Category Archives: politics

Demographics and Retirement in the PRC

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The People’s Republic of China is facing an increasingly serious demographic problem.

New data show the reversal [in the one-child policy] isn’t having the anticipated impact. The number of newborns in China dropped to 15.23 million in 2018, according to the National Bureau of Statistics. That’s two million less than 2017 and 30% below the median official forecast of more than 21 million.

This has serious implications for, among other things, the PRC’s old-age pension and medical care capacity (eliding the impact on the PRC’s ability to man an armed forces establishment of the size it currently has).

By 2050, there will be 1.3 workers for each retiree, according to official estimates, compared with 2.8 now.

Most of these retirement programs are funded by local jurisdictions, rather than from the center, and most of those jurisdictions’ facilities are badly underfunded and getting more so (sound familiar?).  As a result, the PRC is trying to increase national control of those retirement facilities and to increase the bite on businesses to pony up more for the programs.  That last, especially, has its own problems.

Huang Weibin, the general manager of a property-management firm in Guangdong province, said higher pension costs mean his business will suffer a loss this year, likely forcing him to lay off some of his 80 employees.
“If the government doesn’t help us out with subsidies or tax breaks, we will go broke for sure,” he said.

He and the PRC government need only consult with that famous American economist and blogger, David Roberts:

If the question is what the [PRC] can afford…, the way to think about it is not in terms of how much money the country has. It literally has as much money as it wants. It prints its own money!

Problem solved.  Or maybe not.

If Amazon Pulls Out

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Progressive-Democrat strategist and pollster Doug Schoen is worried about new rumors that Amazon might pull out of its agreement to relocate a part of its HQ2 in New York City.  He’s hanging his hat on the commitment from Amazon to produce 25,000 jobs at an average salary of $150,000 per year.

It would be a “disaster for the city,” he wrote in the Fox News op-ed, for Amazon to pull out.

Burdened by a shrinking tax base, crumbling infrastructure, and a lack of good-paying middle-class jobs for the future, New York City needs innovators like Amazon.

Or, perhaps, New York City wants Amazon’s money.

Regardless, Schoen seems to be missing some important costs to New Yorkers in the deal currently in place between New York City and Amazon.  Immediate costs include

  • tax credits equal to $48,000 per new job—assuming new jobs by amazon could be measured
  • $1.5 billion in direct subsidies for Amazon

Potential additional costs include

  • $897 million through New York City’s Relocation and Employment Assistance Program
  • $386 million through a partial property tax abatement program
  • depending on the extent to which Amazon relies on renewables, additional credits through the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority

In return, Amazon committed to providing over the first 10 years 25,000 new jobs at an average annual salary of $150,000—high-paying jobs.

There are unaccounted-for costs in this arrangement, though.

  • that sharp influx of high-paying jobs will create demand for limited-supply items like homes and groceries that will inflation-price others—not just locals—out of those things. Aside from the small businesses and mom-and-pop businesses and their limited expansion opportunities, there’s little physical room left to build more, to increase supply of houses, business buildings, and so on.
  • the influx of those 25,000, along with the office buildings and the commuting and shipping traffic associated a business expansion of this size will sharply increase demand on utilities, public and private transportation, and other infrastructure—which, as Schoen has already noted, is crumbling and unable to handle today’s demands
  • locals—businesses and residents, and what’s left of Schoen’s dwindling middle class alike—don’t get those property tax abatements. Guess who will pay, at least partially, for those abatements

And, in the end, tax incentives rarely get paid back in contracted for outcomes; there usually is a net loss to the incentive-granting jurisdiction.

This isn’t a good deal for New York City, unless it’s looking to replace those folks with below-middle-class jobs with a better sort of families.

A Premature Impeachment

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No, I’m not talking about the Progressive-Democrats’ efforts against President Donald Trump in the Federal Government’s House of Representatives.

This is about Virginia State Delegate Patrick Hope’s (D) move in the House of Delegates to impeach (and presumably get a State Senate conviction) Virginia Lieutenant Government Justin Fairfax over two women’s accusations of sexual assault.  Even though Hope has decided to HIA his push pending additional conversations that need to take place before anything is filed, it’s worth considering some implications of this rush to judgment.

What, exactly, has Fairfax done? Don’t waste bandwidth repeating those two accusations; say what he’s actually done.  The accusations are serious, and they should be seriously investigated, and depending on results, Fairfax certainly should face trial, and if convicted he should face criminal and political sanction.  Nothing has been shown, yet, though.

Thus: hang a man on the basis of accusation?  Skip the whole investigation and trial bit?

Aren’t Progressive-Democrats supposed to be better than that?  Oh, wait—the Kavanaugh hearing.

There’s Bigotry

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…and there’s bigotry.  Keep in mind that the Virginia Attorney General, yet another Progressive-Democrat in the Virginia government—and third in line for succession to the governorship behind Northam (D) and Lieutenant Governor (another Progressive-Democrat and accused of rape, which he is poo-pooing) confessed last week to doing blackface decades ago.

The hue and cry over all of this from the virtue-signalers and determined nay-sayers of all sides is loud.

What’s missing from two of these cases (the alleged rape was much more recent, and it still wants serious investigation, with the Lieutenant Governor in jail or the accusers liable for damages and possibly jail, depending on the investigation’s outcome) is any sense of forgiveness and any recognition of the ability of a man to be rehabilitated, even to rehabilitate himself.

Also missing is any sense that this sort of thing is not unique to Virginia or to Party.  Ignorant, racially stupid, and bigoted behaviors were widespread in those days, and they’re still too widespread today.

There are two aspects to apparently bigoted behavior, though.  One is seemingly bigoted behavior by those who simply don’t know any better, but on learning, correct their behavior.  Yes, it is possible that folks even as recently as 35 years ago, as the civil rights movement was getting firmly under way, didn’t understand what they were doing or were simply indifferent to the negative implications of their actions—hence the need for that movement.  Such persons especially should be given the benefit of the doubt, and they should receive forgiveness.

The other aspect is that seemingly bigoted behavior actually is the result of bigotry.  That aspect is exemplified by the then-Democratic Party’s Jim Crow laws and their Ku Klux Klan, and by today’s antifa and neo-Nazi gangs, among others.  Such persons should be given the benefit of the boot from public life.

There might seem to be a third aspect, behaving in apparently bigoted ways in order to “go along.” I lump those, however, with the actual bigots via those of the go along crowd’s abject cowardice.

An Inquisition

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The “hearing” by the House Judiciary Committee of Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker on Friday was just that.

It was more than that, too.  The number of times the Committee’s Progressive-Democrats talked over and interrupted Whitaker’s answers, even dictating what his answers must be (“Answer yes or no”), before he could complete them was breathtaking.  Not a single Progressive-Democrat let him complete his answers to each of their questions; most of them wouldn’t let him complete any of them.  Here’s the 6-hour C-SPAN video of the hearing; see for yourself.

When Whitaker protested his being blocked from answering, Committee Chairman Jerold Nadler (D, NY) insisted that the time allotted to each member is that member’s to do with as he sees fit: “The gentleman [the committee member] controls the time.”  That’s true, as far as it goes.

However.

Whitaker, as are all witnesses testifying before any House committee (or Senate committee, come to that), was sworn to tell the truth.

Do you swear or affirm under penalty of perjury that the testimony you’re about to give is true and correct to the best of your knowledge, information and belief, so help you God?

It’s impossible to tell the truth, to be correct, without complete answers containing all the truth, all the facts, as understood by the witness.  The Progressive-Democrats’ repeated prevention of Whitaker from telling all of the truth, stating all the facts, in answer to the question put before him comes perilously close to suborning perjury, if not outright do so.