Peter L. Berger's Blog, page 549
November 15, 2015
ACA Coverage, with a Side of Sky High Deductibles
The NYT has slowly begun to figure out that ACA doesn’t make health care affordable. A new piece in Grey Lady on Obamacare notes that sky high deductibles are making insurance unusable for exactly the people who need help the most. A taste:
“The deductible, $3,000 a year, makes it impossible to actually go to the doctor,” said David R. Reines, 60, of Jefferson Township, N.J., a former hardware salesman with chronic knee pain. “We have insurance, but can’t afford to use it.
In many states, more than half the plans offered for sale through HealthCare.gov, the federal online marketplace, have a deductible of $3,000 or more, a New York Times review has found. Those deductibles are causing concern among Democrats — and some Republican detractors of the health law, who once pushed high-deductible health plans in the belief that consumers would be more cost-conscious if they had more of a financial stake or skin in the game.
“We could not afford the deductible,” said Kevin Fanning, 59, who lives in North Texas, near Wichita Falls. “Basically I was paying for insurance I could not afford to use.”
We’ve long noted that the health of the U.S. medical system in the age of the ACA cannot be evaluated by top-line numbers—like how many Americans are insured—alone. Rather, we must look at how well insurance is actually serving Americans in their day-to-day interaction with the health care system.
Every indication so far is that, for far too many Americans, health care is unaffordable, ACA subsidies or not.Dark Times for Doctorates
Aspiring scholars who are able to surrender the money, years, blood, and tears it takes to earn a Ph.D., and who make it through a grinding postdoc as well, may be greeted at the end of the whole process with a job that’s not as glamorous as what they had in mind. The current Weekly Standard cover story delves into the grim career outlook for newly minted Ph.D.’s, a growing number of whom are forced to take temporary teaching jobs as disposable adjuncts. One passage:
As human just-in-time inventory, most adjuncts are hired (or fired) on an as-needed (or as-not-needed) basis, and they usually don’t even require office space, because a typical adjunct’s job doesn’t come with an office. Cooley, with his shared office, is one of the lucky few. Many adjuncts are obliged to use their cars as their campus home base, with the trunk serving as filing cabinet. And they need those cars. Most colleges refuse to let their adjunct faculty shoulder more than two courses per semester so as not to trigger the Obamacare “employer mandate” that they be provided with health insurance. So most adjuncts who wish to earn even a barista-level income of, say, $25,000 a year from teaching have to shuttle among multiple campuses, enduring, thanks to the commuting, workdays that can stretch to 13 hours or more. Compare that with the $69,000 on average that brand-new assistant professors at the very bottom of the tenure ladder earn.
As the article notes, commentators on the left and the right have offered different explanations for why the landscape for Ph.D.’s is so brutal. Left-leaning observers tend to blame “corporatization“—the way modern universities increasingly function (in some ways, at least) like traditional businesses, eager to squeeze more labor out of their employees for less cost. Right-leaning observers tend to highlight the costly burdens imposed by federal regulations, as well as the American Association of University Professors’ stubborn resistance to any alterations to the tenure-for-life system that relegates many academics to second-class adjunct status.
Regardless of the cause, however, it’s clear that these are dark times for prospective Ph.D.’s. To paraphrase Dan Drezner, there are two reasons to to take the dive: Either you’re crazy or you’re crazy about your area of study. The Weekly Standard piece should be required reading for any student who is undecided.What Myanmar Means
It’s official: on Friday, Myanmar’s electoral commission confirmed that Aung San Suu Kyi’s NLD party has won a majority of the seats in Myanmar’s Parliament, in a victory that some are hailing as a defeat for the country’s military and a step forward for democracy and human rights.
In fact, however, things are not that simple: Even after Suu Kyi’s victory, the constitution reserves 25 percent of the parliament for the military. The military also performs critical bureaucratic functions and is the only institution with any experience actually running the country. As U.S. News and World Report put it:Under the constitution, the Myanmar military is a fourth branch of government; it sets its own budget independent of the president and parliament; it appoints the defense, home and border affairs ministers; and it has the right to veto decisions of the executive, legislative and judicial branches of the government. In fact, the civilian government has no oversight over the military, which “has the right to independently administer and adjudicate all affairs of the armed forces.”
Nobody really knows exactly what this election will mean for the future of Myanmar, or for its democratic movement, though there are some hopeful signs that it won’t play out just like it did in 1990. Back then, the NLD won by similar margins and was rewarded for its success with the military jailing and prosecuting of many of its leaders, including Suu Kyi, who spent the next 20 years under house arrest. Today, the head of the military announced that he accepted the results of the election, and that he would meet with Suu Kyi soon to discuss “national reconciliation.”
The temptation for Western policymakers will now be to do everything they can to sideline or push out the military even further. That moralistic approach, however, misses several realities.For one, it’s not actually clear if a democratic government can effectively rule Myanmar, a country in which at least a third of the population are minorities and ethnic tensions are running high. There’s a strong suspicion among the Buddhist plurality that Muslim and Christian minorities may harbor separatist sentiments. In fact, the NLD didn’t run Muslim candidates because of Buddhist nationalist pressure. Rohingya Muslims will need some kind of representation to feel included in the new order, and even so, they might still prefer national autonomy and attempt secession. It’s naive to assume that a fledgling democratic government can automatically hold together such a multi-confessional and multi-ethnic political entity. Just look at what happened in Yugoslavia.And getting Myanmar right is critical, as it could shift the geopolitical calculus for the entire region. The North Koreans, for one, are surely watching. Myanmar has historically had very close economic and political ties with China, but in time its military leaders made a decision to diversify their foreign policy portfolio and improve relations with the United States and its allies. North Korea’s rulers must at least be thinking whether it might be better to join an American-led world order rather than relying only on Beijing for protection and economic assistance. It would not be the worst thing in the world if success in Myanmar made North Korea think it had more geopolitical options.In Myanmar, then, the U.S. needs not to make the mistakes it did in Thailand after that country’s recent coup. Not only did a ham-fisted human rights-first attitude send Thailand into China’s arms; it has led the Thai government to abuse human rights even more. As important as human rights are, smart, strategic thinking—not mere idealism—needs to dictate our efforts in the world.November 14, 2015
Photos From Around the World

Berlin. © Getty Images

Sydney. © Getty Images

Shanghai. © Getty Images

New York City. © Getty Images
Friday, November 13
Allons enfants de la Patrie,
Le jour de gloire est arrivé!
Contre nous de la tyrannie,
L’étendard sanglant est levé, (bis)
Entendez-vous dans les campagnes
Mugir ces féroces soldats?
Ils viennent jusque dans nos bras
Égorger nos fils, nos compagnes!
Formez vos bataillons,
Marchons, marchons!
Qu’un sang impur
Abreuve nos sillons! (bis)Que veut cette horde d’esclaves,
De traîtres, de rois conjurés?
Pour qui ces ignobles entraves,
Ces fers dès longtemps préparés? (bis)
Français, pour nous, ah! quel outrage
Quels transports il doit exciter!
C’est nous qu’on ose méditer
De rendre à l’antique esclavage !Aux armes, citoyens…Quoi ! des cohortes étrangères
Feraient la loi dans nos foyers!
Quoi ! Ces phalanges mercenaires
Terrasseraient nos fiers guerriers! (bis)
Grand Dieu! Par des mains enchaînées
Nos fronts sous le joug se ploieraient
De vils despotes deviendraient
Les maîtres de nos destinées!Aux armes, citoyens…Tremblez, tyrans et vous perfides
L’opprobre de tous les partis,
Tremblez ! vos projets parricides
Vont enfin recevoir leurs prix! (bis)
Tout est soldat pour vous combattre,
S’ils tombent, nos jeunes héros,
La terre en produit de nouveaux,
Contre vous tout prêts à se battre!Aux armes, citoyens…Français, en guerriers magnanimes,
Portez ou retenez vos coups!
Épargnez ces tristes victimes,
À regret s’armant contre nous. (bis)
Mais ces despotes sanguinaires,
Mais ces complices de Bouillé,
Tous ces tigres qui, sans pitié,
Déchirent le sein de leur mère!Aux armes, citoyens…Amour sacré de la Patrie,
Conduis, soutiens nos bras vengeurs
Liberté, Liberté chérie,
Combats avec tes défenseurs! (bis)
Sous nos drapeaux que la victoire
Accoure à tes mâles accents,
Que tes ennemis expirants
Voient ton triomphe et notre gloire!Aux armes, citoyens…
Arise, children of the Fatherland,
The day of glory has arrived!
Against us tyranny’s
Bloody banner is raised,(repeat)
Do you hear, in the countryside,
The roar of those ferocious soldiers?
They’re coming right into our arms
To cut the throats of our sons, our women!
Form your battalions,
Let’s march, let’s march!
Let an impure blood
Water our furrows! (Repeat)What does this horde of slaves,
Of traitors and conspiratorial kings want?
For whom are these vile chains,
These long-prepared irons? (repeat)
Frenchmen, for us, ah! What outrage
What fury it must arouse!
It is us they dare plan
To return to the old slavery!To arms, citizens…What! Foreign cohorts
Would make the law in our homes!
What! These mercenary phalanxes
Would strike down our proud warriors! (repeat)
Great God! By chained hands
Our brows would yield under the yoke
Vile despots would have themselves
The masters of our destinies!To arms, citizens…Tremble, tyrants and you traitors
The shame of all parties,
Tremble! Your parricidal schemes
Will finally receive their reward! (repeat)
Everyone is a soldier to combat you
If they fall, our young heroes,
The earth will produce new ones,
Ready to fight against you!To arms, citizens…Frenchmen, as magnanimous warriors,
Bear or hold back your blows!
Spare those sorry victims,
Who arm against us with regret. (repeat)
But not these bloodthirsty despots,
These accomplices of Bouillé,
All these tigers who, mercilessly,
Rip their mother’s breast!To arms, citizens…Sacred love of the Fatherland,
Lead, support our avenging arms
Liberty, cherished Liberty,
Fight with thy defenders! (repeat)
Under our flags, may victory
Hurry to thy manly accents,
May thy expiring enemies,
See thy triumph and our glory!‘To arms, citizens…
November 13, 2015
Terrorist Attack Underway in Paris
French media and the BBC are reporting a string of rifle attacks at restaurants and a bombing near the stadium in Paris. Several fatalities have already been reported. For updates, follow TAI contributor Benjamin Haddad on Twitter.
"At least 18 deaths" according to Paris police authority.
— Benjamin Haddad (@benjaminhaddad) November 13, 2015
"We heard at least 4 bursts of hundreds of bullets" according to a witness. https://t.co/SenIvrFfDO
— Benjamin Haddad (@benjaminhaddad) November 13, 2015
Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims of the tragedy. If you speak French, you can also follow Le Monde’s liveblog here.ALERTE Attaques multiples à #Paris au moins 18 morts (préfecture de police) pic.twitter.com/e6dZCFGtWm
— confidentiels (@confidentiels) November 13, 2015
Campus Activists Are Playing with Fire
The campus protest movement is spreading beyond Yale and the University of Missouri to other campuses like Amherst. While activists seem to have a variety of goals, some of them laudable, a repeal of traditional free speech norms in the name of creating “safe spaces” seems to be one of movement’s unifying objectives. Here is one item in a long list of demands released by a coalition of students at Amherst College:
President Martin must issue a statement to the Amherst College community at large that states we do not tolerate the actions of student(s) who posted the “All Lives Matter” posters, and the “Free Speech” posters that stated that “in memoriam of the true victim of the Missouri Protests: Free Speech.” Also let the student body know that it was racially insensitive to the students of color on our college campus and beyond who are victim to racial harassment and death threats; alert them that Student Affairs may require them to go through the Disciplinary Process if a formal complaint is filed, and that they will be required to attend extensive training for racial and cultural competency.
In other words, students are quite literally demanding that the college condemn and threaten disciplinary action against students who dared to take the position that freedom of expression is important. And anyone who still thinks that the anti-speech movement is confined to the more radical corners of campus should look at the list of student organizations that signed on to that statement. They include such groups as the Equestrian Club Team, the Choral Society, the Amherst Christian Fellowship, and Club Soccer, not organizations created to organize around this kind of advocacy.
If the unrest continues, and if activists continue to make crushing dissent a core part of their agenda, the entire campus left is in trouble—more trouble than it knows. As Fredrik DeBoer notes, it is only a matter of time before campus politics wind up in statehouses, where Republicans are in a position of almost unprecedented strength.It might not be clear to protesters in insulated campus hothouses, but the majority of the American people do not accept the notion that political pluralism is an inconvenience that can be tossed aside cavalierly. The next time state legislatures debate funding, tenure, and higher education policy, it seems highly likely that campus political culture will come up. If it does, left-wing campus interests are in trouble. Activists might be able to roll over timid university administrators with fanatical demands and sit-ins, but state politicians will not respond in the same way. Take, for example, Scott Walker’s successful scorched earth campaign against the University of Wisconsin, which was undertaken before the latest bout of campus illiberalism that is sure to confirm many voters’ perceptions that something is very wrong in the American higher education system.And it’s not only public universities that should be concerned. State governments have some control over the purse strings of private universities as well (both directly, through scholarships and grants, and indirectly, through tax write-offs on donations), and they have the power to make that funding contingent on certain political requirements. In the 1990s, after Stanford tried to appease protesters by passing a speech code, California’s (overwhelmingly Democratic) state legislature promptly passed a nearly unanimous resolution making such codes unlawful at all universities, public and private.The American people as a whole stand behind the Bill of Rights, even if college students don’t. Any mass movement blithely tossing the First Amendment aside is playing with fire.U.S. Challenging China by Air and by Sea
Earlier this week, a few days ahead of President Obama’s trip to Asia, a pair of American B-52 bombers flew through the Spratly archipelago. The Wall Street Journal has the story:
Two U.S. B-52 bombers flew near a cluster of Chinese-built artificial islands in the disputed South China Sea this week, U.S. officials said, the latest in a series of American challenges to Beijing’s maritime claims.
The aircraft took off from Andersen Air Force Base on the Pacific island of Guam and flew around the Spratly Islands on the afternoon of Sunday, Nov. 8, said U.S. Army Maj. Dave Eastburn, a spokesman for the U.S. Pacific Command.
Chinese air traffic control contacted one of the bombers while it was in international airspace, outside of the 12-mile exclusion zone claimed by China around its manmade outposts, warning it that it had “violated the security of my reef.” The U.S. did not confirm whether the planes had subsequently entered the claimed 12-mile exclusion zone. In 2013, the United States also flew B-52s through China’s claimed Air Defense Identification Zone over disputed islands in the East China Sea.
Amid continuing confusion about whether Washington is committed to confronting Beijing in the South China Sea, count this story for those who say the United States is plenty serious.Microaggression, Meet Ralph Waldo Emerson
The recent spectacle of foul-mouthed students mobbing startled faculty members at Yale and contrite administrators apologizing for causing undergraduates actual or imagined emotional discomfort reminded me of my first real job. Thirty-three years ago I was appointed an assistant professor of government at Harvard, and, simultaneously, an Allston Burr Senior Tutor. This latter position entailed being the residential dean of a Harvard house, as well as part of the university’s Administrative Board. The ungainly title of Senior Tutor—since abolished by Harvard administrators—reflected the institution’s belief that deans had an educational function and should, in fact, be academics. Real academics, the kind that aspire to a lifetime of teaching and research, with administration as an occasional, if vital, duty.
From that experience I learned some things applicable to the age of microaggressions, safe spaces, and trigger warnings. One was that there is a certain kind of immature young person who, having discovered that he or she can upset the adults with outlandish statements or behavior and get away with it, will become increasingly absurd or demanding. Another was that although some professors will leap bravely into the waters off Australia to study the mating habits of sharks, or endure the perils of the fever swamps to understand the propagation of tropical disease, a great many are cowards when it comes to confronting received opinion, including that of undergraduates.The problem has gotten worse since 1982, as American universities, with honorable exceptions (my current university among them) have become mono-cultural colonies of political and social belief. It is exacerbated by the proliferation of assistant deans, a category of administrator famously characterized as “mice studying to become rats,” whose portfolio is tending to the fragile egos of the students who, supposedly, will one day captain industry, media, and government. The administrators’ more insidious job is monitoring faculty behavior—which at Harvard in 2013 disgracefully included surreptitiously sniffing through Senior Tutors’ emails.Harvard and Yale are the products of Old New England, which has something to teach in this regard. In 1692 a witch craze swept Salem, Massachusetts, triggered in part by hysterical children, fed by stern divines who sincerely believed in witchcraft, and permitted by a community too terrorized to stand up for due process, let alone prevent hangings and, in one case, the crushing of an innocent man to death by heavy stones because he refused to confess to an absurd, imaginary crime. There is something not entirely different going on today. Appoint assistant deans to take charge of witch hunting, and they will uncover horrifying stories of naked women flying on brooms at midnight and performing obscene acts with the goat devil Baphomet. Thought police will always find thoughts that require policing, and report dolefully that the problem of malign cogitation is even more pervasive than they had suspected. When one rewards, or merely fails to oppose, a culture of reckless incrimination and denunciation, the craze, and the persecution, will persist. At least Judge Samuel Sewall had the decency in 1697 to apologize for presiding over some of the Salem witch trials, an event commemorated by a painting in the Massachusetts State House. One doubts some apologetic university president (or, if he has already been fired as part of the craze, Board of Trustees) will issue similar regrets, or be represented in a mural in the main administration building as so doing.It is not enough, however, to denounce the pathologies of the witch hunters, the childish cruelty of the denouncers, or the timorousness of the population from whom the witches are plucked. What is needed is an argument, and with it a set of values, that can explain to young people what it means to be an intellectually mature—that is to say, an independent and resilient—adult who will reject such behavior as unworthy of an educated person and incompatible with a free society.To that end one might summon a different representative of Old New England, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and in particular his essay “Self Reliance,” published in 1841. No one can ignore his liberal pedigree: a free thinker, an abolitionist, a feminist, and multicultural before his time (he read widely in and quoted from the Hindu sacred texts, for example). There is much in it, but perhaps nothing so precious as this paragraph:What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder, because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.
To live this way can be hard, Emerson knew: “For nonconformity the world whips you with its displeasure.” But surely one purpose of an education is to know how to form one’s own conclusions, and stand for them even if the crowd bays against you.
That insolent teenagers behave the way they do is unfortunate. What is menacing is when they become a mob. If their teachers can get them to understand that they are in fact acting as a mob; that by calling for the persecution of those who do not conform they are the heirs not of Martin Luther King, Jr. but of Joe McCarthy, it may be the start of their awakening. The students might even, with assistance, discover the respect that liberal thought once accorded to the lonely individual who stands up for what he or she knows is right—someone like the principled doctor in Ibsen’s Enemy of the People or the retiring sheriff in High Noon.The pervasiveness of social media makes the act of standing alone, of being one’s own man or woman, much harder than before. We all wish to be “liked” and we know that the best way to be “followed” is to “follow” others. Retweet and you shall be retweeted. But perhaps there is a core in some of these protestors that a liberal case for standing apart from the crowd could touch. Emerson’s creed, like that of Thoreau after him, should appeal to the anxious young because it is a creed of strength. The shrill petulance of today’s college protestors depresses observers because these talented young people see themselves as weak, vulnerable, psychologically frail, desperately in need of coddling. In another age these students’ demands to be cushioned against every one of life’s psychic blows would, properly, be seen as contemptible, and their willingness to bully anyone who gets in their way as a threat.In my time as an assistant dean I saw some serious hardship cases: students who were the only effective individuals in dysfunctional families, desperately ill themselves, or facing the trauma of real tragedy among friends and relatives, including death. I do not remember one of them insisting that they be shielded from unkind words or ambiguous gestures, let alone potentially distressing Halloween costumes, as was the case at Yale. They had much to teach their fellows about the courage to bear life’s numerous injustices with fortitude. The adults nominally in charge of universities should take the example of today’s young people who have shown such courage—wounded veterans, for example—to heart, and use them to teach those who have suffered little yet feel deeply aggrieved the value of imperturbability in the face of adversity and the virtues of Emersonian self-reliance. Who knows? In such an exercise the faculty just might awaken a little courage in themselves as well.Oil Supply Reaches High Water Mark
“Peak oil” concerns seem like something out of the distant past at this point, as today’s discussion of the global oil market centers on the seemingly ever-growing supply of crude. As the FT reports, global oil inventories have just hit record levels:
The [IEA] said inventories in industrial nations increased by 13.8m barrels to 2.98bn, according to the latest data for September. They surpassed seasonal trends, more than 257m barrels above average levels.
The overhang in oil production that developed in the US as shale output surged has spread across Europe and Asia and is not just restricted to crude but also includes refined fuels. Aside from the build-up across the world’s onshore storage tanks, 100m extra barrels are at sea.
In fact, the world has so much oil that abundance is actually becoming a logistical problem: We’re not sure where to stash all the crude sloshing around the global market. Most onshore storage sites are full-up at this point, so producers have taken to offloading their cargo onto tankers and anchoring the ships off the coasts of major oil ports. Houston, for example, had some 41 tankers idling outside its port last week. As Reuters reports, these bottlenecks are proving very costly for producers:
The lack of space to unload oil is tying up the tankers needed to keep oil moving, and wells running. The bottlenecks could force oil suppliers into quick, cut-priced sales just to free space, adding more pressure to oil prices already close to six-year lows. […]
“We’re alarmed,” said Eugene Lindell, senior crude market analyst with JBC Energy. “There are growing indicators that it’s getting harder to digest this crude.”
Brent crude is currently trading below $44 per barrel, and America’s West Texas Intermediate benchmark is barely above $40. When we look at the supply side of the market, it’s not hard to see why prices have fallen so dramatically, and, with demand unlikely to rise enough to offset this glut, prices seem set to stay a bargain for the foreseeable future. Producers like U.S. shale firms and OPEC’s petrostates will be discouraged by this news, but consumers, at least, ought to be delighted.
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