Tag Archives: economics

Why Should There Be a Cap?

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Scott Atlas wrote in a recent Wall Street Journal that all of us should have access to health savings accounts, instead of just the few well-off among us who can afford the high deductible health coverage plan that’s currently a prerequisite for having an HSA.  He also wants to raise the cap for contributing to one to $7,350 per year.

He’s on the right track, but he stopped short.  Why should there be a cap on HSA contributions?  Why can’t we contribute as much or as little as we want instead of what Government will permit?

Of course, with a properly low, flat income tax rate, tax reduction/avoidance/savings facilities like HCAs, IRAs, 401(k)s, etc, would have less value because there’d be less taxes to be avoided.  We’d have more of our money in our hands to spend as we see fit and to save for the purposes that suit us rather than suit the men of Government.

Child Abuse

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We have children being separated from their parents as those parents are detained for their illegal crossing of our border, their illegal entry—some might say break-in—into our nation.  Some point out that many of those children, the ones who arrive unaccompanied, were callously separated from their parents by their own parents in their country of origin.  Others point out that many of those allegedly accompanied children are not members of a family unit but are simply pawns of drug and human traffickers being used to facilitate those traffickers’ illegal entry.  There are, though, many children/parent family units that have parents detained for their illegal entry and the children separated from them rather than being locking up, too.

The Progressive-Democrats in Congress could help resolve this, were they interested.  However, they steadfastly refuse to negotiate with Republicans–#NeverRepublicanNoWay.  Indeed, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (R, NY) said on Tuesday that there was no Republican bill he was willing to let his members approach Republicans over.  They much prefer to use children as hostages to keep open the question of immigration reform for their personal political gains in the fall.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D, CA), House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D, MD, and possessed of an especially apt title in this context), Senator Chris Van Hollen (D, MD, and Chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee), and Schumer all bleat about child abuse.

They’re dissembling.  Their hostage-taking and children-as-political-fodder are the child abuses.  Their behavior is disgusting.

Heads Up

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As the People’s Republic of China responds to President Donald Trump’s tariffs, motivated in part by the PRC’s cyber-theft of American technology and proprietary information and the PRC’s extortion of the same and its demand for backdoors into foreign business’ (including especially American) core software as a condition of doing business in the PRC, buckle up, indeed, as the article at the link above suggests.

The PRC will do far more than this, though, as it attempts to coerce the US in the pursuit of its Warring States strategy.

Beijing retaliated against planned US tariffs on Chinese goods by targeting high-value American exports—including farm products, cars, and crude oil—bringing the world’s two biggest economies closer to an all-out trade war.

That’s just the beginning.  If we don’t abjectly surrender, the PRC will expand their conflict with open cyber-warfare against us, with rapidly expanding attacks on our government and our infrastructure with denial of service attacks against our financial structure, our distribution grids, DoD, State, OMB (again), etc.  These attacks also will include planting false data wherever they can and with simple vandalism on our key databases.

The PRC also will open the economic spigots with northern Korea and actively facilitate its final acquisition of a capability to deliver its stockpile of nuclear weapons.

The PRC will object and seek to prevent the Republic of China’s businesses from altering their supply chains, which currently involve PRC companies, and they will in the end openly attack—politically, economically, even militarily—the RoC.

Tariffs may or may not be the best way to fight the PRC’s war, but this is a struggle that we must win.  Lose, and we will find ourselves badly curtailed.  Recall that trillions of non-PRC-related trade sails to us through the South China Sea, which the PRC has claimed for itself and has been steadily militarizing.

Non-NATO Defense Spending

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President Donald Trump often decries Europe’s NATO nations for their lack of seriousness about their defense, and he zealously insists that they honor their commitment to spend 2% of their national GDP on defense.  It’s arguable that Trump could ease off (a little bit) and acknowledge the progress he’s made in getting Europe’s NATO members to boost their spending.

But only a little bit because those nations don’t appear to be stepping up in any serious way, as these numbers from a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed demonstrate.

Overall inflation-adjusted military spending by every NATO member excluding America grew 1.8% in 2015, 3.1% in 2016, and 4.8% last year.

These are tokens, not real increases. A nation committing 1% of its GDP to defense that then increases its defense spending by these per centages will end up committing 1.11% of its GDP. There’s nothing serious about that.

Germany’s defense spending increase? The WSJ says that nation currently is spending 1.2% of its GDP on its defense, and it has plans for a 6% increase in next year’s budget.  Increasing that 1.2% by 6% would take it all the way up to 1.27%.

Be still, my heart.

What Hath Socialism Wrought

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This image, from a Deutsche Welle article on Venezuela’s inflation rate—which last month reached 24,571% year-on-year—says it all.

The word drawn on the 100 bolivar note (and yes, it’s a real note, and it’s actually that big) translates to “hungry.”  In the context, it means more broadly, “a widespread, intense, and prolonged shortage of staple foods that a population suffers.”

Hungry indeed, too.  A bit over two pounds of meat cost about 2 million bolivars (or did once, daily inflation is running at 2.4%), or €16.9 or $20, against a surgeon’s monthly salary of not even 6 million bolivars.  Meat, not steak in particular.  That’s some expensive hamburger or shank cut.

And, not to put too fine a point on it, that works out to a bit over three ounces of meat per day, with nothing left over for anything else: vegetables, rent, transportation, etc.  And that’s for a relatively well off man like the surgeon.  What about the middle class, or especially the poort.

This is reminiscent of what Joseph Stalin did to the Ukrainians and White Russians when he collectivized—socialized—the Soviet Union’s kulak farms.