Tag Archives: economics

“We stand for what is right across the world”

Posted on by
Reply

In a virtual Congressional hearing last Tuesday—Corporate Sponsorship of the 2022 Beijing Olympics—there was this exchange between Senator Tom Cotton (R, AR) and Paul Lalli, Coca-Cola’s Global Vice President for Human Rights and corporate representative at the hearing:

SEN. TOM COTTON (R-AR): So your company said at the time that we will continue to stand up for what is right in Georgia and across the United States. So are we to take from your statement at the time that Coca Cola will not stand up for what is right outside the United States? Because that’s what it sounds like this morning in this testimony.
PAUL LALLI, COCA-COLA’S GLOBAL VICE PRESIDENT FOR HUMAN RIGHTS: No, Senator, we stand up for what is right across the world. We apply the same human rights principles in the United States that we do across the world.
COTTON: Do you believe that the Chinese Communist Party is committing genocide against the Uyghur people?
LALLI: We’re aware of the reports of the State Department on this issue as well. There are other departments of the US government. We respect those reports. They continue to inform our program, as do reports from other from civil society.

Think about that deliberately vapid non-response. Coca Cola stands for what’s right across the world, and Coca Cola doesn’t object to the People’s Republic of China’s abuse, much less genocide, of the Uyghurs in the PRC’s Xinjiang province.

Nor was it just Cotton that the Coca-Cola rep refused to answer. Progressive-Democrat Tom Malinowski (D, NJ) pressed Lalli specifically on whether Coca-Cola would condemn any Chinese government abuses against Uyghurs. Lalli’s carefully empty response:

We respect all human rights.

It seems pretty clear: Coca Cola considers that abuse, that genocide, to be part of what’s right across the world. Because Uighurs, in Coca-Cola’s august consideration, don’t count as human or otherwise worthy of human rights.

It’d Be All Right

Posted on by
Reply

The USPS is planning on raising their first class mail rates to 58¢ from the current 55¢ and raising the rates on their other mail classes by 6.8%-8.8%.

This is another example of price-fixing by the Federal government. Maybe the increases are legitimate, maybe they’re not. But we can’t tell because market forces aren’t at work here, only government bureaucrats’ impressions are at work.

It’d be all right if we privatized all of mail delivery. Let a free, competitive market determine prices. Recognize the ubiquitousness of email, texting, Skype, Zoom, etc, etc, etc as competing communications techniques, and let a privatized snail mail system compete in that same free market.

It’s doable; our Constitution only says that

The Congress shall have Power…To establish Post Offices and Post Roads

It doesn’t require Congress actually establish Post Offices, much less have the Federal government run them. The establishment (and operation) are easily done by letting free enterprise do them.

All it takes is the political will to do so.

The Federal Debt Ceiling

Posted on by
Reply

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R, KY) has thrown down the gauntlet.

In an interview on Tuesday, McConnell stated “I can’t imagine a single Republican in this environment voting to raise the debt limit.”
He told Democrats to include the hike in the second infrastructure bill they plan to pass through reconciliation.

I hope McConnell isn’t being overly optimistic about his Senate caucus.

It’s doubtful that there is a single Progressive-Democrat in the Senate who would vote against raising the debt ceiling, but if there were, and if the Federal government were shut down as a result, that wouldn’t be all bad. There are many parts of the Federal government that wouldn’t be missed and those critical to national security—DoD and State—would continue to function.

A Bond Signal

Posted on by
Reply

Sam Goldfarb, in The Wall Street Journal, has part of it.

The monthslong decline in bond yields exemplifies investors’ belief that inflation likely isn’t the biggest problem facing the US and global economy.
Monday’s sharp selloff in major US stock indexes highlighted investors’ mounting concern that the biggest risk to markets right now is underwhelming growth….

Indeed.

There are other things that folks are more concerned about than inflation, the current round of which I say is transitory. One is the Biden administration’s steady drumbeat of Wuhan Virus panic-mongering, currently over the Delta variant, which, albeit is more contagious, is in fact no more lethal than the Wuhan Virus original and against which existing vaccinations are highly effective.

Another thing is the Biden administration’s conflicting statements regarding the Wuhan Virus—its origin, palliatives like hydroxychloroquine and remdesivir, mask usefulness, and on and on.

Another thing is the Biden administration’s active attempts to censor, and to order private enterprises to censor, other conflicting information regarding the virus, vaccinations, and vaccinating in general, all because Progressive-Democrats think us average Americans are just too grindingly stupid to figure out for ourselves.

Another thing is the Biden administration’s runaway reregulation of our economy because Government Knows Best.

Another thing is Government’s Progressive-Democrats insisting on paying Americans to not work, slowing our economic recovery by hindering private enterprises’ ability to get the labor force with which to produce enough to meet growing demand.

Another thing is the Progressive-Democrats’ demand to tax our private enterprises to the point of non-competitiveness while at the same time spending our tax money with enormous abandon, crowding our private enterprises out of our economy in favor of a Government economy.

That’s plenty for investors to worry about.

Unfair to Whom?

Posted on by
Reply

The subheadline to Mick Mulvaney’s op-ed in The Wall Street Journal drives the salient question:

The “global minimum tax” battle may set an example for those who consider low US state levies “unfair.”

This comes against the backdrop of President Joe Biden’s (D) and his Congressional Progressive-Democrat cronies’ drive to give our domestic economic sovereignty over to an international “agreement” concerning the proper levels of business taxes. That international gang, centered on the OECD, insists that more is better, more is fairer.

Fair to whom, though? Nor Biden, nor his cronies, nor his OECD BFFs are willing to say, beyond insisting that Government needs more and that tax competition is somehow unfair.

Into that void, I have to ask: what’s unfair about leaving more money in the hands of those who earned it? What’s unfair about leaving more money in the hands the private enterprises whose production produced the business incomes that are being taxed?

In the absence of those Betters’ answers, I’ll supply my own.

It’s eminently fair to leave those monies in the hands and coffers of those who generated the income.

What’s fair is the Progressive-Democrat Yellen-disparaged race to the taxing bottom. That’s the most money left in the hands of the economic generators.