Tag Archives: political economy

Regulatory Capture

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America’s automotive companies want ever stricter emissions standards.  Or so says Fred Krupp, President of the Environmental Defense Fund.

This, of course, is nonsense.

If car companies truly want stricter emission standards, they can do so without the cover of a government mandate.  Nothing is stopping them from setting and meeting their own stricter standards.  This is, after all, a (largely) free market economy, and it’s at the heart of a (largely) free nation.  Car companies can make their own decisions without Big Brother’s instruction.

Unless, of course, they have a different agenda.  Like, for instance, writing the regulations in a way to protect them from competition from upstart (as in impudent) companies that might have better products or better consumer appeal, or both. That’s classic regulatory capture.

Or, maybe it’s a path to writing the regulations in a way that beats the EDF climatista drum but that has little or nothing to do with producing quality, efficient, cost-effective cars that consumers actually want.

Unions for Socialism

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That’s the situation in Oregon, the new front-runner for socialism in the US, surpassing even California.

[T]he Oregon AFL-CIO wants voters to limit self-checkout kiosks in grocery stores.

The State’s Attorney General still has to sign off on the union’s ballot measure, ironically titled the Grocery Store Service and Community Protection Act, but that’s a formality in a State that favors Antifa violence over law and order and actual protection of communities.

The union claims—and it’s serious—that

self-service checkouts add “to social isolation and related negative health consequences” for shoppers.

And

…contribute to retail workers feeling devalued….

Because, the union insists, Oregon’s citizens are such snowflakes, so easily triggered.  Such infantilization of grown, adult human beings ought to be insulting to the people of Oregon, consumers and workers alike.  We’ll find out whether they’re insulted, though, from how they vote in 2020 when the measure is on the ballot.

If the good citizens of Oregon do show their tenderness by voting up the measure, we can look forward to the unions demanding sackers in stores be featherbedded.  Make-work is, after all, how the socialists keep their populations (more or less) employed.  And how the Precious find comfort.

A Different Sort of National Security Threat

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This one demographic; it’s the potential for population collapse in the People’s Republic of China.  Most of the nations of the world outside Africa face population declines, but none seem as severe as the PRC’s is looking to be.

In 2016, after the one-child policy was abandoned, there were 17.86 million births. This dropped to 17.2 million in 2017 and 15.2 million in 2018—the third-lowest rate since the foundation of the People’s Republic of China in 1949.

That might be an accelerating drop, although three data points don’t make for a strongly measured trend.

There’s this datum, too, from Yi Fuxian, Senior Scientist in the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Medical School Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology:

In China in 2017, the ratio was six workers in the 20-64 age bracket supporting one senior citizen at least 65 years old. This will decline to 2.0 workers in 2039 and 1.6 in 2050.
“No social security net, no family security, and a pension crisis—this will evolve into a humanitarian catastrophe. As women live six to seven years longer than men on average [and are usually a few years younger than their husbands], they will be the main victims of population control,” said Yi.

And this from George Magnus, an Oxford University China Centre Research Associate:

Measured by the proportion of 65+ and the old age dependency ratio, China will age as much in the next 22 years as most Western economies have done in the last 60-70 years—and at far lower levels of income per head, and with a much less developed social security system[.]

It’s unlikely to get better in time to do anything meaningful: the PRC’s fertility rate, the number of children born per woman, as of 2018 is 1.6—far below the 2.1 rate required just to maintain the population at its current level.

But it’s more than just aging women or aging generally.  This is the size of its labor force in absolute terms, too, with its production capacity. The number of Chinese in the labor force is the economic underpinning of the nation and its ability to keep itself armed—to the degree the Communist Party of China and its People’s Liberation Army deem sufficient—and able to face the enemies perceived by the CPC and the PLA.

That economic underpinning also is critical to the nation’s ability to keep its people, including those actively working, fed and housed.

What will a desperate Xi Jinping or Xi-successor do in the face of this crisis?  We need to be prepared diplomatically, economically, and humanitarianly.  And militarily, since neither Xi nor his successor are likely to accept this crisis without resorting to force and invasions to “capture” workers and baby-makers.

Another Reason

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…not to live in New York.  Aside from there being no place for folks who disagree with the Progressive-Democrats in charge, there’s this travesty.

A New Jersey resident—resident in every sense of the term—owns a vacation home in New York where he spends a few days each year…vacationing.

A state administrative law judge ruled last month that [the resident] owed $527,000 in back New York state income tax because of his upstate home. With interest and penalties, that is more than twice the $290,000 he paid for the house in 2011.

Why?  Because he spent those few days in that home which he owned, and under New York tax law that makes all of his income, regardless of where it actually was earned, subject to New York income tax.

I used to be a resident of Illinois, even as I was stationed—living—variously in Alaska and Florida.  I maintained Illinois residency because I was a supporter of then-Senator Chuck Percy.  My income was earned outside Illinois, and the State taxed none of it.  Had I had income earned in Illinois, the State would have taxed only that part of my total income, not the totality of it.

But New York doesn’t have that sense of integrity.  Pay up, sucka.  Or get outta here.

Brexit and Sovereignty

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This is amazing.  And an utter betrayal.

Senior MPs opposing a no-deal Brexit sought assurances from the EU that their bid for a three-month delay would be granted, it has emerged.
European leaders were sounded out before MPs, including the “rebel alliance,” passed a bill…forcing Boris Johnson to ask for an extension.

For the EU to participate in such scruffy deal would seem to be a naked interference in sovereign British domestic politics.

Except that….

On the one hand, this is those MPs selling out British sovereignty.

On the other, this is the European Union, by its ready participation in the sordid affair, telling the British citizens that their nation is not sovereign; it is subordinate to the European Union: Great Britain has no domestic politics that are beyond the reach of Brussels—which is to say Great Britain has no domestic politics of its own.

As Conservative MP and former minister David Jones has it:

Senior EU figures gave private assurances to British MPs…. This confirms the level of EU interference in our internal affairs and makes the need for Brexit all the more pressing.

This collaboration [sic] arguably invalidates the bill just passed. Or would in an honest government and court system, even one like the Brits’ where the courts can be overruled at the whim of a Parliament like today’s mendacious one.