American roads are becoming simply dangerous

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I, on this blog, have frequently deplored the state of American infrastructure in general, but one might reasonably assume that the roads in the nation’s capital might be in good shape. Assume nothing!

Last night we drove home after a concert on the Beltway, the major highway that rings Washington DC. There was fierce, driving rain and it was pitch black. There was no lighting on this major 8-lane highway.

We wanted to reach a turnoff onto an arterial road towards the city centre. It was 10 p.m and I could barely see through the windscreen. Steering blind, I went off the main road at the intersection, or thought I was doing so. Instead, it was so dark that I hit a grass mound and then a concrete block, left there by the road builders. There was no safety shoulder to the rosd. We ended up stranded between two streams of traffic that were moving at about 60 mph. We couldn’t go forward onto either the main highway or the access road, because the traffic was too dense. In any case there sat the concrete block. Instead, wondering what damage had been done to the car itself, I was able to reverse with zero visibility through the rear window, not knowing where I would end up, fingers crossed, and expecting any moment to be rear-ended. This was the most dangerous thing I have had to do in fifty years. We did have a few seconds of respite that allowed us to back onto the roadway and drive away down the access road and safely home.

I describe this incident to illustrate the dire state of the roads, the inadequte signage, the lack of lighting at intersections, the suddenly disappearing shoulders, the indistinct lane markings, and the dangerous obstructions beside the highways. Bless the EU and its attention to safety and signage! It appears that American politicians are more concerned with maintaining over 600 overseas military bases than maintaining the roads the citizens drive on. My wife and I are lucky to be alive, and lucky the cars was not totalled.

The Americanisation of British culture

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One of my first posts on this blog was about how contrary to popular perception, Britain is not the polite and civil country Americans imagine it to be. http://hanrott.com/blog/the-plight-of-british-civility/. In my view, Americans watch far too much Downton Abbey and don’t realise how ugly things have become here. In reality, Britain is increasingly American- your average Brit has far more in common with your average American than with the aristocrats that dominate period dramas on TV. Here are a few examples: (I’ll mention the relatively non-political issues here, and then talk about the Americanisation of British politics tomorrow.)

Fast food. Americans invented what has become known as fast food. KFC, McDonalds and Pizza Hut are all American. For the most part, Europe has resisted the fast food phenomenon, partly because most Europeans see themselves as more sophisticated and cultured than Americans. Not so in the UK, where fast food has rapidly grown in popularity. In particular, the number of takeaways has proliferated. While these places offer cheaper food than restaurants, they are still more expensive than cooking at home. They are also contributing to a rapid increase in child obesity, particularly in the major cities and working class towns. I believe the solution to this lies in the tax system: tax fast food restaurants and takeaways at punitive rates, in order to tax healthier restaurants and cafes less. I’m not sure exactly how this would work, but there must be a way.

Big cars. There are an increasing number of American-style SUVs and sports cars on Britain’s roads. Nowhere more so than the inner London, despite the obvious impracticalities. These cars are more likely to kill or severely injure pedestrians in an accident, worsen pollution and air quality, and are often a vulgar display of wealth. London’s mayor has recently introduced a charge for old polluting vehicles which wish to drive in the centre of the city. I believe this doesn’t go far enough: SUV’s, pickup trucks and other ridiculously large cars should be banned from driving in our major cities altogether. And after 2025, I would also impose severe taxes on anyone who wishes to buy a car that isn’t hybrid or electric.

Foul language. Now I’m not one of these old conservatives who believes every use of a curse word world is a sign of Britain’s social and moral decline. But as a society, we seemed to have adopted the American habit of using swear words as frequently as we can. This is a completely unnecessary development, which only coarsens the language and the way we treat each other. We should be far more civilised and courteous in my view, particularly around children.

Long working hours. Britain is becoming more like America in its working culture. People are expected to work far too long, even if their contract doesn’t explicitly require it. This causes stress and anxiety, and can be particularly harmful for children who don’t see their parents often enough. America doesn’t impose minimum holidays, nor does it guarantee maternity and paternity leave. After Britain leaves the EU, we will have the freedom to do the same, and I’m very worried working hours will be lengthened in a desperate attempt to stay competitive.

Student debt. It’s well known that American university tuition fees are extortionate. But at least there is a generous system of financial aid to help the worse off. In Britain, fees may be well below their American equivalents. However, they are much higher than anywhere else in Europe, and there is little in the way of financial aid. To make matters worse, the government recently abolished a grant for lower-income students, which will only deter those from working class backgrounds from applying to university. The solution is to abolish universities and courses with poor career prospects, and instead use the money to help poor students studying at the more prestigious institutions. This would result in fewer people going to university. But those still attending will not suffer from financial insecurity.

I’m aware I’ve portrayed Americanisation very negatively here. I must stress that I think there are lots of wonderful things Americans have brought to Britain. I’m a big fan of Netflix and American TV generally. I like a lot of American music. Although fast food isn’t quite my thing, I like traditional American cuisine, particularly the way the Southern states make ribs. American companies, from Google to Bank of America, have made Britain a wealthier place- even if they don’t pay their fair share of taxes. But overall, I’m very critical of the way Britain has so keenly adopted the worst aspects of American culture. Like America, Britain is addicted to debt. We borrow vast sums of money, only to spend it on things we don’t need: big cars, fast food, expensive houses, and in some cases, degrees. We then spend our money the wrong way; our quaint and historical high streets are in decline, their business diminished by American-style shopping malls and supermarkets. This debt-fuelled consumerism is making us miserable. We work long hours to pay our debt off, instead of spending time with friends and family. The state encourages people to take on large mortgages, instead of fostering an affordable rental sector. Epicurus, with his emphasis on simple living and a stress-free life, would have looked at the Americanisation of British culture with absolute horror.

 

Taxing the rich

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Anyone who supports fair taxation has heard this line a million times: “If you raise taxes on the rich, they’ll just move away.” The argument sounds commonsensical. Opponents of higher taxes on the wealthy make it without much fear of contradiction. But new research exposes this argument for what it really is, a fabrication.

A joint study from Stanford University and Treasury Department researchers, examined 3.7 million tax-filer records over a recent 13-year period. Millionaires simply do not flee in droves to low-tax states, the data show, when their home states raise taxes on the wealthy.
Millionaires, it turns out, consider many factors when deciding where to live. Their family ties, their professional and personal contacts, and their businesses all make them less likely to migrate than the general population, not more.

This report should give a major boost to state efforts to raise revenue from the ultra-wealthy. The usual suspects have lost a key weapon in their arsenal. (“Millionaire Migration and Taxation of the Elite: Evidence from Administrative Data”, Cristobal Young, Charles Varner, Ithai Lurie, and Richard Prisinzano, American Sociological Review, May 2016).

I believe quite a number of people left France when Hollande raised taxation significantly. Gerard Depardieu was the main name mentioned. In fact, our next door neighbours in London moved from Paris (he is a banker) to work in the City, complaining about tax, although that was only one reason. So it can happen, although its effect on the economy is probably slight. Anyone so hung up on tax, aand tax alone, as to permanently leave their country must be a rare bird. The problem is that the dictum about driving out the rich, made up as a political weapon to frighten the public and opposition parties, has now been repeated with religious passion so often it is now part of right-wing received belief, and is trotted out by every think-tank and conservative news operation, without thought, statistics or proof. People now believe it. It will take more than one report to shift it. Moght I suggest that some might just work harder to replace the cash lost to taxes?

The “special relationship”: forget it

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Under Barack Obama, as former State Department official Jeremy Shapiro informed the Cheltenham Literature Festival last week, US diplomats viewed the notion of a “special relationship” with the UK as “a joke”. Unkind words, perhaps, but Shapiro “did us a favour” by telling the truth. The phrase “had freshness and relevance” when Winston Churchill coined it after the Second World War. But today, on this side of the Atlantic, it “generates unrealistic expectations and encourages prime ministers to behave like poodles”. I banned the term when I was British ambassador to Washington in the 1990s. It made us look “needy” and pathetic. It was even used against us in negotiations: I was accused of damaging the special relationship when Britain did not toe the US line. America, it’s true, is our most important ally. But “in truth, the US only has one special relationship. That is with Israel, because of its influence over the US Congress.” We should remember this when US-UK trade talks begin: “warm and fuzzy words” will mean nothing at the negotiating table. (Christopher Meyer, The Daily Telegraph)

I read this excerpt from the Daily Telegraph with amusement because after 23 years of living in the United States I have heard mention of the “special relationship” with the UK
precisely once, and that came from someone who had been in military intelligence, and had served in England. And yes, the relationship with Israel superceded it long ago, for reasons of electoral fundraising. Surprise, surprise. Britain outside the EU is even less of an attraction. Naturally, foreign service people concentrate on the powerful bits of the world – China, India, the EU. The right-wing conservatives expecting a special deal from any US President are going to be disappointed. Britain is somewhere a third down the list.

Kaiser Wilhelm and Trump, similaries between Germany and the U.S. (part 2)

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(A bit long but scary reading and hopefully worth your time)

For starters, both countries exhibit the familiar warning signs of excessive military influence. In Germany, the Army was essentially “a state within the state,” and scholars have all documented how military dominance distorted German thinking about its security and led to an overreliance on military power and an overly confrontational foreign policy. The German military used domestic organizations like the Navy League and the writings of co-opted academics to make its case to the German people; in America, the Pentagon runs its own public relations operations and weapons manufacturers give generously to think tanks that favor increased defense spending.

Under Wilhelm Germany abandoned Bismarck’s reliance on diplomacy and subordinated that function to the dictates of the General Staff. When asked about the wisdom of the Schlieffen Plan, for example, Foreign Minister Friedrich von Holstein replied “if the Chief of the General Staff … considers such a measure imperative, then it is the duty of diplomacy to concur in it and to facilitate it in every way possible.”

Wilhelmine Germany did face genuine strategic challenges, with a resentful France on one side and a rising Russia on the other. Yet Berlin consistently exaggerated the actual dangers it faced, especially when one remembers that it took on France, Russia, and Great Britain (and later the United States) and nearly won. Even worse, Germany managed to solidify the alliance that opposed it, instead of working assiduously to undermine it. When exaggerated German fears about a hypothetical future decline led its leaders to launch a preventive war in 1914, they were (as Bismarck might have put it), “committing suicide for fear of death.”

One sees a similar pattern in the United States today, where threat-inflation is endemic, the utility of force is exaggerated, and the role of diplomacy is neglected or denigrated. Professional militaries have powerful tendencies to inflate threats, because worrying about remote dangers is part of their job and doing so helps justify a bigger budget. They are also prone to think that force can solve a multitude of problems, when it is in fact a crude instrument that always produces unintended consequences (usually failure!)

Consistent with this pattern, the United States routinely views third-rate powers like Serbia, Iraq, Iran, and others as if they were mortal dangers, treats problems like the Islamic State as if they were existential threats, and tends to assume these difficulties can be solved by blowing more stuff up or sending in another team of special forces. The results of these efforts have been mostly disappointing, yet few in Washington are willing to question this approach or ask why “the world’s best military” isn’t winning more often.

This trend began long before Trump became president, but his own policies are making it worse. We have a general atop the Pentagon for the first time since the early 1950s, another heading up the National Security Council, and yet another as White House chief of staff. At the same time, we have a clueless secretary of state who is either deliberately trying to destroy the State Department or is doing so in fit of absent-mindedness. Like Wilhelmine Germany, in short, U.S. foreign policy is increasingly long on brawn but short on brains.

Wilhelmine Germany and Trumpian America share another trait: an inability to get their finances in order. Germany was Europe’s most dynamic economy before World War I: It had overtaken Great Britain as an industrial power and was leaving France far behind. It also boasted outstanding universities and a world-class scientific establishment. Yet the German state was chronically starved for funds, even as it tried to maintain Europe’s most powerful army, build an expensive modern navy, and pay for social programs that were quite generous by the standards of the time.

And why was Germany in this pickle? Because neither wealthy Junker landowners nor rich German industrialists wanted to pay taxes, and both groups had the political influence to stop the government from raising them.

Again, sounds familiar? America suffers from chronic budget deficits at the state and federal levels, in good part because 1) it spends far more on defense than any other country, 2) it provides lots of entitlement programs for its citizens, and 3) its wealthiest members keep demanding tax cuts, and buy political support for this proposal. Meanwhile, public education, infrastructure, universities, and institutions that helped assimilate new arrivals — are all atrophying for lack of resources and political commitment.

There are ways in which Wilhelmine Germany and Trumpian America are different. America’s overall security situation is far more favorable than Germany’s was. It remains the only great power in the Western hemisphere, the only possessor of truly global power-projection capabilities, and the owner of a robust nuclear deterrent — and it has valuable allies in several key regions (at least for now).

Let us hope that is the case, because another critical difference is more worrisome. Chancellor Theobald Bethmann-Hollweg knew the kaiser was a loose cannon and didn’t want him messing up the chancellor’s own plans to exploit the crisis in 1914. Wilhelm wss kept firmly out of the loop, and ironically, bore little direct responsibility for the war, whatever his personal defects may have been. By contrast, Trump is still in charge of the executive branch, and for the most part it is doing his bidding. The generals may have been able to temper some of Trump’s worst instincts, but he’s still managed to withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, alarm key allies, cause a precipitous drop in global confidence in the United States, undermine the Iran deal, fuel escalating tensions on the Arabian Peninsula, and repeatedly pour gasoline on the delicate situation with North Korea. Because top officials are still following his orders, Trump’s personality defects are more worrisome and consequential than Wilhelm’s were.

All of which suggests that we may need more effective means for constraining the Divider-in-Chief. The Founding Fathers created a divided government because they understood deeply flawed people sometimes get elected, and they did not want the country to be overly vulnerable to one person’s flaws or ambitions. They also created mechanisms to remove such a leader when circumstances warrant. I hope it does not come to that, but for now I’ll take some comfort that such mechanisms exist. Stephen Walt, Foreign Policy – I have heavily edited this and apologise for it still being too long!

Comment: This is the crucial test for Republican Senators and Congressmen – are they true, patriotic Americans, or are they time-servers and permanent fundraisers, indifferent to the calamitous drop both in respect from abroad and the financial and health security of citizens at home? When, if ever, will these people stiffen the sinews and get rid of this dreadful interloper? One year is enough!