Jimmy Carter: A Post-Presidential Leader

The association of leadership with an office, whether atop a government or a corporation, is so tight that it is easy to overlook U.S. President Carter as a leader rather than as a micromanager. Carter’s leadership by example, and thus by symbol, came after he lost re-election. Nelson Mandela of South Africa had led as a symbol in civil rights before he was elected president, and Gandhi effectively exercised ethical political, moral and religious leadership without holding any office. The reductionism or, at the very least, the mere association of leadership with holding an office biases how we evaluate leaders, as distinct from governors.  

The full essay is at "Jimmy Carter."

Salary Averages in the E.U. and U.S.

It can be misleading, even illusory, to cite an average statistic on the entire E.U. and U.S. when their respective member-states differ significantly in their own averages. To be sure, overall averages, such as pertain to an empire-scale union of states covering many subunits are useful in comparison with the overall average of another comparable union. Additionally, in cases in which the state averages do not differ much, the overall average for all of the states aggregated is not misleading. Abstractly, an average of numbers that ranges from 50 to 50,000 is less reflective of the facts on the ground than is an average of numbers that ranges from 50 to 60 because neither of these outliers is much different than, say, an average of 55. In contrast, especially if most of the data from 50 to 50,000 clusters around these poles, then to say that an average of 23,000 represents something actual is dubious and even misleading. It is also misleading to compare the average pertaining to one empire-scale union of states with the average of a state in another such union. Such a category mistake regarding scale and polity-types and levels is commonly made in comparing and contrasting the E.U. and U.S. In an effort to rectify the recurrent cognitive-ideological lapses bearing on trans-Atlantic comparisons and contrasts, a proper comparison of salary averages can serve as an illustration of how to compare “apples with apples, and oranges with oranges” in institutional political analysis that is comparative in application.

As for the E.U., Eurostat reported that in 2023, “the average annual full-time adjusted salary per employee ranged from €13,503 [$14,853] in Bulgaria to €81,064 [$89,170] in Luxembourg, with the EU average standing at €37,863 [$41,649].”[1] I submit that the difference of the state averages from high to low justifies using the state averages rather than citing the E.U. average except for comparing the E.U. to other empire-scale polities, such as the U.S., India, and China. As for the U.S., the average annual salary per employee ranged from $45,180 (€41,073) in Mississippi to $76,600 (€69,636) in Massachusetts, with the US average standing at was $59,384 (€53,986). Again, the difference of the state averages from high to low justifies using the state averages, except in comparing the U.S. as a whole to the E.U. as a whole. The U.S.’s $59,384 (€53,986) average is higher than the E.U.’s €37,863 ($41,649). To be sure, comparing union-to-union has its drawbacks, for the overall conclusion that salaries were on average higher in the U.S. than in the E.U. in 2023 masks the fact that Luxembourg’s average of €81,064 [$89,170] is higher than the average of $76,600 (€69,636) in Massachusetts.

I submit that the intellectual beauty in this sterling symmetry is essentially that of logic absent any distortive ideology that would push someone into comparing the average of a state in one union with another union overall. As an example of an illogical category mistake, making a list of averages on salaries per worker by listing Luxembourg as number 1 and the U.S. as #6 after Austria would omit the averages of U.S. states such as New York, California, and New Jersey whose 2023 averages are higher than those of Denmark, Ireland, Belgium, and Austria. If member-states are to be included, the states from both the E.U. and U.S. must be included to avoid a misleading and distortive category mistake. Similarly, if the U.S. average is included, so too must be that of the E.U., whether or not the state averages are included.

Having demonstrated how the common category mistakes regarding trans-Atlantic political and economic comparisons can be rectified logically, I am under no illusion that such pristine logic will gain any traction, given the sheer intractability of the Euroskeptic, or state’s rights, ideology in Europe even into the 2020s in spite of state-nationalism having spawned two long wars that went global in the preceding century. In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn masterfully explains why scientific revolutions as paradigm changes are typically resisted so much by scientists who are entrenched in the paradigm enjoying the inertia of the status quo. Both personal interests and emotional as well as intellectual investment in an existing paradigm play a role in elongating the existing paradigm’s life-span artificially. So too, clutching onto political and economic comparisons between a state in one empire-scale union of states and another such union had become more ideological than based in fact by 2024, with denial of logic being just one of the implicit casualties. Old Kant must be rolling in his grave.

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1. Servet Yanatma, “Average Salary Rankings in Europe: Which Countries Pay the Highest,” Euronews.com, December 24, 2024. I added the dollar equivalents using the December 30, 2023 euro/dollar exchange rate of 1.1. The highest rate in 2023 was 1.12 and the lowest was 1.05.

The German No-Confidence Vote: Don’t Forget the E.U.

Two months after the collapse of Germany’s ruling coalition in the Bundestag, which problematically left a minority government in place, Chancellor Olaf Scholtz lost a vote of confidence on December 16, 2024 394 to 207, with 116 state representatives in the Bundestag abstaining. The result triggered an early election for February 23, 2024. I contend that two months is reasonable for a campaign season and that the claim of catastrophe since the coalition fell apart is overblown due to the continuing functioning of the E.U. even as one of its states would have a minority government until the triggered election.

With just over two months being deemed sufficient time in which to campaign, the hyperextended U.S. federal election season of more than a year and the specific claim that Kamala Harris didn’t have enough time to run for U.S. president from the third week of July to the end of October in 2024. To be sure, it takes longer to fit enough campaign rallies in during about three-and-a-half months in a union of states that in a state of a union, though the political need to campaign only in several “battleground” states mitigates the difference. Even so, that Germany is a large state in the E.U. and has territory equivalent to Montana and population equivalent to the 15 Midwestern states in the U.S. may mean that something like six months, well short of a year, is enough of a campaign season for U.S. presidential candidates.

Another way in which Germany being a state in the E.U. impacts the significance of the fall of the SDP-led coalition government is that the E.U. federal level was still functioning; all was not lost in terms of functioning government even on the state’s territory, for in a federal system, two governments have authority to govern in a given territory. Roughly a month before the vote, Axel Klausmeier, director of the Berlin Wall Foundation, had spoken at Harvard. He said that the collapse of the coalition in Germany had come at a particularly bad time, as Russia’s President Putin was pushing his military to make further inroads in the invasion of Ukraine. To have a paralyzed Bundestag with an invasion occurring nearby was something that Klausmeier believed Germany could not afford. However, he completely ignored the fact that the E.U. was supplying the Ukrainian government with more military aid, including equipment, than the U.S. was doing at the time. Therefore, the collapse of the government of the E.U. state of Germany did not evince a catastrophe concerning pushing Putin back militarily; the E.U. was still fully functional and Van der Leyen’s administration was lazar-set on pushing Putin’s army off Ukrainian territory. The “two systems of government” feature of federalism means that citizens are not completely dependent on either of those two systems—state or federal—so the E.U. could pick up the slack should the conservative party refuse to join with the SPD to pass legislation during the period before the state election in February, 2025.

Therefore, we can contest as exaggerated the following claim by the BBC: “Given Germany’s stalled economy and the global crises facing the West, staggering on until the [originally] scheduled election date of September 2025 [instead of the two-month trigger due to the no-confidence vote in December of 2024] risked being seen as irresponsible by the [state’s] electorate.”[1] I submit that the downside of both the coalition’s collapse and the two-month campaign season following the no-confidence vote is mitigated by the fact that the E.U. was still functioning unimpaired. For even with the two official direct-access institutions for state governments at the federal level—in the European Council and the Council of the E.U.—that the vast majority of state governments were fully functional means that even those two federal institutions could continue to function.

Indeed, recognition that Germany was at the time a semi-sovereign state in a semi-sovereign union would have the virtue of calming nervous Germans who thought catastrophe was just around the corner, as if the E.U. would allow Putin to invade Germany during its two months between majority governments and that the E.U. without a strong German state government would be paralyzed or even fall apart.

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1. Damien McGuinness, “German Chancellor Olaf Scholz Loses Confidence Vote,” BBC.com, December 16, 2024.

Democracy Breached: Georgia Unfit for E.U. Statehood

On December 14, 2024, Mikheil Kavelashvili became the president of Georgia, further cementing the Georgian Dream Party’s grip on power at the expense of the sovereign state’s accession as a semi-sovereign E.U. state. From the standpoint of representative democracy, what a contrast with the U.S. state of Georgia. The Georgian Dream Party implicitly conflated the qualitative difference between the U.S. and state-scale polities by misappropriating the term, Electoral College, which elects the U.S. President. There is a reason why that College does not apply at the state level, yet in its haste to consolidate power in 2017, the Georgian Dream Party replaced direct presidential elections with an Electoral College, which the party could control. Sure enough, Kavelashvili was the only candidate in 2024, and he got the votes of 224 of the 225 electors who were present for the vote.

Of “the 300-seat electoral college that replaced direct presidential elections in 2017,” the electors were “made up of MPs [i.e., members of the parliament] and representatives of local government.”[1] In contrast, the Electoral College of the U.S. consists not of the existing governments, but, rather, of people appointed by political parties, which in turn are given slots based on the popular votes for U.S. president in the member states. The drafters of the U.S. Constitution believed that the electors should not represent the legislatures, but should be selected only for the task of electing the federal president. That the inordinate dominance of political parties in filling the elector-slots has eliminated the electors’ independence doomed the efficacy of the U.S.’s Electoral College, which was supposed to be a check not only on the government officials, but also the people. The reason for the latter check is that the U.S., as an empire-scale union of states, is too big for much of the American people to know the candidates—the territories are too large and the population too large as contrasted with the territories and populations of states.

The Electoral College of the sovereign state of Georgia in Eurasia was created without any link to popular sovereignty (i.e., an election by the people), and without being independent of the existing government. Rather, the Electoral College is the government, just for a special purpose. Nor was the population or territory of Georgia large enough that electors would be necessary because so few of the electorate had the proximity to know of the candidates enough to be able to cast votes using good, informed judgment. In short, the federal justifications for the U.S.’s Electoral College were missing.

Therefore, in its haste to gain control over the presidency, the Georgian Dream Party misappropriated an element of American political theory, ignoring both the link to popular election and the qualitative rather than just quantitative difference between a state and a union of states. Of course, with raw power in politics/government, might can be declared to be right, but with a knowledge of comparative politics, the sheer might of the Georgian Dream Party can be castrated ideationally. With the democratic legitimacy of Georgia’s government in tatters, the E.U. would act wisely in saying no on Georgia’s accession unless or until drastic changes are made to Georgia’s basic law. In the U.S., it is a requirement that every state be a republic, which means that representative democracy is the basis of a given polity. In the E.U., the case is likewise. Accordingly, rather than protesting at the time to get their government to continue with accession talks with the E.U., the Georgian people should have been oriented to undoing the damage done to the Georgian political system by walking the Georgian Dream Party to the exits.  

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1. Orestes G. Daniel, “Ex-Football Player Kavelashvili Becomes Georgia’s President as Ruling Party Consolidates Power,” Euronews.com, December 14, 2024.

On the Hidden Police Power of Corporate America

After the UnitedHealthcare chief executive “was gunned down by a masked man outside a Manhattan hotel” in New York City, “a days-long manhunt” occurred that “spanned several states.”[1] The fact that only a few days were needed to find the suspect, Luigi Mangione, indicates just how massive and public the manhunt was. For it was not just any murder, as if the murder of a person who is the chief executive of a large corporation were worth so much more than that of the rest of us. I suspect that the influence of the company, and, moreover, corporate America, on local police in any U.S. member state is more than reaches the headlines. The case at hand my even suggest that that influence includes even tacit instructions to treat anti-corporate suspects of murder violently both in retaliation and as a visible reminder to other potential killers that CEOs are off-limits.

As Pennsylvania sheriff employees took Mangione from a vehicle to the back door of a courthouse, at least two of the employees shoved the suspect—and, remember, in the U.S. a suspect is presumed innocent unless or until proven guilty in a court of law—into a wall even though the wall was not on the way from the vehicle to the back door. In other words, the unnecessary violence was not on the way to the back door, and nor was the suspect resisting going into the courthouse. I contend that the unnecessary violence was at the behest of the corporation whose CEO the suspect allegedly shot. At that time, the evidence that would be found had not yet been found, as per the defense attorney’s statement in the courthouse. Whether the violence being maliciously applied by sheriff employees was merely to show the world how a suspect accused of killing a CEO gets treated by law enforcement, or to stop the suspect from speaking to the media present on his way to the backdoor is not clear. It seems to be possible, at the very least, that corporate instructions given to the police in Pennsylvania included: Don’t let the guy get his anti-corporate message out. This would be ironic, given that corporations had at the time the right of free speech, even through spending as if money constitutes speech.

That Mangione was not resisting going into the courthouse and yet was manhandled rougher than suspects were typically treated at the time may give Americans, as well as the world, a glimpse into the power that large concentrations of private wealth (which is what a corporation is) even as translated into raw violence. The use of police by companies in twentieth-century America to beat workers on strike is well documented. What I am suggesting is that local police were still susceptible to wealthy private interests such as corporations into the next century, at least as of the 2020s. I contend that any contact between police departments and the healthcare insurance company would properly have been limited to the police gaining information in the search for the killer.

Another indication of an over-reaction by local police occurred days after Mangione had been arrested, when Briana Boston was charged with a felony “with one count of making threats to conduct a mass shooting” during a phone call with Blue Cross Blue Shield, her health-insurance company, which was denying a claim that she had submitted. Obviously angry, she said, “Delay, deny, depose. You people are next.”[2] The phrase, “delay, deny, depose,” had been written on bullets by Mangione in reference to tactics that insurers use to avoid paying out claims and had become popular online. Because of the popularity, it could not be assumed that the woman was planning on writing the three words on bullets; the phrase had entered the lexicon. In fact, “(a)ccording to a consumer survey by KFF, more than half of insured [American] adults [had] experienced problems with their insurance provider, and some [of those adults] reported serious consequences.”[3] Strangely, the local police in Lakeland, Florida, said that her statement could be taken as probable cause of “making a threat to conduct a mass shooting . . ., according to the affidavit.”[4] A reasonable interpretation of, “you guys are next,” is that if Blue Cross continues to screw policy holders who do their part in paying premiums, someone may eventually go too far in retaliation. She did not say that she was going to take any violent action, or what that action might be. Given that she was momentarily angry, and perhaps justifiably so, the police employee who leapt to the conclusion that the woman was saying she would conduct a mass killing is ludicrous, and yet the police had the discretion (and thus power) to make an example of the woman by charging her with a crime carrying a fourteen-year sentence, without her having done anything. Had being angry at customer-service employees become a crime? Or, had free-speech that is objectionable to big business become a crime? If so, could corporations next go after certain thoughts, using employees of local police departments who dismiss protecting the public as dutiful sycophants?

We can turn the Lakeland police investigation on its head by investigating that department. It is significant that “Lakeland, Florida police said they were contact by the FBI . . . in response to the alleged threat.”[5] That the police did not waste any time and did not seem to second-guess the FBI may suggest that the FBI had been determined to snuff out the “potential” copy-cat. To be sure, the FBI may simply have been over-cautious, but even that could have been due to pressure from Blue Cross or elected officials who have received campaign contributions from the giant company. That both the FBI and the local police department in Florida would knowingly seek to charge an angry policy holder of a crime that carries a sentence of 14 years in prison indicates a grossly disproportionate reaction, which itself could point back to the deference that the FBI (and local police) give to business in doing its bidding, even to scare the public.

As an anecdote, once when leaving a restaurant after barely eating a very badly cooked meal, I was speaking to people in the shopping center’s parking lot about the food. The manager of the restaurant got wind of this and approached me even though I was no longer on her establishment’s property. “The police here are my friends!” she warned me. “Keep talking about my restaurant and I will get them to make you leave.” The manager’s sheer presumptuousness was laughable, so I kept talking as was my right. She did call her friends, who told me I had to leave the parking lot even though that lot was not owned by the restaurant. That the police dismissed my legitimate objection told me enough; I moved to another suburb of Phoenix only months later; Mormon-run Mesa was simply too corrupt (and drug-ridden).

If my small window into the deference that local police pay to small business in falsely enforcing law that is not really law is correct, it is not difficult to conjecture that the FBI as well as local police may be unduly biased towards, perhaps even de facto working for, large corporations. The sort of unaccountability in accusing a distraught policy-holder of mass murder (even without noticing that she had no record of violence and not even a gun!) and being willing to put her in prison for fourteen years, likely to send the public a message from the large corporations, is consistent with the lack of accountability generally on market participants that are so large and wealthy that even competition is stifled that so enrages consumers and thus prompts anti-corporate politics. The connection can be found in Adam Smith’s claim that one of the main rationales for government is to protect the wealthy from the poor, who would otherwise steal the wealth. Does this hold of the governments in the U.S., or is the public to be served? The official answer may differ from the real answer.

That the governments in the U.S. have allowed companies to become so large as to choke competition without anti-trust law being enforced—something that Adam Smith would not like—is yet another indication of the “under the table” power of large corporations in the United States, thanks in part to unlimited political campaign contributions being legal. Perhaps elected officials were the people delivering the instructions from the health insurance company to the Pennsylvania sheriff in Altoona: Be rough with the guy and don’t let him speak to the media. Push him up against a wall if you want. Grab him by the neck. Show the world what happens if someone goes up against corporate America.  Hence the anti-corporate political movement in a democracy that is premised on accountability rather than plutocracy with impunity.

My main point is that institutionally, or structurally, very large and wealthy private companies, whether corporations or privately held, are incompatible with not only market competition, which ensures fair prices (even at grocery stores after a pandemic), but also political democracy, wherein one person has one vote and thus is just as important as the next. Whether a man on the street or a corporate CEO is murdered, the police-response should be the same in terms of the cost and effort in the manhunt and how the suspects are treated. Innocent until proven guilty means that police violence against a suspect who is not being violent or resistant is itself a crime regardless of how rich the victim’s family or company happens to be. 

The case of the health insurance CEO’s murder in December, 2024 was deliberately not supposed to be a vehicle for getting an anti-corporate message out—with even violence being used to enforce this proscription—but how the Pennsylvania police aggressively treated the suspect unabashedly in public view can be seen as a poster advertising the interlarding of corporate power at the expense of accountability in American democracy. Both economically and politically, it can be asked whether large corporations are accountable in the United States; politically, the same question may be asked of the local police departments in the member states. The American governments in the U.S. could do worse than apply anti-trust law to a variety of markets and apply criminal law to local police departments whose actual paymasters can be characterized proverbially as the man behind the curtain—an allusion to the hidden Wizard in the film, The Wizard of Oz. Then again, perhaps Mr. Smith Goes to Washington is a more pertinent film, as the senator played by Jimmy Stuart filibusters for hours and hours against corruption in his home state.

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1. Jessica Parker and Nadine Yousif, “Luigi Mangione Fingerprints Match Crime-Scene Prints, Police Say,” BBC.com, December 11, 2024.
2. Pocharapon Neammanee, “Woman Arrested After Saying ‘Delay, Deny, Depose’ On Call With Insurance Company,” The Huffington Post, December 12, 2024.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5.Ibid.

Ranking Technological Innovation: The E.U. and U.S. as Unions of States

“With the rise of AI, self-driving cars, and wi-fi connected appliances, it can feel like innovation is everywhere these days.”[1] Lest the BBC be presumed to be referring to California, the fifth largest economy in the world, with Caltech and Stanford University, government investment in IT and data infrastructure, and a high concentration of science/technology graduates and employment, California (as well as Massachusetts) is absent from the BBC’s rankings of technologically innovative countries. So Switzerland comes up in that ranking as the world’s foremost in computer technology, while the U.S. comes in third, with states like California and Mississippi being lost in an average that does not correspond to any actual place.

Of course, Europe presents itself as myriad of republics, with the E.U. not being counted, and thus ranked, even though the U.S. rather than California or Massachusetts is counted, and thus ranked. Referring to the 2016 Milken Institute's "State Technology and Science Index," an article in Bloomberg highlights the great science and technology divide existing between the fifty states.[2] With the Index showing a strong positive correlation between a state's innovation ranking and its GDP (gross domestic product), it is obvious that averaging California or Massachusetts with Alabama and Mississippi would be misleading for any generalizations. So too would be averaging Switzerland and Romania in Europe. 

Put another way, the BBC’s ranking highlights little Finland, The Netherlands, and Denmark in the top ten, all three of which are E.U. states, and yet ignores the U.S. member states completely.  It is telling, therefore, that the Global Innovation Index Ranking of 2024 is based in part on the assumption that it is appropriate to average all the U.S. states together on technological innovation, but somehow ill-fitting to lump all of the European states (whether E.U. states or not) together. Not even a polity in Europe having full sovereignty could explain or justify the incongruency, for every E.U. state has delegated some governmental sovereignty to the E.U. Perhaps it is denial of the E.U. instantiating modern federalism that is behind the inconsistency in the Global Innovation Index Ranking for 2024. For in terms of GDP, territory, and even population (clustering) too, the E.U. states and the U.S. states are roughly equivalent (and the E.U. and U.S. are thus equivalent too). 

The Global Innovation Index Ranking 2024: Including the U.S.[3]

1.       Switzerland

2.       Sweden

3.       United States

4.       Singapore

5.       United Kingdom

6.       Republic of Korea

7.       Finland

8.       The Netherlands

9.       Germany

10.     Denmark

Averaging all of the U.S. member-states into #3 rather than listing the foremost American states in technological innovation may be what allows Denmark to be in the top ten, and perhaps this could also be said of the E.U. states on the list: Sweden, Finland, The Netherlands, and Germany. Alternatively, the following ranking, which I have assembled in a cursory manner, may be more accurate, as a consistent polity-basis for comparison replaces the false union-state equivalence:

The Global Innovation Index Ranking 2024: Including the E.U.

1.       California

2.       Massachusetts

3.       Switzerland

4.       European Union

5.       Washington

6.       South Korea

7.       Japan

8.       China

9.       United Kingdom

10.     Singapore

California is no longer held down in a lower average of all the U.S. member states, and Massachusetts and Switzerland follow close behind. The European Union’s rank of #4 reflects the averaging from Sweden to Romania. That no E.U. states are listed leaves room for the U.S. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, mainly due to the efforts by companies in computer tech in Pittsburgh. Of course, we could refuse to sit both E.U. and U.S. states, and thereby leave more room to other areas of the globe to make the cut. Perhaps a ranking of the top 20 could include E.U. and U.S. states, but without the E.U. and U.S. themselves being ranked. We could do another ranking, using the E.U. for all of its states and the U.S. for all of its states, and thus leave room for sleeping giants in other parts of the world that are quite innovative yet are not getting credit for it. To avoid a noxious political category mistake, avoid including the U.S. (instead of its states) when the E.U. is not included while E.U. states are included.

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1. Lindsey Galloway, “What It’s Like to Live in the World’s Most Innovative Countries,” BBC.com, December 5, 2024.

2. Richard Florida, "America's Great Science and Technology Divide," Bloomberg, November 1, 2016.
3. Lindsey Galloway, “What It’s Like to Live in the World’s Most Innovative Countries,”

Euro-skeptic Anti-Federalism: An Institutional Obstacle in the E.U.

On December 6, 2024, the E.U. finally—meaning more than twenty years after negotiations had begun—reached a free-trade agreement with Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay. The deal would cover 780 million people, but the completion of the negotiations between the E.U. president and those of the South American countries was “just a first stage before a long process”[1] that would require passage by a qualified majority vote—meaning 55% of the E.U. states and 55% of the E.U. population—in the E.U. Council and in the European Parliament and in enough state legislatures. Presumably if enough state ministers for trade in the E.U. Council vote yes, their respective state governments would go along and also be sufficient for final passage. I contend that the requirement that enough state legislatures also vote yes on the deal is excessive.

The most obvious point to be made concerning the excessiveness is that the state governments were directly represented in the E.U. Council, so for those governments then to need to approve the E.U.’s treaty is at best duplicative, and, at worse, enabling opposition yet another means of thwarting final passage. Moreover, the treaty is that of the E.U., rather than any of the state governments because the E.U.’s executive branch negotiated the trade deal. To be sure, the presence of non-trade terms in the deal, including binding commitments by the South American countries to stop illegal deforestation, explains why the Commission did not have exclusive competency, which the Commission had as of 2024 in commercial policy as when President Van der Leyen had the Commission enact tariffs on imports from China.  Even though the trade deal with four South American countries did not fall under the Commission’s exclusive competency (i.e., domain of authority), this only means that the E.U. Council and the Parliament had to approve the treaty too; non-exclusive competency does not mean that the state governments must or even should approve federal legislation (and E.U. treaties with other countries).

A subtle reason can also be cited for why the E.U. is too fettered by the excessive role of the state legislatures in being required to pass a federal trade treaty. Specifically, the ongoing Euroskeptic, or states-rights (or “nationalist”), ideology, which had been so unproductive for the E.U. precisely because of the extent of sovereignty that the states retained (i.e., had not already delegated to the federal union), relishes the duplication of the state governments’ power in passing federal trade treaties as indicating that the E.U. had remained merely an alliance of sovereign countries. Before Britain seceded from the Union, Prime Minister David Cameron referred to the E.U. as just one of the networks to which Britain happened to belong. With such a jarringly unreal notion of what the E.U. was politically, it was best that that state seceded. The state of France had not been wrong in halting Britain’s accession in the early 1970s.

In short, a bottom-heavy federal system awash in an anti-federalist ideology can really be paralyzing at the federal level. At the very least, having an excessive number of institutional hurdles for a bill (or trade treaty) to become law undermines the legislative process. Moreover, even dissolution is more likely to occur when the state governments wield a lot of power over federal legislation.  

This may seem trivial or even silly, but words matter because language can feed (and starve) an ideology. Let’s unpack the following passage from Euronews on the proposed trade deal: “Negotiators from the Latin American bloc were assembled . . . with the EU trade negotiation team to iron out the deal, that will cover 780 million people between both zones. But the deal will need a sign off (sic) from EU 27 member states.”[2] That European and American journalism often referred to the E.U. as a “bloc,” even though an informal grouping of sovereign countries does not have a constitutional (i.e., basic law) court, an executive branch, and a bi-cameral legislature whereas the European Union contains the governmental European Court of Justice, the E.U. Commission, the E.U. Council (like the U.S. Senate, representing the states), and a (lower) Parliament, implies that in using the word “bloc” to describe four South American countries as the Mercosur group, and we might think too of the BRICS countries, those trade groups are of the same genre as a federal union. That both the E.U. and U.S. cases of “modern federalism” include dual sovereignty, wherein two governments have domains in which they are sovereign for a given territory, nullifies the appellation of “bloc” or “zone” to either union, even if anti-federalists on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean have been in denial concerning this point.

At an academic talk at Harvard’s Center for European Studies in which the dean of Boston University’s School of Global Studies said that the E.U. does indeed have a federal system, a Harvard graduate student dismissed this point and, in “asking” a question, insisted that the E.U. is only an alliance of countries. I then asked the dean to confirm her judgment that the E.U. is not an alliance, which she did. Yet I doubt whether the Harvard graduate student had enough intellectual humility to let this point sink in. In fact, at another talk at the Center, another graduate student, who had been present at the visiting dean’s talk, insisted that economically, a Swiss (county-sized) canton could be compared to “a red or a blue state,” including Texas and California. That speaker, from MIT, had said that in looking at the economic inequality between rural regions and a metropolitan city, E.U. states should be compared with U.S. states rather than with the U.S. overall (as there is no focal city of the U.S.). That the European graduate student ignored this and implied that Switzerland is a United States of Europe (and thus as equivalent to the E.U. even though the latter treats Switzerland akin to a state in trade matters and free movement sans borders) stunned me. I had been thinking of applying to be a visiting scholar at Harvard’s Center for European Studies, but the stubborn, jejune disrespectful attitude of the two graduate students, as well as their abject ignorance and yet presumption concerning federalism theory, convinced me to cancel my application, for I was already too old for the grief (and passive aggression). Also, I was not about to buy an airline ticket to the E.U. only to be dismissed as a stupid American for claiming that the E.U. has a federal system of government and is thus not a “bloc” or “zone” equivalent to four countries in South America that have a trading relationship.

Given the excessive ability of state governments in the E.U. to styme federal legislation and treaties, misconceiving the E.U. as a “bloc” or “zone” can cement the anti-federalist systemic bias and thus render the E.U. itself as too paralyzed even with respect to federal policy, regulations, law, and treaties that are at the level of the E.U. and thus proper to it, with the state governments having direct federal access through not only the E.U. Council (of Ministers), but also the European Council, which sets the overall political priorities for the Union. Officials of the state governments sit on both councils, and may even have excessive influence over the political parties (not groups!) in the European Parliament. That one of those parties, the European People’s Party, has nonetheless been labeled as a “group” rather than a party from a state-level perspective is yet another instance of how federal law-making must brace against a head-wind of federal illegitimacy.

Lastly, it bears remembering that thirty years from the U.S. having instituted a federal system characterized chiefly by dual sovereignty in 1789 (before which the U.S. was an alliance, or confederation, unlike the E.U.!), the American state governments had too much sovereignty for the good of that union, given the multiple “Brexits” in 1861. To be sure, Lincoln was better off than General Washington had been in fighting a war, for Lincoln’s Union had dual-sovereignty whereas Washington had a confederation (i.e., the state governments were sovereign until 1789).  Connecting the dots for my European friends (and those Americans who are awake concerning the E.U. even existing), the E.U. in 2024 was of the same federal genre or type as the U.S. had been since 1789 but not since 1776! Now this should get several Harvard graduate students from Europe scratching their heads.

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1. Peggy Corlin, “Von der Leyen Clinches E.U.-Mercosur Trade Deal, in Face of French Opposition,” Euronews.com, December 6, 2024.
2. Ibid, italics added.

Electing a U.S. President: What Is a Landslide?

A landslide electoral victory in representative democracy is typically limited to the criterion of the extent of the vote-spread between candidates for a given office. In regard to the U.S. presidency, the Electoral College presents an alternative criterion, especially as a significant difference in votes in the College may not be reflected in the popular vote. Although that vote is by member state, the totals from all of the states are typically used to assess whether a landslide has occurred and thus whether the winning candidate has a political mandate to implement campaign promises. Whether a landslide or not, winning an election legitimates a candidate implementing the platform on which a candidate has campaigned. So whether a candidate for U.S. president has a landslide has typically been over-emphasized by American journalists, as if not having a large spread in the popular vote—even if such a spread exists in the Electoral College vote (which is the vote that really matters in the election of a U.S. president)—means that the winner has no prerogative to enact one’s agenda. I contend that even under the assumption that an electoral landslide is important, there are alternative ways of assessing whether a landslide has occurred.

A landslide can be inferred in terms of the extent of a shift from one party’s candidate to that of another. In the election of 2024, over 90% of counties in all of the U.S.’s member states shifted in the direction of Donald Trump from the election in 2020. That the shift took place in so many counties can be reckoned as significant, and thus as a landslide in terms of shift.

Yet another way to interpret whether a landslide has occurred is to compare how many more or less votes a candidate (or party) has received in an election relative to previous election. For instance, “Donald Trump added about 2.8 million votes to his total in his 2024 victory [from the election in 2020]. Vice President kamala Harris, on the other hand, underperformed by about 6.8 million votes compared with Joe Biden in 2020, according to CNN election results as of November 25 [2024].”[1] Viewing Trump’s gain with Harris’s underperformance relative to Biden in 2020 is arguably more revealing than is looking at small percentage-point difference (49.9% to 46.9%) between the two candidates’ totals in the popular vote (158,425, 893 and 154,247, 094, respectively) in 2024.[2] 

Blue: Where Harris Underperformed; Red: Where Trump Gained (Source: CNN)

The tide was coming in for Donald Trump and was going out for the Biden-Harris administration. Harris had said during the campaign that she would not differ from Biden’s policies, so comparing Biden in 2020 with Harris in 2024 is valid. That Harris received almost 2 million fewer votes in California, her home state, than Biden had received there in 2020 is also revealing regarding the depth of the shift away from her in 2024.[3] 

The top line shows California (source: CNN)

Loading only on the 49.9% to 46.9% difference in the overall popular vote totals masks the magnitude and depth of the shift; the 312 to 226 significant difference in the Electoral College in the 2024 election results is a better indication, though the bias toward relatively less populated states that typically vote Republican overstates the real difference that would exist if the number of electoral votes that each member state has were based only on the number of the number of U.S. House representatives rather than adding the number of U.S. senators in too. Therefore, a landslide in the Electoral College can be considered as less legitimate than the percentage spread in the overall popular vote.

Therefore, I contend that measures indicative of the extent and depth of a basic shift pervading all the electorates of the states can be used to assess whether a landslide has indeed occurred. Using this criterion, the 2024 U.S. presidential election can be viewed as a landslide. Contributing factors may include Harris’ decision to continue arms sales to Israel even though the International Court of Justice had ruled that Israel’s entire occupation violates international law. The International Criminal Court would subsequently issue arrest warrants for two Israeli government officials, including Netanyahu. Another factor may have been the failure of the Biden-Harris administration to sufficiently aid Ukraine to forestall territorial advances of Russia in its invasion of the sovereign country. Still another factor may have been the spreading anti-woke reaction and the failure of the Democratic Party to push back on its woke wing in the general election. The Biden-Harris administration’s refusal to apply anti-trust to the meat-producing and grocer industries when prices stayed high after the pandemic may have influenced the working-class voters who had not shifted over to voting based on social/cultural (i.e., woke) issues. Trump’s visual use of an assassination attempt to “Fight” may also have been a factor. In short, the image of Trump’s fist in the air as he was ushered away from his speaking platform with a bloody ear is miles away from the image of half-measures and political calculation. I contend that the indicators of a general shift from 2020 in the election results better reflect these factors than does the small overall percentage-spread in the popular vote for Trump and Harris in 2024.

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1. Amy O’Kruk et al, “7 Charts and Maps Where Harris Underperformed and Lost the Election,” Cnn.com, November 27, 2024.
2. Ibid.
3  Ibid.

Greedy Grocers: Exploiting Customers and Workers with Impunity

Adam Smith theorized that price competition on products and labor would allow the self-interests of the buyers and sellers to result in unintended beneficial consequences. For one thing, price gouging would not happen because, assuming low barriers to enter the market to sell, competitors would quickly drop their prices and gain market share. That grocery prices did not fall after the supply-shocks, including in shipping and hiring workers, ended with the end of the coronavirus pandemic in early 2023 is a pretty good indication that the grocery (and meat producer) industry was not competitive. Oligarchic markets—those in which just a few, often times very large, sellers exist—are devoid of the competitive mechanism that would otherwise maintain prices that are fair to buyers. That is, not only do competitive markets efficiently allocate goods and services at prices that connect supply to demand; such markets can also satisfy the ethical virtue of justice as fairness. Smith was not shy in admitted that a government willing to stand up to big companies is necessary to keep a market from slipping into the decadence of an oligopoly and especially a monopoly. I contend that both Americans and their elected representatives were blind, perhaps conveniently so given the power of large companies in American governments, both during the coronavirus pandemic, which ran from roughly 2020 to 2022, and even afterwards as Kroger and Albertsons colluded at the expense (literally) of their respective customers and workers.  

On February 26, 2024, about a year after the coronavirus pandemic ended in the United States, the Federal Trade Commission “sued to block the largest proposed supermarket merger in U.S. history—Kroger Company’s $24.6 billion acquisition of the Albertsons Companies, Inc.—alleging that the deal is anticompetitive.”[1] While testifying to a Federal Trade Commission attorney ,  Andy Groff, Kroger's senior director for pricing, said the grocery giant had raised prices for eggs and milk beyond inflation levels. In an internal email to other Kroger executives, he had written, "On milk and eggs, retail inflation has been significantly higher than cost inflation."[2] Of course, the company’s strategy was to try to discredit Groff rather than assume responsibility for having taken advantage of the pandemic. It was telling, however, that at least at Albertsons, including its Safeway division, the practice of weekly discounts shown on the shelves was greatly diminished. So, we can add ending discounts to price gouging to understand the true sticker shock that customers encountered.

The price gouging alone was “not at all surprising," Drew Powers, the founder of Illinois-based Powers Financial Group, has said. Economists had “long indicated that the grocery sector, which is composed of only a few chains like Kroger and Walmart, was benefiting from supply chain disruptions during the pandemic, allowing the companies to hike prices beyond what was necessary to retain profits. According to Alex Beene, a financial literacy instructor, "Supply chain issues, rising shipping costs, and increased wages certainly played their part in the higher prices we're currently seeing. However, the admission some prices were elevated simply because businesses knew they could doesn't help the case for those arguing price gouging isn't an issue."[3]  

Perhaps even more disturbing, but much more subtly, Kroger and Albertsons did not lower prices after the unique economic context of the pandemic had ended. In fact, both companies saw record profits into 2024 and a generally increasing trend from 2010 that belies any claim to have needed to raise prices during the pandemic to stay in business. In fact, the profits during the pandemic were greater than in 2018-2020, and record profits as of January 31, 2024. Not coincidentally, the grocers provided customers with just a slight reduction in prices of food items in 2024 even though the huge increases during the pandemic had been said to be specific to it. This demonstrates that the industry had ceased to operate in a competitive market. The following graphs from Metatrends.net of gross profits for the years (January 1) 2009 - (January 31) 2024 tell the tale, a picture being proverbially said to be worth a thousand words. 

Kroger (left) and Albertsons (right) Gross Profit ($)

That Albertsons increased prices excessively during 2022 can be inferred from the fact that the company's net income that year increased 51% from 2021 even though the pandemic was still occurring. In July, 2024, Newsweek stated the following: “Companies across multiple industries have been posting record profits since the [coronavirus pandemic] while consumers have faced the highest inflation in recent history. The math can only point to companies raising prices above the general level of inflation. As the old saying goes, 'Never let a good crisis go to waste.'"[4] And never let the end of a crisis be the end of the party, for the excuses can run their natural course if the herd animals (and their leaders) are gullible (and corrupt) enough.

That a grocery-store worker filed a class-action lawsuit against both Kroger and Albertsons in Colorado on November 25, 2024 for having colluded “against striking employees to keep pay and benefits down” may indicate that the giant chains took advantage of workers too.[5] The suit alleges that “the two competitors reached an illicit agreement not to poach employees or customers during a 2022 work stoppage.” This “gave Kroger an upper hand against its employees’ union during contract talks,” and Albertson too would likely benefit as it had the same union.[6] The word most erroneous here is competitors, and if Kroger and Albertsons were not competing for employees or customers, then it would have been easy for both managements to raise prices, essentially creating inflation (i.e., above costs and a reasonable profit), in taking advantage of the pandemic turned into a rationale for higher prices and then of societal expectations that price increases would happen and be legitimate.

That Kamala Harris ran for U.S. president in 2024 with only vague promises to help consumers with high food prices rather than a bold promise to wipe off the Sherman Anti-trust Act to apply it to break up both Kroger and Albertsons is so glaring that it could (and should) be asked whether, or to what extent, that industry, as well as the concentrated meat-producer industry, was made financial contributions to Harris’ campaign. Even President Biden’s decision to oppose the merger of those two companies ignored the likely possibility that the grocery (and meat-producer) industry was already too concentrated (i.e., oligopolistic) for price competition to have lowered food prices after the pandemic.  Both the president and the vice president (i.e., Harris) were too snug with the status quo, and perhaps relatedly too influenced, financially and otherwise, by the grocery (as well as meat-producing and even restaurant) industry. That the profits of Kroger and Albertson grew not only during the pandemic, but also in its wake, especially as compared with the pre-pandemic numbers, should have been an obvious indication that Adam Smith’s apotheotic competitive-market model could no longer operate due to the enormous sizes and few number of grocery chains in the United States. Enough voters may have been angry at Biden and Harris for not using the judiciary to restore competition—only acting to oppose the merger—to vote for Harris even though Trump would not likely apply anti-trust law even to the merger. A similar rationale concerning Biden and Harris actively supporting Israel militarily even after the UN’s top court had ruled that the occupation violated international law can be applied for why Harris lost. Enough of the American electorates wanted boldness in place of status-quo timidity that they were willing to vote against Harris and even for Trump even while disagreeing with his bold policies, such as on stopping illegal immigration.

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1. “FTC Challenges Kroger’s Acquisition of Albertsons,” FTC Press Release, February 26, 2024.
2. Suzanne Blake, “Kroger Executive Admits Company Gouged Prices Above Inflation,” Newsweek, August 31, 2024.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid. 
5. Dave Jamieson, “Worker Sues Kroger and Albertsons, Alleging Collusion Against Union,” The Huffington Post, November 26, 2024.
6. Ibid.  

Territorial Economic Inequality: On the Impact of Ideological Category-Mistakes

Why do some countries have more inequality in terms of wealth or economic development, whether between big cities and urban areas, or just from region to region, than do other countries? I contend that in comparing the internals of one state/country to those of another, as much “all else equal” should be satisfied as possible. This can be accomplished to a large extent by resisting the error, or temptation, to make category mistakes, such as in comparing Singapore with China—a city-state to an empire-scale country—or in likening an E.U. state to the entire U.S. European scholars of comparative politics tend to make this category mistake, and non-European scholars are so used to the ideological aggrandizement that they do not typically even recognize the category mistake of treating an early-modern(rather than Medieval) kingdom-scale state of an empire-scale federal union as equivalent to another such union, as if a state in one such union, or a comparable sovereign state, were itself an empire-scale union. Resisting the ideologically-driven urge to begin with a category mistake would do wonders in studying comparative politics and political economy and providing more accurate and beneficial conclusions and recommendations.

Illinois, for example, has fifteen economic regions, yet the one containing Chicago dwarfs the other regions, with are either rural or sport a medium-sized city like Springfield, Rockford, and Peoria, none of which is known for its wealth. How does this compare with Switzerland in contrasting Zurich, and to a certain extent Geneva, which is half the population of Zurich, to the counties, or cantons, that are mainly rural? Both in territory and population, Illinois is larger than is Switzerland, and Chicago relative to the rest of Illinois has a higher population and greater metro-territory than Zurich has to the rest of Switzerland; perhaps comparing Paris in France to Chicago in Illinois would be a closer comparison. Unlike Switzerland, neither Illinois nor France has a federal system, and both are semi-sovereign states in federal systems, the U.S. and E.U., so in comparing Illinois and France, a scholar would better able to “hold all else constant,” except in terms of population, than is the case in comparing Illinois and Switzerland. In that regard, comparing Arizona and Switzerland would be better, as the respective populations are around 7 to 8 million people.

Avoiding the temptation to make category mistakes, such as in claiming that Switzerland is a United States of Europe, with county-sized cantons be likened to red and blue American states, is a prerequisite to being able to make accurate comparisons. At a talk at the Center for European Studies, a Swiss junior scholar acted on the urge during a talk on this topic in November, 2024, to ignore this point even though it had been made by a senior scholar and the scholar from MIT visiting to give his talk that E.U. and U.S. states are comparable with respect to contrasting large cities with rural areas. Ideology, whether States’ Rights in America or the Euroskeptic, or “nationalist,” ideology in Europe, can entrap even scholars, such that their scholarship may be compromised from their decision on an axis of comparison. Hawaii, Alaska, or Texas becoming a member-state in the U.S. is not comparable to one of Switzerland’s county-scale cantons.

After avoiding category mistakes that are based on ideology rather than reason, we can investigate whther too much power being given by a government to localities and regions increases the economic inequality from region/locality to region/locality because there tends to less economic redistribution to less developed regions or urban areas, and because they tend to compete with each other for direct investment by companies. How can we reconcile the cities competing against others to economic equality between regions and cities within a country?

Moreover, there is not only an economic divide between big cities and rural “left behind” places; there are social and cultural differences too; for example, anti-urban sentiment can be non-economic barrier to moving to a big city for school or a job. In some states/countries, the chasm may be more cultural whereas in other cases the difference may be more economic.  To claim that cultural differences within a European state are comparable to those between certain U.S. states, such as Hawaii and Alabama, even ignoring the fact that different languages are spoken to a considerable extent in those two U.S. states and even dismissing the non-linguistic differences that can exist between two distant and large geographical territories, such as Hawaii and Alabama (or Louisiana!), reflects the convenient imprint of a European ideology.

In short, category mistakes, whether spuriously using political, economic, or cultural factors, can doom a study of comparative politics and economics from the start. Much of what is concluded by reason once such a mistake has been made is likely to be faulty. Perhaps the largest cost in doing so in many studies may be in the loss of scholarly reputation of the fields of comparative politics and political economy. Judging from the talks at Harvard’s Center for European Studies, the ideological motivate is salient even among scholars, and this prompts me to ask whether the results of their scholarship is in fact academic in nature or too compromised by the common instinctual-urge to put one’s own ideology in the driver’s seat. To Nietzsche, the content of ideas is instinctual urges, and reasoning is the process in a brain whereby those urges compete with each other for dominance.