The Liberal Case Against Reparations and For an Equality New Deal

I was talking to a fellow liberal the other day about politics and social policy and she brought up reparations. Interestingly, she brought it up in such a way that she just assumed I supported the idea. To her, it was a central part of liberal dogma, so it didn't occur to her that I would disagree. But, as with the other areas where I depart from traditional liberal views, this is actually an area where I disagree with liberal dogma precisely because of my liberal values, not despite them.

Before I lay out that argument, though, let's revisit the definition. According to Wikipedia, the generally accepted definition of reparations is "a political justice concept that argues that [monetary] reparations should be paid to the descendants of slaves from Sub-Saharan Africa who were trafficked to and enslaved in the Americas as a consequence of the Atlantic slave trade."

There are immediate concerns here that pop straight out of the definition itself. For example, who exactly are the descendants of slaves? There are people alive in the United States today living and identifying as whites who are in fact descended from such slaves. They have never suffered personally from racism, nor do they face institutional or systemic barriers to success based on their ancestors' experience. Are we going to pay them? And if not, are we admitting that this is thus not at all about past slavery but about current racism?

If we are saying it is in fact more about racism than slavery, then do we simply pay reparations to all black people? Would Barack Obama, whose father was from Kenya and whose ancestors therefore never knew slavery in the Americas, be entitled to such a payment? The part of his family that reaches back to the 19th century in America is white. They were more likely to be slaveholders than slaves.

So already things are getting very muddied, and we haven't even broached the subject of what exactly reparations would accomplish. What exactly are we hoping to achieve here? Let's say we somehow magically solve the problem of identifying the whom: no one seems to be giving much thought to the consequences of making such payments. As a white male born and raised in the South, I can tell you that the plan would backfire horribly, because I know racists and I know how they think. But more importantly, the payments simply would not solve anything. 

Let's walk through the scenario.

It's January 1st, 2025. After five years of exhaustive vetting and screening, the government has finalized its list of recipients for reparations. Today, the first payments hit their accounts. Let's say we settled on $10,000 a year for 10 years. 

You're a young, African-American male named Marcus Washington (more on that soon) who has just graduated college the prior spring. It's no small miracle you accomplished that feat, given that in America, many more African-Americans per capita live in poorer areas than whites do, and we fund our schools almost entirely through the local tax base, leaving you set up to fail from the day you walked into kindergarten. You were also at a disadvantage in college because of the resource challenges you faced in high school.

Reparations will do absolutely nothing to change these facts or address this injustice.

But despite those challenges, you did it! So now you've been sending out job applications since May, but, so far, you haven't had much luck, which means this reparations money comes in handy. You're not unemployed; however, as a college graduate with a degree in engineering working 30 hours a week at 7-11, you are definitely underemployed. You've done everything right. You've even paid for a professional resume review. Yet the interviews just don't seem to materialize. A significant contributing factor is something you can't control: that name, Marcus Washington. As someone with a name the general population associates with African Americans, you're less likely to even get called in to interview. And even if you had a "whiter"-sounding name, the fact is that unemployment rates for you as an African-American are higher than they are for almost everyone else.

Reparations will do absolutely nothing to change these facts or address this injustice.

But finally, after plugging away at it for another couple of months, you get it: a coveted job in your field. Congratulations! But if you're like the average black man in America, you're earning only about 70% as much as your white peers. What's worse is that this gap has in fact widened in the past generation: your father earned on average 80% of what his white colleagues earned. We're actually going backwards on the racial wage gap. And no, you cannot dismiss this gap based on differences in levels of education: blacks earn less than whites even when adjusting for education. In other words, a black man with a PhD is on average doing worse than a white man with the same degree, so we are indeed comparing apples to apples here.

Reparations will do absolutely nothing to change these facts or address this injustice.

Still, despite earning less than your white colleagues, you're doing OK. Engineers do pretty well financially, after all, even at a 30% pay cut. So it's time to get a place of your own! No more living with Mom and Dad. So let's go apartment-hunting. Despite the fact that your community has no shortage of nice apartments, you seem to be hearing that places have no availability when you email the leasing offices. Well, maybe they do, maybe they don't, but studies show that if they see a "black-sounding" name or hear a voice on the phone they believe is that of an African-American, they are more likely to refuse to rent to you.

Reparations will do absolutely nothing to change these facts or address this injustice.

Eventually, of course, you do find an apartment. So now you have your job and your apartment. Time to relax! Let's go to the movies. As you exit your vehicle, you walk past a white family getting into their car. Is it your imagination, or do they seem to quicken their pace and lock the door as you approach? Maybe, maybe not. Hard to judge an individual situation like that. But what you do know is that many whites associate young black men with violence and danger. And racists like to trot out statistics that show that black men do indeed get convicted for more crimes than white people do. But there are two problems here: one is "get convicted for" as opposed to "commit:" blacks are more likely to be convicted or forced to plea out when charged with crimes compared to whites. The other issue is why we are looking at race as the determining factor here to begin with: it's not that blacks commit more crime than whites, it's that poorer and less educated populations commit more crimes than do wealthier and more educated ones. And for reasons that should be painfully obvious even if this is the very first time you have read about racism in America, blacks face far more hurdles to getting an education and becoming economically upward-mobile compared to whites. But of course, people don't wear t-shirts saying, "Lock Your Doors, Folks, I Grew Up Poor and Was Deprived of a Good Education by a Racist System." So people look for other visual cues to identify perceived dangers, and skin color is a very easy one to flag in a person's brain.

Reparations will do absolutely nothing to change these facts or address this injustice.

But you brush aside your irritation at this white family's caution. It's winter. Maybe they were just in a hurry to get out of the cold? So you go into the cinema and watch your movie.  And as you watch, you notice something. The more violent characters and the ones depicted as being more brutish and of lower socioeconomic standing all have names Americans associate with people of color. You're trying not to see racism everywhere, but it's disturbingly obvious. The more sympathetic characters have names that sound "whiter." Why is that, you wonder? Probably because the American scriptwriter is as subject to the same hidden prejudices and racist assumptions that so many white Americans suffer from. This isn't paranoia: it's a proven fact: white America in general - and yes, that includes even those who swear they don't have a racist bone in their bodies and actually believe that about themselves - tends to automatically conjure up images of aggression and failure simply at the mention of names that they associate with people of color, as Dr. Colin Holbrook found to his dismay in the cited study.

Reparations will do absolutely nothing to change these facts or address this injustice.

You exit the theater feeling a bit shaken. You head back to your car: your pride and enjoy: a brand-new BMW 3-series you treated yourself to as a reward for graduating and landing that great job. (Little do you know, by the way, that you paid more for that car than your white peers would have and your car insurance rates are also higher.) As you approach your vehicle, you stand in front of your shiny new Beamer and look for your keys. That's when a bright light flashes in your face and a tense-sounding voice tells you to back away from the vehicle. As a young African-American male in America, you know the drill by now. You're in an affluent neighborhood, approaching a nice car, and you're guilty of that most unforgivable of crimes, EWB: Existing While Black. You know that your life is in grave danger right now. Move your hands too quickly and you could be shot dead by an officer who most likely would not even be indicted, never mind convicted, for your execution. You acknowledge the officer verbally and very, very slowly raise your hands. He checks your identity and you prove ownership of the car. No violence this time. But what about the humiliation? The idea that you are not really even a full citizen in your own country? That every single day you have to prove both who you are and who you are not in ways that no white person will ever be asked to do in this nation? That you cannot even feel safe around the very people whose sole job is to keep our citizenry safe?

Reparations will do absolutely nothing to change these facts or address this injustice. They will do nothing to facilitate change of any kind, save one: reparations will be the new "America can't be racist, because look, we voted for a black president" meme to white America, except that the effect will be permanent and more damaging this time. And this is where I come back to my perspective as a white man raised in the South around overt racists. I know how their brains work. The day that first reparations check is mailed, racist white America will declare all racism permanently atoned for and eradicated. Think of it much the way you might think of a lawsuit settlement for a wrongful injury that debilitates a man physically and mentally for life. You write the check and you walk away. You go and live your life, feeling you've paid your debt. But what has the money changed if the victim is no longer able to function or enjoy a decent quality of life? Your guilt may be assuaged, but can the victim now magically care for himself? Walk? Think clearly? Clean up after himself? Money changes none of that. It just makes you feel less guilty.

And that in a nutshell is why I oppose reparations: it's just too damn easy. It's a way for white America to just cut a check and walk away from its responsibilities to change all the horrible injustices and barriers to success and well-being cited above (and so many more that I would literally need a book to document them all).

I can't end an objection to reparations that centers on racism without offering some alternative. It is not enough to just say "no" to reparations. We must say YES to something else. And for me, that something else is to use that same amount of money to fund an Equality New Deal, not just for African-Americans, but for all minorities and women, all the groups that to this day continue to see their success blocked by centuries-old barriers. Among the features of this Equality New Deal must be:

1) The ending of reliance on local tax bases to fund schools. Few things reduce upward economic mobility as severely as our unequal schools. If you are poor, you likely live in a place with a smaller tax base. If you have a smaller tax base, your schools get less money and fewer resources. As a result, you get a lower-quality education, and the cycle is perpetuated on down the generations. I am not suggesting anything so radical as the federalization of the American school system. Such an approach would never get off the ground and if it did, it would likely get shot down in the courts. What I am suggesting instead is that we target the poorest 33% of American school systems (as measured not by current expenditure, since that is a choice, but by per capita property tax collection in their districts, adjusted for local cost of living) and simply give them annual grants that equate to the funds needed to provide them the same resources as enjoyed by the average American school system. No strings attached: allow them to retain full, local control. The only caveat would be that progress must be demonstrated each year, and that systems that fail to improve would have to submit to temporary oversight boards in order to keep receiving the funds.

Furthermore, for the next generation, as we wait for the effects of the above measures to permeate throughout the affected populations over the coming 20-30 years, we must offer federally-funded "catch-up" programs for qualifying students. These programs would be one to two semesters of pre-college preparatory training to help students who wish to attend college, but who, because of the poor quality of the education they received, are not fully ready, despite having high school diplomas. To qualify, a student would take a standardized exam in reading, writing, mathematics, civics/history, and basic science. Based on the scores in those four areas, they would then be offered remedial courses to correct any deficiencies and ensure that they are truly ready to attend college. This will help close the performance gap we so often see in our colleges and universities when comparing the outcomes for students from poorer v wealthier school districts. It is hoped that after 30 years, this program could be scaled back or even ended if we achieve more uniform quality of education.

2) For all companies over 100 employees, make job applications race-, ethnicity-, and gender-blind. Initial applications would be submitted on line (as most are these days anyway) and assigned a number specific to to the candidate. Only after a candidate has moved to the interview round would names be required. Salary histories must be banned entirely, since they perpetuate unequal pay (given than employers often make offers based on past salaries versus what is necessarily appropriate for the job, and that perpetuates the cycle of certain groups under-performing in pay). Salaries should be based strictly on job title, education/relevant credentials, and numbers of years of related work experience.

3) Ban the box. African Americans (and other minorities) are disproportionately convicted of crimes and are forced into plea bargains at greater rates than are whites. When these involve felonies, that person is then tagged for life, and finding a job becomes exponentially more difficult. Every time an applicant has to tick that "Have you ever been convicted of a felony?" box, the likelihood of being considered for a job plummets. We must embrace the idea that once you have paid your debt to society, it is fully paid and you should not be punished for life. There are of course cases where we must make exceptions: certain sex crimes, for example, must always be considered if an applicant is applying for a job in which s/he is responsible for children or involved with other vulnerable populations, and certain types of jobs must be exempted from the rule in order to ask about crimes related to fraud and financial malfeasance. But in cases of exceptions, the scope to ask about convictions must be narrow and focused on what is strictly relevant to that particular job.

4) We must take the profits out of prisons and refocus efforts on reducing recidivism by turning our prisons into drivers of opportunity, not despair. We currently have a system in which there is a strong financial incentive to incarcerate people, and African-Americans and other minorities are disproportionately impacted by this injustice. Furthermore, once incarcerated, such institutions not only lack any incentive to engage in rehabilitation, but are in fact strongly incentivized to do the opposite: after all, for them, recidivism is just a fancy word for "repeat business and higher profits," which is unconscionable and is one of the greatest moral outrages of our day. We must therefore completely end private prisons and refocus our system on turning out ex-convicts who are ready to start a new life, not go out and commit more crimes because they often lack the skills and education to do anything else. All prisons must offer job training, GED programs, and online college courses. This is not to "reward criminals," as critics often suggest, but to keep society safe, to keep all of us secure. A person who walks out of a 10-year prison sentence with a degree and a job skill is far less likely to end up committing more crime, after all. So who do you want getting paroled? A hardened criminal who's been brutalized for the past decade, who has no hope and no future, whose only means of survival is more crime? Or an educated, employable person with prospects and a path to success? Which one of those people is more likely to murder your child in an attempted robbery tonight?

5) Law enforcement must be reformed to stop targeting people of color and must be held responsible when it does. This requires three steps at the federal level: 1) Requirement that all police officers in the United States wear body cameras when on duty to keep them accountable. Failure to comply must result in dismissal upon the third violation, and immediate dismissal if it is deemed that the failure was both intentional and related to a violent encounter. 2) All police offers must take and pass a federally-run course on racial injustice awareness. The point of such a course is not to make everyone politically correct. The point is to train officers in the facts surrounding human bias and how it impacts their jobs as law-enforcement officers, and what they can do to mitigate it. Because the ugly truth is that we all have prejudice inside us. Only by becoming consciously aware of it and learning how to manage it can we overcome its negative impacts on others. 3) All instances of police shootings of civilians must be investigated as potential federal crimes. Leaving this to local systems of justice that are often at the very root of the problem is no longer acceptable. 4) All major police departments must pursue aggressive diversity hiring policies to ensure that they look like their communities. If a department serves a city that is 40% black, 40% Hispanic, 20% white, and 51% women, then that, as closely as possible, is what their police force should look like. 5) We must institute training programs that begin to change the culture of deadly force that is so pervasive in many law enforcement communities. While such violence affects everyone, it affects minorities disproportionately. Our 'shoot first, ask questions later' attitude must change. And it can. Police forces around the world have shown us this. We have even seen successful experiments here in the US. It can be done, with the appropriate amount of dedication, training, federal funding, oversight, and regulation.

6) We must increase both enforcement of and penalties associated with all anti-discrimination laws and regulations (which in turn must be strengthened) in the areas of housing, employment, education, and consumer affairs (including lending and insurance), and work to make sure that in every case where discrimination is proven, high-profile consequences are seen to follow. This isn't just about punishing wrongdoers, but showing society at large that we do not accept such behavior. We must not only punish it with fines, but stigmatize it and drag it into the light to demonstrate our collective commitment to change. We must also go further in our efforts to regulate economic activity that either negatively targets minorities or preys on the poor (a population where minorities are over-represented). Examples are predatory payday loans and high-interest/high-cost rent-to-own programs that increase the cost of so many goods in poorer communities. We must also address inequality in our credit, credit rating, and insurance sectors, as these, too, unfairly target many minority groups, resulting in higher costs for many financial products.

These six steps would represent a generation-long Equality New Deal. It likely represents no less economic cost than a reparations program, but will pay far greater dividends. Of course, no amount of legislation, regulation, or policy-making will ever eliminate the scourge of prejudice. Sadly, I believe it will always be with us in some form or another, always finding new ways to express its ugliness even as society moves past others. But such a New Deal can mitigate and, hopefully, eventually end the effects such prejudice has on a population that has been oppressed since the dawn of Western occupation of this continent. Along the way, the economic strength it will unleash will help our entire society and become a driver of growth and opportunity for all Americans.

On Being Tall

I often write about pretty serious stuff on this much-neglected blog, but today I am going to tackle a decidedly unimportant topic: being tall.

I was chatting with a somewhat vertically-challenged friend of mine some time ago when she commented, suddenly and seemingly apropos of nothing, "It must be nice being tall." It took me a moment to understand what had prompted her comment. We were walking through a grocery store and I was getting something off a shelf, a shelf I realized she would not have been able to reach herself. I was doing something she would have needed to ask help with...probably from a passing Friendly Neighborhood Tall Person like me.

It got me to thinking about being tall. It's not something I usually think about, any more than I would expend much mental energy thinking about, say, having dimples, hazel eyes, or Greek toes. It's just a feature of my physical existence. But her question sent me down the rabbit hole. Is being tall very different? Is it better? Are there disadvantages?

I started by asking that same friend how she saw the differences between navigating life at 4'11" (150 cm) versus at 6'2" (188 cm). Aside from the obvious things, such as managing shelves, I was surprised to hear her say that she envied how people just seem to make room for tall people versus short people. "When we're out in public together, you just stroll through the world without a care, and everyone is practically diving out of your way. I have to dart and dive my way through crowded places, and nobody moves for me." I am sure she was exaggerating a bit here to make her point, but it made me laugh out loud, this image of myself obliviously coddiwompling my way through the world as people desperately leap out of my path.

It may surprise shorter people to hear this, but I do not usually even feel aware of my height. After all, while 6'2" is tall, it is hardly freakishly tall. I don't really feel tall. I feel like a pretty average human being, physically speaking. Until, that is, I experience The Moment. The Moment is what I call that occasional experience when I am out in public and I see someone from across a room who does indeed look freakishly tall to me, only to find as I approach him or her that we are in fact the same size, or s/he is even shorter than I am. It's rather unsettling, because I suddenly feel extremely self-conscious about my height. I think to myself, "Is that what I look like to everyone? This hulking, lumbering bipedal tower of awkwardness? A Lurch?!" Fortunately, being taller than 99% of my fellow humans means I do not have to experience The Moment all that often.

One of the most challenging parts about being tall is, happily, something that goes away after childhood; but it does make that period of life difficult at times, as I am witnessing second-hand now with my own young children, both of whom are quite tall for their ages (98th percentile in height for their gender). One might think it is nothing but wonderful to be taller than all one's peers, but it comes with problems. Believe it or not, these problems are created almost entirely by the adults in their lives. The fact is that no matter how many times you remind people they're dealing with a four-year-old boy, they simply can't help judging the child by the standards their eyes are telling them they should be applying. When your four-year-old looks like a six- or seven-year-old, people treat him as such, and expect his behavior to reflect that perceived age. It's doubly problematic if you have a child who is also quite articulate and intelligent for his age. When my middle son was that age, for example, we constantly had issues with teachers and caregivers applying an impossible standard to him, because he was the size of a first-grader and had the vocabulary of a fifth-grader. But despite what their eyes and ears were telling them, they were still dealing with a normal four-year-old boy, one who was no more mature than his peers (and acted accordingly). It got to the point where we would write notes to, say, camp counselors, just to remind them. One summer, we were fortunate to get a camp counselor who was extremely sympathetic: she was over six feet (183 cm) herself, and immediately related to our concerns based on her own experiences growing up.

I remember practical issues from my own childhood, too. One summer, when I was 12, my local amusement park ran a promotion where they were giving kids a discount based on their size, up to age 12. The taller you were, the bigger the discount. (As an aside, can you imagine such a promotion these days?! I am a little horrified they thought this was a good idea. But this was 1983. A different time.) My mother sent me with my birth certificate, because she knew they were never going to believe I was 12. She was right. Even with the birth certificate in hand, I sensed they thought I was getting away with something.

As an adult, I continue to reap unfair benefits from being tall, benefits that far outweigh discounted roller coaster rides. Sadly, society prefers its men, and especially its leaders, to be taller, and judges them accordingly. It's an absurd notion, given what really counts in modern civilization, but of course that is just another example of how our physical and psychological evolution has yet to catch up with even the idea of civilization. During the 99.9% of our evolution, being taller/bigger had clear advantages, especially for leaders. Being bigger meant being more imposing, being more able to impose one's will physically, and being perceived as stronger and more prepared to face the challenges of a hunter-gatherer existence.

But being taller does nothing to make me a better leader, or even person, in a post-modern service economy fueled by mechanized agriculture. If anything, it is objectively disadvantageous. I require more fuel but in exchange for not providing more. I take up more space in a world in which space is often at a premium. And in an economy in which longevity is no longer a problem for the tribe (as it allows workers to contribute for longer, as opposed to being a burden to the tribe when people outlived their ability to hunt or gather), I am at a disadvantage, too: shorter people live longer.

Despite all this, though, I am afforded completely undeserved advantages. Taller men earn more. We have an easier time dating. We are more likely to win elections. People even listen to us more. I have witnessed this last phenomenon many times in my career as a businessman. People just seem to want to defer to me more than they do to shorter people, which is just patently absurd. Height gives me no greater insights or wisdom or intelligence or experience. And yet I very often myself leading meetings because apparently everyone just seems to subconsciously decide that Tall Chief Ooga Booga Man must be in charge of this particular hunting party. It often makes me wonder where I would be in life had I stopped growing at, say, 5'7" (170 cm). Had I, as millions of shorter men are forced to do, had to rely strictly on my actual talents and intelligence, would I have achieved as much? I like to think so. After all, there are millions of highly successful short people. But I will never know for sure how big a contribution an accident of genetics has made in my life.

So, all in all, do I like being tall? It's a mixed bag. There are days I wish I could just move unobtrusively through the world. And as a lover of travel, I have often found my height a limiting factor. (I could write a whole blog entry on adventures I have missed out on due to my size, and it's no treat walking through the streets of, say, Beijing, towering over almost every single person by a whole head, banging my noggin into low-hanging signs.) And as someone who dates, I occasionally wonder, "Would this woman be out with me right now if I were short?"

That last point makes me crazy. As someone who has used dating apps, I can tell you that there are far too many women out there who put too much emphasis on a man's height. It's incredible to me how many women simply reject shorter men out of hand. Many put it right there in their profiles: "No one under 6 feet (183 cm), please!" is a very common refrain. I try not to judge them too harshly. After all, physical attraction just is what it is. You can't control your attraction to taller people, any more than another person can stop himself from being attracted to, say, brunettes. The hormones want what the hormones want, I suppose. Still, it's a bit heart-breaking to think about all the wonderful relationships that will never happen just because that charming, intelligent, witty fellow happened to be a few inches too short according to some random cut-off.

Overall, being tall sometimes makes me feel a bit like a lottery-winner or heir at a gathering of self-made millionaires: I have what they have, but came to it more through luck than merit. But that doesn't make me less grateful. The occasional sore forehead aside, it's not a terrible thing to be.

An Unemotional, Amoral Argument Against Capital Punishment

This past week, the state of Texas executed white supremacist John William King for the 1998 hate-crime of murdering an African American truck driver named James Byrd, Jr. While I can't say I personally mourned Mr. King's passing, I do object to the fact that we as a society murdered him in an act of primitive revenge unworthy of a so-called civilized society. And I was disturbed to see how many so-called liberals were cheering his execution. To me, the idea of a pro-capital punishment liberal makes as much sense as a pro-KKK civil rights activist.

But of course, as soon as one begins a debate about capital punishment, emotions immediately flare and the 'arguments' for and against rely very little on facts and logic and very much on appeals to our baser instincts. Inevitably, religion gets brought into the argument. As usual, either side of this moral argument (as with every other moral argument) can equally rely on their favorite holy book to support their position. Just as I could make equally strong arguments for or against rape, incest, slavery, murder, infanticide, and even polytheism using the Bible, for example, I could build a strong case both for and against capital punishment using that maddeningly inconsistent and morally ambiguous text. (Yet another reason I am not a believer.)

So let's just leave morality, emotion, and religion completely out of the debate, shall we? If none of these can give us clarity and each can be used equally easily by both sides, it seems illogical to rely on any of them to settle the argument. Let's just proceed with facts and evidence, and in the process dispel some myths and misunderstandings about capital punishment, to wit:

1) Its value as a deterrent to others. The argument here is based in human psychology. It's very simple: I don't want to die, so I will be less likely to commit a capital offense knowing that doing so could cost me my life. This argument shows a very poor understanding of both 1) the evidence we've accumulated about the deterrent value of capital punishment and 2) basic human psychology. To the first point, the most obvious flaw in the argument that it is a deterrent is the fact that the United States executes more people than all but five other countries (China, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Egypt, Somalia) and yet has the highest violent crime rate of any highly developed industrial country (by quite a wide margin). So if capital punishment is doing such a bang-up job of scaring potential murderers, why don't we have the sixth-lowest violent crime rate after those other countries who execute so many people? (Note that none of those other five countries is exactly a peaceful paradise either.)

But, you may understandably object, is it fair to compare us to other countries, given our other unique qualities, especially the ubiquity of firearms in the U.S.? OK, so let's compare internally. Do the states that execute the most have lower violent crime rates than non-death penalty states? Surely all those potential murderers are too scared to do the deed in bloodthirsty Texas, for example? Well, apparently they aren't. Texas has a homicide rate that is three times higher than Maine, which does not have the death penalty. And the most violent state in America, Louisiana, ranks 13th in total number of executions since 1976.

I believe this failure of capital punishment to act as a deterrent is strongly related to the second weakness of the deterrent argument itself: basic human psychology. First of all, even if a murderer is acting on a premeditated  plan, few criminals count on being caught, so I do not believe there is much mulling over the consequences going on here. In other words, the idea of being executed only impedes one's plot to the extent that one plans on getting caught in the first place.

But secondly and most importantly, most murders are not committed while the perpetrator is in a state of mind to consider the consequences in any rational way.

Let’s say I am an abusive husband intent on permanently silencing my wife and dispatching my children while I’m at it, I am hardly in the frame of mind to stop and carefully consider what this means for my life expectancy. That's the last thing on my mind until after the deed is done, at which point it is too late for the death penalty to weigh on my reasoning. 

But of course, once I have committed these murders, suddenly the death penalty is all I can think about. And what exactly am I now thinking? The police are closing in. A cop has just pulled me over. I have my gun at the ready. I strongly suspect he's pulled me over because the jig is up and there is an APB out on me and my vehicle. So if self-preservation is my goal, what is the logical thing for me to do in a state with the death penalty? Simple: murder the cop, because I know it's them or me. And I should also eliminate anyone else who stands in my way. 

And this is not a hypothetical at all: how many times have you read stories of murderers going on sprees after they kill their first victim(s), only to die in a hail of bullets in a shootout that often takes law-enforcement officers' and other innocent lives? But what's my smart play if I am in a non-death penalty state and the cops are closing in? Simple: try my best to get away, but, if all else fails, turn myself in peacefully, because that guarantees my survival (while violently resisting risks getting me shot).

The third and final issue with the appeal to the psychology of the human survival instinct is that it is by no means a given that a rational person will view life imprisonment as preferable to the death penalty. While some people might desperately seek to avoid it (and thus become even more violent once one crime has been committed, as above), others may find the prospect of execution as preferable to life imprisonment and thus not be deterred at all. Indeed, for people of this mentality, capital punishment may seem like an easy way out compared to the alternatives of either prison or suicide.

So in summary, the deterrent argument is supported neither by the actual evidence we've accumulated nor by what we know about human psychology and basic human nature. 

2) Its cost. Perhaps I should have led with this, given that it is most frequently the first non-emotional argument I hear. It is simple in its chilling calculus: "Why should I, an American taxpayer, have to pay to keep a murdering scumbag alive, fed, clothed, and housed for life?" It's extremely easy to dispense with this argument: lawfully killing people in a country with a strong commitment to rule of law is a very expensive business, and is far, far more expensive than simply imprisoning them for life. This is so well documented and such an easy calculation that I won't bother going into further detail when others have already done all the research.

Of course, the obvious counter to this argument is that we should simply streamline this process and kill our victims more quickly and efficiently. And all we have to do to achieve this goal of emulating countries like Iran, Saudi Arabia, North Korea, and China, is to completely abandon our centuries-long commitment to the rule of law and our tradition of juris prudence. In short, all we have to do shake off is our democracy and everything our country stands for. Easy peasy.

3) Its equality of application. Another argument typically thrown out to support the death penalty is that it serves to reinforce our collective moral beliefs by teaching citizens that actions have consequences. However, objectively evaluated, it teaches no such lesson at all. Quite the contrary: even a casual observer of our penal system would quickly conclude that the true lesson to be drawn is that in our society, at best, some actions have some consequences for some people some of the time. This is not a matter of debate. Simply look at how the death penalty is applied. According to the ACLU, people of color, for example, make up 43% of those executed since 1976, far out of proportion either to their population or to their crimes. And your skin color as an accused criminal isn't the only area in which the system is unfair: your skin color as a victim matters, too. People accused of killing white people are far more likely to be executed than people accused of killing people of other races. So if capital punishment is meant to be an expression of our values, what does it say about our values when it so clearly favors whites? I blush at the thought of answering that damning question.

4) Its reversibility. This takes no time to cover. There are two easily proven statements here: 1) the United States has often executed innocent people and 2) to my knowledge, death remains an irreversible condition. If both of these statements are accepted as true, and in the absence of a methodology to reverse the first fact going forward (quite impossible), then the death penalty cannot be called a workable solution for a society that claims to value justice. If we could magically ensure that all those convicted  of capital crimes are indeed guilty, we would "only" have the three issues above to contend with. But given that University of Michigan professor Samuel Gross estimates that up to 4% of current death row inmates may in fact be innocent of their crimes, I would say we're in no pending danger of having to fall back solely on those other factors.

So in conclusion, the death penalty is not a deterrent, is not cost-effective, is not evenly applied in a way that reflects our aspirational values, and is irreversible and thus cannot be fairly applied, given our imperfect system of determining true guilt. Therefore, the death penalty is, logically, an unacceptable option for any civilized and rational society. 

Quod Erat Demonstrandum. 

BESTism, or how we can save capitalism from hollow consumerism

Before you dive into this piece, you might want to go back and read the original blog piece in which I introduced BESTism. It will save us both some time! 

You back already? That was a suspiciously fast read, but OK!

So as you know from having read that original piece (which you totally read, right?!), my goal is to suggest an alternative to our current system of consumerism in an effort to save capitalism from itself, because my feeling is that if we don't, the ever-widening inequality of our current system and the sense of purposelessness it brings will eventually cause it to collapse, and that would be catastrophic for our society.

Let's start by attacking and destroying a false premise, to wit: that capitalism and consumerism are essentially synonymous and the latter is inevitable in the former. You have only to examine other capitalist countries to see that in fact there is nothing inevitable about it if the people and their leaders choose to avoid it. We have not taken than route here in the US, so our economy is 70% based on consumer demand. And look where it has left us. Most people feel our country is on the wrong track. Millions of Americans feel hopeless and without a sense of purpose, driving addictions and suicide rates to ever-higher peaks. Opioid addiction is skyrocketing. Suicide rates have risen an astonishing 30% in just 17 years. I even think our obesity epidemic is partially due to this sense of hopelessness: we are becoming a nation of nervous, emotional eaters.

I believe these trends are tied to how hollow we collectively feel our pursuits are. There is no unifying sense of purpose. There is no moonshot. No war on poverty. No grand goals and projects to make us feel that we are all contributing to something bigger than we are as individuals. To change that, I propose we refocus our economic activity, not through command-and-control communism, but by a modified form of safety-net capitalism in which we direct more resources towards Building,  Exploration, Science, and Teaching.

Let me go ahead and rip a Band-Aid off for you right now: this absolutely means higher taxes for everyone. But before you balk too loudly at that, I ask you to consider not the COST of your current tax burden but your RETURN on it. Are you happy as a citizen? Are you economically secure and confident that you could stay that way if you encountered any setback? Are you healthy and assured of coverage if that changes? Are you confident in the infrastructure you rely on every day? If you answered no to those questions, or even most of them, then you should consider that perhaps you're getting a poor return on your investment with your taxes.

Before we move on to the BEST, let's start with two dependencies: health and basic economic security. If you don't have those two things, nothing else matters and you can't focus on the 'big picture,' since you are forced to spend all your energy on merely surviving  (which is key to why Republicans' success relies on keeping people poor and unhealthy). And right now, too many Americans don't have those basics. So to me, any successful system in the 21st century is going to have to have two features: universal healthcare and basic guaranteed income. I believe the simplest route to providing those is to expand Medicare to everyone, allow the importation of cheaper drugs from places like Canada, allow Medicare to use its leverage to negotiate better drug prices, and to send every US citizen and legal resident aged 18 and older $1040.83 a month (in 2019 dollars, adjusted by the trailing year CPI minus 0.5% every year, and fully adjusted for inflation every five years). Parents would also receive $368.33 per month per minor dependent. To keep the system simple, to avoid fraud, and to avoid rural voters becoming resentful of urban ones, I do not think we should make regional/urban COL adjustments. If local municipalities want to make up the difference, they can introduce local schemes to do that, funded by local taxes. For example, New York City may wish to introduce a local tax to supplement their UBI (universal basic income), given that one can't even rent a room in that city at that rate. Another advantage of UBI is that it eliminates our complex web of welfare programs. Combined with universal Medicare, we could eliminate dozens of programs, from Medicaid to SNAP to CHIP. And while yes, taxes would be quite high, keep in mind that your income is now supplemented and you never have to worry about healthcare premiums (except for Medicare supplements) and everyone is getting the UBI, so you're getting back a lot of that money. One question many people will want to ask is, does EVERYONE get the UBI? And the answer is yes. The goal is to avoid class resentment. We all get the exact same check every month, and everyone pays in. (And speaking of paying in, this system assumes we lift the cap on Social Security contributions. Retirement should be simplified, too, with Social Security payments simply becoming a threefold increase in your UBI check starting on your 68th birthday.)

A supplementary way to ensure everyone has the basics is to make work worthwhile. That means a minimum wage of $15 per hour for everyone aged 18 and over, to be phased in over four years,  and then to increase to $20 within four years of that. After that, we should permanently solve the minimum wage issue by pegging it to the CPI. It should increase automatically by the CPI minus 0.5% points every year, and have a catch-up with CPI every five years. (This is to avoid sparking inflation.) 

The above measures would be paid for by the appropriate combination of payroll, capital gains, and dividend taxes, and a yearly 4% wealth tax on the value of everyone's non-retirement stock/bond/mutual fund portfolios and bank accounts, with the first $10,000,000 exempt (with that threshold to increase automatically by the CPI every year).

So, now we have healthy citizens who don't live in constant fear of losing their jobs. All but the very least materialistic people are still incentivized to work, because very few people are happy living on such a paltry sum (though at least you won't starve if you're one of those people). Now we can focus on actually accomplishing something as a society, by dedicating more to doing our B.E.S.T.

1) Building. Think about all the ancient civilizations you studied in school. Rome. Egypt. Greece. Tell me the first thing that comes to mind. If you're like most people, I suspect your brain immediately conjured up images of amphitheaters, coliseums, pyramids, and temples. In short, the legacy you associate with these civilizations is most tangibly expressed in the buildings they left behind for us. What will future civilizations think of us based on our own works? Not much, quite frankly. They might be impressed with a few isolated works of architectural genius and a stadium or two. But mostly their archaeologists will just scratch their heads and say, "well, they certainly liked their strip malls and Starbucks, didn't they?"  

Another challenge for our country is our crumbling infrastructure. Thanks to the GOP's "Starve the Beast" philosophy, our investment in infrastructure has been entirely too low for decades now. The American Society of Civil Engineers gives us a D+. And I find that to be generous. Collapsing bridges, crumbling roads, outdated airports, poor public transportation: our country is quite literally falling apart. 

My recommendation is to drive both cultural and non-consumerist economic growth by making massive investments in building and infrastructure, both to leave a better legacy and to increase our current quality of life.

To the first goal, I would love to see every state and all five territories submit plans for a state monument to commemorate each locale's people, history, and culture, to be financed by the states and territories but with each dollar matched 1:1 in federal funds. Each state's legislature would approve the final project and its location, with Congress having a say in approving the matching funds in each individual case. Think St. Louis Arch, Statue of Liberty, etc.

To the second goal, we need to invest, invest, invest. To that end, I would suggest a ten-year, 2.8% tax on every transaction in the United States, including B2B ones and all capital gains and dividends (on top of current taxes). After 10 years, it would drop to a permanent 1.8%. In addition, we would need a permanent $1-a gallon-gas tax, to be increased by the trailing CPI + 0.1% every year. This is only fair: American drivers are not currently paying for the roads and bridges they drive on. Furthermore, this tax helps cover the negative economic, health, and environmental externalities associated with driving, and also offers a strong incentive for people to economize on gas consumption and seek alternative forms of transportation. 

This massive investment in infrastructure wouldn't just be about getting an A+ on our roads, bridges, railroads, ports, and airports. It would also be about expanding our transportation options, with investments in regional high-speed rail and, if the technology pans out, hyperloops.

2) Exploration. Few things gave Americans as much pride as our accomplishments during the Space Race of the 1950s to early 1970s. Putting a human being on the moon was an achievement for the  ages and to this day, half a century later, it stands as an enduring reminder of our former greatness. We can return to that greatness by kicking off a new, ambitious Space Race. But we should not just look to space: our oceans represent another Final Frontier, with so much of them still unexplored. Such exploration could teach us volumes about biodiversity, ocean sustainability, even basic biology and zoology, since we would doubtless discover new species. So aside from investing far more in NASA and getting them on their way to a quick return to the moon and a Mars landing by 2032, we should also establish an Oceanographic Exploration Agency. Finally, while it may sound like outlandish science fiction, we should also invest more in the greatest exploration of all: SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence), or at any rate for basic extraterrestrial life. Research in this area in the past decade has shown that, with the right investment, our generation may be the last to think itself alone in the universe. I am not suggesting we have much hope of actually communicating with any alien civilizations. Unfortunately, the physics and the sheer size of the distances between star systems make this is highly unlikely if not impossible. But we are living in an age where we may yet be able to prove the existence of such life, even if it turns out to be simple in nature.

These initiatives would be funded by a 0.2% tax on all transactions in the United States, including B2B ones and including capital gains and dividends (on top of current taxes).

3) Science. Basic science drives technology. Technology drives change. Change drives culture and gives society a sense of direction. I think we need to invest far more in basic scientific research, with the benefits shared with all. I believe this can be done within our existing framework of universities, colleges, and government agencies, so to me this is just a simple question of investing more money through university/college grants and agency budget increases for agencies like DARPA, NIH, NIMH, CDC, etc. We also need to spur innovation in clean energy research, and nothing motivates innovation like necessity. I therefore propose that we phase in a simple mandate that wouldn't even require Congressional action: over the next ten years, every business with more than 50 employees that does government contracting work must be able to demonstrate it is getting 10% of its energy from renewables, increasing 10 percentage points each year. This will drive demand from energy consumers, and that will in turn drive innovation and change among energy providers. Another simple step requiring only executive action would be to declare that effective immediately, the US government will only purchase electric or hybrid vehicles for all its civilian vehicle fleet acquisitions. 

4) Teaching. Education isn't just a goal for its own sake. A better-educated society is a happier, more productive society, not to mention a society better equipped to drive the three goals above. The first thing we have to do is stop failing our poor communities. Since so much of school funding is driven by the local tax base, poor communities are stuck in a vicious cycle: too poor to educate their kids, who then grow up to get lower-paying jobs, which keeps the tax base low, which keeps school funding low. To solve this, I think we need to look at the poorest 40% of school systems in the United States and invest enough in them from federal funds to bring their spending levels up to the national median each year. To keep local government from slashing funds in order to qualify for more funds, we would measure this by the per-capita income of the residents of the school system, not by the amount of funds the locality chooses to dedicate, and funding levels would be judged by where they stood before the program was announced. These funds would be no-strings-attached. Let the local school systems decide how to educate their kids. The only caveat would be that we would need to set maximums for capital investments and minimums for teach salaries, because American school systems have an unfortunate tendency to over-invest in the former and under-invest in the latter compared to other countries.

Higher education. I hate the idea of government price controls. I truly do. Command-and-control economies always fail. But our colleges and universities are drunk with power. They know kids need those diplomas, so they keep jacking up tuition prices, often to spend on the most unnecessary of "investments." As a result, the ratio of tuition to average income gets more unsustainable every year. I propose a 30-year moratorium on real-dollar increases in tuition, with both private and public universities limited to tuition increases equal to the CPI minus one percentage point each year or wage growth minus one percentage point each year, whichever is lower. This needs to last a generation to undo the obscene increases of the past generation, increases that have seen the end of the age when people could work their way through school on their own and the dawn of the age of massive student debt. Tight regulations and oversight would be required in order to avoid the creation and exploitation of loopholes. (Think "Oh, we didn't increase TUITION. We increased USER FEES. See, that's totally different!") I also propose that all college students receive $2000 per month while enrolled in school, with assistance ending for any student whose overall GPA falls below 1.8 on the 4-point system. This assistance would last two years for an Associate's degrees, four years for a Bachelor's degree (five in special cases, e.g. some engineering undergraduate degrees that take five years). Students would be on their own for graduate work. Finally,  we need to reverse the law that made it illegal to include student debt in bankruptcies. There is no rational reason this debt should be excluded. It was a sell-out to the student loan industry, nothing more. 

These goals would be funded by a 5% tax on every transaction in the United States, including B2B ones, and on all capital gains and dividends.

In all cases where we raise money from taxes on transactions, this would include on sales to or from the government. It may sound silly for the government to pay itself taxes, but it's important we capture revenue from the entire economy, so the taxes would be transferred from the purchasing agency to the IRS.

One final word on revenue. To achieve our goals, we are going to have to address the elephant in the room: our out-of-control and irrational military spending. I am not a dove. In a world in which authoritarian regimes like Russia and China are on the rise, we cannot unilaterally disarm or even slightly weaken our military readiness. But our budget long ago stopped being about military readiness and efficiency. It is about delivering pork to Congressional districts and to the defense contractors who pay the lobbyists and contribute to campaign funds. Consider the fields of tanks that have never been and will never be used (and the military knew that when they bought them); the planes that were obsolete before they went into production; the ships that don't even work. These are all billions and billions of wasted dollars that do absolutely nothing to strengthen America. Quite the contrary: they weaken us. Meanwhile, our soldiers are paid disgracefully and often do not have the things they need. And don't even get me started on how shabbily we treat our veterans.

So what needs to happen? We need to establish a non-partisan, Congressionally-appointed commission to do a two-year, program-by-program audit and evaluation of the entire military budget for all branches. We need to evaluate not just programs but bases, both domestic and foreign, as well as all inventory, all with only one question in mind: does this help us face the threats of the 21st century, including the three main threats (terrorism, cyber warfare, and the potential for wars with China and Russia)? If it doesn't, it needs to go. Also, we need to pay our soldiers better, especially the enlisted ones. I think it is very realistic to cut military spending by 15%, increase pay for enlisted by 10% and commissioned officers by 5%, and actually INCREASE our military readiness and strength in the process. This needs to be a standing committee once its work is done, because we need to rely on them, not partisan pork-seekers in Congress, to evaluate what is best for our defense. Congress could agree to pass only legislation that includes commission-approved programs and budgets. This takes the political pressure off of them, as they can say to constituents that they are bound to obey the recommendations of the program. This could easily save us $120 billion a year.

So there it is. That is my model for how capitalism can save itself. No big takeovers of industry by the government. Minimal interference in the capitalist free markets. Just an investment in making us a healthy, happy, educated society with a sense of common purpose and a dedication to leave a livable planet and a vibrant legacy for our children and our descendants.

Travelogue: Madrid, Toledo, Mérida, Elvas, Badajoz, Barcelona

I've just returned from my holiday in Spain (with a brief foray into Portugal). It was, as all my trips to Spain have always been, an absolute delight!

Day I:

I arrived in Madrid early Saturday morning, 14 October 2017. I went immediately to my hotel to squeeze in a nap ahead of the arrival of a friend who was coming down from London for the weekend. (It's a sad fact that I simply cannot sleep on planes, so I was exhausted.) Happily, the hotel had a room available that early. I managed to sleep until my friend arrived around midday, at which point we headed out to the Prado. This was to be an important pilgrimage for us both: I had not been to this, one of my favorite museums, in well over a decade; and for her it was a return to the place where, many years earlier, she had first become inspired to study art history and become a curator. And what a privilege for me to visit such a place with an expert! So after a quick stop for lunch, we entered that hallowed place that contains so many of my favorite artists, such as Goya, Velázquez, Rosales, Tintoretto,  Fortuny, and El Greco. The best rooms (in my humble opinion) are Goya's Black Room (from his later period) and the Velázquez rooms. Easily my two favorite pieces are Goya's Duelo a garrotazos and Fortuny's Malvas reales, the former for thematic reasons; the latter for sheer aesthetics.

The one thing I did find disturbing amidst all this beauty, however, is the clear roots of modern Western racism. In almost every depiction of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, they are depicted as being distinctly European (which is of course absurd given when and where they lived), while all enemies of the family are usually painted with darker skin tones and decidedly more 'ethnic' features. Little wonder that to this day, Jesus is a Caucasian in the minds of most Western Christians. 

After the Prado, we spent some time decompressing after beauty-overload and then headed out to dinner at my all-time favorite restaurant anywhere: Restaurante Sobrino de Botín, or simply Botín. I first ate there in Spring of 1991 with my first ex, who grew up in Madrid. It has been open since 1725, and has witnessed an impressive portion of Spanish history. Goya worked there as a waiter before making it as a painter, for example. Hemingway ate there often (though if all claims are to be believed in Madrid, apparently he ate and slept pretty much everywhere). But unlike many places blessed with a long history and an excellent location, Botín doesn't rest on these laurels: it is legitimately some of the best Spanish cuisine to be had. But for all the delightful choices on the menu, for me there is only one thing to order: cochinillo asado, or suckling pig. Preceded by a plate of jamón ibérico, and paired with a bottle of Muga, it is the ideal meal for any lover of Spanish cuisine. We were even treated to entertainment when a local tuna stopped by!

Day II:

Sunday was our trip down to Toledo, a place I hadn't visited for many years.  As the weather was beautiful, I rented a convertible for the one-hour drive down, and was very glad I did! What a gorgeous day for it! The temperature was ideal, around 25C/77F, and there was abundant sunshine. My friend joked that if she could pick a day to die, it would be this and she'd go out like Isadora Duncan. (I'm happy to report she avoided this quick if gruesome death.) We spent the day exploring that ancient and wondrous town, stopping by the Alcázar, the cathedral, monastery, and many other amazing sites. I cannot recommend this town highly enough to visitors. Since my friend is a far better photographer than I, I am shamelessly appropriating her pictures from that day.

Day two ended with me dropping off my friend at the airport, as she had to be back at work Monday morning to wrap up her project in London.

Day III:

Day three during the day was just wandering Madrid. I toured the palace and its gardens, the modern (and frankly hideous and pointlessly derivative) modern cathedral, and the plazas, and just generally made every attempt to lose myself in the city. My interactions with the locals were a constant delight. I love the madrileño dialect of Spanish, so just listening to them is a pleasure in itself. But it's also about charm of the way they interact with one another, a sort of lighthearted brusqueness that hides a certain warm humor.

I won't get points for originality, but the fact is that evening three was identical to evening one, only with a different friend: a return to Botín! We had a lovely evening discussing current events in Spain. My friend, an entrepreneur, felt very strongly that the government itself is the worst enemy of the economy, especially give how difficult and expensive they make it for independent contractors to contract me and work for others. Regardless of how little you earn, just by being classified as one of these workers, you owe the central government a minimum monthly tax, a tax that may in fact surpass your income. Little wonder that such policies do nothing to encourage the very entrepreneurialism Spain claims to promote.

Day IV:

For day four, I rented a convertible (from Sixt, a mistake I will never make again, I promise!) and set out to fulfill two travel goals: see Mérida and cross the border into Portugal. I took my time traversing Castilla-LaMancha and Extremadura, stopping for a while in the medieval town of Oropesa, which had caught my eye from the road. A walled city with an impressive old castle (which is now a parador), it was a quaint stopover and is well worth a couple of hours of your time if you find yourself passing through. 

I finally arrived in Mérida after sundown. My hotel was the Ilunion Mérida Palace, right on the main plaza. After exploring some of the sites by night, I decided just to eat and turn in. As it was a weeknight and off season, the restaurant I chose near my hotel was mostly empty, despite it being the hour at which many locals would normally be eating (though well after the hour at which many tourists would be). I had a charming and kind Chilean waiter who chatted with me for a bit while I had what must have already been my fifth or sixth (but far from last!) plate of jamón ibérico of the trip. It was an excellent way to wind down a long day of travel!

Day V 

I awoke early to find that I would need an umbrella! It was pouring down rain as I went out for my coffee in the plaza. Fortunately, I was able to purchase an umbrella quite nearby and go about my sightseeing. I had come principally for the Roman ruins, of which Mérida has an impressive array, not least of which is the longest bridge the Romans ever built (800 meters, or half a mile). The city, whose name is a corruption of Emerita Augusta, referring to the Roman veterans of Augustus's army who were permitted to settle it in 25 BCE, is a history-lover's paradise. The bridge, theater/temple, and amphitheater are in amazing states of preservation (and restoration). One truly gets an impression of what daily life must have been like here. Equally impressive is the Moorish fortress (Alcazaba) by the river. It was built on the ruins of earlier Roman structures. All in all, I would say there are few places that provide a better sense of the many disparate influences throughout Spanish history, from Roman to Visigothic to Moorish to Christian.

                            Entrance where gladiators emerged to fight for their lives and for the amusement of the residents of the town.

                                                                                   Where state and religion meet to enforce Roman values.

                                         Well-preserved/restored Roman tiles/mosaics.

                                 Architectural wonder. The Roman Empire's longest bridge at 800m/0.5miles.

The clouds parted in the late morning, and by early afternoon I was on my way to Elvas, Portugal. As I flew over the border without hitting the breaks (never mind producing a passport or exchanging currency), I was reminded of the truly inspiring political achievement that we take for granted these days: the European Union. Everyone takes digs at its institutions, and some are even seeking its demise. But stop and reflect that on a continent where bullets and bombs were whizzing across contested borders as recently as two generations ago, borders separating mortal enemies whose conflicts spanned centuries, one can now drive non-stop and quite peacefully from the southern tip of Iberia to the icy north of Scandinavia. It is nothing short of an accomplishment for the ages. 

                                         Now entering another country without stopping, defying millennia of tribalism 

Upon arriving in Elvas, my immediate objective was food, as I had had nothing but coffee that morning. I wandered the town square near where I parked, slowly making my way to the castle. After a bit of aimless but happy meandering, I came upon a restaurant whose specialty seemed to be 'bread soup.' Apparently this does not mean soup made of bread, but rather a hearty, thick soup with cut-up sausages into which one adds thin pieces of bread before consuming. It made for a surprisingly filling meal, and the Portuguese red wine was delightful. But what pleased me most was the hand-made bags in which bread slices were served. I asked the waiter about them, and he gave me the name of the local artisan who made them. After lunch, I made a beeline to her shop and bought two. Apparently the patchworks on them were not random: each patch represented a city or region in Portugal.

                                                    Portuguese bread bag from Elvas

After lunch and my trip to to the local artisan's shop, I wandered the two and enjoyed the beautiful castle, a local church (Sé Catedral Nossa Senhora d’Assunção), and the charming town square. There, I was delighted to witness a large group of local kids sitting near me at the café. Instead of sitting around starting at their phones, they were singing songs together and laughing. It quite a nice change!

Church, exterior

Church, interior

Random street scene in Elvas

                                                    A lovely example of Portuguese tile

As the day ended, I headed back to Spain. I found a hotel in the frankly unremarkable city of Badajoz. My hotel had a casino, where I did my roughly once-a-decade bit of gambling (and losing). Not a wasted evening, though: I chatted with several interesting locals who worked there and gained more insights into the quiet desperation young Spaniards seem to feel with respect to their economic prospects. I met several young people who were all well trained in skilled disciplines, but who found themselves working nights at a small-town hotel casino due to lack of opportunity in Spain's chronically high-unemployment economy.

Badajoz Center

Badajoz center

Badajoz Alcazaba

                                                                   Badajoz Center 

                                                Badajoz Center                                                                     


Day VI

Day six was a slow, peaceful day of traveling back to Madrid through beautiful central Spain. I took my time, as I didn't have to meet my friend for our evening out until 8:00. This was to be a very special evening for me, a return to a place I had not visited in many years: that magical temple of flamenco called the Corral de la Morería. With the possible exception of Café de Chinitas, no place in Madrid (and arguably Spain) can claim to be the true home of flamenco. If you go, you absolutely must reserve online well in advance. Corral is both dinner and the performance, and the food is excellent, so be prepared to eat well. The wine list is impressive, too. But of course the dance is the attraction. Corral has always boasted among the best flamenco dancers, and tonight was no exception. My friend and I were entranced by the performance. As a special treat, the artistic director came onto the stage afterwards to welcome a visiting reporter from the New York Times and to talk about the soul of flamenco. She then treated us to her own dance, proving beyond doubt that flamenco has no age limit. 

                         Guests are permitted to take short videos at the very beginning of the performance.

Day VII:

Day seven was my quick trip up to Barcelona. I lived in Barcelona from 1998-1999, and had not visited since 2012. I hadn't originally intended to make this side trip, but the thought of being in Spain and not seeing old friends (and visiting my favorite Barcelona restaurant) seemed unthinkable. So I got a ticket on the puente aéreo and flew up to have drinks with a dear old friend in town, then have dinner at Tragaluz with another one. I have known them both since 1998. Neither friend is someone with whom I regularly speak these days, but no matter how many years go by, I always have an old sense of warmth when I do get to connect. As my trip was a bit rushed, I didn't get much in the way of pictures, though this look on my friend's face when she bit into dessert perfectly captured my feeling about our dinner.

What I found most interesting about my side trip to Barcelona were the discussions about the independence movement. As it happened, the very next day, the central government was set to take over Catalonia per Article 155 of the constitution. This isn't intended to be a blog entry on politics, so I will just say that what struck me most about all the conversations I had on the topic throughout my stay in Spain, is how differently Catalans v other Spaniards approached the topic. In Madrid, even those relatively sympathetic to the cause felt that Catalan leaders were manipulating the people of Catalonia for their own selfish ends and that the region would not otherwise be seeking independence at this time. And the more conservative voices repeatedly attacked Catalan claims of historical bases for being an independent nation. But Catalans with whom I spoke never mentioned their love of local leadership, and no one seemed to care about any historical claims to back up their arguments. It came down to just one thing: they were sick and tired of the corruption, incompetence, heavy-handedness, and arrogance of the central government in general, but in particular since Rajoy's rise to power.

Day VIII:

After getting back to Madrid, I made another trip to the Prado, because, well, the Prado. You could go there every day for a lifetime and still be overwhelmed by everything it has to offer. After spending a few hours there, I met up with yet another old friend, someone I have known since 1991. As luck has it, she now lives directly across the street from the Prado, so logistics were easy!

And for my final event in Madrid, I saved the best for last: I managed to get tickets to see Carmen at the Teatro Real. My companion and I met up for a quick dinner right next door to the theater. The performance, for which we managed to get box seats, was beyond amazing. The Paris Opera put it on, with the local symphony playing the score. The setting was modern. Every detail of the performance was beyond criticism. Afterwards, my companion and I had the wonderful opportunity to get a guided backstage tour of the whole theater, which was built in the early 19th century and restored in the 1980s and 1990s. When seated inside the theater, one doesn't get any sense of just how vast the overall building is. There are many stories of offices, dressing rooms, tailors shops, a wig design and creation room, cafeterias, rehearsal rooms for musicians and dancers. It goes on and on and on. We toured for over an hour and still probably saw only a small part. 

The looming entrance

After hours and empty

      Just outside the royal family's box, a portrait of of the theater's late royal patron (and grand-daughter of Queen Victoria)

And that was the wonderful finale to another very memorable trip to Iberia! The next morning, I flew back to the U.S. In the cab ride to the airport, I had to listen to a talk show on which a rabidly nationalistic Spaniard railed against the Catalans and their "ingratitude." It left me wondering what kind of Spain I would return to upon my next visit. But in whatever form she takes, Spain will always feel like a second home to me.