Book Review: The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050, by Joel Kotkin

  In his new book The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050, Joel Kotkin attempts to extrapolate current trends for forward 40 years to create a vision of exactly where and how the next hundred million Americans will live. I heard about this book in Tom Barnett's WPR column last week and immediately ordered it, looking forward to a nice bit of Utopian futurism. What I found was a somewhat meandering history of urban politics in America that is at once informative about the future of medium sized cities and uninformed about international politics and economics. The book is also long on description but short of prescription, preferring to say "this will happen" as opposed to "this is how things will happen".

   Kotkin begins his book by taking down a couple pieces of conventional wisdom about the United States - mainly that the U.S. is currently in a state of decline. Kotkin is especially rough on the notion that either China or India is poised to overtake the U.S. economically, pointing out that both countries still have a large percentage of their populations living in poverty and that China in particular is set to age rapidly, having over a third of their population over the age of 60 by the mid 2030s. Kotkin is certain that this rapid aging (which also impacts Japan and the E.U.) will bedevil most other major powers while the America's ability to integrate new immigrants will allow us to remain dynamic. Ultimately, Kotkin offers a vision for a healthier, wealthier, post-racial, post-ethnic America that will remain the global leader in innovation even in the mid 21st century.

What's Useful About this Book:

As a resident of Columbus, Ohio, I know that Kotkin's analysis of the folly of a medium sized mid-western city trying to become a "luxury city" is 100% accurate. Kotkin calls out Cleveland and Dayton specifically, but as I watch the local debate about whether or not to bail out the local NHL franchise (money looser - big time) I think his point is dead on. Kotkin's advice is that medium sized cities need to focus on what he call "vanilla" services, such as police, fire and local schools, as opposed to marque projects "downtown" which are designed to attract the "creative class" but typically wind up money pits in all but the largest and wealthiest cities. Kotkin compares the results of Potemkin luxury cities, like Cleveland, Philadelphia and Dayton, with vanilla cities like Austin and Phoenix, and suggests that the path of the latter is a better strategy for 21st century sustainability.

On the topic of sustainability, Kotkin is bullish on not only on America but the global environment as well, taking a very Lumborgesque "wealthier is healthier" outlook. And Kotkin is skeptical that the current environmental obsession with urban living, believing that Americans are unlikely to ever give up their preference for owning their own home and living in the suburbs. Kotkin believes that current Great Plains small towns in states such as Iowa and Nebraska will become the suburban boom towns of the next several decades.

Less Useful Sections of the Book: Unaddressed Issues:

1. Kotkin spends exactly zero time addressing the coming Medicare implosion. I think it's beyond remiss to write a book in 2010 about America in the year 2050 without seriously addressing the financial issues the U.S. government faces. 

2. Kotkin's read on international politics is, at best, short sighted. He seems to embrace the notion of America as an ever-evolving institution but quickly reverts to The Clash of Civilizations when discussing other world powers such as China and Russia. He takes the so-called Beijing Consensus way too seriously, seemingly ignoring the myriad of problems which plague China's political system - and which justify his belief that China will not surpass the U.S. - and suggests that China will develop a sort of Sino-Globalization opposed to the United States. Can't have it both ways guy - either China has a long way to go or they've discovered a longer lasting light bulb - can't be both. For what its worth, I'm a big supporter of his first proposition - China has a long way to go before they are truly strong and what we've seen in the last 3 decade basically amounts to China picking a lot of low hanging fruit.

Kotkin's read on Russia is even worse, bordering on silly even. He suggests that Russia will successfully embrace something called neo-Czarism. This supposition completely ignores the failure of the Russian economy in the wake of the financial crisis and also ignores Kotkin's earlier read on Russia's weakness.

3. Perhaps the biggest weakness of Kotkin's book has to do with point #1. Kotkin makes a series of vague suggestions for policies but offers no way to pay for them. He writes vaguely about energy policy and industrial policy but doesn't explain how America can square the circle, so-to-speak, with regard to the increasing share of overall government spending going to entitlement spending and the need, if we are to pay for Kotkin's policies, to increase discretionary programs.

In conclusion, The Next Hundred Million offers a welcome dose of optimism but is long on assertions and short of policy national policy suggestions. On the other hand, Kotkin's observations about housing patterns could be very useful to students or practitioners of state and local politics. In fact, I recommend Columbus mayor Micheal Colman read this book ASAP.  Beyond local politics, however, Kotkin's theories could use a bit of fleshing out, and I might recommend he look into writing a follow up which examines what type of economic policies would best empower state and local governments to follow his policies.

I give this book 3 out of 5 stars.

The Opposite of "Get Rich Quick" isn't "Get poor soon"....

Nick Kristoff has a great story in the NYT about a reverse get-rich-quick-scheme:

Kevin Salwen, a writer and entrepreneur in Atlanta, was driving his 14-year-old daughter, Hannah, back from a sleepover in 2006. While waiting at a traffic light, they saw a black Mercedes coupe on one side and a homeless man begging for food on the other.

“Dad, if that man had a less nice car, that man there could have a meal,” Hannah protested. The light changed and they drove on, but Hannah was too young to be reasonable. She pestered her parents about inequity, insisting that she wanted to do something.

“What do you want to do?” her mom responded. “Sell our house?”

Warning! Never suggest a grand gesture to an idealistic teenager. Hannah seized upon the idea of selling the luxurious family home and donating half the proceeds to charity, while using the other half to buy a more modest replacement home.

 Yep. These idiots sold their $1.6 million dollar house and donated half the money to charity.

Then they wrote a book about it.

I'm disgusted. Here is why:

1. That little girl has a GREAT topic to write about in her admissions essay for Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Georgetown, etc. I would kill for a great topic like that. As long as she isn't a complete knuckle dragger, she's virtually guaranteed acceptance. Is it worth $800k to get into a top school? I don't know, it seems like you'd be better off making a donation to the school of your choice - but - I suppose you need access to an alumni network to know who to talk to about a donation and you still risk the girl not getting accepted to the school you made the donation to whereas with this method she's got a all access path she can use to apply to many schools.

2. Whenever Earnest Hemingway wrote a hero the character would often perform selfless acts without the desire for recognition. These bozos didn't have that problem. If you're really such a hero, why don't you donate the money anonymously? But no, not in America, not in the year 2010. Today, you do something "good" (I'll to that in a minute) and then you write a Oprah Book about the event. I'm going to go out on a limb and say between the advance, royalties, maybe an eventual movie deal (Tom Hanks and Sandra Bollock, I say), plus their daughter's acceptance to a Ivy League school I bet they recouped most of that $800 grand.

3. Oh, and the economics of the whole thing is just ridiculous. Why not say to your daughter, "How did the guy in the Mercedes get the Mercedes? What do you think he does for a living? Do you think he's maybe made better choices then the bum?" The answer to all those questions is that the guy in the Mercedes was almost certainly a highly educated professional who invested many years into becoming proficient at something whereas the bum probably wouldn't know what to do with money if you gave it to him. But you won't get into Harvard writing that in your admissions essay.

What this family did was a get-rich-quick-scheme in reverse.

Get rich-quick-schemes are dangerous.    

The money they donated to a charity in Ghana would have done more good if it had been invested in a business in Ghana.

But more important is the implication that there is a "simple" solution to poverty. The implication is that if everyone would just cut their consumption in half poverty could be eliminated and the ECONOMY would be sated by the sacrifice. This theory was recently pilloried in a source far more scholarly and reputable than the NYT's Op-Ed page. 

The only solution to poverty is to grow the economy. You cannot grow the economy easily. Growing the economy requires investment in companies that invest in innovation and new technologies. Growing the economy also requires years of education in science and mathematics.

Obamacare, creating a nation of Californias

It appears as though Obamacare is going to pass the Senate, thanks to senator Ben Nelson.

The deal was sealed Friday night at about 10:30 with a handshake between Sens. Nelson and Reid, ending 13 hours of negotiations. Mr. Reid later called President Barack Obama, who was flying back from the global climate summit in Copenhagen on Air Force One, to inform him the stalemate was resolved.

"Inaction is not an option," Mr. Reid said Saturday.

Speaking at the White House, Mr. Obama hailed what he called a "major step forward for the American people."

This is a horrible bill and Ben Nelson has been allowed to make a horrible, short-sited deal to accomplish it. Nebraska will never have to pay their share of increased Medicaid costs associated with the new bill.  And neither will several other Democratically controlled states:

Nelson’s might be the most blatant – a deal carved out for a single state, a permanent exemption from the state share of Medicaid expansion for Nebraska, meaning federal taxpayers have to kick in an additional $45 million in the first decade.

But another Democratic holdout, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), took credit for $10 billion in new funding for community health centers, while denying it was a “sweetheart deal.” He was clearly more enthusiastic about a bill he said he couldn’t support just three days ago.

Nelson and Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) carved out an exemption for non-profit insurers in their states from a hefty excise tax. Similar insurers in the other 48 states will pay the tax.

Vermont and Massachusetts were given additional Medicaid funding, another plus for

Sanders and Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) Three states – Pennsylvania, New York and Florida – all won protections for their Medicare Advantage beneficiaries at a time when the program is facing cuts nationwide.

All of this came on top of a $300 million increase for Medicaid in Louisiana, designed to win the vote of Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu.

This bill will create a nation of Californias, meaning it will create a situation where many other states are forced to follow California's lead into virtual bankruptcy. This is because many of the currently uninsured will be pushed onto the roles of Medicaid, which is paid for largely by state governments. So even if Obama claims that he has kept his campaign promise not to raise taxes on anyone who makes less than $250,000 per year, this bill will force states to spend more money on the formerly uninsured which will force the states to cut services or raise fees and taxes in other areas to make up the difference.

From Obama's perspective, this is a bill is ok because the tax increases will have to come long after he has run for reelection and because the tax increases will be at the state, rather than the Federal, level so must people will blame their governors and state legislators.

But from the perspective of the American people, this is horrible bill. It is ultimately a wholesale effort to buy political points in the near term by leveraging future earnings. The cheaper health care gets, the more people will consume. And bringing 30 million uninsured onto the insurance roles will just cause those people to consume more healthcare, thus raising the cost, and it will also create a permanent bi-partisan constituency that will reliably support increasing the amount of money spent on public healthcare at every opportunity. 

Considering "Climategate"

I'm opposed to the Waxman-Markey bill. Not because I don't "believe" that human actions can cause changes in the climate, but because I think the W-M bill makes way too many assumptions about exactly how much humans impact the climate and in our ability to reverse that impact. My skepticism is rooted in the work of Bjorn Lomborg and his more conservative outlook on climate change and on the importance of resilience versus assuming we can turn some huge dial and make global temperatures go in the directions we wish.

So now that I've found out that there are numerous questions about the validity of current climate change models I am less than surprised:

The emails seem to describe a model which frequently breaks, and being constantly "tweaked" with manual interventions of dubious quality in order to make them fit the historical data.  These stories suggest that the model, and the past manual interventions, are so poorly documented that CRU cannot now replicate its own past findings.

That is a big problem.  The IPCC report, which is the most widely relied upon in policy circles, uses this model to estimate the costs of global warming.  If those costs are unreliable, then any cost-benefit analysis is totally worthless.

Again, none of this means that "global warming" isn't "real" or "true". All this means is that our ability to gather and interpret data is hamstrung by human frailty. We are - all of us - eternally dealing with scarce resources, be it time, money or knowledge. To me, that is a reason to take a measured, cautious approach to constructing public policies which we intend to affect extremely complex issues. In the case of climate change, this is a good reason not to pass either a so-called "cap and trade" system or even a carbon tax, because we simply do not have enough data to construct a sensible policy response to this situation.    

Obama Wants to Get Pakistan Right; Congressional Democrats Don't Care If American Soldiers Die

Tip of my hat to President Obama on Pakistan.


On one hand, he wants to get tougher WRT the allocation of American aid (he wants to see it isn't used to build a big war force to fight India).


On the other hand, the president wants to offer a quid pro quo with greater economic connectivity to the U.S. in form of special economic zones within both Pakistan and Afghanistan.


This is an extremely good idea that will save lives, create jobs and grow the Core.


Unfortunately, the Democrats care more about appeasing their union overlords then they do about American grand strategy:

A bill sought by Obama to boost trade by establishing special economic zones in Pakistan and Afghanistan has stalled in the U.S. Senate, partly over concerns about labor standards as well as worries within the U.S. textile industry.

I am forced to conclude that Democrats in the senate do not care about winning in Afghanistan. If they cared about winning they would care about shrinking the Gap and growing the Core. They do not. And since they don't want to win but also don't have the balls to cut off all funding for the war and order the troops home, I am left with the only remaining logical conclusion: senate Democrats do not care about American soldiers.

If senate Democrats cared about American soldiers they would either give them the resources they need to win the war or bring them home.

Americans of all political inclinations should support Obama's plan to use a carrot and stick to bring Pakistan into the Core. This plan shows real grand strategic thinking from the Obama administration and will make America safer and wealthier.

Americans of all political inclinations should oppose the senate Democrats who will throw the U.S. military and the Pakistani people under the bus at the behest of their Big Labor masters who seek to create a worldwide Soviet Comintern.

I hope the check from the AFL-CIO was worth it you bozos.

Eyeballing the Link Between Unemployment and Reelection..

All stats from this website.

Weird. Hmm. I would have expected a much clearer correlation between the unemployment rate and presidential reelection.

I started looking at these numbers wondering what Obama's chances of reelection are if unemployment remains high and from a historical perspective things may not be quit as bleak as they appear. I would say unemployment has to be trending down by, oh, say January of 2012 for Obama to have a decent shot at a second term, and obviously if the numbers are still trending up by then both Obama but the whole country will be in a lot of trouble. But as Reagan proved, unemployment does not necessarily have to be low by 2012, it just has to be trending down. And as both Bush 41 and Carter show, trending down after the spring of the election year seems to be too late, so January 2012 will probably be the moment of truth for Obama to make or break his second term.

Polemics != Science

Once upon a time, Paul Krugman was serious economist. He did serious research in the area of international trade and eventually won a Noble Prize.

But those days are long past. Paul Krugman has abandoned his roots as a serious social scientist and has devolved into the intellectual equivalent of Rush Limbaugh.

Social Scientists attempt to use basic scientific principals to gain greater understanding of human behavior, be it in the psychological, social, economic or political spheres. A social scientist strives to make testable, positive observations about the phenomena he is studying. For example, in his 2007 book The Conciseness of a Liberal Krugman makes positive claims about the impact of Republican economic policy on the wages of the average worker - specifically, he claims that the so called "Treaty of Detroit" between the UAW and auto manufacturers led to a steady growth in wages of the average worker.

Now, as it happens, Krugman is probably wrong about his claim.

However, social science is a process that is not always only about being "right" or "wrong" - everyone makes mistakes in their conclusions occasionally, but what is important is that the claims must be positive and testable.

Krugman has moved way beyond the bounds of science. Today he makes wild claims about whatever he saw on CNN the night before.

But with the murder of Dr. George Tiller by an anti-abortion fanatic, closely followed by a shooting by a white supremacist at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the analysis looks prescient.

There is, however, one important thing that the D.H.S. report didn’t say: Today, as in the early years of the Clinton administration but to an even greater extent, right-wing extremism is being systematically fed by the conservative media and political establishment.

The problem with trying to link the work of one crazy person with some sort of supposed "movement" afoot is that crazy people do crazy things whenever they feel like it. Because if a Democrat in the White House "caused" a "crazy right winger" - whatever that mean - to go crazy then how would that explain the murder or a Jewish radio host named Alan Berg during the Reagan administration?

Furthermore, how would that explain a shooting at the White House during the Bush administration?

Beyond the acts of lone gunman, all this recent focus on "Right Wing Terrorism" is nonsense anyway. While acts of "Right Wing Terrorism" seem to spark all sorts of comments from the likes of Paul Krugman there is little concern about the ongoing resource based insurgency going on within our inner cities.

I wrote about one such insurgency in my chapter in the upcoming 5th Generation Warfare Handbook, and occasionally the media reports on it in bits and pieces, but rarely do we get the full story.

Anyone who was truly concerned about "domestic terrorism" and actually knew anything would ignore both the words of idiots like Glen Beck and actions of crazy lone gunman and would instead focus on the need for a concerted grand strategy for Urban COIN in America.