Tag Archives: political economy

NASDAQ is in the Quota Business

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The stock exchange has proposed a rule—and it’s actually serious about it, if you can imagine that—regarding business governance that must be satisfied if a business is to be considered by the Know Betters of the exchange fit for listing on its exchange.

The second largest exchange in the world has asked the Securities and Exchange Commission for permission to impose a quota system on the boards of its listed companies. The new rule would mandate that corporate boards have a minimum of one woman director and one who is a minority or LGBTQ.

So: a black lesbian–a three-fer.

It would be not just an idiotic rule, it would be immoral. It also would be coarsely unfair to the board member. Did she get the job because she was qualified, or did she get it because she filled three squares? She’d always be faced with that stigma.

It’s also a naked interference in the way a business governs itself, which is far outside a stock exchange’s DOC.

Maybe it’s time for NASDAQ’s several hundred companies to take themselves off the exchange.

Alternatively…

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President Donald Trump, recall, is moving to reclassify Federal senior-level civil service employees into a new category (Schedule F for those following along) that would facilitate their hiring and firing outside the existing Federal employment rules that generally serve to keep those employees on the job regardless of their performance quality. That protection tends to obviate the hiring part by reducing the number and availability of slots into which to hire: they’re already (and still) occupied.

That last—ability to hire—is little talked about, as the focus, especially by public unions, has been on job protection rather than job performance.

I said all that to point out all this. One of the beefs about making it easier to fire senior civil servants is this:

Without the existing protections, civil servants in policy-making roles could be replaced by less experienced and knowledgeable staff who more closely subscribe to the administration’s political goals, public-employee advocates said.

What these self-serving advocates omit to say is that, alternatively, civil servants in policy-making roles could be replaced by just as experienced and just as knowledgeable, if not more so, staff. The new staff’s experience, too, would necessarily be broader, as they’d be coming in from outside instead of continuing the hot house echo room (not to mix metaphors or anything) mind set resulting from an extended career buried in the civil service. That increased breadth of experience is dispositive.

Even more dispositive, though, is that more closely subscribe to the administration’s political goals part. Federal employees exist to carry out the administration’s policies and goals, not their own. If they can’t keep up with changing administrations, or choose not to, they’re unfit for continuation.

Full stop.

Oh, and here’s a hint on the breadth of the problem that wants correction [emphasis added]:

The Office of Management and Budget, which played a lead role in crafting the [reclassification] order, submitted its own preliminary list last week, recommending that 425 positions at the office—more than 80% of the entire staff—be categorized as Schedule F[.]

Foreign Taxation

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Various nations insist on taxing corporations that provide digital services—imposing a “digital services tax”—to ensure, those nations are pleased to claim and as most clearly articulated by Canada’s Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland, that

everyone pays their fair share

The Canadian government has been explicit in another direction, also: Canada will act unilaterally if an international taxing regime isn’t worked out by the OECD quickly enough to suit them.

French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire has said he’ll demand a European Union response if the US goes ahead with our impertinent objection to the French government’s decision to tax those same digital service-providing corporations.

There are three problems with this insistence.

One is—let’s be clear—those corporations providing digital services are almost exclusively American companies—Alphabet, Facebook, and so on. European nations and Canada (and Indonesia) don’t want to compete economically in the digital services industry, for all that they’re jealous of American success. Rather than repeating that success for themselves, they want, in the finest socialist tradition, to cap our success: they’re implementing mercantilist, protectionist taxes against us.

The second problem is that these nations refuse to identify what “fair share” is, and they refuse to say what their limiting principle is regarding that claimed fair share. That refusal makes clear that their position is a deliberately open-ended one: “fair share” always will be “more,” and the limit of their principle is “all of it.”

The third problem is these nations’ naked assault on American sovereignty. Using the OECD as their tool, these nations are demanding that American domestic taxing laws be submitted to international approval and control.

Each of these alone is a contemptible disguise of those nations’ refusal to compete, whether economically, politically, or morally. Any combination of them is…unacceptable.

The Biden administration will be inviting national disaster if it accedes to any of these.

Time to Buy

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Ex-President Barack Obama (D), he of the open contempt for ordinary Americans, us bitter Bible- and gun-clinging denizens of flyover country (i.e., the vasty expanse of America that lies between the western coast and the northeastern coast), is at it again.

Former President Barack Obama, in his latest memoir, criticized Americans for liking “cheap gas and big cars” more than they care about “the environment”—even during a catastrophic event like the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

And

…many American voters for decades had “bought into the idea that government was the problem and that business always knew better….”

That last is fully vindicated by the arrogant Know Better attitude of Obama and his ilk, who insist that Government is the only solution, and us petty voters need to sit down, shut up, and do what we’re told.

It’s true enough that business is imperfect and often screws up. However, even with that, it’s axiomatic that business always knows better than Government.

With Obama spouting off again, it looks like it’s time to go out and buy a Humvee and a muscle car or two.

A Start

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But badly insufficient. The Trump administration is trying to form an ad hoc coalition of Western nations that would respond to the People’s Republic of China’s economic aggression. The effort would

create an informal alliance of Western nations to jointly retaliate when China uses its trading power to coerce countries, administration officials say. They say the plan was sparked by Chinese economic pressure on Australia after that country called for an investigation into the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic.
…
“The West needs to create a system of absorbing collectively the economic punishment from China’s coercive diplomacy and offset the cost.”
Under the joint retaliation plan, when China boycotts imports, allied nations would agree to purchase the goods or provide compensation. Alternatively, the group could jointly agree to assess tariffs on China for the lost trade.

Taking defensive measures is necessary, but it’s badly insufficient. This coalition needs also to be ready, willing, and able to take offensive action, action that would inflict far more damage and cost on the PRC than its own economic assaults would inflict. Tit-for-tat tariffs would be less than useless, they’d only be practice bleeding.

So far, though, “the West” other than the US has shown little backbone for facing down the PRC’s aggression, economic or otherwise. Sadly, too, Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Joe Biden has shown little inclination to do anything that might upset the men and women of the PRC government.