My Modified Fast

In “How Low Insulin Opens a Way to Escape Dieting Hell” I write about how you need to be eating low on the insulin index in order to have the calories in/calories out logic to be much help, since if your insulin levels are high, your body will try to get you to eat more and will try to burn fewer calories. Insulin tells your fat cells to take sugar from your bloodstream and store it as fat in order to get blood sugar levels down. (See “Obesity Is Always and Everywhere an Insulin Phenomenon” and “Evidence that High Insulin Levels Lead to Weight Gain.”)

On how to eat in a way that keeps insulin levels from spiking, I have “Forget Calorie Counting; It's the Insulin Index, Stupid” and “Using the Glycemic Index as a Supplement to the Insulin Index.” But the “Forget Calorie Counting” in the title of the first is a little too strong. You should forget about calorie counting until you have made sure that you are keeping you insulin from spiking, and have begun using fasting in the way I talk about in the posts I link to at the bottom of this one.

The great secret is that even eating nothing at all becomes easy when you are eating low on the insulin index before you start a period of eating nothing. The reason is that by eating low on the insulin index, you avoid the inhibition of body-fat-burning that comes from high insulin levels. And the cells of your body will be much better adapted to getting their energy from the ketones your body makes from fatty acids. (When there are a lot of ketones in your bloodstream, it is called “ketosis.”)

But partial or “modified” fasts can also be quite beneficial. This year, I have begun doing many multiday modified fasts. My motivation for not doing a total fast has been partly the desire to feed the good microbes in my gut something. When I do a total fast, I notice that it takes some time after I end the fast for my bowel movements to become regular again; part of that may be mechanical, but part may be that it takes time for my good gut microbes to recover from a period with nothing for them to eat. In addition, although even a total fast is not that hard for me physically, the sense of psychological deprivation is less if I am eating something.

I have been beginning these multi-day modified fasts with 48 hours or so of total fasting. I figure my good gut microbes will be fine within that time. Each day after that, I eat a set of things designed to be (a) extremely low on the insulin index, (b) high in bulk, but (c) very low in calories. I don’t bend the rules on being very low on the insulin index, but I bend (b) and (c) a bit to have (d) some relatively fun things in the mix to lower the psychological sense of deprivation.

You can see a picture of what I eat on this modified fast at the top of this post. It is quite possible to have a lot of bulk with very few calories! For bulk, I have spinach, cabbage (hidden in the bowl), chopped celery, chopped anise and chopped mushrooms (on the cutting board) and radishes. I eat the radishes separately, but the rest of these bulky items I mix in a bowl and add a tablespoon and a half of olive oil, which is sparing, but enough to make the resulting salad taste reasonably good.

I add several things for variety. I have a couple pieces of hearts of palm. These appear at Costco around Easter time; I stock up for the rest of the year. I also have a couple of pieces of 100% chocolate. By far the best-tasting is the kind shown below, which I didn’t know about when I wrote “Intense Dark Chocolate: A Review”:

Finally I drink a kind of almond-milk smoothy. (Most of the ingredients are up front in the picture; the completed smoothy is visible in back.) Almond milk is both very low on the insulin index and quite low-calorie. I use a whisk to stir three different Gundry powders into the almond milk. Somewhat loosely, I think of Vital Reds as a wide variety of ground-up fruit without the sugar from the fruit. Primal Plants includes probiotics. Prebio Thrive is a prebiotic—that is, food for good gut bacteria. I have grown more skeptical of Steven Gundry over time, especially of his newest, most blatantly commercial products (“commercial” in the sense of “bend-the-rules to make a buck”), but I find these three powders useful. (See “What Steven Gundry's Book 'The Plant Paradox' Adds to the Principles of a Low-Insulin-Index Diet” and “Reexamining Steve Gundry's `The Plant Paradox’.”) I also add a tablespoon or so of cream to make it taste good.

I think this adds up to only a few hundred calories, but feels like a surprisingly full meal because of the bulk and the other satisfactions. Even when I am eating up a storm, I normally do it in one big meal a day, so having just one meal during the modified fast doesn’t seem hard to me.

The key takeaway message is that fasting doesn’t have to be an all-or-nothing thing, if you are eating low on the insulin index. You can design a modified fast that includes a finite list of things for which you have carefully counted the calories, and all of which are extremely low on the insulin index. It’s OK that it is a limited list of things, because after the modified fast you’ll go back to eating your usual broader set of things (hopefully all reasonably low on the insulin index). I don’t count calories when I am back to eating normally, and the modified fast has the same things every day, so there isn’t big burden of counting calories.

Many food plans have a lot of bossiness to them. Here you can design your own based on a few general principles. (You do need to read “Forget Calorie Counting; It's the Insulin Index, Stupid” to get a sense of which foods are low on the insulin index and which foods are likely to give you an insulin spike.)

Here are the links to posts on fasting I promised. (You especially need to read “Fasting Tips.”)

Also see the other posts laid out in “Miles Kimball on Diet and Health: A Reader's Guide.”


The Federalist Papers #35 A: Alexander Hamilton as an Economist

The first half of the Federalist Papers #35 is an excellent representation of Alexander Hamilton as an economist. He doesn’t analyze things exactly as a trained economist in 2021 would, but he does a great job for 1787. To illustrate this, let me put as bullet points some of my favorite passages for illustrating Alexander Hamilton as an economist from the first half of the Federalist Papers #35. In bold italics within parenthesis, I’ll put my comments.

  • if the jurisdiction of the national government, in the article of revenue, should be restricted to particular objects, it would naturally occasion an undue proportion of the public burdens to fall upon those objects. Public finance economists emphasize the importance of having a broad tax base for exactly this reason. (Deadweight losses are roughly proportional to the square of tax rates, while revenue is roughly proportional to the level of tax rates when those tax rates are small.)

  • all extremes are pernicious in various ways.

    • Exorbitant duties on imported articles would beget a general spirit of smuggling; which is always prejudicial to the fair trader, and eventually to the revenue itself: (Public Finance econonomists worry a lot about tax evasion)

    • they tend to render other classes of the community tributary, in an improper degree, to the manufacturing classes, to whom they give a premature monopoly of the markets; (Many taxes worsen inequality.)

    • they sometimes force industry out of its more natural channels into others in which it flows with less advantage; (Taxes can shift production inefficiently, raising societal costs.)

  • I am apt to think that a division of the duty, between the seller and the buyer, more often happens than is commonly imagined. It is not always possible to raise the price of a commodity in exact proportion to every additional imposition laid upon it. (Division of incidence between the consumer and producer is now routinely taught in Principles of Microeconomics using supply and demand diagrams with a tax wedge.)

  • The confinement of the national revenues to this species of imposts would be attended with inequality, from a different cause, between the manufacturing and the non-manufacturing States. The States which can go farthest towards the supply of their own wants, by their own manufactures, will not, according to their numbers or wealth, consume so great a proportion of imported articles as those States which are not in the same favorable situation. (Manufacturers benefit and consumers lose from tariffs. States with more manufacturers get more of the benefit. As Alexander Hamilton notes, excise taxes on all purchases of a manufactured good make have very different distributional effects than tariffs.)

  • if the avenues to them were closed, HOPE, stimulated by necessity, would beget experiments, fortified by rigorous precautions and additional penalties, which, for a time, would have the intended effect, till there had been leisure to contrive expedients to elude these new precautions. The first success would be apt to inspire false opinions, which it might require a long course of subsequent experience to correct. Necessity, especially in politics, often occasions false hopes, false reasonings, and a system of measures correspondingly erroneous. (Here Alexander Hamilton is a Behavioral economist. People do stupid things when they feel they are being backed into a corner. “Reaching for yield” is a good example of this in a non-political-economy context, to the extent it isn’t just a response to a large risk premium.)

I’d love to have a resurrected Alexander Hamilton commenting on modern economics and modern economic policy issues.

Below is the full text of the first half of the Federalist Papers #35:

FEDERALIST NO. 35

The Same Subject Continued: Concerning the General Power of Taxation

For the Independent Journal.

Author: Alexander Hamilton

To the People of the State of New York:

BEFORE we proceed to examine any other objections to an indefinite power of taxation in the Union, I shall make one general remark; which is, that if the jurisdiction of the national government, in the article of revenue, should be restricted to particular objects, it would naturally occasion an undue proportion of the public burdens to fall upon those objects. Two evils would spring from this source: the oppression of particular branches of industry; and an unequal distribution of the taxes, as well among the several States as among the citizens of the same State.

Suppose, as has been contended for, the federal power of taxation were to be confined to duties on imports, it is evident that the government, for want of being able to command other resources, would frequently be tempted to extend these duties to an injurious excess. There are persons who imagine that they can never be carried to too great a length; since the higher they are, the more it is alleged they will tend to discourage an extravagant consumption, to produce a favorable balance of trade, and to promote domestic manufactures. But all extremes are pernicious in various ways. Exorbitant duties on imported articles would beget a general spirit of smuggling; which is always prejudicial to the fair trader, and eventually to the revenue itself: they tend to render other classes of the community tributary, in an improper degree, to the manufacturing classes, to whom they give a premature monopoly of the markets; they sometimes force industry out of its more natural channels into others in which it flows with less advantage; and in the last place, they oppress the merchant, who is often obliged to pay them himself without any retribution from the consumer. When the demand is equal to the quantity of goods at market, the consumer generally pays the duty; but when the markets happen to be overstocked, a great proportion falls upon the merchant, and sometimes not only exhausts his profits, but breaks in upon his capital. I am apt to think that a division of the duty, between the seller and the buyer, more often happens than is commonly imagined. It is not always possible to raise the price of a commodity in exact proportion to every additional imposition laid upon it. The merchant, especially in a country of small commercial capital, is often under a necessity of keeping prices down in order to a more expeditious sale.

The maxim that the consumer is the payer, is so much oftener true than the reverse of the proposition, that it is far more equitable that the duties on imports should go into a common stock, than that they should redound to the exclusive benefit of the importing States. But it is not so generally true as to render it equitable, that those duties should form the only national fund. When they are paid by the merchant they operate as an additional tax upon the importing State, whose citizens pay their proportion of them in the character of consumers. In this view they are productive of inequality among the States; which inequality would be increased with the increased extent of the duties. The confinement of the national revenues to this species of imposts would be attended with inequality, from a different cause, between the manufacturing and the non-manufacturing States. The States which can go farthest towards the supply of their own wants, by their own manufactures, will not, according to their numbers or wealth, consume so great a proportion of imported articles as those States which are not in the same favorable situation. They would not, therefore, in this mode alone contribute to the public treasury in a ratio to their abilities. To make them do this it is necessary that recourse be had to excises, the proper objects of which are particular kinds of manufactures. New York is more deeply interested in these considerations than such of her citizens as contend for limiting the power of the Union to external taxation may be aware of. New York is an importing State, and is not likely speedily to be, to any great extent, a manufacturing State. She would, of course, suffer in a double light from restraining the jurisdiction of the Union to commercial imposts.

So far as these observations tend to inculcate a danger of the import duties being extended to an injurious extreme it may be observed, conformably to a remark made in another part of these papers, that the interest of the revenue itself would be a sufficient guard against such an extreme. I readily admit that this would be the case, as long as other resources were open; but if the avenues to them were closed, HOPE, stimulated by necessity, would beget experiments, fortified by rigorous precautions and additional penalties, which, for a time, would have the intended effect, till there had been leisure to contrive expedients to elude these new precautions. The first success would be apt to inspire false opinions, which it might require a long course of subsequent experience to correct. Necessity, especially in politics, often occasions false hopes, false reasonings, and a system of measures correspondingly erroneous. But even if this supposed excess should not be a consequence of the limitation of the federal power of taxation, the inequalities spoken of would still ensue, though not in the same degree, from the other causes that have been noticed.

Links to my other posts on The Federalist Papers so far:

'Never Trust an Important Question to Just One Scientific Discipline'—Alexander Trentin Interviews Miles Kimball about the Pandemic, the Role of Economists, MMT and Central Bank Digital Currency

Link to the interview shown aboveUnder a picture of me is the quotation “I am very concerned about using up our safe government spending capacity on anything less than the most important projects.”

Link to the interview shown above

Under a picture of me is the quotation “I am very concerned about using up our safe government spending capacity on anything less than the most important projects.”

Alexander Trentin is my favorite journalist to talk to. "Like handing a loaded gun to politicians” is the 8th piece Alexander has done based on an interview with me. I like this one best of all. Links to the others are at the bottom of this post. By permission, I reprint the full text of the English version of "Like handing a loaded gun to politicians” between the horizontal lines. The title of this post gives a good sense of the content of the interview.

Professor Kimball, what lesson can we draw from the pandemic?
Despite being a macroeconomist, I have found the very unusual macroeconomic situation much less interesting than the public health response to the pandemic. I think it would have been beneficial if economists were given a greater role on the public health side. Economists are quite well equipped to understand issues in public health, including epidemiology models. In addition to bringing economists into the policy-making on the public health side of the next pandemic, I’d love to see economists get involved in research on diet and health. As an economist, I have gotten some flak for blogging about diet and health every week. But economists actually have the key skills needed to understand issues in diet and health: economists are extremely well-trained in statistics, and well-trained to think about complicated systems. I haven’t found it hard to read papers about nutrition, whether they are based on experiments or on what different people do in their regular lives.

Are economists so much better than other disciplines?
No, I welcome scientists from other disciplines to do research on economic topics and have a debate with economists. Let me say it this way: Any important scientific or policy question needs to have at least two scientific disciplines looking at it. Never trust an important question to just one scientific discipline. It is a lot safer to get multiple perspectives from different disciplines with different scientific incentives, methods, assumptions, biases, and blind spots. Giving each discipline a monopoly over a set of issues that it owns is asking for trouble.

What would economists have done differently regarding the public health response?
It was clear for economists from the beginning that speed was of the essence. Every month you are in the pandemic costs a fortune. I think a lot of countries regret now that they did not spend billions of dollars on speed—for example, by paying to be in front of the queue for getting the vaccines. A simple cost-benefit analysis would also suggest that in a pandemic we should worry less about side effects. We were underspending on public health, while now governments must spend enormous sums on the economic fallout. You could argue that we almost arrived at the worst of all worlds.

What do you mean?
There were two polar opposite options at the beginning of the pandemic: do a very strict lockdown for three weeks to ensure that there are no infections—the eventual China strategy—or just continue to live as before—by which I mean more or less what was done during the 1918 flu pandemic. The first option would have resulted in limited economic damage and few deaths. Following the second option, we would have saved fewer lives, but we would have had relatively little economic damage. We chose a middle way which probably saved lives relative to the second option, but resulted in a huge economic fallout.

Are there other examples of ideas by economists?
Yes, the Nobel Prize laureate Paul Romer argued early for mass testing to catch Covid-19 before any symptoms arise and isolate those who are infected. Suppose for example that everyone in the country had been tested twice a week. That would have done a lot to take away Covid-19’s invisibility cloak early in an infection. And economists understood quite well, maybe better than representatives of other disciplines, that a cheap, fast, unreliable test is much more useful than an expensive, slow, accurate test.

Economists are often attacked for trying to quantify the value of everything, including lives, which many see as immoral.
If you give something a monetary value, in most cases you make it more important, not less. There is a research paper using cost-benefit principles to assess the value of the damage done worldwide by domestic violence in the tens of trillions of dollars. Numbers like that make people sit up and take notice. Putting a dollar value on a problem makes it seem like a problem practical leaders should worry about, not just bleeding hearts. Also, economists will tend to give people more choice, arguing for gentler approaches. For example, to deal with climate change, most economists favor a carbon tax rather than prohibitions.

This sounds like you do not see any faults in economics.
We could do much better. I see too much pressure on economists to publish in top journals instead of following their intrinsic motivation. The external motivations should be dialed down, the intrinsic motivations such as intellectual curiosity or the desire to have a positive impact on the world dialed up. The result of having external motivations dialed up too high is that economists follow fads and there is too little diversity of approaches.

Such as assuming that everybody acts as a homo economicus, i.e., completely rational?
Part of what I mean by “too little diversity of approaches” is that when simplifications are necessary, economists follow the same list of allowed simplifications rather than exploring what can be learned from different simplifications. Assuming that people are infinitely intelligent is a very useful simplification in economics, because there are a hundred ways for people to mess up, but only one way to do things right. But why do so many economists act as if we always have to use that simplification of infinite intelligence handed down by tradition? I don’t mean to say that makes things easy. An alternative to assuming people are infinitely intelligent is to use agent-based models, which pretend the people are much stupider than they really are instead of the usual assumption in economics that people are much smarter than they really are. Knowing the implications both of assuming people are stupider than reality or assuming they are smarter than reality is better than knowing only what happens if they are smarter, but what we really need are models that better match the reality that human intelligence is somewhere between those extremes. I have written about how hard that is in my paper “Cognitive Economics.”

Are there other instances where this is true?
One example is Quantitative Easing, the purchase of long-term or risky assets by central banks. In the simplest traditional model, QE is neutral: there is no important effect because it is only a swap of two assets that investors frictionlessly accommodate, responding to the new situation. Macroeconomists are definitely interested in writing down models in which QE has an effect. But there are many ways to write down a model in which QE has an effect. There is too little curiosity about which of all the possible mechanisms are really in play. The focus on coming up with some possible mechanism. This matters because we know that QE at the dosages we actually used was not enough—we experienced a prolonged recession after the financial crisis. So what we really need to know is what would happen if we did three or four times as much QE as we did last time. To make a reasonable guess about the side effects that would be caused by such a large dose of QE, we need to know which of all the possible mechanisms that could make QE do something rather than nothing is in play.

One heterodox way of looking on macroeconomics is Modern Monetary Theory, MMT. Their proponents argue that we should not worry about the fiscal deficit. Do you agree?
I think they are right that we should be more agnostic about the effects of deficits—and more fundamentally, the effects of the debt-to-GDP ratio. But overall, I think the true parts of MMT are standard economic theory. What they do is to jump from the scientifically correct statement that we should be more agnostic about just how dangerous more debt is to saying we shouldn’t worry about it until the harm is obvious. There are a lot of things we don’t know for sure, simply because—from a statistical point of view—there isn’t that much data in the macroeconomic time series. But my own guess based on what little evidence we have and from the theory that I share with the MMT folks is very different from their guess that we can spend with abandon and it will all be OK. Even if we don’t know exactly what the limits are, I think there are limits to the safe level of spending, and I am very concerned about using up our safe government spending capacity on anything less than the most important projects.

What MMT proponents often say is that inflation should be regarded as the critical factor.
Yes, if we see inflation going up strongly, we should worry. The problem is that inflation could build up over a long time. Think back to the 1960s when inflation was slowly rising. It took a long time for inflation to gain momentum, but it did. It is like a supertanker that is slow to turn. Inflation rising slowly now doesn’t mean it couldn’t rise faster later if we acted as if there were no limits to spending. Also, expectations matter. Currently, US inflation expectations are still anchored around the Fed’s target of 2 per cent. But they could become unanchored.

So, you would argue for caution?
MMT says it is speculative to say there is a problem before bad consequences are on our door step. That is scientifically true, and it is right to point to our ignorance. But it isn’t a good idea to fill in our ignorance with wishful thinking. Saying to politicians “Don’t worry about debt or deficits” is like handing them a loaded gun. Loaded guns can be used wisely, but often aren’t. I’d rather steer clear of danger.

There is now a lot of discussion regarding Central Bank Digital Currencies, CBDCs. Would you welcome such digital currencies?
In discussions of central bank digital currencies, there is a lot of focus on private households. I also fear that digital currencies will be modeled as a replacement for cash rather than as an account with the central bank. Central banks could take a gradual approach: they could begin by allowing companies to do transactions using a central bank account. In the US, to make sure those accounts aren’t too cash-like, I’d like to see them built as extensions to the Fed’s reverse-repo overnight facility.

What is wrong with having central bank digital currencies by cash-like?
Digital currencies should allow for negative interest rates. Any central bank that looks ahead should not commit the mistake of modeling CBDCs after paper money that does not allow for negative rates. If there is a zero-lower bound, i.e., the interest rate cannot fall far below zero, you might end up in a situation where you could lend easily and safely to the government with zero interest rates – which might in certain economic situations be too high. People would lend to the government instead of investing, doing research and development, or hiring. It could crash the economy.

Do you see negative rates as an option for the Fed?
Fed officials still resist it. Negative rates are not even part of the monetary framework yet. And there might be legal limitations to implementing negative rates on reserve accounts. (I am currently coauthoring a paper on negative interest rate law.) Fortunately, those legal limitations don’t apply to the overnight facility (which is based on Treasury-bill repurchase agreements). As it is optional to use that facility, the Fed is free to implement negative rates there. You could allow regular companies to use the facility for ordinary transactions. Limiting the amount of reserves a bank is allowed to hold at the Fed would then be enough to make the overnight facility the central lynchpin of the whole financial system.

Improving Your Blood Vessel Health by Strengthening Your Breathing Muscles

Link to the article shown above

Link to the article shown above

Where do the benefits of exercise come from? Some of the benefits probably come from exercise making people breathe harder, as a study based at the University of Colorado Boulder suggests. I have the links above, but let me give a few of the key quotations from Lisa Marshall’s article “5-minute breathing workout lowers blood pressure as much as exercise, drugs.” What they did was to have all the people in the study inhale for 5 minutes through a handheld device, half at high resistance and half at low resistance. At high resistance, this is called High-Resistance Inspiratory Muscle Strength Training (IMST). Here is what they found:

When assessed after six weeks, the [high resistance] IMST group saw their systolic blood pressure (the top number) dip nine points on average, a reduction which generally exceeds that achieved by walking 30 minutes a day five days a week. That decline is also equal to the effects of some blood pressure-lowering drug regimens.

Doing the 5 minutes of high-resistance inspiratory muscle strength training each day seemed easy:

… remarkably, those in the IMST group completed 95% of the sessions.

Assuming the results hold up, this treatment should be coming to you reasonably soon:

The National Institutes of Health recently awarded Seals $4 million to launch a larger follow-up study of about 100 people, comparing a 12-week IMST protocol head-to-head with an aerobic exercise program.

Meanwhile, the research group is developing a smartphone app to enable people to do the protocol at home using already commercially available devices.

These results are especially intriguing in relation to what the book Breath talks about. I found that book so interesting, that I have 4 blog posts on it:

  1. James Nestor on How Bad Mouth Breathing Is

  2. Carbon Dioxide as a Stimulant for Respiratory Function

  3. A Modern World of Endemic Jaw Dysfunction

  4. Human Skulls, Ancient and Modern

For annotated links to other posts on diet and health, see:

On Altruism, Externalities and Bossiness

At first glance, it is hard to understand the high dudgeon with which those on the political Right have responded to policies meant to address key pandemic externalities. It should be clear to everyone that efforts anyone makes to avoid getting Covid and to self-isolate once getting it are beneficial to everyone else in their county and everyone else in their nation. Thus, leaving aside any government policy, you are doing a good turn for others if you get vaccinated. (See “Two Dimensions of Pandemic-Control Externalities.”)

I know personally several articulate anti-vaxxers in the Covid context. One thing I hear from them is a deep resentment of being told what to do—not just by the government, but by heavy-handed attempts at social pressure. The delicious feeling of self-righteousness on the part of those who despise anti-vaxxers comes at a cost of extra resistance to getting vaccinated by those who hate being told what to do. Bossiness, which I myself can easily fall into, begets resistance—regardless of the good sense behind the bossy directive.

One important symptom of bossiness has been an effort to control the narrative. Sweet reason should be able to persuade without trying to suppress arguments.

Unlike the Leftist impulse to enforce policy by command and control—by government regulations and social pressure—the instinct of most economists is to deal with an externality by something in the spirit of a Pigou tax or subsidy. In the climate context, that would be a carbon tax. In the context of vaccination against Covid, we actually see a small Pigou subsidy in the prize lotteries for those who are vaccinated. Prize lotteries don’t make people angry like being told they are deplorable if they don’t get vaccinated.

In the absence of a Pigou tax or subsidy of the appropriate size, altruism matters. Rather than a long list of rules, a simple ethical principle for situations with externalities is to act as if there were an appropriate Pigou tax or subsidy in place.

Yet, I see it as always reasonable to argue for and lobby for an appropriate Pigou tax so one doesn’t have to try to be noble in relation to a particular externality. There is limited energy and attention that we have for ethical issues. Why not economize on that by converting as many ethical issues as possible into pragmatic issues of responding to an appropriately-sized Pigou tax or subsidy? Save our ethical energy and attention for issues that aren’t so easy to deal with by a simple measure. There are, for example, many areas where we need people to be good that can’t be observed as easily as whether they get vaccinated or not.

There is a fallacy I have seen in the Wall-Street Journal editorial pages. It says that people are totally free to donate to charity or to get vaccinated, so we don’t need any government intervention to encourage them to pay taxes or to get vaccinated. But it is totally rational for me to care about the state of the nation and of the least fortunate in the nation enough that I am willing to do my part in an effective collective effort to make things better, but for me to be selfish enough that the amount I can accomplish on my own to not be worth that same sacrifice. To be more formal, I think many people are altruistic enough that they would sacrifice a lot (as part of a collective effort where many people each individually sacrificed a lot) to have a huge number of strangers be better off, but not altruistic enough that they would sacrifice a lot to have a few strangers be better off. We admire those who are altruistic enough to sacrifice a lot to have a few strangers better off. And it is also meritorious to be willing to do one’s part in a joint effort!

To make the same point a little more vivid, if I have several siblings, I might be selfish enough to not want to take on the whole financial burden of caring for an aged parent, happy to do my part and worried that my siblings won’t do their part. In that situation, I might be glad that the government has set up social security taxes that take money from me and my siblings and give it to my aged parent.

Let me conclude by coming full circle to bossiness and its ilk. Unskillfulness in interpersonal relations across political chasms makes it hard for people to think straight. Enmity, self-righteousness and bossiness interfere with widespread wisdom.

Don’t Miss These Posts Related to Positive Mental Health and Maintaining One’s Moral Compass:

2021 First Half's Most Popular Posts

The "Key Posts" link in navigation at the top of my blog lists all important posts through the end of 2016. Along with

this is intended as a complement to that list. (Also, my most popular storified Twitter discussions are here, and you can see other recent posts by clicking on the Archive link at the top of my blog.) Continuing this tradition, I give links to the most popular posts in the first half of 2021 below into six groups: popular new posts in 2021 on diet and health, popular new posts in 2021 on political philosophy, popular new posts in 2021 on other topics, and popular older posts in those three categories. I provide the pageviews in the first half of 2021 for each post as counted when someone went specifically to that post. All the posts with 100 or more pageviews in the first half of 2021 are included.

I am pleased to be able to report 327,518 Google Analytics pageviews in the first half of 2021—over 50,000 pageviews per month. Of these, 18,061 were pageviews for my blog homepage. One other thing that stands out from the data is how well my back catalog does because of Google search.

New Posts in 2021 on Diet and Health

  1. How to Summarize a Big Chunk of Nutrition Research: Almost Anything You Are Likely to Think Of Is Better Than the Standard American Diet 887

  2. Evaluating Sweden's Food Guidelines 240

  3. How Many Thousands of Americans Will the Sugar Lobby's Latest Victory Kill? 192

  4. Elizabeth Bernstein on Getting Better Sleep 180

  5. On the Keto Diet 166

  6. Sugar Rots Your Teeth. Sugar Kills. So Don't Eat It. 150

  7. Starving Cancer Cells: We Need Metabolic Oncology, Stat! 149

  8. Semaglutide Looks Like the First Truly Impressive Weight-Loss Drug 138

  9. In Praise of the Squatty Potty 136

  10. How to Make Ramadan Fasting—or Any Other Religious Fasting—Easier 133

  11. Why Leptin Isn't a Blockbuster Weight-Loss Drug 130

New Posts in 2021 on Political Philosophy

  1. Peggy Noonan: Bring the Insurrectionists to Justice 160

  2. The Federalist Papers #22 C: Pillars of Democracy—The Judicial System, Military Loyal to the Constitution, and Police Loyal to the Constitution 145

New Posts in 2021 on Other Topics

  1. Friedrich Hayek on John Maynard Keynes: Keynes was Brilliant, but Economics was Only a Sideline for Him (video post) 6,489

  2. The Devil of Getting Criticized 1,256

  3. Higher Capital Requirement May Be Privately Costly to Banks, But Their Financial Stability Benefits Come at a Near Zero Cost to Society 1,096

  4. My Sister Sarah 567

  5. Preparing the Ground for Mathematical Creativity 317

  6. Did the Pandemic Speed Up Productivity Growth? 281

  7. A Political Economy Externality that Should Be Taught in Every ‘Principals of Economics’ Course 234

  8. The Optimal Rate of Inflation 219

  9. My Sister-in-Law Becky Porter Kimball 219

  10. Why You Should Impute Equal Credit to Co-Authors in Economics 200

  11. The Four Horsemen of Relationship Destruction 199

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Older Posts with Continuing Popularity on Political Philosophy

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  14. Governments Long Established Should Not—and to a Good Approximation Will Not—Be Changed for Light and Transient Causes 650

  15. John Locke: Government by the Consent of the Governed Often Began Out of Respect for Someone Trusted to Govern 623

  16. John Locke: When the Police and Courts Can't or Won't Take Care of Things, People Have the Right to Take the Law Into Their Own Hands 589

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  18. John Locke's State of Nature and State of War 449

  19. Freedom Under Law Means All Are Subject to the Same Laws 415

  20. John Stuart Mill on Sins of Omission 411

  21. The Federalist Papers #22 B: Supermajority Rules Aren't an Adequate Fix for Departures from One-Person One-Vote—Alexander Hamilton 404

  22. The Metaphor of a Nation as a Family 392

  23. John Stuart Mill's Brief for Freedom of Speech 391

  24. John Locke: People Must Not Be Judges in Their Own Cases 366

  25. John Locke's Smackdown of Robert Filmer: Being a Father Doesn't Make Any Man a King 339

  26. John Stuart Mill on Other-Regarding Character Flaws (as Distinct from Self-Regarding Character Flaws) 337

  27. Democracy is Not Freedom 330

  28. John Locke: The Public Good 325

  29. John Locke: How to Resist Tyrants without Causing Anarchy 325

  30. John Locke on Legitimate Political Power 321

  31. John Locke: By Natural Law, Husbands Have No Power Over Their Wives 310

  32. Social Liberty 301

  33. John Locke: Defense against the Black Hats is the Origin of the State 301

  34. An Agnostic Prayer for Strength 300

  35. The Federalist Papers #10 A: Conflicts Arising from Differences of Opinion Are an Inevitable Accompaniment of Liberty—James Madison 286

  36. John Stuart Mill: In Praise of Eccentricity 282

  37. Cass Sunstein on the Rule of Law 269

  38. John Locke: Democracy, Oligarchy, Hereditary Monarchy, Elective Monarchy and Mixed Forms of Government 259

  39. John Locke: We Are All Born Free 259

  40. John Locke: The Law Must Apply to Rulers, Too 244

  41. John Stuart Mill’s Roadmap for Freedom 240

  42. On the Achilles Heel of John Locke's Second Treatise: Slavery and Land Ownership 235

  43. John Locke: The Obligation to Obey the Law Does Not Apply to Laws Promulgated by Invaders and Usurpers Who Do Not Have the Consent of the Governed 226

  44. John Stuart Mill on the Protection of "Noble Lies" from Criticism 226

  45. John Locke: No One is Above the Law, which Must Be Established and Promulgated and Designed for the Good of the People; Taxes and Governmental Succession Require Approval of Elected Representatives 224

  46. John Locke Against Natural Hierarchy 220

  47. The Federalist Papers #10 B: The Larger the Republic, the Easier It is to Find Thoughtful Legislators and the Harder It is to Put Together a Majority to do Unjust Things—James Madison 213

  48. John Locke on the Equality of Humans 210

  49. John Locke Treats the Bible as an Authority on Slavery 202

  50. John Stuart Mill: In the Parent-Child Relationship, It is the Children Who Have Rights, Not the Parents 198

  51. John Locke Against Tyranny 191

  52. John Locke Explains 'Lord of the Flies' 171

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  55. John Stuart Mill on Freedom of Contract 162

  56. John Stuart Mill: Two Maxims for Liberty 161

  57. John Stuart Mill on Balancing Christian Morality with the Wisdom of the Greeks and Romans 160

  58. John Locke: The Right to Enforce the Law of Nature Does Not Depend on Any Social Contract

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  60. John Stuart Mill on Rising Above Mediocrity 142

  61. John Stuart Mill on Freedom of Thought 136

  62. John Locke Off Base with His Assumption That There Was Plenty of Land at the Time of Acquisition 134

  63. John Locke on the Supremacy of the People, the Supremacy of the Legislature over the Executive, and the Power of the Executive to Deal with Rotten Boroughs 134

  64. John Locke on Monarchs (Or Presidents) Who Destroy a Constitution 134

  65. The Federalist Papers #2 A: John Jay on the Idea of America

  66. John Locke: Theft as the Little Murder 128

  67. John Locke and the Share of Land 126

  68. John Stuart Mill on Humans vs. the Lesser Robots 124

  69. John Stuart Mill on Being Offended at Other People's Opinions or Private Conduct

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  72. John Stuart Mill on Benevolent Dictators 108

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  75. John Stuart Mill’s Defense of Freedom 101

  76. John Stuart Mill on the Historical Origins of Liberty 100

  77. John Locke on the Mandate of Heaven 100

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  14. How Even Liberal Whites Make Themselves Out as Victims in Discussions of Racism 484

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  17. Grace Wetzel: Orgasmic Inequality 418

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  19. Q&A: Is Electronic Money the Mark of the Beast? 382

  20. Why Housing is So Expensive 379

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  22. The Logarithmic Harmony of Percent Changes and Growth Rates 362

  23. It Isn't OK to Be Anti-Immigrant 352

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  26. David Pagnucco: The Eurozone and the Impossible Trinity 312

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  28. The Complete Guide to Getting into an Economics PhD Program 290

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The Federalist Papers #34: War is Expensive. To Defend the Union, the Federal Government Needs an Ample Power of Taxation—Alexander Hamilton

Today we celebrate the 245th anniversary of the founding of our republic. 245 years is a long time for a republic to last. In lasting that long, the solutions to design problems that the framers embedded in the US Constitution have been crucial. In getting the US Constitution ratified, the Federalist Papers were crucial.

In the Federalist Papers #34, Alexander Hamilton points to a crucial aspect of the Constitution for the survival of the United States: an unfettered power of taxation that could finance the military survival of the United States. On his assertion that fighting wars and insurrections can be expensive, he has been backed up by subsequent history. The Civil War was very expensive. World War II was very expensive. And the other wars were not cheap.

Alexander Hamilton made another prediction, however, that in the due course of time was falsified: his claim that non-military government expenses would always pale in comparison with military expenses. In the last few years, during our continuing wars, Social Security spending is greater than military spending, Medicare is greater than military spending, and non-defense discretionary spending is almost equal to military spending. Even if we got into a bigger, hotter war, there isn’t enough GDP to make military spending that many times larger than Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid put together. Of course, that evolution depended on the amendment to the US Constitution allowing and income tax, so it was fair for Alexander Hamilton to think the constitution-before-amendments that he was arguing for was unlikely to lead to peacetime expenditures anywhere near the level of expenditures in a major war.

There has been a recent focus on our nation’s history having been steeped in sin. Of course it is: even as a nonsupernaturalist, I can say that human beings are steeped in what can reasonably be called sin (and there is plenty of cruelty and ugliness in the animal and plant world, too). What is remarkable is that we have crawled out of that morass of sin as much as we have. To me, the abolition of slavery we eventually got to is more remarkable than slavery; that the murder rate is below one hundredth of a percent per year is more remarkable than that it is above one thousandth of a percent per year, and the love that many people bear for others is more remarkable than the hatred and selfishness we see in the world.

With key amendments in place, the US Constitution keeps us in relative safety and made the legal and political successes of the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s possible. In the 2020s, we face a new round of geopolitical and social justice challenges, as well as key decisions about taxing and spending. But had things gone differently, the situation in 2021 could have been worse—much, much worse.

I am grateful for Alexander Hamilton’s efforts in arguing so strenuously for the Constitution. Below is the full text of his argument in the Federalist Papers #34:

FEDERALIST NO. 34

The Same Subject Continued: Concerning the General Power of Taxation

From the New York Packet
Friday, January 4, 1788.

Author: Alexander Hamilton

To the People of the State of New York:

I FLATTER myself it has been clearly shown in my last number that the particular States, under the proposed Constitution, would have COEQUAL authority with the Union in the article of revenue, except as to duties on imports. As this leaves open to the States far the greatest part of the resources of the community, there can be no color for the assertion that they would not possess means as abundant as could be desired for the supply of their own wants, independent of all external control. That the field is sufficiently wide will more fully appear when we come to advert to the inconsiderable share of the public expenses for which it will fall to the lot of the State governments to provide.

To argue upon abstract principles that this co-ordinate authority cannot exist, is to set up supposition and theory against fact and reality. However proper such reasonings might be to show that a thing OUGHT NOT TO EXIST, they are wholly to be rejected when they are made use of to prove that it does not exist contrary to the evidence of the fact itself. It is well known that in the Roman republic the legislative authority, in the last resort, resided for ages in two different political bodies not as branches of the same legislature, but as distinct and independent legislatures, in each of which an opposite interest prevailed: in one the patrician; in the other, the plebian. Many arguments might have been adduced to prove the unfitness of two such seemingly contradictory authorities, each having power to ANNUL or REPEAL the acts of the other. But a man would have been regarded as frantic who should have attempted at Rome to disprove their existence. It will be readily understood that I allude to the COMITIA CENTURIATA and the COMITIA TRIBUTA. The former, in which the people voted by centuries, was so arranged as to give a superiority to the patrician interest; in the latter, in which numbers prevailed, the plebian interest had an entire predominancy. And yet these two legislatures coexisted for ages, and the Roman republic attained to the utmost height of human greatness.

In the case particularly under consideration, there is no such contradiction as appears in the example cited; there is no power on either side to annul the acts of the other. And in practice there is little reason to apprehend any inconvenience; because, in a short course of time, the wants of the States will naturally reduce themselves within A VERY NARROW COMPASS; and in the interim, the United States will, in all probability, find it convenient to abstain wholly from those objects to which the particular States would be inclined to resort.

To form a more precise judgment of the true merits of this question, it will be well to advert to the proportion between the objects that will require a federal provision in respect to revenue, and those which will require a State provision. We shall discover that the former are altogether unlimited, and that the latter are circumscribed within very moderate bounds. In pursuing this inquiry, we must bear in mind that we are not to confine our view to the present period, but to look forward to remote futurity. Constitutions of civil government are not to be framed upon a calculation of existing exigencies, but upon a combination of these with the probable exigencies of ages, according to the natural and tried course of human affairs. Nothing, therefore, can be more fallacious than to infer the extent of any power, proper to be lodged in the national government, from an estimate of its immediate necessities. There ought to be a CAPACITY to provide for future contingencies as they may happen; and as these are illimitable in their nature, it is impossible safely to limit that capacity. It is true, perhaps, that a computation might be made with sufficient accuracy to answer the purpose of the quantity of revenue requisite to discharge the subsisting engagements of the Union, and to maintain those establishments which, for some time to come, would suffice in time of peace. But would it be wise, or would it not rather be the extreme of folly, to stop at this point, and to leave the government intrusted with the care of the national defense in a state of absolute incapacity to provide for the protection of the community against future invasions of the public peace, by foreign war or domestic convulsions? If, on the contrary, we ought to exceed this point, where can we stop, short of an indefinite power of providing for emergencies as they may arise? Though it is easy to assert, in general terms, the possibility of forming a rational judgment of a due provision against probable dangers, yet we may safely challenge those who make the assertion to bring forward their data, and may affirm that they would be found as vague and uncertain as any that could be produced to establish the probable duration of the world. Observations confined to the mere prospects of internal attacks can deserve no weight; though even these will admit of no satisfactory calculation: but if we mean to be a commercial people, it must form a part of our policy to be able one day to defend that commerce. The support of a navy and of naval wars would involve contingencies that must baffle all the efforts of political arithmetic.

Admitting that we ought to try the novel and absurd experiment in politics of tying up the hands of government from offensive war founded upon reasons of state, yet certainly we ought not to disable it from guarding the community against the ambition or enmity of other nations. A cloud has been for some time hanging over the European world. If it should break forth into a storm, who can insure us that in its progress a part of its fury would not be spent upon us? No reasonable man would hastily pronounce that we are entirely out of its reach. Or if the combustible materials that now seem to be collecting should be dissipated without coming to maturity, or if a flame should be kindled without extending to us, what security can we have that our tranquillity will long remain undisturbed from some other cause or from some other quarter? Let us recollect that peace or war will not always be left to our option; that however moderate or unambitious we may be, we cannot count upon the moderation, or hope to extinguish the ambition of others. Who could have imagined at the conclusion of the last war that France and Britain, wearied and exhausted as they both were, would so soon have looked with so hostile an aspect upon each other? To judge from the history of mankind, we shall be compelled to conclude that the fiery and destructive passions of war reign in the human breast with much more powerful sway than the mild and beneficent sentiments of peace; and that to model our political systems upon speculations of lasting tranquillity, is to calculate on the weaker springs of the human character.

What are the chief sources of expense in every government? What has occasioned that enormous accumulation of debts with which several of the European nations are oppressed? The answers plainly is, wars and rebellions; the support of those institutions which are necessary to guard the body politic against these two most mortal diseases of society. The expenses arising from those institutions which are relative to the mere domestic police of a state, to the support of its legislative, executive, and judicial departments, with their different appendages, and to the encouragement of agriculture and manufactures (which will comprehend almost all the objects of state expenditure), are insignificant in comparison with those which relate to the national defense.

In the kingdom of Great Britain, where all the ostentatious apparatus of monarchy is to be provided for, not above a fifteenth part of the annual income of the nation is appropriated to the class of expenses last mentioned; the other fourteen fifteenths are absorbed in the payment of the interest of debts contracted for carrying on the wars in which that country has been engaged, and in the maintenance of fleets and armies. If, on the one hand, it should be observed that the expenses incurred in the prosecution of the ambitious enterprises and vainglorious pursuits of a monarchy are not a proper standard by which to judge of those which might be necessary in a republic, it ought, on the other hand, to be remarked that there should be as great a disproportion between the profusion and extravagance of a wealthy kingdom in its domestic administration, and the frugality and economy which in that particular become the modest simplicity of republican government. If we balance a proper deduction from one side against that which it is supposed ought to be made from the other, the proportion may still be considered as holding good.

But let us advert to the large debt which we have ourselves contracted in a single war, and let us only calculate on a common share of the events which disturb the peace of nations, and we shall instantly perceive, without the aid of any elaborate illustration, that there must always be an immense disproportion between the objects of federal and state expenditures. It is true that several of the States, separately, are encumbered with considerable debts, which are an excrescence of the late war. But this cannot happen again, if the proposed system be adopted; and when these debts are discharged, the only call for revenue of any consequence, which the State governments will continue to experience, will be for the mere support of their respective civil list; to which, if we add all contingencies, the total amount in every State ought to fall considerably short of two hundred thousand pounds.

In framing a government for posterity as well as ourselves, we ought, in those provisions which are designed to be permanent, to calculate, not on temporary, but on permanent causes of expense. If this principle be a just one our attention would be directed to a provision in favor of the State governments for an annual sum of about two hundred thousand pounds; while the exigencies of the Union could be susceptible of no limits, even in imagination. In this view of the subject, by what logic can it be maintained that the local governments ought to command, in perpetuity, an EXCLUSIVE source of revenue for any sum beyond the extent of two hundred thousand pounds? To extend its power further, in EXCLUSION of the authority of the Union, would be to take the resources of the community out of those hands which stood in need of them for the public welfare, in order to put them into other hands which could have no just or proper occasion for them.

Suppose, then, the convention had been inclined to proceed upon the principle of a repartition of the objects of revenue, between the Union and its members, in PROPORTION to their comparative necessities; what particular fund could have been selected for the use of the States, that would not either have been too much or too little too little for their present, too much for their future wants? As to the line of separation between external and internal taxes, this would leave to the States, at a rough computation, the command of two thirds of the resources of the community to defray from a tenth to a twentieth part of its expenses; and to the Union, one third of the resources of the community, to defray from nine tenths to nineteen twentieths of its expenses. If we desert this boundary and content ourselves with leaving to the States an exclusive power of taxing houses and lands, there would still be a great disproportion between the MEANS and the END; the possession of one third of the resources of the community to supply, at most, one tenth of its wants. If any fund could have been selected and appropriated, equal to and not greater than the object, it would have been inadequate to the discharge of the existing debts of the particular States, and would have left them dependent on the Union for a provision for this purpose.

The preceding train of observation will justify the position which has been elsewhere laid down, that "A CONCURRENT JURISDICTION in the article of taxation was the only admissible substitute for an entire subordination, in respect to this branch of power, of State authority to that of the Union." Any separation of the objects of revenue that could have been fallen upon, would have amounted to a sacrifice of the great INTERESTS of the Union to the POWER of the individual States. The convention thought the concurrent jurisdiction preferable to that subordination; and it is evident that it has at least the merit of reconciling an indefinite constitutional power of taxation in the Federal government with an adequate and independent power in the States to provide for their own necessities. There remain a few other lights, in which this important subject of taxation will claim a further consideration.

PUBLIUS.

Links to my other posts on The Federalist Papers so far: