Shaking up the core Republican beliefs -- economics

I have never had anything good to say about Donald Trump. Fundamentally I have been more concerned about the people who voted for him enthusiastically. There are many individuals as bad as Trump; the problem comes when large segments of the population can be convinced to vote for one of them. (Though Trump has been far worse in office than most of his opponents expected, including me.)

But Trump is a phenomenon of the past four to five years. Before Trump the basic tenets of the Republican party were already quite worrisome, given the values I hold and what's important to me. I'm far from alone.

Some Republicans (and the ones who through their pocketbooks wield the most power) are motivated simply by greed. They are the rich. They want lower taxes so they can have more money. That's a rational viewpoint. There's not much one can do to move them except perhaps appeal to some ember of charity and feeling for the common person that might be banked within them somewhere.

It is widely accepted (at least on the left) that most Republican voters are voting against their own economic self-interest. Some may not understand this, and perhaps their views could be changed by education. But when coastal elites hold them in contempt on this account, they are making a big mistake. The voters also may simply be acting in accord with their values. Many believe that life outcome is based on merit. The rich are rich because they've been smarter or wiser or harder-working, and they deserve what they have. If they are poor, they similarly deserve it. Although that is not at all my understanding of the factual situation, I should think they deserve some credit for voting in line with their principles rather than their narrow self-interest. Many of us would think that view had merit if the proposal on the table was a sort of pure communism, taxing everyone 100% and distributing the money equally among everybody.

I believe that it is vital that people feel there are incentives -- that what they do makes a difference for their personal welfare, typically in terms of how much money they have. Yet in moral terms, very little of a person's success is due to their own efforts -- a great deal comes from genetic and cultural endowment, such as what example your parents set and the material resources you had available to you growing up. Society used to value physical strength and endurance. Today it values intellectual skills far more. Your fate hinges in part on which skills you have and which era you were born into -- rather arbitrary and not a measure of some fundamental underlying worth. Today more and more money goes to the very best, who create the automated systems that dominate our lives. The productivity gains are enormous, but the effects on the standard of living of the bottom 80% are worrisome. The solution is largely redistribution -- taking money from those who are lucky and giving it to those who aren't so lucky.

The New York Times columnist Paul Krugman has said that poor Republican Whites oppose social programs because they don't want money going to Those People -- meaning undeserving lazy people with brown skin. It sounds plausible to me. The current experience with Covid-19 (and the hard economic times that are about to begin in earnest) will leave many of those Whites in deeper trouble than they were before. Perhaps some will understand that this isn't their fault, and start supporting such programs. Maybe some will in their minds recast some of Those People as folks like them who were doing their very best all along. Or maybe some will just accept the fact that Those People will get some of the money as an unpleasant side effect, but think of their own narrow self-interest as more important.

The election of Franklin Roosevelt in 1932 ushered in a sort of "New Deal Mentality" that wasn't seriously challenged until Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980 -- an extraordinary run of nearly 50 years. Ordinary folks were of value, and high taxes on the rich were just fine (top tax brackets reaching 90% at times). Perhaps an economic catastrophe of the kind that now seems to be unfolding -- on the order of the Great Depression -- could give rise to a renewed New Deal Mentality. However, I'm sure the modern-day Republicans will fight back fiercely with every tool in their arsenal.

What perplexes me more in retrospect is why the opposition to the New Deal Mentality was so weak for so long. Eisenhower in his 8 years as President didn't challenge it (though he wasn't himself really a dedicated Republican). Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford didn't challenge it -- Richard Nixon was on the verge of approving universal health insurance when Watergate hit. Another fascinating example came to my attention recently. When the US occupied Japan in 1945, we had the ability to reshape a society as had rarely happened before. In charge was Douglas MacArthur, a Republican, largely insulated from scrutiny of those back home in America. But the society he engineered was very much in line with the New Deal Mentality.

It would be an inspiring outcome of the rule of Trump and the pain of the Covid-19 pandemic if the US once again adopted a New Deal Mentality that would last for decades. The Republican opposition is so determined and clever that I would bet against it happening, but it remains a hope.

When to remove monuments and rename things

Partially in response to Black Lives Matter, there is a move afoot to remove monuments, rename institutions, change flags, and so forth.

I would start with the perhaps controversial view that all these things are fundamentally optional. There is no absolute imperative to remove or rename anything. We are bequeathed a history that is full of various kinds of oppression, and our forebears (yes, the ones in power) made monuments and named things according to what seemed right to them at the time. We can change society for the better now without digging deeply into those old decisions. Righteous indignation to change this situation comes from the same source as today's <"cancel culture">, where people with unpopular views are not just denied speaking opportunities, but subject to boycotts and professional ruin. The Enlightenment view that competing ideas can duke it out in reasoned debate is under serious attack. Monument removal is happening anyway, so it's worth thinking about how to do it right.

Some such status removal and renamings might be an excellent idea as a way forward. The US Civil War seems like a special case. One side was fighting for slavery, and the struggle for rights and status of modern US blacks can be traced back in a continuous line to that war. If in fact this <fivethirtyeight.com article> is correct, that most statues to Confederate leaders were erected 50 years after the fact and as part of an ongoing front in the battle for white supremacy, then let's take them down, especially those on courthouses grounds or public squares. Ones that honor common soldiers that were made shortly after the end of the war could be preserved, as well as those that are out of the way, on battlefields and cemeteries. The decision to remove monuments rests with local and state governments, I believe, and it will be an interesting test of the strength of commitment to black liberation to see which ones do and which do not. Another possibility is adding additional plaques which describe the circumstances under which the monument was erected and condemning the racist attitudes behind them.

Next case: Suppose today that someone said that it is was not possible or suitable for blacks and whites in America to live side by side as equals. Some sort of segregation is necessary. This is a reactionary view, perhaps not even one that could be voiced by mainstream Republican figures. Could we possibly honor a historical figure who took that position? If not, let's pull down all the statues of Abraham Lincoln, because that is what he believed for most of his life. We honor him because given how things stood at the time, he was pulling in the right direction.

If Black Lives Matter is the engine that drives removal of anything honoring the Confederacy, it's worth posing practical questions of political strategy. Is this a good thing to focus on? I don't know the answer, but I think it's worth asking the question. How much better will the lives of African-Americans be once the statues are gone? On the other hand, obviously some white southerners are going to be upset by the removal of those statues, and in their minds much of it is separate from wanting to reinforce racism. Perhaps they could be educated about the specifically racist motivations for status erected decades after the war and their views might soften. One advantage of statue removal is that you can take action and see results. If the statue is removed, then it is gone. Reforming police departments to eliminate the racism seems much more important -- but also much more difficult, and it is difficult to measure success (or even progress).

Economic policies that benefit the poor at the expense of the rich can be implemented and their effects measured. Franklin Roosevelt did it, and we can do it again, this time making sure that blacks are included. It would probably improve the material conditions of American blacks more than anything Black Lives Matter might accomplish, even if it leaves them at a relative disadvantage with regard to whites. Yes, let's work to reduce racism, but let's not neglect other avenues for progress.

But let's go beyond the Civil War. It was a well-defined event, with fairly clear boundaries. What other boundaries can we draw?

One distinction I have heard is that when it comes to removing an offending statue, the solution is not to destroy it, but rather to put it in a museum. In a public place it does give the idea that society approves of it, while in a museum it is more clearly a piece of history, quite likely not something that society approves of any more. I think that is an excellent idea.

Looking at what a particular statue signifies seems important. For instance, we might remove a statue of Teddy Roosevelt <shown in a particular relationship to blacks and Native Americans> without deciding we need to remove all Teddy Roosevelt statues.

When it comes to historical figures, they need to be judged against people in a similar class in their own time and the range of opinions they held. By this criterion, Thomas Jefferson is still worthy of honor. (Tidbit: Sally Hemings was his late wife's half-sister and at least 3/4 white in ancestry.) His contributions to the country were not around the issue of slavery. Similarly with George Washington. Renaming our capital city and the state that is home to Seattle is just going too far.

The United States itself is based on the expropriation of land from Native Americans. No one can offer a remotely persuasive argument with regard to today's values as to why this was justified. Columbus is under attack, and that makes sense as we associate him with the entire idea of Europeans interacting with and conquering the Americas.

A lot happened in the nearly 300 years that went by after Columbus's voyages and the founding of the United States. European domination of much of the Americas became a fact, and the white cities and states on the US east coast acquired legitimacy simply because enough time went by with enough European immigrants that the issue was settled. But further encroachment was still very much a live issue. A major issue in the War of 1812 was the British desire for American settlers to not push west of the Appalachians. Their motivation might not have been the well-being and independence of Native Americans, but still, by modern standards, they were right and we were wrong.

Whites continued to take Native American lands to the point that today, there are just a few reservations. Another 250 years has gone by since the founding of the United States, and the land is occupied by a huge and very interesting country composed mostly of whites. History has overwritten the moral sin of white colonization. Most of our ancestors within the past 150 years had no personal relationship to abuses of Native Americans -- it was already a done deed. We cannot and do not have to give back the land. It would in fact be immoral to do so.

Lest we all feel comfortable in the idea that we are moral people in contrast to those who came before, I'll take the view of a likely posterity looking back at us. You don't have to be any sort of radical animal rights person to understand that factory farming is cruel. The evidence is right in front of us. Anyone who claims they don't know about it is willfully ignorant. If we were to accept regulations that might increase the price of meat and dairy by, say, 20%, we could fix a lot of it. Yet we don't. We just put it out of our minds, or don't make it a priority, or go along because everyone else goes along. Will posterity condemn us all and pull down our statues unless we were vegans? Or do we deserve a break because we had the same views as most of our fellow citizens?

I wonder about the European perspective on how to redress the wrongs of history. The Normans conquered and oppressed the Angles and Saxons, yet they had previously conquered and oppressed the Celts, who had in turn conquered and oppressed earlier peoples. I suspect it's even more complicated on the mainland. The best they could do was to stay "Stop!" around 1945 or so, and leave things pretty much the way they were at that time. People continue to migrate, but it is peaceful.

Keep the Focus on the Less Well Off

I made two lengthy posts on the subject of Covid-19 and social distancing when we were first getting used to this idea. Here's a much shorter one to summarize what I think are the key points.

The economy is in a shambles and will be for a long time no matter what we do. The relief from re-opening now before adequate measures are in place to control the infection will be quite small and so not worth it.

The pandemic is hard on everyone, but the economic depression is much harder on those who aren't so well off. Apparently opinion among them is split about re-opening. The louder noises are from Republican zealots who want their freedom, but folks with jobs that put them in danger are very worried. With regard to the practical effect of reopening, they face losing unemployment benefits if they don't return to a job which is in fact unsafe.

My one practical suggestion is also a political one, aimed at my readers who are pretty well off like me: Do not think about this issue -- and certainly do not talk about it -- without keeping firmly in the center of your attention the poor(er) people who are affected by the virus and the shutdown of the economy. They are the ones most at risk, and policy should largely be guided by what's best for them -- even if we are unsure about or disagree about exactly what that is.

Wealth divisions are key in coronavirus decisions

Having more money enables you to do many things you can't do without it. It's generally accepted that you can buy more expensive toys and a bigger house. In practice, you can buy better medical care, though that is controversial. In buying a more expensive house you also can likely buy one in a nicer or safer area. It's no accident that poorer neighborhoods have more pollution. I don't think the primary dynamic is that people decide to pollute in poor neighborhoods, it's rather than in deciding where to live, pollution makes it less desirable, making it cost less, and that's where poor people end up living.

Covid-19 brings these disparities to light in slightly different ways.

Let's start with the big picture -- Covid lockdown is very difficult for poor people in poor countries. See for instance https://www.democracynow.org/2020/4/2/rana_ayyub_india_coronavirus. People who are going to starve if they stop working are not going to stop working if they can possibly avoid it.

Turning to the US, most people are told to stay home if they possibly can. Social isolation is much easier the fewer people you live with. It is much easier if you have a financial cushion. And who are the people whose work must go on? It includes one prominent class of rich people: doctors. And we hear about the danger to doctors regularly. Nurses are intermediate, but the home health aides are not so well off. Outside the health care field, we have police and firefighters, grocery clerks, and delivery people - working poor or at best lower middle class. We may worry about disinfecting our grocery cans and packages when we bring them home, but these others who do essential work are exposed to far greater dangers all the time.

Mortality from coronavirus is notably concentrated in the elderly and those with pre-existing health conditions. One stark formulation from the web is that it is a "boomer pruner". If you do nothing at all, the most likely result is that only a few children will suffer, a significant portion of adults in the prime of life will get a bad cold, and a large portion of the elderly and those with pre-existing health problems will get very sick, and they will die in substantial numbers. We assume by default in the developed world that this is a horrible result and that any actions that can help this situation should be adopted without debate. And indeed the consequences of serious Covid-19 cases make for startling images -- patients dying in hallways before they can be properly examined, rationing of ventilators and leaving the sicker people to die without that life-saving treatment. We have medical personnel at extreme risk of contracting the virus.

We are also hearing stories from the economic shutdown, but no individual story is as shocking as a Covid-19 story. No one dies directly. Lots of people are unemployed and struggling to get by in ordinary times. Their numbers are vastly increased, but there's no especially moving news footage there. The quote "one death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic" is associated with tyrants. What about "one destitute person is a tragedy, a million destitute people is a statistic"? The federal payments to people, even if repeated and enlarged, won't really do much to help people who are out of work. They'll just lessen the pain a little.

Suppose we just let everyone go back to work. Those who are ill and those who can afford it can continue to isolate as they see fit. A few of the bleak images of Covid-19 are not from the disease itself but from attempts to contain it. There's no reason that patients in the ICU need to die alone, if you leave it to their relatives to decide whether or not to visit. You don't need to ban funerals. Perhaps it would be wise if doctors and other medical personnel who are at risk got out of the business of seeing Covid patients. But some of the difficulties arise from health-care workers taking special health precautions. What if we retreated to the level of precautions we ordinary use for flu patients?

On this scenario, the virus runs through the population, most people survive and develop antibodies, and life goes on. Let's make the assumption that 3 million Americans die. It's a shocking number -- yet it's less than one percent of the population. It includes mostly those who were already elderly or sick. It's something we as a society can easily absorb. Estimates are the Spanish flu killed 2% of the world's population, and it was also more serious because it included many children and healthy people.

The proper comparison is also not between vigorous social isolation solving the problem and no such measures causing rampant deaths. We speak only of "flatting the curve" -- a rather modest goal. Not running out of ventilators, and decreasing the death toll somewhat.

Based on values developed in the realities of recent decades, the mainstream and liberal viewpoint will continue to firmly back social isolation. We are not ready to let the virus run rampant.

And yet there is trouble brewing. Fivethirtyeight.com has this report https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/coronavirus-polls/?ex_cid=rrpromo which I will summarize as 86% of Americans being worried about the effect on the economy, and 70% being concerned about someone they know getting the virus. The story is that Trump backed health measures only when his polling indicated that Americans wanted him to. For now, 80% of voters say social distancing is worth it even if it hurts the economy (https://morningconsult.com/2020/03/26/coronavirus-health-vs-economy-trump-poll/). There's nothing inherently wrong with Trump bowing to that pressure -- doing what the people want to do is the idea behind Democracy (if only we used that as a reason for taxing the rich...). But we'll see how public opinion goes as time goes on, we still see scenes of Covid-19 overwhelming the health care system, and the economic pain gets worse and worse. Along with poll numbers shifting, we'll have to consider the possibility that people will tell a pollster that social distancing is worth it, but express their actual, less popular opinion in the privacy of the voting booth.

The idea that the liberal elite is out of touch with the values of common citizens is always one to consider seriously. There is no question that rich, older people are the ones running the country. In this case there is a danger that Trump will tap into the truth that lots of Americans would rather go back to work and let Covid-19 takes its toll. And this time around he might not be wrong in challenging the orthodox liberal view. 49% of people still disapprove of Trump, but that number may go down when they see him taking the side of the working poor against the sick and elderly.

I in fact believe that the fact that large numbers of Americans think Trump is good and want to vote for him, not seeing the danger to democracy, is a much more serious problem than losing one percent of the population to Covid-19.

What should be clear is that we need adequate funding to deal with the next pandemic, so we can take strong and effective measures (including testing aggressively and having enough ventilators) and have a far better chance of containing the disease. It goes against Republicans ideal that federal funding for something other than the military can actually do good. Maybe they will change, or maybe it will contribute to a Democratic tilt.

Covid-19 is certainly not just a First World problem or a rich person's problem. But social distancing (and the consequent economic devastation) is a First World and rich person's solution to the problem.

Perhaps our social distancing has gone way too far

An understandable first reaction to the news of this virus is denial -- there isn't really any problem. Most people got over this quickly, and even Donald Trump seems to have finally moved past it.

The minimum sensible response to the COVID-19 outbreak is a "mitigation strategy", described as "combining home isolation of suspect cases, home quarantine of those living in the same household as suspect cases, and social distancing of the elderly and others at most risk of severe disease." I can't think of any reason we shouldn't be taking at least those measures.

The US quickly moved to a more radical social distancing strategy. One notable early example was shutting down US professional sports when one basketball player tested positive. Restrictions on travel and the banning of large gatherings have followed. Denial is gone, and there is a consensus that our temporary inconvenience is worth it if we can prevent a public health disaster.

And yet, here is a radical possibility: The world will be much better off in the long run if we do no more than mitigation. There were powerful forces against society taking this as an initial response. It seems callous regarding the immediate, visible problem of people dying from the virus. There is also a strong psychological tendency to say, "This is a serious problem. I want to do my part to help solve it. I'm willing to undergo major inconvenience to do my part." The answer, "Actually, it's best if you keep up your normal routine with a few small changes" doesn't sit so well. Yet this "back to life as usual" line of thinking might come into play as we consider how long we can keep this up.

The model where radical social distancing makes sense is one where we suffer now for a few months at most, we flatten the curve of infections so as not to overwhelm the public health system, and then we can resume our normal ways and pat ourselves on the back for doing what needed to be done. But a few months will not do it. <This report> out of the UK influenced recent US policy decisions and had a key conclusion: "The major challenge of suppression is that this type of intensive intervention package – or something equivalently effective at reducing transmission – will need to be maintained until a vaccine becomes available (potentially 18 months or more) – given that we predict that transmission will quickly rebound if interventions are relaxed."

They determined that the basic mitigation strategies "might reduce peak healthcare demand by 2/3 and deaths by half. However, the resulting mitigated epidemic would still likely result in hundreds of thousands of deaths and health systems (most notably intensive care units) being overwhelmed many times over." That sounds bad, and considered by itself it is very bad, but it might be preferable when we consider the consequences to social distancing as we are now practicing it.

A huge problem with social distancing is the economic fallout. In normal times of economic slowdown, economists lament that a lack of consumer confidence is to blame for things not picking up again -- people's sense that tough times might lie ahead leads to spending less. And since one person's spending is another person's income, the economy stays weak. Consider how mild "reduced consumer confidence" is in comparison to what people see right now. A stock market having lost 30% of its value is one sort of wake-up call. But even if you figure that the stock market is a rich person's problem, one trip to your supermarket will tell you that this is a big deal -- the empty shelves are a result of your fellow citizens hoarding in expectation of hard times ahead. It takes no appreciation of fine points of economics to understand that air travel, tourism, hospitality, sports, and the restaurant business are immediately and drastically reduced. Those industries employ a lot of people who will be out of work, who will spend less, leading to other people out of work. From zero concern to deep concern in a mere two weeks, everyone knows that things are very bad for large segments of the economy. Talk about loss of consumer confidence! As always, hard economic times will hurt most the working poor and not-so-poor.

Those sectors are just the beginning. A remarkable amount of what we spend our time and money on is not strictly necessary. There's no real need to work out at the gym -- you can get back in shape later. Focusing just on how we present ourselves, who needs to get a nice haircut or their nails done? You can now restrict your clothing purchases to the practical and necessary and make them online. We do some of those things to "keep up with the Joneses", but quite likely the Joneses will be giving them up too. And if you stay home, no one can see how you look anyway. Reductions in those sectors and ones that are similarly optional will hurt the economy even more.

This sounds to me like a situation likely to be fully as bad as the Great Depression of the 1930s. At that time, the public rallied behind Roosevelt's radical government intervention, and it still wasn't enough. If any such intervention is to happen today, it will first require the entire Republican ideology to be repudiated enough to relegate the party to long-term minority status. (We'll see if Republican words in the past couple days about shelling out large sums for ordinary people actually translate to sustained action). One useful step might be a guaranteed minimum income.

In fairness, it is hard to get an economy going again once it has stalled. Given that we've opted for radical distancing right now, abandoning the policy will likely not lead to a return to what we have come to think of as "normal" soon.

But there are other problems beyond economics. What does it do to children to tell them they can't go to school or play with friends for 18 months or more? The impressions children get of their world will influence them for the rest of their lives. And what does it do to us -- adults as well as children -- to feel that our fellow human beings, including our friends and extended family, are physically dangerous?

I am a member (though not a very active one) of the First Unitarian-Universalist Society in Newton (FUUSN), which took the creative step of holding a virtual service this past Sunday using Zoom. Over 90 households participated. You could see the live feed of families in a grid, a dozen or more per page. I wondered what might be going on beneath the laudable sense of coming together. Considering the real social contact that this service replaced, each family must wonder whether they are dangerous to the others or whether those others are dangerous to them. The epidemiologist's correct explanation would be that the chance of either being a danger to the other is actually very, very small, but the cumulative danger to society from the occasional transmission is high enough that we should avoid such interactions, however small the danger. But that cannot be easily fit into our human psychology -- what the human brain can absorb is that the other people who have been our social world are now dangerous. The longer our isolation goes on, the stronger this sense will become.

There's also the distinct possibility that the sacrifice of those of us who scrupulously follow this path of social distancing will be undercut by the behavior of a minority who go right on partying. The only solution to that might be police state powers that we have been very reluctant to use in this country.

"Exit strategy" is a concept that arose with regard to war planning, but it's a good thing to think about for any endeavor in life. If you start in on a course of action that is costly, how are you going to stop it later? In particular, we should consider it for radical social distancing. Suppose our efforts flatten the curve, and we declare victory in August and say it's time to go back to life as usual. It won't feel like victory. We will be reading about hundreds of deaths every day from the virus, and the idea that it could have been worse will be hypothetical. Your fellow humans are still as dangerous as they were before. Will you want to go out again? Consider the entirely likely possibility of a vaccine not being widely administered for two years. Patterns will become more and more ingrained. And if you consider going out in March of 2022, society will have changed a lot. The places you used to go out to will be out of business.

There are pandemics for which such measures would be justified. Imagine one that has a 25% mortality for the young and healthy. That would justify radical distancing. Perhaps we will learn from this one the skills we would need to deal with that one.

I could be wrong about all this. I welcome feedback. There may be facts I'm not aware of, and new facts may come to light that no one is aware of now. But I think we should consider seriously the dangers we incur by opting for radical social distancing.

Super Tuesday Muddle and Decision

Today I voted in the Massachusetts primary. I wasn't entirely sure who I would vote for until the last few minutes, which is unusual for me. I found all the considerations going through my mind interesting to me, so perhaps to others too.

I would do anything to <defeatDonaldTrump>. But how to get the best odds of doing that?

If I were personally appointing a President for the next four years, my clear choice would be Elizabeth Warren. Her values line up with mine almost perfectly, and she is very smart and thorough on the details. If she was the radical Democrat in a strong position nationally (replacing Bernie in that position) it would be very tempting to vote for her. But she's not. But the latest polls show her as the only candidate in Massachusetts with any chance to put a dent in Bernie's support and perhaps win a few delegates for use at a convention, so I considered voting for her on a tactical basis, but decided against it.

There's Bernie Sanders again, and I divide my consideration of him into two pieces.

What would he be like as President? I'm in agreement with most of his positions -- I do not believe he actually wants to nationalize the means of product along the lines of the Soviet Union. The columnist Paul Krugman says he might if he had his way ideally turn our society into one resembling Denmark. That would be fine with me. I'm more skeptical of his anti-free-trade positions, but that's not a big deal.

The biggest problem is that he seems uninterested in compromise and conciliation. He's not going to get what he proposes. Even if he rode into office on a wave that gave the Democrats a 5-vote majority in the Senate, it's not enough. No Republican would vote for anything he proposed, meaning he would need the support of almost every Democrat. And there are plenty of moderate Democrats who would not support his more radical positions. None of his big ideas is going to happen in the next four years. Can he work with moderates to enact small but real improvements? I suppose he would have his bully (that is, "terrific") pulpit as a means of expounding moderate socialist ideas as reasonable -- a long-term goal. But would he do that artfully? Or would his strident way of making his points alienate people from considering them fairly? Of course he would be vastly preferable to Trump, as he would restore and respect the institutions of US democracy. But would the people after four years think, "He's like all the other politicians, full of hot air and not getting anything done"?

How about getting elected? He's an old white guy, a comforting demographic unlikely to alienate moderate voters. When people actually think about them, many of his positions are politically popular. Yet there will be heavy use of the "socialist" cudgel against him. His unwillingness to compromise means he might have a hard time pulling in all the moderate Democrats and getting them to the polls -- let alone the independent swing voters. He does have hordes of ardent supporters who are likely to turn out for him. But where are those supporters? It matters little if solid blue states like California and New York pile up extra millions of votes for the Democrat. What matters is swing states -- and how many ardent Sanders supporters are there in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, etc.? The consideration that competes with "energizing the base" is "winning the swing voters" What about them? It might be true that with tribalism so strong today, 90% of Trump voters would never desert him -- but even half of that remaining 10% could be enough to swing those states.

And then there's Joe Biden. Another old white guy, comforting to moderates. A long track record of moderation and compromise. Not likely to enact any major changes (relative to the Obama years) -- and yet infinitely preferable to Trump in restoring the basic decency of democracy. And yet he is such an imperfect candidate. A bumbling speaker, a bit handsy with the women. He'll do everything in his power to reach out to the Bernie supporters, but it's not clear if that will be enough.

Bloomberg was appealing as a sort of "minimal pair" candidate compared to Trump. Also a New Yorker, but a genuine billionaire instead of a pretend one. Also an old white guy, associated with moderate liberal positions. But he doesn't seem to be appealing to lots of people, and using money to try to get votes (I've gotten 3 mailings from him and none from any other candidate) is a bit distasteful.

So what has been decisive? Within the past 24 hours, Klobuchar and Buttigieg dropped out of the race and endorsed Joe Biden. Dropping out is a selfless thing to do, and endorsing Biden is a strong statement -- one that most candidates do not take when they drop out. I figure they are smart people who know far more about politics than I do, especially Klobuchar. They know everything I wrote above and far more. I ultimately went with their choice and voted for Joe Biden.

Among my proud past votes was that for Bill Clinton in the primary of 1992, a year when virtually no one thought any Democrat had a chance against George Bush senior. He was actually a fairly conservative Democrat, but he was a Democrat and much preferable to any Republican.

And whether the nominee is Biden or Sanders, I will very much want to convince the supporters of the other one to come out in November.

If I adopt the perspective of a cynical bystander who wants to see a good show, Bernie Sanders will make for the more colorful campaign and election. But I don't.

When the waiter doesn't give exact change

I tend to write about weighty things. Life also has little details.

I still pay for some restaurant meals with cash, especially if it's a lunch where the total bill is under $20. Waiters have been making occasional mistakes for as long as there have been waiters, yet today I write about something else.

It may have been ten years ago that I first ran into the idea of waiters deliberately not giving you exact change. The first problem is psychological. When people my age were young, a quarter was a valuable coin -- because of inflation but also because children are much poorer than adults. It is no longer of much importance to you if you're being a rational economic actor, but it still has that trace in my feelings. So if their change is off by even a quarter, it is already changing the rules of the game. They're forcing you into the realm of approximations where you're supposed to think that maybe a quarter doesn't matter. I've never known a waiter at a Chinese restaurant to do this, and it's one nice feature of Chinese restaurants (a tiny one, to be sure).

Say the bill is $10.25 and you give them a twenty. If they bring you a five and ten ones, I find it mildly annoying for the reasons above but not too bad. I figure they are being generous and offering me a free quarter. I proceed to leave a cash tip. I can verify it's correct because I see two ones there and know it is 20% of my ten-dollar tab.

What I really dislike is when they only bring you a five and four ones. You've been shorted by seventy-five cents. Who has pocketed that seventy-five cents? I assume it is the waiter, not the restaurant, though it's not entirely clear. Next, they are assuming you are going to leave a tip -- which goes against the social form of a tip as a voluntary payment. But what's more, they are making you do extra math. If I want to leave a 20% tip I should now put down one dollar bill and a quarter. Now when I look at the cash on the table as against my ten-dollar tab, it looks like a very poor tip. But if a quarter isn't important, then I could just leave a dollar. Yet I'm also aware that that is a tip under 20%, so there's some temptation to leave an extra dollar to be sure it's enough.

As long as we as a society are still using coins, we should use them right, partly to be in harmony with our past.

I am happy with retail stores that have a dish of pennies, because you can grab one to cover your purchase of $10.01, and it's also a place to put the few pennies you might get in change. Even when I was young, pennies were not very important. But the vital thing is that it is voluntary. I can if I choose fish in my pocket for that extra penny I owe, and I can pocket the pennies I get from change. I think of penny dishes as an arrangement you see in places on the lower end of the economic spectrum. Maybe there's some stigma attached to it, but I don't think there should be.

I am sympathetic to restaurants adding 18% or 20% to the bill for parties of five or more. When it's no one person's job to make sure everything adds up to include a decent tip, I presume the total is often short, which is why they adopt these policies. In that case there is real money at stake.

In fact, when I order a lunch special that costs $10 and ask for water as my beverage (because in fact water is the beverage I want most), I will typically leave a tip of 30% or even 40%. They've done as much work as they would for a more expensive meal. But that is my choice, and that makes all the difference.