Monday, September 14, 2020

Au Revoir, Robert J. Samuelson

 For quite a few years not so long ago I was regularly posting here variations on "Today is Monday, so on the WaPo editorial page Robert J. (not related to Paul A.)* Samuelson is calling yet again for Social Security benefits to be cut," and he did indeed do that very frequently over a long time.  However, today was his final column for the Washington Post, so we shall no longer have RJS to kick around, sob! It was titled, "Goodbye, readers, and good luck - you'll need it."  There is also a letter to the editor from former publisher, Donald Graham, praising RJS and reminiscing knowing him as a freshman in 1962 at Harvard.  Graham noted RJS eschewed a nominal non-partisan position and studied and thought hard about his columns, even as Graham himself disagrees with some of RJS's long held positions, noting in particular RJS's longstanding support for privatizing Amtrak.  He also noted, as RJS himself stated in this final column, he is not an economist; he has merely reported on economics for a long time, starting at the Post in 1969 and columnizing on economics since as far back as 1977 in various venues.

I also disagree with RJS on privatizing Amtrak, although this is not a topic he has written much in recent years, although he did mention it in this final column.  I would argue that he has ignored that governments fund highways, which gives vehicles a competitive edge on trains, which governments do not provide or support.  So I certainly see a case for government aid to railroads, with Amtrak certainly one of the more heavily used lines in the nation.

I should note what RJS spent most of his last column writing about. He argues the biggest story of his career has been "the rise and fall of macroeconomics."  But then he turned to economists. Much of it is on the money.  He says some nice things about us in general: "With some exceptions most are intelligent, informed, engaged and decent." But then we have been wrong about a lot of things, such as deciding at various points that recessions will never happen again, although RJS admits that he did not recognize the housing bubble or foresee the Great Recession (some of us here or associated with us here did, but RJS largely ignored us). He also accurately notes that many economists take stronger positions than they might otherwise out of a desire for power and position in this or that administration, and also claim to have more influence on the economy than we do.  And then he notes the unwillingness of most to change their minds after a certain point, something he himself exhibited on some of his more strongly held views.  

Of course the one he pushed so hard for so long that I and some others of us bashed him for repeatedly was indeed his constant refrain to cut Social Security benefits, with a final swing at this in general terms in this final column: "From 2010 to 2030, the elderly's share of the population (65 and over) is projected to rise from 13 percent to 20 percent. Spending on Social Security and Medicare will skyrocket, and already is. Yet we have done little to prevent spending on the elderly from squeezing the rest of the federal budget."  So, there we are; it is Monday and yet again, if for the last time, Robert J. (not related to Paul A.) Samuelson is calling for cuts in Social Security benefits!

Of course this statement took its more general form, throwing Social Security and Medicare in together.  I must grant that this time he left them together and did not pull Social Security out separately as he did so many times in the past.  But this was an old trick: point at rising trends in spending in both, which we know are much more due to rising Medicare costs, which are driven heavily by longterm rising medical care costs in general, but then he would pivot to focus on calling for cuts in Social Security benefits.  This seem to reflect an old view that "nothing can be done about medical care politically" (despite Obama passing the ACA with much effort), but that somehow a compromise was politically possible on Social Security, reflecting a memory of Reagan and Tip O'Neill cutting one in 1983 with the Greenspan Commission, which raised taxes and cut benefits for Social Security.  The idea that another round of this was needed was pushed by Bill Clinton in the 90s, and several bipartisan commissions were formed to pull it off, but somehow they all ran into political problems. It became this established delusion in various VSP circles that such a deal should be made, and it has remained entrenched on the WaPo ed page with Fred Hiatt and others, not just RJS. 

I must note that while I beat up on him relentlessly over this matter, I have done so less in the last few years.  It is not that he changed his mind, but he wrote about it much less.  He noted in this final column that he is "repelled" by Trump, and so I found myself much more frequently agreeing with him as he would criticize Trump economic policies ranging from his "help the rich" tax cuts through his trade protectionism to his awful environmental policies.  He would occasionally reprise these old views to maintain his independence, but much more of this attention was focused on the Trump policies.

A final point he made that has me thinking personally is that a reason he gave for retiring now, even as so much is going on, is his feeling of being "a man of the 20th century, but we are now facing the problems of the 21st century, which demand new policies and norms."  This may well be a major factor for him, with indeed his views on Social Security really seeming left over from the 1990s.  As he is just a few years older than I am, it makes me think that the same could be said of me, perhaps.  But I did see the housing bubble and the Great Recession.  I think I shall stick around for some more time.

*Regarding people related to the late Paul A. Samuelson or not but with the same name commenting on economics, it should be noted that Paul's son, William F. Samuelson, is fairly respectable economist who has published on risk and auctions and some other topics, now an emeritus prof from the Management Dept. at Boston University.  He does not share the last name, but the prolific and prominent Lawrence Summers is Paul Samuelson's nephew.  There is also a non-relative, Larry Samuelson, a highly respected evolutionary game theorist at Yale University. In any case, Robert J. Samuelson is neither related to Paul A., nor has he been an economist, although he is probably a better non-economist economist than some others who pose as one, such as say Larry Kudlow.

Barkley Rosser

33 comments:

Anonymous said...

https://cepr.net/robert-samuelson-hangs-it-up/

September 14, 2020

Robert Samuelson Hangs It Up
By DEAN BAKER

Robert Samuelson, the Washington Post columnist who has provided so much material for this blog over the years, announced * his retirement today. I’ll take this opportunity to agree with a couple of points he made in his final column.

Samuelson notes the work that Treasury secretaries Henry Paulson and Timothy Geithner, along with Federal Reserve Board Chair Ben Bernanke did to combat the Great Recession, and then says “but that doesn’t excuse their failure to anticipate the housing boom and to preempt the bust.” This is absolutely right.

The fact that house sale prices had risen in an unprecedented manner, with no corresponding rise in rents, and at a time when vacancy rates were hitting record levels, should have been the sort of thing that even a top economist could notice. The fact that this bubble was driving the economy was also easily seen in a quick glance at the quarterly GDP data. There was no excuse for failing to recognize the bubble and the failure to realize that its collapse would sink the economy.

Unfortunately, Samuelson also gives this trio credit for avoiding a second Great Depression. That’s just a fairy tale they tell to children to justify shoveling hundreds of billions of dollars to the richest people in the country, to save their banks from their own incompetence. There is nothing about the situation in 2008-09  that would have forced us to endure a second Great Depression. We know the secret of getting out of a depression. It’s called “spending money.”

While the initial downturn surely would have been worse if we allowed the market to work its magic on Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, and the rest, there is no economic reason we could not have boosted the economy back to something close to full employment in 2010 with a big spending package. There are of course political issues, but that is rarely how this debate is framed.

The other point I want to endorse is Samuelson’s complaint that economists (present company included) exaggerate their ability to steer policy to achieve desired outcomes. This can lead to seriously flawed policy and a disillusioned public. Of course this exaggerated confidence is a rationale for economists’ six-figure salaries. It is the reason that they get paid so much more than custodians and dishwashers. (It ain’t the market, as I argue in Rigged - it's free. ** )

But you won’t find a column saying that in the Washington Post. It hits too close to home.

* https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/09/13/robert-samuelson-goodbye-column/

** https://deanbaker.net/images/stories/documents/Rigged.pdf

Anonymous said...

https://twitter.com/paulkrugman/status/1305840464910790672

Paul Krugman @paulkrugman

State and local governments spend most of their money on health and education; health spending is going up, not down, in a pandemic. So the fiscal crisis will largely hit education — and the future

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/covid-medicaid-enrollment-increases/2020/09/14/84b6249a-e6f1-11ea-97e0-94d2e46e759b_story.html

Medicaid rolls swell amid the pandemic’s historic job losses, straining state budgets
Nevada serves as a cautionary tale, with a 13.5 percent increase in enrollment.

8:06 AM · Sep 15, 2020

Anonymous said...

https://twitter.com/DeanBaker13/status/1305865022879551493

Dean Baker @DeanBaker13

Your monthly reminder that people here, not China, are paying Donald Trump's tariffs

https://bls.gov/news.release/ximpim.t07.htm…

(price of imports from China are down just 0.3% over the last year)

9:44 AM · Sep 15, 2020

Anonymous said...

https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-09-15/China-s-COVID-19-vaccine-could-be-ready-for-public-in-November-expert-TOilOKqqw8/index.html

September 15, 2020

China's COVID-19 vaccine could be ready for public in November: expert

Wu Guizhen, the chief biosecurity expert from China's Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said on Monday that ordinary Chinese residents could start receiving COVID-19 vaccines as early as November, adding that the current Phase III clinical trials have been going smoothly.

China has been leading the world in research and development of a vaccine against COVID-19. Nine vaccines have entered Phase III of clinical trials around the world, and five of them are being developed by China, according to Wu.

Wu said that the novel coronavirus is a high-risk virus and needs to be produced in a negative pressure environment. Experts from the health commission departments are now intensively reviewing production workshops. Two have passed examination and approval, and a third is being evaluated....

Anonymous said...

https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2020-china-solar-giant-longi/

September 14, 2020

The Solar-Powered Future Is Being Assembled in China
The solar supply chain is punishingly cheap, and Longi dominates it like no one else.
By Bloomberg

On a recent morning in central China, workers in blue jumpsuits and white masks placed clamps around a bar of shiny metal and fed it into a powerful cutting machine. The bar was an ingot made of polysilicon, a heavily refined cousin of the same material that makes up sand. Inside the cutter, it was sliced into thousands of small squares slightly larger than a CD case and thinner than a thumbnail. These wafers would then be shipped on to other factories to be infused with conductive elements such as phosphorous and boron, then wired into cells and assembled into panels—the base unit of solar energy generation.

The owner of this factory, Longi Green Energy Technology Co., is the world’s largest producer of solar wafers and the world’s largest solar company by market value. As of the end of last year it created about 1 of every 4 wafers made anywhere on the planet, and since then it’s announced at least five projects to expand its factories or build new ones. Despite a pandemic that may slow the growth of new solar power installations for the first time in decades, Longi expects its production capacity by the end of 2020 to have increased by two-thirds compared with 2019.

Longi and the other Chinese companies that dominate solar—collectively they control at least 60% of global capacity for every step in the supply chain—are playing a risky game. The short history of the solar industry is a tale of repeated boom and bust, with abrupt technological and policy developments rendering multibillion-dollar investments obsolete. Industry leaders one day have, again and again, become bankruptcy filers the next....

Anonymous said...

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/15/business/economy/poverty-record-low-prior-to-pandemic.html

September 15, 2020

U.S. Poverty Hit a Record Low Before the Pandemic Recession
The share of Americans in poverty in 2019 declined and median incomes were the highest on record, a Census Bureau report showed.
By Jeanna Smialek, Sarah Kliff and Alan Rappeport

WASHINGTON — A record-low share of Americans were living in poverty, incomes were climbing, and health insurance coverage was little changed in 2019, a government report released on Tuesday showed — though the circumstances of many have deteriorated as pandemic lockdowns and industry disruptions have thrown millions out of work.

The share of Americans living in poverty fell to 10.5 percent in 2019, the Census Bureau reported, * down 1.3 percentage points from 2018. That rate is the lowest since estimates were first published in 1959.

Household incomes increased to their highest level on record dating to 1967, at $68,700 in inflation-adjusted terms. That change came as individual workers saw their earnings climb and as the total number of people working increased....

* https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2020/income-poverty.html

rosserjb@jmu.edu said...

I find it curious that Dean Baker is giving credit to RJ Samuelson on recognizing that "the trio" failed to see the housing bubble and impending broader bust, but somehow Dean does not mention (as I did) that RJS himself also did not see it coming. Both Dean and I did, along with some others, as I also noted.

I happen to disagree with Dean about the bank situation in 2008. He accepts that if there had been no "bailouts" for the banks, the initial decline might have been worse, but he seems to think (and long has argued) that it would have been no problem simply liquidating all those banks and paying off the depositers. It is true that depositers would have been covered, although many not for all they had in the banks, but the likelihood of a broader and longer financial crash preventing a recovery he largely dismisses. This was what happened in 1931, although with no coverage for depositers, and it was what put us into the Great Depression, and it was the awareness of that which motivated Bernanke in his actions. I seriously think Dean is and has been pollyanna on this matter.

Actually the most crucial action done by the trio, really Bernanke largely, was not the bank bailouts, which came later and may have been less important. What really mattered, and I know Dean is aware of this, although he has rarely if ever commented on it in print, was during the immediate aftermath of the collapse of Lehman Bros. about this time of year in 2018. There was a near collapse of the major banks in Europe, with the ECB unable to manage the matter and with the euro collapsing. The fed stopped it in its tracks by taking on about $600 billion in eurotrash debt, which was then gradually worked off over the next six months or so, largely replaced by mortgage-backed securities.

This was very unpublicized as Bernanke and crew did not want people to panic, a much more reasonable time to engage in such obfuscation than Trump and his downplaying the coronavirus in February of this year. They pulled it off, and by the time that euro debt was off the system was largely stabilized, partly also due to other actions, including those Dean does not approve of. But the crucial save that kept us from another Great Depression was this unpublicized mid-September save of the European financial system, which avoided a 1931-style full-scale international financial collapse. That is when Bernanke at least, aaved the world from another Great Depression.

rosserjb@jmu.edu said...

BTW, I do not remember Robert J. Samueldon ever writing about that matter or evincing any awareness of what really went down and how we were saved then, although he may have been aware of it. But he was so busy calling for "reform" of the social safety net, even in the midst of the Great Recession, that he somehow missed the real story on the Great Recession itself, aside from the obvious-after-the-fact stuff about the housing bubble.

Anonymous said...

Actually the most crucial action done by the trio, really Bernanke largely, was not the bank bailouts, which came later and may have been less important. What really mattered, and I know Dean is aware of this, although he has rarely if ever commented on it in print, was during the immediate aftermath of the collapse of Lehman Bros. about this time of year in 2018. There was a near collapse of the major banks in Europe, with the ECB unable to manage the matter and with the euro collapsing. The fed stopped it in its tracks by taking on about $600 billion in eurotrash debt, which was then gradually worked off over the next six months or so, largely replaced by mortgage-backed securities.

This was very unpublicized as Bernanke and crew did not want people to panic....

-- Barkley Rosser

[ Really fine essay and comments. ]

Anonymous said...

What should not be overlooked about 2008 and the collapse of Lehman Brothers, is that the bank overwhelmingly facilitated corporate bond purchases and sales and suddenly the bank was gone. The corporate bond market needed to be immediately stabilized to avoid intolerable interest rate swings and that is what the Federal Reserve and Treasury did.

Anonymous said...

https://twitter.com/paulkrugman/status/1305506522441699333

Paul Krugman @paulkrugman

I haven't seen much reporting on Israel's coronavirus disaster. But it shows how easily gains can dissipate if you get careless; and now they're entering a second lockdown

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Eh4XOAWWoAE0MRz?format=jpg&name=small

9:59 AM · Sep 14, 2020

Anonymous said...

September 15, 2020

Coronavirus

Israel

Cases   ( 164,402)
Deaths   ( 1,147)

Deaths per million   ( 125)

-----------------------------------

July 4, 2020

Coronavirus

Israel

Cases ( 29,170)
Deaths ( 330)

Deaths per million ( 36)

Anonymous said...

Having apparently approached a containment of the coronavirus, the Israeli government incautiously opened schools and businesses, and the result has been a persistent community infection spread contributing to what are now 164,402 cases in the small country as compared to 85,202 in all through all of mainland China.

Beyond the mistake of the incautious opening, the need is to look to what was obviously an unanticipated institutional public health or healthcare system weakness in Israel.  Determining how the Israeli healthcare system should be strengthened, could serve as a model.

Anonymous said...

September 15, 2020

Coronavirus

Dominican Republic

Cases   ( 104,803)
Deaths   ( 1,998)

Deaths per million   ( 184)

Cuba

Cases   ( 4,803)
Deaths   ( 108)

Deaths per million   ( 10)

Anonymous said...

While the Dominican Republic has been the fastest growing country in Gross Domestic Product per capita in the Western Hemisphere since 1971, Cuba has been continually and fiercely sanctioned economically by the United States through these years.  However, Cuba has constructed a distinctly superior healthcare system as reflected now in the coronavirus experience of the countries and for years past in a range of critical healthcare experiences from infant mortality to life expectancy.

Anonymous said...

There were 91,120 new coronavirus cases recorded in India today.  Cases have climbed above 80,000 daily in the last weeks.  The distressing point that should be made is just how undeveloped healthcare infrastructure is in India, for all the growth these last couple of decades.  Indian infrastructure in general is poorly developed, as Amartya Sen pointed to in the wake of being awarded a Nobel Prize in economics, but there was little response to Sen from development specialists and even express criticism from Indian economists.  Now, we find India in any day recording about as many or more coronavirus cases as China has recorded in all.

Undeveloped Indian infrastructure has presented daunting problems in national efforts to limit the coronavirus spread.

Anonymous said...

September 15, 2020

Coronavirus

US

Cases   ( 6,775,053)
Deaths   ( 199,843)

Anonymous said...

September 14, 2020

Coronavirus

US

Cases ( 6,749,289)
Deaths ( 199,000)

India

Cases ( 4,926,914)
Deaths ( 80,808)

Mexico

Cases ( 668,381)
Deaths ( 70,821)

France

Cases ( 387,252)
Deaths ( 30,950)

UK

Cases ( 371,125)
Deaths ( 41,637)

Germany

Cases ( 263,221)
Deaths ( 9,436)

Canada

Cases ( 138,010)
Deaths ( 9,179)

China

Cases ( 85,194)
Deaths ( 4,634)

Anonymous said...

September 14, 2020

Coronavirus   (Deaths per million)

UK   ( 613)
US   ( 600)
Mexico   ( 548)
France   ( 474)

Canada   ( 243)
Germany   ( 113)
India   ( 58)
China   ( 3)

Anonymous said...

September 15, 2020

Coronavirus

US

Cases   ( 6,782,961)
Deaths   ( 200,097)

What the data should tell us is that we have serious public health weaknesses, beyond a weakness in political leadership, and these public health problems need to be studied and methodically addressed. However, I find remarkably little interest in going beyond faulting leadership.

Anonymous said...

Notice too, on September 14, the ratios of deaths to coronavirus cases were 11.2%, 8.0% and 10.6% for the United Kingdom, France and Mexico respectively.  Why these ratios have been so high will need to be examined.

Anonymous said...

Please stop the coronavirus spamming. It is making the comments impossible to read, and I think readers of this blog site are well aware of the data or where to get it.

Risky saparulloh said...

Good Luck

Anonymous said...

Please stop the coronavirus spamming. It is making the comments impossible to read, and I think readers of this blog site are well aware of the data or where to get it.

[ Nonsense and offensive. After all, when there have been more than United States 6.78 million coronavirus cases and 200 thousand deaths and a resultant severe recession as well as world consequences and what has been posted is little or vaguely known or understood, I would suggest thinking. ]

Anonymous said...

Only "offensive" that you are being asked to stop spamming with information that we all either know or can easily obtain. We all are able to think without you clogging up the discussion.

Anonymous said...

https://twitter.com/paulkrugman/status/1306223846257762305

Paul Krugman @paulkrugman

Not going to try and parse the latest numbers; just read Ernie Tedeschi. One thing we should be aware of, however, is that economic numbers going into the election will be historically uninformative 1/

Ernie Tedeschi @ernietedeschi

It should be cold comfort to us that retail spending kept growing even after emergency unemployment insurance benefits expired. twitter.com/ernietedeschi/…

9:30 AM · Sep 16, 2020

The problem is that we're living on Covid time, and things change so fast that normal data are vastly out of date compared with where we are 2/

The final pre-election employment report will be released early next month, but it will reflect data collected *last week* — ie, give almost no sense of where the job market is in the weeks before Election Day 3/

The GDP report on Oct. 29 will, as I understand it, reflect average GDP for the 3rd quarter, which roughly means growth from May-August, which we know was fast as the economy partly snapped back from lockdown; but we also suspect that growth has slowed a lot since then 4/

So we'll be going into the election with official data that, through nobody's fault, tells us very little about what's really going on 5/

Now, real people don't read GDP reports. The public will on average come into the election with a sense that things have improved from the bottom but are still pretty bad — which is about right. 6/

This is, I think, bad news for Trump. The economy won't be bad enough to noticeably hurt him, unless that last job report is really bad; but it won't help him much either. And what else does he have? 7/

People believe (rightly) that he isn't even trying to save American lives, and his "scary antifa is coming for the suburbs" pitch doesn't seem to be working 8/

Nick Gourevitch @nickgourevitch

Latest @NavigatorSurvey out this AM: Three-fifths of voters think Trump has given up fighting coronavirus and just 39% say he's fighting hard to stop the spread.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EiCICSlWsAAbtRD?format=jpg&name=small

I guess we'll see what he and Barr come up with for an October surprise. But making the economy great again again isn't going to cut it 9/

Anonymous said...

September 16, 2020

Coronavirus

Israel

Cases   ( 170,465)
Deaths   ( 1,165)

Deaths per million   ( 127)

-----------------------------------

July 4, 2020

Coronavirus

Israel

Cases ( 29,170)
Deaths ( 330)

Deaths per million ( 36)

Anonymous said...

Having apparently approached a containment of the coronavirus, the Israeli government incautiously opened schools and businesses, and the result has been a persistent community infection spread contributing to what are now 170,465 cases in the small country as compared to 85,214 in all through all of mainland China.

Israel has tragically doubled the number of coronavirus cases in mainland China.

Anonymous said...

There were 97,859 new coronavirus cases recorded in India today.  Cases have climbed above 80,000 daily in the last weeks.  The distressing point that should be made is just how undeveloped healthcare infrastructure is in India, for all the growth the last couple of decades.  Indian infrastructure in general is poorly developed, as Amartya Sen pointed to in the wake of being awarded a Nobel Prize in economics, but there was little response to Sen from development specialists and even express criticism from Indian economists.  Now, we find India in any day recording about as many or more coronavirus cases as China has recorded in all.

Undeveloped Indian infrastructure has presented daunting problems in national efforts to limit the coronavirus spread.

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Anonymous said...

September 17, 2020

Coronavirus

US

Cases   ( 6,838,969)
Deaths   ( 201,634)

Anonymous said...

Stick around, stick around...noticed this article on a K recovery where different industries improve and others don't.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/far-economy-goes-might-want-173159344.html

Anonymous said...

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/17/opinion/donald-trump-masks.html

September 17, 2020

What Is It With Trump and Face Masks?
It’s not about freedom or culture. It’s cynical politics.
By Paul Krugman

Believe it or not — and I know many people will refuse to believe it — right now New York City may be among the best places in America to avoid catching the coronavirus.

In New York State as a whole, the number of people dying daily from Covid-19 is only slightly higher than the number killed in traffic accidents. In New York City, only around 1 percent of tests for the coronavirus are coming up positive, compared with, for example, more than 12 percent in Florida.

How did New York get here from the nightmarish days of April? It’s no mystery: partial herd immunity might be a small factor, but mainly the state did simple, obvious things to limit virus transmission. Bars are closed; indoor dining is still banned. Above all, there’s a face-mask mandate that people generally obey.

New York isn’t the only such success story. At first, Arizona’s Republican governor, Doug Ducey, did everything wrong; not only did he keep the bars open, but he refused to let the (mostly Democratic) mayors of the state’s biggest cities impose local face-mask mandates. The result was a huge spike in cases: For a few weeks in July almost as many people were dying daily in Arizona, population seven million, as in the whole European Union, population 446 million.

But then Ducey reversed course, closing bars and gyms. He didn’t impose a statewide mask mandate, but he allowed cities to take action. And both cases and deaths plummeted, although not to New York levels.

In other words, we know what works. Which makes it both bizarre and frightening that Donald Trump has apparently decided to spend the final weeks of his re-election campaign deriding and discouraging mask-wearing and other anti-pandemic precautions.

Trump’s behavior on this and other issues is sometimes described as a rejection of science, which is true as far as it goes.

After all, his mask skepticism isn’t just at odds with what almost every outside expert has said, it’s in direct conflict with what his own health officials — people like Robert Redfield, the Trump-appointed head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — are saying. Just hours passed between Redfield’s declaration, in congressional testimony, that masks are “the most important, powerful public health tool we have” in fighting the pandemic and Trump saying that “there’s a lot of problems with masks.”

But I think it’s also important to understand the point I was trying to make with my New York and Arizona examples: The case for masks doesn’t rest merely on detailed scientific research that laypeople may find hard to understand. At this point it’s also confirmed by the lived experience of regions that suffered severe coronavirus outbreaks but brought them under control.

So how can anti-masker agitation still be a major factor impeding America’s ability to cope with this pandemic?

You sometimes see people suggesting that wearing face masks is somehow inconsistent with America’s individualistic culture....