Let's Accept the Fact that Israel Is Not an Apartheid State

There is a certain point where you get fed up with the hyperbolic, inaccurate slogan of "Israel is an apartheid state" and the ridiculous Israel Apartheid Week events held on college campuses. With such tomfoolery, I have to begin to wonder if these anti-Israel activists actually know what the definition of apartheid is.


What is apartheid? According to the Rome Statute of International Criminal Court of 1998 (Article 7, Section 2h), apartheid is defined as "inhumane acts of a character similar to those referred to in paragraph 1, committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime." The 1973 United Nations General Assembly defined it as "inhuman acts committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them."


In short, apartheid is a de jure racial discrimination that segregates one race from another. That would mean such policies as denying a certain race to vote, making interracial marriage illegal, or barring the oppressed race from holding public office, all of which took place in South Africa. 


To say the least, comparing Israel to South Africa's past policies is intellectually dishonest to the point where it can be defined as slander. Arabs in Israel can vote, own property, be members in the Knesset (Israel's legislative branch), serve on the Israeli Supreme Court (e.g., Salim Joubran), share the same public facilities, receive health care and assistance from other state-sponsored programs, and what's more, Arabic is an official language of Israel. Judge Richard Goldstone, who was infamous for the Goldstone Commission, points out in his New York Times op-ed entitled Israel and the Apartheid Slander that much of the de facto separation amongst communities is primarily chosen by the communities themselves, and continues to say "In Israel, equal rights are the law, the aspiration and the ideal; inequities are often successfully challenged in court."   


Israeli Arab journalist Khaled Abu Toameh, an Israeli that is critical of the Israeli government, like so many other Israelis, said "to say that Israel is an apartheid state is a big exaggeration" and "I would rather live in Israel as a second-class citizen than as a first-class citizen in Cairo, Gaza, Amman, or Ramallah." The South African Interior Minister realizes that Israel is not an apartheid state. Looking at a recent poll brought to my attention by the Brookings Institute, a centrist think-tank, only 36% of Palestinians and Israeli Arabs analogizes Israel's policies to apartheid. You had a majority that were worried about discrimination in some form, which given the political climate, is to be expected. However, you couldn't even get a majority of Israeli Arabs, a people who are not happy with Israel by any means, to say that Israel is an apartheid state. 


Why can't these rabidly anti-Israeli activists in the West realize that although Israel has its own societal and institutional issues that it needs to get through, just like any other nation-state, Israel is still a liberal democracy with a free press, independent judiciary, religious freedoms, and civil and political liberties? 


I'll leave that question as a rhetorical one, at least for now. If you have issues with Israel's policies, I ask two things. First, if you are going to hold Israel to such high standards (which you shouldn't do in the first place because they are of mythical proportions), be consistent and apply those standards to every nation. Don't single out Israel because doing so reeks of anti-Semitic overtones. Second, keep Israel's policies in context, not simply in terms of the tumultuous situation in the Middle East, but in terms of what apartheid actually is. I don't mind a healthy dose of criticism, but leave the fallacious emotionalism of out the discussion; it only serves as a counterproductive force.

A Jewish Perspective on Constructive Humility

I recently came across an intriguing quote about humility that is attributed to Rav Avraham Yitzhak Kook from his book Middot HaRa'aya:

"It is impossible to achieve clarity of understanding except through humility. Humility which brings out a person's sadness is improper humility, but when it is proper, it engenders happiness, inner strength, and self-respect."

Wait a moment, I thought that humility had to do with being low and meek, especially considering that a) the word "humility" comes from the Latin word humilitas, and b) the word is associated with "humiliation" in English. For many, the word "humility" has almost a negative connotation, where people who are humble let people walk all over them like a doormat. But the Torah (Numbers 12:3) says that Moses "very humble," or ענו מאד. Moses was a great leader who had to tend to the needs of thousands of Jews. He even stood up to G-d on no less than two occasions! We don't associate great leaders with meekness, so something has to be awry with this view of humility.

Meekness leads to self-debasement, which is an extreme I am sure we would all rather avoid. Arrogance is also an extreme because such conceit leads to a narcissistic, hyper-inflated ego that is not based on reality. Both self-debasement and arrogance are extremes. The former is an extreme of modesty, whereas the latter is an extreme of pride.

So what is humility?

As Alan Morinis points out in his book Everyday Holiness (p. 50), "Humility is not an extreme quality, but rather a balanced, moderate accurate understanding of yourself that you act on in your life. That's why humility and self-esteem go in hand." Humility is a balancing act between one's modesty and one's pride. 

With this definition, connecting humility to something such as happiness considerably makes more sense. Humility brings you self-knowledge, which brings about self-awareness. By being self-aware, you have a healthy, intact ego. You know who you are, from where you came, and to where you are going. Knowing yourself and being honest with yourself means you are not prone to having distorted views about yourself or others. Things such as flattery or other people's approval will have no power because you already know where you are, which means you are less dependent on what others think of you because again, you are already aware. 

A practice I have found to be effective in cultivating such humility is from Rabbi Simcha Bunim of Pshischa. He carried two notes, one in either pocket. The first said "I am dust and ashes (Genesis 18:27)." The second said "For my sake alone was the world was created (Mishna Sanhedrin 4:5)." We balance ourselves between knowing that in comparison to G-d, who is Infinite Oneness, we will not be here that long, and knowing that because we are created in His Image, our lives have meaning because we have purpose to fulfill. This near-paradoxical concept is what keeps me more balanced. I know that I should not pretend to be greater than I am, but not deny that I my self-worth. It is the sort of self-truth that we can all cultivate in order to lead more constructive lives. 

Using Economic Indicators to Assess Obama on the Economy

It's no secret. I'm not what you would call an Obama fan. I don't like his Keynesian "spend and tax" policies. I don't think he should be bailing out banks or auto companies. It would be nice to objectively quantify what sort of job that Obama has done since in office. That is what the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) endeavored to do in a recently published article, "The economic case against Obamanomics in 13 charts." Although AEI is a right-leaning think-tank, and thus has not been pro-Obama, I think that looking at economic indicators to assess Obama's economic progress is a worthy undertaking.

The first chart that AEI shows is one showing the change in unemployment from the start of recovery. My main issue with their chart they have is when they show the recovery from the 1981 recession. The people at AEI seemed to have forgotten that the 1980 recession was a double-dip recession. Whether it was intentional or not, only including the second dip is misleading. I modified the chart (see below) to reflect the change of the 1980 recession. Not only was the 1980 recession a slow recovery, but heck, even the 2001 recession, which was not that deep in comparison, took a while to recover when considering unemployment.

The second chart used is the U-6 unemployment, which accounts for underemployment in addition to unemployment. In the beginning of 2008, the amount was 9.2%. Currently, it's at 15.1%. However, these numbers do not adjust for the AEI's fifth chart, which is the percentage of citizens in the labor force (see below).

Although some people might have retired, the most probable explanation is that most people have given up on finding employment, which makes sense given the increased average duration of unemployment (see below).

Even if you look back at the beginning of when such data were collected, we are experiencing an unprecedentedly high mean. What has caused people to be unemployed for longer? The most probable answer is that businesses are hesitant to take on new labor. There can be multiple causes of such hesitation: ObamaCare, uncertainties created by the government (e.g., temporary, as opposed to permanent, tax cuts), the unease that business owners feel because the perception that Obama is anti-business, businesses have learned to do more with less, more manufacturing jobs being shipped overseas. Who knows? Causation is not clear here, which means as much as I'd rather not say it, this increased unemployment mean is not automatically Obama's fault.

But let's not just look at unemployment rates. How about GDP growth? It is clear that GDP growth is lower on average in comparison to other recessions in the past sixty-some-odd years. Let's take the data at face value. You still run into the issue that the GDP has enough components to complicate establishing causation. 

Debt as a percent of GDP is another big issue, one that has me worried. White House projections have the debt as percent of GDP rising ever higher (p. 58). As tempting as it might be to "blame Obama first," is that fair to Obama? In this instance, no. The two biggest programs that are only going to grow over time are Social Security and Medicare. These two programs were a well-established part of the American entitlement system long before Obama became president. While it is true that Obama is ideologically disinclined to eliminate or downsize on either program, would it matter even if he were? He'd still have to get past the political obstacles (i.e., the senior citizens that want these programs and the politicians that pander to this ever-growing demographic). 

The final chart, which I can blame on Obama, is the one that shows what would have happened if we hadn't passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan (ARRP), which was Obama's most infamous stimulus package. Didn't he say that if we passed ARRP, unemployment wouldn't exceed 8%? Oh yeah, he did. Whoops! That clearly didn't happen. Keynesian economists will gripe that either the stimulus was not large enough or that it has yet to fully come into fruition. Being a libertarian, it shouldn't be a surprise that I view both of those explanations as lousy excuses to explain failed Keynesian economics. It would be nice for Obama to try something a little more free-market oriented in lieu of stimulus packages, but I won't hold my breath.

Concluding Thoughts: The economy is an extremely complicated organism. So many factors go into it that causation is anything but simple to discern. Let's face it. Obama inherited a mess. To blame Obama for the 2007 recession is like blaming Bush for the 2001 recession or crediting Clinton with the Internet bubble. Obama did not cause the recession to take place, but his policies do affect how quickly of a recovery the economy has. 

We forget all too easily that Congress is the branch that legislates, hence why it's called the legislative branch. Congress enacted ARRP, Dodd-Frank, and unemployment benefits into law. I do also keep in mind that Obama is the head of the executive branch and did sign off on these laws, so it's not as if he's off the hook. 

Obama should be blamed for what he did or didn't do, nothing more and nothing less. And it's hard to quantify the percentage of blame that Obama deserves. There is no doubt in my mind that he has done enough damage to slow down economic growth. However, I ultimately have to conclude that a) some of these indicators have nothing to do with Obama, but b) even the ones in which Obama did play a role, he certainly was not the only actor to impede economic growth.

Does The Israeli Fence Bring About Peace?

You would think that the topic of the Israeli security wall on its borders is passé, but the people at Procon.org decided it was important enough to resurrect the debate, so I might as well give a brief overview.

Why build a fence in the first place? A fence either keeps people in, such as a prison fence, or it is meant to keep people out. In this instance, Israel built a wall because of the latter, because they wanted to bring an end to the huge amount of terrorist attacks that were occurring back in the early 2000s under the Arafat regime. The result? A huge reduction in terrorist attacks. The construction had absolutely nothing to do with oppression and everything to do with a legitimate security concern. But that never stopped the United Nations from giving Israel a hard time, not that I actually care what the United Nations think....might have something to do with their anti-Israel bias.

Let's get back to the fundamental question: does a security fence bring peace? No. It brings about security. That is its function, and it has done quite a nice job at succeeding. Do you think that there is going to be peace between the Israelis and Palestinians if they took down that fence today? Of course not! Because much like the land disputes, it's not the root issue. As Golda Meir put it, it's because the Palestinians hate the Jews more than they love their own children. Not even the "moderate" Fatah recognizes Israel's existence. If you can't even recognize Israel's existence, how can you even begin a peace process? You don't make peace with your enemies; you make peace with your former enemies. When hatred for Israel stops being a Palestinian norm, then there will be hope for peace. But until such an event takes place, Israel might as well protect its citizens while this stalemate is perpetuated.

Does Obama's Corporate Tax Reform Impress Me?

I love how this is the question that is going to keep me up tonight, well, at least until I answer the question. Obama's plan is to reduce the top corporate tax rate from 35% to 28%, and the effective rate for manufacturing will be lowered to 25%. Given that I'm libertarian, my ears perk up when I hear the words "tax cut," especially since America has one of the highest corporate tax rates amongst the OECD nations. Historically, the United States has had a varied corporate tax rate (see IRS data). The proposal does not put it as low as the 1% it was during the early 20th-century, but at least it's not as high as the 52.8% as it was in the late 1960s.

However, I do have to put this in context. First is that Democrats haven't exactly been the most ardent supporters of tax cuts. The second is that a tax cut is not in line with Obama's ideological stance. The third is that it's a re-election year, and anything that the incumbent does around re-election is thus suspect. Do I have good reason to be suspect of this tax reform?

I see this tax deduction is nothing more than misdirection from the fact that Obama is also raising the dividend tax, not to mention the imposition of a "minimum foreign tax." Also, as Cato Institute tax reform expert Dan Mitchell points out, the government already forces the government to overstate its income, which is not addressed in Obama's tax reform. Although Obama is addressing the need to close loopholes, he fails to address the complexity of the tax code, which is in dire need of simplification. Interestingly enough, an OECD study stated that not only is tax complexity harmful, but the corporate tax is especially harmful to a given economy (re-affirmed by the Tax Foundation, although I do have to wonder if this particular study proves causation if the R-squared is only around 0.24).

It would have been nice to see revenue-neutral tax reform or a further tax reduction. One has to keep in mind that this rate does not even include state-level corporate taxes. In Europe, the total corporate tax rate is only 23%. If those in Europe who are all for the social welfare state have at least enough common sense to keep the corporate tax rate low, you would think that America would. How else do you expect America to maintain its competitive edge when its corporate tax rate is still above average?

Obama attempted to address the root cause, which is the corporate tax rate needs to be lowered. However, Obama's plan did not do enough to solve the problem, and as such, I'm anything but impressed.

How Dependent Are Americans on Government?

When the New York Times publishes an article on the extent of government dependence, that's when you know that you have to begin wondering just how dependent the average American has become on government. What does it mean to "be dependent" on government? How do we measure dependency on government?

The Heritage Foundation recently put out the data in their 2012 Index of Dependence on Government. It is tempting to scream "right-winged bias." I'm not a happy that Heritage Foundation only included federal income taxes in its assessment with tax burden or that it does not put the growth of expenditures in terms of 2012 dollars.  But just remember that with the aforementioned NYT article, there was an interactive map that came to the same conclusion: Americans have become increasingly dependent on government.

As Heritage Foundation points out, the programs that create dependency account for seventy percent of our budget! The two largest programs are Social Security and Medicare. Considering the rise of retiring Baby Boomers, it should be no surprise that these expenditures will only increase with time, not only as a dollar amount, but also in percentage of the federal government's budget.

What makes these programs even worse is these two entitlement programs are not predicated upon economic status, but age. This is a point that the Center of Budget and Policy Priorities, a Left-leaning think tank, illustrates, which is that the "middle class" is benefiting way more than perceived. That makes sense given that Social Security and Medicare are the large percentage of these "entitlement expenditures." I know what the CBPP is trying to do. They want to demystify the Republican adage of redistribution of wealth. However, this does not help the Left's cause because they go on and on about how we need these programs to help the poor. If that is not what is really going on, all that the CBPP study does is give libertarians such as myself the reaffirmation as to why such programs are not needed.

Look at Social Security. The original purpose of Social Security was a temporary safety net created during the Great Depression to make sure that elderly citizens weren't dropping dead en masse. Now, the government is treating the program as "guaranteeing" a retirement account to American citizens, much of the funding that helps the "middle class." Considering the rising costs, scaling back on Social Security and encouraging private retirement accounts (PRAs) would be the way to go.

Although Social Security and Medicare are two programs that create a huge degree of dependency at a great fiscal cost, I'm not solely worried about that. What about housing? Or higher-education subsidies? Federal employees notwithstanding, approximately one in five citizens are dependent on the government.

I know of people who would play the emotional card on me here and say that I don't care about others, that I want the elderly to die, or I don't want young adults to receive a good education because I either want virtually every government department either scaled back or eliminated. But let's look at a department such as the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, also known as HUD. The department was created back in 1965, which was also the same year that the legislation that created Medicare passed.

It makes me wonder. Was there no healthcare prior to the creation of Medicare? Prior to 1965, was there no interim housing for those who were temporarily down on their luck? Of course not! For my friends who are enamored with Big Government, it must be difficult to imagine a world in which there is not a bureaucratic entity that attempted to regulate and provide everything. However, prior to the creation of these programs, mutual-aid, religious, and educational organizations provided poor people with such needs as temporary housing, welfare, and healthcare.

But now? We live in society with such a self-entitlement mentality that many expect the government to not only solve problems, but provide citizens with everything, i.e., a "welfare state." It's not simply a matter of the welfare state being a costly endeavor. Dependency stymies progress and growth, both for the individual and the society as a whole. The trend of this country is clearly heading in a direction towards increased dependency. If we are to reverse this negative trend, it begins with changing the minds and hearts of the American people.

Was the Right-to-Work Bill a Victory for Indiana?

As of yesterday, Indiana became the first state in the "Rust Belt" to enact right-to-work (RTW) laws, as well as the 23rd state in the Union to do so. It's the first time in about a decade that such a bill has been passed. One thing is for certain: Big Union is throwing a hissy fit.

Although the bill has become law in Indiana, it begs the question of whether Indiana did the right thing.

Unions complain that it will cause a "free rider" issue. If such an issue exists, then union members would be disincentivized to pay union dues, thereby causing erosion of unions. However, it does not seem out of the realm of possibility, especially in a policy-making sense, to create some sort of mechanism in which non-union members would not derive benefit from any union negotiations. Plus, the Supreme Court prohibits free riding under Consolidated Edison Co. v. NLRB (1938). 

I have this bigger issue with forcing people to be part of a union. It's a violation of freedom of association, as well as dictating whether someone should have their hard-earned cash go towards union dues. If there is a reason that an individual does not want to be a part of a given union, they would either have to "grin and bear it," leave their profession, or leave their state to find a job in a right-to-work state. There might be a reason why nearly three in four Americans has a problem with it.

There are also questions to consider that go beyond fairness, mainly that of efficacy and whether this causes more [economic] harm than good.

The unions complain that workers make less than non-union workers, thus making a "right-to-work" bill a "right-to-work-for-less" bill. The Economic Policy Institute, a Left-leaning think tank, argues that it also has detrimental effects, particularly in private-sector pension funds. Do keep in mind that only 6.9% of private sector workers are in unions, not to mention the average American's propensity towards dissavings, so it's hard to see how that has much bearing. Interestingly enough, their 2011 study shows that states with RTW laws have lower levels of unemployment than states without such laws (8.6% and 9.6% respectively), as well as lower costs of living.

The libertarian think-tank Cascade Policy recently just put out a study as to how implementing RTW laws would be good for Oregon, although much of the data would be relevant for any other non-RTW state. The study looks at various macroeconomic effects of RTW laws, including impact on employment and income growth.

Looking at the data, I think that Indiana will be better off for enacting RTW laws. But it'll depend on what your take on the data is or how you perceive unions. Either way, it'll be interesting to see if Indiana's economy improves.