School Vouchers - Ivry Man (IM) asks Dr. Know (DK) for Guidance

Ivry man finds himself in the park and, as expected, sees Dr. Know seated on his usual bench looking agitated.

IM.	Dr. Know, how are you? I was hoping to see you here. It has been too long since we spoke.
DK.	[Warm smile] Indeed it has my dear friend. The responsibility for this lies with the guy who writes this dialogue. Apparently he has been very busy with other things and could not find the time to bother with the likes of us. Who am I to argue with that?
IM.	As you said the last time we met. But you seemed to be a bit preoccupied a moment ago. Is something worrying you?
DK.	How perceptive you are. Yes, in truth, I am very frustrated. For years I have been arguing the case for school vouchers – of course I am not alone in this – yet such little progress has been made. Support is growing, especially among low income families in the worst school districts in the United States, but the educational establishment is very powerfully against them; even now when the current president has a real opportunity to get behind them, he refuses to do so.
IM.	I see you are upset. I am not sure I understand this issue very well. My intuition tells me that vouchers are a threat to the whole idea of public education and all it stands for. But perhaps you can help me understand better.
DK.	Indeed. I will be happy to. After all, that must be the reason that this dialogue is being written, right?
IM.	I am not sure I understand.
DK.	Never mind. Actually your intuition is shared by many people. One might say it is the conventional wisdom. Although the public school system is only about 150 years old, the notion of public schooling runs very deep in the American psyche. Many believe it is a key, indispensible element of American democracy.
IM.	Yes. How are they wrong?
DK.	They are tragically wrong. While public schooling may have been a good experience for many children, for the majority of children today it is at best very mediocre and mostly a disaster. The public school experiment is a failure. In terms of its own goals and principles it has failed. It is time we disabused ourselves of mindless prejudices in its favor and started to look hard at the facts and at the logic.
IM.	I am sure you can elaborate for me.
DK.	I’ll try. The goals of public schooling as an ideal are probably noble, admirable. To provide every American child with certain minimal educational opportunities – who can argue with that? It is seen as a way to implement basic democratic principles, allowing children of poor families, as well as of middle class and rich families, access to that great solvent of American society, education – and thereby to break down persistent and dysfunctional racial, ethnic and economic barriers.
IM.	Yes, indeed!
DK.	Actually the original impetus for the public school system was not so noble. It was basically a question of Protestant paranoia over Catholic private education and an attempt to negate the subversive progress of the latter. But this not so relevant now.
	The voucher system I have in mind is one that would provide parents a choice of where to send their children to school by providing them with the equivalent in vouchers (or tax credits, or some such refund scheme) of the cost to the taxpayer of educating their children in the public schools. So it is not an argument for getting the state out of the business of subsidizing education. It is an argument for getting the state out of the business of producing education. Or, since I could imagine a dual system (such as we have in higher education), it would remove the monopoly of the state in producing education. A voucher system would closely resemble the GI bill.
IM.	Yes I follow that.
DK.	Note, vouchers or tuition credits or something similar is provided rather than cash because of the standard liberal objection that parents can’t be trusted to use the money for education rather than booze or drugs. Liberals love humanity, it’s just people they have contempt for.
IM.	Nice Dr. Know. Now that you have that off your chest, what are the objections to vouchers?
DK.	It seems to me there are two main arguments against vouchers, the "church-state separation argument" and the "social responsibility argument".
IM.	I am more interested in the second.
DK.	Mostly the reluctance to even consider vouchers seems to come from the conviction that a voucher system will be harmful to the cause of "social equality" (as I mentioned a moment ago). There is the perception that vouchers will destroy the public school system and that this will exacerbate or perpetuate poverty..
	This is a very bad argument. It is now pretty much undeniable that, as I asserted earlier, the public school systems are, in general, failing in their overall mission to provide all elements of the population with at least an "adequate" education. The public school system as an institution is supposed to advance the aims of "equality of opportunity" for all Americans regardless of gender, race, national origin or other educationally irrelevant characteristics and of provide opportunities for those who have different learning styles and approaches as well. It has been thought that schools that were segregated by ethnic group could not deliver on these aims and so the aim of desegregation has evolved along with our national educational policy.
IM.	Yes you pretty much said as much already. So what is the reality?
DK.	If you will be patient I will get to that soon enough.
IM.	A thousand pardons Dr. Know.
DK.	Very well. As it stands now, seen in the light of these aspirations, I believe we should be bitterly disappointed. There are some very good public schools, even some superlative ones. These are few in number and they are located primarily in the affluent suburban areas. They are attended mainly by children from upper income families, mostly white. But, most of our public schools are substandard, overcrowded and bureaucratic. Many of those in the inner-cities are downright dangerous - they are breeding grounds for the drug-traffic, for teenage-pregnancy, for gang-warfare and much else besides. And they do not educate the children who attend them, who are mostly poor and from minority families. The worst nightmares of those who oppose segregated schools are fulfilled by the public school system as it now operates. At best we have institutionalized mediocrity. At worst we have exacerbated the cycle of poverty and deprivation. It is no exaggeration to say that the public school system is perpetuating and exacerbating the very problems it was apparently designed to solve!
IM.	So how would vouchers solve this?
DK.	Well. Vouchers would provide at least the potential of a way out for some, maybe many, maybe most families. That is why, I believe, many families and leaders from minority communities are now actively and vigorously supporting them. As I said earlier, the proposal I am considering, and which all leaders in the field of education should actively support, is one which provides to parents the equivalent of the cost of educating their children in the public schools. At least this way parents would have a choice and schools would start to be accountable to them.
IM.	I think I see where this is going.
DK.	Well, there are two usual objection at this stage. One, those parents who could afford to "top up" (add to) the value of the voucher would take their kids to private schools in the more affluent areas, and this would exacerbate inequality. Two, even the poorer parents armed with a voucher will pull their kids out of the public schools, so the public school system would collapse. There would be nowhere for some kids to go, especially those with special learning needs.
IM.	And what do you say to that? You have an answer I am sure.
DK.	In answer to the first objection: I wonder how much more segregated the system could become than it is now. I suspect actually that with a voucher system schools would become less segregated, not more segregated, as kids from the poorer neighborhoods take their vouchers to schools of their choice. In any case, it is one more spurious argument in favor of the sacrifice of individual economic and social advancement in the name of equality – as Milton Friedman pointed out; those who try to achieve equality by sacrificing freedom of choice end up sacrificing both.
IM.	Aha! And what about the second objection, precipitating the collapse of the public system?
DK.	If the public school system is that fragile that, at the earliest opportunity, its clients would abandon it for preferred alternatives, one might wonder why it is indeed worth saving at all. To the supporters of public schools as an ideal in itself, I would ask how bad do the public schools have to get before you will consider that perhaps they are not worth saving? There are currently a variety of private scholarship programs that provide 50% of the tuition of private schooling for the child, the other 50% being provided by the parents. Parents are invited to apply. The programs are incredibly oversubscribed – by many hundred percent. In other words, hundreds of thousands of families, many of them very poor, are prepared to pay 50% of a private school tuition in preference to the “free” education their kids could get in the public schools. What does that tell you about the value to them of each of these alternatives? This is not hypothetical, this is fact!
	Of course “free” public schooling is not really free. Right now the state and local governments are spending a fortune per child in the public schools, actually much more than is generally known and much more than in the private schools!! The sums are actually breathtaking, and the worst school districts are spending the most! All or most of this money would be available for vouchers, implying a substantial sum in the hands of parents when choosing among educational options for their children. This makes the schools accountable to parents – not to administrators, to unions or to government committees.
IM.	Yes, but what about those who are left in the dysfunctional public school system, and what about those kids with special needs?
DK.	I thought you might say that. And it brings me to perhaps the most important point of all – pay careful attention to what I am now going to say.
IM.	Yes sir, Dr. Know. You know I will!
DK.	When schools are accountable to parents, who have many thousands of dollars of potential revenue for the them, the extent and type of response that might develop is literally unimaginable. The variety of schools of many types, sizes, qualities and specialties (including those for special needs children) is likely to be very large. There is likely to be a high degree of innovation in educational styles (responding to parents who have different opinions and desires in relation to aspects of educational philosophy), and a high degree of dynamism in educational development. Schools will most likely be smaller, safer and more enjoyable. There will be fewer administrators per child, more (and better-performing) teachers per child.
	Educational experts don’t like this at all. They have all sorts of objections based on their own visions of how they think an educational system should be structured, based on their “expert” knowledge. So they are willing to denounce and condemn the very idea of a state- or nation-wide voucher system on the basis that, for example, it might imply the segregation, rather than main-streaming of special-needs kids, or the teaching of subjects not to their liking, etc. The arrogance of this amazes me. Because of their ideological commitments, these people are prepared to sanction the holding of our children hostage in failing American schools and foreclose fantastic opportunities for them in order to be able to try to achieve the doubtful benefits of their visions – many of which have already been tested and found wanting.
IM.	But what if these experts are right about their arguments for a good educational system for all and the deprivation of some?
DK.	Even if there were any merit to the very dubious argument that unfortunate minorities like special-needs families, or kids of dysfunctional parents, or who knows-what, would suffer as a result the introduction of a comprehensive voucher program, it does not follow that one should sacrifice the considerable benefits of the majority in order to preserve the status quo for the special minority. Surely not! A better argument would be to accept vouchers with the proviso that this apparent shortcoming be attended to if necessary by special provisions.
IM.	Hmm! So are you telling me that but for the opposition of these educational elites, the facts and your logic would prevail?
DK.	Sadly no. If it were just the opposition of the educational elites, who are, to be sure, powerful, I believe the arguments for choice in education would have prevailed long ago. It is, rather, overwhelmingly the power of the teachers’ unions that stand against rationality, progress and real reform in education. The teachers’ unions are self-serving, politically very powerful, unmovable bureaucracies. They are in bed with many parts of the executive and Congress. Introducing choice in education would remove protection for bad teachers, would spotlight unnecessary administrative positions and would take away educational decisions from the bureaucracy and put them in the hands of parents. The survival of the unions is threatened by vouchers and they are able and willing to use whatever opportunistic means they can to oppose them. Their opposition is not a principled one! It is based on their vested interest. In my book what they are doing to America’s youth is basically criminal. Yet, thus far they have been able to hide the consequences of their actions from most of us.
	Recently, however, the realization has dawned on parents in the most miserable school districts – in Wisconsin, in DC, in Florida and some other places. And there is a growing groundswell in favor of parental choice in education. This is a non-partisan, non-class issue. Poor minority families are rising up against the teachers’ unions. The outrage is growing. It is heartening, but also frustrating. These are low-income minority families appealing for the right to send their kids to charter schools or voucher-accepting private schools of their choice. The president has a real opportunity to do something really different – to bring real and beneficial change now. But, so far, he has not had the courage to oppose the teachers’ unions and I doubt he, or any other president, ever will. If a breakthrough comes it will probably be in the courts and maybe also in the Congress. It is long overdue.
IM.	What about the church-state separation argument?
DK.	It’s really hard to know if this is a genuine argument, a real worry, or simply another strategy. Many who oppose vouchers assert that they violate the constitutional separation of church and state "because state money can be used for religious education." I believe the logic is faulty. Right now the state is involved in the choice that parents make regarding their children’s religious education. That is because the state makes the price of a non-religious education much cheaper, at the margin, than a religious one. An education containing, or based on, a religious tradition has to be obtained in a private school. This implies that those parents who choose this option end up paying twice. Once, through their taxes, for the public school they don’t use, and again, from their after tax income for the private tuition. Saying that the state is uninvolved adopts the myth that an education that is devoid of religious content is somehow to be considered "neutral". It is not neutral. It discriminates against those who, at equal prices, would have chosen a positive religious content. It discriminates against those who would rather have their tax money educate children in a religion of their parents’ choice. Can a case not be made that the only neutral situation is one that gives the parents a choice, that is to say, is non-coercive with regard to both imposing or depriving religious content?
	In any case, as a practical, legal matter, the argument seems to be wrong. A number of current supreme court decisions indicate that, as does the fact that under the GI bill veterans can choose religiously based universities. The money goes to the parents, not to the schools. And then the parents decide. There is no violation of church-state separation. These are private choices.
IM.	Is that it?
DK.	Pretty much. I would finally add this. Apart from anything else, as a fundamental moral question, on what basis can one support the denial of educational choice to parents?
IM.	So every argument to the contrary you consider to be soundly refuted. Are there any valid arguments against vouchers?
DK.	Yes, indeed, there is one. But it comes not from those who support the public school system. It comes rather from those who oppose any kind of government involvement in education, it comes from those who regard vouchers, or any educational subsidies, as dangerous insofar as they may extend the power of government over the private education sector. Schools qualifying for vouchers would be state-certified thus extending state discretion. This has obvious potential for abuse. One could hardly think of anything more dangerous than giving power over education to powerful governments. The power to command huge resources for the education of young minds is indeed an awesome and dangerous power that one should keep out of the hands of potentially opportunistic bureaucrats. And vouchers would extend this power over private schools who chose to accept the vouchers. We can already see the corrupting influence of this type of thing in our higher educational systems – in the runaway tuition costs and in the state discretion over aspects of the curriculum that they fund.
	I have no argument against this objection. I accept it. I too am against the involvement of government in education at any level. I firmly believe that educational quality and achievement at all levels would be better without it. But my strong advocacy of vouchers is based on the judgment that a comprehensive voucher system would be infinitely better than what we now have, infinitely better. And the probability of achieving a comprehensive voucher system (or even an expanding piecemeal one) that would bring so much benefit to so many children being introduced soon, is so much higher than the probability of achieving a more ideal (from my point of view) system. So my argument is also a strategic one. I judge the benefits of subsidized parental choice to be worth the risk of its very really pitfalls and dangers. I would hope that if ever there were a comprehensive scaling back of the size of the state at all levels, education would be included, whenever such a remote possibility ever arrives.
	I strongly prefer parental choice to what we have now because I believe that, in general, parents want the best for their children and that competition through the educational market will work to give it to them. But even if, as you hear this, my dear friend, you have lingering doubts, ask yourself "how could it be worse than it is now?!!" How could it be worse?! The standard to hold any proposed alternative to is not perfection, it is relative improvement. I don’t see how giving parents of children a choice between schools could make them (their children) worse off.
IM.	As usual Dr. Know, this has been a most enlightening discussion. But I have a few questions for you on another subject if you don’t mind.
DK.	Ah, I wish I could. Unfortunately that will have to wait for our next meeting. So good to see you. Until next time.

Upon which he rises and ambles off in the direction of the library.

Somewhere over the rainbow!

I am guest-blogging on Organizations and Markets.

Here is my latest post:

I am envious. My brother in law and my nephew are in the Serengeti National Park in Tanzania. He is sending short reports via his Blackberry. His descriptions are graphic — he is awe-stricken. Sounds incredible, beyond imagination — to those of us veteran Africans used to having to search hard for game on our game park safaris. In the Serengeti there is game in exaggerated profusion. Lions, leopards, and cheetah virtually next to each other. Huge migrations of herds, hundreds of thousands strong. A trip for a lifetime. I should live so long.

It seems clear that this wonder of nature (a giant crater-bubble full of wild life) would not exist in the absence of the revenue from international tourism. Though government managed, it is subject to vigorous competition from other game parks in that part of Africa. The area is the traditional homeland of the legendary Masai tribe, who have a cattle-based economy. Population growth, technological change, and the pace of modernity threatened to destroy their world. Now they seem to be flourishing. The Masai have turned out to be successful entrepreneurs! I wonder if this is an instance of Ostrom’s successful local initiatives.

More generally, the preservation of wild-life in Africa has turned on the successful management of a plethora of wild-life game parks (many of them quite small relatively speaking), some having the status of super luxury hotels. There is an irony in there somewhere. (I wonder what it is like to have to manage a wild-life park as a business firm).

Of course most of the environmentalists never tell you about the preservation successes of market competition.

The Truth lies in the Middle??

I just watched a movie that made me feel very uncomfortable.

Its called Defamation and you can find information about it here: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1377278/. It is available in various forms on the internet (for free). I watched it on Netflix.

Although it is fairly recent, I would think that more people would have heard about it. I think I know why there is a strong avoidance impulse connected to it. It takes aim at some staple Jewish communal motifs connected to anti-semitism and at a prominent Jewish organization and its leader, the ADF (Anti-defamation League). But this is no simple-minded propaganda piece. It touches some sensitive nerves. It made me want to look away. Although it seems to have been carefully edited to support the author-film-maker's point of view, I found it hard to dismiss - and some of it was downright embarrassing. Maybe you will have a different reaction and a more critical appraisal. Let me know.

The film-maker's name is Yoav Shamir and he is a young Israeli who traveled to the U.S. and Eastern Europe (with a group of teenage Israeli, on a Holocaust memorial trip) to shoot this movie.

I don't want to say too much. Maybe you will want to watch it and you should make up your own minds. I will just say this:

I have emphasized that just because a particular statement or position critical of Israel may not be anti-Semitic it does not mean that it isn't - and I do think that Melshheimer and Walt, Norman Finkelstein and Noam Chosky and company - if not antisemitic are, at least, unconscionably opportunistic and biased in their approach (and at least two on the list are also seriously troubled).

But having said this, and having watched this movie, it also seems to me to be true that the notion of antisemitism can be and has been abused. This is very upsetting. (It is reminiscent of the refusal by many black Americans to give up the mantle of victimhood.) It is productive of its own insidious form of racism - against non-Jews (you see this in the movie).

The most disturbing idea is the exploitation of the Holocaust in this context. There is, unfortunately, an element of truth in Finkelstein's notion of a "Holocaust industry". This exploitation cheapens and desecrates the suffering of the victims and the enormity of the crimes against them. When it comes to the Holocaust, the events speak for themselves and the hype is distracting, sacrilegious noise.

I am in favor of the Holocaust memorial trips for teenagers and others (the "march of the living"). We need to remember and the world needs to know. But we need to be really careful to guard against the temptation to manipulate emotions into conformity with the communal slogans putting the Holocaust behind every anti-Jewish slur.

Finally, it seems clear to me that many Jews need (economically or emotionally) antisemitism to continue to be a perceived threat. Many are thus inclined to see antisemitism in every criticism of Israel or of individual Jews. Trivial events, and crazy outliers, are highlighted out of proportion and ultimately this leads to a loss of credibility and respect. This is particularly true in the context of the modern Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Double standards invoked against Israel can be tackled on their own merits (or lack thereof) - one does not need the Holocaust for this.

Does it need to be said that we need to keep a strong and critical sense of reality in our pursuit of the truth no matter what our personal affiliations?

The Power of Presuppositions

We probably all know this – that presuppositions often prevent clarity of thought and action. Yet when I encounter these presuppositions I am often surprised anew – even by the same cases over and over again. Here are some examples.

1. Consider this simple riddle: “Brothers and sisters have I none; this man’s father is my father’s son”. Who is “this man”?

Most people, upon hearing this, quickly assume that the answer is “I” – that I am this man. My late father-in-law could not be budged from this. Pushing him, I discovered that he began by assuming that the quote is from someone looking in the mirror – which means, if you are saying the quote, you are looking at yourself. I tried to point out that in this case the quote is contradictory or nonsense – it implies that you are your own father and son. I could never convince him.

But the solution is beyond simple, it is trivial. Let’s use the kind of math everyone can follow:

This man = X

This man’s father, X’s father = Y

Re-forming the quote: “X has no brothers and sisters; Y is X’s father. Y is my father’s son”.

So I am Y, X’s father and X is my son.

Answer: X, this man, is my son.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

2. More significant: I frequently put the following multiple choice question on my economics exams, even at a fairly advanced level.

"What is the effect of imposing a minimum wage in an economy at a level below the already existing (uniform) market wage”?

a. The average wage will rise

b. The average wage will fall

c. The average wage will be unaffected

d. It is impossible to tell.

This is a question anyone, including anyone with absolutely no economics training whatsoever, should be able to answer correctly. But presuppositions get in the way.

Most people go immediately to option b. “The average wage will fall”. In a class of 21 bright high school seniors that I just taught this semester, everyone picked this option, in spite of repeated explanation of this very case in class over the preceding weeks. The mental barrier is formidable.

Here is what is going on: people’s intuition is to assume that laws imposed by government are more important than the spontaneous, hidden workings of the market place – aka, the private decisions of buyers competing with buyers and sellers competing with sellers. When people hear that in the question the government imposes a minimum wage lower than the wage currently paid, their minds immediately translate this as “permission” to pay a lower wage and they see no constraints against doing so. Its almost as if employers of labor operate in a vacuum and this new minimum wage law now allows them to pay less than they were paying – because, we all know after all, that they pay a little as they can.

Of course, the correct answer, again trivially, is option c. “The average wage will be unaffected”. It is a “minimum” wage law; not a “maximum” wage law. It does not prevent employers from paying more than the minimum, which, by assumption, they are already doing. Yet most people cannot see it. [Notice how the simple meaning of the words is missed.]

--------------------------------------------------------------------

3. More topical: “Tax-breaks” for the oil companies.

The politicians are much exercised about (see a political opportunity in) the question of repealing tax-breaks currently in place for the oil companies.

This resonates with much of the public, because they hate having to pay such high prices for gasoline – it really bites. The most common initial reaction is to welcome the initiative to repeal the tax-breaks.

As I understand it, two things are going on here – punish the oil companies and bring down prices. People are angry with the oil companies. They see prices going up and oil company profits going up. So they think if the tax-breaks are removed that will hurt oil company profits. They are right about that. They also seem to think that it will cause oil and gas prices to fall. They are completely wrong about that – I can’t even see how they get there. But when I point out that removing the tax-breaks will force prices even higher I am mostly met by blank stares. Some sort of presumption is getting in the way.

Let’s be clear about one thing, removing a tax-break is just another way of imposing a tax. Imposing a tax clearly leads to higher prices paid by the buyer (and lower prices received by the seller). Money is taken out of production by the government. The amount supplied at any price goes down, so prices will rise for any given amount demanded. Not rocket science.

It is also relevant to point out, as I always do, mostly to no avail, that companies do not pay taxes in any meaningful sense. A tax imposed on a company is actually “paid” by the customers, workers, suppliers and others connected with the company. The ones who probably pay the least are the fat-cat executives whom the politicians love to scapegoat and the public loves to punish. It’s all a grand and harmful illusion signifying destruction of value.

It probably all boils down to the power of language to shape thought. Wittgenstein would be proud.

A difference in philosophy? I don't think so.

Not everyone who opposes rational and responsible economic policy can be stupid, and not even the majority can. But they can be, and I think they are, ignorant. Their ignorance is protected by their hard-held presuppositions. This enables them to dismiss any deviant views as "extreme," as "cooky". I have people tell me I am wrong who cannot tell me why. I have people tell me it is a "difference in philosophy". But actually it isn't. It is a difference in understanding of how reality works. It is a difference in models of reality. A shared understanding of reality would produce an agreement on economic policy. Disagreements over economic policy come not from wanting different things, they come from wanting the same things (peace, prosperity and individual freedom) but disagreeing on how to get there. I don't think it is helpful or accurate to call that a difference in philosophy. To do so is to cut off debate, to suggest there are unbridgeable differences, when actually what it means is "I don't want to seriously consider what you have to say".

When it comes to macroeconomic policy, it would seem that it takes an economic earthquake to shake the belief in government job-creation. No amount of argument can do the trick. Does this mean more mindless inflationary stimulus is around the corner? Let's hope not.

Israel v. Palestine. Will we ever have clarity on this?

Melanie Phillips is always "in your face" confrontational

Here she takes the fight to the British PM, who has been tagged in the media as anti-Jewish. Maybe he is, maybe he isn't. And this piece is a little too hot for my taste - weakening the case, for example, by using phrases like Jewish "rightful inheritance". Ancestral homeland appeals mean nothing to the "left" and are already conceded by the "right" (at least in the U.S.). The essence of Phillips's argument, concerning the current situation, and concerning the historical background, is correct. And the latter is better supported by noting a few basic points.

1. In the period leading up to 1948 there was considerable support among the Arab residents of Palestine for Jewish immigration. Why? Because it led to profitable land sales (and increased the value of land owned) and because it led to increased employment and economic growth in the region. The Zionist appeal to the Arab population was precisely along these grounds touting peaceful and mutually advantageous coexistence. It is important to note that the sole basis of the steady Jewish immigration during the period of the Yishuv in the late 19th and early 20th century, was the voluntary and profitable sale of land to the Jewish immigrants, something practiced even by those Arab leaders who in public condemned the immigration, while, in private, profiting from it.

2. This general attitude became increasing undermined over time by extremist right wing Arab leaders, the most notorious of whom was Haj Amin, the grand Mufti of Jerusalem, one-time confidant of Hitler, who authored and broadcast a series of genocidal radio broadcasts in Arabic from Berlin. He became the most important Arab leader (of the AHC - the Arab Higher Committee), successfully and tragically drowning out (and violently suppressing) substantial Arab opposition to him. Under his leadership the Arab residents became increasing violent in their protests against the proposed partition of Palestine into two states - a Jewish and a Palestinian state (sound familiar?).

3. This violence was directed not only at the Jews, but also at the British occupiers of Palestine. The British response was to move more closely to the Arabs' position. Whether this was anti-Semitism, as it clearly was in some notable individual cases (for example Prime Minister Bevin), or whether it was expediency - not wishing to commit to resources and effort to confront the Arabs - is less important than that it meant the abandonment of the British commitment to the Jewish project of peaceful immigration and, in the more urgent situation, to the saving of countless Jewish lives. Either way the record is shameful, but perhaps understandably political.

4. Mr. Cameron is consciously or unconsciously echoing this performance.

Perhaps that is how Ms. Phillips might have argued.

PS. For source material on the above see Ephraim Karsh, Palestine Betrayed Yale University Press, 2011.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: lawrence rosenbloom [mailto:lawrence.rosenbloom@gmail.com]

Sent: Saturday, May 28, 2011 4:10 PM

Subject: Open letter to David Cameron. Worth a read

About Melanie

Melanie Phillips is a British journalist and author. She is best known for her controversial column about political and social issues which currently appears in the Daily Mail. Awarded the Orwell Prize for journalism in 1996, she is the author of All Must Have Prizes, an acclaimed study of Britain's educational and moral crisis, which provoked the fury of educationists and the delight and relief of parents.

An open letter to the Rt. Hon. David Cameron MP

May 2011

Dear Prime Minister,

I was interested to read that, when you met Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this week, you said:

‘Britain is a good friend of Israel and our support for Israel and Israel's security is something I have described in the past, and will do so again, as unshakeable.’ I wonder, therefore, if you make a habit of threatening your friends? For you also said that unless Israel ‘engages seriously in a meaningful peace process’ with the Palestinian Authority, the more likely it is that Britain will endorse the ‘State of Palestine’ for which the PA is expected to seek recognition at the UN in September. This is not the behaviour of a friend so much as the kind of intimidation that is more reminiscent of a Mafia protection racket.

First of all, you have incomprehensibly decided to pressurise the victim in this conflict to make peace with her aggressor, even though the victim is the one party that constantly tries to make peace while the aggressor does not. It is the PA which has refused to negotiate with Israel, not the other way round, on the spurious grounds that Israeli expansion of Jewish homes beyond the ‘Green Line’ is a bar to negotiations

I wonder whether you might explain to both Britain and the Jewish people why you do not insist that Mr Abbas ‘engages seriously in a meaningful peace process’ by unambiguously renouncing – in both English and Arabic – his repeated assertions that his people will never accept Israel as a Jewish state, the casus belli of the entire conflict?

I wonder also if you might explain to both Britain and the Jewish people why you implicitly endorse the racist ethnic cleansing inherent in the putative ‘State of Palestine’ which the PA says it will declare – a state in which Mr Abbas has repeatedly declared that not one Jew will be allowed to live -- but which you have now threatened to support? I’m sure the British people in particular would be interested to know when you decided that racism and ethnic cleansing were part of your modernising programme for the Conservative Party.

Next, I wonder if you might clarify for us exactly why the British government has welcomed the alliance entered into between Hamas and Mr Abbas’s Fatah, and why you believe that this will advance the cause of peace. As you know, your government still regards Hamas as a terrorist organisation. More than that, Hamas is explicitly committed to the destruction of Israel and the genocide of the Jews, a platform from which is has explicitly stated this week that it will not resile. And as you know, following the killing of Osama bin Laden the leader of Hamas in Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh, condemned the ‘assassination of a Muslim holy warrior’ -- while for their part the Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, the terrorist department of the Fatah organisation that you do not appear to think is an obstacle to peace, called bin Laden’s death ‘a catastrophe’ and vowed to step up the jihad to establish the dominance of Islam in the world.

I’m sure we are all agog to learn why you, a Conservative Prime Minister and the supposed ally of America in the defence of the free world, have chosen not only to applaud and promote a coalition which includes genocide fanatics who are in bed with both al Qaeda and Iran, but why you are also threatening their victim, Israel, that Britain will endorse a state run by this genocidal coalition unless Israel itself enters into negotiations with it. To carry on with the Mafia analogy, this is akin to threatening someone that if they do not put a gun in their mouth and pull the trigger you will set the Mob on them to achieve the same result.

I’d be grateful if you could explain to us why you support the killing of the leader of al Qaeda, as well as sanctions against Iran on the grounds that both represent an unconscionable threat to the free world, and yet at the same time demand of Israel that it makes concessions to a coalition made up of the allies of Iran and al Qaeda. I’m sure we’d all like to know, if this is how you treat your ‘friends’, how you would treat your enemies.

I realise, Prime Minister, that before you achieved high office your knowledge of and interest in foreign affairs was hovering around the zero mark. As a result, it is likely that your only knowledge of the Middle East comes from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, which has a history of virulent antagonism towards the Jewish people. I would also expect, however, that you have an eye to your own place in history, and that you would probably like to be viewed by future generations as the British Prime Minister who stood shoulder to shoulder with the victims of genocidal aggression against their destroyers, rather than the other way round.

If you are to get this the right way round and thus avoid such posthumous infamy, it is vital that you come to realise the key point about the Middle East impasse. To arrive at a solution, it is imperative first of all correctly to identify the problem. The problem in the Middle East is not the absence of a state of Palestine. Were that the case, the problem would have been resolved when such a state was first mooted long before World War Two. The problem is instead that the Arabs wish to destroy the State of Israel. The solution, therefore, is to stop them from continuing to try to do so. And to achieve that, it is essential that the west stop rewarding them for their attempts.

For the single most important reason for the never-ending nature of the Middle East impasse is that, uniquely, for more than nine decades the west has rewarded the Arab aggressors and punished their Jewish victims. And from the start, the western leader of this infernal process, I’m afraid to say, was Britain.

It was the British who, out of sheer breathtaking malice against the Jewish people, first incited the (hitherto mainly benignly disposed) Arabs against the Jews returning to their ancestral homeland in Palestine in the early years of the 20th century. It was the British who set out to undermine and reverse their own government’s policy to re-establish the Jewish national home in the land of Israel. It was the British who reneged on their internationally binding treaty obligation to settle the Jews throughout Palestine – including the areas currently known as the ‘West Bank’ and Gaza – with the result that they kept out desperate Jews trying to flee Nazi Europe, causing thousands to be murdered in the Holocaust. At the same time, they encouraged Arab immigration from neighbouring countries and turned a blind eye to the pogroms carried out by these Arab newcomers against the Jews whose land it was supposed to be –thus laying the groundwork for the false claim that the Arabs were the rightful inheritors of the land. And all the time, the British cloaked this vicious treachery in the honeyed fiction that they were the true friends of the Jewish people and had their interests at heart.

The history of the British in this terrible conflict between Jew and Arab is not merely a chronicle of the utmost perfidy and malevolent Judeophobic bigotry. It is also directly responsible for the continuation of the conflict to this day. For Arab aggression against the Jews has been rewarded and encouraged from the start, by robbing the Jews of their rightful inheritance and giving great chunks of it to their aggressors. But if aggressors are rewarded, the inevitable result is more aggression until they achieve their final terrible aim.

And that very same process is in evidence today, with Britain’s grotesque endorsement this week of the coalition for genocide and your government's unconscionable pressure upon Israel to negotiate its own destruction with its mortal enemies. Prime Minister, the virus of Judeophobia is now rampant once again throughout Europe – let alone in the Arab and Muslim world. And the fuel for this fire is the set of genocidal falsehoods about the Arab and Muslim war of extermination against Israel, a Big lie which has turned victim into aggressor and vice versa. Appallingly, the British government is helping stoke this vile inferno by endorsing many of these falsehoods -- and now, worse still, by actually promoting the coalition of genocide and turning the screw on its victim. The similarities with the 1930s and 1940s are uncanny and horrifying – similarities not just with what was allowed to develop in Europe, but also what happened in Palestine itself, the source of today’s terrible impasse.

Prime Minister, if you are not very careful indeed history will judge that you re-established a direct line back to the malevolence of the British in Palestine; back to that terrible time when Britain so foully betrayed the Jewish people and became a party to genocide; back to the approach which gave genocidal fanatics hope that victory was within their grasp. To stand up against all this -- the defining madness of our times -- would demand of you, I know full well, the utmost statesmanship and moral courage. But the alternative is to earn the contempt of decent people everywhere and the scorn of posterity. The choice, Prime Minister, is yours.

Sincerely,

Melanie Phillips

Immigration at a price?

Gary Becker has just published a short monograph for the IEA entitled The Challenge of Immigration: A Radical Solution (see also here). Like most of Becker’s proposals it has a penetrating simplicity and compelling logic to it. I want to consider it briefly (for my earlier assessment of the immigration issue see here).

Here is the Executive Summary:

• Despite substantial economic growth in underdeveloped countries, there are still huge differences in wage levels between poorer and richer countries.
• Low fertility, especially in Europe, is also likely to lead to pressures that will encourage migration in future decades.
• Net migration has grown dramatically in recent years. In 1980, net migration to the UK was approximately zero and by 2005 the figure was 190,000 per annum. In the same period net migration to the USA more or less doubled to 1.1 million per annum.
• There were very substantial migration flows in the late nineteenth century but the USA imposed restrictions from the 1920s onwards. Those restrictions are onerous and involve bureaucratic controls.
• Given the extent of welfare states in countries with higher incomes, it would be difficult to go back to a policy of free migration.
• There would be many advantages to a policy of charging immigrants a fee. If a fee of (say) $50,000 were charged, it would ensure that economically active migrants who had a real commitment to the country were most attracted. This fee could be used to lower other taxes.
• Charging a fee would be a much more efficient way of controlling economic migration than the use of quotas and other bureaucratic systems of control.
• Even a fee of $50,000 would allow people on relatively low earnings to enter the USA if there were skill shortages. Given the level of wage differentials, such a fee could be paid back in a few years or in a decade or so.
• Certain categories of migrant might be allowed to benefit from a loans system to enable them to pay the fee over a period of years. This could operate rather like a student loans system in higher education.
• One advantage of using a fee rather than administrative controls would be that illegal immigrants would have a strong incentive to regularize their status – and would be allowed to do so legally. Such people would have to pay the required fee but would then be free to choose much more remunerative occupations. As such, the use of the price mechanism in migration policy could alleviate the scourge of illegal immigration.

My general reaction to this proposal was quite negative for a few reasons.

1. It appears to solidify the role of government in “centrally planning” the immigration market. Any kind of central planning smells bad – incentive and knowledge problems – abuse, corruption, unavoidable errors of judgment, etc. It also means that government officials get to decide how many immigrants is the “right” number, rather than leaving this to the market.
2. The immigration fee would be paid to the government and would become a source of revenue for it. Becker suggests that this revenue (which could be substantial) could be put toward the budget deficit and obviate the need for some taxes going forward. This argument is surprisingly naïve. It is almost certain that the government will simply expand its commitments to include the revenue. In other words it will simply fuel the expansion of government. This is a proposal for expanding government revenue, not one for simply redistributing the way that revenue is used, as is the case with vouchers.
3. The proposal is basically a mechanism for allocating immigrants between the legal and illegal categories. The higher the fee, the more likely it is to deter legal migration, leaving the potential migration two, not one, options; not to migrate or to migrate illegally.
4. Becker suggests a government funded, or supported, loan program for lower income immigrants to be able to pay the fee. (At $50,000, even low income earners would be able to pay this loan in a few years.) Who needs another government loan program? Most certainly this would turn into a dei facto subsidy.
   

Further thought, however, has inclined me more in favor of the proposal for the following reasons (referring to the list above).

1. The role of government will be diminished. So while it is clearly not ideal it does reduce the necessary bureaucracy and its scope of decision making. Responses to the level of the immigration fee set could be made public and as a way to use “market data” to adjust the number of immigrants admitted. I still don’t like this at all; but I have to concede it is a lot better than what we have.
2. Expanding government revenue by this proposal remains a big problem for me. This could be made much more palatable with a more detailed circumscribing of the use of this money; keeping it out of general revenue. Maybe it could be used for a comprehensive education voucher program. [In the high welfare states, like California, they would want use this money to pay for health-care and education of immigrants. I would resist this, since immigrants are likely to pay for them themselves in their taxes.]
3. The proposal definitely creates a mechanism by which illegal immigrants could regularize their status. It seems it would also avoid the thorny question of amnesty and the moral qualms surrounding it. At $50,000 it is likely to all but remove the illegal immigration problem.
4. One need not have government involved in any loan program. If immigration were economically profitable private companies would fund loans for the fee.

So, all in all, it seems to me this proposal would be a vast improvement over what we have. It is clearly much more politically palatable and likely than more the more radical changes that many of us would like to see along classical liberal lines. Would it foreclose such changes completely? Is it worth taking that risk? Though my heart is not in it, I would have to say yes. What do you think?

The case for climate change policy is slowly unraveling

The case for climate change policy is slowly unraveling, even as the climate alarmists continue to dominate the policy agenda. They have made up their minds and don't want to be confused by facts and logic. I say climate change POLICY (rather than global warming as a phenomenon) because, even if we grant the case for global warming (which has by no means been scientifically made), there are still three other questions that we need to answer clearly in the affirmative before we have a case for global warming POLICY. As I have explained here:

In order to make a case for government policy to mitigate Global Warming all of the following questions have to be answered in the affirmative:

1. Is the global climate warming?
2. If yes, is this (partially) caused by CO2 emissions?
3. If yes, is there anything we can do to significantly slow this down or even reverse global warming?
4. If yes, is it worth the effort?

Each of these questions poses a tough burden to meet, appropriately so before we embark on policies that will disrupt hundreds of thousands of lives (read the blog). I would now add an important fifth challenge.

5. Can we answer #4 above definitively?

This is another way of saying, do we really know what the hell we are doing?

Have a look at this op-ed from today's WSJ for a dose of humility in this regard.




REVIEW & OUTLOOK
APRIL 21, 2011
Climate Refugees, Not Found
Discredited by reality, the U.N.'s prophecies go missing.

In 2005, the U.N. Environment Program (UNEP) published a color-coded map under the headline "Fifty million climate refugees by 2010." The primary source for the prediction was a 2005 paper by environmental scientist Norman Myers.

Six years later, this flood of refugees is nowhere to be found, global average temperatures are about where they were when the prediction was made—and the U.N. has done a vanishing act of its own, wiping the inconvenient map from its servers.

The map, which can still be found elsewhere on the Web, disappeared from the program's site sometime after April 11, when Gavin Atkins asked on AsianCorrespondent.com: "What happened to the climate refugees?" It's now 2011 and, as Mr. Atkins points out, many of the locales that the map identified as likely sources of climate refugees are "not only not losing people, they are actually among the fastest growing regions in the world."

The program's spokesman tells us the map vanished because "it's not a UNEP prediction. . . . that graphic did not represent UNEP views and was an oversimplification of UNEP views." He added that the program would like to publish a clarification, now that journalists are "making hay of it," except that the staffers able to do so are "all on holiday for Easter."

The climate-refugee prediction isn't the first global warming-related claim that has turned out to be laughable, and everyone can make mistakes. More troubling is the impulse among some advocates of global warming alarmism to assert in the face of contrary evidence that they never said what they definitely said before the evidence went against them.

These columns have asked for some time how anyone can still manage to take the U.N.-led climate crowd seriously. Maybe the more pertinent question is whether the climateers have ever taken the public's intelligence seriously.
Copyright 2011 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved