Tag Archives: political economy

“every company should be free to support what they want”

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That’s part of the typical response of Floridians regarding Governor Ron DeSantis’ (R) veto of the Tampa Bay Rays’ training facility being built with taxpayer money, at least as reported by Fox News.

After vetoing the funding, DeSantis said Friday that he doesn’t “support giving taxpayer dollars to professional sports stadiums” and that “it’s inappropriate to subsidize political activism of a private corporation.”

Most Floridians agree with the first part of DeSantis’ statement that taxpayer money shouldn’t be spent on a private sports facility.  Many—most?—disagree with the last part.

Governor DeSantis wants everyone to be free and have freedoms. I think that every company should be free to support what they want.

Certainly. And companies are. But they should express their views, support the causes they choose, on their own dime. Taxpayer dollars have no business being spent on a private company’s individual activism.

Government Industrial Policy

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This one EU-style. Which fits, since Europe has such long experience with the failure of economies, especially industry-driven, when dictated from the top. See, for instance, France, Germany, Italy of the last century, and France and Germany today.

One company’s (Apple, but the principle is much broader) phone charger, and the cell phones dependent on it, would become illegal throughout the EU if proposed legislation goes through. The legislation is

aiming to set a common charging standard for mobile phones and other portable electronic devices….

And

The planned legislation…is aimed at reducing electronic waste and improving consumer convenience.

Government is dictating to consumers how they will achieve the convenience Government says they want.

Never mind that if consumers want only a single charger across all battery-operated electronics (for instance), if they want a form of convenience (and not the form dictated to them by their Betters), a free market will let them drive their economies in that direction.

Sadly, the EU elitists in charge Know Better, and European citizens do not operate in a truly free market.

More Government Overreach

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And by the SEC, yet, which already has its extra-judicial structure of accuser, judge, punisher administrative law judge system in the Federal courts over the legitimacy of such an arrangement.

Now it’s the SEC-proposed rule that would require private enterprises—which by definition are outside the purview of the Securities and Exchange Commission—to open their books to public scrutiny and SEC approval.

Worse, a broad range of elites are supporting this naked overreach:

University endowments, insurance funds, and retirement funds serving teachers and firefighters are urging the Securities and Exchange Commission to move forward with a proposed rule that would ensure private-fund investors receive annual audits and quarterly statements.

Such a move would destroy the private nature and purpose of private enterprises—i.e., enterprises that are wholly owned by a small group of entity operators and which do not sell ownership shares on the open market or permit the owners’ own equity portions to be traded about on open markets.

But the rule-supporting elites give their game away:

Many pension plans are having a hard time meeting their payout obligations to members, the result of decades of underfunding, benefit overpromises, and unrealistic demands from unions.

So they want to get into private entities, even though those entities do not want the elites’ involvement—it’s part of why they’re, you know, private. But in order to do so, those private companies must open their books to the SEC—and the public.

It’s a bad rule, and it should be withdrawn by a serious SEC or blocked outright by Congress. This is a free market matter: if an investor doesn’t like the information he gets—doesn’t get—when he looks into a company with a view to investing, he’s free to not invest.

Full stop.

Nobody Disputes That

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The subheadline lays it all out in the open:

Pyongyang, chairing a United Nations disarmament body this month, says it has a right to defend itself

There’s no disagreement here.

But what Baby Kim needs to understand—what the West (and his allies, the People’s Republic of China and Russia) need to make clear to him—is that northern Korea has absolutely nothing of value, or even of interest, that can’t be gotten far more cheaply through trade than through conquering and taking.

And that even that value is non-existent at present, given the disastrous and murderous mismanagement inflicted by the Kim dynasty over the last nearly 80 years.

That mismanagement, though, lies at the heart of the Kim dynasty’s, and especially Baby Kim’s, constant push for more weapons and weapons development. He needs the distraction of a manufactured threat from without in order to maintain his hold on the population. So long as that need exists, Baby Kim needs no understanding of values.

Biden Paying Interns

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In a first for our Federal government, Presidential interns will be paid, per current President Joe Biden (D).

The White House will offer a $6,000 stipend to its interns, beginning with the summer class which will work from June 20 to August 12.

$6,000 for seven weeks. But will they be good-paying union jobs?

I have another question, too. We’re two summers into Biden’s term, and he’s only just now getting to this. Why? Did he not know his interns have been unpaid? Is he only now getting told this, like he was “slow” to get told about baby formula problems?