Category Archives: Economics

Miscellaneous economy stuff

A Question

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With all the hyped up fears of a coming crash in the stock market and in the economy overall—some pundits are claiming the coming crash will make the Panic of 2008 look like a little burble (e.g., the Federal government will have to make a choice between letting banks and other financial institutions fail en masse or firing up its printing presses)—more and more folks are pushing buying gold and silver or bragging about the gold and silver they already hold.

So my question: what’s the value of all that gold and silver in such a catastrophe? Do these folks really think they’ll be able to exchange their gold or silver for their rent/mortgage payments? Their grocery and utility bills? Their gasoline down at the filling station? Or get those things with markers for their gold and silver held in brokerage accounts rather than in their closets in physical form? What if their broker is one of those financial institutions that went bust? Those holdings, if not lost forever, will be inaccessible for weeks or months while the broker’s assets wend their way through bankruptcy courts and the innumerable legal fights over distribution.

And: how will the holders sell their gold or silver, whether held in physical form or in brokerage accounts? Who will be willing to spend their cash on hand to get those metals?

The Pope’s Error

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Pope Leo XIV, sitting on the Mediterranean island of Lampedusa decried the fate of folks who made it that far and others who did not as they left their home countries, mostly in Africa, looking for a better life in Europe.

There are also those who choose not to be a neighbor and those who choose not to make a decision. Those who have lost their lives in this sea are victims both of decisions that were made and of decisions that were not made. Indifference to the common good and corruption in their countries of origin; a global economic system that generates poverty and exclusion; fear that fuels prejudice and contempt; the belief that such problems do not concern us; the criminal calculations of those who profit from the suffering of others; the slow and difficult transition from mere emergency management to the development of comprehensive and shared policies[.]

No. The problem here is not that the European nations are not accepting all of these folks, nor is it that they are beginning actively to block their entry. The correct answer is for Europe to leave off its [i]ndifference to the common good and corruption in their countries of origin and devote the resources those nations are misallocating ins to supporting those folks making it to Europe and to blocking further flows, instead to working the source: the criminal natures of the home countries so those folks don’t feel the need to try to leave.

The Pope sort of recognized this, but with badly misplaced emphasis.

Thanks to its geographical location and institutional framework, Europe is capable of addressing the crisis, in this region, in a comprehensive manner, integrating immediate relief efforts into a long-term strategic plan capable of receiving, protecting, supporting and integrating migrants, while at the same time assisting developing countries so that no one is forced to emigrate.

The Pope further muddles his argument with his insistent conflation of migrants with illegal aliens, which is what most of those making to Europe are and most of those getting to Lampedusa, and other waypoints, want to become.

That geographic location does place Europe conveniently close to the source, but it should be committing those resources exclusively to assisting developing countries so that no one is forced to emigrate. Half measures don’t accomplish anything other than waste and lost opportunity.

Then there could be fruitful trade between those nations and the nations of Europe, and that would potentiate the benefits for those then-erstwhile home nations and their populations as well as work to the economic—and moral—benefit of Europe.

There’s a Reason for That

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As The Wall Street Journal‘s astute editors noticed, less than a dozen—10, by their count of the fingers of two hands and no toes of either foot—members of the Progressive-Democratic Party caucus in the House of Representatives are willing to oppose the Democratic Socialists of America agenda. My count via the thumbs of just one of my hands (or maybe the social finger of that hand), only one Progressive-Democratic Party Senator is willing to oppose the DSA agenda.

It’s an agenda of government control of our larger businesses (but it won’t stop there), government control of private property, government given (and so able to be taken away) national medicine, ever rising taxes because…”necessity,” and political rather than economic globalization through entirely open borders and an end to deportation of illegal aliens (there being no such thing in the DSA ideology).

Less than a dozen across our Congress. Eleven, out of an aggregate of 255 Progressive-Democrat Congressmen. Those 244 Progressive-Democrat Congressmen demonstrate pretty conclusively that the Progressive-Democratic Party is an overtly socialist party, the direction in which it began moving with the election of Barack Obama as President just 18 years ago, with the pace sharply accelerating after the election of the “squad” of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and Ayanna Pressley just eight years ago.

The Progressive-Democratic Party is rapidly and enthusiastically coming out of the closet, assimilating the DSA (or being swallowed by DSA), and openly asserting that DSA political and economic positions are its own. Those policies are what Party will attempt to inflict on our nation if it gains majorities in the House and Senate after this fall’s elections.

That’s the Point

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Recall that one of New York City’s Progressive-Democrat Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s goal was a plethora of city government-run grocery stores to sell groceries at “affordable prices”—which, for Mamdani, meant “cheaper than what existing grocery stores were selling.” He could mean only that, else he’d be conceding that those prices already were affordable.

The outcome of such a move is laid out in the subheadline:

His socialist supermarkets could put New York’s little grocers out of business.

That’s the point.

Like any good socialist, Mamdani wants government to control the producers. Especially if it’s the particular socialist’s government. Getting rid of the little businesses demonstrates to the larger stores and the chains—whose individual stores generally are franchises run by moms and pops or collections of them run by small- or mid-sized businesses—that they’d better kowtow to the socialist government or leave. In either case, that would increase government’s control over the remains.

Driverless Trucks and Good Paying Union Jobs

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Keith Hernandez, of Teamsters Local 727, doesn’t like driverless trucks.

Driverless trucks endanger good-paying jobs and the communities that rely on them… he says. And

Automation would remove the real-world, first-hand experience and knowledge drivers gain on the road.

No, they wouldn’t and don’t. All that “real-world, first-hand experience and knowledge” is contained in the computers that operate the autonomous vehicles. Delivery drivers are my friends and sales people, as Hernandez also claims? They may well be friendly, even friends, but that’s wholly outside of and separate from their role as drivers. And, no, neither the UPS driver, nor the FedEx, nor Amazon—nor even the Door Dash driver nor the pizza delivery guy are salesmen and women. They don’t pitch me, and I wouldn’t be interested if they did.

Driverless trucks, though, to the extent they succeed in safe, efficient, speedy delivery actually will reduce costs to consumers by taking the labor cost out of the picture. And if they don’t succeed, the truck drivers will continue to thrive in their own right.

No, leave it to a union man to take this tack. Your money belongs to the union. If it can’t get your money by forcing dues payments, it’ll try to get it by featherbedding into unneeded jobs, driving up your costs.