Tag Archives: economics

Market Drops

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The Dow Jones 30 Industrials dropped nearly 1200 points on Monday, a numerically large drop.  But what does it mean, really?  We’ve had a steady, and over the last few months steadily steep, rise in the Dow.  The simple fact is, investors are taking profits off the table.  The proximate cause—the excuse—is fear of inflation triggered (if I can use that term) by good employment numbers and rising wages (finally).  The underlying economy is sound, the tax bill just passed is making our economy more so. To put things in perspective, here are two graphs of the Dow consisting of daily data since 1 January 1980 through 2 February 2018.  The data are unadjusted, meaning they are just the daily close, without dividends figured in.

This graph is of the raw data through the 5th.  Notice that Monday almost doesn’t show up in the grand scheme of things.

This graph uses the same data and puts them onto a log10 scale, which has the advantage of smoothing out exponential growths.  Over the last 37 years, none of the big drops—or rises—show up very well.  The Panic of 2008 only barely appears, and the dot-com bust is just a small dip.  The Dow has been rising steadily, with the short-term burbles put into perspective.

This is a buying opportunity claims this layman investor.

A New Welfare Trap

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This one is in the offing at the State level, and comes as a result of the punitive tax for not buying health coverage was repealed last December.

At least nine states are considering their own versions of a requirement that residents must have health insurance….

And

Maryland lawmakers are pursuing a plan to replace the ACA mandate, which requires most people to pay a penalty if they don’t have coverage. California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Minnesota, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington, as well as the District of Columbia, are publicly considering similar ideas.

Notice that.  These are Progressive-Democrat-run states.

The less well off who couldn’t afford either the penalty or the remaining costs—high deductibles, low per centage of plan provider payments even after “coverage” kicked in—under Obamacare still won’t be able to afford mandated coverage in these States.

Beyond that, they won’t be able to leave the State and relocate to one that doesn’t inflict these costs.  Their already limited economic resources are a barrier to such relocation.  Added to that, though, will be the lack of portability of the mandated coverage plans: having been dragooned into one by, say California or DC, they won’t be able to take it with them, even to Connecticut or Minnesota.  Or to a State that doesn’t require them to buy something they don’t want.

Progressive-Democrats really are that desperate to keep their welfare “recipients” trapped in welfare cages. Aside from that bit of self-serving…nonsense…the move also demonstrates the Progressive-Democrats’ utter contempt for us Americans.  We are, their behavior and policies say, just too mind-numbingly stupid to be entrusted with our own choices.  We have to be led by our Betters, forced for our own good, to do certain things.

Working for a Living

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Indiana has joined Kentucky in getting approval to add a work requirement to its Medicaid program (separately: Federal approval should not be a requirement; the program should be a State-run and -funded program only).

Of course, there are objections.

Democrats and consumer groups are decrying the GOP push, saying it is antithetical to Medicaid’s goal of expanding health care.

That’s plainly not true, though (I’ll ignore the conflation of health care with health care coverage).  The push is exactly what’s needed to make health care coverage available to all who want it.  The plan, even as minimal as this one is (the work-related requirement would apply only to a small segment of Indiana’s Medicaid enrollees), will facilitate availability, not limit it.  By making it possible for folks to get off this welfare program and into jobs that can enable them to buy their own coverage—if they want it—it will allow the State’s Medicaid dollars be committed to those who truly need Medicaid because they’re too old, too young, and/or too infirm to get desired coverage on their own.

Mid-Term Elections

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At their retreat last week, Republicans indicated that they intend to run heavily on the tax reform they got through at the end of last year.  It’s good to have something positive on which to run, especially since, at least for the near term, the Progressive-Democratic Party has nothing on which to campaign other than its #NeverTrump and #NothingRepublicanNoWay platform and its standard disparagement of ordinary Americans like House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s (D, CA) claim that the tax reform’s aftermath of bonuses and pay raises are just crumbs.

As an aside, it must be good to be as rich as Pelosi, that a $1,000 bonus or an increase in take-home pay of some $2,000 per year is just chump change.  President Donald Trump is stinking rich, Vstly more so than Pelosi, and he doesn’t think this added money is trivial.  I’m not stinking rich; I’m not even as rich as Pelosi—not by a long shot—those $1,000 matter to me, as do the added $2,000/yr take-home.

Back to my point.  Republicans can’t only run on their tax reform, though.  They need to add three things to their campaign.  The first addresses, preemptively, the fact that the personal income tax rate cuts—that increase in take-home—expire in about eight years.  Republicans need to emphasize that the only way that rate cut expiration actually would occur would be if Progressive-Democrats in Congress (especially in the Senate where they can filibuster) block those cuts from being extended or made permanent.

The second thing is to go on the offensive regarding DACA.  Most Americans, and it’s pretty much evenly spread across party and independent lines, want the children who were brought by their parents into the US illegally dealt with compassionately and with finality: no more doubt hanging over these folks’ heads.  A couple of Republican proposals for achieving this are on offer. The Republicans currently in office need to push heavily and loudly one or the other or both of them this year, even though—even because—it’s an election year.  Demonstrate that they’re not the ones too timid to do something major and concrete in an election year.

Republicans also need to hammer on Progressive-Democrat Congressmen constantly saying “No.”  Republicans need to be asking loudly, both in their own districts, in their neighboring Progressive-Democrat incumbents’ districts, and in neighboring open districts why Progressive-Democrats so vociferously oppose any plan on offer that takes care of the DACA children—and that does so largely on Progressive-Democrat terms.  Or do the Progressive-Democrats see these folks only as a talking point and not as a group of human beings?

It would have been good if President Donald Trump, during his SOTU speech last week, had pointed to the Dreamers (not the same group as DACA, but there’s tremendous overlap) in the gallery as guests of Progressive-Democrat Congressmen and said to them, “I have a proposal put before Congress that addresses your needs, including a path to citizenship.  Why are the Democrats so opposed to that?”  But that’s water under the bridge, and he still has time to ask that.  Often.

The third thing Republicans need to add to their campaign is their plan for the future.  What do these guys want to do to make American lives better, and how—concretely, an aspect Republicans never have done well—will those things actually make our lives better?

He’s Missed the Point

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John Downs, President and CEO of the National Confectioners Association, wrote a Wall Street Journal Letter to the Editor objecting to Maine Governor Paul LePage’s (R) effort to get junk food off the list of foods for which Maine’s food stamps can be used.

Downs supplied a lot of numbers indicating that everyone, food stamp recipient or other, eats junk food and touting the limits of sugar in the junk food consumed.  But he missed the point.

As long as folks are going to use OPM to buy their food (and for the most part, us OP are perfectly willing to have our funds used for a hand up for those having even an extended rough patch), us OP get to say how our M will be spent in such matters.  And the fact is, food stamps should be used to buy staples only.  Everything else is a luxury, and luxuries should be outside any welfare program.

Like anyone else, of course food stamp recipients want to enjoy some of luxury, including junk food.  In that case, they should get a job so they can afford to spend their own money on their luxuries.  I sympathize with those who can’t find a job (perhaps they’ve been priced out of one by minimum wage laws), but that doesn’t legitimize luxury in a welfare program.

Downs missed the point of the proposed restriction.  But he has a vested interested in missing it.