Is Punishment Ever a Deterrent?

The US Congress -- and, indeed, the nation as a whole -- is currently debating whether or not to endorse President Obama's bid to punish the Syrian government of President Bashar Assad for its alleged use of chemical weapons in the Syrian civil war.

Obama's stated reason is that Assad needs to be punished for violating international norms against the use of chemical weapons (so that the use of such weapons is not repeated). In the words of Samantha Power, the US envoy to the UN, a failure to punish Assad would "give a green light to outrages that will threaten our security and haunt our conscience." A group of US rabbis and Jewish leaders have issued a petition that declares, "We fear that if this attack [by Assad] passes without a decisive response, we might open our newspapers to more images of mass graves from Syria -- and elsewhere -- in the near future." The idea is clear: punishment must be meted out because it would deter bad behavior.

Now, although the fat lady has definitely not sung, as I write this blog post, the tide of public opinion in the US seems to be turning against Obama. Critics have argued that

1. in the absence of UN support, the US cannot anoint itself the world's cop
2. UN inspectors have not yet submitted a report of the findings of their investigations in Syria
3. violence is not an appropriate response to the alleged crimes of Assad
4. even a limited initial attack could lead to deeper involvement
5. the US needs a respite from armed conflicts in the Islamic world
6. any military involvement in Syria would distract attention from vital domestic priorities
7. the Syrian civil war does not pose a threat to the US
8. Syria and its allies could retaliate against Americans
9. any limited, "no boots on the ground," attack would not resolve the bigger issue of ending the Syrian civil war
10. Assad's opponents -- should they wrest power from an Assad weakened by US attacks -- may behave in ways worse than Assad's; etc.

Here, I will ignore all the above issues and simply examine the internal logic of Obama's main idea: punishment of a crime deters the repetition of the crime. The idea sounds eminently logical, but let's put it under a microscope anyway.

To repeat, Obama says he wants to punish Assad because, if Assad is punished, he (Assad) would cease using chemical weapons (hereafter, CW). But why, you might ask, would Assad, once punished, never use CW again? Obama would say, if Assad's first use of CW is punished, he would expect any second use of CW to be punished also. As a result, Assad would not dare use CW a second time.

But why, you might ask, would Assad expect a second use of CW to be punished? After all, any second use of CW would disprove any claim that the punishment of the first use of CW would deter a second use of CW. Therefore, no longer able to claim that punishment is a deterrent, Obama would have no way to justify punishing a second use of CW by Assad. Therefore, if Assad considers Obama to be rational, he (Assad) would not assume that a second transgression would be punished even if the first transgression was.

Now, we can work backwards to unravel Obama's whole argument. As Assad will not fear a second punishment for a second use of CW, Obama will have no reason to punish the first use of CW either. Don't forget that the justification for punishing Assad's first use of CW was that the punishment would convince Assad that a second use of CW would invite a second round of punishment. But we just saw that a second use of CW would not be punished. Therefore, there would be no justification for any punishment for Assad's first use of CW either.

The only way the idea that "punishment is a deterrent" can survive is if the punisher is irrational enough to keep believing that punishment is a deterrent in the face of repeated disproof of the very idea. If Obama is so irrational as to punish one use of CW after another all the while saying that the punishment is necessary to deter any future use of CW in spite of the fact that all previous instances of CW use are disproof of the idea that punishment is a deterrent, then and only then would Assad be deterred. Facing such an irrational punisher, Assad would have no reason to use CW and would be a very, very good boy.

So, Mr. President, please don't attack Syria. You are not the infinitely irrational person described in the previous paragraph who keeps saying "Punishment will deter the next use of CW" again and again even though each use of CW disproves his claim. Please recognize that there is an n such that after n episodes of CW use -- followed in each case by punishment -- you will finally see the light, give in to reason and admit that you can no longer claim with a straight face that punishment is deterrent and that you will therefore stop punishing any future use of CW. And if you will certainly abandon the "punishment is a deterrent" idea after n episodes, there really is no rational reason to not abandon the idea after n - 1 episodes, and so on and on.

In the end, the point is that it really would not be rational to attack Syria thinking that punishing Assad would deter future use of CW. You could, of course, attack Syria on other grounds. For example, you could attack Syria in order to find and destroy Syria's CW stockpiles. This justification would not be as logically indefensible as the "punishment is a deterrent" justification. However, finding all of Assad's hidden CW stockpiles may not be easy, and it would certainly require American "boots on the ground." Moreover, even if you get all of Assad's CW stockpiles, you will not be able to stay in Syria forever; you will have to bring the troops home at some point. And what would stop Assad from rebuilding his CW stockpiles at that point? After all, he would still have his CW recipes, right?

So, in the end, Mr. President, you don't have too many options. Just calm down and take a deep breath.

What Ails Indian Manufacturing?

Keith Bradsher has a terrific must-read report in The New York Times today that encapsulates many aspects of the nightmare that Indian manufacturing is in. Here are some highlights: A factory owner employs fewer than 50 workers and holds on to antiquated equipment for fear of exceeding employment and investment limits that would trigger suffocating labor laws. The 35-mile trip from the factory to the nearest port takes 4 to 7 hours. And yet, speeds any faster would ruin the factory's trucks because of the potholes. As a result of a serious lack of highways, factories need to locate in urban areas, making them uncompetitive because of the high rents. Elsewhere, rent control reduces investment in buildings that could house factories. A seven-employee factory that makes aluminum wire "is regulated by more than a dozen government agencies, each of which sends a separate inspector each year before issuing licenses for things as diverse as electricity use and water pollution. Many of the inspectors demand bribes." The factory's electricity costs are twice what Chinese competitors pay. Domestic firms have stopped investing. Foreign firms have taken an anywhere-but-India approach. (Check out this graph that compares foreign direct investment per capita in China, India, and Cambodia.)

It is scarcely possible to imagine worse government than what India has had for the last God-knows-how-many years. If we classify governments into two groups -- those that primarily see themselves as the only restraint on business rapacity, and those that primarily see themselves as an essential support system for business success -- it is abundantly clear -- at least from Bradsher's reference to all those government inspectors and to the terrible infrastructure -- which kind of government India now has.

India is a vibrant democracy. Her citizens must demand a reorientation of government. The business-throttling government must go, and a business-supportive government must take its place. The people must learn to harangue every administrator with a simple question: "What have you done lately to make Indian businesses more competitive?"

What to do with all the NSA data

As is well known by now, the National Security Agency (NSA) in the United States has been snooping -- without warrant -- on all electronic communication by foreigners (based on the idea that every foreigner is a potential terrorist). Now, it occurs to me that this data belongs to the American people, and they have the right to insist that the NSA extract the full fruits of this data and not use it only for counter-terrorism. For this purpose, I suggest the NSA hold a competition in which people all over the world will send in suggestions on how the data collected by the NSA should be mined for purposes other than counter-terrorism. A board of judges selected, perhaps, by the American Civil Liberties Union will rank the suggestions. The NSA will then mine the data as directed by, say, the top fifty suggestions and publish the results, without revealing any personal information. (I don't see why the NSA would object to this extra work; it would not interfere with what the NSA has been doing.)

So, what would you like to know from the NSA's surveillance stash? Would you like to know how a scientist who has just discovered something exciting expresses her excitement to a colleague? How about poems in lovers' letters? Wouldn't you like to read them (as long as the lovers' anonymity is not breached)? If you are a sociologist, would you like to know how often children email their parents and how the frequency varies with age? Would you like to know how the emigrant's heartbreak is expressed in letters back home? Would you like to know the secret family recipes that mothers send their daughters? What would you like to know about all those foreigners that the NSA sees as potential terrorists?

That Confounded Bridge Isn't Anywhere Here. It's in Brooklyn!

(Click picture to enlarge.)

This one, from this week's New Yorker, is an instant Roz Chast classic.

One more: I'm not Kenneth, and I don't know the frequency!

JSOC in Gardez, Afghanistan, in February 2010

Jeremy Scahill, an award-winning journalist for The Nation, has just come out with a new book, "Dirty Wars," and a documentary of the same name. Scahill focuses on covert operations conducted by the CIA’s Special Activities Division and the Joint Special Operations Command. At around 32:00 minutes into this interview on New York's WNYC public radio station, Scahill discusses an incident at Gardez in Afghanistan in February 2010 in which JSOC killed several civilians including two pregnant women and instead of admitting that they had made a mistake based on bad information, they dug the bullets out of the women's bodies to cover their tracks and blamed the women's deaths first on the Taliban and then on honor killings by the women's relatives. Later, the cruel facts came out and JSOC's head Admiral McRaven had to apologize.

After a Google search, all I could find was this (curiously undated) report on the ABC News web site that covers the episode as well as the gruesome cover up with the cute hook that McRaven gave the aggrieved family a gift of two sheep, following Afghan custom.

I think very few people saw even this one report at the time; I certainly did not. Many thanks to Scahill for resurrecting this atrocity from the information void.

Mitt Romney's Tax Deduction for Rafalca

The controversy over Mitt Romney's tax returns seems to have died down. Romney resolutely refused to reveal more than two years' returns and -- as he probably expected -- the media, unable to rattle the Romneys, eventually got bored, lost interest, and moved on to other matters. One of the odder aspects of the controversy was the matter of the tax deduction that Romney took for the $77,731 costs of the care and upkeep of Rafalca, the mare that competed in dressage at the London Olympics and is owned by Ann Romney and a few of her associates.

After the initial breathless reports, it turned out that the actual tax savings for Romney in 2010 was a mere $49 -- see the last line in the screen shot of Romney's tax returns in this video. However, as Janet Novack, who writes in Forbes magazine on tax issues, has reported, the $49 tax reduction that the Romneys have received in 2010 was just the beginning:

The Romneys will likely get to claim all the horse losses later, even if they never make a dime from Rob Rom—in other words, the taxpayers will end up subsidizing Mrs. Romney’s love of dressage, only on a deferred basis.

The Romneys had relatively low income in 2010 from "passive activity" (don't ask!), which explains the small deduction they received in 2010. But, if and when they earn income from "passive activity" in the future, the rest of the $77,731 deduction will come through. Here's Janet Novack again:

But you don’t forfeit the passive losses you can’t use. Instead they’re “suspended” and can be carried forward and used in future years to the extent you have income from other passive activities. Moreover, when you sell all of a money losing passive investment, any unused losses from it are liberated and can be claimed against non-passive taxable income. If Mitt wins and Ann sells her share of Rob Rom, their suspended horse losses could, for example, be deducted against Mitt’s $400,000 Presidential salary.

Aside from the media controversy over the exact amount of the tax deduction received for the Romney horse, the media coverage has focused on what all this says about the Romneys' wealth and taste for the high life. But, as far as I know, nobody has remarked on whether it was proper or ethical for the Romneys to claim this deduction.

It is clear that the Rafalca deduction was legal. But was it ethical? How can one even figure out if the deduction was or wasn't ethical?

I believe that it was not ethical for the Romneys to take this tax deduction. Look, we all know that tax codes -- long and detailed though they are -- are never written in such detail as to fully and accurately reflect the views of the legislators who are ultimately responsible for the tax code. Given that there is many a slip between cup and lip in the writing of the tax code, it is incumbent upon every taxpayer to ask himself or herself honestly, "I know that it is legal for me to take tax deduction X. But do I honestly believe that the legislators -- who probably gave some pretty rough directions to the tax law specialists who actually drafted the tax code -- really wanted someone in my position to get this tax break?" And if the honest answer is "No," then it is morally necessary that we not claim the tax deduction, even though claiming it would be legal.

To me at least, it is quite clear that US lawmakers did not intend the tax code to be used by a family with net worth upwards of $200 million to claim a tax deduction for a dressage horse's care and upkeep. I am pretty confident that even the Romneys would actually agree with me on this issue. Who wouldn't?

It is a pity that Mitt Romney seems to see the tax code as something to be gamed. Life is not merely about staying within the law; we make ethical choices at every step.

The Medicaid Contrast

I have blogged before about the puzzling lack of attention to Romney-Ryan's swingeing Medicaid cuts in the current US presidential campaign, especially in contrast to the saturation coverage of Medicare. But lately things are looking up. There is now real hope that the Obama campaign, the media, and the electorate will begin to raise tough questions on Medicaid that Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan, and like-minded Republicans will have to answer.

Bill Clinton, in his terrific speech this Wednesday at the Democratic National Convention, ripped into the Romney-Ryan Medicaid cuts and -- realizing that the needs of the poor, who do not vote, tend to take a backseat to the needs of the elderly, who do -- made a masterly attempt to get elderly voters to wake up and notice how they too -- and not just the poor -- would be squeezed by the proposed cuts.

They also want to block grant Medicaid and cut it by a third over the coming decade. Of course, that will hurt poor kids, but that's not all. Almost two-thirds of Medicaid is spent on nursing home care for seniors and on people with disabilities, including kids from middle class families, with special needs like, Downs syndrome or Autism. I don't know how those families are going to deal with it. We can't let it happen.

The press, led by Abby Goodnough and Nina Bernstein of The New York Times, has begun paying more attention.

At The Washington Post, Sarah Kliff has documented Bill Clinton's point that a big chunk of Medicaid spending goes to providing long-term care for the elderly. Ezra Klein of The Washington Post has pointed out -- with a very nice chart -- that the big difference on healthcare policy between Obama and Romney is actually on Medicaid, not Medicare:

First thing you should notice: The difference on Medicare isn’t that large. It’s 0.75 percent of GDP. And note that the spending path Ryan wants to hold Medicare to — GDP+0.5% — is the exact same spending path that Obama wants to hold Medicare to.

The difference for Medicaid and other health programs — including the Affordable Care Act — is much larger. In fact, at 2.25 percent of GDP, it’s three times as large as the cut to Medicare. So that’s the first thing you need to know: Ryan’s main cut isn’t to health care for old people. It’s to health care for poor people.

Now it's up to Obama to stop pussyfooting around. He needs to pick up the Medicaid issue and go on the attack.

Update, September 8, 2012: Sarah Kliff further documents and emphasizes that Medicaid is not 'only' for the poor; it is a sizable middle-class entitlement as well.