June 19 2015 It is a great and wonderful thing to have a sense of purpose and to be doing what you feel you are intended to do. Unfortunately, it is not that common. We’re missing something major here. It is a huge loss as far as the human condition is concerned.

EVERY NOW AND THEN I RUN ACROSS A WRITER OF EXTRAORDINARY TALENT—WHOSE EXCELLENT WRITING IS MATCHED BY THE DEPTH OF HIS, OR HER, CONTENT

 

LET ME INTRDUCE YOU TO JEFF GOINS—WHAT HE CONVEYS IS PRETTY MUCH EXACTLY WHAT I THINK

 

Does Everyone Have a Calling?

by JEFF GOINS · APRIL 13, 2015

It seems everywhere you look today people are talking about what they’re meant to do. In different contexts with different language, we are all saying the same thing. We want our lives to matter.

Whether you think of this as a spiritual calling or as a more pragmatic approach to living a life full of purpose, chances are you’ve thought these same things. I can’t go into a coffee shop or restaurant where I don’t overhear someone at some point talking about this idea.

Is this just a passing fad or the future of work?

I read a study recently that said over 87% of the world’s workers are disengaged with their jobs. This means they either hate their work or are merely indifferent to it, punching a clock to earn a paycheck before they go home to do what they really want.

I don’t know about you, but this seems to be a problem. Is work just a means of making a living, or can it also be a means to a meaningful life?

At the end of WWII, when many men were returning to the factories and many women to their homes, Dorothy Sayers wrote a prophetic essay entitled, “Why Work?”

In the essay, she explained that work was not just a means to an end, but that the work in itself was the end. The worker, she reasoned, ought to serve the work. She was afraid of people losing the purpose they found during the War when aligning their lives around a central purpose and wanted to warn people of the dangers of seeing work as an optional luxury as opposed to a human necessity.

We are facing the same crisis today. There are so many messages on blogs and in the self-help section of your bookstore, all preaching the same Gospel: work is something that we should escape from. But what if that just wasn’t true?

Around the same time that Dorothy Sayers was crafting her essay on why we must work, a young Hungarian man named Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi was finishing up his tenure at an Italian work camp, where he learned to divert his attention away from his captivity using chess.

Later, Csikszentmihalyi would introduce some revolutionary ideas to the world of psychology, regarding work and creativity, arguing that we we need to find true happiness is to get in a state of flow.

Flow, Csikszentmihalyi says, is the tension between competency and challenge. It’s where what you’re good at meets what’s difficult. This is what we need more of in our work if we are going to be truly happy.

If the task is too easy, you become bored. And if you’re not good enough at it, it creates anxiety. The most fulfilling state for a human being is to not be at rest or to be overly stressed; it’s to reside in a state of flow.

So does everyone have a calling? Maybe. But perhaps a better question is: what will we do if we don’t work? What will we become?

And what kind of work ought we be doing? The kind that forces us to grow, that calls our very best out of us, and that hopefully makes a difference in the world.

---

June 18 2015. The current disastrous American Business Model casts a long shadow. It corrupts, it distorts, it serves the Nation ill—and it wastes scarce resources on a truly mind-boggling scale. One of these days, there will be an accounting—and it could be sooner than we would like to think.

THE US. HAS LONG BEEN THE MOST WASTEFUL SOCIETY IN THE WORLD—IN JUST ABOUT EVERY WAY.

IT STILL IS.

I’m not sure I can add much to the above illustration. It makes the point—up to a point—pretty well. The reality, of course, is very much worse. We waste just about everything—from raw materials to food to meds to water itself—and seem to think nothing of it. And in the process, we do severe and last damage to the environment.

If this is the current American Business Model in action—which it is—it seems to me we need a new business model.

---

June 17 2015 I live in a veritable fog of insight—with visibility to match!

THE LONGER I LIVE, THE LESS I FIND I KNOW, BUT THE MORE I SEEM TO UNDERSTAND

HERE ARE SOME THINGS THAT I DON’T UNDERSTAND (EVEN THOUGH I DO IN A WAY)

• I don’t understand why it is so hard to explain to people who don’t write just how wonderful writing is.
• I don’t understand why more people don’t read.
• I don’t understand why it took me so long to realize how little I need to be extremely happy—providing I have what I need to write.
• I don’t understand why we think a system based upon greed is the best economic system
• I don’t understand why so many people are so profoundly ignorant about the day to day issues that affect our lives—and make so little effort to inform themselves or to do anything about it.
• I don’t understand why most of us seem quite content to wreck and otherwise despoil the environment and the only earth we’ve got.
• I don’t understand why we allow ourselves to be manipulated and lied to the way we do.
• I don’t understand why creativity and creative people are, overall, treated so badly.
• I don’t understand why interrupting  people constantly with text messages and the like is seen as good thing—when almost everything worthwhile requires focus.

---

June 16 2015. Being outranged sucks! And it gets you killed.This is an outrageous situation—and the Marine Commandant should be ashamed of himself.

I FEATURE SNIPING (which I rate highly as a tactic) IN MOST OF MY THRILLERS, SO A RECENT STORY THAT THE MARINES LACK A LONG RANGE SNIPING RIFLE REALLY GOT MY ATTENTION

BETWEEN YOU, ME, AND THE GATEPOST, IT’S A DISGRACEFUL SITUATION—ESPECIALLY BECAUSE THE MARINES ARE TERRIFIC SNIPERS

The hype is that the U.S. military is the best in the world—and that its warfighters are equipped with the best weapons. Though I have no doubt that the U.S. military is currently the strongest in the world—if all weapons systems are factored in—I doubt that either of the other statements is true. Certainly, the best American soldiers are as good as they come—but other nations also have exceptional soldiers. Anyway, “the best” is a meaningless statement in this context. It represents more bravado than substance.

Where weapons are concerned, U.S. weapons procurement is so politicized that I am surprised American weapons are as good as they are. After all, those do the actual fighting—as matters are currently constructed—rarely have much say in the matter. Largely, they fight with what they are issued with. Special forces have somewhat more leeway, but it is still limited.

Instead, weapons procurement is largely in the hands of the MICC (Military Industrial Congressional Complex) where all kinds of differing agendas feature (with good retirement jobs for senior officers being high on the list) and defense contractor profitability dominating all. Congressmen are paid off through vote-getting jobs in their districts—and contributions to their various PACs.  All of this rather muddies the focus—which should be on the utility in the fight.

Accordingly, I’m always agreeably surprised when combat effectiveness gets a look in. Of course, all too often combat effectiveness is irrelevant because, after decades have passed, and billions have been spent, such programs are cancelled. The MICC loves such programs because they involve staggering sums of money—a positive river of cash—and yet there is no accountability. Nothing has to be proven to work ever. It just joins the ever expanding graveyard of dead programs (the costliest graveyard in the world). And, by the way, the Department of Defense still cannot be audited (in defiance of the law). Congress continues shoveling money into the Pentagon anyway.

No, I’m not making this up. check it out. You will find the situation is exactly as I am describing it.

Marine weapons procurement is somewhat confused because the Marines haven’t really decided what they are supposed to be doing, or how they should fight. Their myth is based upon assaulting heavily defended beaches from the sea (which they did with exceptional courage and ingenuity in WW II and early on during the Korean War) but they haven’t really found an adequate replacement operational concept in this age of smart weapons—yet are determined not to admit to that fact.

In practice, ever since Korea, they have really functioned as ground troops much like the Army. They hate to admit that, of course, but such is the reality. But debating the correct role of the Marines will be a subject of another post.

The Marine sniper situation is much more straightforward. Thy don’t have what they clearly need—and have needed for sometime. The reasons are a gross failure of leadership, vested interests, and Congress—yet again—not doing its job.

The following is from the Washington Post (which I feel has become significantly better since Jeff Bezos took it over)

The Marine Corps is known for fielding older equipment. In the 1991 Gulf War, when the Army was driving the brand-new M1A1 Abrams battle tanks, the Marines crossed into Kuwait with the aging Pattons — tanks that rolled through the streets of Saigon in the ’60s. In 2003, when they entered Iraq again, Marine snipers carried the M40A1 sniper rifles, many of which began their careers shortly after the end of the Vietnam War.

Today, the Marines’ primary sniper rifle, a newer variant of the M40, still shoots roughly the same distance: 1,000 yards.

Current and former Marine Corps snipers say their hardware doesn’t match the capabilities of the other services, not to mention what is in the hands of enemies such as the Taliban and the Islamic State.

“It doesn’t matter if we have the best training,” said one reconnaissance sniper who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he is not permitted to talk to the media. “If we get picked off at a thousand yards before we can shoot, then what’s the point?”

McCullar, who was also an instructor at the Marine Corps’ main sniper school in Quantico, Va., until this month, when he left the service, voiced similar sentiments.

“With an average engagement of 800 yards, you’re already ruling out a lot of our weapons,” McCullar said.

McCullar’s most recent deployment to Afghanistan, in 2011, was marked by controversy when other members of his sniper platoon were filmed urinating on dead Taliban fighters.

That year was also a period of improvised tactics on the battlefield, as McCullar and his fellow snipers often found themselves in situations where better rifles were needed.

“Sometimes we could see the [Taliban] machine gunners, and we really couldn’t engage them,” McCullar said. He added that if Marines had different weapons, such as a .300 Winchester Magnum or a .338, their accuracy would be much improved.

The Army, for instance, adopted the .300 Win Mag as its primary sniper rifle cartridge in 2011, and it fires 300 yards farther than the Marines’ M40, which uses a lighter .308-caliber bullet.

In a statement, the Marine Corps Systems Command said it has “evaluated several options for replacing the M40 series sniper rifle; however, the weapon continues to meet our operational requirements.”

The M40 is built by Precision Weapons Section, a component of the Marine Corps that is contracted by Marine Corps Systems Command and is primarily staffed by Marine armorers. It exists solely to build and repair the Marines’ precision weapons.

Chris Sharon, a former chief sniper school instructor at Quantico, says there has been a reluctance to cut the M40 program because it could make Precision Weapons Section redundant.

“Nobody wants to be the one who kills PWS,” said Sharon, who is also a former contractor for Marine Corps Systems Command, noting that killing the rifle would significantly downsize one element of the Marine Corps.

Sharon says the solution to the Marines’ problems lies in a system called the Precision Sniper Rifle, or PSR, which other services solicit directly from a private arms manufacturer.

It’s not that expensive,” Sharon said. “You could buy and maintain two PSRs for one M40. . . . All of our NATO allies have a .338 rifle, and we’re the only ones still shooting .308.”

Sgt. J.D. Montefusco, a former Marine Special Operations Training Group instructor, recounted a mountain sniper course in which he participated with a number of British Royal Marines during training in the rugged terrain of Bridgeport, Calif. Montefusco said the Marine snipers in the course were technically more proficient than their British counterparts, but since the weather was terrible and the British had rifles that fired a heavier bullet, the Marines paid the price.

“Pretty much all the Marines failed,” Montefusco said. “And the Brits just had a heavier round, they didn’t have to worry nearly as much as we did when it came to factoring in the weather.”

Montefusco added: “A .338 [rifle] should have been adopted while we were fighting in Afghanistan.”

The Marine Corps recently decided to upgrade from the M40A5 to the M40A6, a new variant that still shoots the same distance.

“You have to look at those programs and ask who’s driving the bus on this?” Sharon said.

McCullar, Sharon and other snipers all voiced their concern about the next conflict and how Marine snipers will stack up against their adversaries on the battlefield.

“We make the best snipers in the world. We are employed by the best officers in the military. And we are the most feared hunters in any terrain,” said a Marine sniper instructor, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media. “But the next time we see combat, the Marines Corps is going to learn the hard way what happens when you bring a knife to a gunfight.

---

July 15 2015 I tend to think of it as “institutional nastiness”—but I’m searching for a stronger phrase for the kind of unacceptable viciousness that so characterizes many of our large organizations.

YET ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF INSTITUTIONAL NASTINESS—THOUGH I AM NOT SURE THAT IS AN ADEQUATE PHRASE BECAUSE SUCH BEHAVIOR CAN HAVE DEVASTING CONSEQUENCES.

IN THIS CASE, IT CONCERNS AN HONORABLE MAN TRYING TO DO THE RIGHT THING—AND BEING SHAFTED BOTH BY HIS OWN SERVICE, THE ARMY, AND THE DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE.

I’m never quite sure whether large organizations attract and breed careerists—or whether careerist have a tendency to gravitate towards  such institutions. Operating with the cover of organization of size blurs individual accountability and tends to mean that dubious behavior is lost in the bureaucracy.

Either way, it is a readily observable fact that large organizations have a depressing habit of behaving badly—unless led by unusually good leaders (and, fortunately there are many which fall into that category—just not nearly enough).

Good leadership is the exception. I find it hard to stress that too much.

Most organizations are led by people of mediocre caliber, and even less integrity—which explains a great deal about the state of society today. The U.S., in particular, has never been richer or had access to such resources (financial, material, and intellectual) yet done such a miserable job for most of its population.

The economy is sluggish, productivity is poor, innovation is down, most workers are less than happy with their jobs, poverty is rife, whole sectors of the economy are a disgrace by international standards, and the political system has been suborned by a tiny ultra-rich minority.

On top of that, despite having the most powerful military in the world, we seem singularly unable either to win our wars, or even to end them in any remotely satisfactory way—if at all. In fact, you can make a very good case that some very powerful people, who make a great deal of money out of unending war, don’t want such conflicts to be concluded—and work hard to see that they are not. The power and corruption of the MICC (the Military Industrial Congressional Complex) should not be underestimated—nor should their ability to block, contaminate, and metastasize. The influence of the MICC extends way beyond the military area. In practice, it functions as a substantial component of the interlocking political control system constructed by the ultra-rich.

Careerism makes no small contribution to this unnecessarily unsatisfactory situation.

I have written about careerism many times in the past, but essentially it is a pattern of behavior which involves putting self-advancement before integrity and the mission—and being willing to do virtually anything if it serves that self-centered purpose. The right thing has no meaning in this context. A moral code is irrelevant. The concept of the decent thing is risible. All that counts is the expedient—the career-advancing—thing.

Normally, doing “virtually anything” involves making one’s bosses happy, regardless of the issues, and covering their asses—after making sure one’s own is covered first—in the process.

Keeping one’s bosses happy covers a multitude—but consistent practices in pursuit of that goal include:

• Re-interpreting events (lying) to put one’s bosses and the organization in a positive light.
• Suppressing bad news where possible.
• Suppressing any and all initiatives, making no decisions, and changing nothing because, by definition, if you retain the status quo, neither you nor your bosses can be accused of doing anything wrong.
• Blocking exceptional talent, where possible, because exceptional talent has a tendency to show up both oneself, and one’s bosses, adversely.
• Blocking anyone who tries to rock the boat in any way—even if his or her cause is demonstrably good, and they are clearly  acting with the best of intentions.

Careerism is not confined to the military. It is common to virtually all large organizations, from corporate to academia—and it constitutes a core component of the current American Business Model—but it is particularly evident in the military, with results which are clear to see.

Where the Pentagon is concerned, careerists tend to gravitate towards being senior officers’ aides—since that guarantees them mentors, an inside track to the various clubs that make up Higher Command, and an exposure to the go-along to get-along culture that pervades the system—and which can detect non-conformists in a heartbeat.

The system requires a degree of competence, but has almost no interest in talent—except in rare situations when it is needed—but it positively excels at identifying anyone who won’t fit in. Indeed, you don’t have to do anything to be spotted as unacceptable. The one truly remarkable ability of nearly all careerists is that they seem to be endowed with a downright uncanny ability to sniff out, and oppose, a decent human being.

Decency virtually guarantees career death. If you are in the military, regardless of your talent and demonstrated heroism, unless you are a careerist, it is virtually certain that you will never make it past the rank of colonel. There are rare exceptions to this—but they are just that—rare.

The club of generals seeks careerism, competence, and conformity to the status quo. Courage is not a requirement—and both physical and moral courage may be a detriment, especially if demonstrated in such a way that has attracted attention. In Japan, the nail that protrudes is hammered down. Where the U.S. military is concerned, it just doesn’t get promoted. That said, it will probably get hammered too.

Careerist are not unpleasant people to meet—and are not necessarily bad people in their private lives. Virtually all are personable, most are reasonably intelligent, and many are good company and are regarded as “good guys.” But they have sold out—and though this lack of integrity can be hard to detect at the level of individuals, it is manifest where institutional behavior is concerned.

The case of Colonel Jason Amerine is yet another depressing example. Disturbing enough in itself, we should worry a great deal more about what this treatment of Colonel Amerine implies—particularly about the leadership.

The following story is from the Washington Post of June 11 2015.

Special Forces officer: American hostages held overseas ‘failed’ by U.S. government

Washington’s effort to recover American hostages held overseas is “dysfunctional” and mired in failures hidden by bureaucracy, an Army Special Forces officer once involved in the Pentagon’s part of the mission told the Senate on Thursday during a hearing for whistleblowers.

Lt. Col. Jason Amerine is shown here at Arlington National Cemetery. (Photo released by the office of Rep. Duncan Hunter)

Lt. Col. Jason Amerine testified that he started working on hostage policy at the Pentagon in early 2013. At some point, he became frustrated with the inaction to free Americans and said he took his concerns to Rep. Duncan D. Hunter (R-Calif.), a member of the House Armed Services Committee, after exhausting all other options. The Army, when it learned about his discussions on Capitol Hill, responded by removing him from his job, suspending his security clearance and launching a criminal investigation into his actions, Amerine said.

“My team had a difficult mission and I used all legal means available to recover the hostages,” Amerine said in prepared testimony. “You, the Congress, were my last resort. But now I am labeled a whistleblower, a term both radioactive and derogatory. I am before you because I did my duty, and you need to ensure all in uniform can go on doing their duty without fear of reprisal.”

Amerine testified before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee during a hearing called “Blowing the Whistle on Retaliation: Accounts of Current and Former Federal Agency Whistleblowers.” He first acknowledged facing an Army investigation and communicating his concerns about U.S. hostage policy to Hunter in a Facebook post on May 15.

The case pits one of the first heroes of the Afghanistan War against the Army. Amerine led a Special Forces team there in 2001 that protected future Afghan President Hamid Karzai. Amerine was wounded by an errant American bomb on Dec. 5, 2001, that killed three other Special Forces soldiers. He later received the Bronze Star with “V” and the Purple Heart, and was labeled by the Army as a “Real Hero” in the 2006 version of its popular video game, “America’s Army.”

The Army Criminal Investigation Command (CID) has disputed that it is investigating Amerine as an act of reprisal, and declined to say whether the soldier is under investigation at all. A spokesman for CID, Chris Grey, declined to comment Thursday on Amerine’s testimony.

Amerine told the Senate that in 2013, his office at the Pentagon was asked to help recover Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, the U.S. soldier held captive for five years overseas and charged earlier this year with desertion. He was later recovered May 31, 2014, in a controversial swap for five Taliban officials.

In this file image taken from video obtained from the Voice Of Jihad Website, Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl sits in a vehicle guarded by the Taliban in eastern Afghanistan. He was recovered in a swap for five Taliban officials last year. (AP Photo/Voice Of Jihad Website via AP video, File)

“We audited the recovery effort and determined that the reason the effort failed for four years was because our nation lacked an organization that can synchronize the efforts of all our government agencies to get our hostages home,” Amerine said. “We also realized that there were civilian hostages in Pakistan that nobody was trying to free, so we added them to our mission.”

Amerine’s team worked to develop a viable trade for Bergdahl, bring the Taliban to the negotiating table and fix the interagency recovery efforts, he said. He “used all legal means” available to recover the hostages, and then went to Congress when he ran out of other options, he said. That prompted the FBI to complain that he was sharing classified information, he said. The Defense Department inspector general later determined he did not, he added.

Amerine credited the Defense Department inspector general with handling a reprisal complaint he filed well. The FBI has previously declined to comment on Amerine’s allegations.

Amerine credited Hunter with influencing the Pentagon to appoint Michael D. Lumpkin, a retired Navy SEAL and current deputy undersecretary of defense, as the Defense Department’s hostage recovery coordinator. Doing so allowed the Pentagon to respond quickly when a deal was struck to recover Bergdahl in exchange for five Taliban officials, Amerine said.

But the other civilians held hostage — including Warren Weinstein, who was accidentally killed in a U.S. drone strike in January — were left behind, Amerine said. One of the options Amerine’s team developed would have swapped seven Westerners for one Taliban drug trafficker and warlord: Haji Bashir Noorzai. He was convicted of drug trafficking and sentenced to life in prison after being lured to the United States in 2005.

Amerine told the Senate that the trade developed would have freed Bergdahl, Weinstein, Canadian Colin Rutherford and a family of three: Canadian Joshua Boyle, his American wife Caitlan Coleman, and their child born in captivity. He declined to identify the seventh hostage.

It’s unclear how the Noorzai swap would have worked. Bergdahl was held by insurgents affiliated with the Taliban, while Weinstein was held captive by al-Qaeda.

“Is the system broken?” Amerine asked. “Layers upon layers of bureaucracy hid the extent of our failure from our leaders. I believe we all failed the commander in chief by not getting critical advice to him. I believe we all failed the secretary of defense, who likely never knew the extent of the interagency dysfunction that was our recovery effort.”

This image made from video released anonymously to reporters in Pakistan on Dec. 26, 2013, shows American aid worker Warren Weinstein. He was held captive in Pakistan until he was mistakenly killed in a U.S. drone strike in January. (AP Photo via AP video)

Hunter said on the House floor last month that Amerine was critical in providing information that helped craft a congressional amendment that would require President Obama to appoint a specific federal official to oversee all hostage recovery efforts.

“Lieutenant Colonel Jason Amerine has worked with my office now for about two years on this amendment, and he is someone that really cares,” Hunter said. “He’s been working hostage stuff with about every government agency that there is, and he played a big role in getting this to where it’s at now.”

Amerine said he “failed” Weinstein and the four other Western hostages still in captivity.

“We must not forget: Warren Weinstein is dead while Colin Rutherford, Josh Boyle, Caitlin Coleman and her child remain hostages,” Amerine said. “Who’s fighting for them?”

Dan Lamothe covers national security for The Washington Post and anchors its military blog, Checkpoint.

---

 

July 14 2015. Economics for pleasure—who knew!

I READ GALBRAITH AT UNIVERSITY—AND LOVED HIM

THE MAN HAD A MARVELOUS DRY WIT—AND ACTUALLY MANAGED TO MAKE ECONOMICS ENTERTAINING (WHICH IT IS DESPITE MOST ECONOMISTS).

"We all agree that pessimism is a mark of superior intellect." -John Kenneth Galbraith

The chart you see below says a great deal about why the U.S. economy is so screwed up. It is so lopsided in favor of defense, it defies credulity (and the defense figures, by the way, are seriously understated).

Why is this considered acceptable by most Americans?

Has it occurred to no one that maintaining a massive defense establishment—with bases in just about every country in the world (less friendly nations excepted) alarms other counties and creates an arms race?

Defense expenditure (a misleading term in itself) has been out of control since the end of World War II at incalculable cost to the wellbeing of most Americans.

It has made a small number of Americans, primarily members of the MICC (Military Industrial Congressional Complex) extremely wealth.

America does need to be strong militarily—but there is a difference between necessary strength and ineffective arrogance. As with most things in life, it is a matter of balance.

It is worth noting that for all this massive expenditure on the tools of defense and destruction, the American track record—where winning wars is concerned is lousy.

A rethink of priorities might be in order. This is a great country and its people need looking after better than has been the case. If the argument is that he first duty of a government is to provide security—which is what many consider to be the case—I question whether military expenditure is the only way, or even the best way, to provide it.

Such are the thoughts of a pretty good (concerned) friend. The present situation of egregious defense expenditure, coupled with rank social injustice whereby growth benefits only a few, is unsustainable.

June 13 2015. If we aren’t prepared to be swayed by the facts, we deserve the politicians we get.

BLATANT PROPAGANDA RULES OUR LIVES—IN DEFIANCE OF THE FACTS

TO A TRULY FRIGHTENING EXTENT

The following is from a recent piece by Paul Krugman. He’s been calling it pretty much right for the over ten years I have been reading his stuff—and evidence supports him in spades. Yet, so many of us prefer to believe the propaganda.

One can but weep.

Oxford, Britain — One thing we’ve learned in the years since the financial crisis is that seriously bad ideas — by which I mean bad ideas that appeal to the prejudices of Very Serious People — have remarkable staying power. No matter how much contrary evidence comes in, no matter how often and how badly predictions based on those ideas are proved wrong, the bad ideas just keep coming back. And they retain the power to warp policy.

What makes something qualify as a seriously bad idea? In general, to sound serious it must invoke big causes to explain big events — technical matters, like the troubles caused by sharing a currency without a common budget, don’t make the cut. It must also absolve corporate interests and the wealthy from responsibility for what went wrong, and call for hard choices and sacrifice on the part of the little people.

So the true story of economic disaster, which is that it was caused by an inadequately regulated financial industry run wild and perpetuated by wrongheaded austerity policies, won’t do. Instead, the story must involve things like a skills gap — it’s not lack of jobs; we have the wrong workers for this high-technology globalized era, etc., etc. — even if there’s no evidence at all that such a gap is impeding recovery.

And the ultimate example of a seriously bad idea is the determination, in the teeth of all the evidence, to declare government spending that helps the less fortunate a crucial cause of our economic problems. In the United States, I’m happy to say, this idea seems to be on the ropes, at least for now. Here in Britain, however, it still reigns supreme. In particular, one important factor in the recent Conservative election triumph was the way Britain’s news media told voters, again and again, that excessive government spending under Labour caused the financial crisis.

---