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On Debt and the Scope of Government

Tuesday, September 11th, 2012

A Response to William McKenzie of the Dallas Morning Nees

McKenzie wants us to focus on the $16 trillion federal debt ( “Let’s make right-sizing government the goal”). First, remember that the United States has never been out of debt. We came close in 1835. The historical trend from the beginning of the Revolutionary War to the present has been a growing debt. The size of the national government has been growing since the adoption of the Articles of Confederation. In fact, the adoption of the Constitution was a significant growth in federal government.[1]

So, let’s talk about debt in terms of presidential periods, remembering that fiscal policy involves Congress as well as presidents. I will also begin with Wilson because that era first saw a billion dollar debt. The Wilson era saw a 722% increase in the national debt, largely attributable to WWI. The last two years, as we demobilized the debt was actually reduced. That reduction continued under Coolidge (-14%) and Harding (-17%) and into the first two years of Hoover. Those debt reductions ended with the beginning of the Great Depression; the Hoover years saw the national debt increase 33%, accumulated after the 1929 crash.

Roosevelt (whom McKenzie mentions) saw the biggest debt run up – a whopping 1,048%. Some of that was the New Deal attempt to end the Great Depression; most of it was the cost of WWII – which big, deficit spending most economists agree ended the Great Depression. Yes, you can spend your way out of a depression.

Truman saw the deficits fall dramatically and even surpluses that reduced the national debt in 1947, 1948 and 1951. This era saw an increase in the national debt by 3%.

Eisenhower was the last president who saw a reduction in the national debt in 1956 and 1957, but in the entire period the debt rose 9%.

Kennedy/Johnson saw the debt rise by 22% — partly due to Great Society programs and the Vietnam War.

Nixon/Ford saw the debt rise by 98% — partly due to the Vietnam War and sharply rising inflation in Nixon’s second term.

Carter saw the debt rise 43% as inflation continued.

Reagan saw the debt rise by 186%; G.H.W. Bush by 54%.

Clinton saw the debt rise by 32%. In 2000 it rose less than 1%.

G.W. Bush saw the debt rise 105%, attributed to the tax cuts of 2001 and 2003, the prescription drug program and the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. The sharpest rises occurred in the last two fiscal years – 11% and 18%.

The first full full year of Obama’s presidency saw the increase fall to 14%.

I can only conclude that since the days of Truman, Democratic presidents have seen more fiscal restraint than Republicans. Truman 3%, Kennedy/Johnson 9%, Carter 98% and Clinton 32% compared to Eisenhower 9%, Nixon/Ford 22%, Reagan 186%, G.H.W. Bush 54% and G.W. Bush 105%.

But absolute debt isn’t a particularly useful number. If you are considering taking out a mortgage (i.e. increasing debt) to by a $500,000 house, there is a difference if your income is $50,000 or $500,000. All else being equal, the debt load for the higher income is less than for the lower. The closest comparison is national debt as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product, which serves and an indicator of the ability of the nation to service the debt.[2]

At the end of Fiscal Year 1946 the national debt stood at 121% of the GDP. That is the highest I have found going back to 1900. That debt represents the debt accumulated by the U.S. government during the Great Depression and WWII. In 1981 it had fallen to 32% of GDP. Remember this is not a reduction in the dollar amount of the national debt — that had risen by $79 billion.

Beginning with FY 1982 we see the debt as a percentage of GDP rising every year except for FYs 1996 through 2001. Thus from Truman through Carter, the trend was for the debt to GDP ratio to fall; and from Reagan through Obama, except during the Clinton years, for the debt to GDP ratio to rise.

It is generally said that the fiscal policies of the federal government during WWII created the modern middle class. That may be an exaggeration, but it is certainly true that the size of the middle class grew in those years. The debates in the early postwar period were whether or not that middle class could be sustained in a postwar economy. The remarkable thing is that it was, and it grew. Certainly things like the G.I. Bill contributed to that. Returning veterans were often the first in their families to get a college education and become “white collar professionals” instead of “blue collar laborers.” Veterans could obtain ownership of homes, cars, refrigerators, TVs, etc.

We also see in that postwar period an increase in median income and, in fact proportional increases for low, middle and high income groups. Virtually all Americans were enjoying increased prosperity. That phenomenon does seem to have slowed some in the 1970s. But beginning in the 1980s we saw something new (or rather more like what we had seen in the 1920s and even the 1890s. High income groups saw their income soar, middle income workers saw their incomes stagnate, and low income workers saw their incomes fall. The result was a radically changed income disparity and wealth disparity. Many economists do not believe this bodes well for the future. The economic precedents (e.g., 1920s and 1890s) suggest grave dangers.

Finally, I would close with an observation. I suspect that the management of the Dallas Morning News, when considering going into debt to obtain a new press will weigh both its ability to service the resulting debt and the potential increase in profit resulting from the more efficient press. It would seem to me sensible that such factors enter into the discussion when discussing federal fiscal policy. As mentioned earlier, federal investment in education (via the G.I. Bill) resulted in increased productivity and prosperity for the American people. And, although it increased debt, it more than increased the capacity of the government to service that debt and also increased government revenues. Many, many other examples of this could be cited such as the government guarantee of home loans to returning veterans in the G.I. Bill, the construction of the interstate highway system begun by Eisenhower, rural electrification and so forth. It can similarly be argued that government investment in the health of the American people is such an activity, since there can be no doubt that healthy workers are more productive than unhealthy workers.

 

[1] “Historical Debt Outsanding” In the discussion that follows I have begun the “Presidential Eras” with the first full fiscal year of their term – typically beginning in September – through the fiscal year that ends in the first year of the next president. While that may bias somewhat, I would argue that the roughly u.5 months that overlaps is more a consequence of the predecessor than the incumbent.

[2] “Revenue as Percent of GDP” I’m using the GDP figures here and the previously cited debt figures.

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A Reading List for September and October 2012

Sunday, August 19th, 2012

Here are some important books to read before the November election — when you are not out campaigning for President Obama and those running for Congress who will support him for the next four years.

The Price of Inequality: How Today’s Divided Society Endangers Our Future by Joseph E. Stiglitz.

Joseph Stiglitz is a professor of economics at Columbia University and the recipient of a John Bates Clark Medal and a Nobel Prize. He is also the former senior vice president and chief economist of the World Bank. His books include Globalization and Its Discontents, The Three Trillion Dollar War, and Making Globalization Work. He lives in New York City. Professor Stiglitz describes the rise of economic inequality, how it is achieved by a wealthy minority at the expense of the majority and why it is bad for free market economy.

End This Depression Now! by Paul Krugman

Paul Krugman is the recipient of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Economics. He writes a twice-weekly op-ed column for the New York Times and a blog named for his 2007 book “The Conscience of a Liberal.” He teaches economics at Princeton University. His books include “The Accidental Theorist,” “The Conscience of a Liberal,” “Fuzzy Math,” “The Great Unraveling,” “Peddling Prosperity,” and two editions of “The Return of Depression Economics,” both national bestsellers. Krugman argues that our economy suffers from depressed consumer demand. He shows how we can end this depression by fiscal policies known to work because they have worked in the past and elsewhere. He effectively counters the arguments coming from conservatives, again using actual examples in recent economic history. He also shows, from economic history why solutions proposed by conservatives have not worked in the past and are unlikely to work today. We know how to end the depression; our political leaders lack the will to do so.

Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress–and a Plan to Stop It by Lawrence Lessig

Lawrence Lessig is the Roy L. Furman Professor of Law and Leadership at Harvard Law School, and director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University. Prior to rejoining the Harvard faculty, Lessig was a professor at Stanford Law School, where he founded the school’s Center for Internet and Society, and at the University of Chicago. He clerked for Judge Richard Posner on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals and Justice Antonin Scalia on the United States Supreme Court. Professor Lessing explains how our political process is corrupted by the way political campaigns are funded. He suggests ways in which we, the people, may break the power of money and retake our rightful place in governance.

Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer–and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class by Jacob Stewart Hacker and Paul Pierson

Jacob Stewart Hacker is the Director of the Institution for Social and Policy Studies and Stanley B. Resor Professor of Political Science at Yale University and has written works on social policy, health care reform, and economic insecurity in the United States. His most recent book, Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Richer Richer–and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class (Simon & Schuster 2010), written with Paul Pierson of UC Berkeley, argues that since the late 1970s the American middle and working classes have fallen further and further behind economically because policy changes in government favor the rich and super-rich.

Paul Pierson is a professor of political science and holder of the John Gross Endowed Chair of Political Science (and he holds/held the Avice Saint Chair of Public Policy) at the University of California, Berkeley. From 2007-2010 he served at UC Berkeley as Chair of the Department of Political Science. He is noted for his research on comparative public policy and political economy, the welfare state, and American political development. Pierson is a native of Eugene, Oregon, where both of his parents taught at the University of Oregon. He graduated with a B.A. in political science from Oberlin College in 1981, and then attended graduate school at Yale University, completing an M.A. and M.Phil in 1986 and a PhD degree in political science in 1989. Pierson taught at Harvard University from 1989 to 2004, when he moved to the University of California, Berkeley.

The Predator State: How Conservatives Abandoned the Free Market and Why Liberals Should Too by James Kenneth Galbraith 

James Kenneth Galbraith (bois an American economist who writes frequently for mainstream and liberal publications on economic topics. He is currently a professor at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs and at the Department of Government, University of Texas at Austin. He is also a Senior Scholar with the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College. He is also part of the executive committee of the World Economics Association, created in 2011. Galbraith provides economic data on income and wealth disparity in a readable manner. The major problem with “free trade” is that business really does not want it. What the corporate lobby has done in the past 40 years is to “unlevel” the playing board to benefit large corporate profit.

For More Information

For more information click on the links above. Eutychus has written about Winner-Take-All Politics, Republic Lost, End This Depression Now and The Predator State in the earlier blog, Four Books to Read Before November and a longer review of Republic Lost, Book Review: Corporate Takeover of America.

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Republican Government – Part 2

Sunday, July 29th, 2012

“No State shall … deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” (Amendment XIV, Section 1, The Constitution of the United States of America)

The Fourteenth Amendment is one of the post Civil War amendments. There can be no doubt that the concern of the authors – and the intentions of those ratifying the amendment – was to insure the civil and political rights of former slaves – that is, citizens and literal persons. (The right of suffrage for races, color or former condition of servitude is further insured by the Fifteenth Amendment, and the obstacle of a tax requirement to vote is prohibited by the Twenty-fourth Amendment.)

In the 1960s and 1970s there was much discussion about representation in Congress, legislatures and local elected boards. Much of that discussion involved the principle that the “equal protection of the laws” involved equality at the ballot box. One citizen’s vote should have equal weight to another citizen’s vote. Part of the debate had to do with the waxing urban population and the waning rural population. The point that carried the day was that republican government represented citizens, not livestock or land area. Thus electoral districts must be approximately equal in human population.

Related to this was the concern that in many cases electoral districts were drawn so as to dilute the vote of certain groups of individuals, particularly minorities. In the context of the urban-rural division, it would deprive urban citizens of the equal protection of the laws to have their city cut up in such a way as to render them minorities in large rural districts. (This is worded this way because at the time the dominance of rural representation in legislatures resulted in this particular bias; the opposite bias is also possible.) But today we most often encounter this bias in legislatures attempting to reduce the influence of racial and ethnic minorities by breaking up areas where they are majority and combining them in White dominated districts.

But, under the Constitution of the United States, republican government is a government in which elected officials represent citizens, and those citizens have a constitutionally guaranteed right to equal protection of the laws – my vote does not have more weight in the halls of government than your vote.

The notion that somehow the Fourteenth Amendment conferred rights to corporations was not part of the discussion of its authors. That was not what this amendment was about. Republican government is representative government. And, under the Constitution of the United State what government represents is people, specifically citizens, and not some legal entity created by a government issued corporate charter. The 1888 decision of the Supreme Court in Pembina Consolidated Silver Mining Co. v. Pennsylvania granting “personhood” to corporations under the Fourteenth Amendment is clearly a case of the court legislating from the bench, and putting into the Constitution something that was not there and was never intended.

In Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission the Supreme Court of the United States bestowed upon corporations First Amendment rights of free speech, so that corporations could spend unlimited amounts of money on political campaigns. Thus, they not only misread the Fourteenth Amendment by making persons out of legal fictions, but they also upset the equal protection of the laws for real persons.

If the vote represents citizens, not livestock or farmland, then surely the vote should represent citizens not dollars. Indeed the electoral process has long been corrupted by the flow of money to elected officials. A lobbyist who can arrange for hundreds of thousands of dollars from small special interest groups or an individual who can write a check for millions to support a candidate inevitably has more weight in the halls of government than the mere citizen who only has his vote to contribute. The result is that the government no longer represents citizens, enjoying the equal protection of the laws, but rather the dollars of small groups of special interests.

What we, the people, must do is to vote those politicians who have been bought by those special interests out of office. I still have a vote; a corporation does not. I must not let my vote be bought by those corporate interests. We, the people, must also send to the Congress and our respective state legislatures representatives who will work to reestablish the equal protection of the laws for citizens and to liberate the American people from the tyranny of corporate plutocrats who have only their own self interest and not the interest of the American people.

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Book Review: Corporate Takeover of America

Thursday, May 10th, 2012

Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer — And Turned Its Back on the Middle Class by Jacob S. Hacker & Paul Pierson

As Will Rogers famously said, “I am not a member of any organized party — I am a Democrat.”

Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson detail how the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers organized business interests to block progressive legislation in the 70s. This involved both the long affinity between corporate America and the Republican Party and intensive lobbying efforts to dissuade moderate Democrats from voting for progressive legislation in the Senate during the Carter administration.

The first part of the book outlines the contrast between the American economic and political scene after World War II and the 70s with the scene in the past 30 years. Most of this material repeats what has been shown in study after study. The authors counter the usual explanations of the change in a CSI detective style, showing that such things as education and technology do not explain the concentration of power and wealth that has occurred.

What has happened, according to Hacker and Paul Pierson  is the strengthen organization of corporate America led by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers and the weakening of organizations which represented a broad spectrum of middle America. The authors describe how the Chamber of Commerce and National Association of Manufacturers successfully lobbied to block labor laws and business regulations during the Carter administration when progressives thought that a Democratic President, Senate and House would enhance regulation of environment and work and product safety as well as eliminate impediments to labor organizations. They also describe how corporate America has transformed the Democratic Party from a pro-working class party to a pro-business party, albeit perhaps not quite as pro-business as the Republicans.

Part of the reason for corporate success in Washington is attributed to the decline in participation in labor unions and a variety of middle American organizations including the Veterans of Foreign Wars and service clubs such as Lions, Shriners and Rotary clubs all of which did provide middle America with a more unified voice in the 1940-60s.

The authors also detail the fact that, at least in the late 1970s it wasn’t necessary for the corporate interests to enact new “business-friendly” legislation or to repeal older legislation; all that was necessary was to block passage of progressive legislation. We have seen this strategy repeated both during the Clinton administration which was unable to get health care reform passed. Doing nothing was all that the health care segments required. We have also seen it in 2009 — the Republicans do not need to pass anything for corporate America. All they have to do — and they have been very successful in this — is to block progressive legislation either by threat of filibuster in the Senate, or in committee, or in the 112th Congress the House. And, in either case, we have minority rule.

Hacker and Pierson do not go into great detail about the role of corporate America money in political campaigns. For that side of the story you should read Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress — and a Plan to Stop It by Lawrence Lessig.

The authors conclude the book with a conclusion “Beating Winner-Take-All” which I must confess is rather disappointing. Having identified the problem as being the effective political organization of corporate America to oppose progressive legislation and even to roll back progressive laws, Hacker and Pierson focus more on the difficulties of getting the tens of millions of middle Americans organized to oppose the corporate takeover of the political system of America. The opposition will require that middle Americans once again organize themselves to speak in Washington — and I might add in their state capitals.

I recommend this book for those who want to have a better understanding of the American political scene today.

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Four Books to Read before November

Friday, May 4th, 2012

Forty-forty: Eras of American Political and Economic History.

Recent American political and economic history can be conveniently divided into two forty year periods: 1933-1972 (from FDR’s first term through Nixon’s first term) and 1973-2012 (Nixon’s second term through Obama’s first). The first period covers a spectacular recovery from the Great Depression dominated progressives of the Democratic Party. It was an era of an improving standard of living for all Americans and of an unprecedented absence of economic crisis. The second period is an era of economic stagnation, wildly widening income discrepancy and repeated booms and ever worsening busts, the latest of which still depresses the American economy, especially for low and middle income workers. What happened?

Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer — And Turned Its Back on the Middle Class by Jacob S. Hacker & Paul Pierson

This book briefly describes the economic contrast between Richistan and Broadland, two mythical countries, one of which sees the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few and the other in which economic growth is shared by all. Our second era is represented by Richistan, while Broadland is more like our first era. How did this happen? The authors use a CSI analogy to ferret out the causes, dealing effectively with the arguments for rapidly growing income and wealth disparity. They conclude that the “criminal” is government.

But how was the government transformed from a moderately progressive democratic institution to a regressive institution representing wealth? The authors provide a good historical analysis of how, at the end of our first era and beginning of the second, the American political parties came to be owned by corporate America rather than the people. This section of the book is worth the price of the book. We see the huge increase in lobbying, campaign contributions, political action committees and propaganda mills posing as think tanks in the 1970s and 1980s.

Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress — and a Plan to Stop It by Lawrence Lessig 

Lessig explains in depressing detail how money corrupts our Congress. Although dealing specifically with congressional campaign finance, it is applicable to state politics and presidential campaigns. He argues that quid quo pro bribery is actually very rare, but the need for congressmen to raise large sums of money to pay for campaigns makes them dependent on their contributors rather than on the people alone. He also details the problem created by the “revolving door” by which government officials move from the private sector and back — often to very substantial incomes — is part of the problem. Less helpful are his suggestion on how to fight this corruption, although some of his arguments have merit. The main problem is getting reform through Congress (and legislatures) dependent on corporate campaign cash.

End This Depression Now! by Paul Krugman

We know how to end this depression but our political leaders lack the will to do so. Lessons learned from the Great Depression, the New Deal, World War II, and the postwar economy in America show the way. Paul Krugman traces the causes of the current financial crises, not as an attempt to fix blame (there is plenty to go around), but so we can understand why it happened and what can be done about it. These lessons are also learned from other nations that have experienced similar conditions in the late 20th century. The reasons recovery has been so slow is that the stimulus was too little, too brief and in some cases misdirected.

The shift of focus on the deficits and debt misdirects our attention from what must be done. At the end of World War II, the national debt was 120% of Gross Domestic Product. It “fell” to about 60% by 1964, not because we had budget surpluses and paid down the debt, but because the economy grew significantly. The dollar amount of the debt had actually increased. The debt as a percentage of GDP did begin to grow in the 1970s, but did not really take off until the 1980s and following.

The slow recovery does aggravate the debt because revenues are suppressed and expenses increased. Government spending increases aggregate demand which creates jobs — which increases the GDP and revenues and reduces expenditures for unemployment compensation, nutrition programs, medicaid, housing assistance, etc. That in turn reduces both the deficits and the debt as a percentage of GDP. Prolonging the recession will have costly long term effects. Long term unemployment makes it more difficult for older workers to reenter the labor market at previous levels, much less at levels they would have achieved if employment had been continuous. Even more dire is the fact that the recession is retarding young workers entering the labor market which will have a negative effect throughout their lifetimes.

Krugman offers a way to bring the current economy up to speed and refutes the arguments of the naysayers.

The Predator State: How Conservatives Abandoned the Free Market and Why Liberals Should Too by James K. Galbraith

Galbraith provides economic data on income and wealth disparity in a readable manner. The major problem with “free trade” is that business really does not want it. What the corporate lobby has done in the past 40 years is to “unlevel” the playing board to benefit large corporate profit.

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RMS Titanic – 15 April 1912

Sunday, April 15th, 2012

The RMS Titanic was not supposed to sink. That hubris possibly led to equipping her with enough lifeboats for less than half the people aboard the ship on the 14th when she sideswiped an iceberg in the North Atlantic. It may also account for the fact that apparently the crew, much less the passengers, had no idea what to do if they were forced to abandon ship. As a consequence, many of the life boats were launched filled to less than capacity.

I have recounted the role of the two Marconi radiotelegraph operators on the Titanic. Both did abandon ship. But getting off the ship and into a lifeboat was not enough to save one’s life. One of the operators died of hypothermia; the other survived, albeit with both feet frostbitten in the 28° waters. That is, of course, below freezing; but salt water freezes at below freezing.

Modern archaeological research has revealed much about the sinking ship. With the ship listing to starboard and the bow dropping, forward water-tight compartments began to fill with sea water. The compartments were open at the top. In other words, the design assumed that a water-tight compartment had to be water-tight only on the sides and the bottom, which would work as long as the ship remained level and the compartments did not go below sea level.

With the bow sinking the stern rose above sea level. The ships structure could not withstand the forces and the ship literally broke in two at midship. The bow section of the ship was designed to cut efficiently through water, so it descended quickly and smoothly to the bottom over two miles below the service. Much of what was above deck was stripped — smoke stacks, cranes for the life boats, etc. But below deck things are remarkably well preserved after 100 years in salt water.

The stern was not so fortunate. Not designed to slip easily through water and given a twist at the outset, it descended in a spiraling path which tore it apart and scattered debris over several square miles of the ocean bed. While the “ride” to the bottom would not have been pleasant for anyone, it must have been far more terrifying for those hundreds of steerage passengers trapped in the stern as the Titanic descended to the bottom 100 years ago today.

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Χριστός ἀνέστη!

Sunday, April 15th, 2012

Resurrection Icon

If anyone is devout and a lover of God, let them enjoy this beautiful and radiant festival.

If anyone is a grateful servant, let them, rejoicing, enter into the joy of his Lord.

If anyone has wearied themselves in fasting, let them now receive recompense

 If anyone has labored from the first hour, let them today receive the just reward.

If anyone has come at the third hour, with thanksgiving let them feast.

If anyone has arrived at the sixth hour, let them have no misgivings; for they shall suffer no loss.

If anyone has delayed until the ninth hour, let them draw near without hesitation.

If anyone has arrived even at the eleventh hour, let them not fear on account of tardiness.

For the Master is gracious and receives the last even as the first; He gives rest to him that comes at the eleventh hour, just as to him who has labored from the first.

He has mercy upon the last and cares for the first; to the one He gives, and to the other He is gracious.

He both honors the work and praises the intention.

Enter all of you, therefore, into the joy of our Lord, and, whether first or last, receive your reward.

O rich and poor, one with another, dance for joy!

O you ascetics and you negligent, celebrate the day!

You that have fasted and you that have disregarded the fast, rejoice today!

The table is rich-laden: feast royally, all of you!

The calf is fatted: let no one go forth hungry!

Let all partake of the feast of faith. Let all receive the riches of goodness.

Let no one lament their poverty, for the universal kingdom has been revealed.

Let no one mourn their transgressions, for pardon has dawned from the grave.

Let no one fear death, for the Saviour’s death has set us free.

He that was taken by death has annihilated it!

He descended into Hades and took Hades captive!

He embittered it when it tasted His flesh! And anticipating this, Isaiah exclaimed: “Hades was embittered when it encountered Thee in the lower regions“.

It was embittered, for it was abolished!

It was embittered, for it was mocked!

It was embittered, for it was purged!

It was embittered, for it was despoiled!

It was embittered, for it was bound in chains!

It took a body and came upon God!

It took earth and encountered Ηeaven!

It took what it saw, but crumbled before what it had not seen!

O death, where is thy sting?

O Hades, where is thy victory?

Christ is risen, and you are overthrown!

Christ is risen, and the demons are fallen!

Christ is risen, and the angels rejoice!

Christ is risen, and life reigns!

Christ is risen, and not one dead remains in a tomb!

For Christ, being raised from the dead, has become the first-fruits of them that have slept.

To Him be glory and might unto the ages of ages.

Amen.

The Easter Homily of St. John Chrysostom

St. John Chrysostom Icon

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RMS Titanic – 13 April 1912

Thursday, April 12th, 2012

One hundred years ago today, the unsinkable RMS Titanic was sailing in the North Atlantic on her maiden voyage. The ship was State of the Art and carried both the elite of societies and the downtrodden seeking a new life in America.

Aboard the Titanic the Marconi Corporation had placed a State of the Art radio-telegraph station. This was before radio-telephony or voice communications. The radio transmitter used a spark gap to generate radio waves — rather like harnessing the static we elders heard on our AM radios caused by lightning to communicate messages. Such transmitters are illegal these days because they cause as much interference as, well, lightning.

But it was State of the Art. It wasn’t there so much as to provide information to the crew or, for that matter, even in the event of emergency. It was there for the same sort of reasons that a modern ocean liner might advertise fast internet and Wi-Fi. The radio station provided passengers — especially first class passengers who could afford it — with the ability to communicate with business associates, friends and family.

A spark gap transmitter requires, not surprisingly, a spark — a spark of short duration to produce the “dit” and a longer duration the “daah” of Samuel Morse’s code. To produce a spark, voltage is required. The longer the spark in the spark gap transmitter (and thus the ability to generate more powerful radio emissions) the longer the gap needs to be. The longer the gap, the higher the voltage is required. The way that high voltages are generated is by use of transformers which can raise low voltage to higher voltages.

But alas, a hundred years ago today the transformer for the transmitter malfunctioned and the transmitter was out of commission. There were two radio-telegraph operators employed by the Marconi Corporation to operate the radio station. The two young men went to work trying to fix the transformer so the transmitter would be operative. Meanwhile, messages the passengers wanted sent piled up in the nurser’s office next to the radio room.

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I’ve got a new gravator…

Saturday, February 4th, 2012

…whatever that is.

Thanks to a ranting friend.

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My American History Project

Saturday, February 4th, 2012

I would like to “get inside” the minds of the “Founding Fathers” as they launched the constitutional form of government which has shaped American life for over 225 years. My interest was sparked by reading James Madison’s Notes of Debates: In The Federal Convention of 1787 which drafted the Constitution. Many things struck me as I read. Madison, for example, seems to have had a notion of pure representative democracy. He seems to have had an idea of a national government both expressive of and constrained by nothing other than the will of the people. He fought for a legislature that would be “dependent on the people alone.” (The Federalist Papers, “No. 52: The House of Representatives”, p. 323) I was also struck by the attitude of those at the Philadelphia Convention concerning states and state government. Perhaps that attracts my notice because of the ongoing debates about “State’s Rights.” To be sure, the views of the 55 men who participated in the convention ran a gambit from those favoring a confederation of sovereign states to Hamilton’s advocacy of reducing the states to departments of the national government. Frequently those men saw state governments as corrupt and too subject to populist demagogues. There was a serious discussion of a Congressional “negative” of state actions—all state legislation would have to be submitted to Congress and subject to its veto. The reason this idea was rejected seems not to be due to any attachment to state sovereignty. Indeed, many had a dim view of state sovereignty. But rather, the idea was rejected for three quite pragmatic reasons.

First, there was the relative isolation of states. This only partly had to do with the notion that a state government was more immediately aware of state needs than a national Congress. But there was a realization of the difficulty of communication and transportation. It could take over a week for information to flow from the states to a central government. They were aware, for example, that it had taken over a week from the scheduled start of the Philadelphia Convention for a quorum to arrive due to weather conditions making travel even more difficult that usual.

Second, they realized that the sheer volume of legislation coming from the states could overwhelm Congress and prevent Congress from dealing with pressing national business.

And third, they realized that the requirement of a congressional negative would make it more difficult to get the Constitution ratified.

This particular issue brings home the fact that the “world” in which our Founding Fathers lived was very different from the world today. Just with the matter of transportation we normally can travel anywhere in the world in a matter of hours, where they measured travel in days, weeks and even months. Communications have undergone an even more radical transformation—words, voices and images can be transmitted around the world at the speed of light.

This project focuses on the United States of America during the period from 1781 (the British surrender at Yorktown) through 1791 (the proposal by Congress of what would become the Bill of Rights). To try to see through the eyes of Americans in that decade geography, demographics, economics, culture, technology and politics are to be considered and contrasted with the United States at the beginning of the 21st century. For example, in 1890, the year of the first census, the United States consisted of 3,929,214 people, a land area of 864,746 square miles—a population density of 4.5 people per square mile. By 2000 the United States had a population of 281,421,906 and an area of 3,537,438 square miles—a population density of 79.6 people per square mile. (United States History, “U.S. Population, Land Area and Density, 1790-2000. 2 February, 2012) How did these data affect how Americans saw themselves in that formative period of our history?

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