Things are looking up?

So, in my last post I promised that I would be blogging with greater regularity, spurred on by my brother’s gentle needling and an improved attitude about the future, or at least about the present. It turns out that I was, perhaps, premature or overly optimistic about my blogging capability.

First, our second child was born four weeks early in the second week of July. If you are a parent, you know that a new baby is highly disruptive to one’s schedule, to say the least. My brother – the one who convinced me to pick up the digital pen again – also had his second child this summer and he warned me that it is exponentially more difficult to manage two rather than one. He was right. Needless to say, fatherly duties have limited my time for writing, as well as my ability to get my head around the issues of the day. And I haven’t managed to finish any of the weighty books I started this summer either.

Second, and more significantly, the news seems to be infinitely worse than it was even a month ago. Today’s stock market slide has taken a toll on my psyche – two mouths to feed rather than one after all – but that’s hardly the worst of it. I don’t really feel bad for most of the investors who are losing so much, although I number among them, except that I can feel the psychological knock on effects setting in already. I’m no poorer than I was at the beginning of last week, but I feel somehow that I am, and this makes me think twice about prospective purchases, even those I can justify as increasing my productivity as an educator. Of course basic economics, or at least the Keynesian version I generally subscribe to, suggests that if I can afford things I should buy them, but it’s still hard to go on a spending spree when the rest of the country seems to be running out of cash.

Which of course leads to the second and ultimately more depressing piece of news. I won’t join the chorus of professional pundits who blame today’s stock market debacle on the last two weeks’ dismal display of Washington politics. Too many better writers than I can offer fuller explanations. Suffice it to say that the upshot of the debt-ceiling debate left me too depressed for words on at least two levels.

First, even though I don’t ultimately condone reckless spending, I can’t see a way out of our economic doldrums that doesn’t feature more spending. As much as I might like to see the private sector pick up the slack and start creating jobs, they don’t seem willing to do so, even though fuller employment and a more robust consumer sector is obviously in their best interests. I’d like to chalk this up to a simple collective action problem, a multiplayer prisoner’s dilemma, but it’s more complicated than that I’m sure. In situations such as this the government needs to be the employer of last resort, and it certainly seems that we are at the last resort, but Congress and the President have made abundantly clear that they will privilege creditors over debtors, the wealthy over the poor and the forces of capital over labor. This, is about as depressing as it gets for an unreconstructed New Deal liberal.

Second, the whole spectacle in Washington leaves me despairing as to how I am going to teach government class this year. The AP demands that I teach the way that government is supposed to work, but what am I supposed to do when the models I am supposed to teach clearly have very little relation to reality? Like the American people, I’ll muddle through, I suppose.

The anger and frustration born of watching too much television news and reading too many NYTimes articles has left me no room for the truly horrific stories pouring over my electronic transom. About the killings in Norway I have nothing to add: they were despicable. Crackdown in Syria? I wish I could say I was surprised. Famine in Somalia? Where to begin. At least Anderson Cooper seems to care about it. And now London is burning and the Twitterverse is acting as though LA 1992 never happened.

Basically the world is starting to look a lot like it did when I was set to graduate college in the face of a different recession and equally bleak job market. Honestly, I hope so, because things did get better after that. The internet came along and saved us, made more than a few millionaires and, in most ways, changed everything. In 1992, I would never have foreseen it. Hopefully something as unforeseen will come along soon.

Sorry for the whinging. I’m on a quest to find something positive to put up.

Long time no see

First, to those of you who actually read this blog, my apologies for not having written for so long. The reasons for my hiatus are numerous, and perhaps some explanation is in order. Initially, work took precedence over these electronic musings and the end of the school year is always busy, crammed with exams, grading and end of year reports. Then I got a bit sidetracked, resuming editing a novel that I “finished” over a year ago. Although I despise editing – any of you who have read this blog regularly will know this – I found it easier than trying to come up with something “original.” Which leads me to the most true and also most craven reason for my delinquency: I just haven’t had much to say.

There are many reasons for my reticence, but two stand out. Normally I write about the news of the day or books and articles that I have been reading. Because of the end of the school year and an overall running out of intellectual steam, I haven’t been reading much, so my arsenal of topics has been depleted. The improving weather has contributed as well; when it is warm I spend more time outdoors, often in transit, and this eats into my reading and writing time. I’ve been on vacation for the past week, and have managed to log a good number of hours reading, so I hope to have more to say in the coming weeks. As for the news, that has been a bigger problem as far as inspiration has been concerned.

For the past few months I have found the news to be unremittingly depressing. Worse than that, the stories dominating the headlines have been either too immense for me to get my head around (the European and American debt crises; continuing economic woes here at home; political posturing and paralysis in the face of persistent problems) or too trivial (the Weiner saga, the Anthony murder trial and … well I don’t even know what else really) for me to waste your time with my comments. Over the past week I’ve been in something of a television news vacuum so there are probably issues that are engrossing the nation that I’m oblivious to. Then again, maybe not.

So why pick up the metaphorical pen now? Well, I’ve finished this round of editing of the novel and will soon begin the process of shopping it to publishers (any advice on this front will be appreciated, especially if you are or know a good literary agent). The July Fourth holiday offers opportunity for reflection and, I hope, inspiration. Two of the books I’ve been reading have sparked a question or two I’m interested in and plan to write about later in the week. Really, what has stirred me out of my torpor, though, has been requests from readers, especially my brother, but also an anonymous person who commented a few days ago on one of my older posts. Knowing that you care enough both to read and to comment is incentive enough for me to write. Thank you.

Apologies too for this post appearing well after the date it was written (July 3). There’s no Internet access to speak of up here where I’m staying. More to come.

God and Mammon

I usually don’t read Andrew Sullivan’s work, for a host of reasons, and today’s installment of his blog the Dish, newly prominent on the Daily Beast/Newsweek/whatever-it-is has confirmed my convictions to keep avoiding him. I’m sure that I will wade into the health care morass from time to time in the future, but I was particularly appalled by the ridiculously high tone of Sullivan’s comparison. To wit, Sullivan seems to believe that, in making decisions about rationing health care, decisions that ultimately can result in a patient’s death, human decision-makers are playing God:

“And as the options for health grow, we are forced to make choices that were previously out of our grasp, and those choices make us, in some way, gods.”

Now if this were an offhand comment in a five or six hundred word piece, I might have let it slide. But, no, this becomes the central theme of Sullivan’s argument, as summed up in his final two paragraphs:

“We are humans; but we have no choice now but to play God. And people wonder why in Genesis, partaking of the tree of knowledge is regarded as a fall. This is our fate as truly modern humans.

I don’t really think it’s a fate we can ultimately handle.”

Overblown? Yes. Self important? Definitely. But this is not what I find so offensive about this piece. No, it’s the way Sullivan ultimately defends Congressman Ryan’s Medicare cutting proposals without acknowledging that the decisions that insurance companies make regarding who gets how much care are not dictated by any sense of godlike cosmic justice but rather are determined primarily by profit motive and the bottom line.

After praising President’ Obama’s health care initiative as the more humane approach to addressing what Sullivan calls an insoluble question, he comes down on the side of Ryan’s market driven cost cutting measures writing:

“My fiscally conservative mind sees some variation of the Ryan option as the only long-term viable one.”

Which is fine, but don’t then simply admit that such a conclusion leaves you uncomfortable because it rebels against your “Christian-informed conscience,” unless you are also going to admit that any market based attempt to address this issue will be serving Mammon much more than God.

Fish in a barrel

I promise, I’m going to stop picking on David Brooks, but really the Times should start a new column called “David Brooks is always wrong,” staffed by those who comment on his op-eds. You probably shouldn’t bother reading his piece on Paul Ryan, but you might want to just to give context for the comments, which boost my faith in the American public, or at least that segment of it that reads the Times. Oh, right. Sigh.

Vacation, all I ever wanted …

I suppose it’s a bit odd to be pointing out that I’ve been away for quite some time. Any of you who read this blog already know this. But I have been working, sort of, on a couple of essays that I hope to have posted soon. These are a little bit more personal, which may by why they are taking me so long. Stay tuned and thanks for your patience. By the way, my vacation was wonderful.

Home Cooking

I’m taking a break from writing about politics to comment on something that should be a bit lighter, although perhaps not less controversial: soccer. Specifically, Tuesday’s remarkable victory by Barcelona over my beloved Arsenal. Before you stop reading, let me say straight away that Barcelona played incredibly well and deserved their win. Arsenal on the other hand played remarkably poorly, as their zero shots on target attest. I’m not going to defend Arsene Wenger (the Arsenal manager, for those who don’t know) either because, as great as he is, he did not adequately prepare his squad for the trip to Camp Nou. On the other hand, I am sympathetic with those Arsenal fans who blame the outcome on the officiating, although for me it was not Swiss referee Massimo Busacca’s second yellow card on Robin van Persie that did the team in on Tuesday. The officials that spelled Arsenal’s downfall in Europe are Howard Webb, Mike Dean, Mark Clattenburg and all the other Premier League referees who have conditioned English players to accept a degree of physicality that leaves them unprepared to face continental opposition.

Tuesday’s game featured some impressive statistics beyond the 3-1 scoreline. Barcelona maintained possession for almost 70% of the game (this statistic and all the others I refer to come from UEFA’s official game description), but for me there were two statistics that really tell the story of the game. First Arsenal were flagged for 18 fouls to Barca’s 8. Second, out of those 18 fouls, Arsenal was cautioned with 5 cards (van Persie twice) while Barcelona received not a single yellow card. Was Arsenal twice as dirty as Barcelona? I doubt it (and the pictures floating around the internet of Barca defender Eric Abidal with his hands around van Persie’s throat do suggest otherwise), but I don’t doubt that Arsenal was more physical, lunging into tackles with greater verve and knocking Barca’s smaller players to the ground with uncomfortable frequency. This was especially true in the first half when a number of Arsenal challenges left Barca players rolling on the pitch in agony, as players often do when they try to win fouls. David Villa and Dani Alves were notable offenders in this regard. Barcelona play excellent football, and they pile up passing statistics. Once they win the ball it is nearly impossible to get it back and Arsenal did themselves no favors by constantly ceding possession to the Catalans. But drawing fouls and breaking up what little rhythm Arsenal could muster by making the most of any and all contact was part of the game plan from the beginning, and Barcelona worked the referees to perfection. They understood, and Arsenal did not, that the level of physical contact that is routine in the Premiership is unacceptable on the Continent, and they did everything they could to remind the referee that in Spain they play beautiful football, not bully ball.

Despite Arsenal’s reputation for being the best Spanish team in the Premier League, they are an English side, hardened by English standards of play that demand a level of strength, speed, and at times brutality that is rare in Europe. Playing weekly in the Premier league, they are accustomed to running through opponents and being treated the same way. All this is encouraged by English referees who are not only the custodians of the game, but also shape the way it is played. English teams are allowed to play with a physical abandon that in other leagues results in fouls and cards, and they are encouraged to it by the press, by certain managers, and especially by the referees. Put simply, plays that are fouls in Spain (or Italy or France) are not fouls in England, and this put English teams at a disadvantage when they have to play abroad. Arsene Wenger is probably the most continental of English coaches, but among his many faults is his inability or unwillingness to teach his players how to react to different game conditions, and this includes a different standard of officiating.

Why is the English game the way it is? On the field the level of physicality is largely controlled by the officials. Coaches can tell their players to “get up at” the other team and go out and “get stuck in,” but if officials call tight fouls, teams will stop their rough tactics, eventually. The more interesting question is why officials allow this type of play to go on and even encourage it. I don’t think that English football is like the NHL where violent play is encouraged as a marketing feature of the sport. Rather, the rough and tumble attitude of the referees is a reflection of what they, and many journalists, perceive as the English character. English football prides itself on its working class roots; its heroes are the hard men who played direct, no nonsense football through pain and hardship, reflecting both working-class grit and English stoicism. The best way to demonstrate the cliched English stiff upper lip is to soldier on through injury as well as insult, fighting as hard as is allowed within the rules of the game, but at the final whistle still demonstrating gentlemanly sportsmanship. The tougher the game, the greater the opportunity to show off the English temperament that brought the nation through the Blitz and beat the Jerrys. It is this martial spirit that not only appreciates a good tackle, but distrusts skill and ball control. Shifty wingers and midfield maestros are appreciated in England, but rarely loved. The English spirit of tough-minded fair play also disdains the diving and play-acting at minor infringements that often characterize European and especially South American players. In addition to his industry, one of the traits that most endears Wayne Rooney to the England faithful is the way he absorbs contact and rarely goes to ground except under extreme pressure from an opponent. I imagine this attitude towards the game, and particularly towards contact and a strong challenge, is instilled in the English player from an early age. It is nurtured by coaches and, at game time, indulged by referees. The result is a game that is fast and thrilling, one of the most popular in the world, but deficient in skill, finesse and most of all guile.

Arsenal was outplayed on Tuesday to be sure, but they were also outsmarted. Their failure, as to a certain extent was Barca’s two weeks prior in their loss in London, was an inability to adjust to different surroundings and to realize that it was not only Barcelona but also the officials who were not going to let them play the way they wanted to. This inability to adjust, to have a “plan b” as the pundits are prone to declaim, has been Arsenal’s Achilles heel for years. The lion’s share of blame must rest squarely on the shoulders of Arsene Wenger, who did not properly prepare his team to deal with adverse officiating and a Barca team that was able to play exactly as they wanted. But the journalists, managers, historians and especially the match officials who perpetuate and glorify a degree of physical play that the rest of the world does not abide deserve some ignominious credit as well.

Anyone for Class War?

I honestly hope that this will be my last post on the Midwestern public sector labor controversy. So much has already been said that I’m not sure I have much to add to the dialogue, such as it is. But one aspect of the conflict has arisen and so far defied comment: why is everyone so angry at middle class teachers?

After weeks of news coverage, it has become obvious that the issues here do not involve all public sector workers, but only a segment of them. The scrutiny and rage has settled on one particular group, public school teachers. This is perhaps not surprising, as teachers are the one group of public employees that almost all Americans know intimately. Some Americans might even harbor unpleasant memories of their teachers, but this seems unlikely to be the source of the’ anti-union animus.  In addition to their ubiquity, there are two other aspects of public school teaching that differentiate them from other public employees, one well known and the other much less so. Everyone knows  that teachers in this country generally have at least two months off each summer. They do have more vacation than average American workers, and this, coupled with a degree of job security that most private sector employees would envy — leaving aside those who are out of work and would be happy for any job at all — might explain some of the disgust being directed towards the teachers. Time off and security may be in the background, but the more vocal complaints about teachers regard their salaries, and this leads to an aspect of teachers’ employment that is less prominent. Teachers, unlike policemen, firefighters or sanitation workers, in addition to being required in many states to possess a masters degree, are ineligible for overtime pay. In other words, unlike many public employees, there is no way for a teacher to work more for extra money. From the perspective of most municipalities this is probably a blessing, because if teachers were actually paid an hourly wage, many of them would take home much, much more.

Whether a more subtle understanding of teachers’ salary and benefit structures would improve the public’s opinion of them is questionable, and obscures another more important point. In the furor over Wisconsin, the debate has centered on whether states beleaguered by debts can afford to pay their  public workers and fund their benefits, and governor Walker’s crusade against collective bargaining rights has added a further byzantine wrinkle to the disagreement. Lost in the discussion is any consideration of whether the teachers — and by extension other public employees — are really as overpaid and privileged as they are made out to be. I would suggest that they are not.

The median annual salary of a secondary school teacher in Wisconsin is $49,400 per year. Nationwide, that number rises to $55,150. (These numbers come from Wolphram Alpha, for what it’s worth). Now this is considerably higher than the median annual wage of $33,190 for all occupations, and it doesn’t include the health coverage and retirement benefits that admittedly strain state budgets further. But do these numbers suggest that teachers represent an overpaid privileged class of workers? The argument against them holds that, yes they are over-compensated, but mainly because their salaries are paid by taxes, rather than as a result of markets. It is possible that without union contracts and state legislation to protect them, freer labor markets would result in lower compensation packages for teachers (although they might also result in instances of higher salaries, and most certainly would lead to competition amongst districts for the most sought-after teachers, further straining local budgets and leading to greater educational inequities). But this, again is beside the real point which is simply this: the reason that politicians are able to describe solidly middle class public employees as overpaid fat cats is not because the state workers are paid so well, but because most private sector workers are paid so little.

Think about it for a second. Fifty five thousand dollars a year comes out to a little less than $4,600 a month, before taxes are taken out. Isn’t this, plus decent employer-paid health care and a promise of future security what we, as a nation, would like to see for all people who work in America? In their salaries and benefits, public sector employees, and teachers in particular remind us what middle class wages and benefits used to look like in America, not in the actual numbers, but conceptually. At these levels someone could be expected to save up enough for a down payment on a house, or to put away money for a child’s college, or maybe even take a vacation. That these basic aspects of middle class respectability seem out of reach for increasing numbers of Americans goes a long way towards explaining why politicians assertions that the only way to balance state budgets is to slash the wages and benefits of teachers and other public employees are finding a receptive audience, and not just among those truly privileged classes who might otherwise be asked to contribute a greater share of their earnings through taxes.

On Wisconsin, on Wisconsin!

Hot on the heels of what can only remotely be called the labor unrest in Wisconsin, Democratic legislators in Ohio and Indiana have taken to the hills attempting to avoid voting on proposals to weaken public sector labor unions in those states. The Internet (at least the sections of it that I read) are all aflame with talk of labor rights and the overarching power of teachers, policemen and firefighters.

David Brooks over at the NYTimes has a column entitled “Make Everybody Hurt” which is intended to be a level-headed explanation of how public sector unions are fundamentally different from, and more pernicious than, private sector unions, and how Wisconsin Governor Walker’s plans to strip public sector unions of their collective bargaining rights would be fine if only they applied to the unions whose membership voted Republican – the police and firefighters – and not just those unions that reliably vote Democratic. Brooks is missing the point in at least two ways.

First, he rightly explains that public sector unions differ from their private sector counterparts in that private sector workers have incentives that align more closely with their employers than do those of public employees. An autoworker’s wage and benefit demands will be tempered by the self interest of knowing that if the demands are too extravagant, the car company will go out of business, while a public employee is free to demand as much as he wants, knowing that his employer, the state, is not likely to declare bankruptcy, and that the costs of any public labor contracts will be passed on to taxpayers. But Brooks ignores the fact that these same public employees will be paying the higher taxes, and in higher percentages if their pay packages are as generous as many anti-union commenters claim. He also ignores the fact that private sector unions wage and benefit demands also place external costs on the consumers who will ultimately have to pay for them, unless the corporations that make the deals with the unions are expected to profit less as a result of paying their workers more. This seems unlikely. Now it doesn’t seem very efficient for states to pay high wages to their workers and then tax them to re-coup a fraction of the money that they spend (leaving out the thorny issue of benefits and assuming that states do collect income taxes). But having well-paid workers with benefits creates other positive outcomes for a state’s economy, namely that these workers, secure in their jobs and confident of salary increases, are likely to spend on goods and services, thus helping the employment picture in the state as a whole.

A second big problem with Brooks’ piece, and one that is more problematic for supporters of unions, is that he glosses over the really significant difference between public and private sector unions. Both unions contribute significantly to politicians in the state legislatures, probably much more to Democrats than to Republicans. But in the case of public sector unions, the contributions go to the legislators and governors who will be negotiating their contracts. These legislators and executives have a huge incentive to offer generous contracts to the state workers – wealthy public sector unions can give more significant contributions to politicians and, conversely, unhappy unions can punish politicians who refused to play ball. This is a big, unhappy problem, but it is a political one, not an economic one, and it has very little to do with questions about balancing state budgets. One caveat to this analysis (as simplistic as it is, I admit): the political power of public sector unions seems slightly exaggerated, at least in states like Wisconsin and Ohio. If they were really so powerful, or if their power was not balanced by other interest groups, it seems that state houses would be full of pro-union Democrats fighting with each other to hand out fat contracts to teachers, and this is clearly not the case.

The most unfortunate part of Brooks’ column is its title. It would have been more accurate to call the piece, “Make all the unions hurt,” or perhaps “make all the workers hurt.” Any honest assessment of the pain involved in balancing a budget would include a realistic discussion of tax increases. Taxes, unlike service cuts, do hurt everyone, although not to the same degree. If we are serious about fiscal responsibility, and if we are ready to start talking about shared sacrifice, by all means we should talk about possible cuts to services and cherished entitlements, but we also must face the reality that the quickest, surest way to pay down the debts we have right now, is to raise more revenue and, barring unprecedented economic growth, that means higher taxes.

The Wisconsin Labor Wars of ’11

According to the NYTimes today, Wisconsin has become the front line in a conflict between labor unions and Republican-run state government that draws comparisons to the current showdowns in the Middle East. Whether such a comparison is at all valuable is not something I care to consider at this point, but I’m glad to see the issue of labor rights being brought up. The way it is being brought up is unfortunate, and sadly emblematic of the state of political discourse in the U.S. today.

In a nutshell, Wisconsin, Ohio, and other states are using their current state budget crises as a rationale for curtailing the collective bargaining rights of public sector unions, most visibly the teachers unions. In doing so, these states’ governors and legislators seem to be riding a wave of public despair over out-of-control spending and anger over the perceived perquisites of public sector employees. First off, public sector employees do seem to have a sweet deal, with their guaranteed pensions and contractually guaranteed procedures that make it difficult to fire or lay off the most senior employees. I imagine that the latter factor is most galling to Americans who are struggling either to find or hold on to a job. No doubt these workers are costly and their pay and benefits must be made up through taxes or further borrowing, so taxpayers have a case for irritation. However, these rules, pay, and benefits are the results of contracts negotiated between unions and the states, and just because the states made bad deals in the past is no excuse for stripping workers of their rights to bargain collectively. Notice that what the governors are asking for are not negotiated contractual give-backs, but sweeping changes in the ability of unions to bargain their contracts in the first place. In addition, the Wisconsin governor is blatantly trying to weaken the power of the unions to build membership and, probably more significantly, to raise money from their members. While such actions are likely to reduce the power of unions in state politics, I fail to see how they will address immediate fiscal concerns.

Lost in the discussion, at least as presented by the Times, is the fact that in many states, the bargaining process between public sector unions and the states is weighed heavily in favor of the unions by legislation that ties states’ hands. In New York, for example, state law forbids pensions from ever being lowered, and teacher seniority rules are set by statute. Of course, the laws that set up the rules are and were heavily influenced by the political power of unions.  I don’t know if this is the case in Wisconsin, but in such cases, it is these laws that need to be changed, not the ability of unions to bargain in the first place. Level the bargaining playing field as much as possible and then let the state governments and the unions fight it out over what can be done. If the unions’ demands are unreasonable in light of current economic conditions, that will be found out and they will have to relent. If the public, knowing the full facts of the contracts, decides that it is worth it to them to keep their public servants compensated at current levels, they can let their representatives know. The states should drive as hard a bargain as they are able and the unions should have to fight them every step of the way. Yes, unions have a great deal of power at their disposal to make their case to the voters in that they are well funded and union members can serve as political foot-soldiers. But the states are far from helpless in the political arena. Governors have the advantage of easy access to the media and anti-union corporations surely have the capacity to match the political muscle provided by union dues.

It is certainly correct for states to say: “We’re broke, these union contracts, pension plans and benefits are killing us, so we need to re-negotiate them.” But in Wisconsin they seem to be saying: “We’re broke, and the best way to fix it is to break the unions’ ability to bargain to their advantage.” The first statement is logical, and possibly even fair, but the second is not. Let’s have a good old fashioned political fight over the issue, and, please, let’s fix the state budgets, but let’s also keep the issues in proper perspective and not confuse fiscal responsibility with political maneuvering.

Industrialization, the Internet, and the Compression of Time

Two days ago in the morning iteration of the web edition of the New York Times, there was an article (sorry for no link, but you will understand why) reporting that the uprising in Egypt was losing steam, as government supporters were harassing the demonstrators and the young Egyptians leading the movement were growing impatient with the inertia of the situation. By that afternoon a new article was reporting that Wael Ghonim had re-energized the revolt, swelling Tahrir square with protesters. The abrupt about face, at least as far as the news coverage in a single “paper” was concerned, gave me pause initially, but it shouldn’t have. This is a wired revolution and events move as fast as broadband will carry them into our homes.

The second wave of protests after Ghonim’s plea was not nearly as surprising as the first story of the day. It seemed premature for protesters to be losing patience on day fifteen of the uprising, but upon reflection it is easy to understand why. Across the globe, we live in a world where 24-hour news, the internet, and global air freight have compressed time and space, and with them our expectations. Fifteen days seems like an incredibly long time in a world where I can purchase a computer online that is manufactured in China and expect to have it arrive at my door in only three. Not only were CNN and MSNBC providing me with looping updates day after day, but I can count on at least three updated versions of whatever story I am following on the web during the course of a workday. It’s cliche to say that the constant flow of electronic news and information has fractured our attention spans, but as with most cliches there’s probably something to this. More important, however, are the expectations that a constantly refreshing news story creates — if the story changes three or four times a day, doesn’t this mean that events are actually moving just as fast?

Mubarak’s dogged refusal to leave today and the fervid disappointment it has brought forth remind me that, while historical processes have no doubt sped up, they do not move at the same speed for everyone. On Tuesday I was teaching about industrialization to my AP World history class and trying — less than successfully I fear — to make the point that the industrial revolution effectively created time as we know it. (Not an original idea at all: borne out of railroads and timetables and the need for vigorous scheduling — if anyone knows the source of this concept, please drop me a comment). As I dug myself deeper and deeper into a rhetorical hole, I hit upon the idea that not only has industrialization created time, the industrial and post-industrial age has seen time speed up. That certain phenomena such as population growth have increased rapidly corresponding with and as a result of industrialization is well known. But I would argue that historical phenomena themselves in this time period, particularly  political “revolutions”,  have become compressed, and that this process has only sped up since 1750.

Take U.S. history as an example. In the pre-industrial age it took about 150 years for the colonies to develop to such a stage that they could declare their independence from Britain (1620-1776). Then the U.S. began to industrialize. The next political revolution in American history, the creation of a modern nation that culminated with the Civil War, took about 80 years (four score and seven, to be more precise). The next phase — creation of the Progressive/capitalist state, took about 60 years, and the creation of a New Deal pseudo-welfare state took about 30 years (from 1935 to 1965). In less than 30  years (1965 to 1980) that New Deal consensus unraveled. The Reagan revolution lasted  12 years, followed by 8 years of Third Way Democrats, another 8 years of Compassionate NeoConservatism and what was supposed to be a new, young, liberal resurgence under the banner of Obama’s Hope and Change. That lasted two years. Leaving aside the head-spinning social and economic changes of the past decade, even in the most stable representative democracy the modern world has seen, political-ideological regimes have lost their stability and the pace of change would probably make the founders gape, if not shake their heads. After all, winning independence from Britain wasn’t done with the stroke of a pen on July 4, 1776, it took six years of fighting and another two to get the peace treaty worked out.

The Egyptian revolutionaries, like Obama, have the misfortune of trying to sustain a movement for change in an era that demands change be constant and shows little patience for sustained efforts of any kind. Conditioned by the relentless news cycle and the culture of page refresh, I found myself wondering why the Egyptians hadn’t achieved their goals yet. If you can’t get something done in two weeks, how can you ever expect to get it done? Ghonim’s premature (and, given recent history, poorly worded) tweet today congratulating the Egyptians on a “mission accomplished,” should remind us that impatience can be the enemy of lasting, meaningful change. Modern revolutions don’t just happen overnight. The French revolution (pretty much pre-industrial to be sure) took between five and twenty five years to work itself out, depending on how one figures in Napoleon. The Russians needed two revolutions in 1917 before the Bolsheviks took power, and another four years before they could finally settle in to rule, and that was in the context of an industrializing mega-state. Mubarak seems to understand this, which is why he is biding his time. Even though he is surely on the wrong side of history, he has seen a lot more of it than the Egyptian youths calling for his ouster. He probably understands that to be young is to be impatient, and probably never more so in our age of instant information gratification.