Category Archives: Economics

Miscellaneous economy stuff

Labor Rights

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Whose rights are they, anyway?

Last Thursday, a California First Appellate District court upheld a State district court’s order that Uber and Lyft must reclassify their gig drivers as actual employees and so must add to their labor costs with benefits, paid leave of various sorts, payroll taxes, and so on. Never mind that this will reduce gig-oriented companies’ ability to recover from the State’s Wuhan Virus-related lockdowns and cost thousands of Californians access to additional income.

The time is fast approaching when it’ll be most useful for Uber, Lyft, and other gig-oriented businesses to leave California altogether.

It gets worse. As Uber noted in part,

…rideshare drivers will be prevented from continuing to work as independent contractors….

Indeed. The California court’s order (and AB5, the State statute that originally levied the classification requirement) go far beyond restricting gig-oriented businesses.

They’re attacks on gig workers themselves by denying them control over their own labor and the price and other parameters under which they’re willing to market their labor. The ruling and the statute convert those who wish to work in California into labor wards of the State’s government.

Almost like they’re State plantation laborers. But it’s all good, though; it’s for the workers’ own good.

The court’s opinion can be read here.

Electric Vehicle Charging Stations

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Electric vehicles need charging stations, and there’s currently broad confusion over the role electric utilities, or anyone else, should have in building out and operating networks of them.

There are other considerations that need addressing, though before networks of chargers can operate at useful efficiencies.

Before any of this can work, though, a couple of other problems must be worked through. The number of miles that can be driven on a battery charge must be drastically improved. This one is improving, but it’s not yet adequate.

Too, the range available from a charge—even when it reaches the range available from a tank of gasoline or diesel fuel—must be achievable in just a couple of minutes—the time it takes to fill a gasoline or diesel tank.

Absent both of these, intercity travel, much less cross country travel, will be badly disrupted and made strongly inconvenient by a diktat mandating electric vehicles.

Beyond that, the ancillary costs of travel will rise. Lodging costs will go up as time spent at the recharging station will prevent many trips from being completed in a single day. Dining costs will rise as additional meals will need to be taken, or extra brown bag meals prepared for the extended time frame. Shipping costs will rise as truckers, with their heavier duty battery packs, will need to spend even more time at charging stations, increasing shipping times.

Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Joe Biden wants a network of 500,000 charging stations built out, which compares with the present 160,000 gasoline filling stations. However, a charging station in every pot won’t, by itself, solve any of this.

Progress

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…on the foreign policy and national security front.

The White House is moving forward with three sales of advanced weaponry to Taiwan, sending in recent days a notification of the deals to Congress for approval, five sources said on Monday, while China threatened retaliation.

The three weapons systems—of seven in the works—have been approved by the State Department and are these:

  • High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS)
  • SLAM-ER, a long-range air-to-ground missile system
  • external sensor pods for F-16 jets that allow the real-time transmission of imagery and data from the aircraft back to ground stations.

These aren’t just feel-good devices, either; they’ll give the Republic of China an ability to strike back hard and meaningfully against People’s Republic of China invasion forces along with recon data concerning approaching/maneuvering PRC forces.

Other weapons systems in the works include these, and their approvals and deliveries need to be moved along apace.

  • large, sophisticated aerial drones
  • land-based Harpoon anti-ship missiles
  • underwater mines to meet amphibious landings and, depending on where deployed, to meet PLA Navy combatants

Still, these sales and deliveries, sound progress that they represent, need to be coupled with more frequent Naval sailings throughout the South and East China Seas and in the immediate vicinity of the RoC, including the Taiwan Strait, and port calls at RoC ports in order to maximize the sales’ potential and concrete effect.

The EU and the US’ Tariffs

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Valdis Dombrovskis, European Commissioner for Trade, is demanding that we remove our WTO-sanctioned punitive tariffs on EU products, or he’ll start a trade/tariff war with us.

He isn’t even trying to be serious about trade. Leave aside the fact that the current tariffs have been explicitly approved by the WTO, and Dombrovskis’ own duplicity:

Of course, if the US is not withdrawing their tariffs we have no choice but to then introduce our tariffs[.]

Because it’s entirely appropriate for the EU to retaliate against WTO-approved punitive tariffs.

Consider, instead, the larger picture.

Trump has offered the EU, on more than one occasion, a completely tariff-free trade regime. The EU has refused even to discuss the matter.

Dombrovskis has this bit of cynicism, too:

But in any case, we will be engaging…and trying to bring the US administration back within the framework of multilateralism[.]

He—and the EU government for which he works—refuse the multilateralism of that no-tariff trade regime we’ve offered to the EU and each of its multilateral constituent member nations for which the EU governance speaks.

Follow the Narrative–I Mean Science

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Here’s some science—the Great Barrington Declaration.

James Freeman, in his Tuesday Wall Street Journal column, opened with this:

This week dozens of esteemed medical experts with blue-chip academic credentials published a warning about the destructive policies adopted to address Covid-19. Since the Sunday publication of this Great Barrington Declaration more than a thousand biological scientists and more than 1,500 medical practitioners have added their names to the petition. Yet it’s been almost entirely ignored by the media outlets that spend much of their days presenting themselves as obedient to science.

The declaration says this, in part:

Current lockdown policies are producing devastating effects on short and long-term public health. The results (to name a few) include lower childhood vaccination rates, worsening cardiovascular disease outcomes, fewer cancer screenings, and deteriorating mental health—leading to greater excess mortality in years to come, with the working class and younger members of society carrying the heaviest burden. Keeping students out of school is a grave injustice.

The declaration closes with its recommendation for how we should deal with the virus [emphasis added].

Adopting measures to protect the vulnerable should be the central aim of public health responses to COVID-19. By way of example, nursing homes should use staff with acquired immunity and perform frequent PCR testing of other staff and all visitors. Staff rotation should be minimized. Retired people living at home should have groceries and other essentials delivered to their home.  …
Those who are not vulnerable should immediately be allowed to resume life as normal. Simple hygiene measures, such as hand washing and staying home when sick should be practiced by everyone to reduce the herd immunity threshold. Schools and universities should be open for in-person teaching. Extracurricular activities, such as sports, should be resumed. Young low-risk adults should work normally, rather than from home. Restaurants and other businesses should open. Arts, music, sport and other cultural activities should resume. People who are more at risk may participate if they wish….

Of course the Great Barrington Declaration and its Focused Protection proposal have been ignored by the media outlets. They’re also being ignored by Progressive-Democrats everywhere from Biden, Pelosi, and Schumer on down.

The Great Barrington Declaration is the wrong science to follow; it’s too politically inconvenient to settled narrative.