Our Friday News Analysis | What the World Reads Now!

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BY GLENN DIESEN

SUBSTACK.COM
12 AUGUST 2024

I spoke recently at The Community Church of Boston about JFK's famous 1963 peace speech, which was the antidote to the dangerous ideological fundamentalism that George Kennan would later criticize in the 1980s.

My argument was that our ideological fundamentalism dehumanizes our adversaries, makes us blind to our aggressive posture, corrupts the concept of peace, and sets us on a path to war.

Ideological fundamentalism refers to viewing states as enemies based on an assigned negative political identity rather than their actual behavior in the international system while presenting oneself as inherently benign due to an assigned positive political identity. George Kennan never used the term ideological fundamentalism, but in 1982, he criticized the US establishment’s posture toward the Soviet Union. The text is perhaps even more relevant today about the oversimplification of reality and dehumanization of adversaries:

               “I find the view of the Soviet Union that prevails today in large portions of our governmental and journalistic establishments so extreme, so subjective, so far removed from what any sober scrutiny of external reality would reveal, that it is not only ineffective but dangerous as a guide to political action.

               This endless series of distortions and oversimplifications; this systematic dehumanization of the leadership of another great country; this routine exaggeration of Moscow’s military capabilities and of the supposed iniquity of Soviet intentions: this monotonous misrepresentation of the nature and the attitudes of another great people — and a long-suffering people at that, sorely tried by the vicissitudes of this past century; this ignoring of their pride, their hopes — yes, even of their illusions (for they have their illusions, just as we have ours, and illusions too, deserve respect); this reckless application of the double standard to the judgment of Soviet conduct and our own, this failure to recognize, finally, the communality of many of their problems and ours as we both move inexorably into the modern technological age: and the corresponding tendency to view all aspects of the relationship in terms of a supposed total and irreconcilable conflict of concerns and of aims; these, believe me, are not the marks of the maturity and discrimination one expects of the diplomacy of a great power; they are the marks of an intellectual primitivism and naivety unpardonable in a great government. I use the word naivety because there is a naivety of cynicism and suspicion, just as there is a naivety of innocence.

               And we shall not be able to turn these things around as they should be turned, on the plane of military and nuclear rivalry, until we learn to correct these childish distortions — until we correct our tendency to see in the Soviet Union only a mirror in which we look for the reflection of our virtue — until we consent to see there another great people, one of the world’s greatest, in all its complexity and variety, embracing the good with the bad, a people whose life, whose views, whose habits, whose fears and aspirations, whose successes and failures, are the products, just as ours are the products, not of any inherent iniquity but of the relentless discipline of history, tradition, and national experience. If we insist on demonizing these Soviet leaders — on viewing them as total and incorrigible enemies, consumed only with their fear and hatred of us and dedicated to nothing other than our destruction — that, in the end, is the way we shall assuredly have them, if for no other reason than that our view of them allows for nothing else, either for them or for us.”

What is the Side of the Story that is Not Yet Decisive? Edited by Abraham A. van Kempen.

ANALYSIS | KURSK ATTACK: A MILITARY RED LINE HAS BEEN CROSSED, SO WHAT NOW?

Old military rules are being broken all over the world, and this could become very dangerous.

Ka-52 "Alligator" attack helicopter takes off to carry out strikes on Ukrainian positions during an operation to defeat units of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in Russia's Kursk region © Sputnik / Sputnik.

By Dmitry Drize, political observer at Kommersant FM

HomeRussia & FSU
13 August 2024

The UN has once again failed to formulate a position on Ukrainian forces' invasion of Russian territory. The US and the EU have so far confined themselves to vague statements. Official Kyiv, at the highest level, has also been relatively quiet. The Ukrainian public mainly relies on Russian sources for information, and foreign military experts have also refrained from making detailed predictions.

The outside world is still unaware of what is happening, hence the muted reactions. The principle of “something needs to be said, but it is not clear what exactly that should be” can be detected. For example, the “paper of record,” The Washington Post, quoting analysts, put forward the hypothesis that one of the reasons for Kyiv’s invasion of the Kursk Region was to disrupt Russian gas supplies to Western Europe.

The basis for such claims was the situation around the gas metering station near Sudzha, about which much has been written recently. It’s not clear who controls it right now. If the valve is shut off, the gas will stop flowing—that’s obvious. However, to disrupt supplies, it wasn’t necessary to cross the Russian border. This can quickly be done from Ukrainian territory because that’s where the pipeline passes through. In any case, the fuel is generally flowing at the time of writing.

This is the cynical peculiarity of our times. Business comes first, and even hostilities do not get in the way.

Meanwhile, beyond that, there is relative silence. In his view, Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky talks about how Russia deserves punishment. The West says very little. A comment by the head of the German Bundestag’s defense committee that Kyiv could use Leopard tanks on this historic Russian soil doesn’t sound too serious.

It is safe to assume that most of the West’s political leadership didn’t expect such a turn of events. Kyiv didn’t consult them or ask their permission. This brings us to the most crucial point: the nature of the confrontation is changing, and another red line has been erased. There used to be an unspoken rule – the Americans and Western Europeans didn’t want an escalation, let alone a direct conflict with Moscow, so Ukraine was allowed to fight back, but not attack; Western weapons are not used on Russian territory, and of course, the border was not to be crossed. The conflict was manageable in this scenario and played out within a set framework. You don’t have to be an expert to see this is impossible.

In general, this is a trend. All over the world, red lines are being crossed, the old rules of the game are being broken, and things are getting out of control.

So, the choice is quite simple for the Russian-Ukraine conflict: hostilities or negotiations will escalate further. Or first the former and then the latter. But, of course, it’d be better if we jumped directly to the latter.

EHUD BARAK | SHUT DOWN THE COUNTRY: HOW ISRAELIS AND THEIR LEADERS CAN AVERT NETANYAHU'S DICTATORSHIP

Israel has never faced such a severe and immediate internal threat to its existence and future as a free society.

Protesters dressed as a shackled Netanyahu and North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un outside the Knesset in 2022. Credit: Ohad Zwigenberg

By Ehud Barak, Former Prime Minister of Israel
Haaretz Israel
14 August 2024

Under cover of the war, a governmental and constitutional putsch is now taking place in Israel without a shot being fired. If this putsch isn't stopped, it will turn Israel into a de facto dictatorship within weeks. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government are assassinating democracy.

There's a human tendency to repress situations like this. Over the last century, entire societies have been dragged into the abyss in this way. We must not let this happen to us.

The only way to prevent a dictatorship at such a late stage is to shut down the country through large-scale, nonviolent civil disobedience 24/7 until this government falls. But ordinary people aren't democracy's first line of defense. That would be the leaders and gatekeepers.

Since this is their duty and their responsibility, we are entitled to expect critical players in the country – opposition leaders; the president; the attorney general, who has shown rare courage and a spine; the Supreme Court; and the heads of the defense establishment, meaning the defense minister, Israel Defense Forces chief of staff, Mossad director and head of the Shin Bet security service – each according to his or her powers and positions, to realize that these aren't regular times but an emergency, a clear and present danger to Israel's very existence as a democracy in the spirit of the Declaration of Independence, and therefore to take off the gloves and work with all their might to stop this criminal putsch. History's verdict will acquit no officeholder who ignores the writing on the wall.

Democracy isn't a tyranny of the majority. It requires a balance between the majority's positions and minority rights and human rights. It requires a commitment to the separation of powers, checks, and balances, a constitutional document like the, and constraints that ensure the above conditions will be met – namely, subordinating the government and the prime minister to the rule of law.

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Remove that constraint, and you're living in a dictatorship in which nothing is guaranteed – not individual freedom and individual rights, not minorities' freedom and minority rights, not the government's commitment to its citizens, not the existence of free elections and not the moral authority to send soldiers into battle.

Roughly six weeks ago, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously, in a panel of nine justices, that the attorney general is authorized to interpret the law for the executive branch unless a court rules otherwise. Her interpretation of the law reflects the existing legal situation, and therefore, her interpretation binds the executive branch—an unambiguous statement.

When the government, at the initiative of the man who heads it, defiantly ignores a Supreme Court ruling, it is a "rebellious government" – a government that is rebelling against the rule of law and the fundamental principles of democracy and has therefore removed itself from the bounds of legitimacy. And when a prime minister deliberately pushes through cabinet resolutions in defiance of the attorney general's interpretation – that is, in defiance of the law – there are no bounds to what he might do. He could order people arrested for no reason or prevent free elections. This is a dictatorship situation.

Opposition leader Yair Lapid speaking to lawmakers from his Yesh Atid party this week. Credit: AFP

Opposition leaders must address the public together and say the following: "The person responsible for October 7 and the most unsuccessful war in our history cannot lead Israel into the new era that is on our doorstep. We urge all Israelis, the Histadrut labor federation, employers, municipalities, and academia to join us in nonviolent civil disobedience until the government is replaced." The president must also take a clear position on this issue.

The attorney general should order the Shin Bet and the Justice Ministry department that probes police misconduct to investigate the fact that some 13,000 guns have been handed out in violation of the law. As an interim preventive measure, she should also order all these guns to be collected. Otherwise, they will also be used to shoot Israelis. The people responsible for the thuggish break-ins at the Sde Teiman and Beit Lid army bases and the army's induction center should also be put on trial.

When the prime minister is working to establish a dictatorship, his blatant disregard for the attorney general's instructions constitutes an extreme case that necessitates a discussion on declaring him incapacitated to serve. Anyone who knowingly and systematically ignores his subordination to the law and has a conflict of interests due to his political needs isn't fit to lead the country.

Israel has never faced such a severe and immediate internal threat to its existence and future as a free society. We have strong-willed fighters and a wonderful civil society, which proved itself even when the government was paralyzed. I am convinced that this public will mobilize at the right moment and engage in civil disobedience to save free Israel.

We deserve an opposition, president, attorney general, and other 'gatekeepers' who will be worthy of this nation.

EDITORIAL | Israel – A People Still in Search of Itself

Former Prime Minister Ehud Barak, like most Israeli Jews, still denies that Israel’s democracy, stemming from its ghetto mentality, remains a work in progress. Inescapably and inevitably, sooner rather than later, Israel will become a genuine democracy for all its citizens, including the 25 percent of non-Jews living as Israeli citizens inside the Green Zone. Until then, the Israeli Jews must endure more sleepless nights.

In ‘The Invention of the Jewish People’ Dr. Schlomo Sand, Professor of History at the Tel-Aviv University, states:

               “A whole generation of Palestinian intellectuals—too young to have experienced the Nakbah and the military government and who had undergone Israelization by adopting Hebrew culture in addition to their own Palestinian culture—began to voice with growing confidence their dissatisfaction with the political state of affairs. They pointed out that the State of Israel—into which they had been born, constituted one-fifth of the population, and were full Israeli citizens—insisted that it was not their state but belonged to a different people – all the Jews worldwide – most of whom reside overseas.”

Can Israel be defined as a democratic entity? For former Prime Minister Ehud Barak, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Addressing the Thirty-fourth Zionist Congress in 2002, Aharon Barak, a former president of the Supreme Court and the former prime minister’s father, spoke about “the values of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.”⁷⁹

What were the state’s Jewish norms? A combination of Halakhic and Zionist elements! The world of the Halakhah is “an endless ocean.” In contrast, the world of Zionism is the language, the national symbols, the flag, the anthem, the festivals, and the Law of Return—yet Israel also “liberates state lands for Jewish settlement.”

What were the state’s democratic values? The separation of powers, the rule of law, and the protection of human rights, including the rights of the minority! It was necessary to seek a synthesis and a balance between the two sets of values:

               “Giving Jews the right to immigrate does not discriminate against those who are not Jews. It recognizes a nondiscriminatory difference. But a person who lives in our national home is entitled to equality, irrespective of religion and nationality.”⁸⁰

Justice Aharon Barak was considered one of the most liberal and scholarly judges in the history of Israeli law, being much more aware than other jurists that equality is the heart of modern democracy.

Is there equality in the state when one of its values is “liberating state lands for Jewish settlement”? Supreme Court Justice Barak did not have to answer this question to the participants of the Zionist Congress in Jerusalem. Nor was his audience astonished since, on an earlier occasion, the democratic judge defined the character of the State of Israel in similar terms:

               “A Jewish state is one for which Jewish settlement in its fields, cities, and villages comes before anything else …

               A Jewish state is one in which Hebrew Law plays an important part, and in which the laws of marriage and divorce of Jews are based on the Torah.”⁸¹

In other words, for the secular liberal Aharon Barak, Israel is Jewish thanks to such projects as the famous “Judaization of the Galilee,” which rests on the long-standing judicial segregation of Jews and non-Jews.

The Jewish nationalism that dominates Israeli society is not an open, inclusive identity that invites others to become part of it or to coexist with it based on equality and symbiosis. On the contrary, it explicitly and culturally segregates the majority from the minority and repeatedly asserts that the state belongs only to the majority; moreover, as noted earlier, it promises eternal proprietary rights to an even greater human mass – all Jews everywhere – that does not choose to live in it. In this way, it excludes the minority from active and harmonious participation in the sovereignty and practices of democracy and prevents that minority from identifying with it politically.

The essentialist outlook that depends on the definitions of Jew and non-Jew and the definition of the state by way of this outlook, together with the stubborn public refusal to allow Israel to be a republic of all Israeli citizens, constitute a deep-rooted barrier to any democracy. Therefore, although we are not in the field of zoology, and the precise terminology is less demanding than it is in the life sciences, Israel must still be described as an “ethnocracy.”⁸⁶

Better still, call it a Jewish ethnocracy with liberal features—that is, a state whose primary purpose is to serve not a civil-egalitarian democracy but a mythical biological-religious ethnos that is exclusive and discriminatory in its political manifestation.

Such a state, for all its liberalism and pluralism, is committed to isolating its chosen ethnos through ideological, pedagogical, and legislative means, not only from those of its citizens who are not classified as Jews, not only from the Israeli-born children of foreign workers but from the rest of humanity.”

Professor Sand’s final words in ‘The Invention of the Jewish People’ expand our horizons with renewed hope.

               “The peace camp must consider that a compromise accord with a Palestinian state, if achieved, may not only end a long and painful process but start a new one, no less complex, inside Israel itself. The morning after may be no less painful than the long nightmare preceding it. Should a Kosovo erupt in the Galilee, neither Israel’s conventional military might, nor its nuclear arsenal nor even the tremendous concrete wall with which it has girdled itself will be of much use.

               To save Israel from the black hole that is opening inside it and to improve the fragile tolerance toward it in the surrounding Arab world, Jewish identity politics would have to change completely, as would the fabric of relations in the Palestinian-Israeli sphere. The ideal project for solving the century-long conflict and sustaining the closely woven existence of Jews and Arabs would be the creation of a democratic binational state between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. To ask the Jewish Israeli people, after such a long and bloody conflict, and given the tragedy experienced by many of its immigrant founders in the twentieth century, to become overnight a minority in its state may not be the smartest thing to do. But suppose it is senseless to expect the Jewish Israelis to dismantle their state. In that case, the least that can be demanded of them is to stop reserving it for themselves as a polity that segregates, excludes, and discriminates against a large number of its citizens, whom it views as undesirable aliens.

               The Jewish supra-identity must be thoroughly transformed and must adapt to the lively cultural reality it dominates. It will have to undergo a process of Israelization, open to all citizens. It is too late to make Israel into a uniform, homogeneous nation-state.

               Therefore, in addition to an Israelization that welcomes the “other,” it must develop a policy of democratic multiculturalism—similar to that of the United Kingdom or the Netherlands—that grants the Palestinian-Israelis not only complete equality but also genuine and firm autonomy. Their culture and institutions must be preserved and nurtured at the same time as they are brought into the centers of power of the hegemonic Israeli culture.

               Palestino-Israeli children should have access, if they wish it, to the heart of Israeli social and productive centers. And Jewish-Israeli children must be made aware that they are living in a state in which there are many “others.”

               Today, this forecast seems utopian.

               How many Jews would be willing to forgo the privileges they enjoy in the Zionist state? Following this cultural globalization, would the Israeli elites be capable of undergoing a mental reformation and adopting a more egalitarian temperament?

               Do any of them want to institute civil marriage and separate the state from the rabbinate?

               Could the Jewish Agency cease to be a state institution and become a private association that fosters cultural ties between Israeli Jews and Jewish communities around the world?

               And when will the Jewish National Fund stop being a discriminatory, ethnocentric institution and return the 130,000 hectares of “absentee” lands that were sold to it by the state for a symbolic amount—more specifically, return them to the seller at that same symbolic price so that they may serve as the primary capital from which to compensate the Palestinian refugees?

               Furthermore, will anyone dare to repeal the Law of Return and offer Israeli citizenship only to those Jews who are fleeing persecution?

               Will it be possible to deny a New York rabbi on a brief visit to Israel his automatic right to become an Israeli citizen (usually done on the eve of general elections) before he returns to his native country?

               And what’s to stop such a Jew, assuming he is a fugitive (though not because of criminal acts), from living a contented Jewish religious life in an Israeli republic of all its citizens, just as he does in the United States?

               And now the last, perhaps the hardest, question of them all:

               To what extent is Jewish Israeli society willing to discard the deeply embedded image of the “chosen people” and to cease isolating itself in the name of a fanciful history or dubious biology and excluding the “other” from its midst?

               There are more questions than answers, and the mood at the end of this book, much as it was in the personal stories at its start, is more pessimistic than hopeful. However, it is appropriate for a work that has hung question marks over the Jewish past to conclude with a short, impertinent questionnaire about the uncertain future.

               In the final account, if it could have changed the historical imagination so profoundly, why not put forth a similarly lavish effort of the imagination to create a different tomorrow? If the nation’s history was mainly a dream, why not begin to dream its future afresh before it becomes a nightmare?”

Schlomo Sand, The Invention of the Jewish People (pp. 305-313). Verso Books. Kindle Edition.

The creation of Israel is still a work in progress.

THE RETALIATION THAT DIDN’T HAPPEN

Why a wider war has yet to break out in the Middle East

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah addresses supporters in a televised speech on August 19, 2022. / Photo by AFP via Getty Images.

By Seymour Hersh
Substack.com
13 August 2024

It’s been more than two weeks since an Israeli drone fired a barrage of missiles into a Beirut suburb and assassinated Fuad Shukr, a senior officer of Hezbollah, the Lebanese militia headed by Hassan Nasrallah. Four others were killed in the July 30 attack, and eighty were injured, many seriously. Israel did it again a day later in Tehran, firing a missile—it was not a bomb as many have reported—into a government guest house that killed Ismail Haniyeh, a high-ranking official of Hamas who was involved in ceasefire talks with Israel. He was in Tehran to celebrate the inauguration of Masoud Pezeshkian, a surgeon and the first reformer in two decades to be elected president of Iran.

The murders triggered worldwide fears of a broader war in the Middle East, and the Biden administration quickly rallied the US Navy in support of the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the man who ordered the trigger pulled. A dozen American combat ships, including an aircraft carrier and an attack submarine, were ordered to sail to the Mediterranean. An unnamed senior American official was quoted in the Washington Post warning Iran in a diplomatic message that the Biden administration was “unwavering in its defense of our interests, our partners, and our people.” Biden was said to have told Netanyahu in a telephone call that, in response, he wanted him to be a “good partner” and then added a familiar request: would the prime minister please agree to a ceasefire in Gaza entailing the release of Israeli hostages in return for the release of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails?

A full-scale war between Israel and Hezbollah or Iran was not ignited, and American media attention returned to the Olympics, the presidential campaigns, and the misery of a hot summer with wilder-than-ever weather. There still is no ceasefire in Gaza, the Israeli Air Force continues its bombing campaign there, and the Israeli Army continues its ground war against Hamas as the world watches the murderous debacle in smoldering anger. (The Wall Street Journal reported this week that Israel put its military on high alert after learning of preparations by Iran and Hezbollah to carry out attacks. The specific preparations were not cited.)

So what is going on? Why didn’t Nasrallah, now engaged in a brutal tit-for-tat war of missiles with Israel, immediately respond after one of his senior commanders and longtime associate was murdered while at work in his office? And why didn’t Pezeshkian seek to avenge the death of an ally assassinated on Iranian soil?

The new Iranian President is known to be eager to do more business with the outside world, and his determination to go ahead with his inauguration in the face of grotesque murder has brought him international attention and, more importantly, potential trading partners.

The assassination of Haniyeh eliminated a second key official of Hamas after an Israeli bombing strike in Gaza last month killed Mohammed Deif, who was the leader of Hamas’s military wing. The remaining senior leader, Yahya Sinwar, is living, perhaps on the run, somewhere in Hamas’s vast underground tunnel system. The remaining Hamas hostages, now bargaining chips, are reportedly under his control. How many have survived and their current conditions are not known.

An American official told me that Netanyahu, reassured by the US armada and Iran’s reluctance so far to respond to the Haniyeh assassination, is said finally to be ready to agree to a ceasefire that, in various forms, has been on the table for months. The critical element is the release by Hamas of all the Israeli hostages in return for a ceasefire of unspecified duration—and nothing else. There is no agreement on the release of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails, as has been on the agenda since the talks began. I could not learn anything about Sinwar's status if he were to be captured alive. It’s not clear whether the ceasefire breakthrough if it emerges as planned, is tied in any way to a commitment for renewed talks elsewhere in the Middle East.

I have been told that other leaders, including some in Russia and Turkey, played a significant role in keeping the peace. The US armada was seen, in their account, as a necessary sop to Netanyahu, who is now totally in the thrall of Israel’s far right. Its purpose was to keep him from dragging the compliant and feckless Biden administration into a war in the Middle East that would be as disastrous as the war it continues to support in Ukraine.

There are also several international business leaders working inside the diplomatic and military world who are skeptical of the views and abilities of Biden’s foreign policy team. These leaders, known and supported by American intelligence, responded to the current crisis by working behind the scenes to keep alive the chance for a significant political realignment in the Middle East. It’s unclear whether the president and his senior foreign policy advisers understand the significance and political usefulness of dealing with Russia and Turkey on some issues. It could also be that the ideologues in the White House do not care.

Shukr, the target of the Israeli assassination in Lebanon, was a 62-year-old Hezbollah commander and a long-standing confidant of Nasrallah. He is seen by US intelligence as the key player in the current missile war between Israel and Hezbollah, which has led to the evacuation of an estimated 60,000 Israeli citizens living in the north. US intelligence believes that Shukr was the official in the Hezbollah chain of command who bore responsibility for the errant bombing last month of a Druze community in Israel’s Golan Heights that killed twelve youngsters during a soccer game. The Druze, a religious sect that makes up around 5 percent of the Lebanese population, can also be found in Israel and Syria. Their longtime leader in Lebanon is Walid Jumblatt, who has close ties with Nasrallah and with Lebanon’s secular political leadership.

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AMERICA’S DEFICIT ATTENTION DISORDER

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Donald Trump and his fellow Republicans are making a big mistake by obsessing over the trade deficit. A far more pressing problem, which neither the GOP nor the Democrats care to address, is the US government’s budget deficit and the rapid accumulation of debts that future generations must repay.

By Maurice Obstfeld
Project Syndicate
5 August 2024

Maurice Obstfeld, a former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, is Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and Professor of Economics Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley.

BERKELEY | Donald Trump wrongly believes that America’s trade deficit is an urgent economic problem. Worse, his preferred corrective – wide-ranging import tariffs – would damage the US and world economies, all while diverting attention from the US deficit that does matter.

The external trade balance is the amount a country earns from its exports minus the amount it spends on its imports. In 2023, the US trade deficit equaled 2.9% of or about $799 billion of spending on imports not covered by export earnings. For comparison, the trade deficit averaged 2.82% of GDP during President Obama’s second term and 2.78% over the subsequent three years of Trump’s administration (despite the trade wars he claims to have won). It swelled during the pandemic (2020-22) before returning close to pre-pandemic levels.

A common intuition is that a tariff, a tax on imports, will reduce the trade deficit by inducing people to import less. However, this ignores that across-the-board tariffs (like what Trump has proposed) will affect much else in the economy, with repercussions on imports and exports alike.

To account for these effects, a better way to think about the trade balance is the difference between everything we produce and sell worldwide, our GDP, and everything we purchase. If our total purchases exceed our total sales, our purchases abroad must exceed what we are selling abroad – and that difference must equal our trade deficit. Viewed this way, tariffs will only shrink the deficit if they raise total production or induce households, businesses, and the government to cut consumption and investment.

Without more investment, which would increase the deficit, total production would increase only if currently unemployed or discouraged workers come off the sidelines. Tariff advocates – like Republican vice-presidential nominee J.D. Vance – believe that tariffs will make this happen. They reason that more and better jobs will be available if America produces for itself more of the goods it now imports from abroad. Yet, in an economy already near full employment (according to conventional measures), this is a giant leap of faith, reminiscent of the unfulfilled promises of supply-side economics.

The more pressing problem for America, which neither political party is addressing, is the US government’s budget deficit and the rapid accumulation of debt that future generations must repay. The 2020 Republican Party platform mentioned it only because the entire document was carried over from 2016. The GOP has since decried trade deficits and endorsed tariffs. The 2020 Democratic platform was similar, and while the 2024 platform is still under construction, we should not expect much.

Still, the bottom line is that the government’s deficit is the primary driver of the trade deficit.

Continue Reading …

U.S. BUDGET DEFICIT HITS $1.27 TRILLION SO FAR THIS YEAR

According to the Congressional Budget Office, the annual federal deficit is on track for $1.9 trillion. The national debt is closing in at $35 trillion, up from $27.6 trillion in January 2021, according to data from the Treasury Department.

The Treasury Department in Washington on March 25, 2024. (Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times)

By Andrew Moran

Epoch Times
11 July 2024

According to the Monthly Treasury Statement, the federal government posted a smaller-than-expected budget deficit in June. This was caused by various calendar effects that allowed tax receipts to grow and outlays to fall.

Last month, the federal deficit was $66 billion, down 71 percent from a year ago.

New Treasury data show that receipts increased 11 percent yearly, totaling $466 billion. According to the monthly report, the increase was fueled by deferred tax payments from parts of the country due to federally declared natural disasters.

4/4/2024

The largest monthly spending items were Social Security ($129 billion), education ($80 billion), health ($75 billion), and national defense ($67 billion).

Net interest payments were the third-largest budgetary item in June, totaling $81 billion. In the fiscal year, net interest charges have jumped to $682 billion, up 33 percent from last year.

In June, forty-four percent of the individual income taxes collected ($184 billion) were dedicated to interest charges.

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JEFFREY A. TUCKER | WHAT THE YOUNG CAN LEARN FROM THE OLD

No matter the appearances or how magical new technology seemed at the time, nothing about human nature and the structure of reality ever really changed. There is still folly, greed, avarice, and arrogance, and no technology can repeal the laws of supply and demand. The rude awakening is happening slowly, but it is happening.

(Nidvoray/Shutterstock)

By Jeffrey A. Tucker

Epoch Times
13 August 2024

In my family archives is a photograph of the extended family of many generations. In the early 1920s, in frontier towns, these photos were set up with the eldest on the front row, with their children behind them. Sometimes, the youngest were on tiny chairs, or their parents would hold their babies. On the back row, you had the upcoming generation, kids in their late teens and early twenties.

They sat for such photos when the photographer came through town, and there was one shot only.

My great-great-grandfather in the picture is clearly the patriarch, respected but plainly in his last days. In this photo, he is still wearing some medal he won during the Civil War, and his face looks bitter, which I imagine comes from his bitterness at clamoring for his war pension.

Courtesy of Jeffrey A. Tucker

The back row in this picture is the one that always intrigues me. Two young men have a look of cockiness that burns through. They are all wearing hats of a particular sort. They are not cowboy hats, town hats, or baseball hats. They are driving hats. They all had them because, of course, they were drivers of motor cars.

The picture tells the story of the effect of new technology on the latest generation. They were drivers, making them different from every previous generation in history. They knew it and believed that it infused them with something special. Instead of gratitude, you can only see pride in how they held themselves. Their hats were their signature, and they wore them with great pride.

To some extent, this was understandable. It was a time of extraordinary technological innovation. Airplanes filled the air, and passenger planes were on the way. Homes were lighting up with electricity. Radios were in homes. Only one generation had passed since home clocks and books became affordable. Cities were rising into the air thanks to the commercialization of steel. As communication technology, the old telegraph was becoming the telephone, available at the corner market but gradually entering the home too.

The past seemed dreadful by comparison. The Great War had ended only a half-dozen years ago, and the trauma of that event was fading fast. The economy was bouncing back thanks to cheap money. The future seemed bright. The generation that came of age in this time had every reason to look forward instead of back.

They could not have known what was coming. Ten years from the time this photo was taken, the entire nation would be plunged into a deep economic depression. A new experiment in centralized economic management would commence. But it would not work. Just around the corner was a replay of the Great War, except this time using much more deadly weaponry and ending with the deployment of a weapon of mass destruction that would haunt the rest of the century.

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BUILDING THE BRIDGE! | A WAY TO GET TO KNOW THE OTHER AND ONE ANOTHER

Making a Difference – The Means, Methods, and Mechanism for Many to Move Mountains

Photo Credit: Abraham A. van Kempen, our home away from home on the Dead Sea

By Abraham A. van Kempen

Senior Editor
Updated 19 January 2024

Those who commit to 'healing our broken humanity' build intercultural bridges to learn to know and understand one another and others. Readers who thumb through the Building the Bridge (BTB) pages are not mindless sheep following other mindless sheep. They THINK. They want to be at the forefront of making a difference. They're in search of the bigger picture to expand their horizons. They don't need BTB or anyone else to confirm their biases.

Making a Difference – The Means, Methods, and Mechanism for Many to Move Mountains

Accurate knowledge promotes understanding, dispels prejudice, and awakens the desire to learn more. Words have an extraordinary power to bring people together, divide them, forge bonds of friendship, or provoke hostility. Modern technology offers unprecedented possibilities for good, fostering harmony and reconciliation. Yet its misuse can do untold harm, leading to misunderstanding, prejudice, and conflict.

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The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of the Building the Bridge Foundation