Category Archives: Economics

Miscellaneous economy stuff

Gross Misunderstanding

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And a key distinction between what the Left and their Progressive-Democratic Party want and what Conservatives and, to an extent, the Republican Party want. President Joe Biden (D) fronts for this…position…and his Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen made it explicit last Tuesday in front of the House Financial Services Committee:

We’ve had a global race to the bottom in corporate taxation and we hope to put an end to that.

The fact—I claim—is that the race to the bottom is a National Good, not a National Bad. Our Constitution specifies only three things our Federal Government is allowed to spend money on: to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States. The general Welfare is further specified by the remaining clauses of that Article I, Section 8.

The only legitimate purpose for taxing is to raise revenue for those three narrowly specified items.

Above that low floor (or it would be low were we not living in a dangerous world with many enemies for whom the vasty oceans no longer represent serious barriers and were it not for out Government having been so profligate with spending for so many decades), the more money left in the hands of We the People in our private economy for our spending decisions, the better.

So, yes—a race to the bottom is good for our nation, the prattle of the Yellons and the Bidens and the Party notwithstanding.

One Party Reign

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Congressman Don Beyer (D, VA), Chairman of the Joint Economic Committee, has this on working with Republicans to do things (assuming “things” need doing, which isn’t always the case, especially by Government):

I would personally prefer that it [President Joe Biden’s multi-trillion dollar “infrastructure” plan] was fully paid for but I’m not going to insist on it. If we can get it half paid for, that’s a huge step forward….

Debt profusion doesn’t matter. It’s only money.

Working with Republicans on actual infrastructure? Here’s Beyer again:

[W]e’re not going to not do it because they won’t come along. … But at the end of the day, if they’re going to say no, then we will proceed with the reconciliation.

Come along. Either do things our way, quietly, or we’ll simply ignore you. That’s the Progressive-Democrat view of unity.

And it’s not just on infrastructure. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D, NY) is pushing for robo-reconciliation. Here’s the current rule [emphasis added]:

Under the 1974 Budget Act, Congress once each fiscal year can pass via simple majority vote a budget resolution for federal revenue and outlays.

And

Mr Schumer’s office is telling the Senate parliamentarian he wants more. His claim rests on Section 304 of the Budget Act, which allows for “a concurrent resolution on the budget which revises or reaffirms the concurrent resolution on the budget for such fiscal year most recently agreed to.” In English, Mr Schumer says he should be able to pass more bills with a mere 51 votes as “revisions” to underlying budget resolutions.

No need to talk to Republicans at all on money matters. They’re obstructionist tightwads, anyway. Again, it’s only money. Especially since it’s OPM.

Progressive-Democrats aren’t interested in bipartisanship.

Costs and Capitalism

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Texas State Representative Matt Shaheen (R, District 66—full disclosure: he represents me among others in the District) put this up on his Twitter feed Tuesday:

(Note: the blue box at around 60% on the y-axis reads “Overall Inflation (59.6%”)

Notice that. All those blue-lined curves running at no or decreasing inflation (some might say, “deflation”) are in competitive industries. There’s nothing wrong with those health care costs—hospital and medical care services—that replacing government with competition, with capitalism, in the market segment wouldn’t cure.

Additional note: see the college-related curves. Those also result from government intrusion into our post-high school education system, here in the form of overt subsidies to the institutions. There’s nothing wrong with these costs, either, that replacing government with competition, with capitalism, in the market segment wouldn’t cure.

An Example of Why

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…State and local jurisdictions don’t—and didn’t—need the billions of dollars of Americans’ tax money sent to them as “bailouts.”

San Francisco plans to start paying 130 local artists $1,000 a month starting in May through the fall in a pilot program announced on Thursday.

Here’s the kicker [emphasis added]:

[San Francisco Mayor Landon] Breed previously announced nearly $25 million from a budget surplus that would go toward preserving the arts as well as nearly $12 million in grants to local arts organizations

The PRC, American Business, and Decoupling

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Matt Pottinger, former President Donald Trump’s Deputy White House National Security Adviser, had a number of thoughts concerning the People’s Republic of China, and its targeting of American businesses, with unusual bluntness.

Beijing’s message is unmistakable: you must choose. If you want to do business in China, it must be at the expense of American values. You will meticulously ignore the genocide of ethnic and religious minorities inside China’s borders; you must disregard that Beijing has reneged on its major promises—including the international treaty guaranteeing a “high degree of autonomy” for Hong Kong; and you must stop engaging with security-minded officials in your own capital unless it’s to lobby them on Beijing’s behalf.
Another notable element of Beijing’s approach is its explicit goal of making the world permanently dependent on China, and exploiting that dependency for political ends.

RTWT.

What also drew my eye is this, near the end of his op-ed, in response to a PRC strawman that the US was working on decoupling our economy from the PRC’s.

No one in Washington is seriously threatening a wholesale decoupling of the two economies.

That’s sadly true, regardless of the fact that Pottinger, with that sentence, was setting aside the PRC’s nonsensical claim. Pottinger did suggest that we are decoupling in key technologies, but I think that’s inadequate.

Washington—and private enterprise—should be moving apace to decouple from the People’s Republic of China. Not just in “key technologies,” too, but all across our economy, from strategic minerals, through those key technologies, to ordinary consumer products, components, and raw materials.

It’s a wide world, and we have no need to trade with our enemies, much less one who’s clearly stated goal is to conquer us and that wide world.