America’s current government may not be the criminal enterprise of Drew Hayes’ “Forging Hephaestus”, but it reflects on the worst characteristics of capitalist democracies.
Books of Interest Website: chetyarbrough.blog
Forging Hephaestus: Villains’ Code Series, Book 1
Author: Drew Hayes
NarratedBy: Amy Landon
Drew Hayes (Author, humorist writer who earned a BA in English from Texas Tech University.)
“Forging Hephaestus” is the beginning of a series of books that this critic is unlikely to complete. The first book, “Forging Hephaestus” sets the table for some interesting points about systems of power, identity, and morality that reminds one of government control and influence. However, Hayes is creating a secret guild of criminals’ intent on ruling the world of crime.
Drew’s story begins with the creation of a young woman that embodies the force of fire.
She is like the mythological god of fire though not appearing as someone who is male or has, as the Greek myth goes, any physical imperfection. One presumes the author is challenging the patriarchal truth of history that shows power, aggression, and ambition are not only masculine. Additionally, the choice of Hephestus as a woman makes one think about a person who exemplifies both creation and destruction, i.e., the birth and death of humanity.
If one thinks of Hayes’ story as a cynical allegory of government, rather than a criminal enterprise, it becomes more interesting to this reviewer.
What Drew describes as a Villains’ Guild is like a government elected by people who believe they are voting for someone who represents their interests. In reality, voters are voting for self-interested people who may or may not govern in voter’s best interest. At best, governments try to serve the public but are not gods of infallible understanding that can legislate what is always in the best interest of its citizens. Generally, governments control through compliance, not morality. Order is prized over justice and equity. That desire for order changes elected officials’ loyalty to those who are elected as much as to people who voted for them.
The guild that Hayes creates audits and enforces their criminal objectives with state surveillance and internal security.
State surveillance and internal security are the same tools used by government which are even more effective today than in the past because of technology. (A past trip to China after Xi had taken power shows how internet searches are restricted when one is in a Bejing’ hotel.) The paradox of surveillance and internal security is that no one is truly free whether they are a part of those who govern or are the governed. Human nature exploits the weak, the ethnic, and ill-informed. Government representatives are no more virtuous or venal than the citizens who elected them. That is why citizens become skeptical about the legitimacy of their government’s concern about common good.
Trump’s world view.
Listening/reading “Forging Hephaestus” is an apocryphal story to some who feel President Trump is the quintessential example of one who is more interested in himself and his family’s wealth than the people who voted for him. America’s current government may not be the criminal enterprise of Drew Hayes’ “Forging Hephaestus”, but it reflects on the worst characteristics of capitalist democracies.
Discrimination is certainly based on the color of one’s skin but also on gender, ethnicity, and income inequality. Those nations that embrace equality of opportunity for all will be the leaders of the future in the age of technology
Books of Interest Website: chetyarbrough.blog
Caste (The Origins of Our Discontent)
Author: Isabel Wilkerson
NarratedBy: Robin Miles
Isabel Wilkerson (Author, American journalist, winner of the Pulitzer Prize in journalism in 1994 while serving as the Chicago Bureau Chief for the NYTimes.)
Isabel Wilkerson has written a provocative book about what she characterizes as a rigid social hierarchy in America that undermines the ideals of democracy. Wilkerson weaves her personal life and the history of black experience with the sociological failings in America’s treatment of race. She notes the past and present truth of white America’s unequal treatment of its citizens based on race. However, her characterization of America’s discrimination as a caste system and its comparison to India’s and Nazi Germany’s governments is hyperbolic. Nevertheless, it creates a sense of urgency for those who believe in the ideal of human equality. It is difficult, if not impossible, to compare other nation’s inequality with America’s effort and present-day failure to fulfill the ideals of democracy.
The timeliness of Wilkerson’s book seems appropriate in relation to the backward steps being taken by Donald Trump.
Some Americans feel threatened by demographic change that will make white citizens less than 50% of America’s population by 2045. In theory, no one should care if all people are treated equally. What history shows is that the ideals of equality have never been achieved in America or in any other country with a dominant race and/or ethnicity.
Trump’s effort to return America to its past is interpreted by some as a return to industrial production.
America’s return to industrialization is a false flag that will not make America Great. Reindustrialization and keeping America white is a fool’s errand based on demography and the age of technology. Trump’s desire for power, adulation, and loyalty have little to do with prejudice but everything to do with appealing to the worst fears of middle-class America. Trump is willing to use whatever dog whistle is required to satisfy his desire for power and prestige. He understands the fears of the middle class and where American power lays. Power and money are the driving forces of capitalism. Middle class American’s buying power has stagnated or fallen since the 1970s despite the increasing wealth of the top 10% of American citizens. The middle class of America is something Trump appealed to in his re-election for a second term because of their disproportionate loss of income and the rising wealth of America’s business leaders. The irony is that Trump is one of the beneficiaries of that income gap between the very rich and the working-class.
Income growth in America.
Income disparity trend in the U.S.through 2015.
Wilkerson is right in the sense that America’s real objective should be to ensure equality of all. She is arguing we should have a greater sense of urgency in achieving equality. Equal treatment for all is a formula that can maintain America’s position as an economic, military, and political hegemon. American industrial hegemony is yesterday’s goal. Technological advancement is today’s goal. To achieve today’s goals, equal treatment of all becomes essential in technology because intelligence, innovation, and persistence does not lie in any one race, sex, or creed.
America is class conscious but not in the same way as either India’s or Nazi Germany’s histories.
Wilkerson notes a caste system can be built around ethnicity, religion, language, or gender but race discrimination is what she has personally experienced and underlays much of her comparisons of American history with India and Nazi Germany. Equality of opportunity is key to continued growth of human beings and national economies in the age of technology. In the short term, one may see an autocratic country like China become an economic and military hegemon, but maintenance of that success is dependent on equality of opportunity for all, not just those in power.
One can sympathize with the author’s view of discrimination but her comparison of America to India and Nazi Germany misses too much of what unequal treatment in America is based upon.
Discrimination is certainly based on the color of one’s skin but also on gender, ethnicity, and income inequality. Those nations that embrace equality of opportunity for all will be the leaders of the future in the age of technology.
To Leah Litman, Trump’s election seems a setback but not a reversal of the ideal of balancing equal rights with private interests. As Alexander Pope wrote in his poem, in the 18th century “Hope springs eternal in the human breast”.
Books of Interest Website: chetyarbrough.blog
Lawless (How the Supreme Court Runs Conservative Grievance, Fringe Theories, and Bad Vibes)
Author: Leah Litman
Narrated By: Leah Litman
Leah Litman (Author, BA in Chemistry & Chemical Biology, constitutional law scholar with Doctorate from University of Michigan Law School.)
One doubts Leah Litman would suggest there are no biological differences between men and women considering her education as a science major and legal scholar. As a science major, she knows there are chromosomal, hormonal, physical, and reproductive system differences between the sexes. However, Litman is spot on in arguing women do not have equal rights with men just as all races and ethnicities do not in the ideals of American Democracy. Litman argues that legally, equality is not being enforced in America today and is being diminished by today’s Supreme Court of the United States.
American Supreme Court
Litman persuasively argues today’s Supreme Court has eroded women’s rights by supporting legal theories that are ideologically promoted by political conservatives but not by precedents set by an earlier Supreme Court. Today’s majority at the Supreme Court has succumbed to the influence of conservative theories about the sexes rather than precedents set by an earlier Supreme Court.
It is not that the sexes are not different but that they deserve equal treatment under the law.
The point made by Litman is that the Supreme Court has found that in “all forms of discrimination”, equality of opportunity is mandated by the 14th amendment which provides equal protection under the law to all citizens with assurance that no person should be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process. Further, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin in employment, education, and public accommodation. Previously settled law by the Supreme Court is being ignored in reversing Roe v. Wade, criminalizing same sex intimacy and marriage, and denying equal rights to the LGBTQ community.
What Litman is pointing to is the politicalization of the Supreme Court.
One might argue the Court has always been a political body. America’s history of discrimination has been reinforced and attacked in different eras of the Court. As the Turkish saying, “A fish rots from the head down”, today’s Justices of the Supreme Court are reversing precedents set in former rulings. America elects a President every four years. Even though Supreme Court justices are appointed for a lifetime, they decide to retire at some point in their careers and are replaced by recommendations of a current President with acceptance or rejection by Congress. If a conservative is in the office of the Presidency, then the recommendation will be based on candidates who reinforce a President’s political leaning. The same, of course, is true for a more liberal President.
Litman infers a politicalization of the Supreme Court lies at the feet of those who choose to vote, promote, and support candidates of their choice.
America is at a conservative revisionist point in the history of the Court with Donald Trump’s election. America has only itself to blame or praise for that revisionism. The obvious leaning of Litman is liberal in that she strongly believes in equal rights for all Americans. Her plea is for Americans to wake up to the importance of voting, promoting, and supporting candidates for public office.
American Democracy remains the best form of government despite wavering on balancing equal rights and private interests.
A perfect society will balance equal rights with private interests. America is not there, but it has a greater possibility of getting there than any other form of governance. To Leah Litman, Trump’s election seems a setback but not a reversal of the ideal of balancing equal rights with private interests. As Alexander Pope wrote in his poem, in the 18th century “Hope springs eternal in the human breast”.
“Apple in China” is a message to the entire world about the risks of technological relocation solely based on reducing costs of labor in a politically and culturally divided world. This is a book every employer should listen to or read.
Books of Interest Website: chetyarbrough.blog
Apple in China (The Capture of the World’s Greatest Company)
Author: Patrick McGees
Narrated By: Fred Sanders
Patrick McGee (Author, technology/business journalist, San Francisco Correspondent for “Financial Times”.)
Patrick McGee has written an important book about world trade. He reveals a shocking story about Apple and the risk of basing a corporation’s economic future on a singular aspect of its success, i.e. cost of manufacturing. This is a story of two companies and the world’s labor market. Foxconn and Apple look to China, Taiwan, South Korea, Ireland, and Asian countries that vie for the role of the cheapest and best labor markets in the world. Foxconn’s and much of Apple’s search and success as a tech company is based on finding the cheapest labor in the world for the manufacture of product. However, McGee explains how that view makes Apple and other international corporations vulnerable to the politics of nation-states that have a mix of economic and political agendas. McGee explains how politics can be a greater cost than benefit to a business enterprise because of nation-state’ politics.
The power of political leadership in business enterprise is on display in America today with Donald Trump and his doomed effort to return America to a 20th century manufacturing behemoth.
McGee’s story is about the impact of China’s government on Apple and Foxconn led by Tim Cook and Terry Gou. Tim Cook is the wunderkind hired by Steve Jobs before his death, and Terry Gou is the Taiwanese billionaire who founded Foxconn which is now headed by Young Liu who was educated in Taiwan and the United States.
Tim Cook (CEO of Apple Inc.)
McGee explains why and how Tim Cook became the CEO of Apple. Jobs who was known as a poor manager of people, needed a manager who emulated Jobs’ drive but understood how to manager an organization to become bigger while remaining profitable. Cook is characterized as someone who has a near photographic memory. His analysis of reports from subordinates could be used to advance company goals or change a subordinate’s understanding of anything they propose that is not practicable or goal focused. What McGee argues is that Tim Cook’s focus on the cost of manufacturing became an Achilles heel when he hires Foxconn to organize Apple’s iPhone manufacturing to be done mostly in one country, China.
To accomplish iPhone manufacture in China, Cook had to transfer thousands of American engineers to train laborers in the assembly of Apple products.
Cook needed a go-between which became Foxconn, a Taiwanese company that is the largest electronics labor contractor in the world. Foxconn is also China’s largest private-sector employer with over 800k employees. Foxconn employees assemble iPhones, semiconductors, and electronics for some of the largest American technology companies in the world, e.g. Apple, Microsoft, and Dell. Foxconn’s relationship with China is further complicated by the international relationship between Taiwan and China. Foxconn has built a lucrative business in the tech industry because of its labor intensity and the desire of tech companies to minimize overhead to improve their profits.
World trade has made Foxconn the leading international labor subcontractor in the world. They employ an estimated 800,000 employees in China alone.
The desire to bring Taiwan under the control of communist China is a background conflict between Xi and Terry Gou. It may be unlikely that Gou would ever be elected President of Taiwan, but his candidacy is a cloud of suspicion to knowledgeable Chinese, Taiwanese, and American leaders. McGee notes Foxconn’s tax audits and land-use investigations by Chinese authorities that some believe are politically motivated. Foxconn has been criticized for poor working conditions because of incidents of worker protests, suicides, and labor strikes. China’s posture on those working conditions is ambiguous and most American businesses are ignorant or uncaring. A China crackdown on labor conditions would have wide effects on the global tech industry.
For Apple to lower costs of iPhone assembly, Foxconn contracted China’s people at low wages, to support what would be unfair labor practices in America, to assemble iPhones.
This benefited Apple in the first years of their association with Foxconn in China. However, later in the transition President Xi spread false reports of poor and unfair warranty practices being offered Chinese consumers of Apple products. Contrary to Xi’s claims, McGee explains that Apple warranties were the same in China as they were throughout the world.
McGee infers politics were behind Xi’s false claims about iPhone warranties.
China’s economy benefited from Apple’s move for cheaper manufacturing costs. China gained an immense technology boost from the retraining of Chinese citizens by Apple’s experienced engineers. With iPhone manufacturing in China, Apple’s revenues rose from $24 billion in 2007 to $201 billion in 2022. Apple invested an estimated $275 billion in China’s economy over 5 years. However, with Xi’s lies and vilification of Apple’s warranty, Chinese smartphone giants like Huawei, Xiaomi, Oppo, and Vivo increased sales. One presumes, Tesla followed a similar cost and benefit reward with its labor and technology transfer to China’s electric vehicle manufacturers.
McGee notes the bad publicity for Apple in the Chinese market threatens Apple’s future in three ways.
One, its loss of sales in China, two, a significant change in low-cost manufacturing advantages with rising Chinese labor cost, and three, Apple’ technology transfer to Chinese companies. Add to those lost advantages is Apple’s relocation costs to another country for iPhone manufacture.
GENERAL GEORGE C. MARSHALL (1880-1959)
An interesting comparison McGee makes between Apple’s $275 billion investment in China for iPhone assembly is that it is more than double the amount used in the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe after WWII.
McGee notes Apple has a supply chain vulnerability from the Chinese government’s relationship with key suppliers of iPhone components wherever they are assembled. “Apple in China” is a message to the entire world about the risks of technological relocation solely based on reducing costs of labor in a politically and culturally divided world. This is a book every employer should listen to or read.
Being bad is a human characteristic, i.e., the desire for money, power, prestige, and sex are elemental parts of the human condition. They are the “Snares” of human life.
Books of Interest Website: chetyarbrough.blog
The Snares (A Novel)
By: Rav Grewal-Kök
Narrated By: Neil Shah
Rav Grewal-Kök (Author, “The Snares” is his first novel. Rav Grewal-Kök has written for The Atlantic, New England Review and won a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship.)
“The Snares” is about a well-educated lawyer who feels like an American outsider struggling to become a success. His mother and father are Punjabi. He seems burdened by being a person of a different race and ethnicity in white America. That feeling is reinforced by the circumstances of his life. He is married to a woman who comes from a wealthy white American family. He is a lawyer at forty years of age that is offered a job by the CIA. His hope is that working for the CIA will be a career making move that will make him a success in his own eyes and in the opinion of his in-laws. The irony of Grewal-Kök’s story is that the CIA is not an avenue for success but a road to perdition. The author paints a picture of the CIA and FBI that makes a mockery of American ideals.
What Grewal-Kök shows is that American government employees are just like the general population.
All the prejudices and dishonesty of America (or any country) are as present in governments as in any organization of human beings. The difference is that government has wider societal influence than a singular business, or eleemosynary organization. Government is filled with all the social goodness and prejudice of the society in which it is designed to serve.
“The Snares” the author is writing about are the best and worst of what the American CIA represent. The author’s main character, Neel Chima, is interviewed for a job with the CIA. Chima is hired by the CIA during the George W. Bush administration. George W., considered a Republican conservative, is the first President to authorize drone strikes for targeted killing. President Bush approved the killing of 6 Yemeni’ men in Yemen for their attack on the USS Cole. What is often forgotten is that Barack Obama, a Democratic liberal, authorized between 400 and 600 drone strikes that killed an estimated 3,797 people, of which 300 to 400 were civilians.
Obama’s drone strikes were in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia.
One takes for granted that every drone strike is based on a careful examination of the human targets that are chosen. What Grewal-Kök implies is the CIA is something more than an intelligence service charged with collecting, analyzing and acting on foreign threats to America. As CIA operatives, these very human and well-educated government employees are pursuing a good life by stopping considered threats to America. Neel Chima is hired because the CIA officer in charge believes he can be an asset in the pursuit of foreign intelligence because of his ambition and life as a Punjabi American. However, Chima’s career ends in a state of turmoil, in part because of his own human vices but largely because of inept management by unscrupulous supervisors.
The snares that Grewal-Kök is referring to are “bad people” who are in powerful government positions. These bad government actors use their position to subvert newbies to their organization for actions that are contrary to ideals of the government agency for which they work. This is particularly dangerous in organizations like the CIA and FBI that are designed to interpret behaviors of potential criminals, i.e. not criminals in the act of crime but those who may or may not commit a crime.
J. Edgar Hoover led the FBI from 1924 to 1972.
The FBI arrested Americans suspected of being radicals during the Red Scare without due process. President Trump is doing the same thing with the arbitrary exportation of immigrants today. The FBI targeted Martin Luther King Jr. and tried to discredit him by closely surveilling, recording, and interpreting his activity. Hoover arguably collected secret files on politicians and famous Americans to aid his power and influence in government more than to reduce public corruption. The author infers the same is true in the CIA.
Grewal-Kök’s primary focus is on the CIA but the “Snares” of which he writes are the same that troubled the FBI. The CIA is creating files on other countries’ citizens with recommendations on actions to kill real and perceived enemies of America. Both conservative and liberal Presidents of the United States have used the CIA to kill foreign nationals. In 2o05 Abu Hamza Rabia was killed by a drone strike under George W. Bush’s administration. In 2006, the assassination of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was done in an airstrike under Bush. In 2011, Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S. born cleric and Al-Qaeda figure was killed in Yemen by a drone strike under Obama’s administration. In the same year, Osama bin Laden is assassinated in a U.S. Navy Seal’ raid ordered by Obama. In 2020, Qasem Soleimani, a major general in Iran’s Islamic Guard was killed in a drone strike at the orders of the Trump administration. In 2022, a CIA drone strike in Kabul, Afghanistan killed Ayman al-Zawahiri under President Biden.
WHAT IS THE TRUTH?
Even if all of these sanctioned murders by American Presidents have been justified, the story of “Snares” makes real–the potential for a bad or ambitious CIA agent to lie or inadvertently misconstrue the truth. Grewal-Kök explains how all human beings are subject to the “Snares” of life.
The character of Neel Chima is an everyman in America. His fall from grace is partly self-inflicted but accelerated by bad actors in the CIA. Being bad is a human characteristic, i.e., the desire for money, power, prestige, and sex are elemental parts of the human condition. They are the “Snares” of human life.
A President who only sees government as a cost and the wealthy as the nation’s only benefactors, compounds America’s inability to solve the problems of poverty with eviction being a preeminent symptom.
Books of Interest Website: chetyarbrough.blog
Evicted (Poverty and Profit in the American City)
By: Matthew Desmond
Narrated By: Dion Graham
Matthew Desmond (Author, sociologist and a Pulitzer Prize winner, Professor of Sociology at Princeton.)
Matthew Desmond has written about American poverty in “Evicted”. There are two types of poverty. One is a worker who is not making enough money to be anything more than poor. The second kind of poor is grinding poverty where one must choose between having food to eat or a roof over one’s head. One who is poor can live in America, may get an education, find a job, and get along in life. However, those with too little money to eat and have shelter–live lives of desperation. Desmond’s book is about the latter to show how American society is failing desperate citizens. Desmond interviews several poor Americans that offer a clear understanding of the difference between being poor in America and being desperately poor in America.
“Land of opportunity” believers argue there are jobs in America and those who choose to beg for food rather than work deserve their fate. The truth is that many jobs in America do not pay enough for those who have jobs to pay rent and feed their families. Housing is expensive and affordable housing is not being produced in large enough quantities to reduce the costs of housing. Affordable housing is hard to build because many homeowners resist having it built in their neighborhoods. When land is found, it is often too expensive for the builder to make a profit with low rents. The cost of construction is often higher than it needs to be because of high land prices, building code requirements, or rezoning needed to allow multifamily housing.
Education in America is not meeting the needs of its citizens.
School availability is not well enough managed to ensure education for all who live in America. Sex education and contraception are being discouraged in school, which is a foolish, self-destructive societal mistake. Healthcare is too expensive for many Americans with low incomes which compounds the health problems of the poor who cannot afford either medical service or treatment. Grinding poverty causes some to seek relief through drugs which increases medical problems and further aggravates inequality being fed by an illicit industry that is growing in America. Drug abuse kills Americans in many ways; not the least of which is addiction and poverty.
The history of American income inequality is burdened by forms of racism and sexual discrimination that do not treat people equally.
Jobs are changing with automation and outsourcing of goods produced by an international economy. American government has failed to create policies that help those who need more help. As one of the wealthiest nations in the world, America has been incapable of solving the spread of poverty among its citizens.
In reading/listening to Desmond’s research, it seems like there is an American conspiracy making one of the wealthiest countries in the world incapable of solving the housing, education, and employment problems of its citizens.
A President who only sees government as a cost and the wealthy as the nation’s only benefactors, compounds America’s inability to solve the problems of poverty with eviction being a preeminent symptom.
Only the Constitution of the United States stands between Trump’s authoritarianism and what has made America one of the wealthiest countries in the world.
Books of Interest Website: chetyarbrough.blog
The Project (How Project 2025 Is Reshaping America)
By: David A. Graham
Narrated By: Ari Fliakos
David A. Graham (Author, journalist, staff writer at The Atlantic.)
Graham has taken the time to dissect the policies proposed by the Heritage Foundation’s support and creation of Project 2025. Project 2025 is a political treatise that seems to outline many of the policies and objectives of the Trump administration.
As Graham notes, even though Trump is unlikely to have read Project 2025, its content seems to outline much of what Trump has done or is trying to do in his Presidency.
A priority in Project 2025 is downsizing the federal government. Interestingly, government employee firings began as soon as Trump entered the oval office. With Trump’s appointment of Elon Musk as the leader of DOGE (the Department of Government Efficiency) over 200,000 federal workers have been discharged. An estimated 10,000 employees were discharged from the Department of Health and Human Services. If all of these firings were to be permanent, an estimated $1.17 billion to $1.26 billion would be saved per year. With 2 million federal employees, less than 1 percent of the payroll cost of government has been SAVED.
Three things come to mind with the 1 percent cost reduction in government employee payroll.
One, is the effect of a job lost to a family who depends on gainful employment. Two, what public services are lost as a result of 2oo,000 fired government employees. And finally, what value is there to the public in reducing government payroll cost by less than 1 percent?
Of course, some will say that misses the point of the symbolic value of reducing the cost of government.
After all, America is founded on capitalism not socialist welfare. Yes and no. Yes, we are capitalists. No, we benefit from government employees who are gainfully employed because they buy things with the money they make while providing service to the public. Is the risk of unemployment in America worth the cost of some human inefficiency?
Project 2025 recommends tax system overhaul with the implementation of a flat income tax.
Trump has reduced jobs in the Department of the IRS. One should remind oneself that the present tax system takes the same maximum amount of money per year out of a family’s income for social security whether they make a million dollars per year or minimum wage. The social security tax rate is 6.2% of up to $176,100 of income per year. After one who is making more than $176,100, no further social security tax is taken. Americans pay that 6.2% whether they make minimum wage or millions of dollars per year. There is something wrong with that picture. Tax reform is needed in America, but the tax reform Trump is interested in is for rich capitalists, not minimum wage earners.
Trump wants to abolish the IRS and finance the government with tariffs and a sales tax.
He wants to have a national sales tax of 23% or roughly 30 cents per dollar spent. That tax will be a burden to the poor but nothing to the rich. Trump perceives an equal benefit to minimum wage workers because they would not have to pay taxes on tips, overtime, and social security. Is that tax benefit equal to corporate tax reductions of 21% to 20% and a reduced rate of 15% for U.S. manufacturers. More jobs may or may not be created, but who gains the most benefit?
Trump infers corporation owners and managers would not put tax savings in their pockets but would create more jobs.
Two entitlement programs Trump believes will be unnecessary as a result of his tax changes are Medicare and Medicaid. Trump supporters believe economic growth will offset the negative impact that his tax reform plan will have on the poor. Does that make it unnecessary to have Medicare or Medicaid for the poor?
Trump is making a mockery of the Constitution by indiscriminately arresting and deporting anyone who cannot prove their status as a legal resident of America.
Project 2025 insists on immigration enforcement with improved border security and tighter immigration policies. Trump endorses that plan, but it is a job for Congress, not an autocratic President. He is willing to pay immigrants with American tax dollars for them to return to their countries of birth. Whose money is it that Trump is choosing to use?
Trump believes global warming is just a seasonal event in the history of earth.
Project 2025 recommends rolling back environmental regulations and endorsing fossil fuels over renewable energy. Trump endorses that plan by rolling back environmental regulations because he believes global warming is a fiction. Science is a fiction to President Trump.
Project 2025 recommends strengthening the executive branch of government and decreasing the rolls of Congress and the courts.
Project 2025 recommends strengthening the executive branch of government and decreasing the rolls of Congress and the courts that are the basis upon which separation of powers were written into the Constitution. Trump is ignoring fundamental tenants of the Constitution like Due Process of Law in the deportation of immigrants.
Project 2025 recommends criminalizing pornography, removing legal protections for anti-LGBT discrimination, and ending diversity programs that drive for equality of all Americans. Trump is using the office of the Presidency to punish elite colleges that have DEI programs meant to address American social inequality.
Trump believes what he believes and acts on those beliefs. His sexual picadilloes are ok but pornography is not. The author shows Trump has support for his beliefs in Project 2025. His support is equally apparent in the free vote of a majority who voted for him in the last election. Only the Constitution of the United States stands between Trump’s authoritarianism and what has made America one of the wealthiest countries in the world.
Migration is the movement of people to new areas of the world for work, better living conditions, and safety. In that process the world economy is strengthened. .
Books of Interest Website: chetyarbrough.blog
The Shortest History of Migration
By: Ian Goldin
Narrated By: Julian Elfer
Ian Andrew Goldin (South African born professor at the University of Oxford, specializes in globalization and development.)
Professor Goldin has written a history of migration that reminds one of the well-known phrases attributed to Socrates: “I know that I know nothing”. Goldin is born in South Africa to a Lithuanian father who fled his home country to escape political and social upheaval in Europe during the early 20th century. In retrospect, that migration saved the future of the Goldin’s from Stalinist suppression after WWII. It is ironic that Ian Goldin is raised in South Africa where white suppression of native South Africans was common. “The Shortest History of Migration” is no apologia, but it is a forthright history of the ubiquity of world migration.
Migration is an essential characteristic of civilization believed to have begun in Africa.
The obvious irony of human origin is the darker skin tone of our first ancestors who had higher levels of skin melanin to protect them from the harsh effects of the sun. Humanity began as a species of a black ancestor, an estimated 6 to 7 million years ago.
Neanderthal precursor of human beings.
Goldin implies humans moved from Africa to explore the world. They may have left to escape the harshness of their existence or because of the nature of species’ curiosity. Their change in environment led to changes in their physiognomy (facial features and expressions) caused by the evolutionary nature of life and the exigencies of environment. The point is that migration has been a part of history since the beginning of life on earth.
What may be forgotten by some is that migration was largely unregulated until WWI according to Goldin.
That seems largely true except the United States passed the Naturalization Act of 1790 that established rules for citizenship and an Immigration Act of 1891 that created the U.S. Bureau of Immigration; both of which implied regulation. Nevertheless, the fundamental point is that migration has been a part of society from the beginning of human life.
WWI generated many new laws and policies about migration.
Wartime measures required passports and border crossing cards to manage migration. National security increased scrutiny of immigrants. Broader societal and political concerns about migration spread across the world. Migration became more complicated.
Goldin argues the benefit of migration is misunderstood and misrepresented by leaders like Donald Trump.
Goldin suggests the economic impact of Trump’s anti-migrant beliefs and policies will undermine both the world and American economies. In 2023, an estimated 18% of the economic output of the American economy came from migration. The two industries most impacted are agriculture and construction but many immigrants work in caregiving and medical professions, all of which will be impacted by labor shortages. Goldin notes that migrants working in other countries send money back to their home countries that amount to more revenue than is provided by tourism and foreign aid. Many, if not most, economists would argue migration is a cornerstone of economic growth and stability. Trump’s false statements about migrant criminality are overblown and unsupported by economic statistics that show migrants contributed an estimated $25.7 billion in 2022 to the Social Security system in taxes that benefit aged American citizens (like myself).
Trump policies will not return American to the manufacturing prosperity of the twentieth century but to a possible depression like that of the 1930s or, at the very least, a recession like that of 2007-2009.
Migration is the movement of people to new areas of the world for work, better living conditions, and safety. In that process the world economy is strengthened.
Unless homelessness is addressed with affordable housing, America’s future looks bleak. A land of have and have-nots will grow to crush American prosperity.
Books of Interest Website: chetyarbrough.blog
Abundance
By: Ezra Klein, Derek Thompson
Narrated by: The Authors
Ezra Klein (American political commentator and “NYT’ journalist.) Derek Thompson (American podcaster and journalist @ “The Atlantic”.)
These two young Americans offer an insightful view of politics and American government in the 21st century.
Donald TrumpKamela Harris
Klein or Thompson could have voted for either Trump or Harris in America’s last election. Their book argues American government is both a boon and bane for citizen “Abundance” in the 21st century. They note America has contradictory economic policies that have created great abundance among Americans while exacerbating inequality. Evidence for their opinion is growing homelessness, an immigration crisis, loss of manufacturing jobs, and government’s failure to creatively adjust public policies to provide solutions.
Those who have shared in the abundance of America have voted for candidates to preserve their privileges.
The authors note homelessness is a function of affordable housing that is denied by government policies that regulate zoning and construction requirements. Government policies make affordable housing too costly to build and impossible to locate because of zoning restrictions. The number of people living on the street is a self-inflicted American tragedy. Some of the homeless are young, some are old, some have mental or physical problems, and others are victims of drugs or their own weaknesses. What they have in common is unaffordable housing.
Historically, immigration has been a great boon to American economic growth.
Klien and Thompson note restrictive immigration policies have created obstacles for workers needed for manufacturing in key industries like agriculture, auto industry assembly, housing construction, and clean energy infrastructure. Rather than wasting money on building walls and deporting workers, the authors advocate immigration reform that meets the needs of American business. One can imply the authors meaning is that to “Make America Great Again” requires immigrants willing to work in agricultural and manufacturing jobs. The end of the baby boom requires help from immigrants to meet the needs of increased manufacturing and construction in the United States.
Some believe what Trump is doing is good for the American economy in the long run.
The criticism is that in the short run, the economy may collapse. Tariffs being used as a ham-fisted way of negotiating fair international trade is a fool’s errand. America needs labor and material in the short run to achieve equal and greater prosperity than it had in the 1970s. Added manufacturing will aid American prosperity, but it will be surpassed in the long run by automation. It is the automation race America needs to win or compete with to remain a world leader. Competing in that race depends on education, and scientific research. The irony is that Trump is firing government employees who have responsibility for public education, research, and funding that have been the engines of America’s prosperity.
The government employees discharged by the Trump administration to solely reduce costs is short sighted.
In the 1980s, 60% of basic research in the U.S. was funded by the government. In 2022 that funding dropped to 40%. Advances in semiconductors, global positions systems, biotechnology, and aeronautics were government-funded discoveries in the 1980s. American government-funded scientific research gave America the internet, GPS technology, mass production of penicillin, Space exploration, human genome project discoveries, and renewable energy innovations. The Department of Health and Human Services has lost 20,000 employees, the Department of Education 1,300, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration 800, and the National Institutes of Health 1,200. One wonders how many of these employees may have been on the edge of scientific discoveries that could change the world.
The truth of “Abundance” is that America has caused many negative ecological impacts and aggravated the gap between rich and poor.
Klein and Thompson have written a provocative book. However, the truth of “Abundance” in America has caused many negative ecological impacts and aggravated the gap between rich and poor. Looking only to abundance does not address either social inequality or the environment. The NIMBY (not in my back yard) resistance to affordable housing aggravates inequality and increases homelessness. Unquestionably, higher density housing impacts the environment.
Klein and Thompson fail to address the increased power of corporations in America.
The 2010 Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission gave corporations the power to spend unlimited amounts of money on political campaigns. The influence of corporations on elections has disproportionate power in the election of government policy makers. That decision by the Court is a distortion of one person, one voter’s influence on public policy.
Aristotle emphasized the importance of “All things in moderation”. NIMBY communities must open their minds and hearts to homelessness and moderate their resistance to neighborhood accommodation. Government agencies must supervise and service higher density housing impacts wherever they are built and after they are completed.
Unless homelessness is addressed with affordable housing, America’s future looks bleak. A land of have and have-nots will grow to crush American prosperity.
Government is not a business for profit and should not be solely measured by its cost. America will survive the catastrophic mistakes being made by President Trump but American citizens, and the welfare of the world will suffer for years to come.
Books of Interest Website: chetyarbrough.blog
Who is Government (The Untold Story of Public Service)
By: Michael Lewis, Casey Cep, Dave Eggers, John Lanchester, Geraldine Brooks, Sarah Vowell, and Kamau Bell
Edited By: Michael Lewis
The stories of these writers are a tribute to those who have chosen careers in American government. Having personally earned a master’s degree in public administration, worked as a local government manager, then as a manager of a private business division, and finally, as a personal business owner, I have an opinion about President Trump. My experience is based on three different types of employment. All were rewarding experiences but in fundamentally different ways.
DONALD TRUMPELON MUSK
The writers of “Who is Government” show how ignorant business creators and managers like Donald Trump and Elon Musk are in discounting the contribution of employees of government organizations. Private corporations do not survive without profit to its owners. Public organizations do not survive without service to the public.
Profit is simple to measure. Public service is measurable but more abstract and difficult to quantify.
One can choose, like Musk did with Twitter, to reduce costs by firing employees. That may improve profitability but at a cost that may hurt or destroy the future of a business. In the case of Twitter, the company lost much of their advertising revenue because an unsupervised public forum could spread false and defamatory information that embarrasses advertisers who were protected by Twitter’ employees that were fired. No analysis was done by Musk about Twitter information’ controls provided by employees. The new entity, “X”, seems to have assuaged some advertisers’ concerns because they have started to use Musk’s new company. The point is that if Musk had taken more time to evaluate what fired employees were doing, he may have retained many of the advertisers who left the forum.
Trump’s employment of Musk to decimate the government employee workforce is following the same foolish path that was taken with Twitter.
No analysis of employee contributions is made. The goal is only to reduce government’ cost regardless of employee’ contribution to public need or service. The consequences have likely reduced health and welfare of American citizens; not to mention harm done to incomes of thousands of government employees’ families.
GEORGE WASHINGTONHARRY TRUMANJIMMY CARTERGEORGE WALKER BUSH (43RD PRES. OF THE UNITED STATES)
With exceptions of George Washington, Harry Truman, Carter, and the two Bush presidents, the worst former businessman that became President was Herbert Hoover who served as President before the greatest depression in America’s history. With Trump as President, one has to wonder whether he is leading America and the world toward its second great depression.
HERBERT HOOVER (31ST PRESIDENT OF THE U.S.)
“Who is Government” illustrates how government employees have contributed to the health and welfare of America. They are unknown and viewed by people like Trump and Musk as just a cost, without benefit to the public. How many science, medical, veteran, and welfare services are being decimated by their narrow vision of government management?
Government is not a business for profit and should not be solely measured by its cost. America will survive the catastrophic mistakes being made by President Trump but American citizens, and the welfare of the world will suffer for years to come.
REVIEWS AND VIEWS OF LIFE 