Category Archives: Economics

Miscellaneous economy stuff

Sanctions and Wariness

Posted on by
Reply

Congress has passed and sent to President Donald Trump a bill that increases sanctions against Russia, particularly its energy sector, and against Iran and northern Korea.  It also adds limits Trump’s ability (and State’s) to ratchet those sanctions up or down in real time in response to Russian—or Iranian or northern Korean—behavior, a fillip that adds a question to whether he’ll sign it (his veto likely would only delay the thing; the bill was passed with veto-proof majorities in both houses).

Germany is “wary” of those sanctions.

The German Committee on East European Economic Relations said US plans for tighter sanctions against Russia had the potential of harming EU firms with energy interests in their giant eastern neighbor.

It went as far as to say that the latest US move appeared designed to stimulate US energy exports to Europe.

Because nothing Evil United States does is good for anyone else.  It couldn’t possibly be that any offers to sell liquified natural gas, for instance, to Europe (a small target of our global market for LNG, and for oil) might be to free Europe—and Germany in particular—from Russian extortion.  It couldn’t possibly be, either, that our increasing exports of hydrocarbons—having as they do a depressing impact on the global price of energy—would be good for Germany or for Europe as a whole.

And this bit of nefariousness:

The committee said it expected German exports to Russia to grow by 20% this year…despite all the EU and US sanctions in place right now over Russia’s perceived role in the Ukraine and Syria conflicts.

And this threat from the German government:

[German Economics Minister Brigitte] Zypries warned against a trade war over this latest round of US sanctions against Russia, saying such a situation would be “very bad.”

Nice piece you got there.  Be too bad if something happened to it.

That’s OK, though.  We’re wary of German timidity in the face of Russian energy blackmail capability, or of their active collusion with Russia.  At least there is symmetry.

The Betrayal of Lisa Murkowski

Posted on by
Reply

Lisa Murkowki is a Republican Senator from Alaska who voted against even opening debate on repeal and replace of Obamacare.

Murkowski has betrayed her constituents.  She betrayed them this week by trying to block debate on repeal and replace.  Or, she betrayed her constituents when she lied to them in 2015 with her vote in favor of repeal in the full knowledge that her vote didn’t matter because then-President Barack Obama (D) would veto the matter.

200 Years of History, Summarized

Posted on by
Reply

This set of graphs, via Mark Perry at AEIdeas, tells the tale.  The full article is Max Roser‘s at Our World in Data.

The graphs are easier to read in Roser’s article.  Following are Perry’s “captions” for each of the graphs.

  1. In 1820, 90% of the world population lived in extreme poverty vs only 10% today.
  2. In 1820, 83% of the world population had not attained any education vs 14% today.
  3. In 1820, 88% of the world population was illiterate vs only 15% today.
  4. In 1820, 99% of the world population was not living in a democracy vs 44% today.
  5. In 1820, none of the world population was vaccinated against diphtheria, whooping cough, and tetanus vs 86% today.
  6. In 1820, 43% of the world’s children died before age five vs only 4% today.

Free market capitalism did that.

Labor Under the Radar

Posted on by
Reply

Rather, a labor reform bill making its way (too slowly, IMHO) in the House.  The bill has some interesting items in it:

  • require unions to obtain permission from workers to spend their dues on purposes other than collective bargaining
  • mandate a recertification election upon the expiration of a collective-bargaining agreement if a workforce has turned over by more than 50%
  • take card-check off the menu of options for holding a union election
  • allow employees to withhold their personal contact information from unions

What’s not to like?

What’s holding up the bill?

Space-Based Defense

Posted on by
Reply

LtGen James Abrahamson, USAF (Ret) and Ambassador Henry Cooper, who were directors on President Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative, had some thoughts on this in their recent Wall Street Journal Letter to the Editor.

Brilliant Pebbles, the space-based interceptor we advocated, promised a high probability of kill (over 90%) of all of a “limited” strike of up to 200 attacking re-entry vehicles—the number then controlled by a Russian submarine commander. It’s better than anything we have today. It became the SDI era’s first formally approved ballistic-missile defense system, with a validated cost estimate of $10 billion in 1988 dollars (now $20 billion) for concept definition and validation, development, deployment and 20 years operation of that constellation of 1,000 Brilliant Pebbles. This isn’t expensive….

Such a thing is particularly inexpensive compared to the cost of those attacking re-entry vehicles getting through to their military and urban targets.

The best defense is a good offense: we should be orbiting offensive weapons, also.  Keep in mind, too, that offensive weapons in orbit need not be nuclear in order to satisfactorily service targets: the energy released by impact after “falling” to earth from orbit compares very favorably with the energy released from nuclear warheads and with none of the radiation or fallout complications.