Unforeseen circumstances

A friend of a friend had warned me about British understatement. Specifically, she had mentioned professors and grading. She said if a professor says “Good,” they mean C-worthy. If they say “Very good,” then you’re headed for a B. If they say “Very good indeed,” then congratulations, that was A-range work. In addition to this warning about British understatement in the academic context, I’d long thought that calling the conflict in Northern Ireland the Troubles was a particularly understated manner of addressing a decades long conflict that involved numerous bombings and deaths and nearly killed a Prime Minister. The newest addition to my collection is “unforeseen circumstances”, something my uncle said on Sunday.

I’ll have to back up a bit first. About a week ago my uncle began behaving oddly. He missed an appointment of some importance, and that was totally out of character for him. Also, he was acting in a way I can only describe as drunk, or, well, his ability to communicate seemed in the near inebriated range – very simple conversation only. Tuesday and Wednesday evening family were advising that he see a doctor and offered to call an ambulance, but he repeatedly refused. We didn’t know what was wrong, but imagined some sort of mental illness, depression or schizophrenia were high on the list. Little accounted for the sudden and dramatic change in behavior that we could understand. Prior to this, he went out, he ran errands, he was a healthy functioning adult. Skipping over some of the details, by Friday evening I was calling an ambulance because of his erratic behavior. Three cheers for the London Ambulance Service by the way.

In the small hours of Saturday morning my uncle was transferred from our local hospital to a much larger hospital in central London. That afternoon he had surgery. A cousin and I were at the hospital. When my uncle came out of surgery, he had what my cousin described as half a Mr. T haircut. There was a semicircle, an arc really, where they had operated. The doctors had removed “a collection of blood in his brain”.

Essentially, it was like the doctors had flipped a switch. The uncle of Friday night was despondent. He was hollowed out, his personality had disappeared, what made him him was gone. My uncle Saturday evening bore no resemblance to my uncle on Friday night. The despondent mood was gone completely. He was talking, laughing, and joking. It was less than 24 hours between my calling the ambulance and my uncle being himself again – 180 degree turnabout in under a day.

What was an odd and unsettling experience for me was profoundly and utterly bizarre for him. He said he could not remember Tuesday to Saturday pre-surgery. In effect, his memory of the past week begins being aware he is in hospital, not knowing where and not knowing why. Imagine stopping time now, and waking up a week later in a hospital bed. Unforeseen circumstance indeed.

I do not know what perspective the doctors and nurses in the neurosurgery ward must have on the world, but the entire episode reminded me of a discussion of free will at Missives from Marx (here and here). Particularly my uncle’s refusing to see a doctor early last week, which he only sort of half remembers. Who was that? I can connect his body to his behavior last week, but I can’t connect his mind, so once again, who was that? That fake uncle, that uncle imposter.

So, Damocles’ sword hangs over all our heads. I learned this in a way I had no appreciation of before I’d been to a neurosurgery ward. You’re a blood clot away from not being you anymore. Not in terms of having to learn to walk and talk again, that’s somehow easier to deal with intellectually. Death and being in a persistent vegetative state are also easier to deal with intellectually. That all falls into the taking away stuff you can do category. But I hadn’t considered who you are as being one of the things you can do. Who you are seemed more intrinsically connected to your you-ness. Your identity is also wrapped up in your brain – which now writing that seems totally obvious. Of course your identity is in your brain, where else would it be? I guess seeing it demonstrated so clearly, so starkly, right before my eyes in 24 hours is what struck me, and prompted this post. That and “unforeseen circumstances”.

Happy endings, knock on wood, my uncle is out of the high dependency unit and will be transferred to a local hospital later this week. Hopefully, he’ll make a full recovery. A strange beginning to 2010, but I’ll take eventual discharge from the hospital and full recovery any day. Three cheers for the NHS too by the way.

Rosie the Riveter

The Economist has a trio of glass half full articles about women’s workforce participation (I, II, and III). During the course of their discussion, the Economist invokes “old-fashioned meritocracy” and pooh-poohs the idea of affirmative action, writing, “To begin with, promoting people on the basis of their sex is illiberal and unfair, and stigmatises its beneficiaries.”

I disagree with the Economist’s assessment of affirmative action. For instance, I support the UK government’s Equality Bill (though diluted) and the French government’s proposals to

see women make up half the figures in France’s leading boardrooms by 2015, under a bold plan to impose gender equality on the male-dominated business world.

In a bill submitted to the French parliament this week, all companies listed on the Paris stock exchange would have to ensure female employees made up 50% of their board members by 2015. If passed, a gradual implementation of the law would see businesses obliged to have women in 20% of board seats within 18 months, and 40% within four years. (Guardian)

It is remarkable that the Economist goes for a glass half full perspective when in various areas the glass is nowhere near such lofty heights, the Economist writes, “Only 2% of the bosses of America’s largest companies and 5% of their peers in Britain are women.” Additionally, “…only 10.5% of board members in CAC 40 (French stock market index) companies are female.” (Guardian).

…in the UK, 12% of FTSE 100 directors are female and one in four boards are exclusively male. Sweden and Finland boast more women at leading companies at 22% and 17% respectively.

The proportion of female directors among US Fortune 500 firms is 15.2%. (Guardian).

The celebratory title, “We did it!” hardly seems to fit the circumstances.

As for the “old-fashioned meritocracy” the Economist praises, grim simulacrum of meritocracy is a more apt description. The mechanisms that reinforce and reproduce privilege impede, “Fairness at entry, fairness in discretionary pay, and fairness in progression.” (Trevor Phillips via DJFN). From all male social clubs to conducting business at the boom-boom room, a variety of structural mechanism can slow change to a glacial pace.

Mad Men doesn’t seem so distant, consider,

In addition to triple-X-rated sexual harassment, Antilla’s subjects also suffered cold, hard job discrimination. Many of their firms paid them lower base salaries than their male equivalents, blatantly yanked away clients and commissions, welcomed them back from maternity leave with pay cuts and demotions and refused to supply them with the study materials that helped male brokers earn their licenses. As of 1994, male sales assistants at Smith Barney were more than eight times as likely to make broker as their female counterparts.

The book’s title, with its connotations of stock market heights, sounds allegorical. But the Boom-Boom Room was a real place: the basement rec room of a Shearson brokerage office in Garden City, N.Y., where some of these abuses took place. Antilla reports on a number of companies, but the Boom-Boom Room is her Tailhook. She spends the first half of the book enumerating the humiliations women suffered at the Garden City branch, and the second half describing the ill-fated lawsuit in which they tried to gain redress.

Quotas aside, a wide array of proposals fall under the umbrella of affirmative action (aka positive discrimination in the UK, and temporary special measures in UN human rights treaties). While I favor the most forceful measures, quotas and timelines à la France and Norway, alternate policies include:

• soft targets with comply or explain as the only sanction,
• recruitment efforts and mentorship programs to encourage participation of the underrepresented,
• longlists or shortlists that prescribe diversity,
• guarantees that some portion of the underrepresented reach a certain phase in the application process (second look, first interview, etc.).

The policy landscape includes far more choice than deadline driven affirmative action measures or inaction.

Overall, the Economist does not reach a holistic vision (entry, pay, and progress) of women’s workforce participation, though to the Economist’s credit, they recognize the slow pace of change and some social structures’ contribution to inequality. Perhaps the Economist’s triumphalist “We did it!” is right in the sense that the Wright brothers also “did it” when they flew a few meters off the ground for a few seconds. But that sets our sights awfully low when our aim should be far, far higher than that. For instance, a quarter of FTSE 100 boards being all male is simply not good enough. The history and ongoing discrimination in terms of pay and positions makes for less than inspiring reading.

I’ll close by saying, representation of women on the boards of the largest companies in a handful of wealthy Western nations is just one, fairly narrow axis for looking at women’s workforce participation. I purposefully argued in this field of the Economist’s domain, avoiding some of the broader and more obvious sources for analysis of women’s human rights, Human Rights Watch and the US State Department’s annual country reports. Taking into account this larger optic, it becomes even clearer that the cause for celebration of progress is limited indeed.

Grant us peace

The B Minor Mass was in its first centuries an unsuccessful piece. But something in the music made Hans Georg Nägeli believe that it was worthy to be published, and that something has inspired generations of choirs since the second half of the nineteenth century to perform it again and again. The slogan “The Greatest Artwork of All Times and All People” might have been written to sell something, but it must contain a grain of truth….

Is Bach’s Mass in B Minor the greatest artwork of all times and all people? A commercial would have to say, “Yes, it is.” I’m not going to answer that question. Music is not about better, faster, louder. Listen to the piece yourself; try to hear how Bach builds his baroque palace, his musical Versailles.

- Johann Sebastian Bach’s Mass in B Minor by Markus Rathey

Baroque palaces for Christmas Day, you could do worse.

Happy holidays to one and all.

Inside the sausage factory

Earlier this month I began interning at the local office of a British political party. This is my first time working on an election campaign, though I have interned or worked at politics oriented think tanks in New York and DC. I would not call my three week long experience campaigning a eureka moment exactly, more an opportunity to connect the dots between the quite comfortable Ivory towers of think tanks (or laptop and pajamas blogging) and the day to day envelope stuffing, leaflet dropping, and occasional message crafting of campaigning. Here are some of the things I’ve learned so far.

First, connecting some expert’s wonkery to another person’s doorstep is pretty difficult, it is great to have lofty ideas, but then someone has to go out into the streets and sell it. Before you conquer the task of being pithy, accurate, and convincing, you have to get people to pay attention. Cut through all the other messages people receive in a typical day and make your particular candidate/issue/party stand out, amongst the Cadbury Christmas egg ads, Indian restaurant leaflets, and World Cup draw hoopla. You are battling for the attention of a public that devotes only a sliver of its time to politics. Certainly the general public devotes less time than the wonk or campaign salesperson ever devote to the finer details of issues – for instance, if you know about medical loss ratios, you probably have an opinion about them already.

Second, I have more sympathy for the candidates now. Asking people to vote for you is humbling, and hard. Humbling because some amorphous mass of people out there, more than you could ever possibly meet is making judgments about you. Your name, your origins, your background, your opinions, your decisions, your life – fairly or unfairly, rightly or wrongly, all this and more is up for public discussion. I’d go so far as to say I even have slightly more sympathy for Ben Nelson, Joe Lieberman, and John McCain. As a writer, you are free to satisfy yourself, maybe your editors, some of your readers too if you’re feeling up for it. Altogether a pretty limited constituency. As candidate, or governing politician, someone’s likely to be incandescent with rage by the close of business. The negotiators’ task is a thankless one.

Third, I have more sympathy for the strident activists now. Stuffing envelopes for hours on end can be made more bearable by good company and some unhealthy snack food. Planning and executing events, well I suppose it is a compliment that your guests enjoy themselves and think it was done effortlessly well – but they didn’t see the dashing around for the corkscrew beforehand. That is to say, those volunteering their time, their homes, their money, they are heavily invested in the ultimate outcomes. They are likely to be among the most bitterly stung by concessions.

What do all these newfound sympathies mean with respect to the healthcare debate?

Well, personally I would like a single payer system, a US version of the UK’s National Health Service would be perfect. In my less charitable moments, I want Obama to be a Cheney of the left, riding roughshod over the opposition, and the Constitution if necessary – goodbye no drama Obama, hello Obama as Khrushchev, “We will crush you!” Not the wisest way to run a country, certainly not sustainable given all the Bush administrations tenuous legal theories’ Supreme Court reversals. Also, Khrushchev didn’t win a Nobel Peace Prize. In a democracy everyone has to quash their will-to-power moments.

So despite dreams of a Scandinavian American policy landscape, an America that takes economic and social rights as seriously and it takes civil and political rights, we’re left with the real live American politicians, real live American interest groups, and getting to that 60th vote in the Senate. We’re left with a politics full of politicking. Some of it unseemly (Senators Nelson and Landrieu), some of it unwise or unstatesmanlike (Senator McCain), some of it fairly hypocritical reversals of positions taken a few years ago (Senator Lieberman).

While I get the disappointment of those on the left who hoped for far more from healthcare reform, I don’t agree that we should somehow start again. We have little reason to believe we’d end up with anything much better than what we have – as the BBC Washington DC correspondent remarked, this bill passed by a whisker. I understand those on the left wanted a more assertive Obama during the course of the crafting of legislation. However, I also understand that a president has to husband his political capital. A second jobs bill, immigration reform, hopefully criminal justice system reform, just a sampling of the contested political territory that lay ahead.

And thanks to Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate majority leader Harry Reid. Negotiating shouldn’t be entirely thankless.

Nobel decline?

Various commentators are still arguing that the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to Obama has cheapened the prize. I was watching Sky News’ coverage. Despite Obama delivering a Nobel Lecture on subjects no less weighty than peace and the human condition (worth the read if you didn’t see it), some of the commentary still centered on the controversy over the award. I recall similar claims, devaluing the Nobel Peace Prize, were made when the prize was announced. In October Peggy Noon wrote, “The Norwegian Nobel Committee has embarrassed itself and cheapened a great award that had real meaning.” She went on to say that, “In one mindless stroke, the committee has rendered the Nobel Peace Prize a laughingstock, perhaps for as long as a generation.” This assertion is a testable hypothesis claiming, since Obama won the prize it has been devalued.

Prestige is an awfully slippery thing to value, but here are some questions to keep in mind:

1. How many past winners excoriate the Nobel Committee for awarding the prize to Obama? You know, I used to hold my Nobel Prize in high regard, but since Obama won, it doesn’t mean that much to me.
2. How many prospective nominators decline to participate in future? I’m sorry, I don’t think it’s a valuable use of my time to nominate anyone for the Nobel Peace Prize.
3. How many future winners will decline the prize due to Obama’s award? Désolé. Since you gave it to Obama it doesn’t mean as much as it used to.
4. Will the Nobel Prize command less attention from relevant audiences in future? Forgive me, but I’m not interested in reporting on this, since you gave the prize to Obama it isn’t really worth my time to report on – Nobel Prizes are not news anymore.
5. Will people stop using Nobel laureate as a description to identify authors, speakers, etc.? Pardon me, but Nobel laureate as a description has become the equivalent of breathing human being, not really adding important or relevant information about the person whose book you’re about to read or speech you’re about to hear.

Call me skeptical. The people who already had a negative opinion of the Nobel Peace Prize will probably go on doing so. As for the rest of us, Nobel Prizes will go on being a big deal, no cheaper for having been awarded to Obama.

Unknown unknowns, Afghanistan

Historians have hindsight. They can dissect turning points in minute detail. Those of us living history forward, however, are confronted by uncertainty, Himalayan Mountains of uncertainty obstructing the horizon. These uncertainties bear out the truth of Donald Rumsfeld’s comment about known knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns. The best we can do is consider the alternatives, systematically lay out our decision-making processes, and be aware of the many cognitive biases that may lead us astray.

Unfortunately, the decision-maker does not get to say, “I wouldn’t start from here.” Nor do decision-makers have the option of not deciding. Also, despite the insights of probabilistic thinking, you don’t get to rerun the world ten times and say: Well, six times out of ten I was right, we just happened to land in an occasion where I am wrong. While we should be interested in the arguments and analysis of prognosticators, we should also be mindful that analysts may be deploying the “lessons of history” in novel circumstances with new unknown unknowns (echoes of the standard caveats of the case study methodology).

Consider alternatives, lay out decision-making, and identify biases. Overall, I think that in sending more troops to Afghanistan, Obama made the right choice. If anything, I find myself leaning towards an even more pro-counterinsurgency stance. It is only fair that I lay out the biases that led me to this conclusion. Part of the reason I say I have “biases” instead of merely “assumptions” or “premises” is that, when faced when uncertainty, our preconceived notions about the world come into play. I doubt that any participant in this debate is engaging in objective, value free assessments.

I have a bias towards taking sunk costs into consideration. Despite the sensible advice to the contrary, I see sunk costs as relevant given the circumstances. Re-entering Afghanistan following some new terrorist atrocity would be more costly than sustaining a mission there, continuing a steady tempo of pressure against al-Qaeda. The reason I disagree with the Biden plan, drones and a lighter footprint in Afghanistan, is that this military intervention would not come with the civilian-side support needed to press Afghanistan towards durable stability. In addition, the Biden plan has humanitarian and public diplomacy drawbacks (NYer).

I have a bias towards paying quite high costs. I reread the opening of Kennedy’s inaugural and found myself agreeing quite a bit.

Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.

Yes, yes, the Kennedy Doctrine, the Bay of Pigs and the path to Vietnam, I am not unaware of the possibilities for utter, utter disaster. Nevertheless, I am skeptical of Obama’s timeline to drawdown in July 2011. Obama left some wiggle room, escape clauses like “begin the transfer” and “taking into account conditions on the ground,” but setting a date was too definitive for me. Certainly not as bad as Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” banner, but I doubt people will focus on the room for fudging dates. July 2011 will be up in lights in the American public’s mind. Also, were I strategizing against America, couldn’t I wait until August 2011 to mount a demoralizing, Tet Offensive-like campaign?

Obama used an Eisenhower quote to advance his case for a timeline, saying, “Each proposal must be weighed in the light of a broader consideration: the need to maintain balance in and among national programs.” This comment is in tension with the passages where he emphasizes the importance of pursing al-Qaeda in the region. There is some delicate balancing, and in the interests of flexibility I’d prefer a balance tilted towards leaving options open; though I understand the purpose of the balancing was an attempt to satisfy those critics on Obama’s left who seek disengagement from the conflict sooner.

Given my view on paying high costs, I tend to discount the finance-related arguments advocating an immediate drawdown of troops or a shorter commitment to Afghanistan. America can pay for the things America wants to pay for, maybe more precisely, we can deficit spend for the things we want to deficit spend for. But we are far away from anyone cutting up the national credit card.

Finally, I have a bias towards human rights and repudiation of the Taliban. There are several ways of arguing this point, and one of the more noxious ways of arguing says, everyone who disagrees with me doesn’t really care about human rights. Thus one ends up with the argument, “Well, would you have preferred for Saddam Hussein to remain in power? QED.” I disagree with this mode of argumentation. In reality, the point of disagreement, and what is doing the work in the discussion, is how much are you willing to sacrifice to achieve the end in question. As mentioned earlier, I’m in the high costs camp with respect to Afghanistan. Advancing human rights in North Korea, Iran, China, etc., I treat as discrete cases where options are more circumscribed. In Afghanistan, (here come the sunk costs) we already have upwards of 70,000 troops on the ground, eight years invested, and massive aid commitments.

For instance, ongoing American intervention means the gains for women can be consolidated. Part of advocating counterinsurgency is preventing the Taliban from reasserting the negation of women in Afghan society. The involuntariness of this oppression is crucial, as far as I can tell, Afghan women would like the opportunity to participate in the life of the state. Therefore, I don’t see this as an instance of what Gayatri Spivak criticized as “white men saving brown women from brown men”.

I’ll just close by saying, I have seen the Fog of War , I have read the Quiet American. In addition to the course of the Iraq war, these works have added a dimension of humility to my thinking about military intervention. But as with Iraq, in Afghanistan America can open a window of opportunity to something different. America can not decide what that “something different” will be, that is up to the people of Afghanistan (and Iraq). By no means are there guarantees of success, or guarantees that we will approve wholeheartedly of the new circumstances that emerge. But for sustainable peace, we cannot simply say, “the nation that I’m most interested in building is our own.” I believe Obama has been too cautious, but I wish the people tasked with implementing America’s strategies every success.

The gutter press

Gawker savages a Sunday Times piece that claims New York City has lost its edge. Gawker’s Foster Kamer gives about a dozen reasons why New York City is superior to London. The ensuing discussion takes place on a pretty elite level, a small coterie of people who’ve lived/worked/studied in both NY and London and can intelligently offer comments on the merits of Beckett on the West End versus Beckett on Broadway, for instance.

One line of Kamer’s critique of London stood out as particularly insightful. Kramer remarks of London,

Your tabloid newspapers make the New York Post look like The Paris Review.

Now, I know American journalism has its problems. Some are just insoluble issues of journalistic ethics writ large, like Okrent’s Law, “The pursuit of balance can create imbalance because sometimes something is true.” There are issues around anonymous sourcing, someone commented the New York Times could be renamed “government officials say,” criticizing the practice of uncritically repeating anonymously sourced information. The management of relationships with sources also poses problems, for instance profiles of administration figures that are essentially flattering puff pieces used to curry favor with potentially valuable sources (beat sweeteners) seem like skating pretty close to quid pro quo to me. There’re numerous other issues, the news becoming infotainment, or political journalism covering the horserace aspect of politics rather than the policy issues, or the economic problems of journalism.

But compared to the UK, the US media landscape seems positively healthy. The tabloids’ sensational screams are more consequential in the UK than any tabloid in the US. The largest circulation papers in the US and UK are fundamentally different types of publication. In the US the serious papers beat out the tabloids, in the UK the tabloids beat out the serious papers. The largest circulation papers in the US are the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, the New York Times, the LA Times, the Washington Post, and then the Daily News and New York Post (Wikipedia). You get pretty far into the list before you reach a tabloid. In the UK the largest circulation papers are The Sun, the Daily Mail, the Daily Mirror, the Daily Telegraph, the Daily Star, the Daily Express, then the Times, the Financial Times, and the Guardian (Wikipedia). Serious newspapers pop up here and there in the UK list, but they do not dominate.

More important than circulation figures of top papers, who is capable of driving the news coverage of other media outlets? In the US the New York Times dominates. You can form a pretty accurate forecast of what will be in the network newscasts by reading the New York Times. The Times and papers of its caliber play an important role in steering the journalism community towards the more serious events of the day. Journalists from these upper tier outlets will be the people who appear on Washington Week in Review, Charlie Rose, the Sunday political talk shows, and other US media. In the UK the journalistic landscape is less hierarchical; editors and journalists from the tabloids appear elsewhere in the UK media. It is not that I have something against the tabloid journalists personally, but the whole ethos of the tabloid newspaper is distinct from that of the more staid news organizations.

Tabloids are sensational. They will pay for stories; they will dig through divorces and drug addictions. They will tell you about the sex lives of celebrities, or non-celebrities, whatever sells. The screaming headline need not correspond to the body of the story; oftentimes there are significant nuances that are bulldozed by the headline, or the story itself. The prejudices of the paper are brought to the fore, there isn’t even a gesture towards objectivity or fairness. When you simplify and remove all the caveats, you get a substantially different tenor of news. You get hyperventilating mirroring the worst excesses of bad science journalism, PhD Comics’ excellent skewering here and here.
This outraged coverage overshadows the occasional worthy tabloid story or campaign.

Given the failings of other parts of the British media landscape, I’m thankful for the BBC.

Tear down these walls

Deterritorialization – political science-speak for the decreasing relevance of borders. In discussions of globalization, it is possible to overstate the mobility of goods and people in this new age of connectivity. Living outside the US, I see various barriers impeding progress towards further mobility. Possibly trivial, but outside the US, Hulu, Youtube, and Dailymotion country limitations are a nuisance, while inside the US, no access to BBC iPlayer. Given rights restrictions, the Great Firewall of China is not the only impediment to the free flow of information online. Internet gripes aside, still far more important roadblocks to mobility persist.

Another barrier, the exceptionally silly US proposal for a tourism tax. As a consequence, others nations are likely to impose retaliatory taxes on Americans going abroad (CT, FT). Nicknamed the Mickey Tax due to the advocacy of the Disney Corporation, the proposal would require visitors to the US to pay $15 and register their visit three days prior to departing for the US. Five dollars would go towards security measures, $10 would go towards a $200 million tourism promotion fund. As the EU Ambassador to the US said,

The proposed $10 penalty for entering the United States is being sold as a ‘tourist promotion’ measure, but only in Alice in Wonderland could a penalty be seen as promoting the activity on which it is imposed. (FT)

I would add, random administrative fees are also a nuisance; do we really need a $6 administrative fee for entry into the US via Mexico or Canada? Do we really need to nickel and dime visitors and visa-seekers this way?

A friend from East Asia who’s a PhD student in Europe described the US visa application process to me: Nightmare. She would like to attend a conference in the US, which is fine as long as she applies two dozen years in advance and is willing to give the US her firstborn child, then maybe, just maybe the US will let her in. Of course, the US is not the only offender. A friend from Eastern Europe, an EU member state mind you, got to the final stages of jobs at two Brussels consultancies only to be stymied at the last minute by work permit rules. In one instance, she had already received a job offer. Yet another frustrating nightmare (when accession was negotiated various Western European states decided to phase in the bedrock EU principle of free movement of people as applied to the new Eastern European members). These women have three masters degrees and speak five languages between them. Why all these hurdles?

The US quota for skilled worker visas (H-1B) is as silly as taxing tourists for daring to visit the US. To their discredit, the Tories would like to impose a similar annual cap on UK immigration. In an exchange with Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), Bill Gates pointed out that skilled workers are going to be hired; it is just a matter of where. Rohrabacher commented that the goal shouldn’t be to replace American B students with Indian A students, Gates replied,

And what I’ve said here is that when we bring in these world-class engineers, we create jobs around them. …so the B and C students are the ones who get those jobs around these top engineers. And if these top engineers are forced to work, say in India, we will hire the B and C students from India to work around them. (Transcript)

Beyond lifting the quota on skilled worker visas, the US should take affirmative steps to recruit and retain the highly skilled. In an age of connectivity and competing knowledge economies, the government need act as an especially insightful human resources department. As Thomas Friedman suggests, we should be,

stapling green cards to the diplomas of each of these foreign-born PhD’s. …any foreign student who gets a PhD in our country – in any subject – should be offered citizenship. I want them. The idea that we actually make it difficult for them to stay is crazy. (NYT)

I’d go further than Friedman and offer permission to study or work in the US to graduates of top universities – wherever the university. There are numerous rankings of world universities that could be used as guidelines as to which schools should qualify. The US ratifying the Lisbon Convention, recognizing qualifications across borders, would be a good start (the US is already has already signed). Also, I’d want to get rid of visa-related hassles, like fees and limitations of spouses working; eschew red tape, streamline the visa process. Ideally for prospective workers, this systematic dismantling of barriers to labor movement would be a reciprocal enterprise – I’d imagine the OECD (or ILO) working to lower barriers. Even if undertaken unilaterally, breaking down these barriers would exploit – in the best sense of the word – the US comparative advantage of being a fairly tolerant, open society. President Obama, tear down these walls.

(Perhaps more on the unskilled or undocumented later.)

Happy families

“All happy families resemble one another, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” – Leo Tolstoy

Saying Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s film Tokyo Sonata is about a dysfunctional family is like saying King Lear is about a dysfunctional family – an accurate description of sorts, but wholly inadequate. While watching the film I had two visions of the type of film this was, and it declared simple my first vision and upended my second. My first vision was that Tokyo Sonata offered a critique of patriarchy, the resonant feminist refrain that patriarchy devours all, men and women alike. Patriarchy traps both sexes in roles that are ultimately destructive to individuality. It’s as though Tokyo Sonata replied, this is an excavation and you’ve only gotten a few centimeters into a major dig.

My second vision was that Tokyo Sonata was a tragedy, resembling Requiem for a Dream in dismantling every member of the family: these are flawed people and we’re going to show in grim, excruciating detail the consequences of these flaws. I’m really glad that the film did not wholly satisfy either of my visions, the feminist analysis or the object lesson in human frailty. I’m glad because then it would be like car chases and exploding things, which no doubt have their time and place in movie-making, but are easily encapsulated. Tokyo Sonata left things altogether more murky, no tidy boxes with bows. I’ll have to see it again. And of course, I’d highly recommend it.

Lisbon!

With Czech ratification of the Lisbon Treaty the European Union has ended a nearly decade long journey of negotiations, ratifications, referenda, and more negotiations, ratifications and referenda. Intense politicking has taken place across 27 EU members to get to this point (BBC).

Now the hard work begins.

The logic of the EU is simple. This set of nations has much to gain from pooling sovereignty. Separately, various European nations are middling or minor powers; together Europe is a superpower (at least economically on par with the United States). Additionally, binding European nations together tightly promotes peace and prevents future cataclysmic conflagrations (WWI, WWII). European officials promoting Lisbon repeatedly invoke Europe on a world stage, if Europe does not come together Beijing and Washington will run the world. An additional benefit, which I don’t think other international organizations have leveraged, the EU allows European nations an extra opportunity to influence global affairs. In addition to serving as an anteroom for forming European consensus in other forums (e.g. the World Bank), the EU is itself recognized as an actor, the EU is a member of the G20.

For me, this argument in favor the EU is compelling. The argument for the EU is especially compelling to many European political elites. But the pesky public keeps getting in the way of grand designs. No less than three no votes in the path to Lisbon (France, Holland, and Ireland) even though Lisbon falls far short of the federalists’ grandest design for a United States of Europe. Instead, Lisbon aims for the less lofty goal of making a 27-member EU function more coherently. Streamline here, eliminate duplication there, and remove some national vetoes. Euro-enthusiasts, like me, were onboard from the start. What to do about that pesky public though? That is, short of following Bertolt Brecht’s wry suggestion, “dissolve the people and elect another.”

I say “pesky public” to tweak the euro-enthusiasts. Treating the public like unwelcome guests at the state formation party is unsustainable. Europe does not belong to the eurocrats, it belongs to the 400 million European citizens. Surefire, quick-fix methods for conjuring a European polity being in short supply, I can only offer the following two suggestions.

First, don’t be afraid of the heavy hitters, big beasts, the best and the brightest, or goats (governments of all the talents). A mélange of American and British ways of saying, big important people should take big important posts. Not an endorsement of Tony Blair to be president of the European Council, but he definitely has world standing in his favor. A euroskeptic MEP remarked that everyone’s third choice usually gets these jobs, resulting in low profile, non-entities in major posts. I would suggest this is not the way forward. With a presidency whose term is two and a half years (renewable once, five years max), the EU has the opportunity to make its case to the European public. “Credit claiming” is the fairly dry term political scientists ascribe to the practice of crowing about accomplishments. Someone in Europe needs to say proudly, “I did that!” Otherwise national politicians take all the credit for the good things Europe does, while pinning all the painful or difficult decisions on the EU (conveniently omitting their own responsibility in creating European laws). This imbalance of credit claiming means the EU’s image gets affixed to a hodgepodge of unpopular policies – with a number of untruths about European directives floating about as well. Euromyths like the ban on crooked bananas, the renaming of a snack food Bombay Mix (Mumbai Mix), the renaming of sausages (emulsified high-fat offal tube), or the renaming of yoghurt (mild, alternate-culture, heat-treated fermented milk) (BBC).

Second, pursue multilingualism. Mother tongue plus two additional languages (M+2) is the official policy of the EU (EurActiv). Those countries with the most monolingual citizens need to work to catch up to the multilingual nations. Language education from an early age could make a difference. In September Charlemagne’s Notebook commented,

But what jumps out at me is the grim statistic about language learning in Britain. One column reports on upper secondary students in EU countries who do not study foreign languages at all. This line in the table shows a line of tiny numbers: lots of zeroes, a couple of low percentages (eg, 3.9% of Spanish teenagers learn no foreign languages at school, a blip for Ireland (18.8% without language lessons) and then comes Britain, where more than half of all schoolchildren in upper secondary education (51.4%) learn no foreign languages at all. This is, of course, the result of a deliberate government policy. In 2003, foreign languages became voluntary for pupils in England and Wales over 14. And there you have the results. Europe is becoming bilingual, except for Britons, who are becoming monolingual.

Yes, Europe is incredibly rich to have so many languages so close together. But it means educators have to redouble efforts to create a European citizenry that can communicate with each other. Europeans need to have the realistic prospect of moving elsewhere to work or study. A more multilingual Europe opens those possibilities up beyond Erasmus students (formally European Region Action Scheme for the Mobility of University Students).

Altogether, the pro-EU elites scorn the masses at their peril. Short term victories could be endangered by backlash and retrenchment. One can only call for do-overs of referenda so many times. The trick of turning the EU Constitution into the Lisbon Treaty also seems like a stunt that can only be pulled the once. Far better to engage the public with an eye toward creating a durable European polity.