How Terrible Is That?

Posted on 8 November 2019 by eehines

Jeremy Corbyn, British Labour Party’s MFWIC, has “accused” British PM Boris Johnson of pushing for US-style deregulation of health care. The horror.

As the UK election campaigns got underway, Corbyn said his rival wanted to “unleash Thatcherism on steroids” once the country was no longer bound by EU trading treaties and regulations.

Channeling our own Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate and Senator Bernie Sanders (I, VT), Corbyn thinks “capitalism” is a dirty word.

He went further:

Corbyn also said…that Johnson wants to strike a trade deal with US President Donald Trump to sell off parts of the UK’s National Health Service, or make it easier for US pharmaceutical firms and medical companies to sell into the UK healthcare market.

This is a preview of How Terrible Is That?. Read the full post (243 words, estimated 58 secs reading time)

They’re Only Uighurs

Posted on 7 November 2019 by eehines

People’s Republic of China President Xi Jinping and his government henchmen are sending their representatives to “sleep with” the wives of Uighurs whose husbands have been interred in the PRC’s concentration camps reeducation locations for the crime of being Muslim.

The excuse for this?

Party officials who are called “relatives” (but not actually related) visit Uighur families every two months, stay for up to a week, and in some reported instances, share a bed with the women, [Radio Free Asia] reported.

Because, says a PRC Government Man,

This is a preview of They’re Only Uighurs. Read the full post (286 words, estimated 1:09 mins reading time)

Boeing and Foolish Questions

Posted on 7 November 2019 by eehines

In a Wall Street Journal article on the tortuous path to criminal prosecution that prosecutors would have in bringing Boeing to criminal trial over its 737 MAX crashes, Andrew Tangel, Jacob Gershman, and Andy Pasztor asked what seems to me to be a very narrow, short-sighted question.

Should prosecutors weigh Boeing’s importance to the economy and national security when deciding how to proceed with a criminal case over the 737 MAX crashes?

Of course prosecutors should—must—not. What’s truly important is the concept of weighing the risks to liberty and to national security of criminals being too big to be punished. We can never allow such a thing to enter even the run-up to criminal prosecutions.

This is a preview of Boeing and Foolish Questions. Read the full post (270 words, estimated 1:05 mins reading time)

Some Economic Data

Posted on 5 November 2019 by eehines

From the October jobs report as summarized by The Wall Street Journal.

131,000 new jobs
- exceeded expectations
- despite some 42,000 jobs lost to the union strike against General Motors
upward revisions of 95,000 jobs in August and September
job growth averaged 176,000 in the last three months, more than the 167,000/mo for all of 2019
overall labor force participation rate rose to 63.3%, which is rising despite baby boom retirements
employment ratio for prime-age workers, age 25 to 54, rose to 80.3%, highest since January 2007—since before the Panic of 2008

This is a preview of Some Economic Data. Read the full post (272 words, estimated 1:05 mins reading time)

A Teachers Union Struck Chicago

Posted on 4 November 2019 by eehines

The Chicago Teachers Union struck Chicago (closing out the children of the city from 11 days of education; although, that may have been a net benefit for the kids, given the lack of education the city’s public education institution provides), and it got everything it demanded.

A new joint class size council will be created to address overcrowding. The council will get weekly updated data and will have $35 million per year to address situations on a case-by-case basis
The contract will run for 5 years, giving the board time to implement some of the massive changes in staff

This is a preview of A Teachers Union Struck Chicago. Read the full post (278 words, estimated 1:07 mins reading time)

Tariffs

Posted on 4 November 2019 by eehines

The Wall Street Journal led off one of its Wednesday editorials with this gem.

The great counterfactual of the Trump Presidency is how much faster the economy would be growing without the damage of his trade protectionism.

Never mind that the great counterfactual of the FDR and Wilson Presidencies (among others) is how much better off the nation would be without the damage of their warfighting.

Once again, WSJ Editors choose to misconstrue the nature of tariffs as tools of international diplomacy and conflict with the nature of tariffs as protectionism. International conflict unavoidably involves domestic damage.

This is a preview of Tariffs. Read the full post (221 words, estimated 53 secs reading time)

A Strike “Template”

Posted on 1 November 2019 by eehines

That’s what the UAW hopes to use its bludgeon of GM as when the union turns to Ford and Fiat Chrysler.

The United Auto Workers will use the agreement at GM as a template that is expected to reach similar terms on wages and benefits in separate contract talks with Ford Motor Co and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles….

However, there’s no reason for Ford or Fiat Chrysler to succumb to this. These are three separate companies, with separate goals, revenue streams, and cost structures; there should be three separate contracts with the UAW.

This is a preview of A Strike “Template”. Read the full post (311 words, estimated 1:15 mins reading time)

PRC Personal Savings Rate

Posted on 31 October 2019 by eehines

James Areddy had an extensive article on this in a recent Wall Street Journal. It seems that the personal savings rate of People’s Republic of China’s citizens peaked around 2010 and has been trailing off ever since. Areddy posited a number of reasons for this, and why it’s likely to continue. Chief among them is the usual suspect of an increasingly less poor, if not increasingly prosperous, population wishing to live better rather than save more. Another major reason seems to be the PRC’s one-child policy, lately relaxed legally, but not socially. With fewer kids in the family, there’s less reason for parents to save against those kids’ future.

This is a preview of PRC Personal Savings Rate. Read the full post (380 words, estimated 1:31 mins reading time)

Fiscally Sound Socialism

Posted on 30 October 2019 by eehines

Richard Rubin posited, in his Wall Street Journal article, some hypotheticals for how Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate and Senator Elizabeth Warren (D, MA) might pay for her Medicare-for-All plan. He suggested that one of the ways toward this goal of Medicare-for-All that all the Progressive-Democrats running for President need to do was to

find[] ways to reduce health-care costs

Were Progressive-Democrat candidates serious about this, though, they’d stop conflating health care costs with health care coverage costs, get government out of the way of both industries, and put them both (back) into competitive, free market environments.

This is a preview of Fiscally Sound Socialism. Read the full post (397 words, estimated 1:35 mins reading time)

“Clean” Cars

Posted on 29 October 2019 by eehines

That’s what Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D, NY) wants Government to subsidize. He’s proposing Government spend $462 billion to pay Americans trading in our gasoline-powered cars for electric ones. He wants to drop $17 billion on subsidies for auto manufacturers to “help” them build more electric cars along with batteries and associated parts, and $45 billion on charging stations and associated “infrastructure.”

In addition to ignoring where this money is supposed to come from, he’s also misleading on the “clean” electric car bit. He knows, after all, where the electricity must come from to charge those batteries, whether at home or at his charging stations.

This is a preview of “Clean” Cars. Read the full post (259 words, estimated 1:02 mins reading time)

A Plebe's Site

Quam bene vivas referre, non quam diu.

Category Archives: political economy