The only sensible part of Friedman's crappy column

I wonder if Thomas Friedman outsourced his column :-)  It was a whole lotta blah, blah and blah.  What was the only sensible part?  His statement (not an argument, because of all the blahs) for "So what do we do?":

The standard answer is that we need better leaders. The real answer is that we need better citizens. We need citizens who will convey to their leaders that they are ready to sacrifice, even pay, yes, higher taxes, and will not punish politicians who ask them to do the hard things. Otherwise, folks, we’re in trouble.

I agree with him here.  If only people will forget that no president or governor can be the game-changer and that, in fact, the constitution divvies up the powers so well that the power really lies only with the people.  But, if we doze off, well, then that is what we deserve.

My classes are wonderful examples of this.  (Not about dozing!)  When I present students with the petroleum issues--who the exporters are, and how anti-democratic most are--they immediately see how our oil consumption then ends up supporting those nutcases.  If more citizens understood this concept, well, not only will we be better off, the entire planet will be better off.  And oil is only one such issue ....

Power to the people, indeed. 

Photo of the day .... India?

It might surprise non-Indians (well, maybe a few Indians too!) that this photo is of people in India

The note at the source:

Tribal girls perform a traditional dance during the Garo Wangala festival at Dimapur in Nagaland. 

Looks so colorful, compared to the dull and boring lives here!

A colleague grew up in Nagaland when her parents were stationed there.  No, this colleague is not an "Indian"--is an American now all the way from Wales!  She has been to parts of India that I have only read about.  Years ago, when there were immense internal problems in neighboring Mizoram as well, the husband of my late cousin-sister was posted there--he was a (medical) Major in the Indian army.  I suppose things have calmed down a lot over the years.  An old school friend spent a year in Sikkim, not far away from all these places.


So many places to visit.  So little time.  And no money.  Well, I will go there.  One of these days.  Before Cherrapunji completely dries out :-(

I thought my life was complicated .... :-)

Until I read this ....

This will be my first Thanksgiving as a vegetarian—excuse me—as a black vegetarian from the Southern United States. As in Texas. As in raised on meat as much as milk. My dad barbecued every weekend. Sunday dinners revolved around collards and green beans with turkey chunks in every forkful, salads and baked potatoes were always sprinkled with bacon. Thanksgiving always included fried turkeys.

This year, I’ll be bringing the Tofurky.

A wonderful short essay.  Read it here
The best line there is this one though:

Vegetarianism is the dietary equivalent of Republicanism in the black community

Oregon's fiscal crisis

Are the revenue raising Measures 66 and 67 doomed to fail because they are scheduled to be voted on in January?

I relocated to Oregon in fall 2002, and soon I was on the metaphorical public policy treadmill in order to figure out what was at stake in the special election the following January.  Measure 28 was on the ballot and it was an attempt to temporarily raise income tax rates. 

On January 28, 2003, Measure 28 was defeated by almost a ten percentage margin, and budget cuts resulted, including at the university where I work.

Before the year ended, there was another measure on the ballot, and again at about the same time of the year.  In February 3, 2004, it was with a convincing 18-percentage margin that Oregonians voted down Measure 30, which was aimed at increasing revenues through income and corporate taxes.

I wonder about the timing for such votes to increase taxes.  Are such revenue-raising attempts self-defeating because the ballots arrive at about the same time that we also receive bills for all the purchases we made over the lengthy holiday season from Thanksgiving until the new year? 

If the “no” votes are more a reflection of voters juggling with their personal finances, and less about a political philosophy of taxes, well, Oregonians seem to be significantly less secure now compared to back in 2003 or 2004—we are currently amidst a deep and broad level of economic contraction and unemployment.

Will we then look past our respective financial insecurities to understand that Measures 66 and 67 will not raise tax rates for most Oregonians?  Measure 66, for instance, will mean higher taxes for roughly about three percent of personal income tax filers, which means that it will not affect the remaining 97 percent.

I suspect that as in 2003 and 2004, the word “tax” could easily grab the attention of a significant number of voters who might almost reflexively reject the idea. 

Should the measures fail, the impacts could be worse than the aftershocks of the rejection of Measures 28 and 30.  In the current recessionary environment, government spending has been able to prevent a more serious depression.  A reduction of public spending could further worsen the state’s economic situation, through direct cuts and their eventual multiplier effects.  In a recent report, the National Governors Association observed that “the biggest impact on states is the one to two years after the recession is over.”  It is, therefore, important to uphold the taxes approved by the legislature. 

However, we also ought to recognize that Measures 66 and 67 are temporary solutions, at best.  We need to look no further than down south at California to realize that increasing the revenue stream alone is not enough.  Thus, irrespective of the results on January 26, 2010, I hope Measures 66 and 67 will catalyze discussions on Oregon’s priorities and commitment to its citizens. 

In the meanwhile, here is to hoping that Oregonians will reverse past trends this coming January. 

Wars: editorial cartoon of the day

How important are corporate income taxes?

Warning: this chart from the Economist might get your blood pressure way up :-)

Chart of the day: prisons v. universities

Isn't the "negative" bar almost the mirror image of the "positive" bar on the right?  Does this sufficiently explain the priorities in Oregon, and in the US too?  Which "institution" would you rather support?  Read the complete report here

From India, .... and then ....

I suppose I am not unlike many from my generation in India who, as impressionable youth, firmly believed in Marxism--how ever incorrect our understanding might have been of that "ism" .... and then we slowly drifted out of it as we read Orwell or Solzhenitsyn, before signing off on capitalism, and yet with a nagging worry that this "ism" has a lot of flaws as well, and forever wondering whether a right "ism" will somehow miraculously show up and make this world a fantastic place .... the fall of the Berlin Wall, and then Tony Blair and Bill Clinton talking up a "third way", .... and now we are down to one--the liberal democratic capitalism.  History is over, spake Fukuyama.

This is International Education Week and my classes have aspects of globalization as the topics.  I remind students about this week.  They forget.  I nag them.  They forget.  It goes on :-)

In such a context, it was neat to read Jagdish Bhagwati's comments.  It was all the more fascinating how he uses "we" when talking about Americans.  I sometimes wonder whether my students take it on face value when I also employ "we" Americans, or whether the accented "we" makes them think otherwise .... One of the fantastic things about America is how "we" becomes quite easy--very easy to become one of the 300 million ..... So, here is Bhagwati talking about "us" Americans, and "we" ought to favor free trade:

America’s great comparative advantage lies in innovation. For someone like me who has come from India it is very obvious that this country is full of innovators. When I was a student I read about Britain’s Industrial Revolution. And it was powered by all kinds of people, inventing the spinning jenny and so on. They were like little Americans, you know, thinking of new ways of doing things and making a buck. Almost every other American I know is thinking about something, some way to do something. We are a highly inventive people, and technology therefore is our driving force. It’s not savings and investments which are driving our productivity. It’s technology and innovation and immigrants like me—not me in particular—lots of people who come here and by the second generation go through the mill and become Colin Powell or Orlando Patterson at Harvard.
Nobody can compete with us in the long run, in my view, because these are not advantages which people in traditional societies can reproduce. So we’re always going to be doing high value. We’ll lose the high value we generate to others quickly because now technology diffuses very fast. But then we’ll have new ideas, new technologies.

I am impressed with the supreme confidence with which he states "nobody can compete with us in the long run ...." Perhaps one needs to be an immigrant to truly relish the flavor of this sentiment :-)

Yet, many of "us" immigrant do not completely ditch the old country either--particularly with the technological innovations that is seemingly only one step away from teleporting a masala dosai fresh from Madras all the way across here!!!.  I think we are in the best possible situation--we get to enjoy everything. 

Sen, of course, wonderfuly defined "us" in the old country as the "argumentative Indian" .... I don't think we ditch that either, much to the displeasure of many of "our" friends and colleagues here :-)

When I was in graduate school, one of my trips across town in the university's free shuttle to UCLA was to listen to a talk by another economist from India--Pranab Bardhan.  A question during the Q/A then was why he was not keen on becoming a formal adviser to the Indian government, which was the direction Manmohan Singh was going at that time.  Bardhan replied that his job was to be a critic, which I thought was a wonderful position to be in :-)  The journeys in life brings me one degree of separation away from Bardhan--apparently a colleague and Bardhan know each other from their younger days in Calcutta.

And "we" are all here in America.

Which country is most pro-market?

Quiz of the day

Obama's options in Afghanistan

According to a highly reliable source, the following are the options that President Obama is considering regarding Afghanistan:

• Not only learn the lessons of Vietnam, but apply them as well
• Visit; act fascinated by their rugs
• Remove every American soldier; see if fighting continues
• Legalize gambling, as that's worked well domestically
• Thunderdome-style battle to the death between Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal and Afghanistan Taliban leader Mullah Omar
• Call the Taliban pretending to be the Prophet Muhammad and tell them to stop ambushing American soldiers
• Announce you're raising troop levels by 15,000, then pull everybody out, then come back with a half million soldiers, in the process convincing al-Qaeda that you're loco and not to be messed with
• Arm and finance a group of religious fighters
• Back the murderous drug-dealing warlord with the most government officials in his pocket

I feel great! For now :-)

Feeling a tad low, I decided to pep myself up by reading some of the appreciatory stuff I have received over the years in response to my opinion pieces.

First, an email, and I have withheld the sender's name:

March 21, 2005
Sir
Thank you for your excellent guest opinion and for your work with students.  We fear for our country's future as it is more and more difficult to discern reality from make believe.  You are a bright light

And this one was a letter in the newspaper on May 7, 2008:

Khé’s columns are thoughtful
I appreciate The Register-Guard’s inclusion of Professor Sriram Khé’s thoughtful and thought-provoking columns.
His perspective as a highly intelligent, well-educated immigrant to our country is one we can all benefit from.
The subjects he has chosen are invariably timely and significant.
I envy the students in the honors program at Western Oregon University who have access to his thinking and wisdom even more frequently than we readers do. They are fortunate indeed to pursue their education under his direction.
Prudy Zorotovich
Elkton

Thank you, folks. 

The imbalance between production and consumption: a tale of US and China

Robert Reich has a neat observation:

Both societies are threatened by the disconnect between production and consumption. In China, the threat is civil unrest. In the U.S., it's a prolonged jobs and earnings recession that, when combined with widening inequality, could create political backlash.

Reich makes a great point that China's export-driven, Yuan-pegged-to-the-dollar, approach that is so much focused on production is a social policy.  Of course, this is not anything new; Friedman, in his metaphor-driven style, compared this to the movie Speed where a minimum speed has to be maintained or else the bus blows up.

But, what is China's endgame in this approach?  Let us say that in 2039 China is one rich country.  Will it still be the Commie-facade economy?  I simply do not understand what is next in China's speeding bus.  The more I think about this, the more I think of my nutty bottom line, and the next game-changing event of history.  And neither one is a good scenario to look forward to.

Be afraid: Geraldo is the voice of reason :-)

Watch this clip, or fast forward to the final minute :-)

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Law & Order: KSM
www.thedailyshow.com
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Email of the day!

You have a lottery winning of 400,000 British Pounds from the British American Tobacco Plc,contact,Dr Andrew Stephen for your price on +44 702 401 2739 and tobaccolottery009@administrativos.com

That is some good chunk of change.  Maybe I can sell the Brooklyn Bridge for a cool mil, eh! :-)

From ABC News, and not from the Onion

Hit&Run notes an ABC news item:

Here's a stimulus success story: In Arizona's 9th Congressional District, 30 jobs have been saved or created with just $761,420 in federal stimulus spending. At least that's what the website set up by the Obama Administration to track the $787 billion stimulus says.
There's one problem, though: There is no 9th Congressional District in Arizona; the state has only eight Congressional Districts.
There's no 86th Congressional District in Arizona either, but the government's recovery.gov Web site says $34 million in stimulus money has been spent there.
In fact, Recovery.gov lists hundreds of millions spent and hundreds of jobs created in Congressional districts that don't exist.

ABC's reporter Jonathan Karl drily notes that Recovery.gov was created to foster greater accountability and transparency in stimulus spending.

Graphic of the day: The cost of war

Kashmir: India, Pakistan, and China

Bush's deal for re-creating shoe-throwing!

Remember that Iraqi reporter who threw his shoes at President Bush?
Well, listen to this update: