Here are NewWork News stories from previous months

Chinese farmers suffer less than expected from WTO membership (Monday, 3/10/03)
After a long struggle, China finally gained membership in the World Trade Organization more than a year ago. While many anticipated a general gain for the burgeoning Chinese economy overall, it was widely expected that Chinese farmers would suffer as a consequence. While vast numbers of people in the Chinese countryside haven't benefited significantly from the latest Chinese revolution, WTO membership doesn't seem to have hurt them as much as expected, according to Christopher Bodeen in Newsday.

Incidentally, according to Audra Ang in Beijing, Chinese textile workers in the northeastern part of the country have been engaging in a protest march with hopes of recovering back pay. In the "bad old days," all of them might have disappeared into some sort of black hole, never to be heard from again. That can still happen in the world's most populous country whose government is now "communist" in name only, but still autocratic. However, there is such a thing as public opinion in China now, and the government, which is looking more and more like the dog that caught the truck, has to pay some attention to it.

The ability of a relatively few people in any government to manage or regulate a much larger population depends, in part, on shared ideology or some sort of core consensus, usually--e.g., the American Constitution "works" because a sufficient number of Americans carry parts of it in their heads as a portion of their assumed interpretations of reality, not because it's written on parchment in the National Archives. Also, governments tend to be highly organized while population masses tend not to be. It's why mobs are so dangerous. Large numbers of people can end up pushing in the same direction--a type of organization--and swamp the authorities. The fact that mobs usually are mindless as well makes them even more dangerous to public order and civilized life. Governments can be overthrown and replaced with chaos.

The current Chinese economic revolution, which could result in China's becoming the world's leading power before the end of the century, so far, is benefiting a relatively small portion of the vast Chinese population, while leaving great multitudes behind. The government, which has let the tiger out of its cage, is now mounted on it, and can neither dismount nor fully control it. Stay tuned.

French vs. U.S. workers (Thursday, 3/6/03)
The French military didn't distinguish itself during World War II, given that it was defeated almost instantly by Hitler, and many French citizens are still a bit sensitive about that. Some persons in the United States have been poking old wounds a bit recently because of French-U.S. disagreement over war in Iraq. Virtually no Americans are claiming that the French military would be needed for a successful prosecution of the war that seems to be coming very soon, but there is profound disagreement about what France's role should be in the rebuilding of Iraq after Saddam. Some of it has gotten silly and childish, such as when Americans refuse to eat French fries or French toast.

Meanwhile, some French executives, while not claiming any sort of military superiority in relation to the Americans, are saying that French civilian workers are better than American workers. So THERE!

Incidentally, does France owe its survival to the U.S. and Britain, given that it was liberated from Hitler in 1944? Probably.

But, does the United States owe its existence to France? Certainly. When Cornwallis at Yorktown saw the French fleet offshore, he knew that it was time to surrender. The American Revolution almost certainly could not have been successful if France had not been an ally fighting on the side of the rebellious colonies.

There would be no France as we know it if it had not been for the United States near the middle of the 20th century. There would be no United States at all if it had not been for France during the last quarter of the 18th century.

Strange bedfellows, indeed (Wednesday, 3/5/03)
In the United States, many fundamentalist Christians seem to conceive of heaven as a sort of hedonistic religious Disneyland in which you will get to spend all eternity with people like Tammy Faye Baker and Jerry Falwell--which seems more like a description of hell to others. Trouble is, there are people who want you to go there, whether you like it or not, and some won't feel bad if they can hurry your departure.

When people convince themselves that what they want is also what God wants, it may be time for everybody else to run for cover. Until the cynical totalitarian systems of the 20th century, at least, more blood has been spilled across the centuries because of fervent religious commitments than for any other reason.

In the early 21st century, the principal stressors include high and greatly inconsistent rates of change affecting the entire world. Most of the presumably solid things people have assumed they could stand on, depend on, are up for grabs, causing widespread anxiety and disorientation. One way of attempting to cope is to more vigorously assert familiar traditions, and many of the most ancient have come into daily collision throughout the world. If you say it louder or more repetitively, it may seem to make it more true somehow. If you can silence the opposition--permanently, if necessary--it may seem to make it more true as well.

Even mortal enemies can share SOMETHING in common. So, what do Osama bin Laden and George W. Bush have in common?

Let's see, now. Both are the opposite of self-made men, in the sense that both were born into famous, wealthy, politically powerful families. Born to privilege, both were taught to be fairly sophisticated about money and to take power for granted, but somehow managed to reach adulthood with a limited world view and a limited view of history. Both seem amazingly unsophisticated about numerous issues of increasing importance in a world afire in which geography is becoming increasingly irrelevant.

And, oh yes, both are strong personalities as well as religious fundamentalists, in their way. Both seem to feel that they've been called by God to rid the world of evil and won't mind too much if it becomes necessary to kill for the Almighty. Osama bin Laden would repeal the Renaissance, if he could, and feels that it would be God's work. President Bush, who seems equally ambitious, would re-make the eternally troublesome Middle East as well as bring about permanent structural changes in American society. And, with God behind you, how could things possibly go wrong? Osama and George seem committed to leading their people on to opposite ends of a tightrope. And, with God as their protector, who needs a net?

Dancing on high wires is a very dangerous business, which is why so many Democrats are seeking their party's presidential nomination for 2004. If the President slips, it's not likely to be a slight stumble from which he can recover easily, meaning that the Democratic nomination could be worth a very great deal next time. Under the right circumstances, nearly any Democrat might be able to defeat the President in 2004, and many of them would like to be ready and in position if a fall comes.

On the other hand, if the Bush-led invasion of Iraq goes well, and any post-Saddam political mines left behind in the region don't explode until after a Bush II second term ends, the President may sufficiently grow his political capital so as to make implementation of his domestic agenda far more likely than it has seemed recently. Linda Feldmann of the Christian Science Monitor writes about the President's $400 billion prescription drug plan as the "latest move for an administration bent on shaping history." Meanwhile, one state's historic budget crunch has claimed a prescription medication plan that was seen as a model for the country only a few years ago.

Today's NewWork News Web Tip: 2002 United Nations Human Development Report (Monday, 3/3/03)
Interestingly, the United Nations, many of whose member states are not democratic, asserts in its 2002 human development report, Deepening Democracy in a Fragmented World, that democratic government has been shown to be most capable of preventing conflict and also of producing and sustaining economic well-being.

This may be a particularly important time to consider these issues, considering that three-time Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman said on television the other night that the combined Gross Domestic Product of the 22 Arab nations is about equal to that of Spain. It helps explain why so many young Arabs seem to be despairing of their future possibilities. In non-democratic societies, people are compelled to pretend that they are more alike than the really are, and to suppress efforts to fulfill their unique possibilities. Stagnation is a major consequence, and resentment and rage are others. Human freedom is an effective antidote for many life-limiting and life-destroying ailments.

East aims to surpass West (Monday, 2/24/03)
Some sort of time-lapse photography covering the entire European continent would show continual "morphing" over the past thousand years or more, and would suggest the folly of assuming that things will long remain as they have been during the recent past. The shortness of the human life-span encourages insufficient perspective.

Within the memories of the great majority of people now living, Western Europe has enjoyed a huge economic advantage over the Eastern countries. But, not so many years before our birth, Vienna was the unchallenged "capital" of Europe. Things change, and, then, change again, and are likely to continue doing so. Alan Cowell reports from Budapest for the New York Times on how foreign investors are fueling Eastern European economies. While most Western European countries seem to have entered a period of "sluggishness," the more interesting opportunities for innovation and growth may be in places like Hungary.

In the United States, the current generation of young adults grew up during the 1990s and the longest economic expansion in American history. They came to expect that strong economic growth and plentiful jobs simply represented the "natural state" of things, rather than a condition that has been hoped for, vigorously pursued, but seldom achieved.

Similarly, older Western European political leaders have expressed frustration that many young Europeans don't seem to understand why so much energy has been given to building and enlarging the European Community. The younger generation has never known anything other than peace among European nations, and tends to assume that it is the natural state of things. One EU official said that his generation feels that they have accomplished quite a lot in recent years, considering that Europe has been at peace since the mid-1940s now, after centuries of European wars. "We feel we've done rather well," he said, "but many young people don't seem to get the point."

Diseases of affluence or political complacency can easily set in when the new generation in charge has grown up as the beneficiary of the investments, labors, and sacrifices of their elders. Then, opportunity is offered to other young people in other regions who have not been similarly advantaged, and the cycle begins all over again. Nations rise, and nations fall. Is Europe's center of gravity shifting eastward?

Paternalistic management may be making a slight comeback, but in a somewhat different guise (Monday, 2/24/03)
There was a time when many American factory workers spent most of their earnings each month in stores owned by their employers. Then, with the urging of some organizational consultants, many workers favored "participative management" in which power within the company could become somewhat more decentralized and more widely distributed. Workers wanted a greater say in company affairs, particularly those that influenced them.

Then, management started severing part of the traditional connection between worker and company by shifting a greater share of the risk arising out of changing market and competitive conditions to workers, which has meant diminished job security and more frequent job changes. Many employers also have been relying more on temp, part-time, and contract workers, as well as "outsourcing" arrangements in recent years, while also leaving full-time employees with more responsibility for decisions affecting their employment, health, or retirement security. The Washington Post's Albert Crenshaw tells how the combination of two of these--healthcare during retirement--has become a major issue for a lot of people.

However, not all individuals are prepared to make the well-informed decisions previously made by company professionals, sometimes in conjunction with union leadership, particularly in financial areas, so employers are beginning to step in again. Most employers want their workers to keep the responsibility for the consequences of their own financial decisions, but an increasing number are willing to offer financial advice. Is it a good idea to take it, or should you seek more independent counsel on such important matters? Here's more from Michelle Higgins and Ruth Simon of the Wall Street Journal.

Incidentally, in a sluggish economy, many "free agents" are finding that the "freedom" has mostly to do with excess free time now. Here's more from Eileen Gunn on the hard times that many independent workers are experiencing.

G7 finance ministers say they'll be vigilant and ready (Sunday, 2/23/03)
Finance ministers from the world's seven richest industrial nations have been meeting in Paris, and have promised to take action if the global economy weakens. This includes an apparent promise from the European central bank to cut interest rates if necessary, according to Alister Bull and Nick Antonovics. Here's more from Brian Love and Luca Trogni, also in Paris.

Just as it is hard to think about ways to increase your income when you're sitting in your dentist's reception room waiting for a root canal, it's difficult for most of us to think of much else other than major war in Iraq, which may be imminent. European officials believe that war anxiety has caused harm to the world's economy, and Julie MacIntosh reports from New York that many major CEOs seem to agree that both uncertainties about war and a war itself could harm the economy.

On the other hand, U.S. Treasury Secretary John Snow has told his fellow economic ministers in Paris that a quick resolution to the crisis over Iraq is likely to result in a quick recovery of the global economy. American Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan has been saying similar things, indicating, for instance, that war anxiety is the only thing holding the U.S. economy back at the moment. Neil Chatterjee reports from London that a survey has found that oil industry experts polled expect oil prices to decline 30 percent later in the year after an Iraq war is over. But, as Caroline Baum of Bloomberg News writes, many economists on Wall Street don't agree. They believe that it will take more.

We're sure you appreciate our having made all this perfectly clear, while settling all the issues once and for all. Actually, we believe that anyone who claims to know what is going to happen or what U.S. policy should be in order to make things turn out nicely is missing part of the problem. His enemies readily claim that President George W. Bush really doesn't know what he's doing. That may be true, but, if so, it doesn't necessarily make him different from the rest of us.

The bottom line is that we are in a new historical era and the world is a very different place from what it was even during the recent past. Most of our ideas and decision rules are a product of previous times. We have no right to expect familiar outcomes under unfamiliar conditions which no one as yet understands.

However, there are a growing number of examples of how catastrophically wrong things can go, even when there is no malice. Joseph Hazelwood, former captain of the Exxon Valdez, may still be trying to kick himself in the ass fourteen years after he allowed the worst oil spill in American waters to happen. Now, at least 96 people are dead and many more hospitalized with burns and injuries simply because a rock band wanted to show off, and, because a surgeon made an unwarranted assumption and didn't bother to check, 17-year-old Jesica Santillan is dead, following a botched heart-lung transplant.

If the latter example weren't bad enough, according to a CBS News report, Duke University Medical Center officials may have handled things in almost the worst way possible once it was determined that Jesica was brain-dead, by not responding to the family's request for a second opinion and by determining on its own to withdraw life support. If you have heard the rumor that universities are filled with a lot of smart people, you may want to withhold judgment for the time-being.

After the first successful test of the atomic bomb at Trinity, Los Alamos, New Mexico on July 16, 1945, some scientists said that they weren't entirely sure that the test would not set fire to the earth's atmosphere.

So, for heaven's sake, President Bush, please be careful.

Today's NewWork News Web Tip: Behavioral Research Council (Sunday, 2/23/03)
The purpose of conventional economic theory is to sufficiently account for the functioning of economies so as to be able to make more accurate forecasts and recommend policies that will be more influential in producing desired outcomes than would be the case without the theory. Economists have chosen to make use of assumptions and measures that serve these ends.

As a consequence, even though economists know as well as anyone that people don't always behave rationally, the assumption of rationality has been useful in economic theory because it has tended to serve their purposes better than more complex assumptions.

Similarly, while, in principle, psychology is relevant to economics, because it all comes down to the economic behavior or large numbers of people, whether or not it is worthwhile to incorporate behavioral or psychological factors into economic theory depends on the extent to which behavioral processes themselves are well-understood or measurable. Until fairly recently, the consensus among most economists has been that, given the imprecision of psychological knowledge, behavioral factors may as well be ignored in economic models.

However, this has been changing, because psychological science is much more advanced now than it was only a few years ago. Behavioral economics has been coming of age. For instance, here's the Behavioral Research Council, a division of the American Institute for Economic Research.

Double dip, after all? (Saturday, 2/22/03)
The Labor Department's Consumer Price Index was up in January by the largest amount in nine months, in large part, because of increases in energy prices at the consumer level as well as at other level that have the effect of driving up the cost of a range of consumer products. Pierre Belec of ABC News reports that Wall Street is worrying that war-related energy price increases could push the American economy back into recession.

Of course, in addition to oil price increases and continuing uncertainty, there will also be the cost of a war itself. Saddam's former chief of staff, General Nizar al-Khazraji who, defected, believes that the Iraqi dictator would like to turn Baghdad into a Stalingrad or a "Blackhawk down" situation for the American forces. The former general was interviewed recently on the CBS television program "60 Minutes II."

Former General al-Khazraji says that Iraqi forces will be no match for the U.S.-led forces in open warfare, so the U.S. military can be expected to prevail in the countryside, whether or not the Iraqi army resists. Saddam's plan may be essentially to give the outer regions away, intending, instead, to suck the U.S. into a house-to-house swamp in Baghdad itself, a city of 5 million people, larger than Los Angeles.

This could greatly prolong the war and make it far more likely that the U.S. will suffer thousands of casualties of its own, while causing major civilian Iraqi casualties. Saddam hopes this would help radicalize most of the Arab world while greatly increasing the cost of the war for the U.S. as well as the global economy, meaning that the U.S. will be under increased pressure from most non-Arab nations as well. According to the former Iraqi general, Saddam will gamble that the U.S. will lose its taste for continuing and abandon its efforts, leaving him in power. The reasons would be, in part, but only in part, economic. Stay tuned.

Another test of agriculture (Saturday, 2/22/03)
Malthus was wrong...at least so far. While the world's population has exploded, our capacity for producing food has exploded even more, meaning that there has been more food per capita for a huge global population in recent years than there ever was for the far smaller populations throughout history. The principal reason that there are still so many hungry people in the world is not because of a food shortage problem, but, instead, because of a food distribution problem. Recent decades have been characterized by many hungry people in some regions while those in other regions have been trying to figure out what to do with surpluses or how to get farmers to produce less.

Still, many human problems don't have permanent solutions; instead, we just have to keep muddling along and do the best we can. A world-wide food shortage is still a future possibility, given that demographers expect a population surge between now and the middle of this century. In fact, world population is expected to increase by another 50 percent by mid-century, then level off at about 9 billion persons. We may need another agricultural miracle. Here's more from Laurent Belsie of the Christian Science Monitor.

The G7 talk in Paris about what to do (Friday, 2/21/03)
If a U.S.-led coalition really is going to conduct an invasion to overthrow the government of Saddam Hussein, time is of the essence, and not just because of the approaching heat of summer or the brief period in early March when moonlight will be reduced, giving an advantage to U.S. and British troops, which, with their hi-tech gear, can fight in darkness just fine.

The world also needs a major reduction of the geopolitical uncertainty that is having a major impact on economic conditions worldwide. Finance ministers from the world's richest industrial countries are meeting in Paris to see what can be done, not about the increasingly likely war that is on everybody's mind, but about the global economy. One of these is Francis Mer, France's Finance Minister, and he acknowledges that the French economy will not grow as much this year as government forecasts had indicated.

Another is the new American Secretary of Treasury, John Snow, who, because of the country he represents, is being watched closely by a lot of people and who is very much aware of the war-threat drag on American and, thus, global economics.

There's certainly enough cynicism to go around, but, as is almost always the case in geopolitical affairs, dynamics are complex and multi-faceted. Many people around the world regard Saddam Hussein as one of modern history's monsters, perhaps qualifying for membership in whatever club Adolf Hitler belongs in.

Still, as Mark Twain remarked, while history doesn't repeat itself, it often rhymes. Much of the anti-war rhetoric recently sounds like a verbatim transcript of things that were being said and written about Hitler more than 60 years ago. Throughout much of the 1930s, Winston Churchill was one of the few voices crying out from the political wilderness in Britain, insisting that a deal could not be made with Hitler and that it was dangerous to trust him about anything, but we all know what happened. Many people in the United States, where some still deny that the Holocaust ever happened, were claiming that Roosevelt and Churchill were the real evils, not Hitler. Germany adopted Austrian-born Hitler and made him Chancellor, while France collapsed quickly and allowed the formation of the puppet Vichy government. As many as 60 million lives could have been saved if the world had stopped Hitler early, but that just wasn't in the air.

While some street demonstrators recently have been right about fascists being involved in the current conflict, they are wrong about where they're located. They're not in Washington or London, but in Baghdad. Also, the fact that France has been doing more business with Saddam than nearly any other country, and also the fact that German Chancellor Schroeder calculated that he might be re-elected only if he could hold the Greens in his coalition, requiring a certain kind of campaign rhetoric, are significant points that can help explain the recent behavior of French and German leaders. It's not all about Saddam or the threat that he may present to the world.

On the other hand, are there real reasons for concern about the consequences of an invasion? Is it possible that things really could go straight to hell? Without a doubt.

But, on the OTHER hand, are there real reasons for concern about the consequences of allowing Saddam to remain in power and continue with his plans for eventually dominating the Middle East, and, therefore, because of oil, much of the industrialized world? Is it possible that things really could go straight to hell? Without a doubt.

Despite what TV comics have said in order to make a living, George W. Bush is not stupid and he's certainly not weak. However, he may be an intemperate fool who had too little early education and who has spent far too little time educating himself since undergoing an epiphany of some sort when he was about forty years old to become the highly focused and disciplined man he is now. It's too early to tell. How history will judge him will depend on how all this comes out, and nobody really knows what's going to happen. Moreover, there is much that is not under the control of the American President or anyone else.

Today's NewWork News Web Tip: The Presidents of the United States (Wednesday, 2/19/03)
The White House doesn't want you to forget who its occupants have been since President John Adams first moved in on November 1, 1800. Fifty years can be a very long time in the modern history of world politics, so the institution of the American presidency has exhibited remarkable continuity over more than two centuries, and it isn't because everyone occupying the office has been saintly or a genius. Several American presidents were slaveholders, for instance, and some of them thought the slavery institution was just dandy. Some have been largely incompetent, some corrupt. Andrew Johnson made a number of public appearances while drunk, including during his Vice Presidential inaugural address following the election of 1864.

Compared to some other chief executive roles in democratic countries (e.g., the British Prime Minister), the American presidency is relatively weak, meaning that the American Constitution, both by what it specifies and by what it deliberately leaves unmentioned, has enabled a society in which power is quite widely distributed. During those times when a real clinker has been president, there have been some limits to the damage he could do. On the other hand, when genuinely remarkable individuals have been president, they have been able to accomplish a lot.

From the White House, here is information about all of the Presidents of the United States, not just those who have lived at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, which is to say that George Washington is included.

Venezuela's oil exports expected to return to normal soon (Tuesday, 2/18/03)
Venezuela is one of the world's largest oil exporters, so global economic leaders have been concerned about the impact of the 78-day strike that slowed output to a trickle for a while, particularly in light of a possible disruption of oil supplies from parts of the Middle East if a U.S.-led coalition invades Iraq sometime soon. However, the head of Venezuela's state-owned oil industry expects oil production to be back to normal soon. James Healey reports that gasoline prices are exceeding $2.00 per gallon in some parts of the country, which might eventually seem inexpensive if crude oil prices were to reach, say, $80.00 per barrel.

Is the expected war really about an American urge to control Iraqi oil? Probably not, at least not in the sense that's often implied, but the U.S. has an interest in preventing some others from controlling it. The United States isn't nearly so dependent on oil from the Middle East generally as many other countries are, and, given the size of the American market, oil tends to find the U.S. anyway, when it's wanted, no matter who pumps it or how many intermediaries there may be. That is, even if Iraq doesn't sell oil directly to the U.S., it may sell it to somebody else who will, in turn, sell it to the U.S. Commodities find their markets, and the U.S. uses a lot of oil, much of which it produces itself, incidentally. There would be no particular advantage for the United States to take over Iraqi pumps, and there are all sorts of reasons for not wanting to do that.

However, some of the "chess players" in the Administration and elsewhere may be thinking about competition from China's rapidly expanding economy over the next 20-30 years, and China no doubt has oil more on its mind now than during earlier years too, as it attempts to become the world's dominant society sometime this century. Both the U.S. and China, as well as many other of the world's industrial economies, may be very concerned about the prospect of Saddam's controlling all of the oil in the Middle East, which is what could happen if he were to obtain fully operational nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them throughout the entire region.

Duct and cover (Friday, 2/14/03)
Federal officials are in a terrible box. If government intelligence indicates that the chance of a terrorist attack has increased, they will be in real trouble if they don't tell the public and something happens. On the other hand, continual warnings encourage people to ignore them all, just as the Surgeon General's health warning on cigarette packs long ago became invisible to addicted smokers. Of course, announcement that an attack is likely can help dissuade the attackers, just as telegraphing a burglar's intentions can encourage him to pick a different house and different time. That is, announcing that an attack is likely may make it less likely.

But, when the government issues a terrorism alert, what are we supposed to do with that information? This time, officials have tried to get a little more specific, saying that you might be well-advised to lay in a supply of duct tape. At the very least, this advice has boosted the economy's duct tape sector, and the economy needs whatever help it can get. It remains to be seen whether attempting to seal your windows with duct tape will be as effective in protecting against chemical or biological attack as the government's "duck and cover" admonitions during the 1950s would have been against the dropping of an nuclear bomb in your immediate vicinity.

Duct tape can be a little like chicken soup--it can't hurt. However, one expert said that if we're concerned about their personal safety and well-being we would be well-advised to stop smoking, look both ways when crossing the street, use our seat belts, and not drink and drive. On the off chance that you are able to seal up your house with duct tape so that poison gasses can't get in, it will mean that oxygen won't be able to get in either, so it's not a long-term solution. Your house has to breath if you want to.

There is something to be said about an understanding of probabilities. There is SOME probability that an attacker will lop a bomb on the very square foot of ground on which you happen to be standing out of the more than two-and-one-half million square miles that make up the United States, just as there is SOME probability that you will be struck by a meteor while scratching your left ear with your right hand. But, how much of your scarce time and energy do you want to use for protecting yourself against these things as opposed to all of the other dangers in life?

However, real risks vary. If you're living in a tiny Alaskan village, you probably won't have to worry about Al-Qaeda dropping a nuclear bomb on you, once they've managed to buy one from North Korea or Saddam, although the possible future threat directly from North Korea may be another matter, if Kim Jong Il decides to make a point after he's tested his long-range missile. However, either a conventional Hiroshima-type nuclear bomb or a much cruder, easier-to-make-and-deliver "dirty bomb" that simply scatters radioactivity in all directions would be very bad news in Manhattan. So would poison gas in any major congested area, even though its effects will tend to be localized. You probably won't have to tape your windows in that Alaskan village.

Moreover, duct tape may not be much help in protecting you from biological weapons, if disease-contaminated and suicidal individuals simply fly back and forth among a number of major American airports, spreading the bad stuff in each crowd with which they come into contact. The perpetrators would be long gone, and possibly long dead by the time Americans begin to get sick, and few will know where they picked up the illness in the first place.

If you live in Washington, D. C., New York City, or any other metropolitan area that not only has high population density but also major targets that are either highly symbolic or essential to the normal functioning of American society--e.g., governmental, financial, communications, etc.--the wise guys among us should not minimize. Amy Joyce tells what employers and others are doing in Washington, D. C.

Fed Head sees little change in the American economy (Wednesday, 2/12/03)
Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan told Congress yesterday that the economy is in about the same condition as six months ago, with geopolitical uncertainties doing most to keep it in a rut. Business Week's Michael Wallace says the Chairman seemed somber and sometimes fairly vague, particularly when talking about the President's stimulus plan, although his lack of enthusiasm for additional tax cuts may prevent the President from getting new tax-cut legislation through Congress.

Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve's Board of Governors also issued its forecast yesterday, saying that low inflation and some accelerating growth is expected through the remainder of the year. Their forecast may be predicated on the assumption that the situation with Iraq will be resolved soon, and that uncertainty about the effect of war and its aftermath on oil prices will be reduced.

The President, gambler as he sometimes appears to be, seems to be staking quite a lot on the chance that a war against Saddam Hussein will be quick and won easily, and that things will go well afterward. He may be expecting that relations with and among some European countries will improve, that the American economy will be released from the constraints imposed by geopolitical uncertainty, and that he will have sufficient political capital accumulated to push his domestic agenda through Congress. On the other hand, if the war and its aftermath go badly...

Not to worry (Tuesday, 2/4/03)
As we've pointed out repeatedly, one can easily find economists with splendid credentials who either agree or disagree with the President's budget plans, so you can choose. In fact, you might be able to save some time by asking your neighbors or by flipping a coin. David Rosenbaum says the President doesn't appear to be concerned about increasing deficits, including a budget that will shrink federal revenues because of proposed tax cuts, among which are fast-track plans for encouraging savings. Detroit Free Press columnist Susan Tompor tells how you would be able to take advantage of the tax-saving benefits, even if retirement savings aren't foremost on your mind.

Incidentally, while some recent Republican presidents have talked about the importance of reducing government and getting it out of people's lives, it isn't what THIS Republican president has been saying. Moreover, Mr. Bush is not the president who said that the "era of big government is over" either. That was a very recent Democratic president named Clinton. Confused yet?

In addition to creating a huge new Cabinet-level department, the current President also listed a variety of new spending plans in his State of the Union message. Now, as Marcy Gordon reports from Washington, he wants $841 million for the Security and Exchange Commission, which would be a budget record for that agency.

Occupational hazards of space work (Monday, 2/3/03)
How dangerous is the work of an astronaut? Abraham McLaughlin and Mark Sappenfield of the Christian Science Monitor report that about four percent of the astronauts who have flown U.S. missions have been lost over the history of space flight, compared to a loss of one percent of timber cutters EACH YEAR. However, of the five space shuttles built for actual flights, as opposed to those built for training purposes, forty percent have been lost.

Nonetheless, in more than 100 manned flights, 14 astronauts have been lost so far, plus a fire on the ground claimed the lives of Apollo 1 astronauts Grissom, White, and Chaffee in January 1967. As painful as each loss is, given that space travel is so tremendously complicated and inherently hazardous, it's remarkable that there have not been far more casualties over its brief history. The astronauts, scientists, engineers, and technicians who have created the historic achievements of the past forty years or so have to be seen as some of the most amazingly competent and dedicated workers in the entire history of human endeavor.

The President's radical savings plan (Saturday, 2/1/03)
The Bush administration is proposing legislation that would make major changes to retirement savings accounts and encourage savings generally. Here's more from Mary Williams Walsh of the New York Times. As additional evidence that not everyone in the Administration are exclusively preoccupied with the Iraq question, Robert Pear reports that the White House is proposing to change Medicaid in a way that would give the states a greater say in how money is spent. Finally, Leigh Strope reports that the Administration believes that labor law is out of date and is proposing major changes that would affect who can collect overtime pay.

The Bush administration has been tossing a lot of things at Congress that it will need to respond to, perhaps recognizing that this will keep the political opposition in the Senate and House from concentrating too much on any single thing. The President and his advisors know that the Congress needs far more time to organize itself for any purpose and can be easily distracted, while the executive branch is under the direction of a single man.

Along similar lines, many journalists seem to wonder why President Bush would re-nominate Judge Pickering after the Trent Lott affair. Well, there are many other judges that he would like confirmed as well, and that may be easier if Congressional Democrats are concentrating most of their energies on Pickering, even if they turn him away a second time. If you're trying to get a group of people safely through a pen containing several angry dogs, what's the best way of doing that? Probably to toss a chunk of red meat off to the side someplace.

Keeping the opposition busy (Friday, 1/31/03)
Gone are the days when many people believed that George W. Bush was a successor to Howdy Doody with Dick Cheney pulling all the strings. The President has joked about how he was a marginally-involved C student at one time, but that was before he underwent some sort of personal transformation when he was about 40 years old. He attributes much of the change to a religious conversion of some sort. In fact, it isn't necessary to be entirely cynical to see the latest version of a religious war going on now.

Bush seems to know exactly who the "evil" are and apparently believes that it's his responsibility to rid the world of them. Many of his enemies seem to know who the "evil" are too, and think it's their responsibility to rid the world of them. Incidentally, the latter group thinks they have met the evil enemy, and s/he is us.

It all suggests that leaders on all sides of this global conflict may be several centuries behind in their understanding of human nature and how the world really works. Saddam, for instance, in addition to inheriting elements of 20th century Nazi ideology, resembles some pre-Islamic despots from his part of the world.

Whatever the reasons, despite earlier appearances, George Bush, Jr. seemed more poised to grow rapidly into the presidency than even many of his fellow Republicans may have believed as late as September 10, 2001. He has become a very ambitious president and seems to be approaching his job with missionary zeal, which is what makes a lot of people very nervous. Religious zealots always KNOW they're right because God is on their side, and, of course, God apparently has been on both sides of many wars down through the centuries. Moreover, it's not new for people to invoke God in order to justify whatever it is they want to do for whatever reason or in order to justify their own or their followers' self-interest.

Mr. Bush is a high-stakes gambler, willing to put himself and his administration on the line in order to restructure the Middle East and much of American society...quickly. If things with Iraq turn out well, he'll probably be able to move ahead with much of his domestic agenda and may even bring about fairly permanent changes in American economic and social life. If things with Iraq turn out badly, start waving good-bye to another one-term President Bush.

At any rate, the President has made sure that his Congressional opposition, as well as his prospective Democratic opponents in the 2004 campaign, can't afford to spend all of their time focusing on the Administration's plans for consigning Saddam Hussein to history's book of the infamous. The President has been tossing out lots of major issues for them to worry about and possibly divide their attention. Susan Page of USA Today tells about one of these, the President's plans for offering a prescription-drug benefit by rolling back part of Lyndon Johnson's "Great Society."

Bill Clinton, whom some Republican opponents once called one of the most gifted politicians ever, has been saying essentially the same thing about George W. Bush. So far, Bush and his organization have danced circles around the Democrats in the pure politics of it all. Problem is, the President seems to like to dance on high-wires too, so it ain't over 'til it's over. History probably will look back on George W. Bush either as one of America's most influential, visionary presidents, or as one of history's biggest and most destructive damn fools. Stay tuned, and swallow some more aspirin.

Who has the world's largest information economy? (Sunday, 1/26/03)
The United States, of course, but that may change soon. A Chinese official has told leaders meeting in Davos, Switzerland that China is gaining and is likely to surpass the U.S. by 2008.

The United States remains the only superpower with a hegemonic relationship to the rest of the world...at the moment, and if we confine ourselves to the use of conventional criteria formulated during the recent past, which already may be obsolete. Despite its economic and military power, we're seeing that the U.S. can't necessarily make things happen the way it might like.

Militarily, for example, the U.S. far surpasses any other nation in the world, and, in fact, spends more on armaments that the next fifteen countries put together. Still, there has been recent discussion about whether America could fight two wars at once without being overextended. What if there were, say, fifteen? Or thirty? Clearly, if the U.S. has too many enemies, there can be no effective military solution.

There are roughly as many people in China as there are Muslims in the world, and either dwarfs the U.S. population. The bottom line is that the United States has slightly less than five percent of the world's population, and, under altered conditions, could easily be swamped by superior numbers. China won't necessarily be a belligerent competitor during the remainder of the 21st century, but it will be a competitor, nonetheless, and clearly intends to become the world's dominant power long before this century ends. China is advancing quickly, while the Islamic world remains largely stagnant and highly resentful of the U.S. We can only hope that people like Osama bin Laden will not succeed in radicalizing all of Islam.

How will the U.S. find peaceful ways to relate to the rest of a changed world while maintaining its role as a "beacon of democracy" with something resembling its current standard of living? The 21st century may prove to be the most challenging in American history.

What are the merits of "merit pay?" (Sunday, 1/26/03)
Despite the power of "positive reinforcement," research psychologists long have known about the limitations of "token economies." It is true that you tend to get more of whatever behavior is recognized or rewarded and less of what is ignored. Still, what constitutes a "reward?"

People who are preoccupied with money tend to assume that everybody else is too, which helps them feel more "normal." People tend to generalize from their own immediate experience. But, is it really the case that everyone will respond to opportunities simply to earn more? If you spend all your time with people who give highest priority to building wealth, are you really exposing yourself to a representative sample of humanity as a whole? If you believe that "Americans want to make more money," it's useful to keep in mind that there are about 280 million Americans. How many of them have you talked to before arriving at your conclusions?

Sometimes, things are too large to be noticed. If you're standing on a mountain, it doesn't seem all that significant. Visit any academic library, and you will be surrounded by tens of thousands of books, most of which were produced through enormous effort by greatly talented people to who never expected to make enough to live on from that effort alone. Clearly, not everyone dances to the same fiddler, and not every worker responds to the same kind of incentive. In fact, there is growing evidence that one of the defining characteristics of the new economy is the increased diversity with respect to what people want from their jobs or careers, and this complicates things for employers. One size probably never fit all, and it seems to be even less true now.

For many people, particularly in the professions, their work is not a "job," but a calling. If you indicate that you're assuming that they're doing it only for the money, you will offend them deeply, and, if you leave the impression that you're trying to manipulate them by offering them more money, the result may be the opposite of what you intend. Social psychologists have referred to this boomerang effect as "reactance," and it is more common than you may believe. For many people, their "work is their life," and it's not because of an obsession with buying expensive toys or possessions with a lot of social "show-off" value.

President Bush doesn't like the civil servant seniority system which rewards the ability to take on "protective coloring" and outlast everybody else by being inconspicuous and, perhaps, uncreative. Instead, he would like the reward system to relate to performance, so he's setting up an incentive pay plan. Stay tuned for unintended consequences. Like many business executives who may be at least a century behind on behavioral research, the President may believe that he knows a lot about human nature.

However, he's not the only one. The biz school grads and accountants who run Kaiser Permanente have been setting up a similar incentive program for physicians. While some doctors undoubtedly chose to go to med school because they heard that American physicians tend to make a lot of money, there are others who could have had some sort of palace in a rich American suburb long before now, but, instead, are able to carry most of their possessions in a couple of boxes and suitcases. Some of these treat the poorest of the poor in regions of the world where there are no suburbs. Which kinds of human motivation do we most want to encourage?

Fair to partly cloudy (Friday, 1/24/03)
Meteorological and economic systems have quite a lot in common in the sense that both are highly complex and subject to influence by a very large number of variables which probably interact in ways nobody really understands. In fact, both probably are nonlinear complex dynamic systems subject to interpretation with the mathematics of chaos theory, which originally arose in meteorology. Meteorological and economic forecasting not only share similar limitations as a consequence, but also can be perplexing or frustrating. Rebecca Gomez reports that the Conference Board's famed Index of Leading Economic Indicators increased in December for the third month in a row, but unemployed continues to be devilish, as the uncertainty of the international situation continues to cast a pall.

Incidentally, unemployment is a growing global problem, according to a new ILO report. Across the world, about 20 million persons have lost their jobs during the past two years. George Fowler has more details and reports that the total number of unemployed in the world now has reached 180 million. That's 6.5 percent of a global labor force of 2.8 billion persons.

Demographic history has been made (Wednesday, 1/22/03)
African Americans no longer make up the largest minority group in the United States, according to the Census Bureau. The Hispanic population is now larger and growing more rapidly, and, in fact, is expected to have immediately political consequences. For instance, if President Bush gets the same percentage of the Hispanic vote in 2004 as he did in 2000, he will lose by several million votes. The black population plus the Hispanic population together make up about one-quarter of the entire U.S. population.

However, there is reason to expect that such traditional categories will become less meaningful as a greater share of the population becomes more obviously "blended." Tiger Woods, whose ancestry is both black and Asian, as well as Colin Powell, whose ancestry is black, Caribbean, Native American, and Irish, among other things, are current examples. There was a time during the not too distant past when most Caucasian Americans tended to identify themselves as "German," "Polish," "Irish," "Norwegian," and so on. Fewer do that now, and think of themselves simply as "Americans," which is the way it's supposed to be. Could anyone possibly be more American than, say, Oprah Winfrey, Colin Powell, Bill Cosby, Arnold Schwarzenegger, or Henry Kissinger?

Do the feds really penalize you for being married? (Monday, 1/20/03)
Vows to eliminate the so-called "marriage penalty" make for good campaign rhetoric, but is it really true? Edmund Andrews of the New York Times says, well, it is and it isn't. Everything considered, you probabaly make out less well if you're single, he says.

Similarly, the term "death tax" has a nice ring to it if you're campaigning and want voters to think that you will try to help them save them money. Marilyn Geewax reports that there are many people who would like to see a complete repeal of the estate tax so that all of a family's accumulated wealth could stay in the family across many generations, assuming that, as often happens, a generation doesn't come along that screws up and loses most of it.

However, not all of the richest families are in favor of the idea. For instance, the richest individual in the world, Bill Gates, has said all along that he doesn't believe in dumping vast riches on the family's younger generation. He intends to give away most of his billions, and, even though he is not yet 50, Bill and his wife's giving is already well underway.

Incidentally, even if you're not a billionaire, Ronald Lipman reports that recent changes mean that you can give away more now than before without tax consequences. Beverly Goodman writes in The Street.com that the new year brings beneficial changes affecting retirees too.

Alternative ways for millions of Koreans to die (Saturday, 1/18/03)
Why is the U.S. government preparing to go to war in Iraq, which probably doesn't yet have nuclear weapons, but isn't preparing to attack North Korea, which probably does? It's a common question among those opposed to the Bush administration's foreign policy.

It may or may not be a good idea to attack in Iraq right now, but it should be fairly clear why no U.S. government would want to get into Korean War II at this point. Seoul is one of the largest, most congested, and also modern cities in the world, and it is within sight of the North Korean border where sufficient artillery for destroying Seoul is located, along with more than one million North Korean soldiers. To put things in perspective, Seoul has about four times as many people as the metropolitan Twin Cities region, and millions of them could die if war were to break out on the Korean peninsula.

Meanwhile, the BBC reports that literally millions of North Koreans may be facing starvation.

Another 37,000 Kmart jobs are set to evaporate (Wednesday, 1/15/03)
Listen up, Kmart shoppers. You're going to have fewer places to shop. Kmart Corporation expects to emerge from bankruptcy several months early, but as a much smaller company, deciding, apparently, that a discount retail universe dominated by Wal-Mart and Target can't support a third discount chain the size Kmart once was. Hundreds of stores will be closed, and another 37,000 jobs will be cut. Here's more from today's New York Times.

The company that became Kmart operated throughout the 20th century, as well as a bit of the 19th and also a bit of the 21st so far, according to this quick history. Interestingly, Kmart was established in the early 1960s at about the same time that Wal-Mart and Target started. Over the years since, Wal-Mart has become the world's largest retailer, and Target became the tail that wags the dog, even replacing "Dayton's" as the name of its parent corporation.

Will Bush's tax cut cut it? (Wednesday, 1/8/03)
Mike Meyers of the Minneapolis Star Tribune says that economists are debating the merits and demerits of President Bush's wished-for tax cuts. In fact, nearly everything about the Administration's economic plan probably is being debated by nearly everybody, including some people who actually may know what they're talking about. Columnist Andrew Cassel of the Philadelphia Inquirer thinks that big tax cuts could cause a big tax migraine, while Elisabeth Bumiller writes from Chicago about the boldness and riskiness of the President's plan, reinforcing other observations about how Bush is willing to take big risks, meaning that he can either win or lose BIG. He won in the midterm elections. The jury's still out on the economy and, of course, on Iraq and North Korea. Dirk Van Dongen writes in USA Today that the President is aiming directly at the economic bull's eye and is likely to hit it.

Much of this would be hilarious if it were not so deadly serious. Economics is at least as technical as medicine, so asking most of us what government policy would be best for stimulating the American economy and creating jobs is a little like asking us which procedure should be used to treat pancreatic cancer. Of course, the difference is that this is a popular democracy, and our elected representatives don't have responsibility for deciding on specific medical remedies. We all not only have a right to an opinion, but we also have an obligation to participate in the processes, whether or not we really know what we're talking about.

Also, of course, if you want to talk to somebody who thinks the President's proposal is either just dandy or just nuts, you can easily find people with either opinion who don't know a single thing about economics. Come to think of it, it's probably easy to find people with either opinion who have expert credentials too.

Today's NewWork News Web Tip: Human Nature Review (Wednesday, 1/8/03)
Human nature is a large subject and Human Nature Review attempts to cover it by reporting research conducted by scholars from more than 160 countries.

Why bother conducting research on the topic, if, as is commonly remarked by politicians as well as participants in barroom conversations, "human nature hasn't changed?"

The answers is that, while this assertion may be largely correct--e.g., the brain of modern humans appears to have remained largely unchanged for tens of thousands of years--our KNOWLEDGE of human nature has changed enormously, and we're just now barely scratching the surface, despite widespread assumptions to the contrary. For instance, compare common traditional beliefs about gender and "racial" differences which persist to the present day with our best current knowledge about these issues (e.g., one cannot tell what "race" a person is by examining his/her DNA, and IQ score distributions for males and females are an almost perfect match). Also, the human brain has as much to do with thinking, feeling, attitudes, beliefs, etc., etc., as legs have to do with running, but before neuroscience research of the 1990s (the "decade of the brain"), we knew almost nothing about how it works.

As we've said repeatedly, since at least the time of Copernicus and greatly accelerating during the 20th century, there has been a growing divergence between our best knowledge of nature, including human nature, as well as the past, on the one hand, and most people's beliefs about these things, on the other. Genuine verifiable knowledge and common popular belief have been getting further and further apart. One important implication is that any randomly selected traditional belief has a high probability of being flat-out wrong, no matter how popular. Of course, any new belief with the same foundations is equally likely to be wrong. An important way in which our period of modernity differs from all previous eras is that humanity has learned a lot about WHAT IT TAKES to arrive at trustworthy answers to empirical questions. WHAT we know depends entirely on HOW we know it.

Bush plan makes him a bigger target (Sunday, 1/5/03)
The President's economic package could cost as much as $600 billion over the next decade. It's intended to stimulate growth of the American economy, but Democrats, including various presidential hopefuls, say it won't do that. Instead it, would just help the rich without helping anyone else very much. The Democrats aren't very enthusiastic about the President's plans for changing Medicare either, according to Janelle Carter in Washington. And, in case you're not surprised so far, there is not yet great public Democratic support for Bush's desire to spend an additional $1 billion to boost educational opportunities for the poor.

All it means is that both major parties have to operate simultaneously on two tracks now that it's only about 14 months before the next Democratic presidential candidate is likely to be determined. Both parties will have to work in order to create new legislation, while at the same time competing to influence public perceptions which will have major political consequences over the next couple of years.

Incidentally, among the Democrats who seem to want the presidential nomination are people who have been quite liberal over most of their careers, such as former Senator Gary Hart, who, in addition to many other things, once managed the presidential campaign of George McGovern. Hasn't that brand of politics been out of fashion now for quite a while, given, not only a very popular President Bush, but also the Clinton-Gore administration, which, in some respects, resembled traditional Republicans?

The sudden death of Senator Paul Wellstone, the Republican sweep two months ago, plus the almost-overnight fall of Trent Lott, show how fast things can change in American politics. What has seemed rock-solid can suddenly dissolve, and, if you want to be a player, it's important to be in position if things suddenly happen to swing your way. If Bush attacks Saddam's regime and deposes him within a few days with little loss of American life and also manages to get the American economy going, he will be essentially unbeatable in 2004. On the other hand, if a war in Iraq goes badly and the economy gets worse, nearly anybody will be able to make Bush a one-term president like his father, and it probably won't be possible for a any of the current Democratic contenders to be liberal enough