Disgraceful Soundbite from the London Riots
I don’t know which part of this truly dismaying interview is more upsetting: the joy in their voices as these girls describe the “fun” they are having at the riots and their hope that they continue the next day, the class-warfare-based justification they feel for the looting and burning of shops, or their almost comic ignorance of which party holds control of the government (“Conservatives. Yeah. Whatever who it is. I dunno…”).
Listen and Weep, courtesy of the Beeb.
A ‘Special’ Relationship?
When President Obama meets with British Prime Minister David Cameron in London, they should focus on the two wars that involve both the U.S. and British militaries (Afghanistan and Libya). But these discussions will take place in the context of diminishing British military capability.
At a time when the United States should be shedding some of the burdens of policing the globe, and encouraging other countries to step forward to defend themselves, the British are moving in the opposite direction. They are cutting their military, and tacitly becoming more dependent upon U.S. power. The end result will be a United Kingdom that is less able to assist us in the future.
The United States today spends far more on its military than does the United Kingdom, and the gap is likely to grow. This is sure to have an impact on the U.S.-UK relationship.
The number of British troops, ships and planes that are available for missions has dropped and will continue to if Cameron pushes through significant cuts in British military spending. He has proposed actual cuts, not the slowing in the rate of growth that Obama and Defense Secretary Gates have presided over so far.
The special relationship has been cemented by the numerous occasions in which British and American leaders have cooperated to address common security challenges. The most important of these involve U.S. and British troops fighting side by side.
But shrinking British defense spending could strain the relationship. The goodwill that has prevailed between the two countries could be in jeopardy, and Americans may find it harder to look upon the Brits as the “good” ally, the one that sticks by us through thick and thin. And if the American public grows disenchanted with British contributions to U.S.-led military missions, the British public may then hold less generally positive opinions of the United States.
A version of this post originally appeared in The National Interest Online.
Tina Brown and the Economics of Recession
Talking about royal weddings on NPR, Tina Brown says that there’s high unemployment in Britain, as there was in 1981, because of Conservative governments’ budget cuts (transcript edited to match broadcast):
Of course, the wedding of Prince Charles and Diana occurred three decades ago, but Brown points out that there are plenty of similarities between the two eras. “2.5 million are out of work right now with the budget slashes and all the economic austerity that’s happening in England,” Brown says. “There were actually the same amount of people exactly out of work at the time of Charles and Diana, when Mrs. Thatcher came in and began her draconian moves.”
I know that Tina Brown is a journalist, not an economist, but surely she’s heard of the recessions of 1979 and 2009, both of which may have helped to usher in a new government pledged to economic reform. It isn’t budget cuts that have increased British unemployment, it’s the recession. The unemployment rate started rising in early 2008 and kept right on rising during the world financial crisis, which featured not budget cuts but massive spending by governments around the world.
British Military Cuts, Conservatives, and Neocons
Yesterday, Prime Minister David Cameron announced Britain’s biggest defense cuts since World War II. The cuts affect the British military across the board.
The Army will shed 7,000 troops; the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force will each lose 5,000 personnel; the total workforce in the Ministry of Defence, including civilians, will contract by 42,000. The Navy’s destroyer fleet will shrink from 23 to 19. Two aircraft carriers — already under construction — will be completed, but one of the two will be either mothballed or sold within a few years. Whether the one remaining flattop in the British fleet will actually deploy with an operational fixed-wing aircraft is an open question. They’ve decided to jettison their Harriers; a technological marvel when it was first introduced, it has a limited range and a poor safety record. In its place, the Brits still intend to purchase Joint Strike Fighters, but not the short take-off and vertical landing (STOVL) version.
And right on cue, Max Boot argues in today’s Wall Street Journal, following the Heritage Foundation’s James Carafano’s example, that fiscal conservatives should not use these cuts as an example of how to reign in deficits. According to Boot and Carafano, military spending is off-limits. Period.
But as I note at The Skeptics, most Americans do not buy into this argument:
In Boot’s telling, Cameron’s decision inevitably places a heavier burden on the shoulders of American taxpayers and American troops.
But why should Americans perform a function for other governments that they are obligated by tradition, law and reason to perform for themselves? Defense is, as Boot notes, “one of the core responsibilities of government.” I would go one better: defense is one of the only legitimate responsibilities for government. So why does Max Boot think that Americans should simply resign themselves to take on this burden, doing for others what they should do for themselves?
I suspect that he fears that most Americans are not comfortable with the role that he and his neoconservative allies have preached for nearly two decades, hence his preemptive shot across the bow of the incoming congressional class that will have been elected on a platform of reducing the burden of government. True, the public is easily swayed, and not inclined to vote on foreign policy matters, in general, but as I noted here on Monday, it seems unlikely that the same Tea Partiers who want the U.S. government to do less in the United States are anxious to do more everywhere else. And, indeed, such sentiments are not confined to conservatives and constitutionalists who are keenly aware of government’s inherent limitations. Recent surveys by the Chicago Council of on Global Affairs (.pdf) and the Pew Research Center (here) definitively demonstrate that the public writ large is anxious to shed the role of global policeman.
Click here to read the entire post.
Mark Penn Mourns the Plight of Libertarian Voters
Mark Penn, who has been a pollster and consultant to the presidential campaigns of Bill and Hillary Clinton, John Anderson, and Ross Perot, writes about political discontent in Britain and the United States in the Washington Post today, noting that in this country
socially liberal and fiscally conservative voters believe, especially after what happened with health care, that they have no clear choice: They must sign on with the religious right or the economic left.
Exactly the point that David Kirby and I have been making in our studies on the libertarian vote, as in the first line of this January study:
Libertarian — or fiscally conservative, socially liberal — voters are often torn between their aversions to the Republicans’ social conservatism and the Democrats’ fiscal irresponsibility.
Libertarian-leaning voters are a large swing vote, and they do indeed find problems with both parties. As parties increasingly cater to their “base,” libertarian-leaning independents find themselves dissatisfied with both liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans. We noted in our first study, “The Libertarian Vote,” that according to the 2004 exit polls, “28 million Bush voters support[ed] either marriage or civil unions for same-sex couples” and “17 million Kerry voters . . . thought government should not . . . ‘do more to solve problems.’” That was 45 million voters who didn’t seem to fit neatly into the red-blue, liberal-conservative dichotomy.
But Penn is on less solid ground in his next line:
It is just a matter of time before they demand their own movement or party.
Movement, maybe. The Ron Paul campaign certainly appealed to antiwar, small-government voters. And the Tea Party movement focuses almost exclusively on economic and constitutional issues, making it more appealing to libertarians than typical conservative organizations. Meanwhile, as the Tea Party opposition to the Democrats’ big-government opposition surges, so does progress toward marriage equality and rational drug reform. Maybe those various libertarian-leaning groups will find each other. But a new party is a much bigger challenge. It’s no accident that the only third party that achieved even modest success in recent history was headed a billionaire who was also a celebrity, Ross Perot. Ballot access laws, campaign finance restrictions, exclusion of third-party candidates from debates and media coverage, single-member districts — all make it difficult to start a successful third party. It may also be the case that moderates, who tend not to be very angry, and libertarians, who don’t really much like politics, are particularly ill suited to undertake the massive amount of work that a new party requires.
But Penn is absolutely right to point to the plight of “socially liberal and fiscally conservative voters,” forced in every election to ”sign on with the religious right or the economic left.”
How the Government Broke up the Beatles
Forget the effect on production incentives and GDP growth—Matt Lewis at Politics Daily points to an article in the Times of London arguing that confiscatory tax rates broke up the Beatles, which may be the most heinous crime of government since the liquidation of the kulaks.
The Wonders of Socialized Dentistry
As we all know, the American health care system is less than perfect. An inefficient amalgam of government spending, federal tax incentives, employer-based insurance, and private providers, the U.S. system costs us more than it should for the services provided. Nevertheless, medicine in America remains far more directed by and for patients, in contrast to nationalized systems, which are usually organized by and for bureaucrats.
The results sometimes are horrific. Indeed, the best way to understand the consequences of Britain’s National Health Service is simply to read stories in British newspapers. Consider this one in the Daily Mail about the lack of adequate dental care:
Like so many young women, Amy King always took great pride in her appearance.
Standing in front of the mirror to check her make-up before a night out, the 21-year-old would always try a smile – friends told her they loved the way it lit up her face.
Eight weeks ago, all that changed. The student from Plymouth was admitted to hospital where, in a single operation, she had every tooth in her mouth removed.
Obviously, not all foreign systems do so little for their patients. France, Germany, and Switzerland all provide care differently, and in all of these nations people receive better treatment than in Britain. But no where is turning health care over to government the best way to ensure quality yet affordable medical care. Instead, control over health care should be placed back in the hands of those who have the most at stake: patients.
Tax Havens Have Stronger Governance Standards
Congratulations to The Economist for reporting on a new study showing that so-called tax havens actually have the strongest laws to weed out shady money. The article cites new research by an Australian political scientist, who conducted real-world tests to confirm that it is much easier to set up anonymous structures in nations such as the United States and United Kingdom than it is to set up similar structures in places such as Bermuda and Switzerland:
…with a budget of $10,000 and little more than Google (and the ads at the back of this paper), [Jason Sharman, a political scientist at Australia’s Griffith University] showed how easy it was to circumvent prohibitions on banking secrecy, forming anonymous shell companies and secret bank accounts across the world. In doing so he has uncovered an uncomfortable truth for many of the leaders of Group of 20 nations meeting on April 2nd to discuss, among other things, sanctions against offshore tax havens. The most egregious examples of banking secrecy, money laundering and tax fraud are found not in remote alpine valleys or on sunny tropical isles but in the backyards of the world’s biggest economies. …A money-laundering threat assessment in 2005 by the federal government found that corporate anonymity offered by Delaware, Nevada and Wyoming rivalled that of familiar offshore financial centres. For foreigners, America is a particularly attractive place to stash cash, because it does not tax the interest income they earn. Thus with both anonymity and no taxation, America offers them all the elements of a tax haven. …America is not the only rich nation Mr Sharman tested. He tried to open anonymous shell companies and bank accounts 45 times across the world. These were successful in 17 cases, of which 13 were in OECD countries. One example was Britain, where in 45 minutes on the internet he formed a company without providing identification, was issued with bearer shares (which have been almost universally outlawed because they confer completely anonymous ownership) as well as nominee directors and a secretary. …In contrast, when trying to open accounts in Bermuda and Switzerland, he was asked for documentation such as notarised copies of his birth certificate. “In practice OECD countries have much laxer regulation on shell corporations than classic tax havens,” Mr Sharman concludes.
Third-World Accommodations
In the 2003 film The Barbarian Invasions, a patient’s wealthy son offers a handsome bribe to the administrator of a decrepit, chaotic, state-run hospital in Montreal that is (mis)treating his dying father. “This is silly,” the startled administrator exclaims. “We’re not in the Third World.”
Britain’s health-care system is perhaps slightly less state-dominated than Canada’s. Yet today comes the following report:
The British government apologised Wednesday after a damning official report into a hospital likened by one patient’s relative to “a Third World” health centre…
Between 400 and 1,200 more people died than would have been expected in a three-year period at the National Health Service (NHS) hospital, according to an investigation by the Healthcare Commission watchdog.
Receptionists with no medical training were left to to assess patients arriving at the hospital’s accident and emergency department, the report found.
Julie Bailey, whose 86-year-old mother Bella died in the hospital in November 2007, said she and other family members slept in a chair at her bedside for eight weeks because they were so concerned about poor care.
“What we saw in those eight weeks will haunt us for the rest of our lives,” said the 47-year-old. “We saw patients drinking out of flower vases they were so thirsty.
“There were patients wandering around the hospital and patients fighting. It was continuous through the night. Patients were screaming out in pain because you just could not get pain relief.
“It was like a Third World country hospital. It was an absolute disgrace.”
The politicians quoted in the story promised, again, that, you know, they would improve things.
Who’s Blogging about Cato
Here’s a few bloggers who are writing, citing and linking to Cato research and commentary:
- Blogging from the 2009 International Conference on Climate Change, The Foundry‘s Nick Loris covers Patrick J. Michaels’s lecture on an EPA program that will “circumvent Congressional legislation to curb greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) and regulate carbon dioxide.”
- Natch Greyes pens his thoughts on Thursday’s book forum featuring Patrick J. Michaels’s new book, Climate of Extremes: Global Warming Science They Don’t Want You to Know.
- Dan Kenitz cites an article by David Lampo on gun control.
- David Kirkpatrick links to Richard W. Rahn’s op-ed in The Washington Times about the increasing loss of liberty in the United Kingdom.
- Free-market energy blogger Robert Bradley, editor of Master Resource, cites Cato’s recognition of the women who launched the libertarian movement: Ayn Rand, Rose Wilder Lane and Isabel Paterson.
- Scott Horton 0f Anti-War Radio interviews Doug Bandow about relations between the US and China.
Let us know if you’re blogging about Cato by emailing cmoody@cato.org or drop us a line on Twitter @catoinstitute.
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