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31. Uncle Sucker: Why U.S. Efforts at Defense Burdensharing Fail

Author:
Justin Logan
Publication Date:
03-2023
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
The Cato Institute
Abstract:
In 2022, the United States counted 50 of the world’s 195 countries as formal treaty allies, not including dozens more informal security relationships. U.S. allies do not carry a proportionate share of the burden of their defense; Washington’s allies account for roughly 36 percent of world economic output but only 24 percent of world military spending. In every alliance, the United States is the most important member and gives more than it gets in return. American politicians and the American public regularly express frustration with allies’ behavior. In 1959, for example, President Dwight D. Eisenhower lamented that the insufficient defense efforts of U.S. allies in Europe meant that the Europeans were close to “making a sucker out of Uncle Sam.” Things have gotten worse since 1959. Today, America’s alliances act as transfer payments from U.S. taxpayers to taxpayers in allied countries. History and theory both suggest that hectoring allies is unlikely to produce much change. Allies know that they can pocket the gains from U.S. commitments, then spend their own money in the ways they believe benefit them most. Policymakers should evaluate alliance commitments in the context of the net contributions of U.S. allies to U.S. defense, weighed against the costs and benefits of a non‐​alliance. The only way to produce more equitable burdensharing is to make allies doubt the strength of the U.S. commitment: the stronger the belief in the U.S. commitment, the harder it is to get allies to defend themselves. Unless policymakers fundamentally change their approach to alliances, there is little hope that defense burdens can be spread more equitably.
Topic:
History, Alliance, Defense Spending, Military, and Burden-sharing
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

32. The Fiscal Impact of Immigration in the United States

Author:
Alex Nowrasteh, Sarah Eckhardt, and Michael Howard
Publication Date:
03-2023
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
The Cato Institute
Abstract:
The National Research Council and the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) published groundbreaking investigations into the economics of immigration in 1997 and 2017. Both publications contained thorough literature surveys compiled by experts, academics, and think tank scholars on how immigration affects many aspects of the U.S. economy. The 2017 NAS report included an original fiscal impact model as a unique contribution to immigration scholarship. Its findings have been used by policymakers, economists, journalists, and others to debate immigration reform. Here, we acquired the exact methods used by the NAS from its authors to replicate, update, and expand upon the 2017 fiscal impact model published in the NAS’s The Economic and Fiscal Consequences of Immigration. This paper presents two analyses: a measure of the historical fiscal impacts of immigrants from 1994 to 2018 and the projected long‐​term fiscal impact of an additional immigrant and that immigrant’s descendants. An individual’s fiscal impact refers to the difference between the taxes that person paid and the benefits that person received over a given period. We use and compare two models for these analyses: the first follows the NAS’s methodology as closely as possible and updates the data for more recent years (hereafter referred to as the Updated Model), and the second makes several methodological changes that we believe improve the accuracy of the final results (hereafter referred to as the Cato Model). The most substantial changes made in the Cato Model include correcting for a downward bias in the estimation of immigrants’ future fiscal contributions identified by Michael Clemens in 2021, allocating the fiscal impact of U.S.-born dependents of immigrants to the second generation group, and using a predictive regression to assign future education levels to individuals who are too young to have completed their education. Other minor changes are discussed in later sections. Immigrants have a more positive net fiscal impact than that of native‐​born Americans in most scenarios in the Updated Model and in every scenario in the Cato Model, depending on how the costs of public goods are allocated. The Cato Model finds that immigrant individuals who arrive at age 25 and who are high school dropouts have a net fiscal impact of +$216,000 in net present value terms, which does not include their descendants. Including the fiscal impact of those immigrants’ descendants reduces those immigrants’ net fiscal impact to +$57,000. By comparison, native‐​born American high school dropouts of the same age have a net fiscal impact of −$32,000 that drops to −$177,000 when their descendants are included (see Table 31). Results also differ by level of government. State and local governments often incur a less positive or even negative net fiscal impact from immigration, whereas the federal government almost always sees revenues rise above expenditures in response to immigration. With some variation and exceptions, the net fiscal impact of immigrants is more positive than it is for native‐​born Americans and positive overall for the federal and state/​local governments.
Topic:
Immigration, History, and Fiscal Policy
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

33. The Vagaries of the Sea: Evidence on the Real Effects of Money from Maritime Disasters in the Spanish Empire

Author:
Adam Brzezinski, Yao Chen, Felix Ward, and Nuno Palma
Publication Date:
05-2023
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
The Cato Institute
Abstract:
The Columbian voyage of 1492 marked the beginning of three centuries in which vast amounts of monetary silver were shipped from America to Spain. During that time, Spain’s money supply was subjected to the vagaries of the sea. Maritime disasters that resulted in the loss of silver‐​laden ships gave rise to random contractions in the amount of money that arrived in Spain. We studied these maritime disasters to obtain estimates of the causal effects of changes in the money supply on economic output and prices.
Topic:
Imperialism, History, Economy, and Maritime
Political Geography:
Europe and Spain

34. Greenland in the mirror of Puerto Rico

Author:
Rafael Cox Alomar
Publication Date:
04-2023
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS)
Abstract:
The quest for self-determination is as critical today as it was in the aftermath of the Second World War. As was the case during the heyday of decolonization, the path to political devolution remains entangled to realpolitik. It is the geopolitical calculus of the metropolitan centers that still defines the viability and feasibility of the decolonizing formulas available to their non-sovereign territories. The options available to Greenland and Puerto Rico will no doubt reflect the new global order emerging from the ashes of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, as the United States and Denmark (along with their NATO partners) engage in the complex task of redrawing and redefining the boundaries and security priorities of their transatlantic alliance. It is precisely against this background that the present brief offers a succinct description of Puerto Rico’s politico-constitutional status. While bound to their respective metropoles within the context of contrasting constitutional arrangements, the political and legal issues besieging Greenland and Puerto Rico are not wholly dissimilar and deserve careful attention. More specifically, the definition of free association adopted by the US House of Representatives on December 15, 2022, upon approving the 2022 Puerto Rico Status Act bill, might prove informative to policymakers in Nuuk and Copenhagen.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Diplomacy, International Organization, History, and Self-Determination
Political Geography:
North Atlantic, Denmark, Caribbean, Greenland, and Puerto Rico

35. Free Association and the United Nations

Author:
Rachael Johnstone
Publication Date:
05-2023
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS)
Abstract:
Since 1945, most States, on achieving independence, seek admission to the United Nations. This is a shortcut to international recognition on the world stage and secures their statehood against future challenge. Although in theory States do not require formal recognition from other States to come into existence, it is desirable. Rather than seeking recognition and/or expensive diplomatic relations with dozens of other States, admission to the UN puts to bed any doubts about the nation’s existence as a State once and for all. Membership is available to States in Free Association (FA States). UN Members each hold a seat on the General Assembly with an equal vote (irrespective of population or economy). The General Assembly controls the UN budget and elects Member States to other major UN bodies (e.g., ECOSOC, Human Rights Council and Security Council). Membership of these bodies allows States to influence UN focus and policy. A small, new Member State may not desire or have the capacity to seek a seat on these bodies directly, but it can engage in “vote-trading” to promote its interests within the broader system. The General Assembly is also a crucial diplomatic forum in which Member States build trust and alliances with one another.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Diplomacy, International Organization, United Nations, History, and Free Association
Political Geography:
Europe and Denmark

36. Climate resilience and Cook Islands' relationship of Free Association with Aotearoa / New Zealand

Author:
David J. Kilcullen
Publication Date:
05-2023
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS)
Abstract:
On 1 January 2020, the Cook Islands was removed from the OECD Development Assistance Committee’s List of Official Development Assistance (ODA) Recipients. Having been assessed as a “high-income status country”, this re-classification rendered the Cook Islands ineligible for OECD development assistance. It was unfortunate timing. The Covid-19 pandemic hit a few months later and caused a significant contraction in the tourism sector on which the Cook Islands is economically dependent. The result was, by the government’s own description, a “severe recession” with a total contraction of -21.6% of GDP in 2020/ 2021. Thus, only months after being recognized as having a sufficiently high income as to no longer warrant OECD development-assistance, the Cook Islands lost nearly a quarter of its GDP. This was especially significant for a country that is particularly susceptible to climate change and weather-related hazards. The Cook Islands is made up of 15 coral atolls and volcanic islands. Over 90% of the residents of the 12 inhabited islands live within one kilometer of a coastline. In addition, its already modest population of just under 15,000 people is rapidly decreasing (down from approximately 17,500 in 2016), undermining social and economic resilience to shocks. Despite notable economic growth in the years preceding Covid-19, greater infrastructure and other investment remains essential to brace the country for future climate-related changes. A question thus arises as to the benefits of Free Association in circumstances where the former colony faces crises.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Climate Change, History, and Resilience
Political Geography:
Europe, Denmark, New Zealand, and Cook Islands

37. For All the Tea in China: The English East India Company

Author:
Jamie Haworth and Sai Mirthipati
Publication Date:
02-2023
Content Type:
Case Study
Institution:
Oxford Centre for Global History
Abstract:
In Chinese mythology, Shennong was a deified emperor credited with discovering, among other things, modern agriculture, the use of fire, farmers’ markets and the Chinese calendar. As the story goes, one autumn afternoon his subjects were boiling water near a Camellia tree when a gust of wind blew some leaves into the pot. Intrigued by the fragrance, Shennong took a sip. Invigorated, he named the mystical infusion “cha”, thereby adding tea to the illustrious roster of his inventions. The Chinese character for “cha” depicts a man standing between “grass” and “tree” – a fitting, almost prescient characterisation that centres the story of tea on the story of humanity. For a millennium until the 1500s, tea was a closely guarded secret held by the Chinese elite. However, within the next three centuries, this elixir of life native to China would become a common commodity widely available across the Western hemisphere. Tea’s exclusivity lessened by degrees, eventually becoming a staple in working-class communities. As more people consumed tea, it became a complex and powerful economic driver – but not all by serendipity, despite Shennong’s myth. The Western thirst for tea led to competing schools of economic thought, financial systems of capital allocation and principles of governance that still characterise the modern world. Simultaneously, however, the Western thirst for economic power led to the development of the tea industry, a commodity that elites marketed in order to support colonial interests in India and China; tea would become inseparable from colonial identity. Chinese tea forced a shift in popular academic sentiment for trade, as part of a transition from a mercantilist zero-sum game to a Ricardian world of comparative advantage. The risks inherent in the tea trade prompted the development of the legal paradigms of limited liability and joint ownership. Furthermore, government-granted monopolies to ship tea prompted the populace to question the role of competition, government intervention and the ethics of running private armies that put state armies to shame. The story of tea includes the building of empires, the fighting of wars and the collapse of state powers. At the centre of it all was the East India Company and the imperial scramble to trade all the tea in China.
Topic:
Agriculture, History, Capitalism, Trade, British East India Company, and Tea
Political Geography:
China, Asia, and England

38. Rhodes Must Fall: The Legacy of Cecil Rhodes in the University of Oxford

Author:
Emma Day
Publication Date:
02-2023
Content Type:
Case Study
Institution:
Oxford Centre for Global History
Abstract:
On 9 June 2020, more than a thousand people gathered in central Oxford demanding that Oriel College remove the statue of imperialist and mining magnate, Cecil Rhodes. Congregating in defiance of the Covid-19 pandemic, protesters drew renewed attention to the long-standing struggle to decolonise education and tackle institutional racism at British and South African universities. They also knelt with fists raised for over nine minutes in tribute to George Floyd, a man whose recent murder at the hands of Minneapolis police marked only the latest atrocity in a long history of racialised violence in the United States. Amid the local and global reckonings over race and racism taking place in the wake of Covid-19 and Floyd’s murder, the 2020 Rhodes Must Fall protest marked the latest iteration in a fight to remove Rhodes from campuses that began over five years earlier.1 In 2014, after completing his master’s degree at the University of Cape Town (UCT) in South Africa, Ntokozo Qwabe won a Rhodes scholarship to study a Bachelor of Civil Law (BCL) degree at Keble College, University of Oxford. Qwabe arrived in Oxford amid growing calls for the removal of the statue of Rhodes back home. UCT students argued that Rhodes’s monument embodied the pervasive white privilege at the university, and that tackling those problems required removing his oppressive figure from campus. On 9 March 2015, students accelerated their demands for change. Political science student Chumani Maxwele hurled excrement at Rhodes’s statue. Others occupied UCT offices and posted the hashtag #RhodesMustFall to publicise their campaign on Twitter. One month later, UCT removed Rhodes’s statue from campus, inaugurating the Rhodes Must Fall movement. Although Rhodes fell in Cape Town, he remained standing at the University of Oxford. The abundance of tributes to Rhodes at the university may have surprised South African students arriving in Oxford, left wondering why Cecil Rhodes still enjoyed such an outsized public representation at one of the world’s oldest and most prestigious universities. Moreover, with Oxford’s own issues of institutional racism rooted in colonialism and slavery, South African students questioned why the many monuments to Rhodes did not provoke anger among Oxford’s staff and student body. After demanding that Rhodes fall in Cape Town, and asking, why not in Oxford, Qwabe brought the anti-colonialist movement to his new university.
Topic:
Imperialism, Capitalism, History, and Cecil Rhodes
Political Geography:
Europe and England

39. Robert Maxwell’s Expectations Gap: Regulation and Reputation in the British Communications Industry, 1981-91

Author:
Charlie Harris
Publication Date:
02-2023
Content Type:
Case Study
Institution:
Oxford Centre for Global History
Abstract:
During Robert Maxwell’s turbulent lifetime, the world knew him as one of the most successful businessmen in Britain, presiding over a publishing and media empire in direct competition with that of Rupert Murdoch. In 1991, Robert Maxwell died – at which point the world discovered that he was, in fact, far beyond bankrupt. As banks called in their huge loans, accountants found that his empire boasted £2 billion in debt. When he drowned, various auditors and authorities were close to catching him in an enormous fraud. Maxwell had stolen around £460 million from his employees’ pension funds and committed extensive stock fraud in order to manipulate the share prices of his empire. Accusations of fraud and mismanagement dogged Maxwell’s career, but to little effect. Beginning with a single publishing house, he built a media empire. His rivalry with Rupert Murdoch – and perhaps his emotional state, which was notoriously volatile and competitive – drove him to expand at an unsustainable pace, which he supported with confidence trickery and enormous loans. His debts quickly outstripped his assets. Desperately scrambling to repay the loans, he turned to stock fraud and his employees’ pension funds. Still desperate for capital six months before his death, Maxwell floated his largest-ever venture – Mirror Group Newspapers – which successfully attracted £250 million in investment, despite the destitution of its parent company. Public autopsies concluded that the blame lay not just with Maxwell, but with advisers, regulators, and complicit financial institutions. Maxwell killed himself (though some still speculate he was murdered) shortly before a scheduled meeting that would have uncovered his fraud. Maxwell did not leave his family destitute, but they no longer had immediate access to the lifestyle to which they had become accustomed. His sons continued working in the City of London. His daughter, Ghislaine Maxwell, continued to circulate in high society. Her crimes are now better known than her father’s; she is famous for her work as Jeffrey Epstein’s right-hand woman, procuring victims (often under-age) for Epstein’s “prostitution ring” (something of a misnomer, as the term implies consent). Both scandals implicated some of the most powerful figures of their day, and in both cases, th
Topic:
Communications, History, Capitalism, Industry, and Robert Maxwell
Political Geography:
Britain and Europe

40. Sexual Harassment in the “World’s Largest Store”: Managing Macy’s Department Store at the Start of the 20th Century

Author:
Mara Keire and Emma Day
Publication Date:
02-2023
Content Type:
Case Study
Institution:
Oxford Centre for Global History
Abstract:
Shopgirl Betty Lou Spence was modelling a nightgown for a customer when she first noticed her handsome and wealthy new employer and heir to the “world’s largest” store in New York City, Cyrus Waltham Jr, passing through her department. Betty was just one among his many working-class female employees, and Cyrus was initially oblivious to her beauty and charm. But, upon introduction, Cyrus was quick to pursue her. Despite belonging to different social classes and company rank, Betty and Cyrus bonded on dates to Coney Island; their relationship quickly blossomed into a marriage proposal. Betty and Cyrus’s unlikely romance provided the plotline of the 1927 box office hit, It. The success of It marked the rise of the department store. Housed in ornate buildings selling a vast selection of desirable goods, stores attracted large clienteles of mostly elite women who shaped new habits of consumption in the early 20th century.1 The women who travelled downtown to department stores helped others to feel safe venturing out on their own to shop. On arrival, the women freely perused the pretty dresses and gowns, lace underwear and ribbons, shoes, silks, leather goods, hats, jewellery, furniture, appliances, carpets, rugs, table linens and anything else for sale. Reflecting their popularity among women patrons, neighbourhoods with rows of fashionable stores, like Broadway in New York City, became known as the Ladies’ Mile.2 Department stores not only offered virtually anything a customer might possibly want in one place; their bounteous interiors made a trip to the department store an enjoyable day out for the whole family, with such lavish facilities as a post office, barber shop, and theatre.3 Whether in New York City, Paris or London, the service and spectacle that these new stores offered helped coin the term “palaces of consumption”.4 Shopgirls like Betty Lou Spence kept these new and ambitious enterprises running. In 1875, 120 salespeople worked at Macy’s New York flagship store, of whom eighty percent were women. Across the United States, the number of women working as salesclerks ballooned from 8,000 in 1880 to over 58,000 in 1890.5 By 1900, saleswomen and store clerks constituted the second-most common occupations for native-born, single working women.6 In 1913, the National Civic Federation, a policy reform organisation of business and trade union leaders as well as reformers calculated that nineteen firms nationwide employed 33,000 workers, of whom two-thirds were women.7
Topic:
Women, Capitalism, History, Sexual Violence, and Management
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America