Tag Archives: political economy

Blockchain and Cryptocurrency

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Lots of folks tout cryptocurrency as the be-all and end-all of currency and liberation of our money from Evil Government.

However.

Here’s a bit about blockchain.

A blockchain is a distributed database or ledger that is shared among the nodes of a computer network. As a database, a blockchain stores information electronically in digital format. … The innovation with a blockchain is that it guarantees the fidelity and security of a record of data and generates trust without the need for a trusted third party.

Guarantees the fidelity and security of a record of data—the fidelity part of that is that each transaction of good in a sequence of transactions is explicitly tracked and its provenance known: who or what did the transaction and who or what received the transaction. At every step of the way from first origin of the first transaction to the last recipient of the last transaction.

Here’s a bit about cryptocurrency, using the hoary Bitcoin as a canonical example.

The key thing to understand here is that Bitcoin merely uses blockchain as a means to transparently record a ledger of payments, but blockchain can, in theory, be used to immutably record any number of data points.

Cryptocurrencies use blockchain—and that ledger, here, of payments (from whom or what to what or whom)—to track the financial transactions.

That immutable record of transactions is just what governments love to have in order to track their subjects’ doings.

Cryptocurrencies are encrypted, though—that’s the “crypto” part. Except that any encryption mechanism can be cracked, and governments have the resources to do exactly that should the men in government decide they have a “need” to.

On the other hand, cash transactions still are untrackable.

How Much

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Progressive-Democratic Party politicians constantly and loudly insist that they need to raise taxes so that the rich actually pay their fair share.

Here are some data on what Americans actually pay at various levels of tax remittances.Notice, too, that the Federal Poverty Guideline for a family of four in 2020 was $26,200 for the Lower 48 and DC.

And there’s this, showing the progressing progressiveness of our tax code.Even as that marginal tax rate has come down, the percentage of total income taxes paid by those Evil Rich has gone up.

This is why those Progressive-Democrats steadfastly refuse to say how much is that “fair share,” whether in dollars or in rates.

This is Why

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Georgia recently won a court case in which the Biden administration had—illegally, as it turns out—blocked its program to expand Medicaid eligibility to individuals making up to 100% of the federal poverty line ($13,590 for singles) while conditioning benefits on working, going to school, or volunteering 80 hours a month.

However, under the Families First Coronavirus Response Act of 2020, States are unable to remove able-bodied Medicaid folks—i.e., folks who are fully capable of working but who choose not to—from their Medicaid rolls as long as the Wuhan Virus emergency remains in effect. The CDC conveniently continues to extend that “emergency,” even though no less a light than our Progressive-Democrat President, Joe Biden, has said the emergency is over.

Alternatively, Georgia could remove those folks and the Federal government could withhold hundreds of millions in federal funds. In all, the Federal government mainlines $130 billion in additional Medicaid funds into all the States’ veins.

As The Wall Street Journal‘s editors put it,

The emergency is a Faustian bargain for states….

This is why it’s at best idiotic for any State to take Federal (our taxpayer) money under any circumstance. The dollars don’t come with strings attached; they represent yokes around the States’ necks.

I Agree with the Progressive-Democrat

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California Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro, the Progressive-Democratic Party member who chairs the House Appropriations Committee, claims she’s open to a tax cut deal.

Our ask is simple: if we can provide tax cuts for America’s corporations, we can certainly provide a tax cut for America’s kids[.]

I agree, and it is a simple ask. Provide the tax cut for America’s kids by reducing the personal income tax rates their parents have to pay.

Sadly, DeLauro isn’t at all serious.

Impressiveness

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Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell had this to say about handling the burgeoning inflation extant in today’s American economy:

Slowing demand growth should allow supply to catch up with demand and restore the balance that will yield stable prices over time.

It’s impressive that a government official as steeped in economics as Powell is has such a deep misunderstanding of the situation.

It’s not a matter of slowing demand growth, it’s a matter of slowing government demand growth. The private economy, especially when it’s not competing with government for goods and services—and for the inputs to those goods and services—will easily and efficiently take care of itself, with changing supply and demand comprising self-correcting stabilizers on our economy.