Throwback Thursday: Recalling William F. Buckley’s Charm and Generosity

by Ray Keating

Eight years ago, in late February, William F. Buckley, Jr., died. The conservative movement could use Buckley’s wisdom today. Here’s the column I wrote at the time for Newsday…

Life offers good days and bad days. The key is to keep it all in proper perspective, and cherish the many gifts from God.

But that’s not always easy. Early last week, I had a couple of bad days. You know – expensive car woes, career challenges, and so on. Then I heard on Wednesday morning that William F. Buckley, Jr. had died. My own frustrations gave way to loss and sadness.

Much can and has been written in recent days about this witty, intellectual powerhouse who was central to the modern-day conservative movement. Buckley started National Review magazine, penned a syndicated newspaper column, wrote novels and nonfiction books, hosted a television show, tweaked liberals, and did much more in nearly six decades of public life.

Oh yes, and he played an important role in defeating communism by laying the intellectual groundwork for Ronald Reagan’s presidency.

In addition, Buckley sailed the seas, ran for mayor of New York City in 1965 on the Conservative Party line to the irritation of liberal Republican John Lindsay, and even was a CIA agent for a brief time. How cool is all of that?

And he did it with panache and obvious joy. Indeed, part of the reason I became a conservative was, no doubt, because of Bill Buckley. I wanted to have as much fun as that guy.

But two personal encounters with Buckley revealed his charm and generosity.

The first time was nearly 20 years ago. I just started writing a column for a very small, now-long-forgotten New York City newspaper. Buckley was doing a lunchtime book signing. So, I decided to ask this conservative luminary for advice. I slipped a few of my columns in an envelope, and when it was my turn in line, nervously handed Buckley the package, asking if he might take a look at my work. His face lit up with a smile, and he declared, “I most certainly will.”

A couple of weeks later, a letter arrived. Buckley graciously read through these early rough columns, and offered some helpful, but gentle critiques. He added that none of this should make me hesitate at the keyboard because I was making a positive contribution. That note of encouragement was invaluable.

During subsequent years, I joked with friends that my life would be complete if two things happened. Jack Nicklaus said “nice round” after playing 18 holes of golf, and Bill Buckley gave thumbs up to my writing.

Well, a couple of years ago, I again saw Buckley at a New York City gathering, and introduced myself. He responded with another smile and said: “Raymond Keating, I read your work.” Without thinking, in a kind of haze of disbelief, I responded: “Oh, come on.” But he reassured that was the case, and we enjoyed a nice conversation. (No word from Nicklaus as yet.)

Those moments with Buckley were good days for this conservative writer. They are memories to be cherished.

But many others have had similar experiences. For example, Matt Carolan, my onetime column partner in these pages, worked for Buckley at National Review. Last week, Matt noted many generous acts on Buckley’s part, and concluded: “Bill's Christian charity and welcoming spirit, whether that be directed to employees, strangers or even political and cultural opponents, were surely some of his greatest accomplishments.”

In my life and so many others, Bill Buckley was a gift. Last Wednesday was a bad day for those of us left on this celestial ball as we will miss William F. Buckley, Jr. But Buckley, I have no doubt, is now enjoying paradise, and paradise is all the more lively for his arrival.

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Mr. Keating is an economist and novelist who writes on a wide range of topics. His Pastor Stephen Grant novels have received considerable acclaim, including The River: A Pastor Stephen Grant Novel being a finalist for KFUO radio’s Book of the Year 2014, and Murderer’s Row: A Pastor Stephen Grant Novel winning for Book of the Year 2015.

The Pastor Stephen Grant Novels are available at Amazon…

Murderer’s Row: A Pastor Stephen Grant Novel

The River: A Pastor Stephen Grant Novel

An Advent for Religious Liberty: A Pastor Stephen Grant Novel

Root of All Evil? A Pastor Stephen Grant Novel

Warrior Monk: A Pastor Stephen Grant Novel

Throwback Thursday: Elections Do Not Repeal Laws of Economics

by Ray Keating

As we watch the carnage of the 2016 presidential election process, it pays to keep in mind that policy matters, and that so-called smart people frequently make bad economic policy decisions. The following column, which originally ran in Long Island Business News in November 2008, debunked the idea served up by many at the time that Barack Obama was just too smart to actually carry through on the policies he supported during the campaign. We, unfortunately, have learned that Obama actually meant what he said, as I argued at the time…

Politics and elections do not repeal the laws of economics.

This fact of life tends to irritate many politicians. On the campaign trail, they pander for votes, and put forth the idea that government can do just about anything. It can tax, regulate, and spend with impunity.

Of course, it’s a complete myth that fundamental economics can be repealed by political rhetoric or legislation. And that is the harsh reality that confronts President-elect Barack Obama and his fellow Democrats who will have larger majorities in both the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate come January.

During his time in the U.S. Senate and on the presidential campaign trail, Obama had very little use for sound economics. For example, he put forth an agenda featuring higher taxes on successful entrepreneurs and investors, as well as on energy companies. Obama also revealed protectionist leanings on the trade front. And he exhibited few qualms about embracing more government spending or an activist regulatory agenda.

Economics 101 tells us that all of this would mean higher costs for businesses and consumers, and bad news for an already-reeling economy.

But in the days leading up to and following the election, assorted experts and talking heads on television have assured everyone not to worry. After all, as we have been told over and over again, Obama is a smart fellow, and he will surround himself with other smart people.

The point, or hope, seems to be that Obama and his aides are just too intelligent to actually try to put his campaign agenda into law. After all, these smart people are not going to do anything that would jeopardize Obama getting re-elected in four years.

There are two major problems with this line of reasoning.

First, history is rich with so-called smart people who made – to put it less than delicately – dumb decisions. That list includes a variety of U.S. presidents. Let’s recall that Herbert Hoover was very smart. In fact, so were Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter. Yet, these smarty-pants made some of the worst economic policy decisions in our nation’s history; decisions that rattled the nation and the globe. Hoover and Carter also wanted to be reelected, but were booted out of office by big numbers.

Second, the unsavory implication is that Obama did not really believe all of those things he declared and proposed during the campaign. It was just what had to be said to get the Democratic nomination, and then to win the White House.

I don’t believe that. I take the president-elect at his word. If you look at Obama’s short voting record in the Senate and his campaign proposals, they reveal a consistent liberal philosophy that favors bigger government, more regulation, and higher taxes, along with skepticism of free trade.

In the real political world, smart people make bad decisions all of the time. Political ideology, poll watching and/or simple emotion often overwhelm or blind elected officials to sound economic thinking.

Where then is the hope for the economy? Well, at least on the policy front, there isn’t a heck of a lot. We’re in a bad economy right now, and most of the policy proposals offered by President-elect Obama will, at best, do nothing to help, or at worst, make matters worse.

One hope is that President-elect Obama and his staff will quickly learn through on-the-job training what policies make for sound economics, and which ones do not.

But our best hope comes from the private sector – from the innovative entrepreneurs, the risk-taking investors, the courageous small business owners, and their hard-working employees. These are the people who will have to find ways to survive and thrive in what is likely to be an increasingly hostile policy climate. Through their ingenuity, they must find avenues around governmental obstacles in order to move ahead, in order to grow the economy, in order to create new jobs. Unfortunately, this already difficult task looks like it will only grow harder in the immediate future.

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Mr. Keating is an economist and novelist who writes on a wide range of topics. His Pastor Stephen Grant novels have received considerable acclaim, including The River: A Pastor Stephen Grant Novel being a finalist for KFUO radio’s Book of the Year 2014, and Murderer’s Row: A Pastor Stephen Grant Novel winning for Book of the Year 2015.

The Pastor Stephen Grant Novels are available at Amazon…

Murderer’s Row: A Pastor Stephen Grant Novel

The River: A Pastor Stephen Grant Novel

An Advent for Religious Liberty: A Pastor Stephen Grant Novel

Root of All Evil? A Pastor Stephen Grant Novel

Warrior Monk: A Pastor Stephen Grant Novel

Governor Cuomo and the Minimum Wage

by Ray Keating

The bad economic apple does not fall far from the tree – especially in New York.

That’s clear with Governor Andrew Cuomo’s effort called the Mario Cuomo Campaign for Economic Justice, named for his late father who also was a governor of New York. What’s the point of this campaign? To jack up New York’s minimum wage to $15 per hour – that is, more than double the federal mandate of $7.25 per hour.

Like his father, Andrew Cuomo has a tough time understanding economics, including the economics of the minimum wage.

New York already imposes a high minimum wage at $9.00. For good measure, Cuomo had his labor commissioner impanel a wage board, which in July of last year recommended a $15 minimum wage applied to employees of fast-food chains. This will be phased in by the end of 2018 in New York City and throughout the rest of the state by mid-2021.

The current Cuomo campaign wants to expand the $15 wage mandate to all industries. On the effort’s website, it says, “A campaign is underway to make New York the first state in the nation to adopt a $15 an hour minimum wage.” Why? According to the Cuomo campaign, “A reasonable minimum wage is a necessity to improve the standard of living for workers, encourage fair and more efficient business practices, and ensure that the most vulnerable members of the workforce can contribute to the economy.”

Of course, all of this amounts to nothing more than political wishful thinking and pandering.

The politics and the economics of raising the minimum wage are unmistakable – but they also happen to be diametrically opposed.

Consider, for example, that according to a Siena College poll released on February 1, 65 percent of New York voters support raising the state’s minimum wage to $15. The problem is that government cannot simply dictate to businesses what they must pay individuals, without there being serious, negative consequences. After all, if it could, then why stop at $15 an hour. Why not $50, or $100?

Contrary to what many politicians and voters apparently think, a higher minimum wage only raises costs for businesses, while hurting young, low-skilled, low-income workers by reducing job opportunities.

The economics of the minimum wage are clear, and not really in any serious dispute. For example, in a 2007 study, economists David Neumark (University of California-Irvine) and William Wascher (Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System) reviewed the economic literature since the early 1990s on the employment effects of the minimum wages. They concluded: “[T]he oft-stated assertion that the new minimum wage research fails to support the conclusion that the minimum wage reduces the employment of low-skilled workers is clearly incorrect. Indeed, in our view, the preponderance of the evidence points to disemployment effects.”

As for the impact on business, consider an Employment Policies Institute (EPI) study released in May 2006 written by economist Joseph Sabia from University of Georgia. It looked at the effects of a higher minimum wage, including on the small business and retail sectors. EPI noted that the “results confirm the consensus economic opinion that increases in the minimum wage decrease employment, particularly for low-skilled and entry-level employees.” And as for small businesses and the retail sector:  “A 10 percent increase in the minimum wage is associated with a 2.7 to 4.3 percent decline in teen employment in the retail sector, a 5 percent decline in average retail hours worked by all teenagers, and a 2.8 percent decline in retail hours worked by teenagers who remain employed in retail jobs. These results increase in magnitude when focusing on the effect on small businesses. A 10 percent increase in the minimum wage is associated with a 4.6 to 9.0 percent decline in teenage employment in small businesses and a 4.8 to 8.8 percent reduction in hours worked by teens in the retail sector.”

For good measure, studies overwhelmingly show that raising the minimum wage is ineffective in reducing poverty rates, particularly given the reduction in job opportunities.

Rather than political ignorance and pandering winning out on economic policy matters, including the minimum wage, in New York, wouldn’t it be refreshing if Governor Andrew Cuomo managed to align policymaking with actual economics? But alas, it’s probably too much to have the apple indeed fall far from the tree.

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Mr. Keating is an economist and novelist who writes on a wide range of topics. His Pastor Stephen Grant novels have received considerable acclaim, including The River: A Pastor Stephen Grant Novel being a finalist for KFUO radio’s Book of the Year 2014, and Murderer’s Row: A Pastor Stephen Grant Novel winning for Book of the Year 2015.

The Pastor Stephen Grant Novels are available at Amazon…

Murderer’s Row: A Pastor Stephen Grant Novel

The River: A Pastor Stephen Grant Novel

An Advent for Religious Liberty: A Pastor Stephen Grant Novel

Root of All Evil? A Pastor Stephen Grant Novel

Warrior Monk: A Pastor Stephen Grant Novel

Throwback Thursday: Learning from a Classic Business Thinker

by Ray Keating

One of the best things about writing and researching in your career is that the learning never stops. This column, which originally ran in Long Island Business News in December 2014, serves up some insights learned from Peter Drucker on managing one’s career…

An anniversary snuck up on me the other day. It turns out that 2014 marked a quarter century of my writing on the economy, policy, business, and more.

That includes being a weekly newspaper columnist for the now-defunct “New York City Tribune,” then for “Newsday,” and for nearly seven years now with “Long Island Business News.” Toss in seven-plus years of teaching in the business school at Dowling College, serving as an economist in the policy world for nearly two-dozen years, and writing ten books, and I’ve been at this knowledge worker thing for a long time.

One of the best parts of these gigs is that the process of learning has never stopped. I always learn when I write. Also, teaching management classes provides assorted lessons or refreshers for my career. That occurred this semester as I turned to one of the classic business thinkers of the past 75 years – Peter Drucker.

Drucker, who died in 2005 at the age of 95, provided insights on management, in the broadest sense of the word, from the late 1930s into the twenty-first century. “BusinessWeek” once referred to him as “the man who invented management.”

Regarding his contributions, the website of the Peter Drucker Institute sums up: Drucker “predicted many of the major developments of the late 20th century, including privatization and decentralization, the rise of Japan to economic world power, the decisive importance of marketing and innovation, and the emergence of the information society with its necessity of lifelong learning. In the late 1950s, Drucker coined the term ‘knowledge worker,’ and he spent the rest of his life examining an age in which an unprecedented number of people use their brains more than their backs.”

I appreciated Drucker’s plain talk that innovation is just as much about hard work, persistence, analyzing opportunities and focus, as it is about inspiration and ingenuity. He wrote about “systematic innovation” and the “discipline of innovation.” Most people default to innovation being mysterious and ethereal. But innovation is grounded in the real world; after all, it is the act of bringing a new or improved product or process to the marketplace. Drucker summed up, “If diligence, persistence, and commitment are lacking, talent, ingenuity, and knowledge are of no avail.”

This semester, I introduced students and myself to Drucker’s Harvard Business Review article “Managing Oneself.” It’s a fascinating piece focused on managing, developing and preparing yourself in order to stay “engaged over a 50-year working life.” He offered a systematic process of assessing your own strengths, preferred working and learning styles, values compared to the firm’s values, and coming to understand how and where you can make the best contributions.

Interestingly, though, for both my much younger students and me, what seemed to hit home was Drucker’s discussion of preparing for and launching an eventual second or parallel career. He noted that most midlife crises are about boredom, as even those who are very good at their jobs still eventually might find a lack of learning, contribution or challenge, despite having another 20-25 years of work ahead.

The students were interested in Drucker’s advice to start preparing for a second career long before entering the second half of your career. I found it interesting that I already had undertaken this process when I started writing novels a few years ago. The students became interested in planning ahead, while I reflected on managing in the midst of the second/parallel career.

I’ve always taught students that your career will be more satisfying if you think of yourself as an entrepreneur, that you are your own small business. Drucker put it just a bit different: “In effect, managing oneself demands that each knowledge worker think and behave like a chief executive officer.” Thinking this way offers a different perspective on your career, whether you own a business or have one boss. As your own CEO or small business, you both have control and must work to make your customers (such as your boss) happy. That’s business, including managing yourself.

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Mr. Keating is an economist and novelist who writes on a wide range of topics. His Pastor Stephen Grant novels have received considerable acclaim, including The River: A Pastor Stephen Grant Novel being a finalist for KFUO radio’s Book of the Year 2014, and Murderer’s Row: A Pastor Stephen Grant Novel winning for Book of the Year 2015.

The Pastor Stephen Grant Novels are available at Amazon…

Murderer’s Row: A Pastor Stephen Grant Novel

The River: A Pastor Stephen Grant Novel

An Advent for Religious Liberty: A Pastor Stephen Grant Novel

Root of All Evil? A Pastor Stephen Grant Novel

Warrior Monk: A Pastor Stephen Grant Novel