Tag Archives: political economy

Another Democrat Blockage

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Pennsylvania has a budget impasse. Democratic Governor Tom Wolf wants more taxes and more spending. The Republican legislature (both houses) want smaller government. One aspect of the dispute is this:

The sides are focused now on the Democratic priority of increasing education spending and the Republican goals of reining in public employee pension costs and privatizing a state-run liquor agency.

How typical is that? Big Government Democrats are holding up a budget deal because they can’t stand private enterprise, but they demand to have the folks in private enterprise–the private economy—continue to pay for fat public union pensions.

These Big Government Democrats need to get out of the way of economic progress. But they are loathe to give up the political power of which their “welfare” programs are so redolent.

Hopefully, It’s a Start

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The Libre Initiative is a conservative organization funded by a donor network organized by the Koch brothers, that pair of Left-wing bêtes noire.

This organization is

[a]ctive in nine states, including Colorado, Nevada and Virginia, Libre, which means free in Spanish, is an effort to organize Latinos around free-market political ideas.

It’s also helping Hispanic immigrants learn English and

offering recent immigrants practical services such as English-language courses, tax-preparation seminars and driver’s license classes….

It’s helping these folks fit into their new nation.

They’ve been doing this sort of thing since 2011, and they represent an excellent start. But. This sort of thing needs to be greatly expanded, with lots of other Conservative organizations taking part, and it needs to be an ongoing effort, not just an election year ploy. The Libre Initiative clearly is more than a ploy. Where are the others?

Economics and Secession

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Spain’s economy may be beginning to recover, even to boom, from the global Panic of 2008.

In its second estimate of gross domestic product for the quarter, statistics bureau INE said the eurozone’s fourth-largest economy grew 3.4% in the July-to-September period compared with the year earlier period, up from a rate of 3.2% in the second quarter.

To be sure, these are only two quarters’ worth of data. It’s also unclear how much of this growth is spread throughout Spain, and how much is concentrated in the secessionist province of Catalonia.

This will be interesting to watch, both for the improvement’s impact on the secession movement and for any later impact from a continued movement toward secession.

Economic Contest

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It’s not yet an economic war. Russia is beginning the contest with Turkey after that nation was so impertinent as to shoot down a Russian fighter-bomber that was the latest Russian aircraft to violate Turkish airspace, this time refusing to leave despite multiple requests and warnings.

…Moscow took aim at Turkey’s economy, ordering tougher checks on its food imports.

This isn’t a contest that Russia can win, though. The Turkish economy is in sounder shape than Russia’s, and Turkey isn’t particularly dependent on exports to Russia. Russia, though, already has banned food imports from the rest of Europe over the latter’s sanctions that responded to Russia’s invasion and occupation of significant parts of Ukraine. This latest move, delicate though it is, simply makes Russia more dependent on domestic food production.

To be sure, this isn’t all the posturing Russian President Vladimir Putin is doing. He’s also shipped a number of near state-of-the-art S-400s, long-range anti-aircraft missiles, to his base in Syria, and he’s moved his guided missile cruiser, Moskva, which also is equipped with SAMs, closer to Syria. Both deployments put Turkish aircraft operating over a significant portion of Turkey in Putin’s gunsights.

This is a contest that Russia needn’t be allowed to win, either. If Putin continues to violate other nations’ airspace in his efforts to prop up his client Bashar al-Assad, those two isolated deployments can become targets themselves.

A Thought on Immigration

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Greg Ip has a piece on demographics in Sunday’s Wall Street Journal.

Next year, the world’s advanced economies will reach a critical milestone. For the first time since 1950, their combined working-age population will decline…and by 2050 it will shrink 5%. The ranks of workers will also fall in key emerging markets, such as China and Russia. At the same time the share of these countries’ population over 65 will skyrocket.

There are two competing factors that dominate those statistics: people are living longer, in particular in retirement, and women are bearing fewer children over their lifetimes. As Ip put it,

[C]ompanies are running out of workers, customers, or both. In either case, economic growth suffers.

The solution to this, of course, is immigration. Blocking immigration because—pick a reason—means we won’t have the labor force we need for, among other things, saving our retirement safety net in substantially its current form or privatizing it.

We’ll have to get our immigration kit in order promptly, though, and be prepared actively to compete for them, much as our private enterprises already have to compete for employees.

By 2050, the world’s population will have grown 32%, but the working-age population (15 to 64 years old) will expand just 26%.

The competition will sharpen:

Among advanced countries, the working-age population will shrink 26% in South Korea, 28% in Japan, and 23% in both Germany and Italy….

That competition cannot be based on how many goodies our government can hand out; our existing and unaffordable Progressive/Democrat welfare state is the outcome of that. No, our competitive advantage is, and must be, centered as it always has been, on our individual liberties and the opportunities our freedoms create.

This is a national security matter, too. Absent a growing, vibrant labor force, we won’t have the economic wherewithal to fund a capable military establishment, much less equip it with the technology required to stay globally dominant—or even strong enough to defend us.

Certainly, we need to secure our borders, and we need to do an efficient, prompt job of vetting those we let in. And those we let in do need to either be satisfied with green cards/work permits, or they need to assimilate into American culture as part of their gaining citizenship.

But we must have those immigrants, just as we’ve needed—and gained—them at critical junctures throughout our history.