Between Hell and High Water

Gas Prices in America

By Mike Koetting November 20, 2023

Two weeks ago, Lisa Cook, a governor of the Federal Reserve Board appointed by Biden, was asked why he was getting so little credit for the economic situation. She suggested that consumers judge the economy not by a slowing of inflation but by the prices they are still paying. People, she said, simply want gas prices back to where they were before the pandemic.

Don’t we all. I still flinch at what it costs to fill up our family car. Still, this comment not only explains why voters question Biden’s economic stewardship, but also puts a blazing spotlight on the long road ahead as economy and environmental realities collide.

My First Car & Our Government

By Mike Koetting November 17, 2023

The first car I ever owned—actually, it was a joint ownership, but that’s a different story—was a 17-year-old, 1951 Plymouth. It was a beater. Edges crumpled, seats beyond uncomfortable, floorboard rusting out, no radio, heater didn’t work and it had a sometimes starter.

We drove this car because that’s the only car we had. There was no public transportation where we lived. Without a car, we were, literally, stuck.

Americans don’t seem to realize that their government is that car. When first put together, it was a magnificent machine—the envy of many countries. And would-be countries. But over the centuries, other countries began to see problems, tinkered with the American original and made one change and the other. The United States did some important tinkering, but it retained a lot of the original, particularly aspects of the structure that make our government so change-resistant. At the same time the creativity unloosened by democracy accelerated the rate of change. Predictably, over the years, our government became less fit for the highway.

Our Black Legacy Tour

By Mike Koetting October 24, 2023

There is no shortage of immediate crucial issues for contemplation such as the dysfunction in the U.S. House and the threat of a complete meltdown in the Middle East. But I wanted to write about our Black legacy tour of the Deep South while it was still pressing in my mind.

At the instigation of a good friend, she, her husband, my wife Barbara and I visited some of the important sites of Black history in the United States. We started at the Whitney Plantation outside New Orleans, a plantation that has been restored to focus on the lives of the enslaved people rather than the masters of the house, and ended at the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, built around the remnants of the Lorraine Motel, where Martin Luther King was assassinated.

The trip included a string of terrific museums and several other sites. All were spectacularly done and unleased a flood of facts, ideas and emotions. It would be impossible to summarize everything I learned or felt in a blog this length, but there were threads in the experience.

A Circus with Consequences

By Mike Koetting October 12, 2023

A Circus with Consequences

As I write this, the Republicans in the U.S. House are still thinking about who should be the next Speaker of the House. I’m not sure how much I have to say that is different from others, but I don’t see how I can regularly write about politics and policy without commenting on what’s happening. The current struggle marks the incontrovertible entry into a 15-month period that will determine whether American democracy continues as we know it or takes a detour, one from which it may never return.

Threats to Freedom of Speech Are Real; Threats from Freedom of Ignorance May Be Even More Immediate

By Mike Koetting September 26, 2023

For several years now, I have been stock-piling notes for a possible blog on freedom of speech. I haven’t done one, however, because thinking about it always makes my head hurt. The over-riding principles are straightforward and almost universally accepted. But applying them is excruciating difficult. As often the case, Scott Stantis nails it:

Perhaps someday I’ll write that blog. But in the meantime, I am more concerned about a different problem, which I will call “freedom of ignorance”–the idea that anything one says is as valid as anything else and there are no obligations to consider either the foundations or implications of one’s opinion. Combine this with the ability of people to self-select their media sphere, and society is at great danger from people exercising their constitutional right to never hear any contrary news.

What We Can Learn from Coverage of the Chinese Economy

By Mike Koetting September 12, 2023

Today’s post is not about China. Well, maybe sort of. But it’s really about what we can learn from the recent turn in the Chinese economy.

For the past few weeks there has been a tidal wave of coverage about the slowdown in the Chinese economy. From Al Jazeera to the Wall Street Journal, everyone has had a prominent story about how the Chinese economy is sagging. I don’t know enough about either China or economics to assess the situation in detail, but the biggest question in my mind is “Why would anyone be surprised at this?”

There are a host of specific partial answers to that question, but most of them are covered by an observation that society doesn’t typically anticipate the future very well. No surprise. As the old witticism goes, “It’s hard to make predictions, especially about the future.” Even if you’re pretty sure you know what is going to happen, you might not know when, or how much, or what other events will also affect the consequences. And sometimes the anticipated event doesn’t even happen. So the easiest thing to do is assume that things will continue more or less along the current path. This is particularly tempting if it looks like the future is going to involve major changes in what the “powers that be” had planned.

Essential Issues over Six Years

By Mike Koetting September 1, 2023

As I am restarting after a break, I thought it might be a good time to make a really high-level review of the three things I identified as core issues for the country and the world when I started the blog, six years ago:

Dealing with vast inequity of resources among people
Radically revising our relationship with the environment
Rethinking the nature of work

It is my impression these are still the critical issues. Moreover, it also seems there is a fourth major question that didn’t seem as omnipresent six years ago.

Assuring the future of democracy

How’s the world been doing on these issues?

Keeping American Healthcare Prices High: A Peep into the Circus Tent

By Mike Koetting August 1, 2023

I wasn’t planning to write a blog in August, but when I ran a across an article on how “drug coupons”—a relatively arcane item that I will describe below—drive up drug costs, I couldn’t resist. It is such a perfect illustration of why our healthcare is so complex and the costs so absurdly high. I felt it was like a little tear in the circus tent that allowed you to see inside to watch the circus-like complexities of our health system.

Looking Into the Political Telescope

By Mike Koetting July 4, 2023

Today being the Fourth of July, and less than 18 months from the next election, it’s as good a time as any other to offer my overview of where we are in the American political wilderness.

I think the short version is that for the last three years we’ve been hovering around a tipping point: one way leads, however gradually, to political sanity. The other, probably less gradually, to a radical change in American life. In either case, the specifics are murky, but I have a feeling the next 18 months will call the question.

The Paris Metro as a Window on America

By Mike Koetting June 22, 2023

I just returned from a (too short) visit to Paris. We used the Metro extensively. The stops are plentiful, the trains run every few minutes, the stations are clean, everything works and the people use it—even us tourists.

Part of the secret is the relatively compact nature of Paris. Building that kind of rail density in Chicago would be prohibitively expensive. But, it seems, building any transit in the US approaches prohibitive expense.