Tag Archives: political economy

Economic Evolution?

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In a Wall Street Journal Letters offering, one writer, in supporting the Chamber of Commerce’s change of position regarding massive government intervention into our private economy, wrote

The 2020 economy is far different than that of 1980, and so what is good for business now is necessarily different.

This is wrong on two counts. The first is that the reason the economy of 1980 seems different from that of 2020 is the explosion of government intervention and intrusive regulation over those 40 years. That’s not actually an economic difference, though; it’s a government behavior difference, with the economy changing in result, not from its own intrinsic evolution.

The other is that what’s good for business is a constant: a free market that’s competitive among businesses, a free market with government intervention and regulation limited to ensuring that business managers don’t lie in their contracts or their advertising and that those managers don’t abuse whatever monopoly power might come their way. Sound economic principles don’t change.

Raising Taxes on Day One

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That’s what Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Joe Biden has said he intends to do; his latest iteration of that intent was last Thursday in a CNN interview.

I’d make the changes on the corporate taxes on day one[.]

Leaving aside the…foolishness…of implementing such an attack on our economy’s health, there has been pushback on the Day One timing—no President, not even a Progressive-Democratic one, can raise taxes by fiat; such a move can only come from the Congress (and subsequently signed by a President or his veto overridden).

That brings up the scenario by which such a raise could, in fact, be implemented on the first day of a President’s term.

Recall that the new Congress always is seated roughly two-and-a-half weeks before the President is inaugurated. (That’s useful, since in the event a Presidential or Vice Presidential candidate doesn’t achieve an outright majority in the Electoral College, it’s the relevant house of Congress that selects the President or Vice President.) If the new Congress has Progressive-Democrat majorities in both the House and the Senate, it easily can pass the relevant tax increases and have the bill ready for the new President to sign into law in the hour after his swearing-in on 20 January 2021—Day One.

That adds to the premium on voting Republican all up and down the ticket in a bit under two months.

Lies of the Progressive-Democrat

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Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Joe Biden claimed in a recent “press conference” in Pennsylvania’s oil and gas country that

I am not banning fracking… no matter how many times Donald Trump lies about me[.]

Let’s review the bidding here.

During a primary debate in March against Senator Bernie Sanders [I, VT] when his audience was not Western Pennsylvania, Biden agreed with Sanders’s fracking ban legislation. “No more—no new fracking”

Those carefully selected weasel words—”new fracking.” Of course, that’s a ban on fracking: the currently fracked fields will play out—pretty quickly, in fact, since the fracking only affects small regions of the oil/gas bearing fields. When they’re played out, no new fracking means just that: a ban on fracking. All the new part means is that existing fracking facilities wouldn’t be torn down under a Biden reign.

That’s not all, though.  Biden guaranteed a New Hampshire woman—pre-Wuhan Virus situation, when he wasn’t afraid to mingle with ordinary folks—that

he would “end fossil fuels” if he became president.

Clearly, subsumed in that ending is a ban on fracking.

The Vice President candidate whom Party picked for Biden isn’t any better. Senator Kamala Harris (D, CA) said when she was still running for Party’s Presidential nomination,

There’s no question I’m in favor of banning fracking.

Biden—his entire ticket—is adamantly and on record as enthusiastically supporting a ban on fracking. Then, in a section of oil/gas country, speaking to that oil/gas labor audience, Biden claims to not wanting to ban fracking.

And we’re supposed to believe him. Those oil/gas laborers are supposed to believe him.

In addition to blatantly lying, Biden is insulting the intelligence of those folks.

Funding the Police

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Senator Josh Hawley (R, MO) wants to do that, so he’s introducing the David Dorn Back the Blue Act that would authorize DoJ to

raise the salaries of state and local police forces all across the country—except in cities that have chosen to defund law enforcement in the wake of nationwide protests and riots.

And

If the bill becomes law, police departments will have new federal funding at their disposal allowing them to increase the salaries of officers “up to 110 percent of the local median earnings, and would exclude cities that defund their police[.]”

Hawley is on the right track, but there needs to be an important adjustment to his bill. Rather than simply providing Federal funding to those cities, those funds should be matching funds, requiring the cities to put up their own salary-increasing funds before getting any Federal monies (I claim the matching ratio should require the receiving city to put up at least 50% of the increase). Otherwise, the city would simply shift the cost of the increase onto taxpayers from other States, taxpayers who have their own police departments to support.

Manifest Duplicity

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Here’s a demonstration of it by the European Union as it pretends to resume final negotiations with Great Britain over the latter’s going out from the EU.

EU officials say the bloc remains intent on striking a deal but that Mr Johnson’s government will need to make some major concessions.

The deal must be on the EU’s terms, and no others.

This is the contempt with which the EU has treated those uppity Brits ever since they began debating the very idea of leaving the EU.

It’s clear that Great Britain should simply walk away: a clean, no-deal break in January will be far better than anything the EU is willing to agree.