Stirewaltisms: The Upside of Six More Weeks of Winter

Plus: The crime rate conundrum, critical Maus theory, and a showdown at the Golden Corral.

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THE UPSIDE OF SIX MORE WEEKS OF WINTER 

In Pennsylvania, celebrity groundhog Punxsutawney Phil forecast six more weeks of winter. Nobody was happy, except for the guys selling road salt. But Phil is still better off than his counterpart in neighboring New Jersey, Milltown Mel, who ended up dead before he could make any predictions.

They don’t mess around in Jersey.

But if we are to take Phil at his shadow, then we should believe that things are going to stay the same for a little while. It doesn’t feel like that would be so bad in American politics today, given what the alternatives are.

Maybe not if you’re President Biden, who is having a very hard time with inflation and lingering pandemic consequences. It’s never a good sign when economists start talking about the Misery Index again. Also, $30 trillion does seem like a lot of money to owe. It’s true that there is no obvious hard correlation between debt-to-gross-domestic-product ratios and national success. The three best for 2020: Hong Kong, Zimbabwe, and Brunei. The three worst: Japan, Sudan, and Greece. 

This is because the debt-to-GDP number does not exist in a vacuum. If the United States did not have the world reserve currency, nine aircraft carrier strike groups, and the ability to end human life as we know it on the planet, our sixth-worst debt rating would look very different. Conversely, nobody in  Zimbabwe  ever says, “Say what you will about the crushing poverty, our debt burden is fantastic.”

But lugging a national debt of more than 130 percent of the largest economy in the world is not a light lift. And it adds extra context to Biden’s jousting with Vladimir Putin over Ukraine. Given Putin’s domestic political considerations, even if the standoff ends in anticlimax, he has probably already gotten the boost he’s been looking for. Putin’s even got a U.S. senator calling for Biden to meet the Russian strongman’s chief demand. If the U.S. and NATO knuckled under the way Missouri’s Josh Hawley suggests, it would certainly raise further doubts about America’s position in the world and make that huge pile of debt look even more unaffordable.

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  1. Avatar photo
    Ben Connelly

    “ Malls often fit the bill.”

    Capitalism to the rescue again! Creative destruction in an endless cycle of renewal! The economic circle of life! America is good!

    Boy based on those cutlines, my fellow Dispatch subscribers are a funny bunch.

    A truly excellent answer to Mr. Brady. Sir, if you’re reading this, good luck in your familial dilemma. If you can reconcile to them, it will be worth it.

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    David M

    Thanks Chris, great newsletter.

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    Paul Gross

    Reading the Morning Dispatch I realized that you are writing a regular column which I was not getting. I received your email and read it faithfully when you were at Fox. I often wondered how long you would last given your propensity to speak plainly. Glad to see I can get your insights once again.

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  4. Payette

    Chris, I delighted in your answers to Mr. Brady and Mr. Leiste! We need to hear more of this in our crazy times.

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  5. Bob Lamond Jr

    Chris, you are on my very short list of “People I’d like to have lunch with at Chick-fil-A!”

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    Jason Gibson

    I second the kids version of the dispatch. I’ve thought about proposing that myself!

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    Russell Board

    This is what I want to remember: "If you only love them, it will be enough."

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  8. Mary Stine

    I love Chris' answer to Mr. Brady: Just love them. As a practical matter, no one is going to really take your advice if they are not convinced you love them and have their best interests at heart. Heck, they may not even if they do! Saint Timothy understood that only God can truly see into a human soul, so our duty is not that. Our duty is love, whether we are religious or not.
    I've found if I look first for common ground, with compassion and respect, I'll be able to have a real conversation, and enjoy the company. I've learned to let insults slide. Sometimes people are just frustrated and want to vent, and some people didn't mean to be insulting. I've learned over the years that I can only live my life and respect others' paths and journey.

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    1. Sue Robinson

      Yes!

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    Dennis

    This was a great read from start to finish. Thanks, Chris.

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    rlritt

    I'm so tired of hearing about "omg, Biden is doing a terrible job controlling inflation and the national debt is high." ( The president should not have to control inflation in free market economy) And what's "misery index" Meanwhile at the end of the article, he grudgingly admits that unemployment continues to go down which means the economy is humming and Covid infections are going down. Maybe they would have been less if he managed to put vaccines mandates in place. A huge percentage of cases are unvaccinated idiots.

    On a personal note I'm not miserable. Both my kids got better, higher paying jobs than they lost when the pandemic hit. All the people I know are doing well. No one seems miserable.

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      WilliamJ

      rlritt, I think as a political guy, Chris is responding to polls that indicate Americans are very worried about inflation indeed - he didn't just pick that out like he's in a think tank. And even progressive economist Larry Summers warned that the last Covid relief bill was too much - overshooting the financial gap in the economy, thus leading to inflation. Signaling through regulatory and financing mechanisms that Biden wants less gas and oil drilling can only help increase those prices as well - fairly viewed, I think Americans are right to blame Biden for inflation to some extent.

      The misery index - inflation plus unemployment (famous at the end of the Carter years).

      I agree - it is a weird economy, the job market is strong. Biden is suffering from both his own mistakes and from bad luck to some extent.

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        rlritt

        Everyone would love higher wages and lower prices, but I don't believe one thing like the relief bill is going to destroy the economy. It would be great if we could have higher wages, full employment and lower prices but that doesn't work because it's all connected. Add to that a sluggish supply chain and you get higher prices. You can't blame inflation one thing. Gas prices have always been very volatile because it's an essential commodity. Eventually the economy gets to equilibrium.

        The less government interferes with the economy the better. Trying to manipulate it, especially by politicians, makes it worse. If Biden froze prices, you'd see massive lay offs, and then he'd get blamed for that.

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      Peter S.

      If only we'd known a year ago that so many would turn into antivaxxers. We knew there would be pushback but I think everyone underestimated it by a lot.

      The time for mandates or harsh incentives — OSHA, private businesses, self-insurers like Delta Airlines, ACA-approved insurance plans, whatever — was then. Even if OSHA's mandate had been upheld, it arguably came far too late to have the impact we needed.

      I still think an amendment to the ACA to permit insurance providers to put the willfully unvaccinated into a separate risk category, like smokers, would have been the best way forward. I mean, the group who would be most affected is also the group who most hates the ACA anyway. They couldn't very well argue against loosening it.

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        rlritt

        I agree. The insurance companies are probably kicking themselves because I'm sure they paid a fortune in hospital bills.

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          Peter S.

          Unfortunately, not much the insurers can do, given the ACA rules. Congress would have to amend it. Self-insurers like Delta Airlines can get away with this already — I'm not sure how exactly, but I would guess they structured it so that the "premiums" don't actually change but the "employee contributions" do. But I really have no idea.

          The other problem of course is that antivaxxers would sue to get the ACA amendment invalidated under the First Amendment free exercise clause. Because their opposition to vaccines is a sincerely held religious belief. God was OK with DTAP and MMR all these years, you know, but Pfizer made him mad.

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