Universal Basic Income

It’s creeping ever more deeply into the Progressive-Democratic Party’s psyche and ideology. It’s an idea that was first dreamed up in the ’70s, and it remains an idea that can only fail were it to be implemented.

Giving everyone a basic income won’t improve anyone’s income; it’ll only incentivize employers to pay a wage diminished by the amount of the guaranteed government payment.  But the failure runs much deeper than that.

Such a scheme is inflationary: the outcome can only be a spike in inflation followed by price stabilization at a higher price level.

Consider an economy in which a producer has two widgets to sell, and two consumers each have a dollar. The producer can sell his widgets for a dollar each.

Now give the two consumers their basic income of $1,000 (let’s say).  The producer still has two widgets, now the consumers each have $1,001 dollars, and the producer can sell his widgets for $1,001 each.  That’s price inflation to a new level—but the consumers’ buying power remains unchanged*: they each still have only enough money to buy one widget, and no more.

Nor is there any incentive—or buying power capacity—for the producer to make more widgets to sell. The producer is getting those same dollars, devalued by the same inflation, that his consumers are getting (from his sales) and so he’s getting no added value to induce him to produce more.  Furthermore, he still can buy the same amount of widget production inputs, and no more; he cannot produce more without incurring greater cost.

 

*Actually, buying power decreases on net for producer and consumer alike, not from the weaker dollar, but from fewer of them in hands of both.  The money for that guaranteed income can only come from one or more of three (sort of) sources. The money must come from the government’s printing press—but that’s the same as the guaranteed income; the dollars just follow a more convoluted path into economy than direct disbursement.  Or the money must come from taxes, which takes money away from consumers and producers directly and leaves them with fewer dollars with which to buy goods and services or to buy inputs to production. Or the money must come from borrowing—which is future taxes or future money printing.

It’s hard to believe that all of those politicians slept through their high school economics, whether they’re today’s crop, like Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate and minor town mayor Pete Buttigieg, newly graduated from high school, or Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidates and Senators Bernie Sanders (I, VT) and Elizabeth Warren (D, MA), who were in high school the first time this idea was floated those years ago.

It’s a Start

TikTok is a People’s Republic of China company (for all its public moves to resite its headquarters outside the PRC) that’s a popular social-media app that’s used for posting short videos.

However.

TikTok collects information about its users, including data that could be used to track the location and movements of individuals….

As a result, tour military is banning the use of the app on government devices; the Coast Guard and Air Force have joined DoD, the Navy, the Army, and the Marines in the ban.

That’s a good start, but it needs to go much farther.  The app needs to be banned from use by anyone while they’re on any government installation or in any government facility, including civilian facilities.  The app also needs to be banned from use by anyone in an overseas military operations area of responsibility.  Location and movement data are just too important to make it easy for our enemies to have access to them.  Recall the Fitbit fiasco, from an American company, and Pokémon Go, from a Japanese company.

Reduced NBA Viewership

The TV ratings of National Basketball Association games are down by 15% compared to last year.

Some folks ascribe this to fewer folks subscribing to television generally. Others blame it on geography:

Many of the league’s best teams are on the West Coast, meaning their games end after some viewers in the East have already gone to bed.

Yet others assign at least some of the blame to injuries, especially to marque players.

NBA Commissioner Adam Silver blames in on a “broken” pay-TV system.

All of those would seem to be factors in the public’s decreasing interest in the doings of the NBA.

I have to wonder, though, how much of the drop is due to dismay over the NBA’s despicable behavior toward the Houston Rockets’ GM tweeting in support of Hong Kong protestors and to contempt for the league’s disgracefully obsequious kowtowing, from Silver, through team management, on down to players on the floor, to the People’s Republic of China government.

Data Transfer and Privacy

The European Union’s Court of Justice had recommended to it by an adviser to the court in a particular case involving Facebook that

Companies, including US tech giants, should be blocked from transferring European users’ data in some cases if they can’t guarantee it will be handled in compliance with European Union privacy laws….

That would seem to include a large number of international companies besides ours. Yet several EU member nations are moving apace to bring Huawei into their communications networks….

Hmm….

Foolishness

Russia and Ukraine have agreed a new natural gas transit arrangement to facilitate Russian natural gas through Ukraine to Europe.  The EU was in on the negotiations, and it’s pleased.  Maros Sefcovic, who was Vice-President of the European Commission for the Energy Union until last January and who then transitioned to Vice-President of the European Commission for Interinstitutional Relations and Foresight, led the EU’s part of the negotiations.  He now says,

Russia remains a reliable supplier to European markets and Ukraine maintains its role as a strategic transit country.

Never mind that this reliable supplier has already used Ukrainian transit pipelines to blackmail both Ukraine (over unpaid bills) and the EU (over Russia’s demand that the EU do what Russia wants).  The same Russian government personnel who led those blackmails remain in place in the Russian government.