Tag Archives: political economy

Then Don’t Go Out

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According to a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, many Americans are worried about States relaxing stay-at-home/lockdown orders too soon in this Wuhan Virus situation. Sixty per cent of us, apparently.

A look inside, though, shows an importance difference.

  • 77% of Progressive-Democrats worry about opening too quickly
  • 39% of Republicans worry about opening too quickly

On the other hand,

  • 48% of Republicans are worried we’ll take too long to open up
  • 19% of Progressive-Democrats are worried we’ll take too long to open up

All of us, Progressive-Democrats and Republicans alike, though, should keep in mind one paramount fact: easing stay-at-home/lockdown restrictions isn’t the same as a requirement to go out. Those persons worried about too soon easing are free to stay indoors.

The rest of us should act like the adult human beings we are and make our own, separate, decisions about whether to take advantage of the relaxations; we don’t need to wait to be told what to do.

Overseeing PRC Telecomm

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The Senate has started looking into tightening oversight of People’s Republic of China telecomms that are operating in the US.

In a forthcoming report, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations will level sharp criticism at a group of telecom regulators for failing to scrutinize the Chinese companies and the way they handle data going back nearly two decades. Senate investigators who briefed The Wall Street Journal on their findings said that without proper oversight the Chinese companies “present an unacceptable amount of risk.”

It’s a start.

But even with suitably proper oversight, a larger question remains unaddressed, much less unanswered: why are these companies allowed to operate in the US at all? They are, after all, arms of the PRC government, not free enterprise entities competing on their own recognizance and beholden to the laws of the political jurisdiction within which they operate.

And this:

Representatives for American carriers warned the Senate investigators that the US moves could cause Beijing to retaliate by cutting off their business with Chinese carriers to provide services. That, the carriers have said, would potentially hurt their customers in China, such as US companies, and hinder the carriers’ ability to cooperate with US intelligence-gathering requests.

Couple things about this. Cutting off American carriers’ business inside the PRC would be relatively minor for operations in a nation that demands domestic partners and technology sharing as a condition of doing business within that nation and that demands government-accessible backdoors into foreign companies’ critical software suites as a condition of doing business within that nation.

The bit about hindering US carriers’ ability to cooperate with US intelligence-gathering requests emphasizes a critical difference between us and the PRC. US carriers’ cooperation with our government’s intel requests is entirely voluntary, for all the political pressure a carrier might face for noncompliance. PRC telecomm companies operating in the US have no such option: PRC government requests for intel-related information are required to be satisfied. The only request aspect relates to the type of information the PRC government requires to be collected.

Federal Aid

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The Federal Paycheck Protection Program is out of money—the first round was that successful—and Progressive-Democrats are once again blocking it from being funded unless they get

hundreds of billions more for hospitals and city and state governments[]

added in.

This is nonsense, but these worthies don’t mind blowing up our nation’s economy if they can’t have their way.

Never mind that the States don’t need more money; any budget gaps they have are the direct result of their conscious spending decisions. They need only to reallocate the monies they’re spending.

To the extent more Federal money really is needed in particular States, those funds should bypass the State governments and go directly to the entities needing the funds—those hospitals, for instance, small businesses—that PPP thing—unemployment insurance facilities, and the like. Along with the stimulus payments directly to taxpayers and pension/SS recipients.

It’s true that State employment facilities are State government facilities, but State governments need not get their hands on the money on the way by; this opportunity could be mitigated by making receipt of the money contingent on the State Government not siphoning other monies already programmed or planned for the employment facility—perhaps even by requiring the State governments to match the Federal disbursements dollar-for-dollar with State spending allocations reallocated. (NB: promises to reallocate future spending should be ignored.)

Restrictions and Supply Chains

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The People’s Republic of China has relatively newly emplaced—earlier this month—export restrictions on a variety of Wuhan Virus-related medical equipment that prevents their shipment to the US. These restrictions included signed deals for shipment—these are now blocked as well.

This is another example of the duplicity of PRC government officials and another example of the worthlessness of those officials’ promises.

Still, it’s not all bad. I don’t know why we’d want medical stuff that’s manufactured inside the PRC or by PRC-controlled manufacturers anywhere else, given the demonstrated shoddiness and outright uselessness of their manufactory.

This is just one more reason why we—and the rest of the world—need to excise the PRC from anywhere and everywhere in our supply chains.

[The PRC] is an almost irreplaceable supplier, making more than 40% of the world’s imports of masks, gloves, goggles, visors and medical garments, according to the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

This is a dependency that must end. The PRC government as currently constituted is simply too unreliable, and the products it produces for export are too quality-lacking.

Employment Insurance

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This is Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Joe Biden’s latest brain…storm.

The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee proposes getting all 50 states to adopt and dramatically scale up short-time compensation programs—also known as work sharing—in which businesses and companies in distress keep workers employed at reduced hours, with the federal government helping to make up the difference in workers’ wages.

That’s not going to do anything other than shift a part of a worker’s pay from the company employing him to us taxpayers.  With Uncle Sugar—that’s us—picking up part of the tab, companies would have no incentive to keep workers employed fulltime, much less pay them a full wage. They would have an incentive to claim this or that distress.

Such a move also would distort cost-signaling by masking the true cost of labor to a company. That would flow, in turn, to inaccurate price signaling in the market place, since the prices buyers would see would not be tied to the seller’s true costs.

This is just another example of Progressive-Democrats looking to expand their welfare cage and gild it with taxpayer money.