Gregg Easterbrook

Here we go again.

With a sort-of withdrawal from Iraq in progress, and a scheduled withdrawal from Afghanistan approaching, Washington needs a fresh adversary. How about China?

China is big and getting bigger. Its wealth and power is increasing. It’s inscrutable, whatever that means. (Just try understanding the United States.) And according to super-secret intelligence reports, China is pursuing national interest. This can’t be allowed — we’ve got to confront them!

Of course it is a standby of politics for governments to create international adversaries, in order to deflect criticism away from themselves. There’s a theory – best expressed in the great spoof Report From Iron Mountain — that while dictatorships can issue orders, democracies need enemies in order to prevent free men and women from saying, “To heck with central government.”

Polls suggest many Americans right now are contemplating the phrase “to heck with central government,” so perhaps Barack Obama’s White House thinks voters will be distracted if China is converted into an adversary. The idea is not new — the George W. Bush White House attempted the same.

When the younger Bush took office, the international scene was fairly tranquil, and at that point, people were tired of hearing Saddam Hussein blamed for everything. So Bush started talking tough about Beijing. This culminated in the Hainan Island incident, which raised international tensions. Cable news was abuzz with confronting China; Dick Cheney darkly hinted of war. The Council on Foreign Relations went to red alert.

Then 9/11 happened, and the China menace disappeared from headlines. Though not from intellectual discourse: this 2005 issue of The Atlantic, home to the very best general-interest public- policy writing, had “How We Would Fight China” as its main cover headline.

The cover photomontage, in creepy distorted color, shows an ominous, slanty-eyed sailor. Maybe he has inscrutable intentions! The Chinese sailor stands in front of, well, you can’t really tell, but the stuff in the background looks threatening too. “The American military contest with China in the Pacific will define the twenty-first century. And China will be a more formidable adversary than Russia,” The Atlantic warned.

Is the Chinese navy really a threat? Politically, is Beijing “newly assertive” or merely going through a natural transition as its stature grows? Do Beijing’s stances on exchange rates, trade and security threaten the United States, as opposed to merely annoying us? Because we annoy the living bejeezus out of them.

The United States wishes China would float its currency, rather than sustain fixed rates that promote Chinese trade. Governments make national policy based, usually, on what they believe advances their national interest. They may be wrong – maybe China should indeed stop managing the renminbi. But it’s ridiculous for Washington to act all horrified about Beijing using money to pursue its vision of national interest: if other nations told Americans how to use our money, we’d be outraged.

It is highly unrealistic for America to think China will fund the U.S. borrowing binge by purchasing Treasury bills; and also suppress its own consumption, while underwriting our middle class living standards by selling us cheap goods; and then also manage their currency to our liking.

U.S. political posturing about currency exchange rates go back at least as far back as the Ronald Reagan administration. American interest groups complain about exchange rates because this feels like something Washington should be able to control, whereas larger economic trends aren’t controlled by any government. When strong currencies benefit America, U.S. interest groups demand that. When weak currencies benefit us, we switch demands
Timothy Geithner just said:

G-20 emerging market countries with significantly undervalued currencies and adequate precautionary reserves need to allow their exchange rates to adjust fully over time to levels consistent with economic fundamentals.

Now, to whom could he be referring? Imagine how infuriating Beijing must find this sort of condescending hectoring, especially from a nation whose leaders will not take any step at all to put their own fiscal house in order.
China has many internal problems, including human rights abuses, corruption, pollution and lack of free speech. China’s relationship with Taiwan is a tense mess. The Han mistreat the Tibetans. The list of China’s faults could go on at some length.

But in the main, there has never been a superpower relationship like the one between Washington and Beijing — mainly constructive, mainly cooperative, neither side positioning to destroy the other.

The world’s largest public works endeavor — the $75 billion South-to-North Water Transfer Project in its early stages in China — could be smashed from the air in a day by United States precision-guided bombs. China is building the project because Chinese leaders assume they will never go to war with the United States. That’s what we should assume too — and not make China into a distant whipping boy for our own domestic problems that U.S. leaders are afraid to face.

Should the United States fear the Chinese navy?
China is expanding its navy, which today is equipped only for coastal operation, though perhaps someday will venture into the “blue water” where the United States Navy rules. Not long ago, the U.S. Navy and Chinese navy (its delightful formal name is the Army Navy) conducted joint exercises. Recently they have not, though China just conducted a joint naval exercise with Australia. Here is the Pentagon’s latest report on the Chinese military, which is decidedly non-alarmist.

This is the warship in the background of the 2005 The Atlantic cover. It’s the lead ship of a class that was cancelled, which makes it sound a lot less menacing. The vessel is a guided-missile destroyer. China has a handful of this type, while the United States Navy has many dozens. The United States has large numbers of more potent guided-missile cruisers, and a huge lead in nuclear attack submarines capable of long stays submerged: any one of them could eat the entire Chinese surface fleet for lunch.

The United States has 11 supercarrier strike groups: China doesn’t even have an aircraft carrier, let alone a supercarrier strike group. China has purchased unwanted medium-sized aircraft carriers from Moscow and is tinkering with them, though none sail. China is believed to be designing its own 50,000-ton conventional-power aircraft carrier, which would be similar to what the United States called a “fleet carrier” during World War II, and not as powerful as the 100,000-ton nuclear supercarriers the United States builds at enormous expense.

Today’s Chinese navy would not dare throw a stone at the United States Navy, and that relationship should continue for a generation or more. Will it change eventually?

By toying with aircraft carriers, China may be testing the waters, as it were. In the mid-1930s, when treaties forbid Germany from building heavy combatant vessels, Hitler ordered construction of “pocket battleships,” largely to see how Paris and London would respond. When they did nothing, he approved  a rearming program for the Germany navy.

Certainly Beijing might be engaged in modest naval expansion to see how we respond, thinking that decades from now, it too will command supercarrier strike groups. Friendly Washington-Beijing relations seem a better hedge against that day than scowling and finger-wagging. The United States asserts a unilateral right to sail as many advanced warships as it pleases. On what grounds could this right be denied to China?

Substituting ethanol for petroleum – what could be wrong with that? A lot, it turns out, including a cynical “stealth tax” on drivers.

A few days ago the Environmental Protection Agency announced that soon gasoline can be made from 85 percent petroleum and 15 percent ethanol, up from a current limit of 10 percent ethanol. Such a move to replace imported petroleum with home-grown ethanol sounds great — until you examine the details.

Ethanol is the king of subsidies. Ethanol from genetically engineered dwarf trees or tall grasses holds tremendous promise as a cost-effective, greenhouse-neutral fuel. But for today, nearly all ethanol sold in the United States is made from corn. Domestically produced corn-based ethanol is subsidized via federal payments to grain farmers, by refinery tax exemptions for fuel containing domestic ethanol, and by tariff barriers intended to prevent Brazilian sugar-based ethanol from entering the country. Annual federal subsidies to corn ethanol cost around $5 billion. Are the benefits worth that?

Corn ethanol may not save petroleum. There’s a dispute, but some research suggests corn-based ethanol is a net loser in energy terms — more petroleum goes into production of the corn than the energy value in the ethanol. Indisputably, raising corn to burn as ethanol depletes topsoil. Topsoil may be a more important resource than petroleum, given there are vast reserves of oil and alternatives being developed, while with current science, topsoil is irreplaceable. We’ve got to deplete topsoil to eat. We don’t need to deplete topsoil for fuel: topsoil should be allocated to its highest use, food production.

Corn ethanol may not be good for the environment. If ethanol occurred by magic, then replacing fossil fuel with corn ethanol would reduce greenhouse gas emissions. But ethanol calculations should take into account the greenhouse gases associated with corn production, especially carbon released by changes in land use. Last year, the EPA concluded that corn ethanol production would be worse overall for the environment than petroleum refining http://www.epa.gov/otaq/renewablefuels/420f09024.htm. The ethanol lobby howled, and the EPA “reworked” its ethanol data to reach the desired PC outcome. In politics, “sound science” is whatever supports your predetermined conclusions.

Politics drives the corn-ethanol push. The farm lobby loves corn-based ethanol because it raises the price of corn – though that penalizes average people via higher food prices. Many (not all) enviros love ethanol because it’s not a fossil fuel. Big campaign donors such as ethanol producer Archer Daniels Midland love ethanol because the subsidies are corporate welfare. But does adding more ethanol to gasoline serve the public? Hey – who cares about that?

The stealth tax. By volume, corn ethanol contains about a third less energy than petroleum. That means a gasoline blend of 85 percent petrol, 15 percent ethanol delivers about 95 percent the energy of pure-petroleum fuel. When the federally sanctioned new gasoline blend starts being put into the tanks of cars, MPG will go down.

The typical American driver covers 12,000 miles annually at a real-world fuel economy average of 20 miles per gallon, which comes to 600 gallons of gasoline purchased annually. That the typical U.S. driver burns through almost two gallons a day is a core reason America is addicted to oil. But higher-MPG vehicles with lower horsepower, and plug-in hybrids, seem the best cure — rather than subsidized ethanol.

If the typical driver’s annual 600 gallons declines in energy value by 5 percent, the typical driver will need to buy 30 additional gallons per year. At today’s prices, that’s a stealth tax of $100 per year per American driver. If gasoline prices go up, the stealth tax rises.

Who gets the money from the stealth tax? Oil companies that market gasoline, and the ethanol lobby. Typical Americans will pay an extra $100 per year so that funds can be channeled to these politically connected lobbies, which in turn will make campaign donations to incumbents of both parties. This is both parties of Congress, and the White House, at their worst – reaching into your pocket in order to create campaign donations for themselves.

Don’t fall for it. The media have not noticed that ethanol mandates will cause automotive MPG to decline – as well as subtract spending money from people’s pockets at a time when consumer demand is needed to spur the economy.

Politicians hope people won’t notice that their MPG is going down, or won’t know why, and will simply be quiet and pay the new stealth tax.

Don’t fall for it.

On Friday, the Social Security Administration is expected to announce that for the second consecutive year, there will be no Social Security cost-of-living increase. That makes perfect sense, since the cost of living is not rising. But this being an election year, there may be intense political demand for a special bonus to retirees, like the $250 bonus checks issued — regardless of need — to all senior citizens in 2009.

It is imperative that President Barack Obama, and Congress, resist demands for bonus payments to senior citizens. The federal budget — and long-term projections for Social Security — are in bad enough shape as is. If Washington can’t resist handing out bonuses, there is no hope the national red ink ever can be stopped.

There’s no “right” to higher Social Security benefits.
In 1972, Congress created a COLA system to increase Social Security benefits (and the threshold level of Social Security taxation) in sync with the rising cost of living. Each year from 1972 to 2009, Social Security benefits rose, owing to inflation. Seniors became accustomed to the first check in January of any year containing a boost. Some surely believe that law requires their benefits to rise annually.

But there’s no right to higher Social Security benefits — indeed, no “right” to any particular level. Congress may change Social Security benefits and tax formulas at whim. So far changes have meant higher benefits, but they can also mean reductions of benefits. Reduced Social Security benefits, at least for well-off seniors, are inevitable in the future. For now, if there is no inflation, there should be no COLA increase.

But wasn’t there a big benefit increase in 2009?
Recall that in mid-2008, fossil fuel prices briefly spiked, then fell. Timing of the spike interacted with details of the formula used by the Social Security Administration to cause a 5.8 percent benefit increase in 2009, though consumer prices actually rose by less than half that in the previous year.

Now a detail of the same formula, having to do with the third quarter of 2008, will ensure no increase in January 2011. Senior citizen lobbies may demand the formula be changed. Though they didn’t complain when the formula awarded too much in 2009. Considering the 5.8 percent 2009 increase, for the last two years seniors have been slightly overpaid by Social Security, and the slight overpayments will continue.

Why the 2009 bonus checks?
In theory, the $250 bonus checks of 2009, total cost about $14 billion, were for economic stimulus. Obama has been honest about the political background: “We never forget seniors because they vote at very high rates.” Though the 2009 bonus was described by the White House as a “one-time” bonus for 2010, Obama proposed a second $250 bonus, which was not enacted by Congress. Will there be a fresh round of calls for another “one-time” bonus?

But aren’t there senior citizens in need?
Of course! The average Social Security retiree benefit is about $14,000 annually, hardly princely. Many recipients need more. And many recipients need less — as a group, senior-citizens are the best-off sector of American society, with the highest net worth and by far the most government support.

Social Security should be reformed so that those at the bottom receive more while those at the top receive nothing.

This is not how seniors’ lobbies approach the issue. They call on the political fiction that Social Security recipients are only “getting back what they put in.” This is a total fantasy: Social Security is an income transfer program, not a savings instrument, with today’s workers taxed to provide for yesterday’s. The political fictions of Social Security are skewered by Allan Sloan here. Cutting and eventually ending Social Security payments to the affluent will be needed to keep the program from running out of funds.

Isn’t there plenty of money in the Social Security Trust Fund?
That “trust fund” is another fiction — it is no more than a drawer full of IOUs from one government agency to another.

In 2009, the Congressional Budget Office said Social Security outlays would not exceed revenue until 2017; instead this happened in 2010. The CBO further said Social Security would run a roughly $150 billion surplus in the years representing a two-term Barack Obama presidency; instead a $70 billion deficit is now predicted. So surely you feel nice and secure about the Social Security trustees saying their system has plenty of money until 2037.

Don’t seniors deserve extra because of the recession?
A year ago, when the Social Security Administration said there would be no COLA for 2010, President Obama backed a second “one-time” bonus check, saying, “We must act on behalf of those hardest hit by this recession.”

As a group, seniors are the least hardest hit. Most are retired, so unemployment, the biggest economic problem associated with the recession, does not impact them. Many consumer prices have fallen, which increases seniors’ buying power.

Two kinds of prices are rising — college education and health care. The former has no impact on seniors, while the latter has limited impact because seniors don’t pay most of their health care costs. Young workers pay those costs via Medicare taxes.

Of course there are individual seniors in need — but for senior-citizen lobbies to depict seniors overall as hard-hit by the recession is political selfishness in the extreme.

Why you should worry about Social Security.
Here’s the Social Security Administration’s current Social Security fact sheet and below are two spooky facts quoted directly from it:

• By 2035, there will be almost twice as many older Americans as today — from 40.7 million today to 76.3 million.
• There are currently 2.9 workers for each Social Security beneficiary. By 2035, there will be 2.1 workers for each beneficiary.

The story of Tyler Clementi brings tears to the eyes. The Rutgers University freshman jumped to his death from the George Washington Bridge after a video of him having sex with a man was posted on the Internet, probably by a classmate. Not only did a promising young life end — it’s 2010, and even college students still exhibit malicious anti-gay bias.

Yet does his awful death mean there’s a “trend” of suicides by young gays and lesbians. That has been a television theme in the last week. It’s clear there have been suicides in which young homosexuals kill themselves at least in part owing to harassment.  Each instance is heartbreaking. But people who aren’t gay, or don’t belong to any group that has been subjected to prejudice, take their own lives. Does the occurrence of a gay person’s suicide show any larger trend?

In 2007, there were about 42 million Americans aged 15-24. The self-inflicted death rate for this group was about one in 10,300. That comes to roughly 4,000 suicides a year by those of teens-to-college age — a horrible figure. That suicide is a leading cause of death for young people is, itself, horrible.

The exact figure is disputed, but a good estimate is that three to four percent of the human family is homosexual. Based on the suicide rate for those 15 to 24, we’d expect somewhere around 150 gay or lesbian young people to kill themselves in a year. That’s terrible – but also shows a few instances of gay suicide do not constitute a trend. This ABC News report laments “five suicides by gay teenagers in the last three weeks,” implying a sudden new development. Other things being equal, statistics would suggest nine suicides by gay young adults in a three-week period.

Are homosexuals as a group at greater risk of suicide than others of similar backgrounds? This study found that gay young people who are rejected by their families are much more likely than their age group as a whole to attempt to kill themselves. But do heterosexual youth who are rejected by their families also have elevated suicide-attempt rates? Being rejected by your family would be traumatic regardless of the reason.

This Centers for Disease Control backgrounder on suicide does not cite sexual orientation as a leading factor, nor does this briefing paper from the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. The AFSP views “psychiatric disorders” as the leading cause of suicide. Mistreatment by society might cause severe depression, the disorder most associated with suicide.

It’s tempting for editors and talk-show bookers to imply that an instance shows a larger trend. Often it doesn’t. In a country of 300 million people, you can find an instance of practically anything. Surely one could find instances of happy, well-adjusted gays and lesbians who are perfectly content with their lives. That would not prove a trend of treating homosexuals fairly, any more than a gay person’s suicide proves a trend of treating them unfairly.
The flip side of this coin is that another kind of suicide — military suicides — are rising at a rate that does show a clear trend.

The Houston Chronicle reported on Monday, “Last year suicides made up nearly 25 percent of the deaths of Texans younger than 35 who served in the military. That percentage is more than twice the rate of suicide in the comparable civilian population.”

In 2008 and 2009, suicide rates among active-duty military exceeded the rates for the general population of the same age and gender. The Army says the 2010 suicide rate is down, roughly to the rate of comparable civilian population.

Military suicide rates are troubling because of what they suggest about the stress and suffering imposed by wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — wars which most Americans have not been so much as inconvenienced. Military suicides are further troubling because soldiers tend to enjoy better health than the population as a whole, meaning health problems are less likely to be suicide factors, and have ready access to no-charge psychological counseling, which should tend to reduce suicide rates.

Any suicide by anyone is a devastating tragedy — but news reports must weigh which tragedies are personal, and which may represent some larger trend.

And bear in mind:

• Suicide is not a private choice — it causes lasting emotional pain and psychological harm to family and loved ones. When death comes from old age or late-stage disease, ending your own life may be ethical. Except in that circumstance, suicide is both morally wrong and cruel to others.
• Studies of those who have attempted suicide and failed show that in almost all cases, they are glad they failed. Whatever awful thing is causing you to consider suicide — it may change, and you’ll later be glad to be alive to know it changed.
• If your leg was broken you’d ask for help. If you are thinking about suicide, ask for help. Suicidal thoughts do not mean you are a bad person — they mean you have a problem and need help. Most people who receive suicide counseling get better.