for the universe’s gravitational forces that influence everything everywhere.

 Having been hypothesized for more than 30 years, dark energy-matter now comes in several flavors. Cosmologists have enlarged their views about how dark energy-matter may work and gained fresh insights about new galaxies. Currently, an entire dark-sector gallery of imperceptible particles has been hypothesized, including fuzzy dark energy.

After learning about this shadowy astrophysical realm, I connected these universal dark forces with our current political expanse. It’s quite clear to me that The Donald embodies fuzzy dark energy through and through. Unfortunately, the untruthful Trumpian fuzzy dark energy is having quite visible consequences. His political and campaign forces are certainly dark, too often very fuzzy and have very little to do with gravity. That hasn’t bothered his followers at all.

Baby banana galaxies portray challengers like Nicki Haley and up until Sunday, Ron DeSantis (who’s retreated to the Everglades), whose hoped-for goal is somehow to be the Republican candidate for president. Baby pickle galaxies depict Dean Phillips and Marianne Williamson, the virtually invisible Democratic presidential challengers. Galactically-speaking, President Joe Biden is represented by Mayall’s Object, an adult galaxy discovered 82 years ago at the Lick Observatory on Mt. Hamilton, east of San Jose, CA. It’s my local space observatory. Joe will be 82 years old 15 days after he wins the election, having conquered fuzzy dark energy spewed by the Repubs. Here’s hoping.