Category Archives: Economics

Miscellaneous economy stuff

Free Speech PRC-Style

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Chinese authorities are training their sights on a new set of targets: economists, analysts and business reporters with gloomy views on China’s economy.

Securities regulators, media censors and other government officials have issued verbal warnings to commentators whose public remarks on the economy are out of step with the government’s upbeat statements….

And

Early this year, Mr Xi [Jinping] visited the country’s three big state news organizations—Xinhua, the People’s Daily and China Central Television—to lecture them on the need to toe the party line, “tell China’s stories well” and enhance the nation’s influence in the world.

But, of course.  Can’t have truth conflict with Party.  After all, “truth” means that 2 + 2 will be 5 whenever the situation warrants.

The Left Doesn’t Like Free Speech

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Especially when it differs from the Left’s holy writ.

The political left is threatening to boycott companies that contribute to a GOP convention that could nominate Donald Trump.

Color of Change, MoveOn.org, CREDO and UltraViolet, et al., are threatening to job businesses that support this year’s Republican convention, but not this year’s Democratic convention.

Of course, the rank cowardice of today’s business “leaders” contributes to the Left’s assault.

The campaign appears to have already succeeded in getting Coca-Cola to limit its GOP convention support to $75,000 this year, compared to $660,000 in 2012.

And

In 2012 Color of Change led a similar assault on companies supporting the American Legislative Exchange Council, which promotes free-market policies in the states.  …  ALEC’s reward for decades of pro-growth advocacy was to see its biggest contributors—Coke [again!], General Electric, Kraft, McDonald’s, Wal-Mart —drop funding and head for the tall grass.

Such cowardice shouldn’t be rewarded; this surrender to threatening speech merely contributes to further assaults on speech—one of the most basic freedoms of our Republic.  But, then, cowards don’t like free speech, either.

Obamacare Strikes Yet Again

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Insurers will seek significant premium hikes under President Barack Obama’s health care law this summer….
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For example, in Virginia, a state that reports early, nine insurers returning to the HealthCare.gov marketplace are seeking average premium increases that range from 9.4% to 37.1%.

And

The health law’s nagging problems center on lower-than-hoped-for enrollment, sicker-than-expected customers, and a balky internal stabilization system that didn’t deliver as advertised and was already scheduled to be pared back next year.

Who is truly surprised by this?  Oh, yeah….

Market Choice?

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Can’t have that.

The Obama administration is locked and loaded for a fresh push on gun control initiatives—reportedly moving to advocate for so-called “smart gun” technology….

Smart gun technology research may well be a good idea, and having smart guns—weapons that can be fired only by their legitimate owners—certainly seems like a good idea.

Even Government involvement in funding basic research—the secrets of the universe kind of thing—or doing its own basic research might be a good idea.

However, Government involvement in engineering research, which smart gun tech development surely is, and Government involvement in determining, or even merely jawboning, what products it wants in a free market most assuredly are not legitimate.

These are matters for private citizens, private enterprise, and the market place to determine.

Full stop.

Minimum Wage Laws and Special Groups Impact

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Fast-food workers and civil rights groups in Birmingham, AL, are mounting a constitutional challenge to a recent state law that bars cities from setting their own higher minimum wages, alleging the law violates the workers civil rights.

The plaintiffs filed a federal lawsuit Thursday against the state’s Republican Gov Robert Bentley, claiming the bill he signed into law in February was tainted with “racial animus” toward the predominantly African-American city.

One of the lawsuit’s main claims is that the state law disproportionately impacts minority residents who live and work in Birmingham, many in low-wage, fast-food industry jobs that leave them impoverished and on public assistance.

Using their own logic, minimum wage laws, having as they do a disproportionate impact on minorities, on single mothers, and on teens (especially minority teens, but teens generally) are themselves tainted with “racial animus,” “gender animus,” yes, even “age animus.”

Hmm….