Category Archives: political economy

Speaking of Proud Records…

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Progressive-Democrat Vice President and Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Kamala Harris is a woman of verbally flexible policies.

At a 2020 primary campaign town hall, Harris had this position:

There’s no question I’m in favor of banning fracking. And starting with what we can do on Day One around public lands, right?

In today’s Presidential campaign season, she’s claiming to not be opposed to fracking. After all, [o]ne important swing state, Pennsylvania, is the second largest producer of natural gas.

Following the George Floyd murder and subsequent race riots (many of which victim neighborhoods still have not recovered from them), Harris was a zealous supporter of defunding police departments.

Defund the police, the issue behind it is that we need to reimagine how we are creating safety.
…
For too long, the status quo thinking has been, you get more safety by putting more cops on the street. Well, that’s wrong, because by the way, if you wanna look at upper middle class suburban neighborhoods, they don’t have that patrol car.

Now she’s pushing funding police departments.

On illegal aliens flooding across our borders: when a debate moderator asked, in a 2019 Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential primary campaign debate, whether they [the candidates] would be in favor of decriminalizing border crossings, Harris signaled her agreement with such a decriminalization. Then, post-election, Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden gave Harris the job of being border czar (the press’ term, which in their own convenient flop, they’re trying to deny they ever used), and Harris has acted on her decriminalization position by…doing nothing regarding tightening border security.

Now, during this campaign season, Harris is claiming to be supportive of tightening border controls.

Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden is in on the scheme of claiming altered positions at political convenience:

White House officials told Politico that these shifts are part of a strategy to undermine the argument that she is a leftist politician, a reputation they believe stems from the positions she took in the 2020 Democratic primary, but which they say do not truly represent Harris’ positions.

Of course, they are her positions, though. Harris was saying what she actually believed when she pushed those earlier positions. Today, she’s merely covering her political behind and pretending to espouse these “changes” purely for her political gain in an election year. Keep in mind those earlier positions; they’re what she will work to implement if she’s elected.

Here’s a Thought

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I do get them on occasion.  The Five Eyes Alliance, consisting of the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, have issued a report delineating the utter dependence of those nations (and the Western world at large, I add) on the People’s Republic of China for supplies of rare earth elements, elements that are Critical Items in producing a nation’s modern weapons and that are Critic Items in national economies dependent on computers, communications, and infrastructure distribution nodes. That report, DECREASING RARE EARTHS DEPENDENCY: HOW THE FIVE EYES ALLIANCE CAN MINIMISE RARE EARTHS TRADING RISK WITH CHINA (all caps in the original) can be read here.

The report recommended diversify[ing] away from China for the importing of rare earth elements (REEs). The authors proposed this be achieved through “two key policies:”

  • broadening the scope of the Five Eyes Alliance to include increased trade and cooperation on REEs and REEs-dependent goods and services
  • actively seeking alternative sources, whether through new import sources or substitutes for REEs

My thought concerns that last. The Five Eyes, along with the nations rimming the South China Sea, particularly Viet Nam, the Philippines, and the Republic of China, also along with the Republic of Korea and Japan—all of which are even more dependent on rare earth acquisition—should begin actively mining the South China Sea floor, which is rich with rare earth nodules just lying around on the surface of the floor. In support of those mining operations, the Five Eyes’ navies should be prepared to sink PLAN shipping that attempts to interfere with this mining of the sea floor underlying these international waters. If those additional interested nations choose not to participate, the Five Eyes should proceed anyway.

That might seem more confrontational than heretofore, but that’s what we need instead of backpedaling all the time or constantly seeking to accommodate the PRC.

An Economics Question

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In his op-ed regarding the wholly unbalanced training of today’s economists (because so many of them are not getting any training in price theory), Steven Landsburg, an economics professor at the University of Rochester, wrote that he puts a question to his students, all of whom get the correct answer, and to  variety of smart lawyers, accountants, entrepreneurs, and scientists, nearly all of whom do not.

The question:

Apples are provided by a competitive industry. Pears are provided by a monopolist. Coincidentally, they sell at the same price. You’re hungry and would be equally happy with an apple or a pear. If you care about conserving societal resources, which should you buy?

Landsburg’s answer:

In a competitive industry, prices are a pretty good indicator of resource costs. Under a monopoly, prices usually reflect a substantial markup. So a $1 apple sold by a competitor probably requires almost a dollar’s worth of resources to produce. A $1 pear sold by a monopolist is more likely to require, say, 80 cents worth of resources. To minimize resource consumption, you should buy the pear.

Maybe. Maybe not. The monopolist is unlikely to be using his resources efficiently; competition will drive that producer to maximize efficiency in resource usage. On a per fruit item basis, it may be that the two are using resources the same. Maybe the competitive producer is using fewer resources per fruit item.

The more accurate answer is that there isn’t enough information in the question to provide an answer.

“What we’d like to hear….”

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The editors of The Wall Street Journal closed their Friday editorial on the threat of an “election recession” and who’ll get blamed if one occurs with this:

They [the Federal Reserve Board] don’t deserve to be scapegoats for a recession, if one is coming. What we’d like to hear from one of the candidates isn’t blame but an agenda for faster growth and stable prices.

That first part is correct. That last is evidence that the editors haven’t been paying attention. Former President and current Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump, and his running mate, current Ohio Senator JD Vance, have been crystalline on this.

They’ve repeatedly touted their mantra of “drill, baby, drill,” their intent to open up drilling for oil and for natural gas along with their parallel push to reduce regulatory impediments to drilling, transporting the goods, refining them, and transporting the refined products, and the sale of those refined products.

They’re openly—explicitly—pushing that because with energy at the heart of our economy, reducing energy costs will reduce inflation and allow wage growth to catch up, which reduces real prices. To which I add: reduced inflation and stable pricing will by themselves produce full and stable employment, another of the Fed’s Directed Operational Capabilities.

I Have Questions

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Progressive-Democratic Party politicians, led by Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden and his soon to be Party-anointed (not voter-selected) heir, Progressive-Democrat Vice President Kamala Harris, insist that our economy is going like gang busters, inflation is down, and on and on. After all, they shout,

The stock market is soaring, household wealth is at record levels, and investment income has never been greater.

And yet,

…some families’ pandemic-era savings are running dry, and delinquencies on credit card and auto-loan payments have jumped.

Thus, I have questions. No show of hands, the questions are intensely individual and personal, and so are your answers. Just think your answers; talk among yourselves, if you wish.

  1. Is what you’re paying for groceries today more or less than what you paid just a few years ago, pre-pandemic? Has your take home pay kept up with that, or are you paying a bigger chunk of your take home for those groceries?
  2. Is what you’re paying today for gasoline or diesel for your personal cars and trucks more or less than what you paid before? Has your take home pay kept up with that, or are you paying a bigger chunk of your take home for these?
  3. Is what you’re paying today for electricity or natural gas to heat or cool your homes or to cook those expensive groceries more or less than what you paid before? Has your take home pay kept up with that, or are you paying a bigger chunk of your take home for these?
  4. Are you eating out less than you used to?
  5. Are you able to keep your credit card paid off every month or your balance stable from month to month, or is or is your balance growing?
  6. Are you able to put as much, or any, money into savings or a rainy day pile as you were before?
  7. Are you able to put as much money into your employer’s 401(k) program, if he has one, or into your IRA as you were before?

You can think of other things on which you spend or would like to spend (a home, perhaps, or a slightly bigger one to accommodate your growing family or the one you’d like to start) that are more expensive today than before, especially as compared to your take home pay.

Those Party politicians are not talking to you when they talk about how wonderful the economy they’ve constructed these last 3+ years is and how much they want to do even more over the next 4 years. They don’t care about you; they don’t even notice you exist.

The other party will address these problems directly. At the core of its economic plans is bringing down the cost of energy. Energy lies at the heart of everything we produce for sale and wish to buy, from energy for production, through transport to points of sale, through those sales. To get at the cost of energy, that other party will get regulatory blocks to production greatly reduced, and it will encourage increased drilling for oil and natural gas, as well as construction of nuclear power plants.

Worried about atmospheric CO2 production from increased oil and natural gas drilling? Keep in mind that CO2 from American hydrocarbon production and use is already at world lows, per capita; our technology keeps CO2 emissions at a minimum. The CO2 emitters are Russia, the People’s Republic of China, and India. Nuclear power plants produce no CO2 emissions in their operation, and very little in their construction.

The answer to those seven questions and to your additional ones will be much more favorable with Party’s Big Government-is-the-answer politicians no longer in a position where their ignoring you matters.