Tag Archives: political economy

What He Said

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A letter-writer in WSJ‘s Wednesday Letters section had this:

China’s consumer economy is bound by families’ overinvestment in property. In the absence of a thriving retail stock market, the life savings of two or three generations are poured into housing.
With grandma’s nest egg and mom and dad’s retirement tied up in a young couple’s first home, even a slight chill in property valuations causes an arctic frost on consumer sentiment.

Yep.

Compare and contrast that with John Adams’ definition of Happiness.

An Alternative Extinguishment

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Federal District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín has ordered Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery to halt their merger process for two weeks—ostensibly, the judge claimed—to give States challenging the deal more time to see their case through in court. The silliness of that order is in the claim that two whole weeks is enough time for such a complex case to wend its way. Any Federal judge worthy of his black robe is well aware of the implications of such a short time frame. This is nothing more than judicial interference in a business decision.

The States’ argument also is risible. The merger would “extinguish competition” in Hollywood and reduce choices for consumers. This can be rendered irrelevant in a straightforward manner. Paramount and WB should move their operations out of Hollywood, out of California altogether. Then there would be no concern about Hollywood at all. There also would be no reduction in consumer choice from the move.

Likely locations for the two companies include Virginia, New Mexico, Texas, and Alabama, each of which has an environment favorable to making movies and television shows. Any of those environments also would lower the costs of production, which could only enhance consumer choice by making movies and TV shows easier and faster to bring off.

Who Can Afford Obamacare?

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The lede:

Rates for many Affordable Care Act plans rose by double digits this year. Insurers want to do the same next year.

It’s especially bad in Progressive-Democrat-run States. For instance:

In Washington state, Centene is asking for a 28% hike, after boosting rates by 35% in 2026. Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Illinois wants 15%—on top of a 28% increase this year.

Who can afford Obamacare? Nobody. Not the individual, not the nation at large. That’s what those unconscionable Federal subsidies, only recently cut back, kept hidden for so long, at the Progressive-Democratic Party government dependency pushers’ behest. Dependency is votes, as they’ve long known.

It’s time the Republican Party stopped dithering and cowering. The party needs to get rid of Obamacare and replace it with an interstate commerce-centric, lightly regulated (which would entail rescinding a double potful of regulations) free market for health insurance, one in which insurers could offer plans that customers actually want, and at competition-driven prices and deductibles, and coverages. Especially that last would drive costs down. Plans that don’t try to cover everything, unless that’s what enough customers want to make a market, plans that cover only a few things, that cover only catastrophic medical events, and every coverage level in between—whatever the customers want in sufficient aggregate to make a market.

Record Profits

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Or at least near-record and with room to rise a bit more. These make those companies obvious targets for the Left and for the Progressive-Democratic Party politicians, all of whom view those profits as immoral and needing to be confiscated by Government or as public goods needing to be confiscated managed by Government or both.

The net profit margin for companies in the S&P 500 rose to 14.8% in the first quarter, according to FactSet. This marks the highest net margin, a measure of the profit generated from every dollar of revenue, reported by the index since the data provider began tracking this metric in 2009. The previous peak of 13.2% was set just a quarter earlier.
It isn’t just tech companies, either. In the first quarter, multiple sectors including financial services and industrials reported net margins above their five-year averages.

Those companies would do well to pass some of those profits on to uses of their choosing, rather than just sitting on them. At the least, the companies need to state openly their plans for the future of the business and its accumulating profits and then demonstrably execute on those plans.

Those uses and plans might or might not make good business sense in the economic world, but it would make good business sense in the political world where the now-openly socialist Progressive-Democratic Party reigns over us.

Don’t Sell F-35s to Turkey because…

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…Turkey still has Russian S-400 air defense missile systems?

The Trump administration is expected to override a decision by a Democratic lawmaker who is blocking a proposed $750 million sale of jet engines to Turkey over concerns about the country’s ties to Russia.
Congressman Gregory Meeks (D, NY) had placed a hold on the sale to Turkey—a NATO ally that is hosting an alliance summit next month—because the country continues to hold a Russian S-400 air-defense system that it bought roughly a decade ago, along with other concerns about Turkey’s role in the region.

That S-400 system, after all, might spy on Turkey’s F-35s and learn how to defeat it.

This is silly. There are reasons to not sell F-35s to Turkey, but the idea that the S-400 can compromise the F-35’s stealth capabilities isn’t one of them, at least not anymore (if it ever was). We’ve sold lots of F-35s to other nations over the years. If the jet’s stealth capabilities could ever be compromised, they already have been, just from their use around the world and our enemies observing their use, including by those objectionable S-400 systems, and collecting data on detecting and otherwise countering the jets. And that foolishly ignores the fact that over those intervening years of F-35 operational use, there have been a plethora of—steadily more and more capable—systems watching and observing and analyzing the F-35 in all its operational flexes.

There are reasons for going ahead with the sale, too, and these should be weighed against those reasons for not selling. The presence of S-400s in the buying nation is not relevant.