Tag Archives: economics

Alternatives

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In an op-ed in Friday’s Wall Street Journal centered on the foolishness of “sustainable” investing, Burton Malkiel had this remark:

The most effective way to reduce an economy’s carbon intensity is to change the economic incentive to pollute.

Not at all. The most effective way to reduce an economy’s carbon intensity—even assuming that’s a useful thing to do—is to provide viable alternatives to carbon intensity. So far, all the Left and their Progressive-Democratic Party is willing to offer is punishment for carbon intensity.

All that does is punish the successful because the less successful don’t or can’t keep up or do better.

Bait and Switch

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Recall the trillions of American taxpayer dollars already committed to dealing with the Wuhan Virus situation, including $139 billion sent to State and local governments explicitly for that situation.  It turns out

blue states and Democratic mayors are also using the money for their pet causes.
Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer (D) is spending millions on free college for more than 600,000 essential workers.
Honolulu Mayor Kirk Caldwell (D) agreed to spend $629,000 to hire 15 community relations specialists.
Democratic St Paul Mayor Melvin Carter recently announced a guaranteed income program for low-income families using $300,000 in CARES Act money….

This is another demonstration that State and local governments don’t need any more Federal American taxpayer money. Progressive-Democrat-run jurisdictions can’t be trusted with the money.

Remember this in November.

The Lady Misunderstands

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Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D, NY) says it’s total BS that the Progressive-Democrat proposed $1 trillion in Federal Wuhan Virus stimulus monies aimed at State and local governments would benefit public sector unions. Whether public sector unions should or should not benefit is a separate matter.

It’s generous, though, to suggest that such an intelligent woman actually misunderstands.

Adding a trillion dollars—or any other amount of money—to a budget means—work with me, now—that budget has those added dollars to spend. Earmark the trillion for specific purposes, or bar it from being used for public unions. Do that by sending the money as cash and tracking serial numbers. That still lets the recipient government move a different [trillion] of dollars from a different part of its budget to benefit its public unions. That’s the fungibility of money. It can be moved around.

Then the Senator said this in all seriousness:

We need to fund government so that we can continue to grow the economy….

Here are the Constitutionally authorized reasons for funding the government:

to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States

Nothing in there about “growing the economy,” not even under that general Welfare part. What is the general Welfare of the United States is explicitly defined by the clauses of the rest of Article I, Section 8.

Indeed, as has been demonstrated over the course of our history and across a broad range of nations, the way to grow the economy is to have a free market, capitalist economy with minimal government involvement.

In fine, the State and local governments don’t need the stimulus money; they need to step back, (in many cases) end the lockdowns, and let the private economy function.

Some Prosperity Data

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Courtesy of the Census Bureau, via Just the News and The Wall Street Journal. These data concern the last year.

  • median household income rose to more than $68,700 just over the last year, a 6.8% year-on-year rise
  • black median household income rose to $66,500—up 7.9%
  • Hispanic median household income rose to $56,100—up 7.1%
  • women median income rose to $47,300—up 3%
  • poverty rate fell to 10.5%
  • child poverty rate fell to 14.1%

These are all highs (or lows) over the last several decades, and the sizes of the changes are historically large, also.

Over the last three-ish years, median household income has increased by 9%. That’s associated with a decrease in income inequality, including a small decrease in the share of income held by the top 20% over the same period paired with a bottom quintile increase of 2.4%.

Notice how all of this coincides with the pre-Wuhan Virus situation unemployment rates—at historic lows for our general population and for blacks and Hispanics in particular—along with rising labor force participation rate, which remains low, but it’s climbing from the historic lows achieved during the prior administration’s eight years.

One major factor little commented on in the NLMSM is the effect on prosperity and income inequality of folks in the bottom quintile actually having a job and an income—especially minority folks.

Which administration is it, again, that’s been in charge?

Insufficient

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Recall that Oracle and ByteDance have a proposal on the table for Oracle to take a minority partnership position in ByteDance’s TikTok.  In response to objections to that, some

Trump administration officials are looking to give American investors a majority share of the company that will take over the Chinese-owned video-sharing app TikTok[.]

Senators Marco Rubio (R, FL), Rick Scott (R, FL), Thom Tillis (R, NC), Roger Wicker (R, MI), Dan Sullivan (R, AK), and John Cornyn (R, TX), object to that, too.

Any deal between an American company and ByteDance must ensure that TikTok’s US operations, data, and algorithms are entirely outside the control of ByteDance or any Chinese-state directed actors, including any entity that can be compelled by Chinese law to turn over or access US consumer data.

The Senators are absolutely correct. Any fraction of ownership by a People’s Republic of China company that’s greater than zero is too much; giving, as it would, the PRC’s intelligence community access to all the data TikTok scoops up from the individuals and businesses that use it.