New Year's and World Peace

New Year's and World Peace
Nicholas Johnson
The Gazette, December 31, 2023, p. C8
“Back in the day” I joined friends on New Year’s Eve to help push earth into one more year. We occasionally kept at it until 1 or 2 a.m. New Year’s Day, either to make sure we’d finished the task or because we’d lost track of time.

As we aged we remained determined to stay until midnight local time, but not much beyond that.

The years rolled on and many wished to be in bed before midnight. So we switched our clocks to Eastern time, watched television’s portrayal of New York City ringing in the new year at midnight New York time, headed home an hour earlier and were in bed by 11:30 central time.

And now?

I’m reminded of Laura Bush’s stand-up routine at a press corps dinner. She interrupted President George W. Bush’s speech: “I’ve got a few things I want to say for a change. (George is) usually in bed by now. (I told him) if you really want to end tyranny in the world, you’re going to have to stay up later. Nine o’clock, Mr. Excitement here is sound asleep and I’m watching ‘Desperate Housewives.’”

How many of us 90-year-olds can relate to that?

Many of the world’s cultures and religions have celebrations around the winter solstice. I’m told in Spain they eat 12 grapes. We, by contrast, welcome the yearly opportunity to overeat for the six weeks from Thanksgiving to New Year’s Day. It’s just a difference in cultures.

New Year’s Day has walked a long and winding road through history, beginning with welcoming floods and the new agricultural year. Babylonians and Sumerians in Mesopotamia welcomed the flooding of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Egyptians marked the beginning of the new year’s agriculture when the Nile flooded.

Iowa’s farmers also focus on next season’s crops -- buying from monopolists, selling to monopolists, hoping for rain without floods.

New Year’s Day celebrations interweave gods, religious beliefs, stars and planets. Though there are many calendars (e.g., Coptic, Seleucid, Egyptian, Jewish and Zodiac), our Christian calendar’s New Year’s is widely accepted.

That’s right, we are praying to a Catholic pope’s 1582 calendar. We may not understand or adopt the metric system, and our children’s math scores may be falling, but we are attracted like iron filings to a magnet with the numerical precision of 24-hour days, 52 weeks and 28-to-31-day months.

How could we use New Year’s to push 8 billion people closer toward the “world peace” Miss America contestants wish for?

With Universal Time Coordinated (UTC). Google it.

We now have 24 time zones and 24 New Year’s midnights -– further separating humans. [Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons, London fireworks, New Year's Day, 2017.]

Airlines, radio amateurs, numerous industries and the military recognize the “local” times around the planet. But to operate globally they also need an everywhere time. UTC time is London time. Noon in Iowa is 6 PM UTC.

With a UTC New Year’s the world celebrates at the same precise moment. Starting the year agreeing about something. What a concept!

Nicholas Johnson wishes everyone a happier New Year than the year we’re leaving behind. Contact mailbox@nicholasjohnson.org

SOURCES New Year’s

“New Year,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Year

Laura Bush

AP, “Laura Bush steals show at press corps’ dinner; First lady Laura Bush stole the show with a surprise comedy routine that ripped President Bush and brought an audience that included much of official Washington and a dash of Hollywood to a standing ovation at a dinner honoring award-winning journalists,” NBC News, April 30, 2006, . https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna7693810 (““Not that old joke, not again,” she said to the delight of the audience. “I’ve been attending these dinners for years and just quietly sitting there. I’ve got a few things I want to say for a change.” [George is] usually in bed by now” and said she told him recently, “If you really want to end tyranny in the world, you’re going to have to stay up later.” She outlined a typical evening: “Nine o’clock, Mr. Excitement here is sound asleep and I’m watching ‘Desperate Housewives’.”)

Spain’s grapes

“Twelve Grapes,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelve_Grapes (“The Twelve Grapes[1] (Sp. las doce uvas de la suerte, "the twelve grapes of luck") is a Spanish tradition that consists of eating a grape with each of the twelve clock bell strikes at midnight of December 31 to welcome the New Year. Each grape and clock bell strike represents each of the coming twelve months.[2]”)

Mesopotamia and Egypt

Evan Andrews, “1. Babylonian Akitu “5 Ancient New Year’s Celebrations; Get the facts on the ways 5 ancient civilizations rang in the New Year,” History, Dec. 31, 2012, https://www.history.com/news/5-ancient-new-years-celebrations (“Following the first new moon after the vernal equinox in late March, the Babylonians of ancient Mesopotamia would honor the rebirth of the natural world with a multi-day festival called Akitu. This early New Year’s celebration dates back to around 2000 B.C., and is believed to have been deeply intertwined with religion and mythology. . . . Through these rituals the Babylonians believed the world was symbolically cleansed and recreated by the gods in preparation for the new year and the return of spring.”

Patrick J. Kiger, “How Mesopotamia Became the Cradle of Civilization; Environmental factors helped agriculture, architecture and eventually a social order emerge for the first time in ancient Mesopotamia,” History, Nov. 10, 2020, https://www.history.com/news/how-mesopotamia-became-the-cradle-of-civilization (“Mesopotamia’s name comes from the ancient Greek word for “the land between the rivers.” That’s a reference to the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, the twin sources of water for a region that lies mostly within the borders of modern-day Iraq, but also included parts of Syria, Turkey and Iran. The presence of those rivers had a lot to do with why Mesopotamia developed complex societies and innovations such as writing, elaborate architecture and government bureaucracies. The regular flooding along the Tigris and the Euphrates made the land around them especially fertile and ideal for growing crops for food.”)

Evan Andrews, “3. Ancient Egyptian Wepet Renpet,” “5 Ancient New Year’s Celebrations; Get the facts on the ways 5 ancient civilizations rang in the New Year,” History, Dec. 4, 2023, https://www.history.com/news/5-ancient-new-years-celebrations (“Ancient Egyptian culture was closely tied to the Nile River, and it appears their New Year corresponded with its annual flood. According the Roman writer Censorinus, the Egyptian New Year was predicted when Sirius—the brightest star in the night sky—first became visible after a 70-day absence. Better known as a heliacal rising, this phenomenon typically occurred in mid-July just before the annual inundation of the Nile River, which helped ensure that farmlands remained fertile for the coming year. Egyptians celebrated this new beginning with a festival known as Wepet Renpet, which means “opening of the year.” The New Year was seen as a time of rebirth and rejuvenation, and it was honored with feasts and special religious rites.”)

Evan Andrews, “4. Lunar New Year,” “5 Ancient New Year’s Celebrations; Get the facts on the ways 5 ancient civilizations rang in the New Year,” History, Dec. 31, 2012, https://www.history.com/news/5-ancient-new-years-celebrations (“One of the oldest traditions still celebrated today is Lunar New Year (also called Chinese New Year), which is believed to have originated over 3,000 years ago during the Shang Dynasty. The holiday began as a way of celebrating the new beginnings of the spring planting season, but it later became entangled with myth and legend.”)

Agriculture’s monopolists

“Monopolies Are Killing Our Farms,” Bemidji Pioneer, April 15, 2010, https://www.bemidjipioneer.com/opinion/monopolies-are-killing-our-farms (“Has Big Ag gotten too big? And do consumers really benefit from the low prices farmers earn for selling livestock and grain to food giants like Cargill, Smithfield, and Tyson? After two decades standing idly by while those companies and seed behemoth Monsanto swallowed their competitors, a new Department of Justice anti-trust team is vowing to bust up companies that have gotten so big they're thwarting competition. . . . [F]amily farmers and independent ranchers have watched as corporate mergers and takeovers left them with fewer buyers for their crops and animals, and fewer suppliers of basic inputs like seeds and fertilizer. . . . Smithfield's 2007 takeover of Premium Standard Farms, a merger that fattened the largest U.S. hog producer and pork packer by feeding it the country's second-largest producer and sixth-largest packer. In the Southeast, the merger left 2,500 independent hog producers with just one regional buyer. Smithfield could say to the hog farmers who weren't under contract to the company: Here's the price and, if you don't like it, good luck selling your hogs.”)

Varieties of New Year’s celebrations

Cheyenne Buckingham and John Harrington, “26 Completely Different New Year’s Days Around the World,” 24/7 Wall St., updated Jan. 11, 2020, https://247wallst.com/special-report/2019/02/01/26-completely-different-new-years-days-around-the-world-3/ (“People all around the globe ring in the new year, but not all celebrate the same way Americans do, or even on the same day. Though people have different traditions and customs, most feel grateful for the year that passed and optimistic about the one that’s about to begin. Several New Year’s celebrations stretch across several days, like the Burmese and Thai New Year. The Chinese New Year is the longest, lasting 15 days.”)

Varieties of calendars

Miriammne Ara Krummel, “A.D. 2022: Why Years Are Counted with a Gregorian Calendar When Most of the World is Note Christian,” Milwaukee Independent, Jan. 1, 2022, https://www.milwaukeeindependent.com/syndicated/d-2022-years-counted-gregorian-calendar-world-not-christian/ (“The A.D. system, often called “C.E.” or “Common Era” time today, was introduced in Europe during the Middle Ages. It joined the world’s other temporal systems like the Coptic, Seleucid, Egyptian, Jewish and the Zodiac calendars, along with calculations based on the years of rulers’ reigns and the founding of Rome.”)

Near-global acceptance of Christian calendar’s New Year’s

Miriammne Ara Krummel, “A.D. 2022: Why Years Are Counted with a Gregorian Calendar When Most of the World is Note Christian,” Milwaukee Independent, Jan. 1, 2022, https://www.milwaukeeindependent.com/syndicated/d-2022-years-counted-gregorian-calendar-world-not-christian/ (“On December 31, people from cultures all around the world welcomed in A.D. 2022. Few of them thought about the fact that A.D. signals “anno Domini,” Latin for “in the year of our Lord.” In A.D. temporality – the one acknowledged by most societies today – next year marks 2023 years since the purported birth of Jesus Christ. So why did we all toast this new year, given that most of the world’s nearly 8 billion people are not Christians? . . . The A.D. system, often called “C.E.” or “Common Era” time today, was introduced in Europe during the Middle Ages. It joined the world’s other temporal systems like the Coptic, Seleucid, Egyptian, Jewish and the Zodiac calendars, along with calculations based on the years of rulers’ reigns and the founding of Rome. Latin Christendom slowly but confidently came to dominate Europe, and its year dating system then came to dominate the world, so that most countries now take A.D. for granted, at least when it comes to globalized business and government. A.D.‘s ubiquity has almost silenced other ways of thinking about time. This began during the medieval era, under the influence of educated Christian monks . . ..”)

Catholic Pope’s 1582 calendar

“Gregorian calendar,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregorian_calendar

America’s rejection of metric system

Why Doesn’t the U.S. Use the Metric System?” Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/story/why-doesnt-the-us-use-the-metric-system

(“When they began to vet potential systems around the year 1790, the newly developed French metric system made its way to the attention of Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson. Though it was so close at hand, Jefferson, and even France until much later, decided to pass, and the U.S. adopted the British Imperial System of measurement (the one still used in the country today). Since then, the U.S. has had many opportunities to change to the metric system, the one that is used by a majority of the world and that is lauded as much more logical and simple. . . . Whenever the discussion of switching unit systems arose in Congress, the passage of a bill favoring the metric system was thwarted by big businesses and American citizens who didn’t want to go through the time-consuming and expensive hassle of changing the country’s entire infrastructure.”)

“Metric Conversion Act,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_Conversion_Act (“The Metric Board was abolished in 1982 by President Ronald Reagan . . ..”)

Reduction in math test scores

Alexander Fabino, “America's Tanking Math Scores Spark Fears of Mental Decline,” Newsweek, Dec. 5, 2023, https://www.newsweek.com/us-students-math-scores-decline-pisa-assessment-mental-health-concerns-1849812#:~:text=Despite%20stable%20performances%20in%20reading,that%20participated%20in%20the%20assessment (“Despite stable performances in reading and science, the PISA results found that U.S. students' average performance in mathematics literacy in 2022 was markedly lower than in previous cycles, falling to 26th globally in math literacy among the 81 countries and education systems that participated in the assessment.”)

8 billion people

“Current World Population,” worldometer, Dec. 26, 2023, https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/ (8,081,286,900 @ 8:31 AM)

Miss America contestants and “world peace”

Chad Gramling, “Why Do We Expect World Peace From Miss America, But Not Jesus?” 1Glories, Dec. 30, 2021, https://www.1glories.com/world-peace-miss-america-jesus/#:~:text=World%20Peace%20is%20one%20of,in%20the%20movie%20Miss%20Congeniality (“World Peace is one of just two easy answers in life. It’s the correct response when a pageant contestant is asked what she would most want to see happen during her lifetime. This response is the mocked canned answer made famous in the movie Miss Congeniality.”)

Universal Time Coordinated (UTC)

“Coordinated Universal Time,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coordinated_Universal_Time

UTC used by Airlines, radio amateurs, numerous industries and the military

Jo Craven McGinty, “Major Industries Use Coordinated Universal Time. Why Doesn’t Everyone Else?; An economist and an astronomer want the world to abandon local time zones,” The Wall Street Journal, July 12, 2019, https://www.wsj.com/articles/major-industries-use-coordinated-universal-time-why-doesnt-everyone-else-11562923800

Noon in Iowa is 6 PM UTC

See “Universal Time Coordinated (UTC),” above

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Golden Rules & Revolutions: A Series - I

April 12, 2008, 2:40 p.m.

Income Disparity & Revolution
Series Introduction. We're going to try an experiment over the course of the next week.

I haven't been blogging much during the past week or so. It's crunch time around law schools -- for professors as well as students. Seminar papers to be read, edited, and evaluated, followed by one-on-one conferences and subsequent drafts. Regular classes and make-ups. Writing final exams. Plus all the usual semester-end details and the inevitable unforeseen requests and emergencies.

But I have been thinking, collecting ideas and links to stories that, it turns out seem to be interrelated in some way to economics and politics.

In the past, this would have taken the form of a very lengthy blog entry that any follower of this blog would have needed a goodly amount of discretionary time to read.

So, what I've decided to do instead is to take the sections into which it naturally falls and parcel them out over the course of the next seven or eight days -- in a couple instances matching them to events of the day in question.

They will be titled, "Golden Rules & Revolutions: A Series," followed by the Roman numeral of that part. That will both make it possible to read each entry in less time, and to track back (with the left hand column links) to the related, earlier entries.

Anyhow, today we start with . . .

Increasing income disparity, despair. . . I am not a conspiratorial theorist, nor am I charging that anyone truly desires to turn the United States into a third world country, in which the top 1% of super rich rule over a 90% in abject poverty. All I would observe is that what is happening -- as a result of what will be spelled out in this series -- is not that different from what would be happening if that were the goal of government officials and the ruling elite.

[F]rom the late 1980s to the mid-2000s . . . inequality increased across the country. . . . No state has seen a significant decline in inequality during this period. . . .

On average, incomes have declined by 2.5 percent among the bottom fifth of families since the late 1990s, while increasing by 9.1 percent among the top fifth.

Pulling Apart: A State-by-State Analysis of Income Trends, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, April 9, 2008.

And see, for Iowa data, David DeWitte, "Report finds income gap growing in Iowa," GazetteOnline, April 9, 2008, 11:40 a.m. ("The income gap between rich and poor is growing faster in Iowa than in most other states, according to a new report, which found a 49.3 percent average income growth in the wealthiest Iowa households over the past two decades. A study by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities found the richest 20 percent of Iowa families earn 6.1 times as much as the lowest 20 percent of Iowa families by income. The ratio 20 years earlier was 4.7 times as much income for high-income families. . . . Fast-climbing pay for top corporate executives also has increased the income disparity . . ..")

. . . and Revolution. I recall reading many years ago -- where it was I would have no way of recalling now -- that there is a rough mathematical formula for predicting the point at which a growing income disparity will ultimately produce a revolution.

No, I don't think we're yet there in the United States.

But I am one of those who thinks Senator Obama was right when he said, "Lately, there has been a little, typical sort of political flare-up because I said something that everybody knows is true, which is that there are a whole bunch of folks in small towns in Pennsylvania, in towns right here in Indiana, in my home town in Illinois who are bitter. . . . They are angry. They feel like they have been left behind. They feel like nobody is paying attention to what they're going through." Perry Bacon Jr. and Shailagh Murray,"'Bitter' Is a Hard Pill For Obama to Swallow; He Stands by Sentiment as Clinton Pounces," Washington Post, April 13, 2008, p. A6.

As the story points out, Senators Clinton and McCain are trying to dismiss this truth -- denying that anyone's bitter, and charging that Senator Obama, who was living and working in south Chicago as a community organizer, is an "elitist."

It's reminiscent of Ben Stein's story about his visit with Warren Buffett.

Buffett, one of the nation's -- if not the world's -- wealthiest men, had just completed a study of the relative tax rates paid by his secretaries and clerks compared with his own.

It turned out that Mr. Buffett, with immense income from dividends and capital gains, paid far, far less as a fraction of his income than the secretaries or the clerks or anyone else in his office. . . . “How can this be fair?” he asked . . ..

Even though I agreed with him, I warned that whenever someone tried to raise the issue, he or she was accused of fomenting class warfare.

“There’s class warfare, all right,” Mr. Buffett said, “but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”

Ben Stein, "In Class Warfare, Guess Which Class Is Winning," New York Times, November 26, 2006.

Those who refuse to acknowledge what's happening in America can charge those who do with being "elitist," or fomenting "class warfare." But that does little to assuage the anger of those on the losing side of this warfare.

And when that anger is permitted to seethe long enough the news from elsewhere can serve as a reminder of the limits that ultimately come to constrain the greed of oppressive governments and the super rich elite.

Barbara J. Fraser, "As Economy Grows, Income Disparity in Latin America Widens," Catholic News Service, August 3, 2007 ("a two-day general strike in the region was called to protest government economic policies. . . . The incident was one of many around Peru in mid-July, as teachers, farmers and others took their discontent to the streets . . .. Despite six years of steady economic growth, mainly from the export of minerals such as gold and copper, most Peruvians, especially those in rural areas, say they are not feeling the benefits.")

Thu-Trang Tran, "A new peasant revolution – is China learning from its past?" Inside Asia, June 1, 2006 ("Although the Chinese government may not wish to confront nor discuss the social unrest and violence of the Cultural Revolution, it seems the government is wary of history repeating itself. The government is concerned about the simmering social tension resulting from the widening wealth gap as the giant economy powers its way to the top spot.")

Associated Press, "Egypt: American freelance photojournalist and translator detained while covering riots," International Herald Tribune, April 10, 2008 ("Thousands of Egyptians angry over high food prices and low wages have been rioting this week in Mahallah, a Nile Delta city that is home to the Middle East's largest textile factory. Rising prices have struck hard in Egypt, a U.S. ally where 40 percent of the people live in or near poverty.")

No, I don't think we need fear imminent revolution in America.

And no, I don't think the declining dollar, the $40 trillion in unfunded federal debt we're leaving to our great-grandchildren, our multi-billion-dollar negative trade balance, and recession mean we're on the precipice of third-world status.

But I do think we need to take the impact of our economy and governmental policies on ordinary Americans much more seriously than I sense our leaders and media are willing to do. Why? For starters, because I think it is the decent, just and humane thing to do.

But also for all the reasons I have laid out here and will in the rest of the series to come.

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