Tag Archives: political economy

Another Alternative

Posted on by
Reply

A letter writer in an earlier WSJ Letters section took issue with Allysia Finley’s op-ed in which Finley favored removing sugary foods from SNAP eligibility, characterizing Finley’s position with typical Leftist exaggeration:

[U]nder Ms Finley’s principle it would be appropriate for the government to withhold such benefits for given people unless they adhere to government diktats on such lifestyle choices as individual diets, exercise habits and so forth….

In Wednesday’s Letters section, another letter writer responded:

[T]hose who support taking sugary treats off the SNAP menu aren’t suggesting that the government monitor lifestyle choices—they’re simply encouraging the government to restrict harmful foods from the program. … Given that taxpayers are paying for that food, this would help fulfill the government’s fiduciary responsibility to manage taxpayers’ money wisely in another way: the policy would also minimize food-stamp recipients’ healthcare bills, for which taxpayers are also paying.

She’s absolutely right on this. There is, though, another alternative to the earlier letter writer’s exaggeration: if a citizen doesn’t want to have to adhere to government diktats, the citizen shouldn’t take the government’s schilling in the first place. This choice often involves hard, uncomfortable tradeoffs, but in the vast majority of cases, they’re entirely possible while in the medium- and longer-run being beneficial.

A Good Start

Posted on by
Reply

President Donald Trump (R) has signed an Executive Order that sets up a mechanism for the US to mine and harvest minerals and metals from the ocean floor under international waters. It’s for more than just international waters, but this is the part of importance to me.

Environmentalists and legalists don’t like it, the former because they don’t want the pristine sea floors disturbed at all. It seems unimportant to them that the metals and minerals are critical to our nation’s economy and our defense establishment and that without them, we’d be unable to provide any sort of environment within which environmentalists could environmental.

The latter don’t like it because there’s no international law that regulates or even permits such mining. It’s apparently lost on these that the lack of regulation or permission means that the mining and harvesting is entirely legitimate to do.

At least one mining enterprise, The Metals Co, a Canadian firm that’s still interested in doing business with the US, has said that given the EO and a 40-ish year old American law, the Deep Sea Hard Mineral Resources Act, it can start mining in a year or so.

Given that, the first mines should be set up in the Gulf of America, and done so promptly. The second mines should be set up in the South China Sea, and done so just as promptly.

Merit-Based to Depoliticize

Posted on by
Reply

The Trump administration is moving to consolidate Federal employment/termination decisions in the OMB and out of the several separate Departments and agencies.

[DOGE personnel embedded in OMB began issuing] orders that have weakened other agencies’ control over their own workforce, in many cases bringing hiring, firing, and performance evaluation—which for some employees, will soon be based primarily on execution of the president’s agenda—under the purview of OPM.

Previously,

Most of the government is made up of mid- and low-level civil servants whose jobs have historically been sheltered from political hiring decisions.

That’s the problem that badly wants fixing.

Government hiring and firing, at any level of government, needs to be politicized to an extent in order to maximize the likelihood that government employees work to carry out the policies of the incumbent President, Department Secretaries, and agency heads. This does not require a return to full-up patronage, but it does require that what constitutes an assessment of merit include how hard and how effectively that employee works to execute those policies and how well a prospective employee can be expected to do so.

A Useful Self-Identification

Posted on by
Reply

The People’s Republic of China has decided not to apply its across-the-board 125% tariffs on certain goods that it imports from the US.

China’s government has exempted some US imports that the country would struggle to immediately source from elsewhere from its retaliatory tariffs, people familiar with the matter said.
Chinese authorities have told some importers of American goods that they would waive the most recent 125% increases in tariff rates for certain US imports. Those products include certain semiconductors and chipmaking equipment, medical products, and aviation parts, the people said.

These, then, are precisely the goods that we should cut off from exporting to the PRC.

On the other hand,

The Trump administration, similarly, announced exemptions on its “reciprocal tariffs” for China-made smartphones, laptops, and other electronics earlier this month, a recognition of the US’s reliance on China for such goods.

This is a mistake if the purpose is anything other than a negotiating tactic. There is a critical difference between the two sets of goods. The goods the PRC is exempting are critical components and component-making goods whose cutoff would severely impact that nation’s ability to make downstream products. The goods the Trump administration is exempting are finished products. Their supply chains can be adjusted to flow from non-PRC sources, including domestic, an adjustment that might be difficult, but an adjustment that both is eminently possible and is absolutely necessary: we should never have ourselves dependent on an enemy nation for such goods.

What’s Missing?

Posted on by
Reply

A Wall Street Journal news writer wrote about the accumulation of additional wealth by the already wealthiest in the United States.

New data suggest $1 trillion of wealth was created for the 19 richest American households alone in 2024. …
It took four decades for the top 0.00001% of Americans share of total US household wealth to grow from 0.1% in 1982—when 11 households made up that rarefied group—to 1.2% in 2023, according to an analysis by Gabriel Zucman, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley and the Paris School of Economics.

What’s missing is any discussion of economic mobility, which always has been at the center of our nation’s economic development and overall wealth increase. Who are these households, and who were they?

Those in Zucman’s research on the top 0.00001% in the US are worth at least $45 billion per household and include Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and private-equity investor Stephen Schwarzman.

All of these, with the possible exception of Buffett, are Johnny-come-latelies to this tier—that’s upward mobility, and part of that eight household increase.

JPMorgan Chase’s private bank estimates US billionaires numbered nearly 2,000 last year, up from about 1,400 in 2021, when it began tracking billionaires. Wealth-data firm Altrata, meanwhile, estimates the figure at 1,050 billionaires in 2023, the most recent year for which it has data, up from 975 in 2021.

There’s a hint there. General wealth is increasing and individual folks and households move up the economic ladder. With mathematical certainty, others move down: even with a growing population—and ours is only barely growing—0.00001%, 0.01%, 50% of our population are finite numbers, and while more are rising than falling, some still must be moving down.

That’s economic mobility. And this: even as wealth is getting concentrated, it’s getting concentrated in an ever-increasing number of households.

It’s good to be rich. It’s even better to live in a free market economy where any of us can get there. After all, it’s not the concentration of wealth that matters so much, it’s the ability of any of us to accumulate that wealth and move up the economic ladder in the first place that’s important.