March 6

 How convoluted our business ties have become. When we try to punish Russia for its horrible behavior we often end up hurting ourselves or our allies as this article shows. I have been tracking the gas prices locally. Yesterday all but one station had gas for $3.90/gal and that one had raised their price to $4.00. Today all gas stations (the ones that are listing their prices--some aren't) are selling their gas for $4.00. The news yesterday mentioned that another Senator had introduced his own bill for a ban on Russian oil and the reporters featured interviewees who commented on the pain of higher prices but considered it worth given the circumstances in Europe. One of the featured analysts made the mistake of minimizing in a rather condescending way the effect of the price increases on "average" Americans (if there is such a category) which was received with a good bit of sarcasm here.

David Kaiser has a post which touches on several points that have been rattling around in my head since crisis began. I had been thinking this morning about the fact that no conventional, large scale war has been fought in Europe since the end of WWII. Wars since have been confined to third-world countries and were often insurgencies or civil wars that were proxies for our "great" power rivalries.  Kaiser doesn't draw many conclusions about that. I am thinking about the levels of suicide and/or drug addiction among our "volunteer" soldiers and the repeated scandals concerning the substandard medical treatment many received for their wounds.

Kaiser does remark on the loss of respect for governmental authority in both the former Soviet Union and in western democracies. He is a bit vague about the causes of the loss of respect in either country except for the blame he casts on our educational system. I could point to the high cost of wars of choice that yielded far few if any benefits ordinary Americans could see. I can't speak to the Russian situation but I seem to remember a "joke" that passed around during the time their government was expending a lot of blood and treasure in Afghanistan: they pretend to pay us and we pretend to work. Makes me wonder just what their economy was doing then. About that time (the 1980s) the income of middle class Americans stagnated and the only things that kept most families enjoying a middle class lifestyle were women entering the work force and easy credit (student loans, home equity lines of credit, etc.).

I will leave you to read the last couple of paragraphs for yourself. Some of the conclusions indicate that whatever "normal" will come after the dust finally settles won't be the old normal.

About 30 years ago I read Dmitry Orlov's work regularly--before it went behind a subscription wall--and I was reminded of one piece where he explained why he thought that Americans would do worse in case of an economic/social collapse than the Russians did during their 1991 collapse. Russia had a large number of people who survived WWII or who grew up during the hard times in the post war period and remembered what they did and applied those memories to the new crisis. Americans had fewer people who remembered the hardships of the Great Depression and WWII. Most of us have no memories or experiences to draw on to help us through such times. I was thinking of that during the discussions of the effects of the sanctions on the Russians and on us and I wondered it Putin was betting that his people would weather the privations better than our people would. I wonder how that bet will play out.