Tag Archives: economics

There’ll Be Blowback

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But it’ll be badly misplaced.  President Donald Trump is moving to stop further direct aid to the Caravan Triangle of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras over those nations’ failure to control those caravans by putting to actual use that aid—which was intended to support improved economies, the living conditions within those economies, and training to deal with gangs and the drug trade.

[T]he State Department…notified Congress that it would look to suspend 2017 and 2018 payments to the trio of nations, which have been home to some of the migrant caravans that have marched through Mexico to the US. border.

This comes as Honduras has formed and put on the road a caravan of 20,000 people.  In response to this, Trump said

We were giving them $500 million. We were giving them tremendous aid.  We were paying them tremendous amounts of money, and we’re not paying them anymore because they haven’t done a thing for us.

Indeed, the blowback has already begun.  Senator Robert Menendez (D, NJ), Ranking Member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is claiming

Instead of doing our part to help stabilize the situation in the Northern Triangle and stem the flow of children and refugees to our borders, President Trump reportedly wants to make matters worse by blocking resources for programs that get to the root causes of this humanitarian crisis.

Senator Marco Rubio (R, FL), a member of the same committee, presaged the blowback with his October tweet:

I understand instinct to cut US aid to punish countries for failing to stop illegal migration. But our aid to #Honduras & #Guatemala isn’t cash.  It’s primarily equipment & training to stop drugs headed to US & to deal with the gangs causing people to leave those countries.

The sad fact is, though, that neither Menendez nor Rubio understand the underlying facts, that the aid, cash and equipment and training, are not going to the folks who need it—those people being gathered up into caravans.  It’s going through those governments to the oligarchs and thieves.  The people—and the putative trainers and trainees—are not seeing a cent or a centavo of the aid, nor are they getting a single bit of the equipment or training.

Beyond that, Mexico has already offered “migrants” and “asylum seekers” jobs and job opportunities and asylum.  That these folks ignore or reject Mexico’s offer gives the lie to the claim that they’re coming here to escape terrible conditions at home or to seek the protection of another government.

Yet Another Veterans Administration Failure

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Here is another failure of the VA to take care of our veterans as they are charged to do, and as the VA’s motto promises they’ll do.  Here is another casual dishonor of that promise [emphasis added].

More than 1,000 Department of Veterans Affairs patients in Kansas didn’t get proper follow-up care after initial colonoscopies last year, a problem that was addressed only after a whistleblower repeatedly reported it, according to a government watchdog.
The watchdog found patients didn’t get follow-up screenings on time and when they did, often didn’t get the results in a timely manner because of [a string of excuses].

Here’s that motto which the VA has so routinely dishonored:

To care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow, and his orphan

After all this time, and with VA failure rate continuing unabated, it’s time to get off the dime and get rid of the VA altogether.  As I’ve said many times, commit this Failure Administration’s current and putative future budgets to vouchers for our veterans so they can get the care they need and want from the doctors they choose, the clinics they choose, the hospitals they choose.  It’s time to unshackle our veterans from the VA’s determined resistance to perform.

 

Veteranos Administratio delende est.

A Thought on Medicare for All

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University of Massachusetts-Amherst Economics Professor and Co-Director of the Political Economy Research Institute, Robert Pollin, had a thought on this.

Of course, so do I.

Pollin opened his tract with this:

All Americans would be able to get care from their chosen providers without having to pay premiums, deductibles or copayments.

No, we’ve already seen the lie in this. We experienced the broken, falsely presented promise with the sales job on Obamacare and the oft-repeated lie that if we liked our doctor, we could keep him and the associated lie of lower premiums.

Roughly 30 million people, 9% of the US population, are uninsured. Another 26%, 86 million people, are underinsured…

With millions of those Americans thrown off insurance plans they preferred because Obamacare made them illegal. This “economist” carefully elided that small fact.

We propose that all businesses that currently purchase health insurance for their employees be mandated to pay 92% of what they now spend into Medicare for All—saving 8% of their health-care expenditures.

Thereby throwing even more people off the plans they prefer.

This person also ignores another salient fact: the complete failure that is an existing single-payer plan, the VA.

And one more: even now, folks with surgical needs or prompt-but-expensive care needs or any other non-cookie cutter needs in other nations’ “free for all” health programs come here for those needs’ satisfaction rather than bear the interminable delays in getting that care in their nations’ programs.

Pied-à-Terre Tax

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New York City wants one, and The Wall Street Journal, among a host of other folks, think it’s a terrible idea.

The idea is what the politicians are calling a pied-à-terre tax—which is French for “give me your money, fat cat.”

I’m not sure I agree with the WSJ.  I see the pied-à-terre tax as a vast boon to New Yorkers, and to others.

a Journal analysis this week suggested it could crash New York’s luxury property market.

There actually are strong upsides to this tax. Fewer of New York’s rich folks will be hurt by the SALT cap on Federal income tax deductions as they leave this high and higher tax State for better States.

To the extent the WSJ‘s analysis is accurate, the luxury property market’s crash will have cascade effects that will make all housing property cheaper—and more affordable—for middle- and lower-class folks in New York at large as well as in New York City.  And that will have its own knock-on effect: even fewer people impacted by the SALT cap.

I’m having trouble seeing the downside to NYC’s pied-à-terre tax.

Delusions of Average

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Some folks think an annual income of a half million dollars leaves them…average…and strapped. The tweeted image of an example of this delusion is below.  CNBC represents this as a real couple.

You can read the CNBC article linked to in the tweet here, but the image and many of the comments in the tweet’s thread are instructive by themselves.

Morgan Housel offered a couple:

@morganhousel
So $36K in 401k contributions should be added to “what’s left over,” along with $18K in charity contributions (not an expense either).

@morganhousel
If you fix that then the headline becomes “This couple that makes $500K and spends too much money still saves more than 20% of their after-tax salary, which is what happens when you make a lot of money.”

Here’s ODS:

‏@brendan_schleen
Average people don’t have the ability to contribute 18k a year to charity either

KP:

@lightsoutonight
Their house is $1.5 million, with $20,000 property tax payment.  So average.

m night…:

‏@HezbollottaLove
Personally I love to be so goddamn deluded that I can save $36k a year for retirement, have a $200/month per person clothing budget, and spend $2000/month on food, and STILL have $7300 leftover as Do Whatever money, and think that’s “average”

And Thomas:

‏@MintyMultimedia
3 6k vacations a year, 12k a year for “lessons” even though the kids are young enough to need 42k a year in childcare.
The dude who deluded himself into thinking this was “average” was high off his own farts.

 

In the end, though, go ahead and read the linked-to article.  Its author, Kathleen Elkins, shows herself to be delusional with remarks like these:

As the example of one New York City couple shows, you and your partner could be making $500,000 a year and still end up with very little besides 401(k) money.

And

…there’s only $7,300 left each year to go towards other savings goals, investment accounts, or retirement funds.

Very little.  Those 401(k)s getting 36 stacks per year aren’t actually retirement funds, apparently.  And the $7,300 that’s left over is just dog food.  Never mind that lots of actually average income households would love to have that much at the end of the year to go towards other savings goals, investment accounts….

 

h/t to ralf.