Gregg Easterbrook

New York is about to become the sixth state to recognize same-sex marriage, doing so by decision of its legislature, not judicial fiat. Gay marriage is gaining in social acceptance. Two generations ago, interracial marriage was viewed as scandalous, and often proscribed by law. Today it’s legal everywhere in the United States, unremarkable, and endorsed even by most religious conservatives. Same-sex marriage is likely to follow the same progression.

But as the saying goes — be careful what you wish for.

Advocates of gay matrimony speak entirely of the privileges received by those whose unions are recognized by the state. Human Rights Watch phrases same-sex marriage as a “right to equality.” The New York Times editorialized that New York’s new law expands the chance to “enjoy the legal rights of marriage.”

Marriage indeed brings privileges — community respect, health care benefits for spouses, improved credit ratings, the presumption of fitness for parenthood. I’ve been married for 23 years and am glad of that fact every day. (You’d have to check with my wife for her side of the story.)

But advocates of same-sex marriage speak as if wedded bliss were all wine and roses. There are many negatives attached to matrimony:

• Married people accept significant restrictions on personal freedom. (In theory there can be open marriages, but my guess is that about 15 people in world history have achieved an open marriage with two happy partners). Even in successful marriages, the restriction on freedom can be a source of stress.

• For a not inconsiderable number, marriage becomes a cause of misery. It can be sad to be alone; to be married to the wrong person can cause wretchedness. On “I Love Lucy,” marriage was a laugh a minute. Many wedded people experience marriage quite differently.

• You’re not just marrying a person, you are marrying his or her family. Two single people in a romance are motivated primarily by attraction to each other. Once marriage happens, families on both sides may invite themselves in. Gays and lesbians beware, marriage can mean lifelong close connection to people you have not chosen and perhaps haven’t even met.

• Raising children is far harder than your worst-case analysis. Spouses have two-way obligations to each other; parents have one-way obligations to children. My wife and I raised three children, all wonderful. But Lord almighty there was a lot of work, expense and obligation involved.

• Children may be romanticized by the unwed, including by unwed gays, as an exciting delight. The reality is that kids take over your life, even if all goes well. If things go poorly, children can bring unhappiness, and the ethical parent cannot under any circumstances walk away. This is also true legally. A spouse may be divorced. A child is your responsibility till age 18, regardless of what happens in the marriage.

• Married people have financial obligations that single persons are spared. In most states, spouses are responsible for each other’s debts — even debts of which they are unaware. Your spouse buys a Rolex watch without consulting you? Has a gambling debt you were never told about? You are liable. Same-sex marriage advocates speak often of money-related benefits of matrimony, such as that married people in most transactions are viewed as better credit risks than single persons. But if your spouse makes financial mistakes, they become your mistakes. Marriage, legally, is a contract. Part of the contract is liability for each other’s debts. There’s no out clause.

Concerns like these should not faze advocates of same-sex marriage. A fair guess is that men who marry men, and women who marry women, will end up either happy or miserable in about the same proportion as men and women who marry each other.

But with same-sex marriage gaining acceptance, gays and lesbians should begin to assess the negatives of matrimony, as well as yearn for the positives. Many who marry later go to fantastic expense and inconvenience to become single again. This isn’t some weird coincidence.

Postscript:

What made me think gay marriage is on its way to general acceptance was the Miss USA Factor.

In 2009, favorite Carrie Prejean was denied the Miss USA crown when she told judges she thought same-sex marriage is wrong. Once, no woman who supported gay marriage could have won a beauty-queen title. Now a woman must favor same-sex unions to wear the tiara.

If beauty-pageant answers are a barometer of evolving public opinion, consider that the new 2011 Miss USA, Alyssa Campanella, in her questions, competition more-or-less endorsed the legalization of marijuana.

Photo: A girl holds a sign reading, ‘New York, Will You Marry Me?’ as she takes part in the Gay Pride Parade in New York June 26, 2011. REUTERS/Jessica Rinaldi

The cost of ongoing U.S. wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya is up to at least $1.2 trillion. What would the economic recovery look like if that money hadn’t been spent?

The GDP was about $10.1 trillion when U.S. forces invaded Afghanistan, and is $14.7 trillion now, an annualized growth rate at around 2 percent. That the U.S. economy still was able to grow despite war cost — every penny of it borrowed — other runaway borrowing, and the 2008 revelation of systemic perfidy on Wall Street, at the big banks and at Fannie Mae is testimony to America’s vibrancy.

But imagine if $1.2 trillion had been added to the economy, rather than spent on war. Of course lower military spending does not translate one-for-one into increased economic growth — the two aren’t directly correlated. But they are related, and as Harvard economist Martin Feldstein said last week, “each dollar of extra deficit adds much less than a dollar to GDP.”

So imagine that $1.2 trillion had not been spent smashing things, including America’s own military hardware, in Iraq. Afghanistan and now Libya. War, after all, is about killing people and destroying resources. Economic growth is about empowering people and creating value.

Add war costs back into  the economy and the U.S. GDP would be around $16 trillion today, an annualized growth rate of roughly 3 percent for the last decade. At that level of growth, unemployment would be lower, deficits would be lower and the national mood brighter.

Not having spent  money on war would be no panacea. If there’d been no Afghanistan, Iraq or Libya wars, the United States nevertheless would have felt the economic turbulence all the West has flown through. The European Union spent almost nothing on these wars, and its economies cooled, too.

But without at least $1.2 trillion spent on the last decade’s wars, the United States would be in much better economic and fiscal condition. And the true cost may be higher. The 2010 book “The Three Trillion Dollar War” by Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel-winning economist, and by Linda Bilmes estimates that long-term expenses such as disability payments will drive the number to that level. Destroying resources gets expensive fast. Last week, the White House acknowledged that U.S. air strikes in Libya have already cost $1 billion.

While the Base Realignment and Closure Commission has been engaged in a two-decades-long tooth-pulling exercise to shutter military installations within the United States, we’ve been furiously opening new ones overseas — nearly 100 U.S. military facilities now operating in Iraq and Afghanistan. The value of the dollars that funds these bases leaves the United States, weakening the U.S. economy.

It is far from clear that United States wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and now Libya were national security requirements, or morally defensible. Outgoing Defense Secretary Robert Gates, a Republican and lifelong pillar of the military and intelligence establishments, just told Thom Shanker and Elisabeth Bumiller of the New York Times the country should avoid “wars of choice.”

After 9/11, the United States was justified in counterattacking Afghanistan in self-defense. Al Qaeda there is long since routed and Osama bin-Laden is dead, yet a huge U.S. military force remains — doing what, exactly? The White House can’t even explain what the Afghanistan war is supposed to be achieving.

Eight year later, no coherent explanation for the invasion of Iraq has been offered by presidents of either party. Saddam Hussein is long since dead, and Saddam’s purported atomic weapons program has long since been shown nonexistent by Pentagon investigators in conquered Iraq. Yet the United States still spends lavishly in Iraq, including, the Washington Post just reported, by giving the Iraqi army American M-1 tanks, the best — and by far most expensive — tank in the United States arsenal. One of the original stated reasons for invasion of Iraq was to disarm it. Now Iraq is receiving powerful advanced armaments at American expense. Set aside whether this makes any sense; the cost is depressing the U.S. economy.

Ninety days ago, the United States began bombing Libya. President Barack Obama has already become sufficiently Nixonian in that he just told Congress three months of bombing does not constitute “hostilities” under the War Powers Act. The stated reason a U.S.-led NATO force began bombing Libya was to prevent the Qaddafi government from killing civilians. Now NATO is killing civilians in Libya. Set aside whether this makes any sense; the cost is depressing the U.S. economy.

Not only does the $1.2 trillion represent money invested in destruction rather than creation: as borrowed money, it gives business reason to think the nation’s future is dim. Businesses that think the U.S. future is dim are investing their capital outside the United States, in nations not engaged in budget-busting military adventures their own leaders can’t explain.

In 1781, George Washington said the cost of the Revolutionary War must be repaid immediately, lest his peers “ungenerously throw upon posterity the burden which we ourselves ought to bear.” The Revolutionary War bought something of great value, liberty. America’s three ongoing wars are buying what, exactly?

Photo: U.S. Army soldiers from the 2nd Platoon, B battery 2-8 field artillery, fire a howitzer artillery piece at Seprwan Ghar forward fire base in Panjwai district, Kandahar province southern Afghanistan, June 12, 2011. REUTERS/Baz Ratner

As Barack Obama makes the first presidential visit to Puerto Rico in half a century, let’s cut to the chase: this island will be the 51st state, and the sooner the better.

Fifty is a nice round number for states, but prepare to kiss it goodbye. Puerto Rico will be 51st, and not necessarily the last. Alberta and British Columbia may join the United States someday; U.S. states named Sonora and Baja California are not out of the question. There will be more stars on the flag.

The United States has always been about the open door: arrivals make the country stronger. The boundaries of our great nation have always been in flux: until 1912, it was far from clear that Arizona belonged.

The time has come for those boundaries to change again. So let’s imagine what will happen after the island becomes a state:

A backward, feudal economy will begin to hum. Poverty will decline. Low education levels will be replaced education levels about the same as the U.S. average. Glistening office towers and condos will rise. Mainlander suspicion of the island’s residents will fade. Eventually one of the island’s sons or daughters will be elected president.

Wait — I’m describing Hawaii!

Peruse the history of Hawaii prior to its 1959 statehood, and you’ll think you are reading about Puerto Rico today. Hawaii then had an obsolete economic base and poor schools; its residents were viewed by the mainland as foreigners. Today Hawaii’s per-capita GDP, $49,000, exceeds the number for the mainland, and the very name Hawaii evokes a sense of paradise.

Once Puerto Rico becomes a state, its fortunes could arc upward. Right now the island’s murky status as a semi-autonomous “unincorporated territory” holds Puerto Rico back in economic development, and in global standing. Admit Puerto Rico into statehood and positive change will begin.

Some residents of Puerto Rico oppose statehood, advocating sovereignty. Some Walloons want independence from Belgium, some in Newfoundland want to return to being a British dominion — you can’t please everybody. Puerto Ricans who favor independence are a minority: many oppose an independence-or-statehood referendum, because they know their position will lose. (Details of possible referenda are in this recent White House report, which all but endorses Puerto Rican statehood — President Gerald Ford endorsed Puerto Rican statehood, and the elder President George Bush all but endorsed the idea.)

Here are important points for understanding the Puerto Rico issue:

* Since 1941, everyone born on the island has entered the world as a U.S. citizen. When commentators declared that Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor had “emigrated to the United States from Puerto Rico,” they betrayed a common misunderstanding of the island’s confusing status. (Setting aside that Sotomayor was born in New York.) Average-height J.J. Barea of the Dallas Mavericks, improbable star of the NBA Finals, grew up in Mayaguez, Puerto Rico. He didn’t “become an American,” as some sportscasters said. He was born an American.

* It’s not true that Puerto Ricans pay no federal taxes. Residents of the island do not pay federal income taxes. But then, since the three federal income tax cuts of the last decade (two under the younger President Bush, one under Obama), 45 percent of mainland Americans don’t pay federal income taxes, either. Puerto Ricans pay Social Security and Medicare taxes, which fund their federal retirement and health care benefits. (To the extent these benefits are funded, but that’s a separate question.) Statehood for Puerto Rico would cause its residents to pay federal income taxes.

* Companies doing business in Puerto Rico are nearly exempt from federal corporate taxes. Statehood would cause companies there to pay corporate taxes.

* Puerto Ricans cannot vote in presidential elections — they can vote in presidential primaries, which are run by the parties — and have no senators or true members of the House of Representatives. If Puerto Rico became a state its residents would vote for president and command approximately the same number of electors as Oregon. The new state would have two senators and four to five representatives. Membership of the Senate would rise to 102, while the four to five representatives for Puerto Rico would reduce representation of the other states by the same number.

* There’s no doubt Puerto Rican statehood would aid the Democratic Party, which may explain White House interest. (Democrats would benefit in the current generation: for all we know, by mid-century, Puerto Rico will be a Tea Party stronghold.) Two more Senate seats would be huge for the Democrats.

Nearly a million Puerto Ricans have moved to Florida, which has replaced New York City as home-away-from-home for those of Puerto Rican origin. “I know a boat you can get on” is now being grumbled by Floridians, not New Yorkers. Granting the vote to Puerto Ricans living in New York wouldn’t have short-term impact on presidential politics, since New York already votes blue. But with Florida a battleground state, enfranchising nearly a million additional people there, most of whom will vote Democratic, could determine a presidency.

* The Census Bureau projects that by 2050, the Hispanic (using that term loosely) share of the U.S. population will rise to 24 percent from 12 percent. Statehood for Puerto Rico could accelerate the rise of Spanish-speaking and Spanish-descended Americans.

So how about the legislation that grants Puerto Rican its statehood including a clause that makes English the language of the United States, and bars official bilingualism? (Some states mandate English; there is no controlling federal law.) The melting-pot aspect of English has benefitted all Americans, including first-generation Americans: while the track record of official bilingualism in other nations is poor.

If the United States is to welcome Puerto Rico as a state, fully embracing its residents, English as the U.S. language should be part of the deal. That’s a future-oriented compromise with something for everybody.

Photos, top to bottom: U.S. President Barack Obama speaks at a welcoming event after arriving at Luis Munoz Marin International Airport in Puerto Rico, June 14, 2011. REUTERS/Larry Downing; A pro-statehood woman waits for U.S. President Barack Obama to pass by the House of Laws of the Caribbean Island of Puerto Rico, in San Juan June 14, 2011. This is the first official visit of a sitting U.S. President to Puerto Rico since President Kennedy visited in 1961. REUTERS/Ana Martinez; Students block Plaza Las Americas highway as part of a one day strike protesting against government layoffs, in San Juan October 15, 2009. More than 17,000 public sector employees have been dismissed since March 2008. REUTERS/Ana Martinez

Rep. Andrew Weiner, after elaborately denying posting a controversial picture on Twitter — Hollywood beauties are described as posing “semi-nude,” Weiner posed semi-lewd — just admitted that he did. Sarah Palin refuses to admit she was wrong about Paul Revere’s Midnight Ride — though she claimed Revere’s purpose was to warn “the British”. John Edwards, now facing criminal charges, is in jeopardy of going to jail owing to a chain of events that began when he refused to admit having an affair — after boasting of being a family-values vice-presidential candidate. Presidential contender Newt Gingrich first refused to admit a dumb remark about Medicare reform, then claimed quotation of his own remark is “a falsehood.” Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey at first refused to admit using a state helicopter for personal travel — though it was on film! — then denounced those who complained.

These are merely the last week’s examples of a troubling tendency among public figures — refusal to admit being wrong. Just as lying about what you did may be worse than what you did, refusing to admit an error may be worse than the error itself.

All human beings occasionally are wrong — trust me, I’ve had plenty of experience! Honest admission of error makes a person upright and sympathetic. Refusing to admit error, by contrast, suggests deviousness or even megalomania. The sort of person who huffs and puffs and refuses to admit a mistake does not belong in a leadership position.

In the era of YouTube and Twitter, it’s often easy to obtain the evidence of public error. That makes it all the more creepy when politicians stare into the camera and deny that they’ve made a mistake.

Yet we’re surrounded by politicians who deny their mistakes. In recent history, presidents Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton denied significant personal errors: one lost the White House as a result, the other nearly did. (I will skip the many instances in which public leaders would not admit to mistakes because they believed, rightly or wrongly, that refusal was in the national interest.)

Recently in the United Kingdom, former prime minister Tony Blair refused to admit his memoir contained lines that appear lifted from a movie, weirdly defending the lines not as true but as a story he had told “many times”. In Germany, Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg’s refusal to admit plagiarism went so far that he nearly brought down the government before confessing and resigning.

Those who make mistakes used to say, “I was wrong” and sometimes, “I apologize.” Now they deny everything, even if, as with Palin, the mistake is quite minor.

After bollixing, in Boston, an account of Revere’s ride, Palin could simply have said, “Whoops.” Lots of smart people make mistakes about history — how many reading this column could describe, say, the Powder Alarm?

Palin was given a chance, on Fox News, simply to say whoops. Host Chris Wallace asked her, “You realize that you messed up about Paul Revere, don’t you?” Palin responded, “I didn’t mess up about Paul Revere … he did warn the British.” Palin then said that being asked — in Boston! — about the Midnight Ride was “a gotcha type question.” Next unfair media gotcha-type question for the former governor: Who’s buried in Grant’s Tomb?

What seems to be at work here is political egos so enormous that the politician who errs won’t say so — because this would be an admission he or she is not a little god walking on Earth.

Lashing out, rather than apologizing, is a bad sign in this regard. Gov. Christie, who thinks everybody else should cut back on favors from government, lashed out at any suggestion he should, too. Christie only revealed himself as a hypocrite. When Gingrich, who betrayed his first two wives yet now presents himself as the candidate of family values, was asked about that over the winter at a campus appearance, he lashed out at the questioner. Last week after making his doublespeak declaration that “any ad which quotes what I said on Sunday is a falsehood,” Gingrich bizarrely added, “That way we can have an honest conversation.”

Voters look for positive signs of why a candidate should be elected, and for danger signs of why one should not. There are few danger signs about politicians more clear than haughty refusal to admit error.

Photos, top to bottom: U.S. Congressman Anthony Weiner (D-NY) reacts as he speaks to the press in New York, June 6, 2011. Representative Anthony Weiner admitted on Monday to sending a lewd photo of himself to a 21-year-old female college student over his Twitter account after previously denying he had done so. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid; Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin (R) greets a protester holding a sign reading “Idiot Queen” as she arrives for a clambake at a private residence in Seabrook, New Hampshire June 2, 2011. REUTERS/Brian Snyder

Suppose a company that was losing customers to other firms responded by increasing prices, cutting service, granting raises to workers and overpaying management. If the company then demanded a lavish government bailout, the public would laugh.

The company I have just described is the United States Postal Service.

A USPS bailout is not the solution. Blowing up the Post Office — its monopoly, its customer-be-damned attitude, its system of lifetime job guarantees regardless of performance — is the solution. After the dust from the explosion settles, the mails will continue to exist, in a leaner, sustainable and more customer-conscious form.

The USPS just reported a $2.2 billion first-quarter loss, despite having a federal monopoly that exempts the Post Office from competition for its core business. Exemption from competition is the core of the USPS problem, allowing the agency to drag its heels against the modern age, while clinging to bad business practices.

Any private firm losing market share, as the USPS is losing market share to electronic mail and to package services such as FedEx and UPS, would respond by cutting prices, in order attract business. Textbook economics says cut prices, and demand will rise — this sure worked for cell phones. Increase prices, and demand will decline. Since 2006, the USPS has increased first-class postage rates by 13 percent — almost double the rise in the Consumer Price Index in the same period. Also in that period, mail volume has declined 20 percent, with sharp drops in first-class mail. This is not a shock. This is textbook economics!

In its last fiscal year, the Post Office lost $8.5 billion, and projects total losses of $42 billion from 2010 to 2015. Despite raising first class rates twice in the last five years, the Post Office has filed for another rate increase. Despite staggering losses, the USPS just agreed with its primary union on a contract including raises and a no-layoffs clause. Here, Business Week recounts more bleak or embarrassing USPS info.

The pay of the Postmaster General, the system’s CEO, rose 40 percent from 2006 to 2010. In fiscal 2009, the Postmaster General paid himself $800,000, plus preposterous perks such as country club membership. The new Postmaster General is earning a mere $276,000, plus perks.

This would be humorous if taxpayers and mail users weren’t being taken for a ride. Here, the Postmaster General of 2009 declares that because of congressional mandates, he has almost no authority. If the Postmaster General has almost no authority, why high pay? Hire a teenager to run the USPS after school.

There is one thing the USPS consistently does right, and that is fully fund its pension program. The law that changed the Post Office from a government branch to a quasi-independent entity required that in return for the gift of taxpayer-financed federal property across the country — Post Office real estate is worth a bundle — the USPS would cover its own pensions. If only all state and local government branches, and all corporations, were honest about fully funding their pension obligations.

Since fully funding its pensions is the one thing the USPS does right — the agency wants to stop! The mail service is asking Congress for a pension bailout; senators Tom Carper of Delaware and Susan Collins of Maine, ranking members of the Senate committee with USPS oversight, just introduced a bill that would in effect force future taxpayers to cover USPS pension costs.

So an organization that is performing poorly, while exempting its workers from accountability via no-layoff rules, wants federal taxpayers to take over its pension costs thus freeing up more money for USPS management and unions to waste on themselves.

This would be amusing, if average people weren’t being bilked. The money the USPS wants doesn’t pop out of the air. It would come from average people trying to post letters or packages, or from future generations being saddled with yet more pension expenses.

The idea of creating more unfunded pension costs — when federal, state and local unfunded pensions are already a scandal — is absurd. Since the idea is absurd but benefits a special-interest consistency, naturally the United States Congress is interested.

The only solution is to end the USPS mail monopoly: let private competition enter the fray, and let the chips fall where they may.

Yes, this would inevitably lead to the closing of tiny rural post offices, and that would be a sad day. But there are no horse-drawn stage coaches stopping at the town saloon anymore, either, and rural America gets by. It will get by with a revamped modern mail service, too.

Correction: The two senators have separate bills with similar titles. Both senators’ bills would streamline USPS operations. Both would allow the USPS to reduce its pension contributions, citing studies that suggest the USPS is setting aside more pension reserves than needed.

Author’s Note: Perhaps the Senators are right, and USPS pension contributions may safely be reduced. But recent history on this point is not encouraging — many states, and General Motors and Chrysler, cut their pension contributions, and bailouts followed.

Photo: A U.S. Postal Service vehicle navigates amid the storm-damaged Alberta community near Tuscaloosa, Alabama, April 29, 2011. REUTERS/Marvin Gentry