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Open Thread September 9, 2023 Where do Americans mingle the most?

Angry Bear | September 9, 2023 10:57 am

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A question being asked by The Economist; Where do Americans mingle?, Vienna Virginia

Sit-down chain restaurants foster more cross-class mixing than any other institution.

Sit-down chain restaurants, like Olive Garden, Chili’s, and Applebee’s are prime sites for many Americans. Restaurants bring Americans together more than any other private or public institution and eclipse bars, churches, petrol stations, libraries, parks and schools . . .

Olive Garden would not be my choice for Italian. If you subscribe to The Economist, by email with a login, you can have access to articles now and then without subscribing. I get too much literature as it is. Neither am I independently wealthy to afford all of the subscriptions. Just a heads up!

Open Thread August 23, 2013 – Starting Aug. 1, the sale of energy inefficient lightbulbs was banned in the U.S. Angry Bear.

21 Comments

Fred C. Dobbs says:

September 9, 2023 at 11:37 am

In other Economic News…

G20 Summit Leaders Meet Under Long Shadow of Ukraine War

NY Times – Just In

India, the host, hoped to advance an economic agenda to aid poorer nations even as the Russian and Chinese leaders skipped the gathering.

Leaders of the world’s largest economies gathered on Saturday to discuss ways to ease burdens on poorer nations, at a Group of 20 summit whose Indian hosts hope will advance a global economic agenda even as it is overshadowed by Russia’s war in Ukraine and the absence of the Russian and Chinese leaders.

President Biden greeted Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India with a handshake and a wide grin as he arrived at the meeting. The two men had seen each other on Friday night at Mr. Modi’s residence for a bilateral meeting that lasted just under an hour. …
- Fred C. Dobbs says:
  
  September 9, 2023 at 11:38 am
  
  Mr. Biden will be trying to present the United States as an economic and strategic counterweight to China and Russia. India, a growing diplomatic and economic power that has stuck to neutrality over the Ukraine conflict, has painstakingly tried to limit discussions about the war to the economic distress it has caused, with energy and food prices rising around the world.
  
  Atop the Group of 20 economic agenda in New Delhi is the issue of global debt and overhauling institutions like the World Bank to address the growing strains on poorer countries; a push for more financing to help vulnerable nations deal with the costs of mitigating threats from climate change; and the potential of digital technologies to increase inclusion in global economies.
  
  But the Ukraine war remains a heavy presence, with American and European nations raising it in negotiations on every issue, and Russian and Chinese opposition making consensus harder.
  
  But on Saturday afternoon, Mr. Modi said that a consensus had been reached over a joint leaders’ declaration — but he did not provide further details. The disagreements over the Ukraine war among member states had made it unclear whether the leaders could agree on a joint statement. …
  - Fred C. Dobbs says:
    
    September 9, 2023 at 2:16 pm
    
    G20 Declaration Omits Criticism of Russia, Notes Ukrainians’ ‘Suffering’
    
    NY Times – Sep 9
    
    A painstakingly negotiated declaration Saturday evening at the Group of 20 summit in New Delhi omitted any condemnation of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine or its brutal conduct of the war, instead lamenting the “suffering” of the Ukrainian people.
    
    It was an eye opening departure from a similar document agreed to less than a year ago in Bali, when leaders acknowledged different views over the invasion but still issued a strong condemnation of the Russian invasion and called on Moscow to withdraw its troops.
    
    This year, amid low expectations that the divided group would reach any sort of consensus with Ukraine,the declaration pointed to past United Nations resolutions condemning the war and noted the “adverse impact of wars and conflicts around the world.” The statement also called on Russia to allow the export of grain and fertilizer from Ukraine and “to support a comprehensive, just and durable peace.”
    
    American officials defended the agreement, saying it built on the statement released last year and that the United States was still pressing for peace in Ukraine. …
    - Fred C. Dobbs says:
      
      September 9, 2023 at 7:50 pm
      
      … In the third paragraph of the 2022 joint statement, the G20 had declared that the group “deplores in the strongest terms the aggression by the Russian Federation against Ukraine and demands its complete and unconditional withdrawal from the territory of Ukraine.”
      
      That line is nowhere to be found in this year’s statement, nor was any other mention calling for a Russian withdrawal. Beyond calling for unimpeded deliveries of food and fertilizer, there is no mention of Russia at all in the 83-paragraph document.
      
      The first mention of the war in Ukraine comes in the eighth paragraph. “Concerning the war in Ukraine, while recalling the discussion in Bali,” the declaration says, “we reiterated our national positions and resolutions adopted at the U.N. Security Council and the U.N. General Assembly.”
      
      The statement last year cited the high level of support for the resolution opposing Russia’s unprovoked invasion — with “141 votes for, 5 against, 35 abstentions, 12 absent.” It also noted that “most members strongly condemned the war in Ukraine and stressed it is causing immense human suffering and exacerbating existing fragilities in the global economy.”
      
      However, the 2023 statement made no mention of a majority opposing Russia’s actions.
      
      “We highlighted the human suffering and negative added impacts of the war in Ukraine,” the statement released on Saturday said. …
      
      The G20 statement this year takes a softer line on the war in Ukraine.
Crprod says:

September 9, 2023 at 1:30 pm

I use a free login to access occasional articles in The Economist. If I wanted to read several articles, I would check out an issue from the local public using Libby. There are many interesting periodicals available there this way, but not everything that you would to read a couple of articles an issue from without having to subscribe. The library also has a license for hoopla. Most of the ebooks in the catalog are only available through hoopla. There are a couple of problems with this. The number of items checked out daily seems to be much smaller than the demand. Since the quota resets at midnight, insomnia aids in getting the book you want. The other problem is that many nonfiction books are only available as audiobooks. You don’t want to tackle a history book of several hundred pages with maps, charts, and notes as an audiobook.
- Bill Haskell says:
  
  September 9, 2023 at 11:33 pm
  
  Crprod:
  
  Thank you. I will have to try it.
Jim says:

September 9, 2023 at 2:30 pm

Many McDonalds will have a morning coffee club, usually older males, sometimes veterans. I’ve noticed this in towns and cities throughout the southwest. Sometimes as many as ten people hanging out for awhile.

While Olive Garden and similar places do have some demographic mixing, I don’t observe much interaction between customers.

Bars are a whole different story. There are bars like the one in the TV show “Cheers”, very tribal, with savvy bartenders.
- Bill Haskell says:
  
  September 11, 2023 at 7:58 pm
  
  Jim:
  
  Yes on that. I have seen them also.
Fred C. Dobbs says:

September 10, 2023 at 9:10 am

Marriage is increasingly for the upper classes. That’s not a good sign.

Boston Globe – Sep 10

The economic divide between one- and two-parent households is getting larger.

… in a new book, “The Two-Parent Privilege: How Americans Stopped Getting Married and Started Falling Behind,” University of Maryland economist Melissa Kearney makes a convincing case that children who grow up in one-parent households are — on average — at a major economic disadvantage.

Two incomes, not surprisingly, tend to be greater than one. And two parents tend to have more hours to spend on their children. (Of course, averages are just that — some single parents have plenty of money. Some have plenty of time. And some have both.)

Forty years ago, in 1980, Kearney wouldn’t have had much material for a book. At that time, more than 80 percent of children lived with married parents, and the proportions weren’t very different for children with college-educated and non-college-educated parents.

But over the last few decades, we’ve started to pull apart. Now, 84 percent of kids whose moms have four-year degrees live with married parents. Less than 60 percent of kids whose moms don’t have a college degree live with married parents. “There has been a huge class divide in these trends,” Kearney told me. “And we can’t afford to ignore them anymore.”

Kearney writes that the problem has gotten so big and the inequities have become so considerable that they threaten to become a source of multigenerational divisions.

“Adults who have lower levels of education and earnings are less likely to get married and raise their children in two-parent homes,” she writes. “Their kids grow up with fewer resources and opportunities, and they don’t do as well in school as their peers from married, higher-income families. . . . Social mobility is undermined, and inequality persists across generations.” …
- Fred C. Dobbs says:
  
  September 10, 2023 at 9:31 am
  
  Now, in our case, Mrs Fred & I married young, had been together for a dozen years, with no kids. (Our 53rd anniversary is a few days away.) Both of us had good high tech jobs, but no kids, unlike most of our co-workers. Ten years later we decided to start a family, had two kids, were paying enormous sums for day-care, our employer started to fall apart. That was ten years farther on. I ‘retired’ early, became a stay-at-home Dad, was the principal parent for both kids.
  
  Which was a weird experience. Not many of such families in the little town where we reside. We got some funny looks. But it worked out ok, had amassed enough money previously to make it work.
  
  In the end, though, both kids are unmarried, in long-term relationships & live far away, and have decided not to have kids of their own, and apparently to stay with their partners & stay unmarried.
  
  BUT, this was true fifty years ago and still true today, that it is very tough to raise a family on one income. That was not the way things were when I was growing up.
  
  Was Rosie the Riveter responsible?
- Fred C. Dobbs says:
  
  September 10, 2023 at 10:00 am
  
  Globe: Why have marriage rates shifted so radically since 1980? Much of the story may sound familiar: Lots of solid jobs — especially jobs for men with high school educations — disappeared. Some of those jobs were automated. Some went overseas. Many men saw their economic status fall.
  
  Meanwhile, women became far more likely to head to college than men. In 1970, nearly 60 percent of college students were men. Now, nearly 60 percent of college students are women.
  
  While men with college educations have thrived economically, those without a college degree have — on average — seen their economic status decline relative to women. And at its unromantic core, marriage is a contract. “That makes the economic proposition or value of marriage less attractive to those affected populations,” says Kearney.
  
  This sets the United States apart from much of the world. Here, 23 percent of children are raised in one-parent households. Worldwide, the average is 7 percent (15 percent in Canada and 7 percent in Mexico).
  
  What’s really important to note is that no one should have to stay in a marriage that’s bad for them or their children. There are all sorts of reasons to exit a relationship, and it’s wrong to question or stigmatize other people’s choices. Single parents are working super, super hard — as anyone who has been or knows a single parent will tell you. …
  - Fred C. Dobbs says:
    
    September 10, 2023 at 10:05 am
    
    For years, of course, we’ve fretted that income inequality is out of control, that the haves and have-nots increasingly shop at different stores, live in different places, and access health care and education in widely divergent ways.
    
    Now, as marriage has become much more common among the upper middle class than among the lower class, that inequality is spiraling. Between the early 1970s and the early 2000s, the richest 10 percent of Americans went from spending less than $3,000 per child each year to spending north of $6,000 per child each year (adjusted for inflation). Meanwhile, those in the middle of the income distribution spent between $1,000 and $2,000 per child in the early 2000s, much as they did in the early 1970s.
    
    “And by the way,” Kearney notes, “those numbers understate it. Because those numbers don’t even include housing costs. So if one of the things that rich parents are doing the most to invest in their kids is move to expensive suburbs that have the best schools, that would make these gaps look even wider.”
    
    Is there a way to reverse these trends?
    
    Kearney argues that no matter what choices parents have made, kids should get a good start in life. Which means dramatically expanding the safety net for low-income families. Nearly a hundred years ago, when far too many seniors were living in poverty, we decided that situation was unacceptable. Kearney believes we should deem child poverty similarly unacceptable and potentially create a counterpart to Social Security for kids. And we should energetically aid parents seeking to improve their economic status and that of their families.
    
    But Kearney believes we should go beyond that — and try to change relationships in America. She advocates funding programs through Health and Human Services that strengthen parental bonds and support parents in helping their children flourish. Wealthy people, of course, already have access to precisely these sorts of resources through marriage counseling, nannies, enriched preschools, and on and on. …
- Fred C. Dobbs says:
  
  September 10, 2023 at 10:14 am
  
  The Two-Parent Privilege: A Book Event with Melissa Kearney
  
  (This is a book that is being promoted by the American Enterprise Institute, which as you may know is a center-right think tank.)
  
  Wikipedia: Founded in 1938, the organization is aligned with conservatism and neoconservatism but does not support political candidates AEI advocates in favor of private enterprise, limited government, and democratic capitalism. …
Fred C. Dobbs says:

September 10, 2023 at 4:43 pm

Where do Americans mingle most?

Apparently, on pickleball courts.

Everyone Is Obsessed with Pickleball

… rotating players in and out of games is how pickleball is most often played, not just a technique used during lessons. The mixing and mingling inspires even more interaction. Beyond the traditional round-robin of rotating teams, at the facility where I play, you can also sign up to be “King of the Court,” which means you play with a different partner each game, all of whom have a similar level of play to yours. … The winning doubles team moves up a court and splits, while the losing team moves down a court and splits. The result is that you get to know new people all the time, unlike in any other sport, and create new friendships. A camaraderie quickly forms as you attempt to merge playing styles to beat opponents, who are also new players. …
Bill Haskell says:

September 12, 2023 at 1:18 am

Comment by Eric377

Comments on the SS post seem closed. Apologize for using this space, but this post seems an informational one and doubt I’ll seriously interrupt a debate here. The “prudent reserve “ is apparently a full year of benefits. We are just now in a redemption phase, so that is at least a miss of 100% on a year’s receipts. Let’s be generous and imagine that the problems requiring using the prudent reserve stretch over 5 years. What is happening to general tax receipts if payroll specific receipts miss forecast by 20%? What kind of credit market absorbs an extra massive pure redemption when general revenues are already massively down? I have little doubt Dale can work through numbers to say something is possible. I just don’t believe needing anything remotely close to a full year’s benefits is compatible with a situation normal enough to actually make the needed transactions. Cover a 4% miss for 4 months? Okay, but even that has Treasury working very late nights to get in front of Congress with a plan which is not just keep redeeming the Trust Fund.
- Fred C. Dobbs says:
  
  September 12, 2023 at 10:29 am
  
  On that note, if Americans don’t like what’s going on with GOP domination in various & sundry parts ot the US guv’mint, then they can do something about it by electing more Dems, assuming they can get past state GOP control (30 states!) of various aspects of the federal election process. I sincerely hope they do.
Fred C. Dobbs says:

September 12, 2023 at 1:05 pm

Meanwhile…

McCarthy, Under Threat From Right, Orders Biden Impeachment Inquiry

NY Times – Sep 12

Speaker Kevin McCarthy on Tuesday directed top congressional Republicans to open an impeachment inquiry into President Biden, blowing past G.O.P. divisions as he worked to appease far-right lawmakers who have threatened to oust him amid a pitched fight over spending.

Mr. McCarthy said he would task three committees — Oversight, Judiciary and Ways and Means — with carrying out the inquiry into the president and his family as Republicans hunt for evidence of financial wrongdoing or corruption. …

Vladimir Putin says the cases against Donald Trump show the ‘rottenness’ of the U.S. system.

NY Times – Sep 12

President Vladimir V. Putin called the criminal cases against Donald J. Trump good for Russia and an indication of the American system’s “rottenness,” in wide-ranging remarks Tuesday …

… made at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, in southeastern Russia, appeared aimed at lending firepower to the Republican outcry over the prosecutions of Mr. Trump, who has long expressed public admiration for the Russian leader and has helped encourage a sizable Moscow-friendly contingent within the G.O.P. …
Fred C. Dobbs says:

September 13, 2023 at 9:19 am

What We Know About the Impeachment Case Against Biden

NY Times – Sep 12

Republicans claim they have unearthed evidence of wrongdoing by the president and his family that could rise to the level of high crimes and misdemeanors. In fact, there’s little to back up their allegations.

Speaker Kevin McCarthy made seven accusations against President Biden on Tuesday. Here’s what we know about them.

Trump Has Been Privately Encouraging GOP Lawmakers to Impeach Biden

NY Times – Sep 13

The former president has talked regularly with members of the House Freedom Caucus and other congressional Republicans who pushed for impeachment.

On a sweeping patio overlooking the golf course at his private club in Bedminster, N.J., former President Donald J. Trump dined Sunday night with a close political ally, Marjorie Taylor Greene.

It was a chance for the former president to catch up with the hard-right Georgia congresswoman. But over halibut and Diet Cokes, Ms. Greene brought up an issue of considerable interest to Mr. Trump — the push by House Republicans to impeach his likely opponent in next year’s election.

“I did brief him on the strategy that I want to see laid out with impeachment,” Ms. Greene said in a brief phone interview.

Mr. Trump’s dinner with Ms. Greene came just two nights before Speaker Kevin McCarthy announced his decision on Tuesday to order the opening of an impeachment inquiry into President Biden, under intense pressure from his right flank.

Over the past several months, Mr. Trump has kept a close watch on House Republicans’ momentum toward impeaching Mr. Biden. Mr. Trump has talked regularly by phone with members of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus and other congressional Republicans who pushed for impeachment, according to a person close to Mr. Trump who was not authorized to publicly discuss the conversations. Mr. Trump has encouraged the effort both privately and publicly. ,,,
Fred C. Dobbs says:

September 14, 2023 at 9:21 am

With flashier floods and stronger hurricanes, ‘I don’t think we know what normal is anymore’

Boston Globe – September 13, 2023

… “Is this just a new normal? I don’t think we know what normal is anymore,” said Michael Rawlins, associate director of the Climate System Research Center at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. “What happened [Monday] night is an obvious manifestation of a warming climate.”

It’s the latest in a season of extremes, in which Massachusetts saw its second-rainiest June through August, the planet had its hottest summer on record by a large margin, and ocean surface temperatures soared.

Earlier this summer, as much as 9 inches of rain fell across parts of Vermont over 48 hours, resulting in flash floods that washed out roads, necessitated more than 200 urban and swift water boat rescues, and flooded downtown Montpelier. The same storm brought devastating floods to Western Massachusetts, where some farmers lost their livelihoods under inches of water, and to New York’s Hudson Valley. …

(Previously…)

As Earth’s temperature rises, Massachusetts residents’ sense of urgency on climate change declines

Boston Globe -April 19, 2022

Despite increasingly urgent international warnings and an onslaught of catastrophic wildfires and weather linked to global warming, fewer Massachusetts residents see the climate crisis as a very serious concern than they did three years ago, according to a new poll.

It’s not that respondents weren’t aware of the climate threat …

But with a pandemic and war in Ukraine as a backdrop, fewer than half, 48 percent, ranked climate in the highest category of concern, down from 53 percent in 2019, the last time the poll was taken. Less than half said they would vote along climate lines or take steps such as switching their home heat off fossil fuel. …
Fred C. Dobbs says:

September 14, 2023 at 2:37 pm

Heather Cox Richardson, historian turned viral Substacker, talks threat of autocracy

Boston Globe – September 13

By day, Heather Cox Richardson is a Boston College history professor. By night, she is what the New York Times calls a “breakout star” of Substack with more than 1 million subscribers on the newsletter platform.

Richardson writes her “Letters From an American” newsletter just about every day in matter-of-fact prose that puts the day’s news in historical context. Turns out you don’t have to be bombastic to develop a following.

The Harvard-trained historian is an expert in 19th-century America, specializing in politics and economics. Richardson’s new book is out later this month called “Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America.”
- Fred C. Dobbs says:
  
  September 14, 2023 at 2:41 pm
  
  Here are edited excerpts …
  
  Q. In your new book, you provide historical context on how democracies can become autocracies. So, are we closer to being an autocracy than we’ve ever been before?
  
  A. The answer to that, I think, is an unequivocal yes. But it’s important to remember that at certain times in the United States we have had authoritarian governments, and that really is the American South from about 1874, 1875 through to 1965. And when people say, ‘Oh, it can’t happen here,’ my answer is always it has.
  
  This is exactly what happened in the solid Democratic states in the South during Reconstruction and then well into the 20th century, in which one party took over the apparatus of government and proceeded to create a governmental system that discriminated not only against Black Americans and people of color, but also against any white Americans who weren’t part of that governing circle.
  
  What makes a difference now on the national stage is this is the first time in our history that a major political party has abandoned the idea of democracy. That being said, one of the things that is so exciting about this period for a historian is that for all that terror looming in the background, there is also this extraordinary flowering of concern about civic democracy.
  
  Q. Are you surprised about Trump’s grip on voters? He’s the first president with a mug shot, and he still might be the the nominee for the Republican Party.
  
  A. Not at all. Every generation has tons of Hitlers and Mussolinis, and they never go anywhere. The real question is: ‘Why do people support them? Why in certain areas do people support them?’
  
  What happens is that you get a population that has been destabilized either economically or religiously or socially, and they feel like they’ve lost out. And you get a leader who says, ‘Oh, I’m on your side.’
  
  Q. Last year you had a chance to sit down with President Biden. And in this interview, you called Biden a “transformational president.” But many Democrats don’t even think he should be running for a second term. Were you just being nice to a podcast guest?
  
  A. I was not actually a Biden supporter. I thought at best he was going to be a placeholder president. And I thought we needed something different than that. And I fully admit I was dead wrong because what he has done domestically is reverse the policies of trickle-down economics or supply-side economics that Ronald Reagan put into effect in 1981, and that have really dominated American politics for the past 40 years.
  
  That’s never worked. It’s never produced great economic growth at all. And it certainly pales in comparison to the economic growth that we’ve seen under Biden, who took us back to that vision of the period from 1933 to 1981 that was shared by members of both parties to say, ‘Listen, what we really got to do is put money back in the hands of ordinary people, and it’s going to make sure that there is just more money in the economy, and it’s going to spur economic growth.’ And of course, it has.
  
  When I say transformational, you’ll note that I didn’t say good or bad, although in my opinion, that’s good.
  
  Q. So a hundred years from now, what do you think historians will say about this period in American history?
  
  A. That’s actually what made writing this book so incredibly difficult. Either they will say, ‘Oh, my God, this is where it all went bad, this is the modern version of the fall of Rome.’ Or they will say, ‘Look, this is the time when people took back their country and made it the incredible place it is now.’
  
  Anybody looking back at this moment will recognize that it is a transformative moment for the country, the United States of America, but also for the globe. Not only because of the rise of autocracy, but, of course, because we have this giant sword hanging over us in the form of climate change.
  
  But whether they say, ‘This is where it all went wrong, or this is where it all went right,’ at the end of the day, it’s up to us.