Tag Archives: economics

The USPS and Price Increases

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The United States Postal Service lost more than $560 million in the previous quarter (!), and it wants a pay raise to pay for it, a rise in the price of stamps by a penny.  Now, a penny might not seem like much, especially against the current price for a first class stamp on a 1oz letter, but it is symptomatic of a much larger problem: the USPS, a protected monopoly in the first class mail niche and so lacking actual competition and associated innovative pressures, is a money-losing (to the tune of two and a quarter billion dollars each year) proposition.

Postmaster General Megan Brennan:

America deserves a financially stable postal service that can continue to play a vital role in our economy and society[.]

Yewbetcha.  And the USPS ain’t it.

The postal service has lost money for 10 years in a row. It says the continuing red ink hurts consumers because it can’t make necessary investments to ensure “prompt, efficient and reliable postal services,” such as by updating delivery trucks and equipment.

Once again, the USPS, with its empirical performance, is making the argument for disbanding it and replacing it with competitive private enterprises in a free market economy.  Sort of like the protected monopoly Ma Bell was replaced, the USPS needs—the American people need—that replacement (who pays a dime a minute for a long distance call anymore?  Who needs to pay half a buck to send a letter?).

Going Soft

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Senate pseudo-Republicans are balking at one good item that was contained the House-passed American Health Care Act: repeal of Obamacare’s trillion dollars’ worth of taxes.  These guys actually don’t see the value of that repeal.  Senator Susan Collins (R, ME) is typical:

I don’t see how you can repeal all of the pay-fors…and still meet the goal of providing health-insurance coverage for people who truly need assistance[.]

Aside from the false premise of needing Federal government “pay-fors” as a default position, rather than a last result, the Lady from Maine and her fellows plainly either don’t understand free market principles, or they have no confidence in free markets.

One path for the Senate could be a repeal of the taxes but a delay in the effective dates.

This is the only legitimate point of discussion on the repeal of these taxes.  The AHCA makes the repeal retroactive to 1 Jan 2017.  It’s the repeal that’s important, not its date of effectivity.  Effective 1 Jan 2018 is fine, so is a date (certain) in 2019, to the extent health coverage providers, businesses, and individual citizens need time to plan and prepare.  The repeal itself, however, must be inarguable.

I’ve decried the House’s Freedom Caucus of No, but the Caucus of Squish in the Senate is going too far in the other direction.  These folks need to do the job they were sent to the Senate to do vis-à-vis Obamacare and our nation’s health provision and health coverage industries.  Failing to repeal the Obamacare taxes in addition to the reductions in other business and personal taxes that have been proposed is unacceptable.  If the Caucus of Squish fails to do this, its members need to be replaced at the next available elections for each of them.

If that costs the Republican Party control of the Senate, well—how will we tell the difference?  The Caucus of Squish is, with its timidity, worse even than the Progressive-Democratic Party.

Getting Rid of Federal Government Rules

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A couple of random thoughts triggered by a Wall Street Journal article.  The Republican Congress has been using the Congressional Review Act to rescind rules enacted by various Executive Branch agencies.  The Act allows Congress, by simple majority vote (no Senate filibuster) and Presidential signature to rescind rules so long as the rescission is done within 60 days of the rule’s promulgation in the Federal Register or formal reporting to Congress.  There are potsful of rules that haven’t yet passed that threshold, and so Congress can reach back years for rescissions under the Act.

Senate Democrats have insisted the rules have lengthy debate time….

This isn’t necessary.  The rules have already been debated extensively, both in the public and via the rule’s public comment period during which experts in the subject matter as well as the general public have conducted extensive debate.  Except for rules rushed through at the end of a President’s term or whose comment period was held sub rosa, like many of the EPA and CFPB rules have been.  Those rules had their chance at lengthy debate, and the relevant rule-making authority has already said that lengthy debate wasn’t necessary.

Senator Chris Coons (D, DE) said the “Republican majority has misused” the act and has repealed regulations “adopted genuinely to protect the environment, protect consumers, protect the public.”

Of course.  It’s the thought that counts for Democrats, not the actual <ahem> disparate impact they have in their failure to protect much of anything and the actual damage they do, especially to consumers, citizens, and individual choices.

Congress should push the pace; the extraneous rules are costing us money.  Just the 13 rescinded already have saved the public some $85 billion.  There’s also nothing in the Act that prevents Congress from batching up related rules (or unrelated rules, come to that) and rescinding them en masse.

Confusion

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The latest whiner pundit to weigh in on President Donald’s tax reform principles, laid out in a concise one-pager.  And yet these pundits pretend to confusion over it.

President Donald Trump’s plan is silent so far on crucial details Americans need to calculate their tax bills, including the personal exemption and the size of the tax brackets.

And

The president’s latest plan for middle-income households…has left tax experts puzzled. That is because his one-page tax outline released in April is silent on essential details, including how the tax code will treat the personal exemption that reduces taxable income depending on family size. It sets tax brackets of 10%, 25%, and 35% without establishing the income levels that divide them.

And

[T]he plan says nothing about how personal exemptions or head-of-household filing status would be treated….

Geez.  It’s an outline; it’s not intended to be finely detailed. The President has proposed the principles and broad parameters of the taxation portion of his budget, and that’s both entirely appropriate and sufficient.  How personal exemptions, head-of-household filing status, etc, might be treated easily follows from those principles.

The fleshing out—the actual legislation, including bracket income boundaries and those other matters—is Congress’ responsibility, even though it would in an ideal world work with the President in the development of that legislation.  Oh, wait:

The White House is now working with the House and Senate on a unified GOP tax plan, including on the core issue of how much of a household’s income should go untaxed.

It seems more likely that these guys are just bellyaching because nobody is consulting their august selves.

The Durbin Amendment and Price Fixing

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Senator Dick Durbin (D, IL) added to Dodd-Frank an amendment that mandated the maximum price large banks could charge merchants who process debit-card payments.  The House’s Financial Services Committee, in marking up Chairman Jeb Hensarling’s Financial Choice Act, included repeal of the Durbin Amendment.

Naturally, Durbin has demurred, and he did so, among other place, in a Letter to the Editor of The Wall Street Journal.

It’s no secret that Wall Street hates the swipe-fee law that I authored in 2010. This law finally reined in the debit swipe-fee price-fixing that Visa and MasterCard were doing on behalf of banks. The old rigged system permitted Visa and MasterCard to fix the same fees for all card-issuing banks, and without competition the fees always went up. It was a market failure and merchants and their customers ended up paying for it.

And

The 2010 reform law said that if the nation’s top 1% of biggest banks are going to let Visa and MasterCard price-fix their swipe fees, then the fees must be reasonable and proportional to the cost of conducting the transaction.

Wow.  Price fixing is OK as long as it’s Big Government doing to fixing, says the Progressive-Democrat from Illinois.  No.  There exist, already, laws against such collusion; all that’s necessary, were the banks actually colluding as Durbin claims, is to enforce existing law.  There is neither need nor excuse to expand Government by writing a new law to fix a failure from enforcing existing law.

Market failure?  Again, no.  Not every burble, bubble, or dislocation represents a market failure; indeed, they’re the normal volatility of a thriving free market.  Or they would be with less government interference so we actually had a free market.  Far from a market failure, this failure is another failure of Big Government’s central planning for our market.  It’s time—long past time—to dump the Durbin amendment.

It’s time—long past time—for competition to reenter the credit and debit card free market niche and to let the free market “fix” the prices.  It’s time—long past time—for Big Government to leave the market.