Tag Archives: economics

The Party of Expansionist, Acquisitive Government

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That’s what we can see made plain in the incoming Congress’ House of Representatives.  Congresswoman Bonnie Watson Coleman (D, NJ) had this on her Progressive-Democratic Party’s plans:

There are dozens of measures…that have been languishing with Republicans at the helm for years, and I expect to see many of them finally come to the floor under Democratic leadership[.]

Plans like rolling back the just enacted tax cuts and preventing the individual income tax cuts from becoming permanent.  Because the Progressive-Democrats know more about how to spend our money than we do.

Plans like Medicare for all, free education for all—paid for by raising those taxes.  So much for “free.”

Guaranteed jobs, especially, “green” jobs—at the Progressive-Democrat’s mandated minimum wage because, like all workers, “green” workers are just too stupid to be trusted with freely negotiating their own compensation package.  And hired by whom?  Not so much a free economy employer; “greenery” isn’t competitive, so the Progressive-Democrats intend to centrally plan our energy economy and require greenery along with subsidizing it.  That can be expected to work as well as the Progressive-Democrats’ centrally planned health economy.

Oh, and they want to deepen the central planning on that: as part of their “Medicare for all” bit, they intend for Uncle Sugar to be sole dispenser of and sole payer for each citizen’s (and illegal alien’s) health care.

Block border security by blocking any wall and by eliminating Immigration and Customs Enforcement.  And hamstringing US Customs & Border Protection generally.

It’s going to be an ugly, wasted two years with no serious legislation coming out of the House—only the Party’s nakedly socialist claptrap.  Socialist and Government-run because, these worthies insist, the average American is inadequate to the task of his democratic duty.

Why I’m Not Worried

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I’m not Alfred E Neuman, but I do have some history on my side.  The current market situation seems ugly—and it is.  Aside from my preferred stock portfolio, I’ve gone to cash equivalents for my investments.  Here are some tables illustrating recoveries from past ugly market quarters, via Wall Street Journal‘s Market Watch column of, fittingly enough, Christmas Day.

Here we are without the Great Depression:

1932’s recovery isn’t here, but maybe that period was too high a price to pay for the recovery: 163%, 345%, these were from a severely lowered baseline.

Those are large capitalization stocks; here’s recovery for the Russell 2000, an index focused on small stocks:

For the just concluding quarter, the S&P 500 is down (so far—as of market close noonish last Monday) 17.1%.

Notice that recovery magnitude.  Things get better both economically—and politically because good economics leads to good political outcomes for the party in power.

Update: Disregard yesterday, though; that was an aberration, not anything related to the Tables’ historical predictions. Harken to the trends, not the individual incidents.

Border Wall Funding

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Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D, NY) is continuing to insist—brag, really—that there aren’t the votes in the House or the Senate for funding for a border wall.  Presently, he’s focused on the Senate:

Schumer maintained that Trump does not have the votes for a wall, at least in the Senate.

Schumer’s prior remarks might have been right about the House; the Republican caucus there has been as unfocused and undisciplined and dither-ridden as they’ve been for the last several years regarding border security.  Thursday, though, President Donald Trump injected some backbone into the caucus and sharpened its focus: he told Speaker Paul Ryan (R, WI) and other Republicans present in a mid-day meeting—in no uncertain terms—that he would veto the CR that the Senate had so cravenly passed because it had no border wall money in it.  Thursday evening, the House responded, passing 217-185 (with 8 Republicans voting with the Progressive-Democrats) an amended CR with $5.7 billion in it for a border wall.  That bill has been passed to the Senate.

However, the reason President Donald Trump doesn’t have the votes in the Senate is because Schumer actively, proudly, blocks such a thing, even as he claims the Republicans control the Senate—as though in his fantasy world 60 is less than 51 (or next year, 53).  Of course, Schumer knows better, he’s just proud of his obstructionism.  He’s also proud of his hypocrisy, having supported several more billions of dollars than just five for a border wall—the 2006 Secure Fence Act, for instance—and as recently as last January, after which he welched on an agreement that involved solutions for 1.8 million DACA people (more than the 800 thousand for whom Progressive-Democrats had been seeking help) along with a parallel $25 billion for the wall.

Prepare to greet the Schumer Shutdown redux.

A US Appellate Court Thinks Americans Are Grindingly Stupid

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Kellogg’s makes Cheez-Its, a cheesy, corny confection that’s attractive to lots of folks, especially at boring parties.  Some versions of this snack are marketed as “Whole Grain” or “Made With Whole Grain,” and the text on the packaging makes plain that this means 5 to 8 grams of whole grain for each 29-gram serving along with the primary ingredient being “enriched flour.”

This is too confusing for three women to bear, so they sued.  One of the women went so far as to claim she was injured by all of this, yet, were the packaging only changed, she would continue to purchase the products in the future (where are the feminists over this feigned stupidity?).  There started out some sanity in this idiocy:

A federal judge dismissed the case in 2017, ruling that the “Whole Grains” wording was factually correct. In toto, the label “would neither mislead nor deceive a reasonable consumer.”

Amazingly, the 2nd Circuit reversed.

Additional verbiage on the front and side of the package is no defense, the court said.

The 2nd Circuit thinks Americans are just too stupid for words.  Or it finds entirely reasonable that Americans are too mind-numbingly lazy to read a simple label.

Tax Cuts Don’t Have Long-Term Benefits

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That’s the claim of ex-President Barack Obama’s (D) Council of Economic Advisers Chairman Jason Furman in a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed.  It’s an accurate claim, too, when tax cuts are taken in isolation, as Furman took them throughout his piece.  That loneliness was emphasized by his closing remarks.

Going forward, policy makers should aim for a reformed tax system that is more stable, economically efficient, simple, and directly supportive of the middle class. Do this right, and the results could be higher economic growth and higher wages without the higher deficits. That’s a combination that’s proved elusive to date.

“Tax system,” not “tax and spend system.”  Leave it to an Obama staffer to miss the boat on this. The major reform remaining is to make the existing individual income tax cuts permanent (much less, lower)—an action the Progressive-Democrats in Congress will actively block. The necessary dual to tax cuts, though, is completely inconceivable to folks like Furman and his Progressive-Democrat cronies: cutting spending to fit within the lowered tax revenues.   After all, it’s those associated spending cuts in combination with the tax cuts, that produce the mid- and long-term benefits.

It’s true enough that feckless members of the Republican caucuses contribute to this failure, but their failure centers on how and where to make the cuts; they don’t have a mental block against even thinking about them.