Thoreau the scientist: how environmental research informed Walden and later works

 

The steam locomotive chugged its way toward Cambridge, Massachusetts, on August 15, 1859. On board was an impatient young scientist wanting to understand the math and science governing how river channels should behave. After disembarking at Harvard College and searching the stacks of its library, Henry David Thoreau checked out “Principes D’Hydraulique,” a three-volume tome of hydraulic engineering.

Once he translated and transcribed 17 pages from the original French, he finally discovered what he was looking for: an equation for the equilibrium velocity of a stream, given its shape, slope, volume of flow and bed roughness.

This theoretically minded, quantitative side of Thoreau is nearly invisible in the cultural zeitgeist. There, his other side dominates: the famous 19th-century transcendental nature writer, philosopher, social critic and abolitionist who lived for two years in a small house in the woods above Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts.

This literary-minded, qualitative Thoreau is canonized and mythologized for “Walden,” a foundational text for America’s environmental movement, and for “Civil Disobedience,” which describes a model of nonviolent political protest later adopted by Emma Goldman, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr. and many others.

Removal of this low factory dam across the Concord River in Billerica, Mass., was the center of contention for what may have been America’s first major environmental assessment. 

The nearly invisible Thoreau – the compulsively quantitative and analytically rigorous physical scientist – emerged from my research as a geologist interested in the history of 19th-century science. With two decades of scholarly books and articles behind me, I’m now featuring this less well-known Thoreau in my upcoming book, “The Walden Experiments: The Science of Henry David Thoreau.”

Footnote to fame

Thoreau rose to fame as an original American thinker. He’s now the star of an award-winning video game. The Thoreau Alliance, an organization dedicated to educating about his life and legacy, is international. A recently released and highly acclaimed Ken Burns-Ewers brothers biopic, “Henry David Thoreau,” focuses on the usual side of Thoreau as a writer and activist, emphasizing his focus on environmental justice, sustainable living and the power of nature to heal our increasingly technological and frenetic lives.

Henry David Thoreau was a prominent 19th-century naturalist, environmentalist and writer. Benjamin D. Maxham/National Portrait Gallery

I served as an adviser for and appear in the film, which touches on Thoreau’s science. These touches are limited mainly to his work as a biological naturalist. Examples include his pioneering insights on the dispersal of seeds, his anticipation of Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection and his study of the seasonal manifestations of natural phenomena, such as plants’ flowering times and bird migrations.

The fourth draft of a hand-inked table titled ‘Statistics of the Bridges…’ about the Concord River, prepared by Thoreau as part of a legal case in 1859. Courtesy Concord Free Public Library. Survey 133b.

Physical science

“I keep out of doors for the sake of the mineral, vegetable, and animal in me.”

Thoreau wrote this entry in his journal on Nov. 4, 1852, when he was busy researching the lake at Walden Pond. His words remind readers that any search for meaning must ultimately begin with the bedrock roots of their lives on which all plants, animals and cultures depend. My way of saying the same thing is, “No rocks, no ecosystems, no cultures.”

During his research on the lake and nearby streams, Thoreau made an original discovery in fluid mechanics. On June 4, 1854, he wrote the first known technical description of a standing capillary wave: a small water wave that, instead of rippling outward, stays in a fixed position.

This phenomenon, which he later made a technical drawing of, is now known as the Thoreau-Reynolds Ridge. His co-discoverer, Osborne Reynolds, was a pioneering Irish British hydraulic engineer.

Limnology and geology

Thoreau also pioneered limnology, the science of lakes. He studied how light passed through the water of Lake Walden in liquid, solid and vapor phases, how the lake stored heat in stable layers during the summer and winter, how the water chemistry affected its clarity, and how lakes eventually fill to become dry land.

His 1939 recognition as America’s first limnologist precedes by two years his 1941 canonization as an important American writer.

Thoreau correctly interpreted that his New England landscape had been shaped by a colossal ice sheet that had flowed southward from Canada. At the time, the state geologist of Massachusetts and the American science establishment were incorrectly attributing the same landscape to an iceberg-laden catastrophic flood. He also correctly reasoned that his beloved Walden Pond was born when a buried remnant of that ice sheet melted downward to create a groundwater-filled sinkhole called a kettle.

He kept a growing reference collection of rocks and minerals in his attic garret that was later exhibited for decades at the nearby Fruitlands Museum in Harvard, Massachusetts. His journal entries are peppered with geological insights related to these specimens. His final journal entry is a geological interpretation of rain splash erosion.

Thoreau’s river science

The most analytically rigorous science of Thoreau’s life culminated with his 1859 research trip to the library stacks of Harvard College. At the time, he was investigating how the Concord River watershed had changed in response to the construction of a downstream factory dam a century earlier.

Thoreau’s research was a clandestine part of a protracted legal case involving four acts of the state Legislature between 1859 and 1862. Potentially, this was America’s first major environmental assessment because it examined alternative actions to dam removal and weighed environmental protection against socioeconomic costs.

During a span of 18 months, Thoreau carried out nearly 50 discrete research tasks to create dozens of tables of numerical data and a detailed compilation map of the Concord River Valley that’s over 7 feet long. His river science predates that of the United States’ first recognized river scientist by 18 years.

A colorized sequence of seven survey lines on a detail of Thoreau’s draft bathymetry of Walden Pond. He was searching for its deepest point. Courtesy Concord Free Public Library. Survey 133b.

The boldest claim of my latest book is that Thoreau’s sharp swerve toward science in 1851-52 led to the rescue of “Walden,” his most famous work. Specifically, his field research led to an understanding of its namesake place as a natural system of water, air, land, aquifer and life that included humanity. This more complex and inclusive vision transformed what had been an abandoned draft of social critique into the nature writing that became a foundational text for America’s environmental movement.

The Thoreau who built literary castles in the air put the solid foundations of physical science beneath them.    

-Robert M. Thorson, Professor of Earth Science, University of Connecticut

"He died poor, alone, unknown"

 

                 

He made nine dollars from the most famous poem in American history. A dead drunk nobody invented modern detective fiction, horror literature, and science fiction. All while earning almost nothing. Edgar Allan Poe was 40 years old when he died. Broke. Alone. Found delirious on the streets of Baltimore.

Everyone said he was a failure. “Just a drunk who wrote weird stories.” “Never made any real money.” “Died in a gutter like a nobody.” They couldn’t have been more wrong.         

Here’s what Poe built that no one saw coming: He was orphaned before age 3. His foster father disowned him. He got kicked out of West Point. He watched his young wife die slowly of tuberculosis while he couldn’t afford to keep her warm.

Every door slammed in his face. But Poe had something no one could take from him. The ability to see darkness clearly. And turn it into words that burned into people’s minds. When everyone else was writing polite poetry about flowers and nature, Poe wrote about murder. Madness.

The terror hiding inside ordinary people. Editors rejected him constantly. “Too dark.” “Too strange.” “No one wants to read this.”

He didn’t listen. He kept writing. Kept submitting. Kept getting rejected. Kept going anyway. Then came “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.” The first detective story ever written. The template that every crime novel, every mystery show, every procedural drama still follows today.

Before Poe, detective fiction didn’t exist. He invented it. Then came “The Raven.” It made him famous overnight. People memorized it. Quoted it everywhere. It spread across the country. And Poe made about nine dollars from it. Nine dollars. For a poem that’s been read by hundreds of millions of people.

He died poor. Alone. Unknown by most of the world. But here’s what happened after. Arthur Conan Doyle read Poe and created Sherlock Holmes. Said Poe’s detective was the model for everything that followed. H.P. Lovecraft read Poe and built cosmic horror on his foundation. Stephen King read Poe and called him the father of American horror.

Every detective show you watch. Every horror movie that makes you check the locks at night. Every psychological thriller that gets inside your head. Poe built the blueprint. Today his work is translated into every major language. Taught in every school. Referenced in every corner of popular culture. All from a man who died thinking he was a failure.

He never saw any of it. Never got rich. Never got recognition. Never got to see his influence spread across the entire world. But he kept writing anyway. Because he understood something most people don’t. Your work doesn’t have to pay off in your lifetime to matter. Your impact doesn’t have to be visible to you to be real.

Sometimes you plant seeds you’ll never see grow. What story are you not telling because you think no one wants to hear it? What work are you abandoning because it’s not paying off fast enough? What creative risk are you avoiding because the world says it’s too dark, too weird, too different?

Poe watched his wife die. Lost every job he ever had. Got paid almost nothing for his best work. Died alone in the street. And still became one of the most influential writers in human history. Because he never stopped doing the work. He never let rejection silence him. He never let poverty stop him. He never let anyone else’s opinion define what he created.

Your circumstances don’t determine your legacy. Your consistency does. Your commitment does. Your willingness to keep going when everyone says quit. That’s what separates people who change the world from people who just complain about it.

Poe had every excuse to give up. He used none of them. Stop waiting for permission. Stop waiting for payment. Stop waiting for recognition. Do the work. Tell your story. Let the world catch up later. Think Big.

Edgar Allan Poe (January 19, 1809 - October 7, 1849)

-English Literature   

    

"His future was supposed to be a factory floor. Then one teacher noticed him—and twenty years later, he won the Nobel Prize"

 

His teacher gave him books when his home had none. Twenty years later, he won the Nobel Prize and wrote him one letter: "You are why I'm here."      

November 7, 1913. Mondovi, Algeria. Albert Camus was born into the kind of poverty that erases futures before they begin. His father, Lucien, was an illiterate agricultural worker in French colonial Algeria. When World War I broke out, he was conscripted and sent to fight. On October 11, 1914, Lucien Camus was killed at the Battle of the Marne. Albert was eleven months old. He would never remember his father's face.

His mother, Catherine, was left alone with two small boys, no money, and almost no options. She was partially deaf and couldn't read or write. To keep her children from starving, she took the only work available: cleaning houses for wealthy French colonials.

Every day, Catherine scrubbed floors for families who had more books in one room than she'd seen in her entire life. Then she came home to a cramped two-room apartment in Belcourt—one of Algiers' poorest districts—where she lived with her sons, her domineering mother, and her partially paralyzed brother.

No running water. No indoor toilet. No electricity for years. And absolutely no books. Albert Camus grew up in silence. His mother rarely spoke. There was never enough food, never enough space, never enough of anything. By every measure that mattered in 1920s colonial Algeria, Albert Camus had no future.

At ten years old, Albert sat in a crowded classroom at the École Comunale—a public primary school for working-class children. He was quiet. Watchful. Small for his age. He wore the same worn clothes week after week. His classmates were mostly the same: poor French and Arab children whose futures were already factory work, dock work, early death. Education ended at age 14 for children like them. That's when you left school and started earning money. But one teacher noticed something.

Louis Germain was a slim, serious man who believed that intelligence had nothing to do with wealth. He'd spent his career teaching poor children, and he'd learned to spot the ones who could escape if given a chance. Albert Camus was one of them. The boy barely spoke, but when he wrote, his sentences had a clarity that stunned Germain. Germain made a decision: he would save this boy.

Germain tutored Albert for free after school—hours of extra instruction he wasn't paid for. He taught him Latin, French literature, mathematics, everything Albert would need to pass the scholarship exam for lycée—secondary school.

But the real obstacle wasn't Albert's ability. It was his family. Catherine needed her son to work. At 14, Albert could bring in money. His grandmother was even more opposed: "Education? For what? He needs to work." Louis Germain went to their apartment in Belcourt and confronted them. He stood in that tiny, dim apartment—no books, peeling walls, the smell of poverty thick in the air—and made his case to a nearly deaf woman who couldn't read and a hostile grandmother who saw education as a betrayal.

"Your son is brilliant," Germain said. "If he continues school, he can have a different life. Please. Let me help him." Catherine looked at this teacher who had no reason to care about her son. She couldn't understand why he was fighting so hard. She said yes. In 1924, at age 11, Albert took the scholarship examination for the Grand Lycée in Algiers. He passed.

He became one of the very few poor children in colonial Algeria to advance to secondary school. Most of his classmates came from wealthy colonial families. Albert was the cleaning woman's son. He wore secondhand clothes. He couldn't afford books or lunch. But he studied with ferocious intensity because he understood: Louis Germain had given him an escape route, and if he failed, the door would close forever.

Albert didn't fail. He discovered philosophy, literature, theater. He read Gide, Malraux, Dostoevsky—writers who asked the questions he'd been asking his entire childhood: What is justice? Why does suffering exist? How do we live in a world that makes no sense? But he never forgot where he came from. Every day, he went home to Belcourt, to the silent apartment where his mother still scrubbed floors.

At 17, Camus contracted tuberculosis. It nearly killed him. He survived, but the illness left him with permanent lung damage and the knowledge that his time was limited. It changed everything. He became obsessed with the question: If life is short and ultimately meaningless, how do we live with dignity?
These questions would define his career.

In his twenties, Camus became a journalist, then a novelist. He wrote The Stranger, about the absurdity of existence. He wrote The Plague, exploring how humans respond to suffering they can't control. He wrote The Myth of Sisyphus, arguing that life's meaninglessness doesn't justify despair. Camus became famous worldwide. His books sold millions. Intellectuals debated his ideas. And in 1957, at age 44, Albert Camus won the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Stockholm, December 10, 1957. Albert Camus stood at the podium, accepting one of the highest honors in literature. He was the second-youngest person ever to win it. The ceremony was grand royalty in attendance, formal dress, speeches in multiple languages.

But when he left the ceremony, the first thing Camus did was write a letter. Not to his publisher. Not to literary critics. He wrote to Louis Germain, his primary school teacher in Belcourt. The letter, dated November 19, 1957, said: "Dear Monsieur Germain, I let the commotion around me subside a bit before speaking to you from the bottom of my heart. I have just been given far too great an honour, one I neither sought nor solicited. But when I heard the news, my first thought, after my mother, was of you. Without you, without the affectionate hand you extended to the small poor child that I was, without your teaching and example, none of all this would have happened. I don't make too much of this sort of honour. But at least it gives me the opportunity to tell you what you have been and still are for me, and to assure you that your efforts, your work, and the generous heart you put into it still live in one of your little schoolboys who, despite the years, has never stopped being your grateful pupil. I embrace you with all my heart. -Albert Camus"

Louis Germain, now elderly and retired, received the letter and wept. He'd spent his career teaching poor children who disappeared into factories and docks. And one of them—one small, silent boy from Belcourt—had just won the Nobel Prize and credited him as the reason. Albert Camus died three years later, on January 4, 1960, in a car accident at age 46.

He was at the height of his fame. He had more books to write, more ideas to explore. But a rainy French road ended everything. In his coat pocket when he died was an unused train ticket—he'd planned to take the train but accepted a friend's offer to drive instead. A random choice. A meaningless death in an absurd universe—exactly the kind of irony Camus had written about his entire life.

But here's what survived: His books, which have sold tens of millions of copies and continue to shape how we think about meaning, morality, and rebellion. His ideas about the absurd—that life has no inherent meaning, but we must live as if it does anyway, with dignity and defiance. And that letter to Louis Germain, which became one of the most famous letters in literary history.

Louis Germain gave Albert Camus something more valuable than books. He gave him permission to believe that poverty didn't define potential. That a cleaning woman's son could think, could write, could matter. That intelligence wasn't a privilege reserved for the wealthy but existed everywhere—even in silent boys in crowded classrooms in the poorest districts of colonial Algeria.

Germain died in 1965, five years after Camus. By then, he'd lived long enough to see his student become immortal. His home had no books. His mother couldn't read. His future was supposed to be a factory floor. Then one teacher noticed him—and twenty years later, he won the Nobel Prize.

-Classic Literature 

    

"The Department of Justice’s grift store for friends and supporters of the president, laying a solid foundation for settlement payouts, should be an affront to every taxpayer in America"

In the past few weeks, Michael Flynn, a 2016 Trump campaign adviser, seems to have benefited twice from DOJ largesse. Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about discussions with the Russian ambassador during the 2016 transition — a case that was dismissed after President Trump pardoned him.

Not satisfied with the good fortune of a pardon and dismissal, Flynn sued the government, alleging malicious prosecution and related claims. 

The DOJ, which had been successfully fighting the case, reversed course under the Trump administration, paying a reported $1.25 million taxpayer-funded settlement to Flynn. And just days ago, the government submitted a court filing asserting it had reached yet another settlement in principle with Flynn on a different claim.

The DOJ also reportedly paid $1.25 million to former 2016 Trump campaign adviser Carter Page for his claims against the government relating to the Russia investigation, notwithstanding that lower courts had dismissed Page’s lawsuit and an appeal was pending.

At the start of his second term, Trump continued to upend history’s retelling of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol by issuing blanket clemency to more than 1,600 January 6 riot defendants and absolving the attackers from owing restitution for the millions in damages they caused. Many of those pardoned have become repeat offenders.

Now, in a display of jaw-dropping audacity, pardoned January 6 rioters have sued the federal government for tens of millions of dollars for alleged physical and emotional damages caused by the police seeking to repel the attacks. 

Another DOJ settlement seems more likely in light of the department’s recent move to vacate the conspiracy and sedition convictions against Proud Boys and Oath Keepers leaders. Poly-market is likely planning its betting odds on how long the pardon-to-payout pipeline will take before a taxpayer funded settlement from the DOJ is achieved.

In this administration, loyalty and personal benefit are mutually reinforcing. It’s worth comparing, as the grift grows, the government’s efforts to protect its friends and supporters from accountability with this country’s treatment of wrongly convicted individuals. The justice system has long been marred by the numbers of people who have languished in prison for years, seeking to prove their innocence.

Those who are fortunate enough to ultimately be exonerated struggle — often unsuccessfully — to receive any compensation. Unlike those who are pardoned, an exonerated prisoner is declared innocent in the eyes of the law, as opposed to being forgiven by a presidential benefactor.

The settlements to Trump’s cronies, however, may merely be practice for the ultimate payment to the president and his family that would result in one of the most brazen examples of public corruption in history.

The president, his two sons, and The Trump Organization have sued the Internal Revenue Service — an agency the president oversees — for $10 billion, alleging the IRS disclosed confidential tax information to the media. The president had previously filed claims before the DOJ seeking $230 million as compensation for grievances that included the search for classified documents at Trump’s Florida home and the Russia investigation.

The president controls both sides of these cases. 

Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general and Trump’s former criminal defense lawyer, demonstrates the same slavish devotion to the president that his fired predecessor, Pam Bondi, exhibited.

While recently defending the firing of DOJ lawyers for working on assigned cases during the prior administration, Blanche stated that, if he is not nominated as attorney general or otherwise retained at DOJ, he would thank the president and say, “I love you, sir.”

The president requested, with the DOJ’s consent, an extension of a key deadline in his IRS suit, claiming that the parties were engaging in settlement discussions. If the DOJ resolves this case for even a fraction of the billions sought, it will validate its disdain toward the taxpaying public and its contempt for conflict-of-interest requirements.

Paying taxes is an act of trust that is based on an expectation that the government will use those funds to perform essential functions on behalf of the public. DOJ settlements and potential settlements with the administration’s friends and supporters (and possibly the president and his family) undermine its responsibility to seek accountability and serve as a stunning breach of that trust at the taxpayers’ expense.

Lauren Stiller Rikleen is the executive director of Lawyers Defending American Democracy and the editor of Her Honor—Stories of Challenge and Triumph from Women Judges.

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America's $39 trillion debt

Delayed flight. Gate C14. And God himself decided to entertain me by placing two people directly behind me solving America's $39 trillion debt problem between bites of a $22 airport sandwich.

#1 turns to his friend:
"If capitalism is so great, why are we $39 TRILLION in debt?"

#2, without missing a beat:
"Because of socialist programs, obviously."

I closed my laptop. I needed a moment. Because let's actually look at where the $39 trillion came from. Not feelings. Not talking points. Numbers.

💣 THE IRAQ & AFGHANISTAN WARS: $8 TRILLION
No WMDs found. No democracy built. Two countries left in chaos. That's not socialism. That's bipartisan warmongering with a Lockheed Martin logo on it.

💣 THE 2008 BANK BAILOUT: $700 BILLION (+ $12 TRILLION in Fed support)
Wall Street gambled with your mortgage, crashed the global economy, then got handed a check with YOUR name on it. The banks kept their bonuses. You kept your debt. That's not socialism for the poor — that's socialism for the rich.

💣 THE 2017 TAX CUTS: $1.9 TRILLION added to the debt
Sold as a gift to the middle class. Apple alone saved $47 billion. Your check? Maybe $40 a month. The debt? $1.9 trillion heavier.

💣 THE US HEALTHCARE SYSTEM: $4.5 TRILLION per year
America spends MORE per person than any country on Earth — and gets LESS. A hip replacement in Spain? €6,000. In the US? $40,000. Medical bills are the #1 cause of personal bankruptcy in America. That's not too much socialism. That's the cost of having none.

💣 PENTAGON BUDGET: $886 BILLION in 2024 alone
Larger than the next 10 countries COMBINED. Meanwhile your bridge is crumbling and your kid's school has a GoFundMe for pencils.

Now. Let's talk about socialism "failing."
MEXICO — right next door. Nobody's paying attention.
Claudia Sheinbaum became president in 2024. She has a PhD in climate science. An actual scientist running a country. Not a TV personality. Not a failed businessman. A scientist. She expanded universal pensions, free internet nationwide, and scholarships for millions of young Mexicans. Foreign investment is flooding in. Nearshoring is making Mexico one of the hottest manufacturing destinations on Earth. And she's navigating Trump's tariffs and border provocations with more dignity than any US politician has managed in years. She doesn't tweet at 3am.

Must be infuriating for some people. 😊

BRAZIL — and this story needs to be told.
Lula was a factory worker. A union leader. A man who lost a finger in a machine press and turned his pain into a political movement. He was imprisoned on charges later thrown out by Brazil's Supreme Court — many believe to keep him from power.

He came back. Won the election. Returned to the presidency at 77.

Under Lula:
• Bolsa Família restored — lifting millions out of extreme poverty
• Minimum wage raised above inflation for the first time in years
• Amazon deforestation dropped 50% in his first year back

A man who came from nothing, survived prison, and came back to feed the poor and protect the rainforest. That's not a communist villain. That's a story Hollywood would make a movie about — if he were American and right-wing.

CHINA — and this one will really hurt.
Nominally communist. And yet:

• 45,000 km of high-speed rail. The US has zero.
• 5 million engineers graduated per year. The US graduates 200,000.
• BYD just outsold Tesla worldwide.
• 800 million people lifted out of poverty in 40 years — the greatest anti-poverty achievement in human history.

Someone forgot to tell the second largest economy on Earth that socialism always fails. While America spent $8 trillion blowing up the Middle East, China was building infrastructure, educating engineers, and buying up the debt America kept creating. Who's actually winning here?

And yes — Venezuela. We know. A corrupt petro-dictatorship that printed money, destroyed private institutions, and was strangled by US sanctions. Not a social democracy. Not what any serious economist proposes. Comparing Venezuela to these countries is like comparing a gas station hot dog to a Michelin star restaurant and concluding that food is dangerous.

Here's what those two people at Gate C14 — and half of Facebook — can't grasp:

America doesn't have too much socialism.
America has socialism for the wrong people.

Subsidies for oil companies that made $200 billion in profit? Socialism.
Bailouts for banks that gambled and lost? Socialism.
Tax breaks for private jets and yachts? Socialism.

Free school lunch for a hungry 7-year-old? Suddenly that's communism. The $39 trillion wasn't built by teachers, nurses, food stamps, or public libraries.

It was built by wars nobody wanted, tax cuts nobody needed, bailouts for people who needed them least, and a healthcare racket that would make the mafia blush.

But sure. Blame the socialism. Flight's still delayed. They're still talking.

I ordered another coffee. ☕

-FB

"American consumers bore the costs of Trump’s tariffs"

 

On “Liberation Day” in April 2025, Donald Trump imposed a massive set of tariffs on imported goods from around the world. The federal government then collected those funds — raking in ten upon tens of billions of dollars — for nearly a year, until the Supreme Court ruled that the president had unconstitutionally usurped Congress’s taxation powers.

As a result, the federal government has now begun the process of refunding about $166 billion in illegal tax revenue — payable to the corporations that originally handed over the money to the U.S. Treasury. But did these corporations actually pay the tax? Or, after all, was it you and me?

In truth, the fat tax-rebate checks from the IRS will be going to corporations that already passed those costs on to shoppers in the form of tariff-bloated prices. American consumers paid the premium, but Treasury’s refunds will be going to huge companies. Ford announced it expects a $1.5 billion payback; General Motors anticipates a $500 million return. Both companies will reportedly be using the cash to boost their earnings.

Whether by incompetence or dark design, Trump’s illegal tariffs have worked like a reverse-Robin Hood scheme, on steroids. The pockets of the poor and middle classes were picked — during an affordability crisis, no less. And, following a detour through the IRS, that cash is now topping off the coffers of multinational corporations for whom the economy is already delivering record profits.

The economic ins and outs of tariffs, or import taxes, can be confusing at the best of times. And Donald Trump has added to that confusion with a constant stream of lies. To hear the addled president tell it, foreign countries pay the bulk of tariffs. But that is not true: A study by the New York Fed shows that foreign exporters absorbed only a small fraction of the costs of Trump’s tariffs. Instead, roughly 90 percent of the costs were paid by Americans.

An independent study by the Kiel Institute, a leading European economic think tank, pegs the cost paid by Americans even higher, at 96 percent. The report, titled “America’s Own Goal,” also illuminates how the costs of Trump’s tariffs, though initially paid by importers, are “ultimately” passed through to consumers via higher prices. The net effect of Trump’s tariffs, the study described, was to “transfer wealth from American consumers to the U.S. Treasury.”

In other words, American consumers bore the costs of Trump’s tariffs. The corporate importers were just the middleman. And yet, those same corporations are now in line to pocket the massive rebates from the Treasury, leaving consumers all the poorer.

To be plain: This isn’t a little bit of money around the edges. According to Congress’s Joint Economic Committee, the Trump tariff burden per household over the last year was about $1,700 — or more than the cost of one month’s groceries for a family of four.

In aggregate, that money could have supported important investments in the common good. Assume, conservatively, as the New York Fed found, that 90 percent of the $166 billion in tariff revenue was paid for by American consumers — or about $150 billion.

Below is a list of national expenditures that also each total about $150 billion:

37 Artemis II missions (at $4 billion a pop.)

20 years of funding for WIC — the nutrition program for infants and mothers

15 years of housing for everyone now in a homeless shelter

12 years of Head Start — the federally funded preschool program for disadvantaged kids

8 years of expanded SNAP or “food stamp” benefits (since cut under Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill”)

5 years of expanded Obamacare subsidies (also cut under Trump’s bill)

4 years of Pell Grants — the federal needs-based grants for college

1 year of funding for the Department of Transportation, to repair and revamp the nation’s highways, airports, and rail lines

Instead, all of that money will be boosting the bottom lines of American companies that rely on imports to run their businesses. According to an analysis by Citi Research, some of the biggest refunds are going to the likes of Walmart ($10.2 billion), Target ($2.2 billion), Nike ($1 billion), Kohl’s ($550 million), and Home Depot ($500 million).

Outside of a few shipping companies like DHL — which, for technical reasons, became the “importer of record” and tariff payor on behalf of other businesses — almost no companies are vowing any kind of rebate to consumers. (Costco, an outlier, has made a vague commitment to “find the best way to return this value to our members through lower prices and better values.”)

The net effect, then, of collecting and rebating Trump’s failed tariffs has been to create a massive transfer of wealth from normal people to already rich corporations. Forget “trickle-down.” This is hoover-up economics, and it is an outrage.

But surely the economic pain for everyday Americans must have served some greater patriotic policy purpose. Right? Not so much. Tariffs did not, as Trump promised, spark a domestic manufacturing boom — factory jobs in the U.S. have dropped by about 90,000. Tariffs also did not shrink the nation’s trade deficit in goods, which actually grew about 2 percent. The tariffs did, however, make life worse in other ways, primarily by goosing inflation. 

(Fed chair Jerome Powell recently blamed “elevated readings” in the nation’s inflation rate “largely” on “inflation in the goods sector, which has been boosted by the effects of tariffs.”) That, in turn, has kept the Federal Reserve from lowering interest rates, keeping everything from mortgages to car payments more expensive.

Perhaps it should not surprise us that Trump’s signature economic policy ended up being A) illegal and B) a massive giveaway to the already wealthy, at the cost of his base. But it is yet another reminder that the populism he applies to his agenda has never been more than a gloss. And that Trump has nothing but contempt for those who struggle — but will ever be the billionaire’s best friend.

Tim Dickinson is the Senior Political writer for The Contrarian

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It's that time of the year again: A Selection of Final Exams for Your Perusal

                                                                                                  

Public Speaking:  Thirty-eight riot-crazed aborigines will storm the classroom in three minutes.  Calm them.  You may use any ancient language, except Sumerian, Latin, or Greek.

Music: Write a piano concerto.  Orchestrate and perform it with kazoo and bongos. You will find a piano under your seat.

Biology:  Create life.  Estimate the difference in subsequent human cultures if this form of life had developed 500 million years earlier.  Give special attention to its probable effect on the English Parliamentary System.  Prove your thesis.

Engineering:  The disassembled parts of a high-powered rifle have been placed in a box on your desk.  You will also find an instruction manual, printed in Swahili.  In 10 minutes, a hungry and irritated Bengal Tiger will be admitted to the classroom.  Take whatever action you feel appropriate.  Be prepared to justify your decision.

English:  Using a formalistic or Machiavellian perspective, compare and contrast Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland with the “The Patriot Act” (107^th Congress), the Bush-Cheney Doctrine of pre-emptive strike, and Trump's Iranian obsession.  Draw your own intelligent generalizations based on the content and development of the English language and Orwell's Double-speak. 

History:  Describe the history of the papacy from its origins to the present, concentrating especially but not exclusively, on its social, political, economic, religious, and philosophical impact on Europe, South and North America. Be brief, concise, and specific.

Political Science:  There is a red telephone on the desk beside you.  Start World War III. Report at length its socio-political effects, if any.

Economics:  Develop a realistic plan for refinancing the national debt.  Trace the possible effects of your plan in the following areas: Cubism, the Annual Darwin Awards, and the wave theory of light.  Outline a method for preventing these effects.  Criticize this method from all possible points of view. 

Sociology:  Estimate the sociological problems which might accompany the end of the world.  Construct an experiment to test your theory. 

Psychology:  Based upon your knowledge of their effects on the world, evaluate the emotional stability, degree of adjustment, and repressed frustrations of each of the following: Vladimir the Impaler, Genghis Khan, Ivan the Terrible, Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, Kim Jong-Il, Richard Nixon, Vladimir Putin, and Donald J. Trump.  Support your evaluation through use of a priori and a posteriori data and synthetic reasoning.

Epistemology:  Take a position for or against truth.  Prove the validity of your position without reference to Cartesian doubt.

Medicine:  You have been provided with a razor blade, a piece of gauze, and a bottle of Scotch: remove your appendix.  Do not suture until your work has been inspected.  You have 40 minutes.

Decades ago, I passed a Not-So-Humorous Comprehensive Exam in English & American Literature. The instructions for this real absurdity:

“The exam contains two parts, each a session of two hours, administered on successive days. In the first session, candidates are examined on a standard reading list which is given below. Questions will ask you to demonstrate a good knowledge of the listed texts and an ability to draw intelligent generalizations on the content and development of English and American literature based on those texts. The second day’s session will consist of intensive questions on a specific text or texts to be announced approximately five weeks before the exam dates. In this session you are asked to demonstrate competence in critical reading apart from historical considerations.”

The Reading List:

Beowulf

Chaucer: Knight’s Tale, Miller’s Tale, Nun’s Priest’s Tale

Second Shepherds’ Play (Towneley Cycle)

Sidney: An Apology for Poetry

Spenser: The Faerie Queene, Book 1

Marlowe: Dr. Faustus

Shakespeare: King Lear

Jonson: The Alchemist (or) Volpone

Donne: Satire III, “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning,” “Love’s Alchemy,” “Good Friday 1613, Riding Westward”

King James Bible: Ecclesiastes

Milton: Paradise Lost, Books I, III and IX; Areopagitica

Marvell: “The Garden,” “To His Coy Mistress,” “An Horatian Ode”

Dryden: Preface to Fables, “Alexander’s Feast,” “Mac Flecknoe”

Congreve: The Way of the World

Swift: Gulliver’s Travels

Pope: The Rape of the Lock

Johnson: Preface to Shakespeare, Life of Cowley, Life of Milton

Austen: Pride and Prejudice

Blake: Songs from Innocence: “The Lamb,” The Divine Image,” The Chimney Sweeper,” “The Little Black Boy”; Songs of Experience: “The Tyger,” “The Chimney Sweeper,” “London”

Wordsworth: The Prelude, Books I & II; “Tintern Abbey”; Preface to the Second Edition of Lyrical Ballads

Keats: “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” “Autumn”

Dickens: Great Expectations (or) Bleak House

Browning: “My Last Duchess,” “Fra Lippo Lippi”

Arnold: “the Function of Criticism at the Present Time,” “Wordsworth,” “The Study of Poetry”

Shaw: Arms and the Man

Yeats: “Sailing to Byzantium,” “Among School Children,” “Byzantium”

Conrad: Lord Jim

Lawrence: Women in Love

Joyce: “Araby,” “The Dead”

Beckett: Waiting for Godot

E. Taylor: “Meditation One,” Meditation Eight,” “Huswifery”

Franklin: Autobiography

Hawthorne: The Scarlett Letter (or) The Blithedale Romance

Melville: Moby Dick

Emerson: Nature, “The American Scholar,” “Experience”

Thoreau: Walden, “Civil Disobedience”

Whitman: “Song of Myself,” “When Lilacs Last in Dooryard Bloomed,” “Democratic Vistas”

Dickinson: “There’s a certain slant of light,” “The soul selects,” “A bird came down the walk,” “After great pain,” “I died for beauty,” “I cannot live with you,” “Pink, small, and punctual”

Twain: Huckleberry Finn

James: The American (or) The Ambassadors (or) The Portrait of a Lady

O’Neill: The Iceman Cometh

Frost: “Home Burial,” “The Death of the Hired Man,” “West-Running Brook”

Eliot: “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” “Burnt Norton,” “Tradition and Individual Talent”

Faulkner: The Bear

Hemingway: A Farewell to Arms (or) “The Killers,” “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber,” & “The Snows of Kilimanjaro”

Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby

Stevens: “Sunday Morning,” “The Emperor of Ice-Cream,” “Anecdote of the Jar”

Miller: Death of a Salesman

Ellison: Invisible Man

Plath: “Black Rook in Rainy Weather,” “Morning Song,” “The Rival”

P.S.

The second part of the exam was on Bernard Shaw's Arms and the Man. I would have preferred Major Barbara.   -Glen Brown