Tag Archives: economics

“Employment Levels”

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Candidates to replace term-limited Bill de Blasio (D) as mayor of New York City are coming out of the woodwork like the city’s rats. The opening sentence of a Wall Street Journal article covering their plans to “job recovery” is riddled with irony.

More than three dozen New York City mayoral candidates are vying for one of the toughest jobs in the country: leading the nation’s largest city back to pre-pandemic employment levels while trying to find the funding to do so.

The candidates—the city—do not need to “find the funding” to put folks back to work. In an actual free market environment, private employers provide the funding for their own employees. They get that funding from private citizens buying those employers’ goods and services. The city—any government—is a cost center for every business in it jurisdiction, from the taxes the city exacts (some of them actually legitimate charges) to the regulations (very few of them serving any legitimate purpose, being merely revenue centers for the bureaucracy charging them) it imposes.

Returning New York City to pre-Wuhan Virus situation levels is breathtakingly cost-free—and revenue-generating for the city: get out of the way, let the businesses reopen so folks can go back to work, let schools reopen so kids can go back to school—reducing both private and public medical costs—and letting even more folks go back to work.

It’s just that straightforward. It shouldn’t be as hard as even well-meaning, but overthinking, politicians make it.

Opposition

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Republicans in the Senate put Progressive-Democrats on the record on a number of amendments to Party’s budget reconciliation move—itself a deliberate act to sideline any dissent—which Republicans offered during a Thursday afternoon through Friday morning vote-a-rama. Party’s budget reconciliation then was voted up strictly along party lines.

Here’s some of what the Senate’s Progressive-Democrats oppose. Notice that every one of these would have enhanced Americans’ national security, economy, and individual liberty had they had the support of even a single Progressive-Democrat.

  • 50-50 on a failed amendment to support the border wall
  • 50-50 on a failed amendment supporting the free exercise of religion
  • 50-50 on a failed amendment to oppose packing the Supreme Court
  • 50-50 on a failed amendment opposing stimulus checks for people in prison
  • 50-50 on a failed amendment opposing the Biden administration’s move to restrict oil and gas leasing on federal lands
  • 50-50 on a failed amendment opposing a federal carbon tax

Needed Stimulus

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…or not. Mostly—nearly entirely—not.

real per capita disposable income in [Wuhan Virus situation-ridden] 2020 grew 5.5%

The Wall Street Journal noted that this is all before the December-passed $900 billion stimulus “took effect.” It’s also after that stimulus—which still hasn’t had much effect since much of that money hasn’t even been sent into the economy by Government.

What happened to the $2.6 trillion Government had already lobbed into the economy?

Preliminary data for 2020 show total savings for 2020 was $1.6 trillion higher than in 2019.  And that was before the $900 billion stimulus.

It’s also after those $900 billion….

Some folks are squawking that the money wasn’t really all that stimulative—it was saved rather than spent, which was the purpose of the stimulus. Some folks misunderstand. Savings do get spent—in the short term, if not immediately, on short-term needs and wants. Savings that aren’t quickly spent become deposits in financial institutions, where they join the pool of what economists call loanable funds—and get lent to borrowers, who then spend. Loanable funds might not be promptly spent, but they most assuredly do get spent.

Given this and the fact that the December stimulus remains uncommitted to the economy, why the urgency, and the need, for an additional $1.9 trillion in stimulus? According to the CBO,

The office said gross domestic product would return to pre-pandemic levels by mid-2021 and will continue growing until 2026 as a vaccine reduces the number of new infections and the need for social distancing.

And

Labor market conditions continue to improve. As the economy expands, many people rejoin the civilian labor force who had left it during the pandemic, restoring it to its pre-pandemic size in 2022[.]
The unemployment rate gradually declines throughout the period, and the number of people employed returns to its pre-pandemic level in 2024[.]

All that without the $1.9 trillion mess currently being rammed through Congress by Progressive-Democrats.

Why, then, do we need the additional $1.9 trillion national debt stimulus? We don’t. Progressive-Democrats do, or rather they want the money, so they can continue to virtue-signal. Those new trillions that Progressive-Democrats are insisting they’re going to jam down our throats, and rip from our children’s and grandchildren’s wallets (not that I mix metaphors or anything), in a strictly partisan fashion will be, in the longer run, nothing but destructive of all things economic.

There is urgency: to stop the train wreck that is this new $1.9 trillion package of froo-froo.

Costs

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In Monday’s Wall Street Journal Letters section, a letter-writer pooh-poohed the idea that the People’s Republic of China might actually invade the Republic of China and reclaim the island of Taiwan.

A decision by Beijing to invade Taiwan would create a major geopolitical crisis for China. Its extensive global trade and investments would be disrupted, creating economic problems. An invasion would result in an occupation. The people of Taiwan have lived in freedom and under the rule of law—they are not about to put on Chinese handcuffs and live in a communist society.

Houlihan made an all-too-common mistake that political and military analysts make in assessing an enemy nation’s motives and goals. Here, he assumed that the PRC cares about costs of regaining and reoccupying the island of Taiwan, just because we would have those concerns. In the end, if the PRC succeeds, it will have destroyed the Republic of China (without the US’ and others’ support, the “people of Taiwan” won’t be capable of resisting PRC handcuffs for any length of time) and regained the island.

And humiliated us, driving us from the western Pacific, opening up the Republic of Korea and Japan—hated enemies—to tacit, if not explicit, control, and putting Southeast Asia, which it has failed repeatedly in invading, under its thumb.

And gained control of the South China Sea shipping lanes, further strangling the RoK and Japan, and inflicting sufficient economic damage on us as to be able to control, in large part, our behavior.

Those may well be goals, in PRC eyes, worth spending a bit of political and economic capital to attain.

The PRC certainly is building, as fast as it can, a military capability designed for the purpose. The PRC also has the stated goal of replacing, in the near-to-medium term, us as the sole world power.

Defunding the Schools

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Senator Marco Rubio (R, FL) is proposing a stern response regarding schools that cannot reopen because the national teachers unions and the school districts’ associated teachers union locals refuse to send their members back to work. That refusal comes in the face of the fact that it’s safe for schools to reopen and teachers to report for in-person teaching, at the least for grades K-8, because the kids both don’t get sick from the Wuhan Virus, and they don’t spread any Wuhan Virus infection they may be carrying among themselves or to adults.

…I will be filing legislation to hold our nation to that promise [President Joe Biden’s campaign promise to reopen all schools within the first 100 days of his becoming president].
If a school continues to cave to the unions at the expense of their students, they should not receive funding. I propose that if a school refuses to offer students an in-person option by April 30, 2021, 100 days into the Biden administration, that funding should be rescinded and directed to school choice and the reopening plans of schools that are prioritizing their students’ needs.

It’s a necessary step, but it’s one that would hurt the schools as much, if not more, than it would the shirking unions and union members. Thus, it cannot be the only step.

Union locals that won’t send their members back to their jobs, back to the jobs unions insist on controlling, also must be decertified in their school districts, and those teachers who continue to refuse to report for their jobs—their duties—should be terminated for cause (for cause so that these shirkers would be ineligible for most unemployment-related welfare).

Who will teach the kids if the teachers are fired, some might ask. Those some should also ask, who’s teaching the kids now? And, no, virtual teaching for those grades is all virtual and no teaching and a complete failure, even after all these months of teachers supposedly learning how to teach those age groups virtually.

With the shirkers fired, the teaching slots would be free and the districts could call in substitute teachers already on their lists (or remove them from their lists if they refuse to report for duty); hire replacements; reallocate the now unused payroll funds to support home-school pods and individual home-schooling families; in the spirit of Rubio’s proposed reallocation of Federal funds, work with local voucher and charter schools—the list is extensive.

The unions and their members aren’t doing their jobs; they don’t need either compensation or to have those jobs. Of course, taking that necessarily local action requires more courage, more strength of character, than those districts targeted by Rubio’s proposed legislation have been showing—that’s part of the need for his bill.