Rekindling love for the USA

Lately I’ve been a bit down on the USA. Of course, the main reason has been the current president, and the depressing thought that 60 million voted for him and 30 million of those still idolize him. But I wonder if I’ve started denigrating the wider US unreasonably, like you do in one of those stale relationships where you start to only see flaws. So I thought I’d do some thinking and research to find some love – think of it as relationship self-counselling.

Like many, I think, I fell in love with the US as a child. Movies like The Graduate or Manhattan showed a place of unlikely affluence, huge houses and large yards, massive skyscrapers and psychoanalysts and sophistication. Remember that back then Europe was only a generation removed from destructive war and many Brits lived in two-up two-down terraces and had only recently discovered cars (stick shift ones) and TV’s.

Slowly, the infatuation declined once I became politically active and read The Guardian. I learned that these easy lives were not so sophisticated to the eyes of an adult, and that much of the wealth was generated at the expense of civil rights and equity. Still, I craved to visit, so the child in me was still in love. I also keenly remember a trip to New York in 1997, where my daughter of 17 demonstrated naïve love, snapping limos and neon with undisguised joy.

It was in that era that I started working with Americans and visiting on business, usually to Houston. I was also reading The Economist more regularly, and that paper constantly harped on about the economic benefits of America's free markets. These experiences confuse me, because in Shell US I saw as complacent and protected a corporate beast that I could imagine. But the beautiful neighbourhoods still made me envious.

That was the background to jumping at the chance to come to live in New York in 2012, especially since it seemed perfect timing for a change of scene and I felt (correctly, as it turned out) that NYC would benefit our rather timid kids.

And New York still holds me in awe. Mainly it is the scale and magnificence of what humanity has constructed here. Even now, whenever I view Manhattan from the RFK Bridge or Gawanus, or look up the length of one of its avenues, my spirits rise. Most New Yorkers hate and avoid Times Square, but I seek it out and sit there to suck in its scale, tacky or not.

We Europeans also tend to be snotty about US culture, often equating age to value. We are wrong. Visit St John Divine or The Cloisters or Grand Central Station, they may not be 500 years old but they are lovely. Don’t forget also that US museums house much of the best artworks, including the European ones.

And we may think of Americans as uncultured, but the culture in NYC is tremendous. You can find a great place to enjoy any niche you are into. I have a fine choice of early music choirs to join or listen to, a privilege not many world cities could offer me.

So I am still up on New York and New Yorkers, despite the noise and filth and potholes and cost of living. But what about the USA and Americans? I turned to the web and their ubiquitous lists to see if I could improve my mood towards the land I am living in.

The first lesson from my research was a reinforcement of one of the things to hate. Even these lists have become politicised and polarised. One rather dodgy list came from a guy who had written a book called “How Nazis infiltrated the left”, or something like that. So I quickly learned to filter the lists to select from. I’ll quote from a couple of them.

One list of eight started with nice, friendly people. They are certainly open and optimistic, but I’m not convinced. I’ve been rather sceptical about all the news reports about Americans helping fellow Americans after the recent hurricanes. I don’t doubt the veracity, but in my experience any people round the world would react the same way, and the reports are rather a desperate attempt to cling to a unity that is no longer there. I’ve met nice friendly people everywhere, each with a few quirks to get used to, and I don’t buy that Americans are different. Reflecting on how they arrived, it may be that they are more optimistic and have more energy to progress, but that may be dissipating over time as well.

Next on the list came jobs, which hardly seems true nowadays especially if quality of job is part of the consideration. After that came travel. True, the land is large and beautiful and accessible, but so is everywhere else by now. Next came diversity. I buy this one, especially in Queens and NYC, human diversity is a wonderful asset. After that came the climate, which I’ll try to remember next January while shovelling snow or next August while hugging the aircon. Kid friendly came next, which feels pretty desperate given the US placing on surveys of the best places to bring up kids and of kids mortality (look it up – it comes behind everywhere in Europe). Then you get convenience and lifestyle. I can partly accept these, but it does seem to depend a lot on where you live and what you earn, and I really don’t think I’ll ever love shopping malls.

Another list had most of these and added a few more. Free speech was near the top. That is fair enough, but hardly a differentiator with Europe, and not necessarily commensurate with the prison population, nor with the president’s remarks about sports this past weekend. This list also included emergency health care, healthy food and street signage, which made me wonder if the author had ever travelled outside the US at all.

If I had looked up things to hate about the US (I didn’t) I guess I would have bought into more items. Guns are everywhere and plain dumb. Politics is toxic. Public healthcare and schooling is iniquitous and broken. Safety nets are pitiful. The ignorance of a wider world is widespread, military arrogance unforgivable.

So I don’t really know where this leaves me. I love New York, which still has a lead over most other cities. But the lead might be narrowing as European and even Asian cities catch up. The same might be true of America itself. Perhaps I fell in love with it because it progressed most quickly after World War II in terms of easy, modern living. But this lead has narrowed even more, and as my taste has moved on from big houses and shopping malls, perhaps even disappeared altogether.

So America doesn’t have much of a lead any more. Then add in Americans and it becomes even harder to rekindle love. Most of the arguments on the lists strike me as out of date or ill informed or even desperate. Which might define the country itself in its current turmoil. And, with thirty million souls stubbornly supporting an unworthy regime, trends are not promising.

So I will count my blessings. I’ll continue to feel awe at this wonderful city, and to respect, with caveats, the US for leading the world admirably from 1945. I’ll continue to admire the diversity of people who have moved here to make their lives better and show drive and optimism.

But this exercise, valuable as it was, didn’t reveal any great reasons to fall in love with the place again, and plenty of reasons to be sceptical about its future and critical of its present. There is not so much about this land that is exceptional any more. And a significant minority seems to be doing all it can to reduce what advantages remain.    

Trust Corporate America? Why should I?

A recent survey showed the continuing decline in trust in almost all institutions of the US. Of course, the president is doing a lot of damage, and helping to drag congress lower from a low base. The only group widely trusted now is the armed forces. There seems to be almost no scrutiny of the military in the US, just thoughtless adulation. Their public relations people have done a great job.

Here is a thought. What tends to happen in countries where no one is trusted except the military? The answer is obvious – military coups. The way things are going, that is not a possibility to discount just now. A lot of the public would actually support a coup. In a minor way, it has already happened, because most of the power in the white house now resides with military veterans.

Noting the survey, The Economist focused on a different institution where trust had diminished, that of corporations. Seemingly, there has been something of a collapse of trust in corporate America. Having lived here for five years, I am amazed that there was any trust to start with.

Look at the most egregious scandals of the last fifty years and corporate America’s fingerprints are all over them. We should start with the tobacco industry, now known to have covered up and manipulated evidence about the toxicity of its product over a generation. Surely this scandal could never be repeated? Actually, it has already, by the sugary drinks industry. The playbook has been almost identical, and the outcome rather similar as well.

One clue came in a profile I once read of a senator from Georgia whose name I don’t remember. The profile made play of a fridge in the office of this lawmaker, which was bursting with Coke, duly offered to all visitors as a sign of friendship. We can only surmise what benefits the Coca Cola Company has received in return for its modest generosity.

This is how things work in the US. One area where Trump is absolutely right is his plea to “drain the swamp” in Washington. Sadly, almost all his actions so far have had the opposite effect.

Chief among the generally detrimental acts has been the way the administration has attacked regulation. It is true that excessive regulation hampers consumers and can also add government costs and create barriers to entry, but the purpose of most regulation is to protect consumers, and it is that type of regulation that is being swept away. This has been most obvious in the energy sector so far, but there will be plenty more to come in the finance sector.

The three biggest contributors to the swamp are lobbyists for energy, finance and health, and it is no surprise that the first two of these are leading the assault on regulation. The third one, health, is the real reason why health care reform is so elusive. The parties argue about how to allocate costs – essentially between richer and poorer people – but the true scandal is the total cost of the system. No matter how it is allocated, Americans will receive a raw deal. And the high costs are basically a result of the equivalent of those Coke fridges stuffed into the offices of congress, supplied instead by health care providers. They make sure that the high costs remain built in.

I have not finished with scandals. Shkreli with his drug prices was just the one who went further and got caught. Wells Fargo with their phantom accounts and default unnecessary products is the same story. You can add the companies supplying water to Flint, or lobbying to build yet more homes on flood plains in Houston, or to reduce building code requirements against fire – in London for Grenfell Towers or the US. A common theme is companies acting to the edge of regulations that they have worked to minimize.

I worked in an energy corporation for 28 years, during which we had our share of scandals such as Nigerian exploitation and South African tacit support for apartheid. I was occasionally embarrassed about where Shell ended up in an argument, but nearly all the time I could see how reasonable trade offs led to that position, and I could trust my fellow employees. This changed with Phil Watts and the reserves inflation scandal – the first time that personal incentives and stock market pressure pushed someone over a line.

The 1990’s saw all these factors come into play. Executive play ballooned. Pension fund calculations led to minimal growth expectations of 6% real for everything, a clearly unsustainable level. And politics was taken over by capital at the expense of labour, and, I would argue, of citizens. That Georgia senator is more beholden to his donors that his voters, and that leads to trouble.

If I were to advise US political thinkers, especially on the left, I would advocate putting the citizen at the centre of their platform. This is hardly a radical idea, but it would represent a clear departure from where things lie today, even for Democrats, who have their own corporate buddies such as accident chasing lawyers and protectionist trade unions.

A citizen first program could be distinctive. It could be effective too – look at how the risk of customer defection led companies to renounce Trump’s white supremacist tendencies and earlier LGBT discrimination. The people have power, if we remember how to use it.

One simple example of a citizen led policy would be to legislate that an advertised price for any good or service represented the final payable price. Wow, what a revolutionary idea! Most countries have this already, but I was shocked when I first visited the US and was asked to pay $10.80 for something priced at $9.99 – because of taxes. The label should read $10.80! And if I order a theatre ticket online listed at $59, then $59 is what I should pay, not $89 including nebulous fees.

For corporate policy, the key theme for my party would be to promote competition. Competition drives innovation and service and better deals for citizens. In most US sectors, competition has declined, due primarily to lobbying for a skewed playing field by incumbents. Peter Thiel gave it away in Zero to One – any smart entrepreneur these days is only interested in pursuing a business that can become a monopoly. Monopolies feed themselves not their customers. Policy should minimise monopolies. That is also why trade is generally a good thing, since it generates competition and better deals for consumers.

The stock market has risen because policy – enacted and intended – is giving yet more power to corporations at the expense of citizens and further expanding inequality. Jobs, they cry! That is the excuse for every removal of regulation or reduction of worker influence or curtailment of trade and competition. Instead, start with the citizen and competition and jobs will follow. They will be good jobs too.

Obama sort of had this idea when he argued that all his policy decisions were made with the criterion of what it would do for the middle class. But I don’t think he articulated this clearly enough nor pursued the logic far enough. Some groups of white citizens in unstable jobs certainly did not feel he delivered for them. Democrats are looking for a distinctive theme, and for sure Bannon is right when he notes that focusing on minority rights and historical injustices will not resonate. So let us instead start with citizens, all citizens, and see where it leads.

In Praise of Content

I visited the US Tennis Open twice last week. We live very nearby, so try to go at least once every year. Overall, it is a marvellous experience. The real advantage over other sporting events in the US is how close you can be to the players. If you go during the first week and purchase ground admission only, you can place yourself on an outside court and find a wonderful degree of intimacy to the players and the ebb and flow of a match.

Here are one or two tips. The evil ticketmaster has been contracted by the tennis association to manage all ticketing. A consequence of this is that ticket prices are dynamic, even standard non-resale tickets. If you book a month in advance, you can pick up a grounds ticket for maybe $30, but closer to the tournament the price doubles, then doubles again, and even doubles one more time. Book early, and take a risk on the weather. Ticketmaster also insist on using mobile phones for ticket verification, which is all very well so long as your phone is not old like mine. The first visit this year I stood in line for an hour at will-call. The second time, I was smart enough to enlist the help of some young volunteers available for tech dummies like me. Once such volunteer let me log in on her phone and then walked in through the gate with me.

Then, like with all sports, recognise that they are after your hard earned cash. Print an order of play before you leave home, or discover that they will try to charge you $5 inside the grounds. And purchase as little eat and drink as possible – the quality is not bad, but the prices are crazy. Finally, wear a hat and be ready for different temperatures. I was fooled by a weather forecast, and am still bothered by a top of my head that is very red indeed.

Follow all these tips, and you can enjoy a great day full of tennis, up to ten hours of it if you are lucky and ready to stay until the end. Last Friday I saw the first ball hit on court 17 at 11.15am, and the last on Armstrong at 7.30pm.

But when I got home, I reflected about what most people appreciate nowadays. I would wager that very few people did anything like what I did. Most of the time, I found myself with the best possible view of world-class sport, accompanied by only few hundred other spectators. And not all that many of those were actually watching the tennis.

From what I could observe, most people found something on their mobile phone of more interest than a live sporting match going on right in front of them, not just in the breaks but all of the time. There were people whose main interest seemed to be the camera on their phone. Then there were the celebrity hunters, looking for Roger Federer walking to his locker room or Chrissie Evert’s back in the ESPN booth than watching live tennis from two lesser but still pretty talented mortals.

Then you can add in the chatters, the wanderers, the shoppers and the concession surfers, many of these people dressed to impress.

Bemused, I tried to work out what was going on here by comparing the situation with others I have known. I concluded that partly this is a New York thing. Somehow, New Yorkers are a bit about show and expressing emotion rather than accepting gifts of content. It seems to be OK to be late – at the baseball, the crowd seems to build after three or four innings and then decline again soon afterwards, whatever the state of the game.

Perhaps one issue is that many people have not paid for the tickets themselves because of corporate or club giveaways, so value them less. Others are so wealthy that the ticket price is peanuts to them – or maybe want things to appear that way.

There is also something fundamentally ungrateful about New Yorkers. I went to a wedding reception last weekend, a good party that regular people had paid a lot of money to make happen for me and the other guests. Yet there were empty seats. One couple I spoke with confessed they were in two minds about whether to show up until the last minute, because, apparently, they were tired. This feels so disrespectful to me. I wonder if this is unique to New York.

But the bigger issue may be about generations and attention spans and motivations.

Our son is a soccer fan, supporting Arsenal. Yet he cannot watch more than five minutes of a game without getting distracted. I think this has become normal in the generation of the smartphone.

I am not quite sure why it is. There are certainly more distractions available these days. Teaching at school has become more about short bursts than long hauls – reading books and writing essays are dying arts, and tests are mainly multiple choice. Movies are more and more dominated by instant thrills rather than developing plot lines.

Then the phone itself is not just the source of distraction but also the source of temptation to share. That makes sitting down and enjoying content less attractive, since that reduces the material to share, and adds to the fear that others are having more fun, the fear of missing out.

I am not sure whether all this is much of a bad thing. I don’t want to become another old person boring on about the good old days and knocking smartphone culture. Kids these days are often smart, and socially conscious and respectful, and resourceful. Did we really want to continue teaching based on learning lists of kings and queens?

Still, there do seem to be some downsides about the lack of appetite for content that takes more time to develop. Maybe people are missing out on something good. There is something unique in slow moving drama, whether in sports or a good book or on TV. The young seem to have lost the art of appreciation for that.

More important, is humanity, at least in the US, losing its ability to master extensive content completely? In my career, there was always a place for conciseness and for engaging formats, but some issues required plentiful reading or writing to truly understand and to create effective policy. Will the smartphone generation simply not have that skill?

Perhaps there is already some evidence in the Trump presidency. Firstly, it seems that a content averse generation is more likely to elect based on sound bites or personality rather than on policy content. I was astonished that the lack of published policy in the US election last year, and the manifestos in the UK one in 2017 were certainly weaker than what had come before.

Electing based on sound bits is one thing, but governing based on them is another. I read this week that lobbyists in Washington were now being asked to craft policy documents, since the capability within the administration was not there. Now that truly is a frightening prospect.

The shortage on STEM graduates in the US is well known. Perhaps there is another shortage likely to arise, that of graduates able to create or master detailed written content. If this is a US phenomenon only, it surely presages a deep competitive disadvantage, as well as giving a clue to future students where to focus to do well. If it is global, then that signals an inhibitor to human progress.

Modern technology does many good things, and generally I am an optimist about the youth of today. But these idle thoughts while enjoying tennis matches in relative solitude certainly gave me pause.