Subsidiarity Economics 2025. The Times more or less locally, Part 10. The killing the messenger edition.

August 2, 2025.

Eight months into the year, and our 10th edition for 2025.

Uff.

Mad King Donald fired Dr. Erika McEntarfer, the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, as he was upset by the Bureau's negative job report, which he stated was rigged.

It was rigged, of course, because facts in Trumpland are rigged if they aren't universally pro Trump.

This is likely to get a lot worse as the fact is that a lot of things Trump has set in motion are going to start having pretty negative consequences.  Likewise, some firmly held GOP beliefs on economics and science aren't going to hold up to reality.

Speaking of reality and the news, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is closing its doors due to the budget rescission.  The CPB, NPR and PBS are separate entities, but this is not a good development.

Republicans, who don't actually seem to realize the three entities are separate from each other, are rejoicing that public funding is ending for "left wing" media, by which they largely mean media that reports reality and the truth, as opposed to propaganda.

August 3, 2025

Three Kentucky distilleries, all small ones, have filed for bankruptcy within the past eight months, with the lastest coming last week.

While I haven't seen any analysis on it, distilleries were particularly worried about the Trump tariffs and, surprise surprise, booze can be made anywhere.  Canadians have pretty much sworn off of US alcohol and were actually a major market.  They make their own anyway.  Seems like Europeans might be doing so also.

And part of this is probably the impact of an artisanal whiskey boom of the last decade fading.

August 5, 2025

Proposal to address ‘nation’s worst workforce exodus’ fails to get support from Wyoming lawmakers: The Wyoming Business Council says it has more policy ideas forthcoming to address "vicious" shrinking workforce conundrum.

August 10, 2025

Some really interesting things are going on that are definitely Wyoming centric that we haven't noted, or haven't noted much, and should.

The first might be that a proposal to put in a nuclear generator construction facility in Natrona County north of the town of Bar Nunn has really turned out to be controversial.  This comes on the heels of a nuclear power plant in Kemmerer that is also controversial.

The ins and outs of the controversy are a little difficult to really discern, but at some level, quite a few people just don't like the idea of something nuclear.  It's not coal, and its not oil.  Chuck Gray, for example, has come out against this and wind energy.  Chuck hasn't worked a day in his life in a blue collar job and he's just tapping into the "no sir, we don't like it" sort of thought here.

What's going to happen?  We'll have to see.

Another local controversy is the approval of a 30 lot subdivision on Casper Mountain.  This has drawn the ire of a lot people who live on Casper Mountain, and most of it is posed in conservation or even environmental terms.

The irony there, of course, is that people who have already built a house on the mountain are somewhat compromised in these arguments.  I get it, however, as I really don't think we need more rural subdivisions in the county, at all.

On the mountain, I'd note that one of the really aggravating things that has happened recently is that last year a joint Federal/State project paved the dirt road on the backside of the mountain to the top of Muddy Mountain.  It didn't need to be done and it just encourages land rapist to built houses on the backside of Casper Mountain.

Natrona County Bans Big Trucks On 26 Roads Amid Gravel Mine Controversy

I understand the opposition here, but in context, things seem to lack consistency.

Which gets back to this, I suppose.  If a person just doesn't want development, they can say that.

What you can't do, however, is pretend that some major pillars of the state's economy are going to be here forever.  The extractive industries are basically on their way out right now.

One of the amusing things about all of this is that the MAGA hat wearers locally who are opposed to nuclear energy are facing it in part due to the current administration.

Uranium Operation Is Wyoming’s First Fast-Tracked By Trump’s New Energy Rules

August 13, 2025

Longtime Wyoming newspaper executives to buy, reopen eight shuttered newspapers: Overjoyed newsroom staff in communities across Wyoming are back on the job with pay after corporate closure laid off 30 employees.

 Trump greenlights 14.5 million-ton coal expansion in Wyoming: The newly accessible tract represents a little more than half of the Antelope mine's annual production but signals more coal mining actions to come.

Wyoming Board OKs 50% Battery Storage Increase For Laramie County Solar Project

Casper’s west-side City Brew Coffee location has reportedly permanently closed

August 15, 2025

Headline in the CST:

US producer prices surge

And the tariff chickens come home to roost.

One Of Wyoming's First Combo Agriculture-Solar Farm Can’t Find A Buyer For Its Power

Trouble north of the border, where unions remain much stronger than they do here:

Air Canada cancels flights (August 15) due to labor trouble.

Air Canada is facing a flight attendants strike and is basically starting to shut down.

Cynthia Lummis on a comment from the Treasury Secretary saying the US needs to explore ways to buy more Bitcoin:

America needs the BITCOIN Act.

No, it doesn't.  Focus on Wyoming issues and pay attention to them Senator.

August 17, 2025

Social Security Benefits Are an Estimated 8 Years Away From Being Slashed -- and the Cuts Are Even Bigger Than Initially Forecast

August 19, 2025

Federal mineral taxes are being reduced from16.67% to 12.5%.

They had been raised during the Biden Administration.

August 20, 2025

In Blockbuster $15.4 Billion Deal, Black Hills Energy To Merge With NorthWestern

August 23, 2025

Employees at Laramie's Mountain Cement voted to unionize.  They will be joining the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers.

August 30, 2025

Well, there's absolutely no surprise.  Trump's illegal tariffs were affirmed to be illegal.

D'uh.

The Court's decision starts:

The Government appeals a decision of the Court of International Trade setting aside five Executive Orders that imposed tariffs of unlimited duration on nearly all goods from nearly every country in the world, holding that the tariffs were not authorized by the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), 50 U.S.C. § 1701 et seq. Because we agree that IEEPA’s grant of presidential authority to “regulate” imports does not authorize the tariffs imposed by the Executive Orders, we affirm.

Even here, however, the Court granted a stay of thirty days on the implementation of its order, which a private litigant would be unlikely to have received, and the government shouldn't have received here.  The order should have gone into effect immediately absent the government posting a bond to cover the damages, which would be all the tariffs collected while the matter was on appeal, and all that it has already collected, which should need to be fully refunded.

But a refund won't happen and the implementation of the ruling is delayed by 30 days, so the government can appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, which doesn't actually have to take the appeal.

Whether the S.Ct upholds it, or proves to be a pure political arm of the government, is another matter.

There were three dissents in the en banc decision.

September 7, 2025

Postal traffic into the United States dropped by more than 80% after the Trump administration ended a tariff exemption for low-cost imports.

September 9, 2025

Wyoming’s massive new federal coal tract not likely to draw high bids: State and coal industry officials want a new 440 million ton coal tract offered for sale, but opponents warn lease won't benefit public coffers like years past.

Like Star Athletes, WyoTech Grads Recruited For Jobs All Over The Country 

Wyoming Wool Initiative seeks lamb donations for student program

September 13, 2025

Headline from the Trib:

Local board pulls $25M grant application to develop Radiant Nuclear site 

And

Feds fast-track coal mining expansion in southwest Wyoming

And

Court sides with Wyoming utility, rules state should have allowed higher rate increase

Related threads:

The Union Pacific is laying off carmen in Green River and may be closing the shop there.

September 24, 2025

Apparently US immigration raids have caused Michelob Ultra, which is gross, to become the most popular beer in the U.S., displacing Corona, which is gross, for the last 12 months.

September 25, 2025

From the Trib:

Wyoming unemployment falls to 3.2% in August 2025

And the Cowboy State Daily:

Gordon, Local Officials Expect Critical Budget Shortages After Property Tax Cuts

The General Services Administration is attempting to rehire hundreds of employees laid off by Elon Musk's moronic Dipshit DOGE.

September 26, 2025

More tariffs.  100% tariff pharmaceuticals, 30% tariff on upholstered furniture, 50% tariff on kitchen cabinets and bathroom vanities, and a 30% tariff on heavy trucks. 

September 30, 2025

The Trump administration plans to open more than 13 million acres of federal land for leasing for coal and provide $625 million in funds to expand power generation from coal, the latter a blatantly socialist move, but apparently Republicans are okay with Socialism now.

In Wyoming, The West Antelope III coal lease will go to competitive auction on Oct. 8.

These will prove to be carbon laden farts in a windstorm as coal will continue to decline, but the action will be damaging to long term power generation and the climate.

Cattle prices are reported to be at a record high.

October 1, 2025

Powell Valley Healthcare is shutting down its oncology services and its internal medicine clinic in Cody  as a way to remain economically sustainable.

Casper air travel should continue during federal shutdown, but ripple effects loom

 

Casper air travel should continue during federal shutdown, but ripple effects loom

October 3, 2025

Chuck Gray, Curt Meier Spar Over Renewing 50-Year Wind Leases In Carbon County

October 6, 2025

(LETTER) Bob Ide personally benefits from his property tax cuts

Last edition:

Subsidiarity Economics 2025. The Times more or less locally, Part 9. Waist Deep in the Big Muddy. It's Donald Trump's economy now.

Labels: Coal, Distributism, Economics, Errare humanum est perseverare diabolicum, Hypocrisy, Japan, Localism, Pronatalism, Subsidiarity, Taxes, The Big Ugly, The Second Trump Administration, Wyoming's boom and bust economy European Union, inflation, Taxes, The Second Trump Administration, Wyoming's boom and bust economy

A bankrupt policy. Trump shafts American consumers and does so again for 大豆

I had a draft post at the time of the last election I never published why farmers and ranchers routinely vote to have themselves shafted by voting for the GOP.  Democrats typically have farm policies that actually benefit farmers, including preserving the lands.  Republicans tend to be in favor of land rape to benefit the wealthy.

I really have no good explanation for it.

Well, no surprise, soybean farmers are getting pounded by Trump's tariff polich. D'uh.

Trump's trade battle with China puts US soybean farmers in peril

I love this quote from one soybean farmer:

“Overwhelmingly, farmers have been in President Trump’s corner,” said Ragland, the president of the soybean association. “And I think the message that our soybean farmers as a whole want to deliver is: ‘President Trump, we’ve had your back. We need you to have ours now.’”

Well, I'm a type of farmer, a livestock farmer, and frankly Ragland, screw you and the John Deere you rode in on.  You are getting just what you deserve.

Trump bets the soybean farm on tariffs | Wall Street Journal

But, have no fear, socialized farming through the GOP will come to the rescue.  Trump is going to take $10B from the national sales tax, i.e., tariffs, to bail out farmers.

So, the American consumer is getting taxed, as in the end it's us who pays the tariffs, to bail out soybean farmers.  

Good old free enterprise at work there.

Farmers are getting stiffed by Trump's taxes, and will continue to get stiffed by them, and he hopes to balance the table by handing over money the American public handed over via tariffs. 

A better plan would just be to let soybean farmers go bankrupt.  

That's way harsh, of course, but there is a certain element of justice to it.  People voted for it.  If they voted for it, you get what get and you don't have a fit.

Locally there's some of this going on, oddly enough, with nuclear energy.  I support nuclear energy, and apparently the Trump administration does as well, and of course Wyoming has uranium and once had a nuclear mining industry.

People are having a fit, including a lot of people who are diehard right wing populists.

I guess that's their right, but farmers  have no right to have the implications of a policy that Trump was very clear about implementing relieved from them.  Trump always was in favor of tariffs and made no secret about it. What did they think was going to happen?

Moreover, the "we supported you" argument is only a good one if its something unexpected.  This amounts more to political payola.

Shut Down.

As people wake up this morning on a Wednesday of a week that's proving to be a surreal tour de force, the Federal government is "shut down".

Well, kinda. . . the government never actually shuts down, but partially shuts down.

Anyhow:

Today In Wyoming's History: October 1:  2025.  The Federal government entered a shutdown due to an impasse between the Republican Party and the Democratic Party on a continuing budget resolution, although the root causes of the dispute were the overall Trump Administration's refusal to yield on any of its policies.

And, of course, this:

Wyoming Delegation Pins Likely Federal Shutdown On ‘Idiocy’ Of Democrats

"Idiocy" of the Democrats is a pretty bold claim for a group of politicians supporting a President who routinely acts illegally, and who yesterday was demonstrated to be quite senile.  It's also quite the insult coming from three politicians who have decided to completely blow off the concerns of their constituents over public lands and whom at least one basically stated that Wyomingites had the opposite view because they're stupid.  The government is shut down as the Republicans simply won't yield on anything.

Speaking of idiocy, Wyoming's dependency on the Federal Government is now a concern, something we routinely fail to acknowledge here:

Gov. Gordon ‘monitoring potential federal government shutdown,’ issues protocol for Wyoming federal workers

This contest may play out over a protracted period.  I don't expect it to resolve anytime soon.

Also, the Republicans have enough votes to pass an actual budget.  They don't need a CR. . . unless they can't get all of the Republicans to vote for a budget.

We are in big trouble.

 

Wyoming’s economic issues are more urgent than we realize

Wyoming’s economic issues are more urgent than we realize: On paper, the Equality State appears to have good annual growth, but pockets of extreme wealth skew the numbers, writes columnist Khale Lenhart.

What's the meaning of Charlie Kirk? Sometimes the light's all shinin' on me. Other times I can barely see. Lately it occurs to me. What a long, strange trip it's been

 Additional labels for:  

What's the meaning of Charlie Kirk? Sometimes the light's all shinin' on me. Other times I can barely see. Lately it occurs to me. What a long, strange trip it's been

Monday, September 3, 1945. The new Post War World.

"Japanese soldiers are shown marching through Nanking's residential section. These soldiers are still fully armed but under perfect control at all times. Photographer: Lt. Richard Loeb. 3 September, 1945."

Yeoman's Fourth Law of History.  War changes everything

This is something that somehow is repeatedly forgotten by those who advocate wars.  I'm not a pacifist by any means, but it should be remembered that wars change absolutely everything, about everything.  No nation goes into a war and comes back out the same nation.  People's views about various things change radically due to war, entire economies are dramatically changed, and of course the people who fight the war are permanently changed.

We've discussed this here from time to time in regards to specific topics, but this law is so overarching that the impact of it can hardly be exaggerated.  Every time a nation enters a war, it proposes, in essence, to permanently alter everything about itself.

On Monday, September 3, 1945, people woke up to a new world, whether they realized it or not. 

The prior day Japan, the last Axis hold out, surrendered.

May people had the day off, as it was Labor Day.

With this entry, we end our daily tracking of events 80 days in the past.  When we started tracking events 80 years ago, it was because we were coming up on the 80th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.  Events of the 1940s otherwise are not really the focus of this blog, and 80 years is an odd period to look back to retrospectively, although no odder, I suppose, than 125 years, 115, and 120 years, which this blog otherwise does, although in the context of this blog's focus, that actually is less odd.  The tacking of those other dates fills in gaps left in the focus of this blog when we started posting on the Punitive Expedition from a 100 year focus.  Just as here we failed to fill in the dates from 1939 to 1941, which were very much part of the Second World War story, we failed to fill in the dates from 1900 to 1916, which were very much part of the overall story of the event we were focusing on.

We still occasionally post events 100 years past, and 50 years past, although not all that frequently.  And we will likely catch some 80 years past when they are very significant.  Should this author make to 2030, chances are good that we'll start again with the events of the Korean War, or perhaps just three years from now with the Berlin Blockade.

For now, we're finished with the 80 years retrospectives.

We would note that things were still going on in the Second World War on this date.  The war in the Pacific sputtered to a conclusion and in a manner distinctively different from the war in Europe.  In Europe, as we have seen, there were some German formations that fought on after the German surrender, but usually because they feared being taken captive by Communist forces.  Japanese forces however were often still quite well organized in the field and had not, in many locations, been defeated.  Their surrenders were bizarrely formally orchestrated, usually featuring meetings and formal surrender instruments.  Of course, Japan had not been occupied at the time of Japan's surrender, which was not true of Germany.  

Indeed, on this day, General Tomoyuki Yamashita formally surrendered the remaining Japanese troops in the Philippines to General Jonathan M. Wainwright.  Things like this would go on for days.

Also going on for days would be the  British reoccupation of its lost colonial domain in the East.  Other nations, notably the French and the Dutch, would try the same, but they'd have to fight their way back in, and ultimately, they lost the fight.

All that is part of the story of the post war world.  Colonialism was done for.  The British would have the wisdom soon to see that, whereas the French resisted it.  

Also part of the post war world would be the rise of Communism. 

Communism had been part of the global story going back into the late 19th Century, but the Second World War boosted its fortunes, in part because it aligned itself with anti colonial movements.

The struggle between Communism and Democracy, even imperfect democracy, had already begun before the end of the war.  In some places the struggle between Communist and Anticommunist forces was long established.  The Chinese Civil War had commenced before World War Two, and it had recommenced before the Japanese surrender.  In other places, however, the end of the war brought out movements that had not been significant before.  In Vietnam, for example, the Viet Minh has declared independence prior to the Japanese surrender and were moving towards contesting the French for control of the country, something that would be interrupted by the British at first, using surrendered Japanese troops.  That a Cold War was on wasn't widely recognized to be occurring as of yet, but that it was is clear in retrospect.

The rise of the United States as a global power, something that many Americans had not wanted to occur before World War Two, had been completed by the Second World War's end.  Economically, the United States was effectively the last man standing.  1945 would usher in a post war economic world such as had not existed in modern times.  The US became the globally dominant economic power because its factories had not been destroyed, and would enjoy that status well into the 1970s.  At the same time, the US became a major military power for the first time in its history, a status which it retains.

The period from 1945 to, roughly 1973/1991, would be sort of an American golden era, albeit one with many significant problems.  The legacy of that period haunts the United States today.  From 1945 until the early 1970s nobody could contest the US economically and that meant, at home, there were always decent jobs for Americans, no matter how well educated they were, or were not.  A college education guaranteed a white collar occupation.  That began to come apart in the 1970s and by the late 1980s that was no longer true, although Americans have never accepted the change.

Indeed, that's a major problem today.  The US is controlled by those who came of age in this era, and many elderly voters cannot look back past it.  When people pine for a return of a prior era, that's the era they hope to restore.  But it was never destined to be permanent.  World War Two was so massive it destroyed the global economy, but the economy would inevitably recover, and the Cold War against the Soviet Union could never have been won by the USSR.  The economy that had come into place in the 1990s was a more natural one, and interestingly restored the global economy to the state of globalization that it had obtained prior to the First World War.

The social changes brought about by the war were likewise massive, and that's been forgotten.

Ironically, one of the most cited social claims about the war is incorrect, that being that it brought women into the workplace.  It didn't.  That had been going on for a long time, but as often noted here, it was domestic machinery that caused that change.  Having said that, the immediate post war economic boom caused a massive introduction of that machinery into homes.  People who had never owned a washing machine, for example, now suddenly did.  And with the washer and dryer coming in, trips to the laundromat, or hours spent at home working on laundry, both being "women's work", went out. They now had time to go to work. . . or school.

This, as many of the trends we noted, was something that was already occurring. The war accelerated it. Even before World War Two more women graduated from high school than men.  College education remained predominantly male, but even at that the number of female college students grew from 9,100 (21% of the total) in 1870 to 481,000 (44% of the total) by 1930, with female university attendance receiving a big boost during the 1920s.  The war, however, boosted this.  Already by the 1920s the reduction in female labor needs at home had meant that a sizable number of well off and middle class young women could attend college.  The Great Depression dampened that, but the end of the Second World War dramatically altered the situation after 1945.

Young men also began to crowd college campuses like never before.

Prior to the Second World War a small minority of men attended, let alone completed, college. In 1940 5.5% of American men had completed a bachelor's degree or higher, which was a higher percentage than women at 3.8%.  Moreover, with certain distinct exceptions, American men who attended college were part of a WASP upper class.  Indeed, the extent to which Ivy League schools were protestant institutions has been largely forgotten.  Princeton, for instance ended its Sunday chapel requirement for upperclassmen in 1935, for sophomores in 1960, and for freshmen in 1964.  Harvard, we should not, ended its chapel requirement in 1886 and Yale in 1926, but the point is that most of those who attended private universities were of a WASP heritage. This was less true, of course, of state universities, which often had a agricultural, teaching or mining focus.  

World War Two, however, changed all of this through the GI Bill, with newly discharged men heading to university.  Included in student body were Catholics, a sizable American minority, who had largely not attended university before.

The implications of this were enormous.  Women leaving homes to live on their own before marriage had really started in an appreciable degree the 1920s, although it occurred and was possible before that.  My mother's mother, had a university degree prior to that time. Large numbers of young men doing so was really new, with perhaps the only real analogy being the camps of young itinerant workers in the Great Depression.

Of course, the Great Depression had practically acclimated young men to living away from home while young, and then the Second World War certainly acclimated large numbers of them.  The new environment was large numbers of young men and young women living away from home, and from very varied backgrounds.  Co-ed students from prior to the Second World War would have found a much narrower demographic than they did after the war.

This at least arguably accelerated the blending of distinct cultures within the overall American culture, although that's always been a feature of the United States.  Having said that, the "melting pot" of American culture melted more slowly prior to World War Two.   With the war having a levelling effect on ethnic differences, they shifted notably.

Prior to World War Two, and for some time thereafter, Catholics, Jews, Blacks and Hispanics were really "others".  It's certainly the case that distinctions and prejudice remains today, but the Second World War started the process of addressing them.  Catholics fairly rapidly moved from a disdained religious minority, albeit a large minority, to part of the general American religious background, that process complete with the election of John F. Kennedy.  At the same time, however, the uniqueness and identify of many of these groups, which had heretofore been quite strong, began to dissipate.

Sudden success and sudden cultural change often has within them the seeds of their own decay and downfall.  This seems to have been much the case with the second half of the Twentieth Century as "the American Century".  Americans came to very rapidly believe that their postwar economic good fortune was due to some native genius, rather than the good luck of having been outside the range of Axis aircraft.  Rapid cultural changes that saw young Americans step right out of high school and into good paying jobs, or off to college for even better paying jobs, all while being outside of their parents homes, began to seem like a decree of nature.  Liberalization of culture yielded to libertinism of culture and an attack on traditional value.  Everything seemed headed, in the end, in one direction.

It didn't.

The destroyed nations rebuilt, and at the same time, under American influence, democracy spread.  This was a huge global success, but it also meant that the US inevitably came to a point at which it could not dominate the world's economies.  Advances in technology an globalization ultimately wiped out he heavy labor segment of the American economy while at at the same time the same developments that freed up women from domestic labor enslaved them to the office place.  The post war arrogance that bloomed in the late 60s ultimately badly damaged the existential nature of the family in ways that are still being sorted out.

The post war world started to come to an end in 1991 with the fall of the USSR.  But like a lot of things, it took and is taking a long time to play out.  We're likely in its final closing pages now, as the Boomer generation makes a desperate effort to restore a lost world, but only selectively.  Very few really want to return to the point before these developments commenced.  The ultimate question remains however if World War Two, which the country had no choice but to fight, resulted in such existential damage to the country, and the world, that much of what came before the war was not only better than what came after it, but that whether the damage of the war was so severe that it cannot be recovered.

On this day, in addition to what has already been noted, British Marines landed at Pennang.  Hirohito opened the 88th Imperial Diet.

The Red Army opened Officer's Clubs.

While we won't catalog events hence force on a day to day basis, we will look in more depth at the changes World War Two brought about, for good, and ill.

Last edition:

Sunday, September 2, 1945. Japan signs the Instrument of Surrender.

Labels: 1940s, 1945, Allies, Australia, Blog Mirror, Japan, North Vietnam, United Kingdom, Vietnam, VJ Day, World War Two

Mid Week at Work. Three Mirrors.

 This blog, as we occasionally note has the intent . . . to try to explore and learn a few things about the practice of law prior to the current era. That is, prior to the internet, prior to easy roads, and the like. How did it work, how regional was it, how did lawyers perceive their roles, and how were they perceived?

Well, okay, clearly its strayed way beyond that, but it's retained that purpose and is focused on the period from around 1900 until around 1920, which makes a lot other things, indeed most things, off topic.

But this past week there were a collection of things we ran across that really do sort of focus in on that a bit, and given us an example of how things have changed.

Taking them in no particular order, we have the story of baseball player Tommy Brown, about whom we noted:

Seventeen year old Tommy Brown became the youngest player in Major League Baseball to hit a home run.  Brown had joined the Dodgers at age 16.

Brown provides a good glimpse into mid 20th Century America.  Nobody would think it a good thing for a 16 year old to become a professional baseball player now.  Moreover, the next year, when Brown was 18, he was conscripted into the Army, something that likely wouldn't happen now even if conscription existed.  He returned to professional baseball after his service, and played until 1953 and thereafter worked in a Ford plant until he retired, dying this year at age 97.  Clearly baseball, which was America's biggest sport at the time, didn't pay the sort of huge sums it does now.

Tommy "Buckshot" Brown as born on December 6, 1927 and January 15, 2025, and gives us a really good glimpse of the world of the late 1930s and 1940s.  He'd dropped out of school at age 12 in 1939 and went to work with his uncle as a dockworker.  Being a longshoreman is a notoriously dangerous job and frankly the occupation was heavily influenced by the mob at the time.  There's no earthly way that you could be hired as a longshoreman at age 12 now, nor should there be.  But life was like that then.  My father's father, who was born in 1907, I think, went to work at age 13.  

People did that.

If you are a longshoreman at age 12, you are a 12 year old adult.

He must have been a good baseball player to be hired on in the Majors at age 16.  If that happened now, you'd have to be one of the greatest players alive in the game. But this was during World War Two, and baseball was scraping.

It was scraping as the military was.  The service had taken pretty much all the able bodied men who weren't in a critical war industry.  We don't like to think this about "the Greatest Generation" now, but by 1944 and 1945, the Army was inducting me who were only marginally capable of being soldiers in normal times.  Men who were legally blind in one eye and who were psychotic were being taken in, and I'm not exaggerating.  The recent incident we reported here of a soldier going mad and killing Japanese POWs makes sense in this context.  It's relatively hard to get into the Army now.  After World War Two men inducted were in good physical and mental shape.  By the last days of the Second World War not all were and we knew it.

Brown's story also tells us a lot about what economic life was like mid century.  Obviously, baseball didn't make Brown rich, and there was no post baseball career associated with sports.  He went to work in a factory.

Going to work in a factory, in the 50s, was a pretty solid American job, and another story we touched on relates to this.

The US War Production Board removed most of its controls over manufacturing activity, setting the stage for a post war economic boom.

The US standard of living had actually increased during the war, which is not entirely surprising given that the US economy had effectively stagnated in 1929, and the US was the only major industrial power other than Canada whose industrial base hadn't been severely damaged during the war.  Ever since the war, Americans have been proud of the economics of the post war era, failing to appreciate that if every major city on two continents is bombed or otherwise destroyed, and yours aren't, your going to succeed.

Having said that, the Truman Administration's rapid normalization of the economy was very smart.  The British failed to do that to their detriment.

Americans of our age, and indeed since the 1950s, have really convinced themselves that American Ingenuity and native smartness caused us to have the best economy in the world in the third quarter of the 20th Century, and that if only we returned to the conditions of the 50s, we would again.

Well, the conditions of the 1950s were a lot like the conditions of the post war 1940s.  Every major city in the world, save for American and Canadian ones, had been damaged, and many had been bombed flat.   It's not as if Stuttgart, Stalingrad, or Osaka were in good shape.  We would have had to nearly intentionally mess up not to be the world's dominant economy and that went on all the way into the 1970s.  The UK did not really recover from World War Two, in part due to bad economic decisions, until the 1960s.  West Germany, ironically, recovered much quicker, but in no small part due to the return of refugee German economists who intentionally ignored American economic advice.  Japan emerged from the devastation in the 70s.  Italy really started to in the 60s.  

Many of these countries, when they did, emerged with brand new economies as things were brand new.  Japan is a good example, but then so is Italy, which had been a shockingly backwater dump until the mid 50s.

Russia, arguably, has never recovered, helping to explain its national paranoia.

The thing is, however, that the myth as been hugely damaging to Americans, who imagine that if we were only whiter and had "less regulation", etc., we'd be back in 1955.  It's not going to happen, and we can't tariff our way back to the Eisenhower Era.

Of course, a lot of that post war era wasn't all that nifty. We had the Cold War, for example, and we often dealt with significant inflation, in no small part to inflate our way out of enormous Cold War defense budgets. . .which is probably a warning of what's to come when we realize we have to do something about the national debt.

Finally, we had posted on women and careers.  Well, sort of.  Anyhow, right after that we saw a Twitter post in which a young woman who posted on TikTok was being discussed for say:

I'm just so tired of living and working and doing this every single day, and having nothing — I don't know how I'm gonna get childcare when I have to work 40 hours a week because I can't even afford to feed my family as is.  I'm having medical problems. I can't even get into the doctor because X rays and MRIs are 500, let alone a colonoscopy and endoscopy that I need. Like, I can't afford anything. My doctors cancel my appointments.

This world is just not meant to be like this, we need to make change for us, for each other. Please.

She's right.

This was under the heading, on her post, of "This world is a scam".

The world?  Well, that's a little too broad.  But the modernized industrialized Protestant work ethic world of the West?  You bet.

Interestingly, one of the things she took flak for was buying some sort of baby bottle washer.  It's been a long time since there were infants here, but when there were, I recall we tended to use sort of a disposable system, not real bottles.  Having said that, I looked bottles up, and I can recall that we had some of the ones that are still offered, so I'm likely wrong.  Anyhow, washing bottles is no doubt a pain.

The irate people, who are probably generally irate simply because she had children, and therefore is not fully lashed to the deck of the economic fraud everyone is participating in, seemed to think that this therefore meant she was rich.  Not hardly.

FWIW, I looked up baby bottle washers too, and they really aren't that expensive.  They no doubt probably save time.  Time is money and of course we need to get those wimmen's out in the workplace where they can serve the machine.

Women only entered the workplace at this level in the first place after domestic machinery freed, or seperated, their labor from the house, where it had previously been necessary.  You don't see women being criticized because their house contains a vacuum cleaner, or a dishwasher, even though this is not intrinsically different.  

Indeed, this tends to be the one area where the right and the left are in agreement, and will yell about how society needs more baby warehouses, um daycares.  The left, of course, goes further and discourages having children at all, and would indeed expand infanticide if it could, one of the issues that gave rise to the culture was and the populist revolve that we're still in.  

At any rate, she's right.  The world is not meant to be like this. We made this horror, and others.  We can fix it.

Monday, August 20, 1945. Wainwright liberated.

Lt. Gen. Jonathan Wainwright, Lt. Gen. Arthur Percival, and the governor-general of the Dutch East Indies, Mr. van Starkenborch Stachouwer. were rescued from being Prisoners of War by a special American parachute detail at Mukden.  The goal was to free the POWs before the area was overrun by the Red Army.

The occupation of Mukden, as well as Harbin, in fact occurred on this day.

Anti Semitic riots broke out in Cracow, Poland.

The US War Production Board removed most of its controls over manufacturing activity, setting the stage for a post war economic boom.

The US standard of living had actually increased during the war, which is not entirely surprising given that the US economy had effectively stagnated in 1929, and the US was the only major industrial power other than Canada whose industrial base hadn't been severely damaged during the war.  Ever since the war, Americans have been proud of the economics of the post war era, failing to appreciate that if every major city on two continents is bombed or otherwise destroyed, and yours aren't, your going to succeed.

Having said that, the Truman Administration's rapid normalization of the economy was very smart.  The British failed to do that to their detriment.

British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin condemned Soviet policy in Eastern Europe as "one kind of totalitarianism replaced by another."

The trial of Vidkun Quisling began in Oslo.

The Việt Minh consolidated their control of Hanoi.

Seventeen year old Tommy Brown became the youngest player in Major League Baseball to hit a home run.  Brown had joined the Dodgers at age 16.

Brown provides a good glimpse into mid 20th Century America.  Nobody would think it a good thing for a 16 year old to become a professional baseball player now.  Moreover, the next year, when Brown was 18, he was conscripted into the Army, something that likely wouldn't happen now even if conscription existed.  He returned to professional baseball after his service, and played until 1953 and thereafter worked in a Ford plant until he retired, dying this year at age 97.  Clearly baseball, which was America's biggest sport at the time, didn't pay the sort of huge sums it does now.

Last edition:

Wednesday, August 19, 1945. Bataan I and Bataan 2.

Labels: 1940s, 1945, Aircraft, Battle of Sakhalin, Battle of Yongjiazhen (雍家镇战斗), Chinese Civil War, Chinese Warlord Era, Japan, Manchuria, Nationalist Chinese Army, People's Liberation Army, Philippines, Red Army