Category Archives: Economics

Miscellaneous economy stuff

Questions

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President Joe Biden wants to extend the New START arms control treaty with Russia for an additional five years.

I have questions.

With Russia’s long history of arms treaty violations (INF, Open Skies, original START, BMD, among others), what’s the value of extending this one or having a new arms control treaty with Russia? They can’t be trusted to honor it.

New START—and any other weapons control treaty, especially those involving nuclear weapons—does not include the People’s Republic of China. The PRC is actively modernizing and expanding its nuclear weapons arsenal, along with hardening its missile arm and increasing its mobility. What’s the value of any arms control treaty that does not include the PRC? Related to that, the PRC has repeatedly demonstrated its economic agreement unreliability since its accession to the WTO. On what basis would Biden think the PRC would be more reliable on military agreements, assuming Biden wants to include the PRC in one?

Our economy is so much stronger than Russia’s, and it’s still stronger than the PRC’s. We defeated the USSR with an openly done arms race—which also produce a broad range of technology advances of considerable value to our private economy. Why is Biden reluctant to engage in another arms race and once again defeat the rump USSR that is Russia and defeat the PRC?

Biden won’t answer these questions. Almost as bad, the press won’t ask them of him.

“Meet Us Halfway”

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With the newly installed Biden administration, the People’s Republic of China are enthusiastically touting the status quo ante. Here’s the PRC’s Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Hua Chunying:

I hope they can meet the Chinese side halfway, uphold the spirit of mutual respect….

Meet us halfway: agree that the South China Sea with its islands and resources are our sovereign territory, and we’ll stop going after the East China Sea. For now.

Oh, and yes, we’ll respect you in the morning.

Income Equality

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A short piece about billionaire real estate developer Jeff Greene‘s view of the current state of our economy had this:

A progressive Democrat, Greene explained that former President Donald Trump failed to support the working class by increasing wages and establishing income equality….

This is a typical Progressive-Democrat distortion of the facts. With unemployment rates falling to historic lows and Americans reentering the labor force (reversing a years-long trend), income equality actually increased markedly during the Trump administration. The lowest income earners got more hours and some pay increases, and those without jobs got jobs, increasing their income sharply from zero. In the meantime, the highest paid saw very little increase in their income. The rich stayed rich, and the poor got much less so.

If the real estate developer didn’t see this, it’s only because, in his own bubble, he continued to not pay his employees adequately or to push his contractors to pay their tradesmen adequately or to hire more.

Diversity vs Diversity

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Nasdaq—the tech-oriented stock exchange (no irony there)—is demanding companies listed with it

appoint within the next four years no fewer than two “diverse” directors: at least one woman, and one person from an underrepresented racial or ethnic group or someone who identifies as LGBTQ. Any company failing this requirement would be obligated to explain why.

The SEC must approve the demand before it has legal effect, but look for the Biden SEC to grant that.

Nasdaq, and the rest of the social justice warrior-ettes and virtue-signalers, miss the point of diversity, though. Or they don’t miss the point; they just don’t care.

Diversity of thought, diversity of approaches to problem solutions, most assuredly is something desperately needed in the boardroom. And in the C-suites, in middle management, on the production floor. And in schools, legislatures, and other political entities. (Voucher and charter schools already have this kind of diversity, in the main.) And in the mainstay of our private economy, mom-and-pop and other small businesses. Diversity of irrelevant characteristics like race, gender, or anything other will fall out of hiring for diversity of thought.

That’s even the logical outcome of those who push for diversity based on those irrelevant characteristics: all men are fundamentally equal in capability, these worthies say, regardless of color, gender, or….

Diversity done for the sake of diversity of race, gender, any other form, however, is just bigotry for the sake of bigotry, regardless of claimed purpose for the bigotry.

Works for Me

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New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has taken his State hostage and, reminiscent of a scene in Blazing Saddles, involving his Cleavon Little character counterpart, is threatening that if he doesn’t get billions in Federal dollars, “the…hostage…gets it.” (“Isn’t anybody gonna help that poor State?”)

During a speech detailing the state’s annual budget, Cuomo requested at least $15 billion in federal funding—or the state will likely have to implement a number of undesirable measures, including tax increases.

And

Cuomo said the state has proposed temporarily increasing the top rate by two percentage points to 10.86%, from 8.82%. A wealthy resident in New York City would pay a top rate of 14.7% in combined taxes….

“Temporarily.” Sure.

But the very threat is Cuomo’s admission that his State already plenty of money; it just needs reallocation. Cuomo’s State has no need of Federal—which is to say, the money of us non-New York citizens.