As the World Turns

As the World Turns

Richard Haass, the President of the Council on Foreign Relations, the highly respected organization and policy think tank, has held that position for the past dozen years. He has now written a book called The World: A Brief Introduction. This book is described as a primer on the global era we live in from COVID-19 to terrorism and gives us a basic understanding of the dynamics that have in the past and now govern all aspects of our life on this planet. If there is one thing we have been forced to learn once again through the Coronavirus pandemic, it is that we are all connected on this earth and try as we might, we cannot isolate ourselves and insulate ourselves from what happens around us. Last night, as Kim and I were falling asleep to the dulcet tones of Brian Williams on MSNBC, we heard it said by one of the pundits that “you can’t build your walls high enough.” That made us sit up and joke with one another that that line, which I used in my 2013 book Global Pension Crisis: Unfunded Liabilities and How We Can Fill the Gap had come from my ten years of lecturing at Cornell as a Clinical Professor of Finance. I had wanted to title the book with that catchphrase, but publisher word-search issues prevailed and I was left to use it as the title of Chapter 3. Kim said I should have copyrighted the phrase, but I doubt a search would have yielded a clean slate or lack of precedents. In other words, I doubt seriously that I invented the phrase. It has too much of a ring to it and has always felt to me like something that has been said by others over and over.

The context of my use of the walls metaphor was that in talking about the impending, ubiquitous and unavoidable global pension crisis, I argued to my students that they needed to understand it deeply because it would be the defining challenge of the world during their working lifetimes. I told them that nothing they encountered would likely define their economic prosperity more than the global pension crisis and that there was no escaping that reality. To begin with, I may have overstated that upon reflection since in the ensuing seven years we have seen Climate Change and now Coronavirus (perhaps better defined as Pandemic Risk) compete for primacy in our rank ordering of concerns. The Global Pension Crisis has become no less critical and no less impactful on every one of my students for the next forty or so years, it is just that other problems may exceed it in urgency.

Nevertheless, you still can’t build your walls high enough times three. The shit of the world climbs up those walls, no matter how high you try to build them, and it comes over that wall and gets you and your loved ones, no matter what. I’m not even sure you slow the shit down with a wall since most things in nature seem to recognize that walls are built around things that shit wants to get into. What this should say to people is that once you go global you just can’t go back to your island and pretend that the rest of the world doesn’t affect you. In fact, even if you never chose to go global, the process of advancing technology and information/media ubiquity makes it impossible for any island to go untouched. This is toothpaste that is out of the tube and is not going back in. This is that boiled egg that can never change back from a solid to a liquid. This is our collective brain on drugs as the public service advertisement says. Once you travel this far you need to find bigger and better solutions than just building your walls higher and higher in the naive hopes that you will keep out all the bad things of the world. It simply doesn’t work that way.

This is why I think Richard Haass’ new book is so important. People who are globalists don’t need to understand globalization as much as they need to understand what non-globalists know and don’t know. The primer would clearly be useful for people of nationalist tendencies, but I almost think it will be more valuable for those of us who desperately need to narrow the gap that exists with people who are, by their natural instincts wall builders.

The MBA student in my old pension class that forced me to wield my wall-building admonition the first time was a young man who quite defiantly declared to me and the class that he planned to make enough money to never have to worry about a pension. He was not wrong. I ran a global private banking business that helped manage money for many many wealthy individuals and families around the world. None of them were worried about their pensions or their 401-k. I’m betting that they all accepted their pensions and did the appropriate tax planning to transfer their defined contribution funds to their heirs in the most efficient manner. But none of them saw their futures and lifestyle being dependent on their pensions. Pensions are for the great “unwashed” and perhaps the middle class. Affluent and wealthy treat pensions as an afterthought. This was the basis for his bold and arrogant opinion. But he was so very wrong. As wrong as anyone who thinks that their wealth shields them from COVID-19.

I know people who pay others to shop for them. I know people who have bought their own test kits. I know people who can afford not to work and to barricade themselves into their homes and even buy their own ventilators, just in case. But my friend in Florida who says his life hasn’t been changed by Coronavirus goes on to say that his business’ revenues are off 45%. What he doesn’t say is that his taxes will have to go up to address the economic collapse coming down around our ears. His grandkids will be saddled with the huge deficits this will create. If he wasn’t such a good friend I would remind him that he didn’t build his walls high enough. Then I would pat him on the back and say, “don’t worry, no one and no one could have.”

I wish for people to read Richard Haass’ book even though I have just bought it on Audible and will start listening to it tomorrow (it’s a short 10 hour listen I see). That is how desperately I believe that everyone needs to better understand the broader context of the world we live in today and how the knee bone is connected to the thigh bone, etc., etc. We also better need to understand one another and that includes those of us who think ourselves so much more enlightened than those who build walls and cannot see past their own self-interest. We need to close the gaps between us and work the problems in the new realities of the world. That means that globalization is here to stay. That means that all men and women are created equally. That means that healthcare and a modicum of prosperity is an inalienable right the cost of which the collective must bear unless we all want to pay a much higher price down the road.

When we stood on that hilltop in Italy in 1971 and sang the Coca Cola commercial that we wanted to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony, we were espousing the theme of the love generation of the sixties. I am way past that in my thinking. Now I just want to teach the world to heal itself and think rationally and long-term about solutions that address the underlying problems of health, collective prosperity (there is plenty for all to be sure) and happiness as the world keeps on turning. To do that requires thoughtfulness and understanding on all sides. So join me in reading this brief introduction to the world.