Monday, September 26, 2022

Italy Goes Hard Right, and What’s so Bad About Nationalism Anyway?

Giorgia Meloni's far-right nationalist Brothers of Italy party won the most votes in the Italian election: 26%. Combined with two smaller and farther-right parties, Meloni's coalition won 44% of the vote and that should allow her to form a government and become Italy's first female prime minister.

This was the article that brought the Italian election to my attention this morning: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/25/world/europe/italy-meloni-prime-minister.html

I think it is a warning sign that Meloni spent some time during the election trying to persuade people that she will not be like the fascist dictator Mussolini who took power in Italy 100 years ago this year. Even more of a warning sign is that the reason she has to tell people she is not like Mussolini is that, in the past, she has spoken admiringly of Mussolini.

This article says that Meloni "bashes" the European Union, international bankers, and migrants. These are all signs of "nationalism" which I will talk about a little more below. Meloni also supports Ukraine but her coalition members seem more partial to the dictator Putin so we will have to see how that ends up.

Italy has a pretty big "anti-establishment" party called the Five Star Movement which got 15% of the vote in this election. There is also a Democratic party, which refused to form a coalition with other liberal and centrist parties and ended up with 19% of the vote. Even a coalition on the left might not have been able to win in this election but it would have been nice to see them working together anyway.

There was unusually low turn-out in this election....

I wonder why?

So, what's wrong with "nationalism?" Usually when a party explicitly identifies itself as nationalist it also does not like international organizations, it wants to "go-it-alone," AND it usually has some theories about WHICH people belong to the nation: which languages, cultures, religions, races - and which do NOT.

Internationalists believe that the world will be more prosperous, and more peaceful, if countries work together in international organizations.
Nationalists want countries to "go-it-alone" which, internationalists believe is more likely to lead to destructive economic competition, and war.
Internationalists believe that everyone is created equal and that everyone should have the same rights, and that includes people of EVERY language and culture, and religion, and race.
Nationalists tend to think that their "nation" should have just one language, and one culture, and one religion, and one race, and that OTHER people should NOT have the same rights.
Internationalists believe this kind of thinking leads to oppression and, ultimately, to atrocities.

Italy is now going more nationalist. Let's hope they go slow and avoid the excesses we saw from nationalist leaders of the past, like Mussolini.

According to some, the Italian people have not really moved toward nationalism. "The Italian electorate had not moved to the right, political scientists said, but instead again resorted to a perennial desire for a new leader who could possibly, and providentially, solve all its ills."

I hope Italy will remain as free and prosperous as it is now and will increase its freedom and prosperity in the future. We shall see.

This election could have gone differently IF:
If so many people had not stayed home on election day.
If the anti-nationalist parties had not refused to unite against the nationalists.
If so many people were not dreaming of one powerful leader who will solve all their problems....

[Note: I have not yet read the books I link to in this post but I am looking forward to reading all of them. Someday! They all look like important books about recent history. If you read them before I do please leave a comment and tell me about them. If you click on any of these links and then buy these books, or almost anything else at Amazon, Anything Smart will earn a commission. Thanks for your support!]

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If you want to support Anything Smart, please click on the book links in this post and make a purchase. If you buy any of these books through this blog, Anything Smart will earn a commission. Thanks for visiting my blog, and thanks for your support!

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Thursday, September 22, 2022

Trump Takes a Legal Battering

I am not a lawyer but it certainly looks to me like Trump took a legal battering yesterday (Sep. 21, 2022). If Trump was a battleship then what happened yesterday would be like taking two torpedoes below the waterline. He might not sink... but he is taking on water.

Torpedo 1

First, the New York Attorney General presented 220 pages of evidence that Trump has fraudulently misreported the values of his assets at least 200 times over a 10-year period. In one egregious case Trump had professionals appraise one of his buildings. They said it was worth just over $200 million. Trump then reported the building was worth over $500 million and even claimed that this figure was from the appraisers!

The New York Attorney General is planning to bring a lawsuit against Trump for these fraudulent reports. She is asking for various penalties including repayment of $250 million.

We don't know how all this will turn out but it is hard to imagine a jury seeing 200 documented cases of false financial statements intended to get loans, or better terms on loans, that would otherwise not have been available, without saying "Guilty!"

Torpedo 2

Then the second torpedo hit.

This one involves the government documents Trump had at Mar-a-Lago.

In this case it certainly looked like Judge Cannon was trying to cut Trump some slack as a former president. Yesterday, three judges from the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals said, "No slack!"

The Department of Justice is clearly working on the assumption that Trump illegally had government documents at Mar-a-Lago. The only obvious defense is to say that Trump had a right to the documents. The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals yesterday kind of blew that up when they said: “We cannot discern why plaintiff would have an individual interest in or need for any of the one-hundred documents with classification markings.”

Trump has been trying several stories lately to explain why he didn't do anything wrong. One of his stories is that he declassified these documents, possibly only in his mind, but declassified nonetheless.

The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals also blew that up by saying it doesn't matter whether the documents were declassified or not: “The declassification argument is a red herring because declassifying an official document would not change its content or render it personal,” the panel said. “So even if we assumed that plaintiff did declassify some or all of the documents, that would not explain why he has a personal interest in them.”

So, two torpedoes yesterday.
Torpedo 1: the New York Attorney General released 220 pages of evidence that Trump committed fraud at least 200 times.
Torpedo 2: the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals said those government documents at Mar-a-Lago did NOT belong to Trump, which is going to leave him hard-pressed to explain why he had them.

Trump has proven himself very good at damage control over the years.
He might not sink.
But he took two torpedoes yesterday.
Under the waterline....

[Note: I have not yet read the books I link to in this post but I am looking forward to reading all of them. They all look like important books about recent history. If you read them before I do please leave a comment and tell me about them. If you click on any of these links and then buy these books, or almost anything else at Amazon, Anything Smart will earn a commission. Thanks for your support!]

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Thursday, May 12, 2022

The Critical Thinker by Steven Schuster

Chapter 1: What is Critical Thinking?

This is a good beginner level book about critical thinking. It is easy enough for anyone to understand, even without any prior studies of critical thinking or logic. Actually, this book doesn’t cover logic at all, but it does discuss some of the basic principles that can help people think better.

One of the important tips from this chapter is SLOW DOWN! Critical thinking is not hasty.

But why do we have to slow our thinking down? What are we slowing down FOR? The answer is, we have to slow down so we can ask ourselves key questions about our beliefs. Questions like: “WHY do you believe that?” or “HOW do you know that?”

This chapter reminds us that the very heart and soul of good thinking involves taking the time to figure out WHY we believe the things we believe. If we don’t do that, we’re not really thinking at all, are we? When we start doing that, we will be taking the first steps on the path to becoming really good critical thinkers.

Chapter 2: “What are the Main Guidelines of Critical Thinking?”

One of the important tips from this chapter is to avoid OVER-GENERALIZATIONS! The whole point of critical thinking is to distinguish what is true, or likely to be true, from what is false, or likely to be false. The problem with over-generalizations is that they are almost always false, so people who use over-generalizations are extremely unlikely to be good critical thinkers.

If you make claims about EVERY member of huge and varied groups like “all Americans” or “all Russians” or “all Democrats” or “all Republicans” or “all Men” or “all Women” or, worst of all “EVERYONE” then you are almost certainly making a false statement, or, at the very least, an unprovable statement. If you use false statements as premises for logical arguments then your argument is automatically going to fail because a sound argument cannot be based on a false premise. If you use an unprovable statement as a premise for an argument than your argument is not going to be very persuasive.

Suppose someone says “anyone who enters the US illegally should be in jail.” If you ask them why they think that, they might reply with an over-generalization like “EVERYONE who breaks the law should be in jail.”

The problem with this over-generalization is that it is almost certainly not true and the person who makes it almost certainly doesn’t even believe it. If we ask them “In 19th century America a person who broke the law requiring them to return a runaway slave should have gone to jail?” Or “In Nazi Germany a person who refused to turn in a Jew so he or she could be sent to a concentration camp should have been sent to jail?” they will probably say “No. I only mean people who break GOOD laws should be in jail.”

Notice that the over-generalization was a sloppy and careless effort to AVOID critical thinking. Once we get to a statement that only people who break GOOD laws should be in jail then we can start some hard critical thinking about what is the definition of a good law and how can we distinguish good laws from bad laws.

We might further ask “Should people who roll through a stop sign be in jail because they broke the law?” Or “Should a hungry old person with no money who steals a piece of bread go to jail?” Most people would probably say “no” to both of these questions which might lead us to modify their initial over-generalization again to something like “Everyone who breaks a GOOD law that is about a SERIOUS issue should go to jail BUT we can also make exceptions for people who break a relatively minor law because they are in desperate need.”

Now again we can do some real critical thinking about what are the serious issues that we should jail people for and what are minor issues that we should not jail people for and what could count as desperate need that would allow us to show mercy to someone who broke the law.

In this example the initial over-generalization was an attempt to avoid thinking about all these important questions. In fact, over-generalizations are often attempts to avoid thinking at all, and people who try to avoid thinking, are NOT good critical thinkers.

So, if we want to be good critical thinkers, we have to be very specific and avoid the kind of sloppy over-generalizations that are intended to prevent thinking instead of aiding it.

[Note: The Critical Thinker by Steven Schuster. I hope you will buy and enjoy this simple introductory book about critical thinking. If you click on this link and then buy this, or almost anything else at Amazon, Anything Smart will earn a commission. Thanks for your support!]

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Time of the Magicians: Wittgenstein, Benjamin, Cassirer, Heidegger, and the Decade That Reinvented Philosophy

Sunday, November 14, 2021

The Ten Books for General Knowledge Course 2021-2022

With all the projects I am working on, I'm still going to add one more: A survey of all of human knowledge in ten books!

Over the next year I'm going to read 10 books specifically intended to cover as much general knowledge as possible, while still insisting that the books be written in an interesting, enjoyable, and relatively easy-to-understand way.

Most of these books I have read before, but a couple will be new to me.

With thanks, and apologies, to Mr. Dewey Decimal, my own division of all human knowledge goes like this:

Natural Sciences
Social Sciences
Languages
Literatures
Arts
Technologies
Religions
History
Philosophy
General knowledge or mixed works

So, if we read one book in each of these areas then, within a year, we should have vast stores of general knowledge, which is valuable in its own right, and also gives us the critical raw materials for becoming better thinkers.

Let’s go!

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Book #1: Natural Sciences

Coming of Age in the Milky Way
Timothy Ferris

[Note: Coming of Age in the Milky Way by Timothy Ferris. I hope you will buy and enjoy this brilliant popular science book. If you click on this link to buy it, Anything Smart will earn a commission. Thanks for your support.]

I will start with the Natural Sciences. The book "Coming of Age in the Milky Way" was published when I was 25 years old. I have read it at least twice and I believe it is the best popular science book I have ever read. If a person were only going to read one science book in their life, I would recommend this one.

The first sentence of the preface explains the author's purpose: "This book purports to tell the story of how, through the workings of science, our species has arrived at its current estimation of the dimensions of cosmic space and time."

How big is the universe?
How old is the universe?
Scientists have found answers to these questions after thousands of years of study.
This book describes how they did it.

In the early chapters of this book Ferris describes what ancient people thought about the universe so we can see how far we have come. In early cities tall buildings were built for priests to climb and study the heavens, because the builders thought a tall building would get the priests significantly closer to the heavenly bodies. At least two ancient thinkers thought the sun was about the size of a shield, and if it was that small, they could not have thought it was too far away. In Ptolemy’s model, which was accepted for more than a thousand years, the entire universe would have fit inside of the Earth’s orbit around the sun.

A lot of the history of Astronomy is just the record of how scientists gradually learned how gigantic the universe really is.

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Book #2: Social Sciences

The Worldly Philosophers: The Lives, Times, and Ideas of the Great Economic Thinkers Robert L. Heilbroner

[Note: The Worldly Philosophers by Robert L. Heilbroner. I hope you will buy and enjoy this great survey of the classic thinkers in economics. If you click on this link to buy it, Anything Smart will earn a commission. Thanks for your support.]

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Book #3: Languages

The Elements of Style
William Strunk, Jr.; E.B. White

[Note: The Elements of Style by William Strunk. Revised by E.B. White. I hope you will buy and enjoy this classic book on the proper use of English. If you click on this link to buy it, Anything Smart will earn a commission. Thanks for your support.]

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Book #4: Literatures

A Little History of Literature
John Sutherland

[Note: A Little History of Literature by John Sutherland. I hope you will buy and enjoy this fantastic survey of literature. If you click on this link to buy it, Anything Smart will earn a commission. Thanks for your support.]

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Book #5: Arts

Civilization
Kenneth Clark

[Note: Civilization by Kenneth Clark. I hope you will buy and enjoy this dazzling study of civilization through great works of art. If you click on this link to buy it, Anything Smart will earn a commission. Thanks for your support.]

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Book #6: Technologies

The Soul of a New Machine
Tracy Kidder

[Note: The Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder. I hope you will buy and enjoy this masterpiece about the development of a new computer. If you click on this link to buy it, Anything Smart will earn a commission. Thanks for your support.]

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Book #7: Religions

The World’s Religions
Huston Smith

[Note: The World’s Religions by Huston Smith. I hope you will buy and enjoy this masterpiece about the development of a new computer. If you click on this link to buy it, Anything Smart will earn a commission. Thanks for your support.]

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Book #8: History

The Penguin History of the World, 6th ed.
J.M. Roberts; Odd Arne Westad

[Note: The Penguin History of the World by J.M. Roberts. Revised by Odd Arne Westad. I hope you will buy and enjoy this sweeping history of the entire world. If you click on this link to buy it, Anything Smart will earn a commission. Thanks for your support.]

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Book #9: Philosophy

The Story of Philosophy
Will Durant

[Note: The Story of Philosophy by Will Durant. I hope you will buy and enjoy this great introduction to some of the most important philosophers in the history of Western Civilization. If you click on this link to buy it, Anything Smart will earn a commission. Thanks for your support.]

This is the best introductory philosophy book I have ever read. Written by Will Durant, and published in 1926, this book is a classic that everybody should read and anybody can understand.

Durant covers some of the greatest philosophers in the history of Western Civilization including Plato and Aristotle from ancient Greece, Spinoza and Immanuel Kant from early modern Europe, Bertrand Russell and John Dewey from the 20th Century, and several more.

For each philosopher Durant tells us about their lives and the culture they lived in, and then he gives us quick and easy-to-understand introductions to some of their greatest ideas.

Some of these ideas might seem strange to us, but many of them will seem familiar, because these are the thinkers who have created and maintained the foundations of the world we still live in today. The more we know about these philosophers, the better we will understand our own civilization.

This book begins with the three giants of ancient Greek philosophy: Socrates, who believed that if people KNOW what is really good then they will do it, so all we really have to do is teach them; Plato who wrote a whole book, The Republic, about how to create a good society by ensuring that the best people will be its rulers; and Aristotle, who studied everything, and started most of the branches of knowledge that college students still major in today, including, perhaps most importantly, the study of logic itself, so we can have confidence that our thinking is leading us to the truth and not just into a morass of confusion.

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Book #10: General Knowledge

A History of Knowledge: Past, Present, and Future
Charles Van Doren

[Note: A History of Knowledge by Charles Van Doren. I hope you will buy and enjoy this amazing review of how the human race has come to know the things we do know. If you click on this link to buy it, Anything Smart will earn a commission. Thanks for your support.]

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If you want to support Anything Smart, please click on the book links in this post and make a purchase. This set of ten books will give anyone a huge amount of general knowledge. A good supplement to any education. If you buy any of these books through this blog, Anything Smart will earn a commission. Thanks for visiting my blog, and thanks for your support!

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Monday, October 18, 2021

Do Higher Taxes Slow Economic Growth?

Recently I heard someone say that raising taxes will cause the economy to grow more slowly and reducing taxes will cause the economy to grow more quickly.

We can compare tax rates and economic growth for ourselves to see if this is true. This link goes to historical GDP data: https://apps.bea.gov/iTable/iTable.cfm?reqid=19&step=2#reqid=19&step=2&isuri=1&1921=survey. (On the BEA link above, when you get to the web page click on "Section 1," then "Table 1.1.1," then "Modify" to choose the years you want to look at.)

This link goes to historical data on top marginal tax rates: https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/statistics/historical-highest-marginal-income-tax-rates.

Using the data from these two web sites let's see what happens to GDP growth as tax rates change.

[Note: The Big Con by Jonathan Chait is an excellent book about supply side economics. If you click on this link to buy it Anything Smart will earn a commission. Thanks for your support.]

In 1982 Reagan cut the top tax rate from over 69% to 50%.
In 1987 he cut it to 38.5%.
In 1988 it was down to 28%.
Then, in 1991 tax rates started going up again.
So, the Reagan era of low taxes was from 1982-1990.

Looking at the GDP table we can see the GDP grew at an average rate of 3.44% during this period.

If we look at the decade before the Reagan tax cuts it looks like the supply siders might be on to something. From 1972 to 1981 the GDP grew at 3.11% per year. That is good growth, but slower than Reagan's. Does that mean the Reagan tax cuts spurred economic growth?

Let's go back another 10 years.
From 1962 to 1971 the GDP increased at an average of 4.36% per year.
This is much faster than Reagan's growth, and this was long before the Reagan tax cuts.
If the fast economic growth of the 1980s was caused by the Reagan tax cuts, what caused the even faster economic growth of the 1960s when tax rates were much higher?

So, do higher taxes cause slower economic growth or not?
Let's take an extreme case.
From 1951 to 1963 the top marginal tax rate was always over 90%.
If high taxes slow the economy down we should see slow economic growth during this period.
But from 1951 to 1963 the GDP grew at 3.8% per year!
So, we ask again, if the Reagan tax cuts gave us growth of 3.44% why did we have faster growth in this earlier period when the tax rate was much higher?

[Note: The Big Con by Jonathan Chait is an excellent book about supply side economics. If you click on this link to buy it Anything Smart will earn a commission. Thanks for your support.]

What happened after Reagan?
In 1991 the top tax rate went up from 28% to 31% and in 1993 it went up again to 39.6%.
If higher taxes slow the economy down, we should see that happening in the 1990s as taxes go up.
But from 1991 to 2000 we see that GDP growth was averaging 3.45%.
That is almost exactly the same as what we had under Reagan.

The truth is we had good economic growth under Reagan. But we can find earlier periods when we had even faster growth with higher taxes. And in the period after Reagan, we had equally good growth with higher taxes.

This is just a quick look at changing taxes and changing rates of economic growth.
W could do a more thorough study by looking at other factors such as total taxes rather than top marginal rate.
We could look at a different period of history or a different country than the United States.
We could look at data from individual states or cities....

But what we know for now is, that with the data we looked at here, there does not seem to be any evidence that lower taxes cause the economy to grow faster.

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If you want to support Anything Smart, please click on the book links in this post and make a purchase. The Big Con is an excellent book on supply side economics. If you buy it through this blog, Anything Smart will earn a commission. Thanks for visiting my blog, and thanks for your support!

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