Tag Archives: jobs

Favorable Jobs Report, Therefor Cut Interest Rates?

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That’s the latest push, this time by Vice President Mike Pence.  He’s as wrong, though, as President Donald Trump, for all that he’s more genteel in his push.

There’s no inflation happening here. The economy is roaring. This is exactly the time not only to not raise interest rates, but we ought to consider cutting them[.]

Pence made this remark on the heels of Labor’s employment report announcing strong job growth, rising wages, and 3.6% unemployment.

No.  Interest rates where they are aren’t hindering our economy; on the contrary, they’re still a tad low.  Our economy is flourishing for a number of reasons, one of which is that interest rates are approaching more natural levels, not being held at below free market rates.  “Natural” here is defined in terms of the Federal Reserve’s legislated mandate—to maintain stable prices and low unemployment—and the Fed’s long-held optimal stable pricing goal of 2% inflation.

Cutting rates on the basis of a favorable jobs report (and one not entirely favorable: the labor force participation rate fell for the second straight month, and that rate is a factor in calculating the headline unemployment rate) would be a mistake.  Instead, the Fed should move its benchmark rates to levels consistent with its 2% inflation goal and then sit down, be quiet, and accept that the economy and employment rates will be noisy around that level (or any other level).

Animal spirits, after all, are hormonal, but within surprisingly broad ranges, they keep correcting back.

Banning Workers’ Freedom

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That’s what two Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidates want to do.  Here’s Kamala Harris, who’s doubling as a California Senator:

The barriers to organized labor being able to organize and strike are something that have grown over a period of time[.] … It has to be about, for example, banning right-to-work laws[.]

Here’s Social Democrat Bernie Sanders, doubling as an Independent Senator from Vermont while, once again, masquerading himself as a Progressive-Democratic Party member for this campaign, calling for:

a federal ban on so-called right-to-work laws in a Monday [1 Apr] speech.
Speaking to the International Association of Machinists at the union’s conference in Las Vegas, Sanders said as president he would push legislation in Congress to prohibit the laws.

And

…the trade union movement must be in the middle of all of those discussions.

Aside from blatant attacks on all workers’ 1st Amendment right of freedom of assembly, these are obvious and petty attempts at pandering for the votes of blue collar workers.

The attempts also are dishonest in their cynically deliberate distortions of the situation.  Right to work laws guarantee workers’ right to work without paying dues to unions to which they do not belong and their right to work without being forced against their will to join unions.

Those right-to-work laws do not bar workers from joining unions; on the contrary, they explicitly allow them to—that 1st Amendment bit, again.  Instead, the laws simply enable workers to support their families without having to join a union as a precondition for doing so.

Oh, and it’s all about the Benjamins, too.  Unions fund the political campaigns—and other expenses—of Progressive-Democratic Party politicians.  Those forced dues that freed workers no longer have to pay were a significant fraction of the funds used to pay those politicians; and those politicians are desperate to recover the money.

Economic Performance

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…and one Progressive-Democrat’s tax proposal.  Although, the fact is that these effects aren’t unique to Senator and Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren (D, NM): the trend of effects are the outcomes of all the Progressive-Democratic Party’s proposals, differing only in detail.

Warren’s particular proposal is to tax business profits above $100 million at 7%.  Here are some outcomes of such a thing, according to the Tax Foundation, with the FoxBusiness cited.  A tax like this would

  • reduce incentives to invest, so GDP would shrink by ~1.9% over the long-term
  • reduce a firm’s capital by 3.3%
  • reduce wages by about 1.5%
  • eliminate as many as 454,000 full-time jobs
  • reduce after-tax income across the entire economy by 0.93%, with the biggest reductions on the top 1% of taxpayers
  • considering that shrinkage of our economy, after-tax income reduction could be an even larger 2.16%

But, hey, it gets after that hated 1%, so it’s all good.

This is of a piece with all Progressive-Democrat tax ideas, based as they so much are on their belief that the money really isn’t the business’ money, anyway.  They didn’t earn that.  They had (Government) help.

Regulating State Tax Incentives

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There Ought to be a Law was the title of an old Reader’s Digest humor column: every little pet peeve came in for a jokingly recommended law barring it.  Because More Government is always the solution.

Barton Swaim, in his Wall Street Journal op-ed, actually takes that seriously, and he wants to apply it to the idea of States and cities offering businesses tax incentives to get them to build in those jurisdictions.  He wants the Federal government to…regulate…what those State and local jurisdictions can do to entice businesses.

He’s even holding up the European Union as a paragon in this venue.

The European Union imposes significant restrictions on how much member states or regional governments can offer companies to entice them to expand or relocate.

This is the same EU, keep in mind, that is constantly trying to bully low-tax member nations to charge more and higher taxes, rather than encouraging high-tax member nations to lower and lessen theirs.

Never mind that, though.

Why couldn’t Congress impose a simplified version of this principle on state and local governments?

It’s true enough that many of those incentive deals the States and locals turn out to be lousy from the States’ and locals’ perspective.  Why, then, shouldn’t the Federal government dictate to the States and local governments what those bodies should do with their own citizens’ and residents’ money? For their own good, you see.  Besides, isn’t it the Federal government’s money, anyway, and not those citizens’ and residents’?

Be more like Europe, and be more infested with central diktats than we already are. Yeah, that’s the ticket.

Because, after all, States (and the local jurisdictions within them), to paraphrase John Jay, have the same relationship to the Federal government that counties have to the States: mere political jurisdictions set up to facilitate enforcement of Federal laws.

Federal republic be damned.

Sure.

Control

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Senator and Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Kamala Harris (D, CA) wants the Federal government to pay a significant fraction of public school teachers’ salaries.

What a terrible idea.

The Federal government paying a significant fraction of public school teachers’ salaries means Federal government control of our public schools. Those schools are in enough trouble; we don’t need the Feds getting in the way, also.

Aside from that, this is just another Progressive-Democratic Party attempt to grab our money, this time to deny it to our heirs.  Again.

Apart from both of those, this is another example of the Progressive-Democratic Party’s contributing to the erosion of our families, illustrated by this claim of Harris’:

Our country’s success is a product of the two groups who raise our children: parents and teachers. We are not paying our teachers their value[.]

Teachers help raise our children? No, that’s the exclusive province of parents; schools are not ex loco parentis child care centers, and teachers must stop being babysitters and do the only thing they’re hired to do: teach.