Category Archives: political economy

Another Reason to Shift

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Boeing and union leaders reached a tentative labor deal that includes:

  • 25% pay increase over four years
  • bolster retirement benefits
  • lower healthcare costs
  • commit Boeing to building its next plane in the unionized Pacific Northwest

The rank-and-file object. They want a 40% pay increase over four years, and they’ve characterized it as a hard line. They’re also still upset that Boeing dared set up an aircraft production plant in the non-union south. They voted Thursday to reject the contract and then to strike beginning that night at midnight.

The strike will halt most of Boeing’s aircraft production, and that would occur

at a time the aerospace giant is bleeding cash and piling up debt….
A prolonged work stoppage could further strain the industry’s supply chain and exacerbate jet shortages for airlines struggling to meet resurgent travel demand.

A strike—telling company management that if the union doesn’t get its way, it’ll destroy the company by preventing it from operating at all—is nothing more than legalized extortion.

This is one more reason to move even more aircraft production to right-to-work States.

With unions having monopoly power over business labor, and this Boeing branch of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers union (among so many other unions) so blatantly abusing its monopoly power, this also is one more reason to rescind the special status of unions as being exempt from antitrust laws.

What She Said Then, What She Says Now

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News outlet writers are starting to object, however mildly, to Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Kamala Harris’ reluctance to do interviews and news conferences. Harris did do the one interview recently, with a friendly interviewer and while accompanied by her Comfort Running Mate, but that’s it. The press does have a beef about her apparent fear of sitting for unscripted interviews with objective interviewers—and doing them frequently and alone—and to have unscripted, free-wheeling news conferences of some duration and frequency where she wouldn’t know the questions in advance.

The press, though, couches their objections in the premise that without these interviews and news conferences, they won’t know what her platform is or what policies she intends to push were she elected.

Those of us outside the press, us less credulous average Americans, do know what her platform and policies are—Harris has told us quite clearly over the last several years, right up to mid-2024 when she supplanted Joe Biden as Party’s candidate.

Here is her platform made manifest, from what she has said and what she’s saying now, even if her remarks today are scattered about, and her remarks yesterday are being busily ignored by those same news outlet writers.

What She Said Then What She Says Now
There’s no question I’m in favor of banning fracking. I made that clear on the debate stage in 2020 that I would not ban fracking, as vice president I did not ban fracking, as president I will not ban fracking
“an undocumented immigrant is not a criminal”
And: once pledged to close all privately-run immigration detention centers “on day one” during her first presidential campaign		 Harris’ campaign manager: “I think at this point, you know, the policies that are, you know, having a real impact on ensuring that we have security and order at our border are policies that will continue”
January 2017 criticized t Obama’s refusal to veto a UN Security Council resolution on Israeli settlements. Israel has a right to defend itself, and how it does so matters.
I also expressed with the prime minister my serious concern about the scale of human suffering in Gaza…the images of dead children and desperate, hungry people fleeing for safety, sometimes displaced for the second, third, or fourth time.  We cannot look away in the face of these tragedies [not set at the feet of Hamas].
What She Said Then What She Still Says
Tax each stock and bond trade
Roll back 2017 tax cuts
Raise capital gains tax rates at the same rates as ordinary income		 Raise corporate taxes
Tax unrealized capital gains
4% “income-based premium” on households making more than $100,000 annually to pay for her version of “Medicare for All”
$10 trillion in public and private spending over 10 years to create millions of jobs and reduce greenhouse gas emissions		 Expand child tax credit and Earned Income Tax Credit, to be paid for by “there’s a great return on investment.”
Spending $25,000 via “tax credit” to cover the down payment costs for “first-time home buyers”

Do we believe her when she was saying what she believed, or do we believe her foxhole conversions of convenience today? I suggest, on the other hand, that where her positions today are substantially of those from yesterday, we certainly can take her at her word, and these are part of her clearly stated platform, also.

Here’s a Thought

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The article opens with this subheadline and lede:

There might be better ways to help low-income families than vastly expanding the child tax credit
The child tax credit is one of the few government entitlements that both political parties want to make more generous.

The problem with the child tax credit, though, is that rewards folks for not working—the credit is fully refundable, meaning that families get the full handout credit even if their income is lower than the credit.

My thought is this: switch to a low, flat income tax rate regardless of the source of income. That will leave more money in the hands of all American citizens—more than just the credit’s value—it’ll leave that money in our hands throughout the year, instead of our having to struggle through all twelve of the months of the current year, plus tax time, in order to get the money back in the following year (only a fraction of the credit is handed out in installments).

And it’ll encourage getting more work, or at the least reduce the government’s handout-induced discouragement of work, by leaving that erstwhile tax money in the hands of folks who work and pay taxes. Further, that erstwhile tax money already is coordinated [sic] with income; there’s no need to play games with indexing.

The problem with that, though, is strictly political. The move directly challenges the Progressive-Democratic Party’s addiction to constantly raising taxes. The move also would greatly reduce Party’s ability to curry favor and buy votes with credits and circuses’ handouts.

She Contradicts Herself

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Progressive-Democrat Vice President and Party Presidential candidate Kamala Harris does this with some regularity. Here’s her latest self-contradiction:

If you earn a million dollars a year or more, the tax rate on your long-term capital gains will be 28% under my plan, because we know when the government encourages investment, it leads to broad based economic growth[.]

Capital gains are the stuff of investment, both its goal and the source of funds for further investment as well as for initial investment in different directions.

Thus: Harris would “encourage” investment by taking investment funds away from investors via her higher taxes.

That’s some investment encouragement.

A Couple of Questions

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Former President and Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump says he wants to “once again turn America into the manufacturing superpower of the world,” and that a couple of the ways he’d achieve that would be to reduce the corporate tax rate to 15% for those companies that make their products in the US and by applying tariffs on foreign-made goods.

One question concerns how strictly he’d apply that tax break criterion—or how strictly Congress would allow him to. Would making their products in the US include or exclude companies who assemble their products in the US, but do so from components or subassemblies that are imported? If implemented in some form, would the exclusion include components or subassemblies that are made in USMCA members Mexico and Canada?

The subassembly bit especially would impact the several car companies that assemble their vehicles in the US, but these are far from the only companies that do that. Which brings up another question: what about those international companies headquartered in other nations but that assemble/manufacture in US factories products for sale in the US. Would the 15% tax apply to the US component of those businesses? To the whole foreign-domiciled company?

How would the tariffs apply to the components imported for final product assembly? How would the tariffs apply to those foreign-headquartered companies that bring in components for final assembly in the US and sale in the US?

Answers need not block either of the two proposals, but they do need to be worked out.