“Career-Defining”

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The headline lays it out:

Chief Justice Roberts Faces Career-Defining Decision on Trump

The WSJ‘s news writer centered his headline claim on the current Supreme Court case that concerns the authority a President has (or has not) to unilaterally adjust or apply de novo tariffs. This is certainly a major case with serious implications and outcomes. Career-defining, though? Calling it that is nothing but journalistic arrogance. This guy is not the definer of “career-defining;” he’s just one man with an opinion.

Career-defining certainly would be a momentous move with long-lasting effects.

Here’s another momentous move by Roberts, one from a few years ago, and that still is reverberating. That ruling, in which Chief Justice John Roberts rewrote the Affordable Care Act to include a tax aspect that Congress had explicitly considered and just as explicitly rejected, was every bit as momentous as anything the Roberts Court might decide regarding Trump’s tariffs. Career-defining? At least as much as the tariff case. That’s my one-man opinion.

Be Still, my Heart

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Visa and Mastercard, two of the largest credit card issuers, may be reaching a deal with merchants over fees charged merchants. This could settle a dispute that’s gone on for two decades.

Under terms being discussed, Visa and Mastercard would lower credit-card interchange fees, which are often between 2% and 2.5%, by an average of around 0.1 percentage point over several years[.]

A whole tenth of a percentage point. That miniscule fraction adds up, some, over many years, for the card issuers, but it does nothing for the individual merchant—or the merchant chain.

To put that magnanimity in perspective, imagine an investor—one of those merchants, perhaps—investing in an instrument that grows at 0.1% per year.

Were he to start with a $10,000 investment, after 10 years, his pile will have grown to $10,100.451.001. After 20 years, the duration of the current dispute, he would have a $10,201.91 golden egg.

Be still, my heart. With friends like this in the merchants’ world, I’ll continue to do business, as much as possible and especially with local mom-and-pops, in cash, which lets the merchant keep all of the money I’m paying for his good or service.

Some Thoughts on Tariffs

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The Wall Street Journal‘s editors have twisted their panties on tariffs, again, this time showing their lack of understanding of tariff rebates to us low- and middle-income American citizens (in addition to their lack of understanding of tariffs as foreign policy tools. That President Donald Trump (R) has muddled that use is not an excuse for the editors’ failure).

Begin with a couple of things the editors have elided.

President Donald Trump (R) early on said tariffs would let him reduce income taxes—something the editors completed ignored in their present missive. Trump wants to give a $2,000 tariff rebate to us American citizens. While this isn’t a direct reduction of our income taxes, it certainly offsets that much of each of our income tax bills. As a first step in reducing income taxes, it’s not bad.

Then there’s this:

In arguing [before the Supreme Court] that tariffs aren’t really taxes and are mainly a tool of foreign policy, Mr Sauer said “these tariffs, these policies, it is clear that these policies are most effective if nobody ever pays the tariff. If it never raises a dime of revenue, these are the most effective use of these—of this particular policy.”

Sauer went on to say that these foreign policy tariffs do, in fact, generate revenue, but that’s deeply secondary to their purpose, which is to persuade the tariffed nation to change its ways. The editors acknowledged that in an earlier editorial, though only by deeply burying it near the end of that piece. This time, the editors completed elided it.

Then there’s this bit of illogic, even as the editors deride the Trump administration’s logic.

If tariffs are most effective if no one ever pays them [as Sauer also argued], then how are they going to raise the revenue Mr Trump needs to pay those rebates?

Here the editors are exposing the fantasy of their world. “No one” ever pays tariffs because they work perfectly, nations are persuaded, and Hallelujah. No. The world isn’t an ideal place, no foreign policy measure ever works perfectly, friction occurs, and nations adapt according to their own imperatives. Foreign policy tariffs will still raise revenue, even as they do move nations to change, if not completely so, in desired directions.

Finally, this bit of editorial foolishness.

This is a teaching moment for a high school logic class. Start with the contradiction that Mr Trump can both pay a tariff rebate and pay down the national debt. The annual federal budget deficit is roughly $1.8 trillion even with tariff revenue, so paying a rebate would add to the national debt, not reduce it.

Start with the derision of Trump both paying a tariff rebate and paying down the national debt. Of course, both can be done. The rebate won’t, of necessity, absorb all of the current tariff revenue raised, and there’s no reason to expect it to do so in the future. Tariff revenue easily can be committed to, and split between, both goals.

And this: paying a rebate would add to the debt? The editors announce this as received wisdom, declining to provide any facts or logic to support their announcement. That’s because they cannot. The debt arises from spending more of individual and business taxpayer money than the government receives in individual and business taxpayer money. Tariff money is outside of that path. Even if foreign policy tariff revenue were taxes, their expenditure is outside the citizen and business tax revenues the government receives, and spending that revenue adds nothing to our national debt, even if all of the foreign policy tariff revenue were committed to rebates.

And this, straight from the horse’s mouth (which postdates the editors’ missive):

All money left over from the $2000 payments made to low and middle income USA Citizens, from the massive Tariff Income pouring into our Country from foreign countries, which will be substantial, will be used to SUBSTANTIALLY PAY DOWN NATIONAL DEBT. Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DJT

Veteran’s Day

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I first posted this in 2011; I added to it in 2014.

Thank you for all who have, and are, serving.  And because I couldn’t have said it better, I’ll let Mike Royko, late of the Chicago Tribune, via Coastal Courier, say it from his 1993 column.

I just phoned six friends and asked them what they will be doing on Monday.

They all said the same thing: working.

Me, too.

There is something else we share. We are all military veterans.

And there is a third thing we have in common. We are not employees of the federal government, state government, county government, municipal government, the Postal Service, the courts, banks, or S & Ls, and we don’t teach school.

If we did, we would be among the many millions of people who will spend Monday goofing off.

Which is why it is about time Congress revised the ridiculous terms of Veterans Day as a national holiday.

The purpose of Veterans Day is to honor all veterans.

So how does this country honor them?…

…By letting the veterans, the majority of whom work in the private sector, spend the day at their jobs so they can pay taxes that permit millions of non-veterans to get paid for doing nothing.

As my friend Harry put it:

“First I went through basic training. Then infantry school. Then I got on a crowded, stinking troop ship that took 23 days to get from San Francisco to Japan. We went through a storm that had 90 percent of the guys on the ship throwing up for a week.

“Then I rode a beat-up transport plane from Japan to Korea, and it almost went down in the drink. I think the pilot was drunk.

“When I got to Korea, I was lucky. The war ended seven months after I got there, and I didn’t kill anybody and nobody killed me.

“But it was still a miserable experience. Then when my tour was over, I got on another troop ship and it took 21 stinking days to cross the Pacific.

“When I got home on leave, one of the older guys at the neighborhood bar — he was a World War II vet — told me I was a —-head because we didn’t win, we only got a tie.

“So now on Veterans Day I get up in the morning and go down to the office and work.

“You know what my nephew does? He sleeps in. That’s because he works for the state.

“And do you know what he did during the Vietnam War? He ducked the draft by getting a job teaching at an inner-city school.

“Now, is that a raw deal or what?”

Of course that’s a raw deal. So I propose that the members of Congress revise Veterans Day to provide the following:

– All veterans — and only veterans — should have the day off from work. It doesn’t matter if they were combat heroes or stateside clerk-typists.

Anybody who went through basic training and was awakened before dawn by a red-neck drill sergeant who bellowed: “Drop your whatsis and grab your socks and fall out on the road,” is entitled.

– Those veterans who wish to march in parades, make speeches or listen to speeches can do so. But for those who don’t, all local gambling laws should be suspended for the day to permit vets to gather in taverns, pull a couple of tables together and spend the day playing poker, blackjack, craps, drinking and telling lewd lies about lewd experiences with lewd women. All bar prices should be rolled back to enlisted men’s club prices, Officers can pay the going rate, the stiffs.

– All anti-smoking laws will be suspended for Veterans Day. The same hold for all misdemeanor laws pertaining to disorderly conduct, non-felonious brawling, leering, gawking and any other gross and disgusting public behavior that does not harm another individual.

– It will be a treasonable offense for any spouse or live-in girlfriend (or boyfriend, if it applies) to utter the dreaded words: “What time will you be home tonight?”

– Anyone caught posing as a veteran will be required to eat a triple portion of chipped beef on toast, with Spam on the side, and spend the day watching a chaplain present a color-slide presentation on the horrors of VD.

– Regardless of how high his office, no politician who had the opportunity to serve in the military, but didn’t, will be allowed to make a patriotic speech, appear on TV, or poke his nose out of his office for the entire day.

Any politician who defies this ban will be required to spend 12 hours wearing headphones and listening to tapes of President Clinton explaining his deferments.

Now, deal the cards and pass the tequila.

– Mike Royko

Next, because this is a day of remembrance and of honoring our surviving veterans, take another moment to visit here and take in Mark Toomey’s piece.

And follow his advice at the end.

Interesting Idea

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This one from President Donald Trump (R), who has one on occasion.

I am recommending to Senate Republicans that the Hundreds of Billions of Dollars currently being sent to money sucking Insurance Companies in order to save the bad Healthcare provided by ObamaCare, BE SENT DIRECTLY TO THE PEOPLE SO THAT THEY CAN PURCHASE THEIR OWN, MUCH BETTER, HEALTHCARE, and have money left over[.]

The idea wants study to identify any hidden implications, good or bad. It also wants a couple of criteria attached. One is a means test for eligibility for the payments. The Federal Poverty Guidelines do a good job of locating the threshold for poverty. Anyone or any family with income above the poverty guideline is, by definition, not living in poverty, and so should be ineligible.

The other criterion is a sunset clause. The subsidies, even as direct payments to the individuals, should have a hard expiration date beyond which they end, irrevocably (or as nearly so as a Congress can make a statute, which frankly isn’t much). The duration of the payments should be only long enough to allow the individual and family make their own budgetary adjustments, plus what might be called an engineering slop cushion—perhaps six months.

All in all, though, this is a good initial consideration.