Category Archives: Economics

Miscellaneous economy stuff

Alternatives

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In an op-ed in Friday’s Wall Street Journal centered on the foolishness of “sustainable” investing, Burton Malkiel had this remark:

The most effective way to reduce an economy’s carbon intensity is to change the economic incentive to pollute.

Not at all. The most effective way to reduce an economy’s carbon intensity—even assuming that’s a useful thing to do—is to provide viable alternatives to carbon intensity. So far, all the Left and their Progressive-Democratic Party is willing to offer is punishment for carbon intensity.

All that does is punish the successful because the less successful don’t or can’t keep up or do better.

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Bait and Switch

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Recall the trillions of American taxpayer dollars already committed to dealing with the Wuhan Virus situation, including $139 billion sent to State and local governments explicitly for that situation.  It turns out

blue states and Democratic mayors are also using the money for their pet causes.
Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer (D) is spending millions on free college for more than 600,000 essential workers.
Honolulu Mayor Kirk Caldwell (D) agreed to spend $629,000 to hire 15 community relations specialists.
Democratic St Paul Mayor Melvin Carter recently announced a guaranteed income program for low-income families using $300,000 in CARES Act money….

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The Lady Misunderstands

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Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D, NY) says it’s total BS that the Progressive-Democrat proposed $1 trillion in Federal Wuhan Virus stimulus monies aimed at State and local governments would benefit public sector unions. Whether public sector unions should or should not benefit is a separate matter.

It’s generous, though, to suggest that such an intelligent woman actually misunderstands.

Adding a trillion dollars—or any other amount of money—to a budget means—work with me, now—that budget has those added dollars to spend. Earmark the trillion for specific purposes, or bar it from being used for public unions. Do that by sending the money as cash and tracking serial numbers. That still lets the recipient government move a different [trillion] of dollars from a different part of its budget to benefit its public unions. That’s the fungibility of money. It can be moved around.

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Some Prosperity Data

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Courtesy of the Census Bureau, via Just the News and The Wall Street Journal. These data concern the last year.

  • median household income rose to more than $68,700 just over the last year, a 6.8% year-on-year rise
  • black median household income rose to $66,500—up 7.9%
  • Hispanic median household income rose to $56,100—up 7.1%
  • women median income rose to $47,300—up 3%
  • poverty rate fell to 10.5%
  • child poverty rate fell to 14.1%

These are all highs (or lows) over the last several decades, and the sizes of the changes are historically large, also.

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Insufficient

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Recall that Oracle and ByteDance have a proposal on the table for Oracle to take a minority partnership position in ByteDance’s TikTok.  In response to objections to that, some

Trump administration officials are looking to give American investors a majority share of the company that will take over the Chinese-owned video-sharing app TikTok[.]

Senators Marco Rubio (R, FL), Rick Scott (R, FL), Thom Tillis (R, NC), Roger Wicker (R, MI), Dan Sullivan (R, AK), and John Cornyn (R, TX), object to that, too.

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A TikTok Partnership

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Oracle Corp has become the frontrunner in the race to do a deal with the People’s Republic of China company ByteDance, which owns TikTok, for an acquisition of that app. That status seems solidified by ByteDance having submitted a proposal to the US government that lays out the terms of a deal in which Oracle would become the junior partner in a TikTok-Oracle(-ByteDance?)…alliance.

Recall that President Donald Trump has required that ByteDance divest itself of TikTok as a condition of TikTok’s being allowed to continue operating in the United States. Trump’s objection to TikTok is centered on the app’s scooping up of a vast range of personal and personally identifying data and the subsequent transmittal of those data to back to ByteDance inside the PRC.

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Nice Try, Thank You for Playing

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The Problem Solvers Caucus, a bipartisan collection of House Representatives, has produced an idea for getting help to those Americans who’ve been hit the hardest, economically, by the present Wuhan Virus situation. Aside from its trillion-and-a-half dollar price tag—a bill that American citizens will have to pay in taxes or in debt—which is future taxes—there are a couple of sound components.

The idea, though, contains one terrible component—and that one represents a full third of the total cost of this thing.

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Open New York City for Operation

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Open New York City for Operation

The city currently is closed down by order of Da Mare Bill de Blasio (I know, different city. Same guy, though, functionally), and that’s causing a lot of damage, and not just economic.

More than 160 business leaders, including executives at Citigroup Inc, Mastercard Inc, and Nasdaq Inc, have signed a letter to Mayor Bill de Blasio warning of New York City’s deteriorating condition in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic and growing anxiety over public safety, cleanliness, and other quality-of-life issues.

De Blasio’s response? No. Gimme money first.

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Maybe It’s Time

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On two fronts. First is the Eu’s nakedly bad faith and extortionist attempt to interfere in Great Britain’s internal affairs.

The European Union on Thursday demanded that the United Kingdom immediately rewrite a new Brexit bill that would change parts of a divorce agreement it signed with the EU last year—threatening legal action if the outgoing member does not comply.
European Commission Vice President Maros Sefcovic met with UK Cabinet Office minister Michael Gove for crisis talks after the UK government proposed a new Internal Market Bill, which would allow ministers to “disapply” certain rules related to Northern Ireland agreed to in last year’s Withdrawal Agreement.

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Equal Protection

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Recall that California, earlier this year, enacted a law requiring gig employers to reclassify those folks from contractors to formal employees—with all of the employee expenses that entails: half the payroll taxes due, retirement benefits, health benefits, paid time off, etc, etc, etc.

In response, a number of companies who’ve centered their business models on gig employees, have sued and have been fighting to force the law—AB-5—onto this fall’s ballot for the actual citizens to decide.

Related to the law and the hoo-raw surrounding it, are some additional consequences illustrated by this:

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