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We finish up our conversation about reparations and then move on to economic topics.

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In this second session we focus on immigration and the concept of community, and delve into many other topics.

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Here is Collini's book review, discussed in my Substack post.

Warning: it is long and dense.

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For OLLI students without direct access to the article discussed, there is a pdf file in this padlet section.

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This session introduces my idea of using a spectrum to describe issues, rather than a binary "for" or "against"...

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Our third session was a discussion of race and racism, preceded by a series of my personal stories (that I hope were relevant to those topics...).

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Our Founders believed that "the pursuit of happiness" involved living the self-examined life, not in acquiring wealth (though all of them were wealthy men). Christian teachings also reflected that theme, which led many religious orders to require vows of poverty.

I will be offering an OLLI course in the summer to discuss the book pictured.

"For the love of money is the root of all evil; and while some have coveted after it, they have erred from the faith and pierced themselves through with many sorrows." (King James Version)

1 Timothy 6:10

"I tell you the truth, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God." When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished and asked, 'Who then can be saved?' Jesus looked at them and said, 'With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.'[Matthew 19:23–26 Parallel versions appear in Mark 10:24–27, and Luke 18:24–27]

This was a response to a young rich man who had asked Jesus what he needed to do to inherit eternal life. Jesus replied that he should keep the commandments, which the man replied that he had done so. Jesus responded, "If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me." The young man became sad and was unwilling to do that. Jesus then spoke that response, leaving his disciples astonished.

[from Wilipedia]

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Instant gratification leads to a rise in individualism at the expense of community. TV and video games consume time formerly spend interacting with other people.

Trump's victory attests to the breakdown of close community ties, leading to the rise of tribalism and identity politics. "Drill, baby, drill!"

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Not for discussion in Week One but of relevance to our overall subject matter

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Not for discussion in Week One but of relevance to our overall subject matter

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This book was recommended by a member of the class. Kimmerer's earlier book "Braiding Sweetgrass" was one of a series of OLLI bookgroups a couple of years ago. I've not yet read this book, but I imagine that the themes are similar.

Sustainability and reciprocity. Respect and gratitude rather than exploitation. Contrasting all of that with our capitalistic consumption-driven economy.

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Also, the intro to Lisa's OLLI talk:

https://berkshireolli.org/event-4884303

the link there to the maps is still operative

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In my course description I mention a possible topic of "governance: from globalism to anarchy" -- I think a good way to approach this would be to discuss immigration.

I have written two posts on this topic of "Borders Without Walls"

(1) https://michaelforbeswilcox.substack.com/p/borders-without-walls

(2) https://michaelforbeswilcox.substack.com/p/more-thoughts-on-immigration

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I'll have more info and suggested (optional) readings posted here in the days leading up to the first class.

In addition, you might want to review the description of this course:

https://berkshireolli.org/F101ReframingtheQuestionsW25

See the readings posted in this section as pdfs or links.

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Berkshire OLLI - F101 Reframing the Questions W25

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In this seminar-style course, we will discuss issues of the day, with a focus on imbalances and possible cures, including opportunities for personal involvement.

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Mohican History Walking Tour of Stockbridge (Stop Two)

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An optional reading on local Native Culture

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An optional reading on local Native Culture

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Mohican History Walking Tour of Stockbridge (Stop One)

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This book helped inspire me to offer this course. The author discusses the many (often conflicting) ideas that come with the label "freedom" -- at one extreme including the freedom to enslave people.

... this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom— ... government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

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I also still consider myself a bit of a Marxist, for two reasons, which on their surface, might sound contradictory. One, I believe that society is fundamentally organized around how we produce for ourselves and reproduce ourselves. I believe there is a contradiction inherent in the way we create wealth through cooperative and social means and the fact that only a select few individuals appropriate it. I believe that there is something fundamentally irrational in the present disposition of society, something that doesn’t really work and is constantly being jury-rigged, and that is why we see these periodic social and economic crises. I also share Marx’s qualified admiration for what capitalism has accomplished in terms of the discovery and development of our productive capacities. ... I believe that in the very long run we will either find a way to socialism or else humanity will destroy itself.

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The Chinese Exclusion Act is widely considered to be the first significant crackdown on immigration in American history.

Perhaps we have forgotten the lessons that could have been taken from that experience.

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The price America paid for its first big immigration crackdown

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The Chinese Exclusion Act was the first significant crackdown on immigration in American history. We explore the factors that led to the Act and examine what happened to the economy after it passed.

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Human Smuggling versus Human Trafficking

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Human Smuggling versus Human Trafficking

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I mention this article in one of my posts linked in this section.

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Harking back to last week's discussion of how confusing (and therefore less than useful) labels have become, this editorial in the Sierra Club magazine spells it out. (emphasis added)

Resistance takes many forms. It seems likely that opposition to Trump 2.0 will look much different than [sic] it did in Trump’s first term. This time, the resistance may be characterized by long-term, hyperlocal, cross-class organizing that ditches the old markers of left and right. I have always believed that a passion for wild nature transcends political labels. Americans’ desire to preserve this country’s natural heritage isn’t transpartisan so much as it’s prepartisan: An affinity for nature comes before ideological identity. Now more than ever, those of us who care about protecting wildlands and climate stability must find common cause with people who don’t call themselves environmentalists but still share that passion—even when we disagree on much else.

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It will require grit to thwart the Trump administration’s oil-soaked agenda

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We will review the concept of "Community"

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We will review the concept of "Community"

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An opinion and a bit of local history from Carole Owens.

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DATELINE STOCKBRIDGE: Community is the most important thing - The Berkshire Edge

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So how do we get community back? If we can, how do we maintain it? What is the definition of community and what are elements?

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This book (Caste) is foundational to my thinking on the issue of race and racism.

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Caste by Isabel Wilkerson: 9780593230275 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books

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#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB PICK • “An instant American classic and almost certainly the keynote nonfiction book of the American century thus far.”—Dwight…

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More comments of mine, written three years ago

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More comments of mine, written three years ago

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As you can see from the footer, I prepared these comments to aid in discussion around Native culture.

One of the links given takes you to my thoughts on a related topic: https://www.mfw.us/blog/2021/10/09/the-origins-of-critical-race-theory/

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This author and idea are cited in the book Caste

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This author and idea are cited in the book Caste

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A reminder that racism and reparations are an issue around the world, not just in our country.

Simon Winchester's book "Land" was mentioned in our first class. In it, he devotes a large section on New Zealand and how land stolen from the indigenous Maori is being returned.

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Harking back to our previous discussions, this book review (inadvertently) traces the evolution of the work ethic from being community-oriented to its present state of individualism.

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Another essay that helps to define the complexity or the problem.

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Link to a classic article on Reparations

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Link to a classic article on Reparations

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The author does not advocate for any specific program of reparations, but calls for a dialog around the issue. That was ten years ago. It seems to me that some progress has been made, mostly in awareness of the issue and in token steps intended to ameliorate the injustices. All of that has hardly changed the situation on the ground, however.

The Case for Reparations

Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal. Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole.

By Ta-Nehisi Coates

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-case-for-reparations/361631/?gift=0-qYca5Vu1wwcuj6dsHF9ExzavSqhKgRo78Qv7lQ9yk&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share

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Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal. Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole.

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A possible topic for discussion.

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This is the story I mentioned in class on Week Three. It is a very moving and disturbing story of abuse and survival.

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Named a "Best Novel of the Decade" by Literary Hub Saul Indian Horse is a child when his family retreats into the woods. Among the lakes and the cedars, they attempt to reconnect with half-forgotten traditions and hide from the authorities who have been kidnapping Ojibway youth.

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In this somewhat sardonic post, Krugman addresses one of our issues

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In this somewhat sardonic post, Krugman addresses one of our issues

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Krugman bemoans "the rage some Americans obviously feel at any suggestion that people should change their behavior for the common good" -- which says something about his view of where those people are on the community to individual spectrum.

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Why he wants to kill a hugely successful policy

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From The New York Review of Books

Fanon the Universalist

Adam Shatz argues in his new biography of Frantz Fanon that the supposed patron saint of political violence was instead a visionary of a radical universalism that rejected racial essentialism and colonialism.

https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2024/06/06/fanon-the-universalist-the-rebels-clinic-shatz/?utm_source=nybooks&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=email-share

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Fanon the Universalist _ Susan Neiman _ The New York Review of Books

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A book that is out of print (I saw one copy advertised for over $100), but available at https://archive.org/details/bwb_P8-AUQ-680

All three essays in the book are fascinating to me, partly because all three men pictured are relatives of mine; partly because two of them were joined by another man from Stockbridge to form a trio on the Supreme Court.

But mostly because it provides a behind-the-scenes view of 19th-century history, including the nomination of Abraham Lincoln to be President and the codification of laws as we now know them.

Clearly, this all deserves a larger write-up, which I will attempt to do if I live long enough.

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Eschew Obfuscation: The New Obscurantism

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Eschew Obfuscation: The New Obscurantism

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A timely dispatch on the irrelevance of traditional political labels (one of the themes of this course).

We will also discuss schismogenesis.

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Lakoff taught that there are two types of voters (presumably on a spectrum):

1) people who are influenced by facts and science

2} people who put their trust in authorities they admire

Folks at opposite ends of this spectrum end up talking past each other. Those who are fact-based feel that if they present enough "evidence" they will convince the others of their way of thinking.

Lakoff says this is a mistaken way of thinking, and that instead, it is necessary to understand and discuss underlying values.

Those who look to a trusted authority (he likens it to a family in which the Father is the ultimate arbiter) are more comfortable being told what the think or do by someone in whom they have faith.

In the current environment, most people are dissatisfied with the state of things.

The factoid types read through a piece such as the one by David Frum and wonder how there can be so many stupid people in the world. After all, shit happens, and we do the best we can.

The faith-based folks are offered conspiracy theories and scapegoats. This gives them great comfort because it identifies the people who have deliberately messed things up, and it offers simple solutions.

Unfortunately, simplistic solutions do not work well in a complex world. Firing a bunch of federal employees, for example, has a miniscule effect of the federal budget but threatens to destroy the functioning of many government services.

Ironically, it has been pointed out, the so-called Red States have the most to lose. Paul Krugman, in one of his recent posts, repeats the old joke that economists use: "The only thing difficult to predict is the future." And like a good economist, he does not put a prediction and a date in the same sentence, but he does seem to believe it's only a matter of time before things fall apart.

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I'll explain why this has something/everything to do with income/wealth disparities.

If you are not confused, this should help: https://tinyurl.com/OLLIW25AW

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I also still consider myself a bit of a Marxist, for two reasons, which on their surface, might sound contradictory. One, I believe that society is fundamentally organized around how we produce for ourselves and reproduce ourselves. I believe there is a contradiction inherent in the way we create wealth through cooperative and social means and the fact that only a select few individuals appropriate it. I believe that there is something fundamentally irrational in the present disposition of society, something that doesn’t really work and is constantly being jury-rigged, and that is why we see these periodic social and economic crises. I also share Marx’s qualified admiration for what capitalism has accomplished in terms of the discovery and development of our productive capacities. ... I believe that in the very long run we will either find a way to socialism or else humanity will destroy itself.

https://johnganz.substack.com/p/mailbag-no-3

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This article addresses our exploration of the community/individual spectrum:

"Alfani’s observation that the rich as a group have no clear social function is borne out by the fact that, in the Musk era, they have reacted to populist pressures largely by justifying their fortunes as individuals."

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Class Consciousness for Billionaires _ The New Yorker

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Another long article from the author who explained The Great Transformation.

It is a rather downbeat assessment of the situation in Britain, but many of his observations apply to any capitalistic society.

This reading, like all others, is optional. You may find it of interest if you need more reasons to dislike capitalism. He offers a wishlist of possible ways to ameliorate capitalism's evils, but he doesn't seem to hold out much hope that they will be implemented.

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Stefan Collini · Where to Draw the Line_ Why do we pay tax_

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An Additional Look: Doing Good with Wealth

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An Additional Look: Doing Good with Wealth

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An uplifting and unusual approach. Still, completely undemocratic (taking the power of the purse away from the people).

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3-year study finds MacKenzie Scott’s $19 billion in charitable giving has been ‘transformational’ for nonprofits

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A new report analyzes data from over 1,000 organizations that have received grants from the billionaire philanthropist.

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Evaluating government revenues and expenditures

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Evaluating government revenues and expenditures

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A good tax system should meet five basic conditions: fairness, adequacy, simplicity, transparency, and administrative ease.

Although opinions about what makes a good tax system will vary, there is general consensus that these five basic conditions should be maximized to the greatest extent possible.

1. Fairness, or equity, means that everybody should pay a fair share of taxes. There are two important concepts of equity: horizontal equity and vertical equity.

Horizontal equity means that taxpayers in similar financial condition should pay similar amounts in taxes.

Vertical equity is just as important, however. Vertical equity means that taxpayers who are better off should pay at least the same proportion of income in taxes as those who are less well off. Vertical equity involves classifying taxes as regressive, proportional, or progressive.

Regressive tax: A tax is regressive if those with low incomes pay a larger share of income in taxes than those with higher incomes. Almost any tax on necessities, such as food purchased at a grocery store, is regressive because lower income people must spend a larger share of their income on these necessities. Oklahoma’s sales tax is one example.

Proportional tax: A tax is proportional if all taxpayers pay the same share of income in taxes. No taxes are truly proportional. Property taxes often come closest since there is typically a close relationship between a household’s income and the value of the property in which they live. Corporate income taxes often approach proportional because one rate applies to most corporate income.

Progressive tax: A progressive tax requires higher-income individuals to pay a higher share of their income in taxes. The philosophy behind progressive taxes is that higher income people can afford and should be expected to provide a bigger share of public services than those who are less able to pay. The federal income tax is the best example of a progressive tax; the Internal Revenue Service reports that the top one percent of taxpayers by income paid 37 percent of federal income taxes in 2016.

While no system of taxes is perfect, it is important to seek horizontal equity because taxpayers must believe they are treated equally. It is just as important to seek vertical equity so government does not become a burden to low-income residents.

2. Adequacy means that taxes must provide enough revenue to meet the basic needs of society. A tax system meets the test of adequacy if it provides enough revenue to meet the demand for public services, if revenue growth each year is enough to fund the growth in cost of services, and if there is enough economic activity of the type being taxed so rates can be kept relatively low.

3. Simplicity means that taxpayers can avoid a maze of taxes, forms and filing requirements.  A simpler tax system helps taxpayers better understand the system and reduces the costs of compliance.

4. Transparency means that taxpayers and leaders can easily find information about the tax system and how tax money is used.  With a transparent tax system, we know who is being taxed, how much they are paying, and what is being done with the money. We also can find out who (in broad terms) pays the tax and who benefits from tax exemptions, deductions, and credits.

5. Administrative ease means that the tax system is not too complicated or costly for either taxpayers or tax collectors. Rules are well known and fairly simple; forms are not too complicated; the state can tell if taxes are paid on time and correctly, and the state can conduct audits in a fair and efficient manner. The cost of collecting a tax should be very small in relation to the amount collected.

--------------------

This rendition* is a good representation of what I have learned over the years in both my studies of economics and in my days as a political activist.

A complementary concept is that government should not be viewed as a vending machine. Fees instead of taxes for public goods are inherently unfair.

taken from https://okpolicy.org/resources/online-budget-guide/revenues/an-overview-of-our-tax-system/characteristics-of-an-effective-tax-system/

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Oklahoma Policy Institute - Better Information, Better Policy

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‹‹ Go back to An Overview of our Tax System | Go on to Oklahoma's Tax Mix ››
A good tax system should meet five basic conditions: fairness, adequacy, simplicity, transparency, and administrative ease.
Although opinions about what makes a good tax system will vary, there is general consensus that these five basic conditions should be maximized to the greatest extent possible.

, or equity, means that everybody should pay a fair share of taxes. There are two important concepts of equity: horizontal equity and vertical equity .

Horizontal equity means that taxpayers in similar financial condition should pay similar amounts in taxes.

Vertical equity is just as important, however. Vertical equity means that taxpayers who are better off should pay at least the same proportion of income in taxes as those who are less well off. Vertical equity involves classifying taxes as regressive , proportional , or progressive.

Regressive tax : A tax is regressive if those with low incomes pay a larger share of income in taxes than those with higher incomes. Almost any tax on necessities, such as food purchased at a grocery store, is regressive because lower income people must spend a larger share of their income on these necessities. Oklahoma's sales tax is one example.

Proportional tax : A tax is proportional if all taxpayers pay the same share of income in taxes. No taxes are truly proportional. Property taxes often come closest since there is typically a close relationship between a household's income and the value of the property in which they live. Corporate income taxes often approach proportional because one rate applies to most corporate income.

Progressive tax : A progressive tax requires higher-income individuals to pay a higher share of their income in taxes. The philosophy behind progressive taxes is that higher income people can afford and should be expected to provide a bigger share of public services than those who are less able to pay. The federal income tax is the best example of a progressive tax; the Internal Revenue Service reports that the top one percent of taxpayers by income paid 37 percent of federal income taxes in 2016.

While no system of taxes is perfect, it is important to seek horizontal equity because taxpayers must believe they are treated equally. It is just as important to seek vertical equity so government does not become a burden to low-income residents.

means that taxes must provide enough revenue to meet the basic needs of society. A tax system meets the test of adequacy if it provides enough revenue to meet the demand for public services, if revenue growth each year is enough to fund the growth in cost of services, and if there is enough economic activity of the type being taxed so rates can be kept relatively low.

means that taxpayers can avoid a maze of taxes, forms and filing requirements. A simpler tax system helps taxpayers better understand the system and reduces the costs of compliance.

means that taxpayers and leaders can easily find information about the tax system and how tax money is used. With a transparent tax system, we know who is being taxed, how much they are paying, and what is being done with the money. We also can find out who (in broad terms) pays the tax and who benefits from tax exemptions, deductions, and credits.

means that the tax system is not too complicated or costly for either taxpayers or tax collectors. Rules are well known and fairly simple; forms are not too complicated; the state can tell if taxes are paid on time and correctly, and the state can conduct audits in a fair and efficient manner. The cost of collecting a tax should be very small in relation to the amount collected.

‹‹ Go back to An Overview of our Tax System | Go on to Oklahoma's Tax Mix ››

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Characteristics of an Effective Tax System - Oklahoma Policy Institute

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‹‹ Go back to An Overview of our Tax System | Go on to Oklahoma's Tax Mix ›› A good tax system should meet five basic conditions: fairness, adequacy, simplicity, transparency, and administrative ease.

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I share this short article for a couple of reasons:

1) it offers a glimmer of hope in these dark times

2) it reminds me of George Lakoff's warning in my title above

I'll post comments on the second separately.

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Lessons from the pandemic and its aftermath

Listen to more stories on

Updated at 11:26 a.m. ET on February 12, 2025
Five years ago, the coronavirus pandemic struck a bitterly divided society.

Americans first diverged over how dangerous the disease was: just a flu (as President Donald Trump repeatedly insisted) or something much deadlier.

Then they disputed public-health measures such as lockdowns and masking; a majority complied while a passionate minority fiercely resisted.

View More

Finally, they split-and have remained split-over the value and safety of COVID‑19 vaccines. Anti-vaccine beliefs started on the fringe, but they spread to the point where Ron DeSantis, the governor of the country's third-most-populous state, launched a campaign for president on an appeal to anti-vaccine ideology.

Five years later, one side has seemingly triumphed. The winner is not the side that initially prevailed, the side of public safety. The winner is the side that minimized the disease, then rejected public-health measures to prevent its spread, and finally refused the vaccines designed to protect against its worst effects.
David A. Graham: The noisy minority
Ahead of COVID's fifth anniversary, Trump, as president-elect, nominated the country's most outspoken vaccination opponent to head the Department of Health and Human Services. He chose a proponent of the debunked and discredited vaccines-cause-autism claim to lead the CDC. He named a strident critic of COVID‑vaccine mandates to lead the FDA. For surgeon general, he picked a believer in hydroxychloroquine, the disproven COVID‑19 remedy. His pick for director of the National Institutes of Health had advocated for letting COVID spread unchecked to encourage herd immunity. Despite having fast-tracked the development of the vaccines as president, Trump has himself trafficked in many forms of COVID‑19 denial, and has expressed his own suspicions that childhood vaccination against measles and mumps is a cause of autism.

The ascendancy of the anti-vaxxers may ultimately prove fleeting. But if the forces of science and health are to stage a comeback, it's important to understand why those forces have gone into eclipse.

From March 2020 toFebruary 2022, about 1 million Americans died of COVID-19. Many of those deaths occurred after vaccines became available. If every adult in the United States had received two doses of a COVID vaccine by early 2022, rather than just the 64 percent of adults who had, nearly 320,000 lives would have been saved.
From the January/February 2021 issue: Ed Yong on how science beat the virus
Why did so many Americans resist vaccines? Perhaps the biggest reason was that the pandemic coincided with a presidential-election year, and Trump instantly recognized the crisis as a threat to his chances for reelection. He responded by denying the seriousness of the pandemic, promising that the disease would rapidly disappear on its own, and promoting quack cures.

The COVID‑19 vaccines were developed while Trump was president. They could have been advertised as a Trump achievement. But by the time they became widely available, Trump was out of office. His supporters had already made up their minds to distrust the public-health authorities that promoted the vaccines. Now they had an additional incentive: Any benefit from vaccination would redound to Trump's successor, Joe Biden. Vaccine rejection became a badge of group loyalty, one that ultimately cost many lives.
We want to believe that somebody is in control, even if it's somebody we don't like. At least that way, we can blame bad events on bad people.
A summer 2023 study by Yale researchers of voters in Florida and Ohio found that during the early phase of the pandemic, self-identified Republicans died at only a slightly higher rate than self-identified Democrats in the same age range. But once vaccines were introduced, Republicans became much more likely to die than Democrats. In the spring of 2021, the excess-death rate among Florida and Ohio Republicans was 43 percent higher than among Florida and Ohio Democrats in the same age range. By the late winter of 2023, the 300-odd most pro-Trump counties in the country had a COVID‑19 death rate more than two and a half times higher than the 300 or so most anti-Trump counties.

In 2016, Trump had boasted that he could shoot a man on Fifth Avenue and not lose any votes. In 2021 and 2022, his most fervent supporters risked death to prove their loyalty to Trump and his cause.

Why did political fidelity express itself in such self-harming ways?

The onset of the pandemic was an unusually confusing and disorienting event. Some people who got COVID died. Others lived. Some suffered only mild symptoms. Others spent weeks on ventilators, or emerged with long COVID and never fully recovered. Some lost businesses built over a lifetime. Others refinanced their homes with 2 percent interest rates and banked the savings.

We live in an impersonal universe, indifferent to our hopes and wishes, subject to extreme randomness. We don't like this at all. We crave satisfying explanations. We want to believe that somebody is in control, even if it's somebody we don't like. At least that way, we can blame bad events on bad people. This is the eternal appeal of conspiracy theories. How did this happen? Somebody must have done it-but who? And why?

Compounding the disorientation, the coronavirus outbreak was a rapidly changing story. The scientists who researched COVID‑19 knew more in April 2020 than they did in February; more in August than in April; more in 2021 than in 2020; more in 2022 than in 2021. The official advice kept changing: Stay inside-no, go outside. Wash your hands-no, mask your face. Some Americans appreciated and accepted that knowledge improves over time, that more will be known about a new disease in month two than in month one. But not all Americans saw the world that way. They mistrusted the idea of knowledge as a developing process. Such Americans wondered: Were they lying before? Or are they lying now?

In a different era, Americans might have deferred more to medical authority. The internet has upended old ideas of what should count as authority and who possesses it.

The pandemic reduced normal human interactions. Severed from one another, Americans deepened their parasocial attachment to social-media platforms, which foment alienation and rage. Hundreds of thousands of people plunged into an alternate mental universe during COVID‑19 lockdowns. When their doors reopened, the mania did not recede. Conspiracies and mistrust of the establishment-never strangers to the American mind-had been nourished, and they grew.

The experts themselvescontributed to this loss of trust.

It's now agreed that we had little to fear from going outside in dispersed groups. But that was not the state of knowledge in the spring of 2020. At the time, medical experts insisted that any kind of mass outdoor event must be sacrificed to the imperatives of the emergency. In mid-March 2020, federal public-health authorities shut down some of Florida's beaches. In California, surfers faced heavy fines for venturing into the ocean. Even the COVID‑skeptical Trump White House reluctantly canceled the April 2020 Easter-egg roll.

And then the experts abruptly reversed themselves. When George Floyd was choked to death by a Minneapolis police officer on May 25, 2020, hundreds of thousands of Americans left their homes to protest, defying three months of urgings to avoid large gatherings of all kinds, outdoor as well as indoor.

On May 29, the American Public Health Association issued a statement that proclaimed racism a public-health crisis while conspicuously refusing to condemn the sudden defiance of public-safety rules.

The next few weeks saw the largest mass protests in recent U.S. history. Approximately 15 million to 26 million people attended outdoor Black Lives Matter events in June 2020, according to a series of reputable polls. Few, if any, scientists or doctors scolded the attendees-and many politicians joined the protests, including future Vice President Kamala Harris. It all raised a suspicion: Maybe the authorities were making the rules based on politics, not science.

The politicization of health advice became even more consequential as the summer of 2020 ended. Most American public schools had closed in March. "At their peak," Education Week reported, "the closures affected at least 55.1 million students in 124,000 U.S. public and private schools." By September, it was already apparent that COVID‑19 posed relatively little risk to children and teenagers, and that remote learning did not work. At the same time, returning to the classroom before vaccines were available could pose some risk to teachers' health-and possibly also to the health of the adults to whom the children returned after school.
David Frum: I moved to Canada during the pandemic
How to balance these concerns given the imperfect information? Liberal states decided in favor of the teachers. In California, the majority of students did not return to in-person learning until the fall of 2021. New Jersey kept many of its public schools closed until then as well. Similar things happened in many other states: Illinois, Maryland, New York, and so on, through the states that voted Democratic in November 2020.

Florida, by contrast, reopened most schools in the fall of 2020. Texas soon followed, as did most other Republican-governed states. The COVID risk for students, it turned out, was minimal: According to a 2021 CDC study, less than 1 percent of Florida students contracted COVID-19 in school settings from August to December 2020 after their state restarted in-person learning. Over the 2020-21 school year, students in states that voted for Trump in the 2020 election got an average of almost twice as much in-person instruction as students in states that voted for Biden.

Any risks to teachers and school staff could have been mitigated by the universal vaccination of those groups. But deep into the fall of 2021, thousands of blue-state teachers and staff resisted vaccine mandates-including more than 5,000 in Chicago alone. By then, another school year had been interrupted by closures.

By disparaging public-healthmethods and discrediting vaccines, the COVID‑19 minimizers cost hundreds of thousands of people their lives. By keeping schools closed longer than absolutely necessary, the COVID maximizers hazarded the futures of young Americans.

Students from poor and troubled families, in particular, will continue to pay the cost of these learning losses for years to come. Even in liberal states, many private schools reopened for in-person instruction in the fall of 2020. The affluent and the connected could buy their children a continuing education unavailable to those who depended on public schools. Many lower-income students did not return to the classroom: Throughout the 2022-23 school year, poorer school districts reported much higher absenteeism rates than were seen before the pandemic.

Teens absent from school typically get into trouble in ways that are even more damaging than the loss of math or reading skills. New York City arrested 25 percent more minors for serious crimes in 2024 than in 2018. The national trend was similar, if less stark. The FBI reports that although crime in general declined in 2023 compared with 2022, crimes by minors rose by nearly 10 percent.

People who finish schooling during a recession tend to do worse even into middle age than those who finish in times of prosperity. They are less likely to marry, less likely to have children, and more likely to die early. The disparity between those who finish in lucky years and those who finish in unlucky years is greatest for people with the least formal education.

Will the harms of COVID prove equally enduring? We won't know for some time. But if past experience holds, the COVID‑19 years will mark their most vulnerable victims for decades.

The story of COVID can be told as one of shocks and disturbances that wrecked two presidencies. In 2020 and 2024, incumbent administrations lost elections back-to-back, something that hadn't happened since the deep economic depression of the late 1880s and early 1890s. The pandemic caused a recession as steep as any in U.S. history. The aftermath saw the worst inflation in half a century.
In truth, the story of COVID is a story of strength and resilience.
In the three years from January 2020 through December 2022, Trump and Biden both signed a series of major bills to revive and rebuild the U.S. economy. Altogether, they swelled the gross public debt from about $20 trillion in January 2017 to more than $36 trillion today. The weight of that debt helped drive interest rates and mortgage rates higher. The burden of the pandemic debt, like learning losses, is likely to be with us for quite a long time.

Yet even while acknowledging all that went wrong, respecting all the lives lost or ruined, reckoning with all the lasting harms of the crisis, we do a dangerous injustice if we remember the story of COVID solely as a story of American failure. In truth, the story is one of strength and resilience.

Scientists did deliver vaccines to prevent the disease and treatments to recover from it. Economic policy did avert a global depression and did rapidly restore economic growth. Government assistance kept households afloat when the world shut down-and new remote-work practices enabled new patterns of freedom and happiness after the pandemic ended.

The virus was first detected in December 2019. Its genome was sequenced within days by scientists collaborating across international borders. Clinical trials for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine began in April 2020, and the vaccine was authorized for emergency use by the FDA in December. Additional vaccines rapidly followed, and were universally available by the spring of 2021. The weekly death toll fell by more than 90 percent from January 2021 to midsummer of that year.

The U.S. economy roared back with a strength and power that stunned the world. The initial spike of inflation has subsided. Wages are again rising faster than prices. Growth in the United States in 2023 and 2024 was faster and broader than in any peer economy.

Even more startling, the U.S. recovery outpaced China's. That nation's bounceback from COVID‑19 has been slow and faltering. America's economic lead over China, once thought to be narrowing, has suddenly widened; the gap between the two countries' GDPs grew from $5 trillion in 2021 to nearly $10 trillion in 2023. The U.S. share of world economic output is now slightly higher than it was in 1980, before China began any of its economic reforms. As he did in 2016, Trump inherits a strong and healthy economy, to which his own reckless policies-notably, his trade protectionism-are the only visible threat.

In public affairs, our bias is usually to pay most attention to disappointments and mistakes. In the pandemic, there were many errors: the partisan dogma of the COVID minimizers; the capitulation of states and municipalities to favored interest groups; the hypochondria and neuroticism of some COVID maximizers. Errors need to be studied and the lessons heeded if we are to do better next time. But if we fail to acknowledge America's successes-even partial and imperfect successes-we not only do an injustice to the American people. We also defeat in advance their confidence to collectively meet the crises of tomorrow.

Perhaps it's time for some national self-forgiveness here. Perhaps it's time to accept that despite all that went wrong, despite how much there was to learn about the disease and how little time there was to learn it, and despite polarized politics and an unruly national character- despite all of that -Americans collectively met the COVID‑19 emergency about as well as could reasonably have been hoped.

The wrong people have profited from the immediate aftermath. But if we remember the pandemic accurately, the future will belong to those who rose to the crisis when their country needed them.
This article originally misstated the U.S.'s gross public debt in 2017 and early 2025. It appears in the March 2025 print edition with the headline "Why the COVID Deniers Won."

David Frum is a staff writer at The Atlantic.

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Lessons from the pandemic and its aftermath

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In the US it appears that "safety" in vehicles applies solely to the vehicles occupants, whereas in Europe the safety of pedestrians and other people outside the vehicle are also important.

This makes for an interesting comparison of where the different regulations fall on the Community to Individual Spectrum.

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Tesla Cybertruck Banned And Seized By Police In The U.K_

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Government of the rich, by the rich, for the rich

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Government of the rich, by the rich, for the rich

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Why do rich individuals get to override the democratic process?

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Bill Gates Says He Donated $100 Billion Of His Wealth To Charitable Causes, But He ‘Didn’t Order Less Hamburgers Or Less Movies’

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Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates on Monday disclosed that he has donated $100 billion to charitable causes. What Happened: Despite Gates’ extensive philanthropic efforts, he remains the world’s seventh-richest person, with an estimated net worth of $164 billion, according to Bloomberg Billionaires. In an interview with the BBC, he said philanthropy is now his primary focus and that giving away such a large sum has not impacted his personal lifestyle. “I still have more to give,” he said, adding t

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An upbeat piece by Anne Applebaum

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The Russian president can’t win his war against Ukraine unless he persuades its allies to betray it.

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Addressing the current state of affairs on one (or more) of the issues we discussed earlier in the course.

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The text for this course will be the book "The Pursuit of Happiness" by Jeffrey Rosen, who was interviewed for OLLI by Doug Mishkin. The book is an exploration of the philosophical beliefs of the Founders, and is a fascinating and thorough historical account. As we approach the 250th anniversary of the Declaration, we will discuss what has gone awry, and how we, as individuals, can respond.

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and America's decline. "Make American Irrelevant Again" -- Matthew 20:16 = "So the last shall be first, and the first last..."

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... if Merz’s remarks are an indication of where Europe is heading, Trump may have missed his window for betraying Ukraine and delivering it to the Russians.

t’s terrible watching the United States degenerate into Putin-loving thuggery. But there may be some compensation: our degradation encourages the remaining good guys to step up to the plate.

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A potential superpower realizes that it can’t rely on America

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As I mentioned in an earlier class, Japan has long been opposed to immigration. This could be that fate of the United States if immigration were to be halted here.

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(Bloomberg) -- The number of births in Japan fell to another record low, underscoring the growing challenge of how to shoulder ballooning social security costs for an aging society with what's already become an ever shrinking pool of tax-paying workers.

Most Read from Bloomberg

The number of newborns in 2024 fell 5% from the previous year to 720,988, extending a nine-year streak of declines, according to preliminary population data released Thursday by Japan's health ministry. The reading marked the lowest tally since such records began in 1899.

Deaths rose 1.8% to a record-high 1.62 million for the same period, resulting in the biggest ever annual decline in total population, the report showed.

The sustained decline in the nation's births adds to the urgency for a government already bearing the heaviest debt load among developed nations. Japan's public debt will be 232.7% of gross domestic product this year, according to a report from the International Monetary Fund.

It's also part of a widening global trend. South Korea's fertility rate edged higher last year for the first time in nine years, but at 0.75 remains well below the rate needed to maintain the population. The drop in births in France accelerated in 2023 to the fastest pace in half a century, while China's population has declined for three straight years.

Fewer workers means less tax revenue for government coffers while also pressuring businesses coping with staff shortages.

Since Japan's working-age population peaked in 1995, its labor market has remained relatively tight. The unemployment rate is 2.4%, the lowest among OECD countries, and has stayed under 3% for almost four years. By 2040, Japan is projected to face a labor shortfall of 11 million, according to an estimate by Recruit Works Institute.

In 2024, a record 342 Japanese companies went bankrupt due to the labor crunch, according to a survey by Teikoku Databank data.

Meantime Japan's social security costs continue to climb as a growing proportion of the population surpasses retirement age. For the fiscal year beginning in April, the government has allocated ¥37.7 trillion ($253 billion) for social security, a nearly 20% increase over the past decade.

Japan's pension system is also under pressure, with fewer contributors and more recipients. In the past two decades, the number of those paying into it has fallen by about 3 million, while the number of recipients has risen by nearly 40%, according to the welfare ministry.

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Japan Sees Fewest Births on Record, Deepening Demographic Crisis

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(Bloomberg) -- The number of births in Japan fell to another record low, underscoring the growing challenge of how to shoulder ballooning social security costs for an aging society with what's already become an ever shrinking pool of tax-paying workers.Most Read from BloombergThe Trump Administration Takes Aim at Transportation ResearchShelters Await Billions in Federal Money for Homelessness ProvidersNYC's Congestion Pricing Pulls In $48.6 Million in First MonthNew York's Congestion Pricing Pla

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I guess we should thank Trump for ending the era of American Imperialism. Unfortunately, that comes at the cost of him supporting the rise of Russian Imperialism.

I never thought I'd live to see this day. In fact, I never thought about this happening because it is too far from any reality I was familiar with.

Remember when Russia was our enemy, and was afraid of us? I once had a long private talk with Sergei Khrushchev when he was teaching at Brown, just before he became an American citizen. He had accompanied his father on his famous tour of the United States, and Sergei had a lot of amusing anecdotes. But the bottom line was that Nikita's threats and bluster were all to cover up his knowledge that the US was far superior in every way to the Russian Empire (alias the Soviet Union).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Khrushchev

And here is tRump, grasping defeat from the jaws of victory.

It Was an Ambush

Today marked one of the grimmest days in the history of American diplomacy.

By Tom Nichols

conclusion:

Friday, February 28, 2025, will go into the history books as one of the grimmest days in American diplomacy, the beginning of a long-term disaster that every American, every U.S. ally, and anyone who cares about the future of democracy will have to endure. With the White House’s betrayal of Ukraine capping a month of authoritarian chaos in America, Putin, along with other dictators around the world, can finally look at Trump with confidence and think: one of us.

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Today marked one of the grimmest days in the history of American diplomacy.