Category Archives: Economics

Miscellaneous economy stuff

Private Property Rights and Asteroid Mining

Posted on by
Reply

The US Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act (the Space Act), which President Barack Obama signed shortly before Thanksgiving, acknowledges certain critical things regarding private enterprise and solar system resources. One of those critical things is this:

Any asteroid resources obtained in outer space are the property of the entity that obtained them, which shall be entitled to all property rights to them, consistent with applicable federal law and existing international obligations.

Naturally, others who lack the capacity to reach the asteroids (our own capacity, so far, is limited; the law was enacted in the expectation that our capacity would expand in the reasonably nearby future), demur from our new law: it violates international law, they claim. Sa’id Mosteshar, a Board Member of the London Institute of Space Policy and Law, is one such:

It is my opinion that any US entity obtaining asteroid resources would be in contravention of international law, as would the government for permitting it. The Treaties governing space activities do not give the US that right, and the US government cannot assign to its citizens rights that it does not have.

Indeed, he argues that the asteroids are

not subject to national appropriation.

Mosteshar is right, but he plainly doesn’t understand how wrong that makes him.

It isn’t government enterprise that would be doing the exploration and exploitation governed by the Space Act. It’s private enterprise.

We’ve understood since Locke articulated the concept all that time ago that governments don’t have rights to give or withhold. Already endowed in each individual one of us by dint of our existence is a set of rights. We then grant certain lesser rights, authorities, and privileges to our governments in order that those governments can do what they were created to do: protect those larger rights that are our endowment.

One of those rights is our property in our own bodies and the ownership that gives us—each of us as individuals—in the fruits of our labor. Hence Mosteshar’s correctness, which makes him so wrong. Private property rights are not governments’ to give; of course, the US government cannot assign to its citizens that right: we already have it. Private enterprise exploration and exploitation are not subject to national appropriation because it isn’t national at all: it’s…private. Private exploration and exploitation of off-Earth resources—the asteroids, for instance—in no way establishes a national claim on those resources or the results of their exploitation. It just obligates the nation to move to protect those private property rights, held by its citizens, against interference by others.

Hillary Clinton’s Tax Proposals

Posted on by
Reply

And she has lots of them. I’ll list her tax credit proposals here.

  • $1,200 to offset the costs incurred by a family member caring for an aging parent
  • $5,000, refundable (it’s paid even to those who aren’t paying any income tax), for out of pocket health costs
  • $1,500 “apprenticeship” for businesses who hire entry-level workers, per such hire
  • 15% of the value of bonuses paid out if businesses create employee cost-sharing programs, paid to those businesses
  • Unspecified amounts for low-income homeowners who install solar panels

She also wants to expand these extant wealth redistributing credits:

  • Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit
  • Work Opportunity Tax Credit
  • New Markets Tax Credit
  • American Opportunity Tax Credit
  • Wind, solar, ethanol tax credits

We don’t have enough pages to our tax code rules, you see, and we don’t have enough special exceptions to our tax rules and who pays—and who gets.

Never mind that none of this tax gerrymandering, none of this redistribution of OPM according to Progressive rules rather than the needs and wishes of those doing the earning, would be necessary with a low, flat rate tax code that admitted of no exceptions, no deductions, no credits, no loopholes, no gerrymandering; a tax code that would be used to fund government and not be abused for social engineering in accordance with Progressive demands.

A Bit About Global Warming

Posted on by
Reply

The climate panic-mongers need to explain some things. This, for instance, from Steven Mithen’s After the Ice: A Global Human History 20,000-5000 BC (quoted at Watts Up With That:

The next century of human-made global warming is predicted to be far less extreme than that which occurred at 9600 BC [11,600 BP]. At the end of the Younger Dryas, mean global temperature had risen by 7°C in fifty years, whereas the predicted rise for the next hundred years is less than 3°C. The end of the last ice age led to a 120 meter increase in sea level, whereas that predicted for the next fifty years is a paltry 32 centimeters at most,….

The timeline that opens the article at the link is complex, and it’s instructive. So is Andy May’s article at that link.

This is Backwards

Posted on by
1

The IMF is likely to announce Monday (tomorrow as I wrote this, yesterday as you read it) that it will add the PRC’s renminbi to its basket of reserve currencies alongside the US dollar, the British pound, the Japanese yen, and the eurozone euro. As a result of this, the renminbi will be more tightly scrutinized, and the IMF’s hope expectation is that the PRC will become much more open in its handling of the renminbi. As The Wall Street Journal put it Saturday,

Inclusion would also put pressure on the central bank to offer the same degree of clarity and transparency that the US Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank, and other vital institutions strive for.

Here, too, is Sheng Songcheng, Director of the Statistics Division of the People’s Bank of China:

We will have to build up confidence in renminbi assets from investors both at home and abroad and at the same time, prevent the financial risks associated with a more global currency. That calls for carrying out various financial reforms in a coordinated way.

A couple things: Sheng is not the top official of the PRC’s central bank; he’s just the guy in charge of one of the bank’s departments.

More importantly, though, is that this order of events is backwards. The central banks of the US, Great Britain, the EU, and Japan were open, transparent, and generally free of government manipulation before they became global reserve currencies.

So should it (have been) a requirement for the PRC, the PBOC, and the renminbi. The promises and predictions of a lower level functionary of the PRC government have little value.

An aside and a short lesson, courtesy of a friend of mine: the terms “renminbi” and “yuan” very often are used interchangeably; this is incorrect. “Renminbi” refers to the national currency, just as “dollar” and “pound” (or “British pound” where the distinction matters) refer to national currencies. However, unlike in the US and Great Britain, where “dollar” and “pound” refer also to units of the national currency, the unit of the PRC’s national currency is “yuan:” that thing in the window costs five dollars, or it costs five pounds, or it costs five yuan—not five renminbi.

Food Stamps and Junk Food

Posted on by
Reply

Maine wants to stop the use of food stamps to buy sodas and candy, limiting SNAP beneficiaries to a moderately healthier set of food purchases. The USDA says it’ll “review” the move.

Sure. However, the USDA routinely blocks moves like this, aimed at moving the program at least a little toward healthier diets—a move whose importance is emphasized by the number of children impacted by SNAP handouts. I’m not holding my breath, and neither are the good folks of Maine.

An American Beverage Association spokeswoman said, not at all self-servingly,

We think families should be free to choose what they put in their grocery carts.

Of course. When they’re the ones paying for what they put in their grocery carts. However, when what’s going into those carts is paid for in large part with OPM, those OP get a significant say, also, or should get one.