Category Archives: Economics

Miscellaneous economy stuff

Seattle’s Minimum Wage

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Here‘s a part (certainly not all) of the Left’s rationale for the $15/hour minimum wage just passed in Seattle. It’s from FoxNews‘ cite of David Goldstein, of whom they refer as a “Seattle blogger.”

If some jobs are lost, but we lift tens of thousands of low-wage workers out of poverty, that’s a net plus in the long run[.]

Which it would be, were this accurate. During the creative destruction that goes on all the time in a free market economy, jobs are lost and many more created—not only for low-wage workers, but for all workers. But the jobs that are lost due to government mandated minimum wage laws are exactly those of low-wage workers, who are priced out of the job market. There won’t be tens of thousands of low-wage workers lifted out of poverty by this law, these low-wage workers now will be trapped in no-wage poverty because they can no longer get jobs.

The simple fact is, the jobs are low-wage (notice that: the jobs are low-wage, not the workers in those jobs) because the value of the work—not of the worker—is so low.

And the Left adds this bit of rank cynicism:

It may very well be unfair, but unfair regulations are not illegal. The government distinguishes between different types of businesses and different types of industries all the time.

Because, you know, shut up.

Pipelines

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The Canadian government has approved a proposed pipeline to the Pacific Coast that would allow Canada’s oil to be shipped to Asia.

This is oil that would be flowing to American refineries through a pipeline that would be up and running today, if the Obama administration hadn’t stonewalled the Keystone XL pipeline proposal all these years.

Remember this in the fall and in 2016.

In Which Russia Creates an Opportunity

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Russia on Monday cut gas supplies to Ukraine as a payment deadline passed and negotiators failed to reach a deal on gas prices and unpaid bills amid continued fighting in eastern Ukraine.

Ukraine’s Naftogaz company head Andriy Kobolev said Russia had cut the supply of gas to Ukraine, but that Ukraine can manage without Russian gas until December.

There’s no reason at all we can’t fill this newly created market with American natural gas, even if it will take longer than next December to get the delivery chain up and running.

By extension and demonstration, this also creates a market opportunity to sell American natural gas throughout Europe. Even with a seaborne “pipeline,” we can deliver at a lower price than Russia can.

All we need is an administration willing to take advantage of the opportunity.

Another Reason to Reduce Financial Support for the IMF

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[T]he [IMF] said there is significant slack in the [US] economy and authorities must do more to stimulate growth in the near term. At the same time, Washington must cut spending and raise revenue in the long term to avoid public debt overwhelming the country’s finances.

The best option is for the government to boost spending, notably on infrastructure, the IMF said.

This is a clear misunderstanding of the role of government in a free nation’s free market economy—by folks who should know better. Hence the need to reduce support: these folks are merely squandering what they have.

No, Washington must not “do more to stimulate growth” in the private sector, other than by reducing its enormous boot print and getting out of the way of our economy.

No, Washington must not “raise revenue in the long term” except by getting out of the way of our economy and letting its growth and increased and increasing health generate more revenues for government through increased and increasing economic activity. Here, I’m eliding the premise that Washington actually needs revenue increases.

No, Washington does not need to “boost spending.” As the IMF pretended to notice just above, Washington must cut spending. In fact, Washington must cut spending to below actual revenues and quit crowding out the private sector and private enterprise.

Full stop.

Our Economic Future

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James Pethokoukis, at AEIdeas, has some thoughts. Oddly, so do I.

Pethokoukis first. He paraphrases Binyamin Appelbaum in New York Times:

…economist accept slower growth is partly the result of long-term trends…. [Y]ou have (a) the demographically-driven decline in labor force participation and (b) an apparent productivity slowdown starting in the mid-2000s as the pace of technological innovation and diffusion has slowed.

But these two are easily corrected. The “demographically-driven decline in labor force participation” is largely, if not primarily, the retirement of us Baby Boomers without associated replacement from births into existing and new families, much less an increase in that rate. (The long-term departure from the labor force by those who’ve given up finding work in this economy is a separate matter that policy corrections will resolve.)

The US, though, always has relied on high immigration rates, as well as yesterday’s higher birth rates, for our supply of workers at all levels of a company from the janitor/mailroom clerk (no dating me here…) to the President/CEO/Bossman. We don’t have high immigration rates today, so we’re not getting the influx into our labor force that we need. The illegal entry rates don’t make up for much of that at all, and the illegality of their entry serves only to hold them back from full contribution. That dearth is only exacerbated by our lower birth rates; it’s not caused by it.

The productivity slowdown and tech innovation rate is a function of the lack of new ideas, new approaches to old problems, creative approaches to new problems, etc from an entrenched population that’s used to doing things in the business world in a certain way (and that staidness is a fact of human nature). Here, too, immigration has played a major role in our economic vibrancy. Immigrants bring those new ideas, new approaches, new etc. And immigrants start new businesses—become those CEOs/Presidents/Bossmen—all out of proportion to their numbers.

All of which suggests a solution to that “slower growth” bit.