Tag Archives: economics

Lies of a Progressive-Democrat President

Posted on by
Reply

President Joe Biden (D) has long claimed that his tax-raising plan and his IRS would not target anyone making less than $400,000 per year. He repeated that claim in his State of the Union speech last Tuesday.

Under my plan, nobody earning less than $400,000 a year will pay an additional penny in taxes.

Never mind. His IRS’ latest proposed rule:

The proposed SITCA [Service Industry Tip Compliance Agreement] program is designed to take advantage of advancements in point-of-sale, time and attendance systems, and electronic payment settlement methods to improve tip reporting compliance.

Not even that vaunted and highly successful barkeep, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, pulled down 400 stacks in a year when she was working saloons in New York City.

The IRS claims the program is “voluntary,” but watch what happens to the hapless waitress or waiter, or any other low-wage person for whom tips are a significant fraction of his income, who doesn’t report his tips in a manner that suits the revenooers.

Biden has lied again.

Separately, I’ll no longer include my tip on the charge card receipt that’s increasingly often offered to patrons as a “convenient” way to tip wait staff on their presentment of my bill. Instead, I’ll return to an earlier practice of leaving my tip on the table as cash. The busboy is more trustworthy than this President and his IRS. That’s an appallingly low bar for the busboy, but I do not mean the comparison as faint praise for him. Far from it. I may go a step farther, and pay the whole bill with cash.

Aiding an Enemy Nation

Posted on by
Reply

In the present case, it’s technically legal, but it’s strictly wrong.

The People’s Republic of China is a global leader in the development of artificial intelligence, and it’s on the way to becoming the global leader. AI has a number of uses of which the PRC is taking advantage, including surveillance of citizens and fighting battles and entire wars.

Despite this threat to our nation’s security, American businesses and investors have comprised more than 40% of the 400 international investments in PRC AI, and those 400 investments were 17% of total international investment in PRC AI.

Here, per the Center for Security and Emerging Technology at Georgetown University, are the top 10 American investors in PRC AI—companies that put their lucre acquisition ahead of our nation’s security:

The CSET has reported further that

Collectively, observed transactions involving US investors totaled $40.2 billion invested into 251 Chinese AI companies, which accounts for 37 percent of the $110 billion raised by all Chinese AI companies.

And [emphasis added]

such financial activity, commercial linkages, and the tacit expertise that transfers from US-based funders to target companies in China’s booming AI ecosystem carry implications that extend beyond the business sector. Earlier stage VC investments in particular can provide intangible benefits beyond capital, including mentorship and coaching, name recognition, and networking opportunities. As such, US outbound investment in Chinese technology, and particularly AI, merits additional attention and tracking.

This comes after Google, for instance, infamously refused to continue a contract with the US’ Department of Defense to develop battlefield-capable artificial intelligence packages while continuing actively to support the PRC’s citizen-surveillance and military AI development. Alphabet’s subsequent words and actions concerning its now wholly owned subsidiary now being willing to work with DoD do nothing to mitigate, much less correct, that infamy.

Subsidies

Posted on by
Reply

President Joe Biden (D) is arranging subsidies for American companies in a misguided effort to support development and production of electric vehicles and their batteries in the US. The EU objects, saying the subsidies disfavor EU nation-domiciled companies, and is proposing some options to counter the American subsidies.

One provision suggested by the commission could allow governments to directly match certain green subsidies offered by the US. European competition chief Margrethe Vestager said that means that if a company was offered $1 billion to build a new battery factory outside of Europe, “a member state could offer the same.”
The matching subsidies program would have several conditions, Ms Vestager said. A business would have to show how it could benefit from a subsidy from the US or another country, and any matching funds would have to benefit more than one European country.

The EU can’t make any economic move at all without layering on yet more bureaucracy and regulation. These conditions seem also to be offered because the EU doesn’t trust, rightly or wrongly, its own constituent nations to play nice among themselves even against a common external competitor. This is another example of the central planners demanding one-size-fits all regulation, and demanding them preemptively, denying the constituents any opportunity to perform on their own recognizance.

An Easy Solution

Posted on by
Reply

LanzaTech is a “carbon-capture” company with a number of joint ventures with People’s Republic of China-controlled companies around the world. The company also has on its Board of Directors a Managing Director of Sinopec Capital, itself a PRC-domiciled (and so under the control of the PRC’s intelligence community via the PRC’s 2017 National Security Law) company.

LanzaTech even acknowledged in its Form S-4 announcing its decision to become a public, exchange-listed company, filed last March with the SEC, that [section head emphasis in the original]

We may be subject to risks that the Chinese government may intervene or influence our operations at any time.
Because we have employees located in China and conduct some operations in China, including through our China-based joint venture and at the facilities in China operated by our partners using our process technology, we are subject to the risk that the Chinese government may intervene or influence our operations at any time.

Despite that admitted (potential) subordination and Senate Republican objections centered on LanzaTech’s ties to the PRC government, the Biden administration’s Energy Department awarded LanzaTech a $1.6 billion dollar contract to research biofuel production. And with that tie, to pass any discoveries and developments and concepts along to the PRC.

Congress as a whole controls the Federal government’s pocketbook, and spending bills must originate in the House. It’s time to reduce or eliminate altogether funding for the Department of Energy until its unelected and subject to Senate confirmation managers become responsive to Congressional requirements. Start with reducing the Department’s funding by those $1.6 billion and applying the Holman Rule to reduce Secretary Jennifer Granholm’s salary to $1.00 per month. To the extent her intransigence continues, continue reducing Department funding and reduce the salaries of her Deputies to $1.00 per month.

This is straightforward to do, even if it might be politically difficult without the Senate and the White House. But that’s a matter to keep in mind in the fall of 2024.

Mistaken?

Posted on by
Reply

In a Fox News article centered on Congressman Chip Roy’s (D, TX) proposed legislation that would bar Federal funds from going to schools that teach critical race theory (the foolishness doesn’t deserve capitalization), Cato Institute’s Colleen Hroncich had this in objecting to Roy’s proposal:

For starters, the federal government has no constitutional role in education[.]

Plainly, the Federal government does have a role, Constitutional or otherwise, in education—hence the existence of those federal funds to schools that Roy’s proposal would block.

Alternatively, Hroncich is correct, and all Federal funds transfers to schools should stop.