Tag Archives: political economy

American Education

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Our public school establishment has grown enormously over the last two-and-a-half generations, even as the public school student population has grown not so much, and public school performance as measured by student testing performance has not improved a single minim. The graph gives, as of 2017, the total change of the indicated personnel and student populations; you can see the changes year-by-year here [there’s a replay button at the top of that graph].

Mark Perry put his conclusion succinctly:

This is a preview of American Education. Read the full post (344 words, 1 image, estimated 1:23 mins reading time)

The Biden Tax Plan

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Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Joe Biden thinks American businesses don’t pay enough taxes into Government’s coffers.

“Vice President Biden has been clear that it’s absolutely unacceptable for some of the biggest companies in America, like Amazon, to pay next to nothing in taxes,” Michael Gwin, a campaign spokesman, said.

This is a carefully misleading claim that Biden is making through his spokesman. Some of the biggest companies in America actually pay billions of dollars in taxes for all that each of those companies pay a net amount of close to zero. That, though, is an outcome of our byzantine tax code that lets companies—big and small; although it’s the biggest that are able to make the most of it—balance a tax bite here with a subsidy, write-off, credit, or what-have-you there in order to achieve low/zero overall liability while paying those individual billions.

This is a preview of The Biden Tax Plan. Read the full post (452 words, estimated 1:48 mins reading time)

Progressive-Democrats and Economic Recovery

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Progressive-Democrats don’t seem to care about economic recovery, only about using the current Wuhan Virus situation and the economic dislocation the virus has spurred for their own political power gain.

This is made plain by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D, CA) in an interview she gave to CBS News‘ Face the Nation Sunday.

…what we will not support is the following. What they’re saying to essential workers, you have to go to work because you’re essential. We’ve place no responsibility on your employer to make that workplace safe and if you get sick, you have no recourse because we’ve given your employer protection.

This is a preview of Progressive-Democrats and Economic Recovery. Read the full post (515 words, estimated 2:04 mins reading time)

Government and Student Debt

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In an article on the possibility of the Federal government extending its current moratorium on student debt repayment, The Wall Street Journal posed a question to its readers.

How should Congress address the backlog of student-loan payments borrowers will owe after Sept 30?

I say, mostly by leaving it alone. The loans are strictly business arrangements between the borrower and the lender.

In a free market economy, government has no role here, other than to allow student debt to be discharged through bankruptcy like most other debt. Such bankruptcies then must flow with all the ramifications they entail for both the lenders and the borrowers.

This is a preview of Government and Student Debt. Read the full post (202 words, estimated 48 secs reading time)

Internet Security

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There is a move afoot—and it’s making significant progress—to develop and deploy a quantum computing Internet.

A group led by the US Department of Energy and the University of Chicago plans to develop a nationwide quantum internet that could be functional in about a decade and with the potential to securely transmit sensitive information related to national security and financial services.
“What we’re moving forward on is building out quantum networks [to] someday…turn into a full second internet, a parallel internet to the digital internet,” said Paul Dabbar, the Energy Department’s Under Secretary for Science.

This is a preview of Internet Security. Read the full post (496 words, estimated 1:59 mins reading time)

Some Actual Data

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Because as most in the current administration do, Progressive-Democrats natter on about, and the NLMSM bleats hysterically we should do, here are some actual data and some actual science that we should follow regarding the Wuhan Virus and our current situation.

The subheadline pretty much tells the tale.

Research suggests the new coronavirus kills about five to 10 people for every 1,000 that it infects, though rate varies based on age and access to health care

The Executive Summary:

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Let ’em Burn?

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That’s what Bill McGurn and some others think as Progressive-Democrat-run cities suffer increasing rioting and looting and chaos while those same Progressive-Democrat mayors increasingly vociferously object to Federal law enforcement personnel presence and actions.

Opening with

Because President Trump believes such [foreign] concerns aren’t America’s business, he has been reluctant to involve US troops abroad. So it’s surprising that he now appears eager to intervene in the mostly Democratic-run American cities that have been wracked by chaos, shootings and destruction in the weeks since George Floyd’s death at the hands of Minneapolis police.

Then, near his close:

This is a preview of Let ’em Burn?. Read the full post (618 words, estimated 2:28 mins reading time)

The Biden Fed

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Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Joe Biden has a plan for the Federal Reserve system of banks. This bit jumped out at me in the article at the link that describes his plan.

[T]he policy blueprint Team Biden cooked up with Bernie Sanders’s economic advisers argues, “the Black unemployment rate is persistently higher than the national average, which is why Democrats support making racial equity part of the mandate of the Federal Reserve.”

Because blacks are fundamentally incapable of competing in America without special treatment. This is the soft bigotry of low expectations.

This is a preview of The Biden Fed. Read the full post (156 words, estimated 37 secs reading time)

Opening Schools—Two Schools of Thought

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California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) has ordered all schools—private and public—not to open until his Omnipotent State declares it safe to do so. This seems at the behest of California’s teachers unions, which fear competition from private schools—and which are losing that competition, as they’ve been doing for some years.

Catholic school tuition, for instance, costs $1,000-$4,000 per student less than the union public schools, and they provide better education—academic, discipline, moral values. And they’re ready, willing, and anxious to open on schedule.

This is a preview of Opening Schools—Two Schools of Thought. Read the full post (440 words, estimated 1:46 mins reading time)

Tax Misallocation

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The misallocation, this time, is not in the way our tax monies are being spent.

It’s in what our money is not being spent on in lieu of paying those taxes in the first place.

According to a 2018 Bureau of Labor Statistics survey—before the 2017 tax reform bill had been able to percolate into our economy in any serious way—we Americans spent more on the taxes Government exacts from us than we did on food, clothing, and health care combined.

This is a preview of Tax Misallocation. Read the full post (372 words, estimated 1:29 mins reading time)