Violence in Libya, and why Egypt was probably the last peaceful transition we'll see anytime soon

A friend Tweets:

My response: "Yes. That's the whole point. I deplore it though."

It's worth mentioning, though, that after Tunisia and Egypt, we're probably done seeing peaceful transitions away from authoritarian rule in the Middle East—at least for a little while. Those countries' rulers passed from the scene with relatively little violence, and it's easy to see that other rulers in the region decided that the lesson was they'd either A) have to commit bloodshed to hold onto power or B) give up power. There's little chance, at this point, that they'll try to peacefully outwait the protesters: That route doesn't seem to work. For authoritarians, the incentives now belong on the violent side of things.

I'm not suggesting the protests are futile. The use of violence, as in the case of Libya, probably further de-legitimizes governments that are already illegitimate. But if this series of revolutions is to continue, the easy parts are probably already over.

Why is there income inequality?

Apologies for the lateness of this post compared to the first two. There's lots of other work to be done, and this series has required me to do some hard work in the form of thinking through things. It's more time-consuming than the usual point-and-shoot of blogging. 

So we've established that there is, in fact, growing income inequality in the United States. And the evidence of history suggests that such inequality can be a societal problem over time. So the next question is this: Why is inequality growing here? And what can be done about it?

Paul Krugman—whose 2007 book, "The Conscience of a Liberal" forms the basis of this series of posts—seems to offer a simple, even seductive answer: It's the Republicans' fault. They're the ones who radically cut marginal taxes on top earners after 1980, and they've done all they can to weaken the power of unions, who were a major factor in lifting the tide for working-class Americans in the post-Depression era.

Here's the crux of it, he says:

Over the course of the 1970s, radicals of the right determined to roll back the achievements of the New Deal took over the Republican Party, opening a partisan gap with the Democrats, who became the true conservatives, defenders of the long-standing institutions of equality. The empowerment of the hard right emboldened business to launch an all-out attack on the union movement, drastically reducing workers' bargaining power; freed business executives from the political and social constraints that had previously placed limits on runaway executive paychecks; sharply reduced tax rates on high incomes; and in a variety of other ways promoted rising inequality.

Krugman, of course, is as interested in reining in the elites as he is helping the working and middle classes get ahead.  I'm more concerned with the latter part of the equation, and it seems to me he doesn't do a good enough job addressing why that second part failed to happen. There's no reason that rising executive pay should necessarily require stagnating worker pay in a growing economy, it seems to me. And despite the efforts of some more committed conservatives, there's not really been much reining in of the welfare state in the last 30 years—Republicans have even expanded it without bothering to pay for it.*

*If they somehow manage to slash and burn Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare, however, this statement is null and void.

This is leading me to a conclusion about the cause of the inequality problem, but I want to prod at Krugman a little more first. He spends much of his time exalting the 1950s—when inequality was low, marginal tax rates were high, and everybody lived better than the generation before them. And that's true. But Krugman doesn't really address something I've got to believe has to be a major factor in all of this: the 1950s also happened to be a time when the United States was, more or less, the only industrialized power left standing. All the other ones had been destroyed by World War II, and it took the Marshall Plan to get a lot of those economies starting to roll in the right direction. The United States had a big head start on the rest of the world, which means its workers had a head start on the rest of the world, right?

Fan mail: Billy Eger sets me straight

My most-persistent correspondent doesn't like my views on NPR. I wrote: "And the money spent on public broadcasting creates a public good far more valuable than those dollars would indicate: It creates a better-informed citizenry, the kind needed for a well-functioning democracy."

Billy's response:

For a well functioning democracy? That's your problem Dumbshit ,WE ARE A REPUBLIC NOT A DEMOCRACY.SO UNTIL YOU ACTUALLY LEARN YOUR HISTORY AN NOT WHAT YOU WANT IT TO BE ,YOU SHOULD SHUT YOUR PIE HOLE ,IF YOU HAD BRAINS YOU'D BE DANGEROUS,HAVE A NICE DAY STUPID.CAN'T FIX STUPID

billy from wickliffe

I enjoy Billy's pedantry. But for the sake of argument, here's James Madison's definition of a "republic," writing in Federalist 39: 

If we resort for a criterion to the different principles on which different forms of government are established, we may define a republic to be, or at least may bestow that name on, a government which derives all its powers directly or indirectly from the great body of the people, and is administered by persons holding their offices during pleasure, for a limited period, or during good behavior.

The government derives its powers "from the great body of people." Now. Billy's right that we're not strictly speaking a democracy. (Strict democracy is ... kind of socialistic.) But the term hasn't generally been used strictly, really. Lots of people—most people, I'd say, and certainly some notable conservatives—use and have used the term "democracy" to describe our republican form of government, so I don't think I was doing anything particularly ill-informed. Since our republican form of government derives its powers from the people, my point still stands. 

 

The Daily News' new ombudsman lives in ... North Dakota?

At the end of the first column from the Daily News' new "public editor" comes this startling bit of information:

Richard Aregood is the Charles R. Johnson Professor of Journalism at the University of North Dakota.

North Dakota?

Now, granted, Aregood isn't a stranger to the Philadelphia scene. As his UND bio notes, he "worked as a reporter, rewriteman, rock critic, city editor, deputy sports editor, and assistant managing editor before moving to the editorial page." He won a Pulitzer. And granted, he seems (appropriately) skeptical about the journalistic acumen of new Daily News editor Larry Platt.

But still. North Dakota.

The upside to this is that Aregood will have a lot of distance from the newsroom and editors he is supposed to critique on behalf of the public. The downside is that he's also going to have a lot of distance from the readers he's supposed to represent. 

Sure, you can email Aregood with your complaints and compliments about the Daily News. But it appears that Aregood won't be around Philadelphia to get a deeper sense of what people are saying to each other—say, at a food cart on Broad Street near City Hall—when they pick up a copy of the paper. Despite his deep roots at the Daily News, I suspect Aregood will be plenty willing to let the paper have it with both barrels when needed. But given that there's 1,500 miles of distance between Aregood and the community he's serving, I'm not sure he'll always know when it's needed.

Fan mail: No funding for lefty NPR

W.R. Engel writes me from Muncie, Indiana:

Joel, PBS, NPR should be defunded not to kill off Big Bird and friends (although I feel the world could do without Barney the big purple) but because taxpayer money should not be used to fund politically biased organizations. If you don't think there is a left-leaning bias at PBS and NPR I've a few bridges to sell you, or ask Juan Williams. Not to worry, Elmo, Bert and Ernie and all will find new homes and become millionaires.

This same issue was raised in the comments of an earlier blog post I wrote on the topic. My response, admittedly quite glib, was that NPR is "liberal" only in the sense that "informative" is somehow construed as being liberal. Less glibly, it's always tough for me to weigh these kinds of accusations: The kind of people who make these accusations seem to believe that every news organization that isn't explicitly conservative in its outlook is somehow liberal. I don't buy that.

But this kind of thing is in the eye of the beholder. To the extent we can quantify this, it's worth noting that NPR's listenership comes from all over the politicial spectrum—tilted, perhaps, ever-so-slightly to the left, but not by much. And that audience mostly believes NPR is very fair.

NPR is going to get into ideological dustups from time-to-time—like the Juan Williams imbroglio—because major news organizations can't really avoid them. I remain convinced that NPR (and, to a lesser extent, PBS) provides a profoundly good public service that the private market has shown little inclincation to provide. It is worthy of continued taxpayer funding.

In Wisconsin, Republicans discover democracy

Love this from Sen. Lindsay Graham:

Graham: “In a democracy, when you run on something, you do have an obligation to fulfill your promise. [Gov. Walker] didn’t take anybody by surprise, he’s doing exactly what he said. There was a referendum on this issue and the unions lost, and the Democrats in Wisconsin should come back to Wisconsin to have votes.”  

Graham, of course, a starring member of the the Republican minority during the 111th Congress elected with President Obama. Somehow, Republicans--despite massive defeats at the polls--found it right to ignore the message voters sent then in order to mount a record 112 filibusters in one year. Lectures from Graham on the nature of democracy are frankly laughable.

Netflix Queue: 'The Twilight Samurai'

Three quick thoughts about 'The Twilight Samurai':

* This sweet, slow, and elegaic film focuses on Seibei Iguchi, a low-ranking samurai at the end of the samurai era. He is poor and dirty, loves his daughters and even encourages them to study books(!!), but serves out ancient obligations to his sponsoring clan. Because his clan is mostly at peace--until the end of the film--he and his fellow samurai have little to do; they serve as clerks and accountants instead, rarely drawing their swords in anger. Given this film was made in 2002, a few years into Japan's real-life "lost decade" of recession, it's not difficult to read his situation as an allegory of Iguchi's modern-day countrymen living lives as semi-neutered "salarymen" torn between past glories and current duties.

* The presence of women in this film is what makes it unusual, at least from my experience of samurai movie watching. In both Japanese and American action movies, we tend to like our sword- and gun-slingers somewhat ascetic, stoic, and bordering on chaste. Their deepest emotional attachments tend to be with other men--or, if with women, doomed. (Make of that what you will.) But Iguchi's love for his daughters shapes his other actions in this movie--and not in the usual "I've got to get vengeance for them or protect them from a threat" kind of way. That makes him a different kind of hero, actually vulnerable instead of movie vulnerable. And that's what draws us in, even if the pacing seems to drag a bit at times.

* In the end, Iguchi must strap on his swords and have a climactic battle. Though 'The Last Samurai' has an elegaic feel to it, it seems that here is where we're given permission not to mourn what has passed. Iguchi and his opponent do not fight for their own honor, or freedom, or anything noble. They're each performing the assignments they've been given--"You're an errand boy. I've been an errand boy too," his opponent says--in order to keep the pillars of Japanese feudal society in place. The fighting is messy, inelegant, fought by two complicated humans instead of Good Guy and Bad Guy. The fight and the film end on a bittersweet note, then: We are the warrior-protagonists in our own lives, and if the battles we're sent to fight are sometimes less-than-noble, or even outright incomprehensible, there's still an honor to be found in fighting the best we can, and in finding comfort in the ones we love.