Stidmatt

Since finishing my degree in the field, I’ve spent the last ten years of my life poring over political economic data. I’ve read many books, but most importantly, I’ve pored over large datasets and come to some conclusions.

Press freedom, democracy, corruption, income, inequality, life expectancy, education levels, and visa restrictions are closely connected.

If you are in a country that is already high-income and free, defend your extant institutions and support further crackdowns on corruption. You probably have a fairly open visa policy, or you are Anglo.

However, if you are in a country that is low-income, undemocratic, and poorly educated, where do you begin?

Start with democracy. This is what we find in Latin America and Eastern Europe, the most successful development stories in the world today. Increase press freedom and crack down on corruption.

Once you have democratic institutions that are responsive to your citizens, you can boost your economy by keeping children in school through high school. Every additional year in school increases lifetime earnings exponentially.

While increasing the quantity of education youth receive, crack down on corrupt institutions that keep people in poverty. Enable everyone access to a diverse market economy.

That’s the order of operations.

Transitioning to a high-income economy is impossible without first increasing the mean years of schooling. There is a clear logarithmic relationship between mean years of schooling and GDP per capita.

However, with a well-educated workforce, you also need to crack down on corruption for ordinary people to have access to legal institutions that allow them to build wealth.

With more wealth comes longer life expectancies.

This is how countries can transition to high-income democracies.

Relevance to current events

Georgia and Ukraine are doing exactly what they need to do to continue the path they have been on for the last twenty years. Georgia needs to overthrow its Georgian Nightmare, and Ukraine needs to be able to send the Russian Army back into Russia. They will not develop further if they fail in this goal first.

Other countries around the world should follow their example. But it cannot start from outside. It must start from within.

If foreign armies or paramilitaries are invading a country, it is good to support them, such as how the United States has supported Afghanistan and Ukraine. While we can protect allies from external threats, and we should, we cannot determine how they develop their internal mechanisms.

Once they have established a democracy, build up education, and grow their economies to build strong societies.

Shower thoughts… how many times has a single party held the presidency for at least three terms in a row?

• Reagan – Bush: 1981-1993
• Roosevelt – Truman: 1933-1953
• Harding – Coolidge – Hoover: 1921-1933
• McKinley – Roosevelt – Taft: 1897-1913
• Lincoln – Johnson – Grant – Hayes – Garfield – Arthur: 1861-1885
• Jefferson – Madison – Monroe – Adams – Jackson – Van Buren: 1801-1841

It has been 36 years since the presidency stayed in the hands of one party after two terms.

This, however, gets more interesting when we consider that Bush and Trump lost the popular vote in their first elections, meaning we can add the following for times when a party has won the popular vote three times in a row:

• Obama – Clinton – Biden: 2009-2025
• Clinton – Gore: 1993 – 2005
• Cleveland: 1885-1897
• Lincoln – Johnson – Grant: 1861 – 1877

We must also break up the Lincon – Arthur streak because Hayes lost the popular vote.

The 2016, 2000, and 1892 elections are interesting for two reasons. First, the popular vote winner did not win the Electoral College. Second, they formed three times where a party won a plurality of the vote three times in a row but did not have the presidency for three terms.

How many times has a party won the popular vote three times?

Not all pluralities are majorities. A majority is when a candidate wins at least 50% of outstanding votes, while a plurality is when a candidate wins the most votes.

There have been nine popular vote plurality streaks lasting at least 12 years in US history:

• 1828 – 1832: Jackson-Van Buren, Democrats
• 1860-1872: Lincoln – Grant
• 1884-1892: Cleveland
• 1896 – 1908: McKinley – Roosevelt – Taft
• 1920 – 1928: Harding – Coolidge – Hoover
• 1932 – 1948: Roosevelt – Truman
• 1980-1988: Reagan – Bush
• 1992 – 2000: Clinton – Gore
• 2008 – 2020: Obama – Clinton – Biden

There have been six popular vote majority streaks lasting at least 12 years in US history:

• 1828 – 1832: Jackson-Van Buren, Democrats
• 1864 – 1872: Lincoln – Grant
• 1896 – 1908: McKinley – Roosevelt – Taft
• 1920 – 1928: Harding – Coolidge – Hoover
• 1932 – 1944: Roosevelt
• 1980-1988: Reagan – Bush

Hillary Clinton in 2016, Bill Clinton in 1996, Harry Truman in 1948, Grover Cleveland in 1884, and Abraham Lincoln in 1860 all failed to win a majority of the popular vote.

It has been a long time since a political party has won a majority of the popular vote for the presidency three times in a row.

There is a clear correlation between the number of nationalities who can travel to a destination country without any form of visa and press freedom today.

It’s hard to find a stronger correlation than this.

Of countries with a democracy score over 7, only Cape Verde, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Malaysia, India, and the United States allow fewer than seven nationalities to travel there without a visa. The next is Timor-Leste, where 32 nationalities can travel without a visa. So, former British colonies tend to have more visa restrictions than other democracies today.

There is essentially no correlation between homicide and visa policies. There is no global trend of people traveling without a visa to another country to kill people.

There is no evidence worldwide that increasing visa restrictions increases safety.

However, there is strong evidence that travel restrictions correlate with a restriction in press freedom, increases in corruption, and general democratic backsliding.

Demand thoughtful, effective policy.

• Demand laws that prosecute money laundering and other anti-corruption laws.
• Oppose travel restrictions that don’t target criminals. No-fly lists do the job better than visas.
• Demand evidence for policy changes.

Happy New Year.

Banks love cash-only businesses. Cash-only businesses are their profit center. Credit cards have very small profits in comparison.

I bet you have been told differently. Let me explain…

I’m walking around Brooklyn, and there are two restaurants of comparable quality competing with each other. One of them has an ATM which will charge me up to 30% to access my cash from my checking account, from experience. Another one does not. The one with the ATM will not take my credit card, the one without the ATM will take my credit card and pay somewhere around 2-4% in order to process my payment.

I withdrew only $20 from the ATM restaurant and paid a $3 fee to access my money with my debit card. The meal for my friend and I cost just under $20, so I don’t buy a drink worth $2-3. They saved $0.40 in transaction fees and lost $3 in revenue they would have made if they accepted my card. The customer at the restaurant with the credit card processor bought drinks, and their bill was around $25 minus $0.42 to the credit card processor, so $24.58 in revenue; the ATM restaurant only made $18, and the bank made $3.

Banks make more money from cash-only businesses. Local retailers make less.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OceYCEexDqQ

Often, I will hear the call that lower-income users are subsidizing higher-income households who use credit cards. While this is technically true, we have to remember that cash is not free. If a business decides to go cash-only, it is far easier for an employee to siphon off a dollar here or there from cash in the till than it is for someone to siphon off money from credit card fees. While credit card fees are 2-4%, those are predictable. It’s hard to predict exactly how much cash will be siphoned off from the till by employees, and in a big store it is even harder to track who is stealing the cash. The average dishonest retailer employee costs their employer $1551.66, according to https://explodingtopics.com/blog/employee-theft-stats.

Ultimately the cost of cash-only costs businesses the same amount in theft as they would pay in credit card processing fees. The main benefit to the credit card is that people generally have hundreds if not thousands of dollars in credit available when using a credit card, while if you are cash only your customer is limited to the amount of money in their wallet, typically $40 or less. Over that limit, and your customer will have to hold back spending, reducing your company’s profit.

In summary:

• Credit card fees are not significantly different from the percentage businesses would lose from employee theft of cash.
• Cash-only customers are limited to the cash in their wallet, which is much lower than the credit available on their credit card.

This is the real reason why most businesses choose to take credit card purchases.

Every relationship, romantic or otherwise, has an assumed base level of consent. There is always going to be some level of interaction which doesn’t require constant asking in order for the relationship to work. i know we are in an era where we are somehow expected to ask verbal permission every time for everything, but that is unrealistic.
For people who are dating, sleeping together is usually an assumed level of consent. If I’m dating someone and they are already asleep and we usually share a bed, it is not necessary for me to wake them up in order to sleep in our shared bed.
Some couples have a baseline consent of cuddling together. One of my best friends will lay her head on me without asking permission, and that’s somewhere around our baseline consent level. Some people would want verbal consent every time, but we are both comfortable with that without needing to ask 30 times a day. After a while, it evolves to be an assumed level of consent.
The problem with what people are expected to do now breeds an unstable and unrealistic relationship model. It is up to each couple to determine where that line is. I cannot say that a line which has worked in one of my relationships is the line which every couple should use. It’s both unrealistic and patriarchal.
The way we can determine whether someone is consistently violating another’s consent boundary is if there is a consistent and egregious moving past the established line for that relationship without verbal consent. It’s more complicated, but its also more realistic.
There also needs to be a statute of limitations for most transgressions, because we cannot live our lives worrying if a relationship we had 20 years ago will someday come up and claim things which might not be true. It’s complicated. We need to stop pretending this is a simple issue.

Consent can of course always be rescinded, but I think we need to seriously think about how to design a reasonable way of looking at consent and I do not think we have reached it yet. There is more work to be done.

German coalition collapses, and an election will be held in February.

https://www.dw.com/en/german-election-scholz-loses-confidence-vote/live-71063891

To be clear, I support border controls between US states when the number of illegal guns crossing the border puts the lives of citizens at risk.

However, the current Schengen border controls do not make anyone in the Schengen area safer.

The number of migrants entering the European Union has indeed increased since 2021.

It is also true that Syria was the largest source of refugees entering the European Union.

The solution to refugees seeking asylum in the European Union, the United States, and other countries is not to ban asylum-seeking. International law regarding asylum status exists because Jews fleeing the Holocaust were denied entry to the United States because there was no legal framework. Refugee status is an essential part of international human rights law.

The solution to reducing the number of refugees is to help solve the crises that cause refugees to seek asylum in the first place.

The top two sources of refugees to the European Union in 2023 were from Syria and Afghanistan. The way to prevent Syrian refugees is to help Syria develop strong democratic institutions that protect the rights of all people. Then there won’t be refugees from Syria. It’s the same problem in Afghanistan. The reason for so many refugees from Afghanistan is that the Taliban is a despotic regime.

Congratulations, you just reduced the number of asylum seekers in Europe by 20%, and no human rights violations required!

The way to deal with refugees without internal border controls or country shopping is to follow existing laws. Under European Union law, asylum seekers must seek status in the first European Union member state they enter.

This means that if a refugee enters the European Union in Bulgaria at the Turkish border and then travel to Germany in order to seek refugee status, they technically aren’t supposed to do that and Germany can deny them refugee status on those grounds, requiring them to go back to Bulgaria and seek asylum status there.

The European Union is also going to adopt a unified asylum procedure starting in 2026, so international law will be respected without putting a heavy burden on one member state or another. I believe this is the right approach.

Ultimately, blocking asylum seekers from moving across internal borders will be negated as a valid reason for temporary border controls in the European Union.

On top of this, refugee status is not a valid way to seek permanent immigration to another country. Refugee status comes with a near automatic approval process for valid applicants while the crisis and reason for refugee status are valid. Once the reason for asylum has ended, countries have the right to request the refugee return home. It is not like immigration, however, where approval is not a guarantee or a right, but likewise, the revocation of citizenship is much more difficult. I think this is a valid approach.

The second most common reason for internal borders is fear of terrorism. The rule for this should be they can only be implemented after a terrorist attack from someone who entered the European Union through another member state and then crossed an internal border to commit a terrorist attack. I think this is a reasonable restriction. There has only been one terrorist attack in the European Union this year, and it was done by a 25-year-old Afghan refugee who had been in the country since 2013—literally a one-in-a-million chance.

In summary, I think internal borders are being misused by European governments, particularly the Scholz administration right now, for political gain, specifically to appease impossible-to-satisfy far-right political elements.

If we wanted to end refugees moving to Europe, it would be better to arm Ukraine, establish a free democracy in Syria, and topple the Taliban.

That is the only realistic way to reduce the number of refugees moving to Europe.

https://www.europarl.europa.eu/about-parliament/en/democracy-and-human-rights/fundamental-rights-in-the-eu/guaranteeing-the-right-to-asylum

https://www.dw.com/en/is-the-rise-in-internal-border-controls-ending-the-eu-dream/a-71054656
Asylum annual statistics

This is a map of the northern hemisphere as of today, but starting on January 1st, it will change to the following:

Congratulations to Romania and Bulgaria on joining the Schengen Area on January 1st. I hope more countries will join in the future.

https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2024/12/12/romania-and-bulgaria-are-granted-full-schengen-membership-with-one-caveat

I hope Ukraine will win the war in the next year and join NATO.

I hope Georgia will have a closely monitored election and elect a government that respects basic human rights, followed by joining NATO.

I hope Putin and the Ayatollah will be defeated.

I hope Israel and Palestine will have new elections and elect moderates into government for the first time since the early 1990s.

I hope Democrats win supermajorities in 2026, leading to the impeachment and removal of Donald Trump and JD Bowman.

Then, Schengen should be extended to North America, and eVisas between democracies should be abolished.

I hope we build a world more free and peaceful than has ever existed.

We are so close.

https://ourworldindata.org/literacy

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/mean-years-of-schooling-long-run

Data on literacy going back to the beginning of the Renaissance tells a very important story.

Main points:

• The United Kingdom and the Netherlands were the first countries to see a mass adoption of literacy in from 1550-1650.
• The United States had a high level of literacy from our founding. This is due to being founded by protestant refugees from Europe.
• Sweden started with almost no literacy in 1500 and exceeded the United Kingdom by 1800.
• Most people in Latin America stayed illiterate until the 20th century. We are now seeing a massive increase in their mean years of schooling, leading to economic and social development unparalleled in history.
• Literacy is essential to developing a modern economy. Literacy and education come first, then development occurs.
• Democracy and literacy are highly correlated.

https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/armed-groups-in-syria-carry-out-summary-executions-in-lataki

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dachau_liberation_reprisals

Killing officers of a deposed despotic regime is not a war crime.