PROGRESSIVES HIT A BIG BUMP

Freedom is just a word for nothing left to lose. ~ Janis Joplin

At this point, the quadrennial task surrounding development of practicable political strategies to win presidential and Congressional elections in America is unmistakably facing the Democrats. Big time. Given the Trump administration’s astonishingly frenzied, disordered, tumultuous record so far, you might think it could be an easy task. I doubt it.

How bad is it now for Democrats? Let me count the ways. Republicans hold a 241-194 majority in the House of Representatives and a 52-48 majority in the Senate. The Democrats’ Congressional representation is very concentrated. More than 50% of the House Democratic caucus members come from just six (12%) of our states. One of every four House Democrats is from either California or New York. At the state level, Republican governors now exercise power in 33 states. Republicans now control 66 of the 98 legislative chambers in the country. Republicans control 32 state legislatures, including 17 with veto-proof majorities. Those 32 states account for 61% of the U.S. population. Republicans now have total political control over 25 states outright and another 2 where they can override a Democratic governor’s vetoes. The nation hasn’t seen this level of Republican dominance in our political process since Herbert Hoover was president.

Despite this unassailable Republican domination, during the past weeks much of the liberal media has been running stories about how Rex Tillerson, Betsy DeVos, Jeff Sessions and Steven Mnunchin could be denied the cabinet positions He Who Shall Be Named Micro-Man nominated them for. Hope springs eternal and all that, but the laws of Senatorial mathematics unsurprisingly crushed those less than faint Democratic hopes. As of Feb 14, each of these questionable, unfitting nominees has become a Senate-approved cabinet member, as expected. Oops, I wrote too soon. On Feb 15 Andrew Puzder, the president’s nominee for Labor Secretary, resigned after numerous Republican Senators expressed dissatisfaction with him. Micro-Man remains a laggard. So far he has barely filled his roster of senior administrative jobs; he has nominated just 35 people to fill the roughly 700 positions that require Senate confirmation. Are these the results of "a fine-tuned machine"? I think not. 

During the past year well-founded, “identity”-based issues raised by progressives were thrust into the nation’s social, legal and political limelight. These issues included “visibilzing” the 0.6% of the population who identify as transgender. [Yes, visibilizing doesn’t appear in the dictionary; the term is used by used by the LGBTQIA community.[1]]  This limelight engendered a diverse set of personal and political reactions across the nation, including support and outrage. What happened from these reactions? Among other things, the Nov 8, 2016 federal election happened with calamitous results for the Democrats’ social liberals, among others.

There are many ideas floating in the political ether about what contributed to this election’s surprising outcome, now that the Democrats are WOPPed – wholly out of political power – in Washington DC and many states. I think 3 of the reasons Democratic social liberals/progressives fared badly are: a lack of motivating, emotional connection of enough voters with Democratic candidates’ goals and priorities; geographically-concentrated, heavily urbanized backing; and fractionalizing minorities central to the Democrats’ base.

The Democratic coalition that twice elected Barack Obama nosedived this time around. During the campaign there was much talk about the increased prominence of minority voters and their amplified importance for Sec. Clinton’s success. Demographically, that was true for her campaign, but not the nation. According to Census projections, no one racial group will be a majority of the country by the year 2044, which is 27 years in the future. But right now, non-Hispanic whites represent 70% of eligible voters and they vote more reliably than any ethnic or racial group. The Democratic campaign tactics seemingly forgot this; the election’s actual vote count reflects this gross oversight. Micro-Man won 58% of the total white vote and 63% of the white male votes.

Despite being unwaveringly tooted by Democrats, Hillary Clinton failed to win a majority of white women voters. Also, Millennial, Hispanic and African-American voters failed to vote for Sec. Clinton in sufficient numbers in enough states to ensure her victory. Critics mention that Sec. Clinton’s campaign emphasized far more why voters should not cast their ballots for Micro-Man, and not a strong or alluring enough message to voters about why she deserved their votes. There was too much pessimista and not enough optimista in her campaign. It seemed like her campaign forgot, in a stunning error, about the primacy of our outdated Electoral College mechanism. An example of this misguided bungle was her spending campaign effort in Arizona and Texas (among the reddest of all states), rather than Michigan and Wisconsin. OMG.

Here’s a personal example attesting to why Democrats now inhabit such a dark political space. Recently my wife and I had dinner with some friends and inevitably talked about the despairing situation we and our nation are facing because of He Who Shall Be Named Micro-Man is president. Recalling former times when progressives were actively headlining the news, one of us asked “What was the name of that group who was protesting Wall Street.” It took us a while to remember the answer: Occupy Wall Street.

The Occupy movement was formed in late 2011 to demonstrate against inequality and the deluge of financial disruption for millions of Americans during the Great Recession. It popularized the phrase “we are the 99%,” reflecting the continuing struggles inequality poses on people who are neither wealthy nor rich (the 1%). In 2011 at the height of its influence, the Occupy movement had palpable difficulty stating its principal objectives because of its commitment to “participatory democracy.” Perhaps as a consequence, its legacy does not include demonstrable electoral political success.

In contrast, it takes much less time to remember the Tea Party, and its movement’s widespread (and all too successful) influence on American politics since 2009. In 2010 the Tea Party Caucus (that has since morphed into the Freedom Caucus) in the House of Representatives was formed after conservative candidates it directly supported had won 48 seats in the House. In a real sense the Tea Party’s legacy includes the populist ground-roots political activism that helped elect the current president as well as very conservative members of the House and Senate.

The Democrats have had no counter to the well-organized political movement that has provided total control of Congress and the Presidency to the Republicans. In a sense, now that the Democrats have virtually nothing left to lose, they have the freedom to create a fresh, new strategy and tactics for future success.

The average age of the 4 Democrats’ Congressional minority leaders is 73 years. The Democrats are now electing much-needed, new leadership of the Democratic National Committee (DNC). The DNC, like Democrats in the majority of states, has no unified political power base. Creating such unification will be imperative.

Notable exceptions to the Democrats lack of power include their 5 state trifectas (states where one political party controls both legislative houses and the governorship): California, Oregon, Hawaii, Connecticut and Maryland. Nevertheless, as mentioned above, Republicans enjoy having 25 state trifectas, as well as the all-important federal trifecta. As one journalist put it, Democrats and the DNC are “leading from behind.”

In effect, the DNC is now searching for relevance as well as a plan for 2018 and beyond. They would do well to learn from the successful efforts of the Tea Party and other political crusades. In the short time available for next year’s House elections, this plan needs to entice majorities of voters to elect Democratic candidates in local, state and Congressional elections. Creating such a plan will require discipline and focus – something Democrats have found difficult in the past to master. The DNC will need to finally acknowledge the obvious; that the world beyond the Washington DC beltway is a much different place than they thought it was.

The Democrat’s plan for success also should include direct financial and political support for the growing number of grass-root organizations that already have empowered thousands of people’s “resistance” to Micro-Man’s chaotic, painful changes. The DNC and Democrats will need to build upon the initial successes connected with the Women’s March, the airport demonstrations and town-hall meetings to form a viable, enduring movement founded on a new, expanded, easily-repeatable message that emphasizes inclusion, human rights, safety and opportunity.

In fact after being WOPPed 4 months ago, messaging is the only leverage Democrats now have at the federal level. If successful, such communication – from strong, distinctive and broadly empathetic candidates – coupled with resistance and other action, can induce more people to actually vote for Democrats. Only then may there be a sparkle of light at the end of the dark tunnel Democrats now find themselves in. What do we now have left to lose?  

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[1] The better-known abbreviation for the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) community has been amended to LGBTQIA as a term used to refer to the now more multi-faceted community by explicitly adding the Queer, Intersex and Asexual communities. 

GROWING, GROWING, GONE?

He looked at us, Dean and me, with an expression that seemed to say, “Hey now, what's this thing we're all doing in this sad, brown world.” ~ Jack Kerouac, On the Road

We’ve barely begun to travel on the president’s road to alleged greatness and it has already turned into quicksand.

Mostly because of the president’s flurry of ukases – aka, executive orders (EOs) – that have closed our borders in the guise of “national security” and begun to dismantle the Obama accomplishments. These executive orders are not like those of the past. They appear to be uncoordinated, skeletal, rushed tweet-like summary statements rather than well-considered, substantive pronouncements, as past presidents’ ones have been. No real core, no measured assessment, no pre-coordination with affected agencies; nothing but a glorified headline press release that employees of executive agencies have to guess what they mean and what they’re supposed to do as a consequence. Pundits have told us that DJT “thrives on chaos;” now we’re all suffering from it; wondering how to make “You’re fired” mean something.

At this point, the prime example is he-who-must-be-named Micro-Man’s Jan 27 EO on immigration that indefinitely barred Syrian refugees from entering the United States, suspended all refugee admissions for 120 days and blocked citizens of 7 Muslim-majority countries, refugees or otherwise, from entering the United States for 90 days.

This decree has unleashed confusion and turmoil throughout the immigration system, including airports in the US and overseas. It prompted protests and legal action. Emigrating Christians appear to be spared these administrative shackles that seem only applicable to Muslims, despite frantic counter-statements by the president’s embattled cohorts. Ah, chaos.

But let’s travel on the road beyond SFO, LAX, OGG and JFK and head to making America great again through Micro-Man’s promised, magnified economic growth.

A large part of post WWII American greatness is tied to our impressive macroeconomic growth. In real (inflation-adjusted) terms, our 2016 GDP is almost 4 times larger than it was 50 years ago, quite an accomplishment, which averages to yearly growth of 1.4% through the ups and downs of our last half-century of business cycling. The chart below shows annual real GDP growth for each president since Reagan in 1981. The growth rates for the two most recent presidents, Barack Obama and George W. Bush, are noticeably lower than that of either Bill Clinton or Ronald Reagan. Where has all our growth gone?

Source: Bureau of Economic Analysis

Micro-Man has stated that as president he will oversee “tremendous” economic growth. In September 2015 he said, “We're looking at a 3%, but we think it could be 5%, it could even be 6%.” Twelve months later his campaign estimated that the economy would expand at an annual rate of between 3.5% and 4%, following his proposed overhaul of the tax code. Then one month later, during his Las Vegas debate with Hillary Clinton, he tenaciously doubled down on producing increased annual GDP growth, “I actually think we can go higher than 4%. I think you can go to 5% or 6%.” After his election victory, Steven Mnuchin, who DJT has nominated to lead the Treasury Department, and be responsible for implementing the president’s economic agenda, backtracked on his boss’s Olympian growth goals, and stated in an interview, “I think we can absolutely get to sustained 3% to 4% GDP [growth], and that is absolutely critical for the country.”

Because so much depends on it, I hope our economic growth will increase, but seriously doubt it can happen at the fantasy-levels of 5% or 6% per year, given the policy ideas DJT and real Republicans have already declared. For some perspective, even 4% annual nominal GDP growth means the US would need to add $754 billion – slightly larger than Turkey’s GDP (ranked 18th largest in the world, with a population of 80.3 million) to our GDP. That yearly increase would be a very heavy lift and require policies that will not be considered even in a tweet by Micro-Man.

Economists generally agree (I know, I know, it’s almost oxymoronic to state that economists agree on anything, but…) that sustained macroeconomic growth requires increases in the number of employed workers, increases in capital stock (e.g., factories, machinery and equipment), increases in labor and capital productivity (aka, total factor productivity) and technological advancement.

By examining each of these key drivers of growth during the recent past, we reach a somber conclusion: US macroeconomic growth will not soon increase from the most recent 1.5% to 2% annual rate to even 4%. If Republicans reduce government support services as expected, this will mean serious economic challenges for millions of Americans that have nothing to do with growth. 

Increases in the number of employed workers will fall due to policy and demographics. Donald Trump and his Republican supplicants are all too busy denying visas, closing borders and building walls that will prohibit immigrant labor – be they unskilled, semi-skilled or those with H1B visas – from entering the US. The rising retirement of Baby Boomers means the number of US laborers will be barely growing, despite Millennials’ additions. The labor force is anticipated to grow at an average annual growth rate of just 0.5%, from 2014 to 2024, the lowest in several decades. The US total fertility rate now is at its lowest in a long time – 1.87 children per woman. So much for expecting the number of employed workers to increase. More positively, the US capital stock has steadily increased for decades. The St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank estimates in 2014 that the US capital stock was $51.2 trillion. But capital stock increases alone cannot pull growth rates up.

Total factor productivity (TFP), which combines productivity changes in labor with that of capital, has been growing at a smaller rate than previously. Over the past four quarters ending in the third quarter of 2016 the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco calculated that TFP grew at a diminutive annual rate of just 0.32%. Because TFP encompasses the benefits derived from technological improvements, economists believe it is a central source of growth within an economy. So the decades-old reduction in productivity growth is a significant and puzzling concern for economists and policy-makers, excluding today’s president.

One likely drag on productivity growth is the enduring reduction in government-funded non-defense R&D spending. The Obama administration’s proposed FY2016 budget called for a modest increase in R&D funding over last fiscal year. This proposed budget now is no longer relevant and a new, summary one may be produced by the new president. Outlays for all R&D would have represented 3.5% of all federal spending in FY2016, continuing a long decline.

Professor Robert J. Gordon has made a compelling case that the days of 3% to 4% annual growth for the US are behind us. Historic growth rates are gone. His captivating book, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, comprehensively documents the reasons for his dour prognosis. Prof. Gordon’s calculation of total factor productivity shows that for the decade ending in 2014 the annual change in TFP was a small 0.7%, the second smallest since the decade ending in 1930. There are 4 general reasons, which Prof. Gordon labels “headwinds,” that are now flying in the face of growth. They include rising inequality, poor-quality education, our aging population and rising government debt that can reduce productivity gains relative to increases in people’s standard of living. He forecasts that average growth in real income per person over the next quarter-century will be a minute 0.7% per year—almost one-half the already-small 1.3% per year rate realized in the 2000–2015 period.

Thus, looking at the near future, it’s unlikely that US economic growth can rise to historic levels, say even 3% per year. It’s gone unless public policies are enacted to reduce inequality, improve public education, increase labor-force size and participation and reduce government debt including the oncoming onslaught of baby boomers’ Medicare/Social Security transfer payments. If enacted, such policies could increase productivity and standards of living. But they won’t be by Micro-Man. His flighty day-by-day policy agenda offers no hope of that happening. It’s likely we’ll revert to Kerouac’s sad, brown world with unknown, unintended consequences.

ROBOTS, BLACKSMITHS, AND THE FUTURE

For whom the bell tolls: human employees?

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent. ~ John Donne

I’ve been fascinated with robots and technological change for over five decades. My high school drama club produced Karel Capek‘s play, R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots), that creatively introduced the word “robot” into the English language and forever after augmented science fiction’s realm. [Spoiler alert: the robots won.] In graduate school I examined the process and impact of technological advance in several industries, including energy utilities.

Industrial robots haven’t been science fiction for decades. They’ve been used in many industries to increase productivity and reduce labor requirements. Recently, much more attention has been cast on robots and more generally, automation advances and artificial-machine intelligence (AI), as “job stealing” forces that may soon reap havoc with all sorts of workers’ employment prospects. In his “farewell address” last week President Obama warned about “the relentless pace of automation that makes a lot of good, middle-class jobs obsolete.” This week’s Davos meeting of the world’s political/business/techno-elite has identified technological disruption (i.e., human workers’ jobs becoming obsolete) as one of the 4 “biggest risks” of 2017.

Such decades-old technological forces already have seriously jeopardized the president-elect’s stated (and impracticable) objective of significantly increasing US domestic manufacturing employment. Turning manufacturing’s automated digital clock way back into a labor-intensive, analog pocket-watch will be impossible, despite Micro Donald’s tweets.

We’ve come way beyond mere robocops. Alarmist pro-roboticists like Jerry Kaplan, author of Humans Need Not Apply, believe that with continuing advances in AI, virtually every human job will ultimately be replaced by automatons. In his book Kaplan says robots will choose to “farm us [humans] or keep us on a preserve, making life there so pleasant and convenient that there’s little motivation to venture beyond its boundaries.” Sounds like big fun, doesn’t it? Martin Ford’s book, The Rise of Robots, offers another dystopian view of future human employment, as epitomized by the book’s sub-title, “Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future.“ The machines are coming for the high-wage, high-skill jobs as well, Ford says, and not just for manufacturing jobs, burger-flippers, or hospitality workers.

According to these authors, signs of the robotic transformation are hiding in plain sight. Over the last 15 years, 50,000 financial workers on Wall Street have lost their jobs as high-frequency trading programs complete over 100,000 transactions in one-tenth of a second, while at the same time attempting to mislead their competitors. A McKinsey study states that 43% of workers’ time in the financial sector could be automated using expected improvements in AI. Legal firms no longer are interested in paying staff to sift through hundreds of documents when a computer can absorb a thousand times as many in just a few seconds. Automated software can now turn facts into functional journalism. The list goes on…

Martin Ford says “nearly any white-collar job that involves sitting in front of a computer manipulating information” is exposed. Enhanced, AI-based capabilities are behind an Oxford University study’s examination of over 700 occupations that concluded 47% of US jobs are at risk from automation. Currently, that’s almost 75 million jobs that could be threatened, what Ford characterizes as a “jobless future.” Such provocative, ominous conclusions have increased concerns about future availability and sustainability of human employment, and may have precipitated one member of Congress to say (absurdly) he wished “technological change would just slow down.”

Nevertheless, individuals and analysts have bifurcated feelings about these disquieting pronouncements. A recent New York Times readers’ poll about future technologies indicated that “robot servants” elicited the highest number of “somewhat excited” responses (32%) and the most “not too excited” plus “not at all excited” responses (52%).

Is indeed the bell tolling for human employees? No, not any more than it generally already has, despite the media hype to the contrary. The idea that tomorrow’s future will be jobless plays directly into people’s fears of huge displacement by characterizing the historical trend of employing new machines-technology to advance productivity as totally job-killing. It hasn’t ever been. This is not a new trend, and it’s never ultimately created significant, widespread unemployment.

In the US much of this advancement began in the mid-18th century in agriculture, when over 90% of American workers were toiling on farms, with the invention and adoption of machines like the cotton gin, steel plow and reaper. These innovations generated massive improvements in labor productivity. Building on this dramatic agricultural productivity advancement, the Industrial Revolution also appeared in 18th century Great Britain and beyond. For the first time in human history, mechanization assumed a keystone position in industrial and agricultural production.

Certain laborers have been and continue to be adversely affected by adoption of new technologies. There are now far, far fewer blacksmiths than there were in the late 19th century – the pre-automotive age of horse-and buggy power. In 1900 there were about 20 million horses in the US. I estimate that in the very late 19th century there were between 9,000 and 12,000 blacksmiths just in rural America, where 60.4% of Americans lived. In addition, there were sizeable numbers of blacksmiths in fast-growing cities. In 1900 New York City had around 100,000 horses that provided virtually all types of transportation for humans and commercial establishments. In the Big Apple alone there were more than 900 businesses that served this equine population – firms with blacksmiths, wheelwrights and farriers. At the turn of the 20th century there were probably 3.5 million horses in American cities. Then things changed, big time.

By the 1920s, after the horseless carriage (aka, automobile) had utterly reined in horses’ general transportation duties, blacksmiths and their brethren were no longer as much needed. Many of them eventually probably found jobs at Ford, General Motors, Studebaker, or other car manufacturers.

According to Maynard Studios there are now only 500 professional blacksmiths in the US. Should we shed a tear for the thousands of long-displaced blacksmiths? No.

Robotophiles’ (or is it robotophobes?) visions of a jobless future remind me of prognosticators who in the early days of personal computers confidently predicted that we’d soon be living in the age of the “paperless office.” So, is your place of work now paperless? Nope; paper is still plainly present in our offices and homes. The paper industry produced revenues of $132 billion last year.

The paperless-future folks forgot both about people’s needs for tangible documentation, and that technological, structural changes take a long time to become prominent. Likewise, the menacing prophecies of writers like Martin Ford and Jerry Kaplan that millions of human workers will soon be displaced by robots are misguided.

Scott Andes at the Brookings Institution has found that there need not be any correlation between adoption of robots and manufacturing job losses. Countries like Germany, that utilize more manufacturing robots than we do, have lost fewer manufacturing jobs. Automation technology creates jobs, doesn’t just supplant them. Contrary to popular belief, the use of ATMs in the 1990s resulted in an increase in the number of bank tellers because the cost of opening up new branches was reduced because of the ATMs.

Nevertheless, as automation technology advances it will continue to especially imperil workers whose time is mostly spent on routine, repeatable tasks. As has been true during the past several decades, humans with more computer skills will continue to replace human workers with inadequate or no computer skills, in the way that graphic designers and word processors replaced typists. This substitution is never immediate, despite Ford’s claims; it can require significant investment and planning. In fact, in his final chapter Ford succumbs to reality by stating anticlimactically that “there is no question that the economy will remain heavily dependent on human labor for the foreseeable future.” Yet however beneficial for the overall economy digital advances can be by improving labor productivity, those at the bottom of the labor distribution without sufficient digital or computational skills are the most vulnerable and will be most hurt. This is why robotophiles should be clamoring for improved, focused education techniques and programs that will train digitally-displaced workers no matter how young or old they are, rather than preaching for universal basic income.

Will robots soon become the specter of the end of human employment? No, the much-feared jobless future of the day after tomorrow is pure hype. But continued robotization (aka, advanced, digital mechanization) of commercial practices will certainly cost jobs, as it has since the late 18th century, and create them. And yes it’s one of numerous concerns facing labor; but those shouting about humans losing all prospects of employment are getting ahead of themselves and reality.

With our in-coming president centered solely on individual companies’ employment practices (see Carrier Corp’s 800 jobs) rather than a needed, broader, macro labor strategy, every job lost in Monticello (Iowa), Grand Rapids (Michigan) or other towns is his only (slender and momentary) measure of his tweet-based policy’s effectiveness. That’s why he’s my woeful Micro Man. If, as expected, he doesn’t extensively increase manufacturing employment, he’ll no doubt blame innocent Democrats. The fate of our laborers and the economy will depend on what happens as Micro-Man’s myopia meets a myriad of macroeconomic challenges, including those surrounding technological displacement. 

A January Postscript. As you can imagine, it’s not just blacksmiths who have been technologically displaced. Nope, Botts Dots are now headed for history’s dust-bin. The Dots have apparently reached the end of their road because of new technology – driverless cars.

According to the Sacramento Bee, “After more than a half century of service, the safety device created by Elbert Botts in a Sacramento lab and once described by a state official as a loyal old dog, is expected to be relieved of duty sometime this year. The classic white ceramic dot, a notable innovation in its day, appears to be a bad fit as a lane marker in the emerging new world of driverless cars that rely on cameras, radar and computers to ‘read’ and understand lane lines.” Botts Dots have been done in by driverless cars; who would have guessed. It’s especially startling since you only need several people's hands to count the number of validated, non-experimental, fully-driverless cars and trucks now cruising on California fabled freeways.   

A MICRO MAN WILL SOON BE AT OUR NATION’S HELM

An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a narrow field. ~ Neils Bohr

Donald Trump will become the 45th President of the United States (US) in exactly 30 days, following his unexpected election victory. The Electoral College voted yesterday to make him president and Congress will certify the Electoral College’s vote on Jan. 6. Coming into the presidency, Mr. Trump’s experience is narrowly founded on commercial real estate and reality TV. Unlike Neils Bohr, he would never admit to making any mistakes. His grandiosity-seeking persona has focused on specific, narrow, micro-oriented concerns, usually announced via 140-character Twitter posts.

Political commentators have been spewing too many speculations about how Donald Trump surprisingly won the presidency. Nate Cohn of The New York Times and others have concluded that his victory came from a fortuitous, slight “red-shift” in a few battleground states – Florida, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.

He narrowly won each of these states by one point or less of the popular vote. But these slender victories gave him a decisive Electoral College edge. Only with effective, focused and steady effort over the next several years on the part of Democrats will this red-shift be prevented from being a long-term political prospect. This is by no means a sure thing; currently the Democrats are leaderless and far from united. For example, when was the last time you heard that the Sanders-Warren progressive movement was succeeding in the political ground work to place strong candidates on 2018 ballots that can actually win elections?

Interestingly, the red-shift phenomenon has been examined for over 150 years, but not by politicians. Astrophysicists first discussed it in the 19th century. It was a basis for Edwin Hubble’s early 20th century Law that posited other galaxies are receding from Earth, causing a red-shift (Doppler) effect. The Hubble Law supports the dynamic Big Bang model of the universe.

Even though the headline-obsessed Donald Trump likely will cause a number of “bangs” as president, with any luck they won’t compare in the slightest to the Big Bang that Hubble described. Fingers remain completely crossed on this. But let’s now depart from cosmology and take off to the here and now.

Even before he’s president, The Donald (TD) pulled off one momentary bang on Dec. 1 in getting Carrier Corp. to "save" 800 jobs at its Indianapolis air conditioner plant. Nice work. However, despite all the media hoopla that TD created in Indianapolis, the next week United Technologies Corp.’s chief executive (UTC owns Carrier) stated that some of those “saved” jobs would be ultimately lost to automation. In other words, Carrier still plans to cut its workforce, so those 800 saved jobs are a chimera. And what about the other 400 Carrier workers that TD seems to have completely forgotten about who will be soon laid off? Oh well, sorry guys.

Is The Donald ducking his responsibilities to take a comprehensive view of his job as president? So far, as president-elect, it seems so. He is all about tactical, individual, bottom-up “deals,” (micro transactions), rather than a broader, strategic (macro) vision that might unify and preserve America’s greatness. [As I’ve already shown, we are now great, and have been, despite his incessant proclamations to the contrary.] And yes, in recent times certain groups of Americans have not seen much if any economic benefit, as other groups have. This vital issue of economic inequality, that TD’s announced economic policies will not remedy at all, does need to be rectified; but it does not detract from our overall distinction as a nation. There is no nation that can claim seamless distributional equity.

The Donald’s Carrier deal required now-governor Mike Pence to offer a lush $7 million taxpayer-funded bonus to the company. What happens after January 20 when workers beyond Indiana demand TD’s help? Maybe President Trump can create a rotating vice presidency of Republican governors who can bestow multi state crony capitalism outside the Hoosier State on an as-needed basis.

Irony abounds. The US unemployment rate declined to 4.6% in November, the lowest it’s been in over 9 years. This reduction represents a significant success for hundreds of thousands of US workers that the Obama administration has helped in bestowing. In fact, during President Obama’s time in office the economy gained 15 million jobs, which works out to 36,000 jobs per week. Yet TD’s public statements clearly emphasize his disparagement of this advantageous macro situation.

He campaigned with a micro focus on preserving manufacturing jobs, which have steadily declined during the last 63 years, on fending off the purported “war on coal” that has affected the nation’s 80,000 coal-miners and stopping imports. 
Mr. Trump’s allegations about why coal miners now represent only 0.05% of our labor force are, to be generous, misplaced. Sure, environmental policies established by Republicans and Democrats have played a part (and offered important, essential health and longevity benefits to all of us), but the most important factor reducing coal mining jobs has been competitive market forces, specifically the reduction of domestic natural gas prices due to significant improvements in extracting natural gas from the ground (e.g., fracking).

Coal’s share of its key market as a fuel for electric power generation has been cut by 15% during just the past 8 years. Natural gas and non-fossil-fuel technologies (solar, wind, biomass) have gained what coal has lost. No bully-pulpit phone calls or mouth-to-mouth meetings by TD will restore coal’s former markets. Why should they? He continuously accentuates his acumen as a businessman who understands markets and technology, and applauds market forces that he has taken advantage of in commercial real estate. Market forces are present in the energy sector as well.

The improvement in the nation’s overall (macro) employment – now 124 million full-time workers – isn’t his concern; he’s purely focused on micro transactions – industry-specific situations – like Appalachian coal miners or air conditioner builders. Micro matters to him. Perhaps he believes macro is for losers.

If we didn’t know it before, most of us now know that working class wages have stagnated for more than a decade. This upward wage inertia has turned John M. Keynes' famous downward "sticky wages" insight on its head. The wages of less-educated, primarily non-urban workers, among others have been stuck from rising. White working-class people strongly voted for TD and gave him a crushing 39% margin over Clinton. With TD’s beauty-contest cabinet appointments and his suggested economic policies (e.g., not raising the $7.25/hr federal minimum wage) how can wages for working-class laborers be improved? They can’t.

Under the Trump presidency, I expect average real (inflation-adjusted) wage rates will continue to decline or at best stay steady. Inflation is likely to increase if he convinces his congressional buddies to fund his ideas for improving the nation’s infrastructure (an eminently worthwhile, if overdue measure of expansionary fiscal policy), and increase the defense department’s budget (an utterly mistaken, uncalled for scheme). Among other reasons, such sizeable spending, along with Republicans’ incessant desire to cut federal income and remove estate taxes for the richest Americans, will require large amounts of deficit spending. Increased deficit spending will raise interest rates on government bonds. Ten-year Treasury notes’ interest rates have risen 55.7% since Nov. 1.

Right after the Federal Reserve increased the Federal Funds interest rate last week by 0.25%, the US dollar appreciated as expected. The new president’s suggested increases in deficit spending will further strengthen the dollar. With the stronger dollar, US exporters will have a more difficult time selling their goods overseas and imports will become less expensive, something that can threaten a larger trade deficit and lower macroeconomic growth, neither of which is likely to please the new president. Watch for Congressional Republicans to fortify their discussions about reducing the Fed’s much-needed independence.

In his 44 days as president-elect, I’m convinced that TD thinks solely in micro terms, he’s a distinctive deal guy. He is likely to be a pervasive transactional president, unmoored by any unifying vision of meaningful macro objectives. Perhaps learning from the Kardashians (although he’d never give Kim even a milligram of credit), he banks on the broadening power of social media – especially Twitter – to provide pseudo-breadth to his micro moves.

Can micro TD convince us and the world that his narrow, transactional perspective is sufficient to lead our nation? Is this the change that his acolytes voted for? We'll be finding out on a day-by-day basis beginning in 30 days.

A CULINARY HISTORY OF SALAD DAYS

Vulgarity is the garlic in the salad of life. ~ Cyril Connolly 

 Salad is my escape path from now; from the startling, dispiriting events that began on Nov. 8. It’s a fresh means of branching way beyond anything drearily political.

So here’s my hopefully appetizing blog about the cliogastronomy of the green salad. [For you etymologists, I’ve tossed Clio, the Greek muse of history, into the bowl with gastronomy, the study of culinary customs, to create cliogastronomy, an historic analysis of culinary customs, in this case of salads.] I picked the green salad because it is parsecs distant from vulgar, citrusy orange-ish hair. Lettuce proceed...

A brief history of salad.  According to the Oxford Companion to Food, salad is a term derived from the Latin sal (salt), which yielded the form salata, salted things such as the raw vegetables. Salt is associated with salad because vegetables were seasoned with brine or salty oil-and-vinegar dressings during Roman times.

The phrase "salad days", meaning a "time of youthful inexperience" (on notion of "green"), is first recorded by Shakespeare in 1606. Salads ware eaten in ancient Roman and Greek times with a dressing of vinegar, oil and salt. Apparently ancient Roman salads were quite similar to modern-day ones.

Salad also appeared in late 14th century when the English, perhaps including Richard II, were eating salad or sallet at their meals. International trade records in the 17th century include cargo logs from the island of Curaçao to the Dutch colony of New Netherland (that later became New York, New Jersey and Delaware) of "a can of salad oil at 1.10 florins" and "an anger of wine vinegar at 16 florins", primal precursors to Newman’s Own Italian dressing. Back in the Old World, Louis XIV, the Sun King, probably enjoyed several types of salads, including mixed greens, pickled vegetables and boiled salads (warm vegetables dressed in vinegar/spices). Yum!

Unsurprisingly, salads have evolved over the centuries. The Food Timeline enumerates 23 different varieties of salads, everything from Caesar salad to Watergate salad. Caesar salad wasn't concocted by Augustus, the first Roman emperor; it was created by Caesar Cardini, an Italian immigrant who opened a series of restaurants in Tijuana, Mexico. On Fourth of July weekend in 1924 at Caesar's Place, Cardini created the salad as a main course, arranging the lettuce leaves - together with garlic, olive oil, croutons, Parmesan cheese, Worchestershire sauce and anchovies - on a plate with the intentiion that they would be eaten with his customers' fingers. The salad became particularly popular with Hollywood movie people who visited Tijuana. The rest is history. 
And now we have space salads, way beyond Tijuana. Space salad farming is now officially a thing according to NASA. After proving that lettuce grown entirely in space was safe to eat back in 2015, NASA has announced that the first crop of orbital veggies has now been cultivated exclusively for consumption by the crew.

This latest crop of “Outredgeous” red romaine lettuce grown entirely on the International Space Station (ISS), operation name, Veg-03, is the newest step in NASA’s ongoing efforts to create a sustainable, renewable food source aboard their spacecraft. The first space lettuce eaten by American astronauts (Veg-01) was produced back in 2015, and was sampled both plain, and with balsamic vinegar by the ISS crew. Astronaut hero Scott Kelly said at the time that it tasted like arugula.

Lettuce.  Cliogastronomically speaking, what’s known about lettuce, the primary ingredient in green salads? Lettuce is a member of the daisy family. Its first recorded production was in Egypt 4700 years ago. It was initially grown for the oil from its seeds and considered a sacred plant of the reproduction god Min.

Lettuce leaves’ consumption came at bit later. Based on hieroglyphics, Egyptian lettuce may have been an ancient ancestor of what we now call romaine lettuce. There are 2 broad types of lettuce, head lettuce – like the iceberg lettuce you consumed as a child; and leaf lettuce – like romaine, bib and red-leaf. California’s Central Valley accounts for 71% of US head lettuce production, followed by Arizona producing nearly 29%. These 2 states also produce over 98% of leaf lettuce in the US. Lettuce is grown year-round in California, much of it in the Salinas Valley the nation’s salad bowl, and Arizona.

According to the USDA Census of Agriculture, 3.88 billion pounds of lettuce were produced in 2012 on 323,359 acres, up 3% since 2007. In 2014, annual consumption was 14.1 pounds and 10.8 pounds per person for head and leaf/romaine lettuce, respectively. Due to its very high water content (94.9%), lettuce cannot be successfully frozen, canned or dried and thus must be eaten fresh. The number of farms producing lettuce on 5 acres or less (such as vertical farms) increased 38% between 2007 and 2012. Sales of US lettuce in 2013 totaled nearly $1.5 billion, making lettuce a leading vegetable crop in terms of value. In 2014, salad restaurants in the US were earning more than $300 million. This seems like a fair amount of green (money), nevertheless it represents a minuscule 4 one-hundredths of a percent of total US restaurant industry revenues. Lots of room for growth.

Tomatoes.  As you know, a myriad of other veges can be tossed with lettuce to create a mixed greens salad, including artichoke hearts, avocados, carrots, celery, cucumbers, hearts of palm, mushrooms, olives, onions, peppers, radishes, red onions, shallots, and spring onions. For me, the most important vegetable to include in a mixed greens salad is the tomato, all others pale in comparison. The US popularized mixed greens salads in the late 19th century.

Tomatoes are a new-world fruit, probably originating in what’s now Peru. They made their way to Europe in the 16th century, courtesy of Spanish explorers. There are more than 3,000 varieties of heirloom or heritage tomatoes in active cultivation worldwide and more than 10,000 known varieties. The name tomato comes from the Aztec xitomatl (or tomatl, that means “plump thing with a naval.”) gave rise to the Spanish word "tomate," from which the English word originates.

Rudolf Grewe dug into the earliest of Europe’s culinary encounters with the tomato and discovered that although some Europeans knew tomatoes could be eaten; few actually did, because most thought tomatoes were poisonous. [Since it is a relative of the nightshade family, a tomato plant’s leaves are indeed poisonous.] One writer in 1585 suggested they be prepared “with pepper, salt, and oil.” But this writer didn’t recommend it, as tomatoes “give little and bad nourishment.”[Tomatoes are 94.5% water, so he had a nutritional point. But despite their low calories, they offer a fair amount of vitamins C and K and minerals.] Even though they were widely grown in European gardens as a decorative plant, it took more than a century for Europeans to record any formal culinary preparations for tomatoes.

Likewise, some early colonists in the US also believed that the brightly colored fruit was poisonous. By the time commercial production began in the mid-1800s, the tomato was well established as a popular produce item in the American diet.

From coast to coast, we love tomatoes. Tomatoes are the second most consumed vegetable in the US, behind potatoes. Ninety-three percent of American gardening households grow tomatoes. My parents planted them in their WWII “victory gardens” and every year afterwards. As a youth, I remember driving past miles of commercial tomato groves in Southern New Jersey (the “Garden State”) when we vacationed on the Jersey shore in the summer.

There are 2 general categories of tomatoes, fresh market and processed. Fresh tomatoes are grown in all 50 states. In 2014, annual per capita fresh market and processed tomato consumption was 20.6 pounds and 67.2 pounds, respectively. Florida produces the most fresh-market tomatoes. California grows 96% of all US processed tomatoes that you eat in salsa and other tomato products such as sauce, paste, ketchup and canned tomatoes. Americans have increased their tomato consumption 30% over the last 20 years, mostly in processed forms.

In 2014, approximately, 27.3 million pounds of fresh market tomatoes were harvested with a total value of $1.14 billion. A total of 14.6 million tons of processed tomatoes were grown in 2014, with a total value of about $1.32 billion. Tomato production has become much more efficient. Half a century ago, harvesting California’s 2.2 million tons of tomatoes for ketchup required as many as 45,000 workers or barely 49 tons per worker. In the 1960s, scientists and engineers at the University of California – Davis, developed an oblong tomato that lent itself to being machine-picked and an efficient mechanical harvester to do the job in one pass through a field. By 2000, only 5,000 harvest workers were employed in California to pick and sort what was by then a 12-million-ton crop of tomatoes. That’s roughly 2,400 tons per worker, a 49 times increase in productivity over 5 decades.

As mentioned before, there are innumerable varieties of tasty, colorful tomatoes such as beefsteak, plum, cherry and grape cultivars. Our favorites include dry-farmed Early Girls, where the tomato plants are no longer watered after they reach maturity. This lack of water stresses the plant, forcing its roots deep into the soil in search of water and focuses its efforts on producing fruit.

But no matter what the size, shape or color, when tossed in a mixed greens salad the tomato provides the perfect accompaniment for a wondrously fresh, flavorsome dish that many have enjoyed over the centuries. May every day be a salad day; it trumps anything. 

WHAT HAPPENED? The demise of Hillary Clinton

Success consists of going from failure to failure without lose of enthusiasm. ~ Winston Churchill

This was not an exciting “election cycle”; there was no hope involved, only accusations and denigrations. We were politically exhausted by Nov. 8, and the turnout data have confirmed this. Voter turnout for all 50 states was 58.0% of eligible voters; in 2012 it was 58.6%; in 2008 it was 62.2%. This means more than 97 million eligible voters did not vote last week.

Too many Democratic voters simply stayed home. California had the 4th lowest state voter turnout of any state, just 51.8%. State turnout rates ranged from 74.0% (Minn.) to a trifling 34.0% (Hawaii). Although Hillary Clinton won the popular vote with a 1% margin, she will garner only 228 Electoral College (EC) electors. Donald Trump will win with 290. Many liberal-progressive Democrats understandably remain distraught and upset. I certainly empathize.

Although Republicans intimidated certain voters, and created deceitful barriers to reduce or eliminate likely Democrat voters from casting ballots, that is not the only reason she lost. More importantly, the Trump voter turnout was unexpectedly much stronger and broader than anticipated. Hillary Clinton’s loss wasn’t merely caused by what the Republicans did. It was also due to what the Democrats didn’t do.

First, the Democrats couldn’t hold together Obama’s 2012 coalition, and didn’t spend any real effort to peel away much of a sliver of white middle-class and lower-middle class voters who Trump focused on.

In my last blog, “Voter Turnout,” I mentioned that Clinton’s grand challenge for this election was to persuade more Hispanics, Blacks, women, millennials and college graduates to actually vote for her than they did for President Obama. Her campaign failed this challenge. Only 12% more women voted for Clinton than Trump; only 18% more millennials voted for her. Other published voter turnout analyses have stated that Trump won 53% of the white women’s vote. At this point, so soon after the actual election, there is a fair amount of conflicting information about the characteristics of voters and who they voted for. These discrepancies probably arise from differences between specific exit polls’ sampling methods and analysis. Nevertheless, the results are woeful.

The efforts Democrats undertook to entice Hispanics, Blacks, millennials and other pro-Democrat voters to vote for Clinton did not raise their turnout. In fact, initial turnout analysis indicates that Clinton’s support margins (the difference between people who voted for her and who voted for Obama in 2012) declined for Black, Hispanic and Asian voters, as well as for men and people who earn less than $50,000 per year.

In past elections, two key demographic categories for the Democrats – Hispanics and millennials - have been difficult to lure into voting booths. Again this time they didn’t vote enough or give her sufficient margins for her to win on Tuesday.

Nationally, only 11% of votes cast on Nov. 8 were by Hispanics, the same turnout as in 2012. No other turnout data are yet available regarding ethnicity/racial voter participation, but when they are I doubt they will show anything that speaks of a successful turn-out-the-vote effort for Clinton.

Second, Clinton’s campaign seemed to have forgotten the importance of the archaic, but elemental Electoral College. In close elections like this one, the EC can provide additional importance for the smaller-population states that Trump won.

She overwhelmingly won urban-dwellers (by a 24% margin), but lost small-city and rural voters (by a 28% margin). Guess what; the states away from America’s coasts with lots of small cities outnumber the fewer states with very large cities.

This is one reason why this election’s state-by-state results’ map resembles a landscape with  blue-tinged boarders (all of the west coast and the northern part of the east coast) and a very wide, red middle, with just 4 blue exceptions (CO, NM, MN and IL). It’s been a long time since the red middle has been as wide. Trump won 30 states, Clinton just 21, including Washington, DC. This landscape became the election victory for Mr. Trump, at Sec. Clinton’s expense.

The electoral bottom line: Clinton couldn’t get enough of her targeted voters in enough states to vote for her to win. Trump’s dark, nefarious, emotion-based appeal to “the forgotten” middle-class won the day, and is now changing the political panorama of the nation. 

VOTER TURNOUT: EVERY POLITICIAN’S CHALLENGE

It’s not the voting that’s democracy; it’s the counting. ~ Tom Stoppard

Breathe a sigh of relief, it’s almost over. There are only two days left before this year’s election; can you count that low?

Seemingly forever, the media have been flooding us with a tsunami of election ads and information, including wayward stories about what young teenage girls’ views are of the election and the candidates. Really? I feel a deep sense of relief that November 8 is almost upon us. Despite feeling this bit of relief from “the election cycle” almost reaching its proverbial high noon, the anxiety accompanying the result more than whelms my passing feelings of reprieve.

And it’s not just me. Therapists across the country have reported a growing number of people seeking assistance from election-induced fatigue and trauma syndrome (EIFTS). I suggest you take this handy, insightful and quick quiz to determine if you’re suffering from EIFTS. Should your quiz score indicate you qualify for EIFTS assistance, don’t forget to thank Wolf Blitzer, Rachel Maddow and Bill O’Reilly, along with The Donald and Hillary, among others.

More seriously, probably the most crucial challenge facing every politician in every election, including this one, is voter turnout. Getting people to actually vote, and vote for you, is of ultimate, prime importance. At this point the candidates and their surrogates still remain busy hoarsely making public speeches. Like Donald Trump’s mystifying decision to speechify in Albuquerque, New Mexico last week, a solidly-blue state this time around. But beneath the lecterns, their campaigns are franticly focused on nudging and cajoling likely voters to the polls. Far more concerning are some nativist Republican Trumpophiles who are erecting deceitful barriers to reduce or eliminate likely Democrat voters from casting ballots. Perhaps we should send them to jail.

It’s been a while since US voters have been so unexcited about casting ballots in a presidential election. What happened to Hope? In 2012’s presidential election just under 219 million people, accounting for 57.5% of eligible voters, cast their ballots, down from 62.3% in 2008. This modest voter participation/turnout rate ranks the US 31st out of the 35 developed democracies comprising the OECD.

The chart below illustrates the participation by voters’ racial/ethnic characteristics in the past 4 presidential elections. As shown, white and black voters participate more by a noteworthy margin over Hispanics and Asians. Despite significant efforts, getting Hispanics and Asians to actually vote has long been a dispiriting quandary. Hopefully the Democrats’ efforts over the past several weeks will be more successful this time.

Since 2000, a maximum of just 49% (in 2008) of Hispanics voted in any presidential election. In contrast, 66% of eligible black voters and 65% of eligible white voters on average participated in the past two presidential elections. Uniquely among the four racial/ethnic groupings shown in the chart, black voters have increased their voter participation consistently since 2000.

Percent of eligible electors who voted in presidential elections, 2000-2012 

Source:  New York Times

The relatively small voter participation rate for Hispanics is a particular challenge for Hillary Clinton, because they represent a growing, core constituency for Democrats.

Another constituency that has been targeted by Sec. Clinton’s campaign is millennials, who like Hispanics have a diminutive record of voting. In two of the media-designated “most important” swing states - North Carolina and Florida – less than one in five millennials voted in this year’s primaries; 15% in Florida, 18% in North Carolina. Hopefully far more millennials will vote rationally on Tuesday.

These disparities in voting participation exist in non-swing states as well. In California, an overwhelmingly blue state, only 17% of eligible Hispanics and Asians voted in the 2014 election. In that year, the California voting electorate was 60% whites and 18% Hispanics, which is far different than the state’s overall demographics. Actual California population demographics are 38% whites and 37.6% Hispanics.

Another important constituency for Sec. Clinton and Democrats has become educated voters. For once the Democrats have an advantage over Republicans. Because the more educated a person is, the more likely she/he will vote, and vote Democratic. According to the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey (CPS) and the United States Elections Project,  54.9% of all voters nationally in the 2012 election were 60 years or older; just 16.3% were young people aged 18 to 29 years. From CPS data only 17.6% of people with less than a high-school degree voted in the 2012 election and just 29% of high-school graduates voted. In contrast, 59.9% of folks who have an advanced degree turned out to vote in 2012.

Finally there is the gender distinction between voters. In every presidential election since 1980 more women have voted than men. For our last national election in 2012 63.7% of women reported voting versus 59.8% of men. This translates into almost 10 million more women voters than men.

So who are the most reliable voters; voters that need the fewest nudges to get into the voting booth? Simply stated, the most dependable voters are female, older and more educated folks.

The above-cited voter turnout data illustrate why Democrats need larger and more effective get-out-the-voter efforts than Republicans. With the exception of women and college-educated people, Democrats’ target constituencies – people of color, urbanites and young people – don’t vote as reliably as the historically-targeted Republican electorate – white, middle- and upper-middle class suburban folks. Just ask Bernie Sanders.

Nevertheless, the white, non-college educated working-class people who Mr. Trump has apparently captured don’t vote as reliably either. Although it makes no difference for Tuesday’s election, the white working class has noticeably diminished over time. Two demographers have noted that in 1940 82% of Americans 25 and older were whites with no more than a high school education; by 2007, that figure had dwindled to 29%.

The waning prominence of white working-class people is directly linked to the electorate. In 1980 according to exit polls, 63% of the electorate was comprised of voters who were whites without a four-year college education. That had dropped 10 points by 1992, when Bill Clinton won the presidency. That election marked the last time exit polls would find whites without college degrees to be a majority of voters. By the time Barack Obama won the presidency in 2008, just 39% of those who cast ballots were whites without college degrees.

For this and other reasons, white working-class men have reason to feel disremembered. That is until The Donald pledged to focus his ethno-nativist attention on them. As we’ve seen during the past year, some white working-class people remain vocal and motivated by ephemeral Trumpian messages.

My advice for those of you who haven’t yet voted is to make absolutely sure you do. Your vote counts, and can make a very real difference. The resilient, postive destiny of this great country depends on every eligible citizen to vote for Hillary Clinton. She is infinitely more qualified, knowledgeable and capable than her opponent. And unlike her opponent, she will keep our republic from heading over a precipice too fraught to imagine.