Tag Archives: political economy

Taxing Europe

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Speaking at a gathering of the Group of 20 major economies in Brisbane, the former prime minister of Luxembourg defended his position, saying a lack of cooperation between European Union member states created a system where “very low taxation of companies” was legal. “Things of that kind could happen because of the divergency between national tax legislation,” he said.

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said that like he thought low taxes were a bad thing. Leaving more money in the hands of the folks who earned it, instead of transferring it to Government Know Betters is a bad thing.

Contra our own President Barack Obama and his Democratic Party, I don’t want us to be more like Europe.

Another Installment of the Obama Recovery

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The number of part-time workers who’d rather work full time remains heavily depressed. Here are some numbers, via Nick Timiraos in The Wall Street Journal.

  • 3 million full-time workers hired just this year, but the number of full-time workers is still around 2 million shy of the level before the recession began in 2007
  • number of workers who are part time for economic reasons is 4.5% of the civilian workforce, down from a high of 5.9% in 2010 but well above the 2.7% average in the decade preceding the recession

Yeah, we’re doing wonderfully well. Sure.

Democratic Party Principle

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A couple days ago, one of Obamacare’s primary architects, Jonathan Gruber, said this about the need for the tactics used in order to get the thing passed.

This bill was written in a tortured way to make sure CBO did not score the mandate as taxes. If CBO scored the mandate as taxes, the bill dies. Okay, so it’s written to do that. In terms of risk-rated subsidies, if you had a law which said that healthy people are going to pay in—you made explicit healthy people pay in and sick people get money, it would not have passed…. Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. And basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical for the thing to pass…. Look, I wish Mark was right that we could make it all transparent, but I’d rather have this law than not.

Despicable as that is, though, what really bothers me are two other things.

In a subsequent interview with MSNBC‘s Ronan Farrow, Gruber had this exchange with Farrow regarding those remarks:

“Do you stand by the comments in that video?,” MSNBC host Ronan Farrow asked Gruber, referring to a video of Gruber explaining how a lack of transparency helped Obamacare pass into law.

“The comments in the video were made at an academic conference,” Gruber said. “I was speaking off the cuff and I basically spoke inappropriately and I regret having made those comments.”

Notice that: Gruber regrets the remarks, but he does not at all regret the underlying principle he espoused. He stands by his claim that Americans are too stupid to understand the issues at hand, and he stands by his claim that it’s entirely appropriate to lie to us in order to get his way.

The other thing that bothers me is the lack of senior Democratic Party officials’ repudiation of Gruber’s underlying principle. I’ve not seen even any rank and file Democrat repudiating it. Apparently, this is a principle of the Democratic Party at large—we’re dumb, and it’s OK to lie to us to get past the impediment to their policy enactment that our dumbness presents.

Why Is This Bad?

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Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen said Friday the central bank could trigger some financial turbulence when it starts raising short-term interest rates from near zero, where they have been pinned for six years.

The Fed will try to limit such volatility by communicating its interest rate plans clearly, Ms Yellen said….

She’s nominally talking about the volatility arising from the Fed not being entirely clear about its market moves monetary policy strategy in order to avoid “disrupting” financial markets, but she’s really talking about volatility throughout our economy, not only the financial markets.

Democracies, especially republican democracies, are at their noisiest when they’re at their most robust. So, too, are economies at their freest and most robust when they’re at their noisiest. It is, after all, the creative destruction of a free market that creates the broadest opportunity and the broadest prosperity. It is exactly that creative destruction that is stifled by a government that sits on and suppresses market volatility.

Three Press Conferences

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After the “what shellacking?” outcome of Tuesday’s mid-terms, Senate Minority Leader (and expected Majority Leader in the next Congress) Mitch McConnell (R, KY) held a press conference in which he invited bipartisanship and a working-together atmosphere in which the President and Congress could get done the things that need doing in those areas in which there was substantial agreement and continue debating those matters in disagreement.

A few hours later, President Barack Obama held his own press conference. In this one, the principle, Obama, also invited bipartisanship and a working-together atmosphere. So long as the Republicans came along with him. If they did not, he would act unilaterally, most particularly on immigration, via Executive Order. After all, he insisted, the election outcome was a demand by the voters—especially those two-thirds who stayed home and didn’t vote—to “work together.”

The next day, with the offer of peace and willingness to compromise having been thrown in Republicans’ face by Obama, House Speaker John Boehner (R, OH) came out angry, offering to work with the President, but warning him against going against or around Congress.

Two out of three isn’t bad. Unfortunately, that third is willfully rejecting the voters’ demand—especially of those voters who voted.

No, Mr Obama, the outcome was not a demand to work together. It was a repudiation of your behavior, of your policies, of the policies of your party. The results are plain, not just at the Federal level, but also in the governors’ mansions where Democratic Party governors were ejected, for a net gain of three governorships by the Republicans, and in the 99 State legislative houses, where Republicans increased their control to 67-69 of those chambers (some elections remain too close to call).

Neither, though, was this set of outcomes a mandate for the Republicans to enact their plans (which, despite the NLMSM’s attempt to spin otherwise, have been quite specific). Republicans, under our system, were simply the alternative on the ballot. Suggesting that if it’s repudiation of the one it must be endorsement of the other is a cynically false dichotomy proffered by that same NLMSM.

This was a demand, rather, to do something else. Not necessarily what the Republicans propose, just most definitely to stop doing what the Democrats and Obama have been doing, and do something else.

That will take the two parties working together, and where the Democrats continue their obstruction, it will take the Republicans exercising their majority power and the majority authority the voters have given them—for now—so overwhelmingly.

And it will take Obama getting out of the way.