Tag Archives: political parties

Biden’s Attack on American Free Markets

Posted on by
Reply

The Biden administration’s OMB is moving to eliminate consideration of opportunity costs from the administration’s estimates of the costs of proposed regulations, a move that would make those regulations seem cheaper than they are.

Opportunity costs are at the core of free market economics, and The Wall Street Journal‘s editors offer a succinct definition [emphasis added].

Consider a business that spends $1 million obeying a regulation by making an upgrade, installing new equipment, hiring lawyers, and whatever else compliance entails.
[O]pportunity cost is what the $1 million would have been used for absent the regulation. It might have been spent on research and development, hiring, increasing output, or paying bonuses to employees, who in turn would spend it on something else.
An accountant would say the cost of this regulation is $1 million, and this is basically how President Biden’s OMB wants regulators and the public to think as well. A good economist knows better and would account not only for the dollars spent but also the forgone rate of return on activities never taken up due to regulatory compliance.

Thus, opportunity cost estimating is a critical way in which businessmen—not just economists—estimate the value of a variety of potential moves in an effort to identify the one (or two in concert with each other) that make the most business sense/provide highest and most likely return(s) on the actual dollars that would actually be committed.

Biden’s move is not just an attempt to…mislead…us ordinary Americans regarding the costs of the Biden regulatory state, it’s an outright attack on our free market economy and an attempt to replace it with his regulatory state, economic decisions from the center, economy.

Biden’s Tightrope

Posted on by
Reply

That’s what the editors over on The Wall Street Journal calls President Joe Biden’s (D) move to bar US investments in certain People’s Republic of China technologies and enterprises.

President Biden’s executive order on Wednesday restricting US investment in Chinese military technologies tries to balance national security and business interests. The problem is that Beijing doesn’t distinguish between the two, which is why business risk in China is rising.

This is the fallacy of the editors and of Biden: since the PRC does not distinguish between national security interests and business interests—does not separate out military utility from civilian utility—when it comes to technology there is no balance for our government to seek. All tech, in the PRC’s eyes, has military utility, therefore all tech American businesses and those of our friends and allies might sell or otherwise transfer into the PRC has military utility, and all such American sales and transfers should be barred, and those of our friends and allies should be jawboned against. The transfers threaten our national security as well as that of our friends and allies.

The White House concern is that the Communist Party will weaponize US venture and private-equity investment in technologies such as artificial intelligence.

In a heartbeat the CPC will. Biden’s bar reflects some understanding of PRC President Xi Jinping’s avowed goal, which he facilitates by eliminating

barriers between civilian and commercial sectors and military and defense industrial sectors, not just through research and development, but also by acquiring and diverting the world’s cutting-edge technologies, for the purposes of achieving military dominance.

But then Biden shied away from taking the full step.

open global capital flows create valuable economic opportunities and promote competitiveness, innovation, and productivity.

And:

Auto makers will still be able to invest in Chinese self-driving systems. Drug makers can join with Chinese companies to develop new drugs.

Never mind that self-driving technology has obvious uses in the PLA’s mechanized/armored ground forces, the PLA’s air forces, the PLA’s naval forces. Never mind, either that the tech used in developing new drugs supports the PLA’s ability to develop drugs for treating PLA diseases and casualties and to develop drugs and other biologics for offensive use.

The editors join him in that failure to follow through:

A complete de-coupling of the US and Chinese economies probably isn’t possible, or desirable, given their interdependence.

Yes, it is, and it’s more than desirable, it’s critical to our national economic and military security, and so to our political security. There will be some economic disturbances as our businesses relocate their supply chains—from ore and minerals in the ground up through final assembly components and end products—out of the PRC, and there will be some economic disturbances as our businesses buy and sell technologies with other customers than the PRC. Those temporary disturbances, though, need to be balanced against the long-term costs of being dominated by the PRC.

There’s no tightrope here, except in Biden’s timidity.

The Fix is In

Posted on by
Reply

Recall that Delaware Federal Prosecutor David Weiss is the prosecutor who agreed to a wrist-slap plea deal regarding Hunter Biden’s tax failures and his illegal possession of a firearm. That deal was so soft, and so shady—Weiss even tried to slide an indemnity against any further prosecution on any matter into the rehab program Weiss had agreed—that the judge presiding on the case tossed it the day it was formally presented to her.

Now, Attorney General Merrick Garland, President Joe Biden’s (D) wingman in DoJ has appointed a special counsel to oversee the continuing/renewed investigations into Hunter Biden’s shady foreign dealings (many of which border on, if not actually are, FARA violations), money laundering, and influence peddling, all of which have implications regarding Joe Biden’s involvement.

That special counsel is…David Weiss. That David Weiss.

This is move does two things: it sets the stage for whitewashing the Biden family, and it actively interferes with the House investigations into Hunter Biden’s dealings and those dealings’ implications regarding Joe Biden. Now the principles and other witnesses have cover to refuse to testify before the House’s investigating committees: “it interferes with an ongoing investigation.”

Sure.

And one more thing. The appointment of Weiss as special counsel is a sham. Special counsels, by statute, must come from outside government, not just outside DoJ. Weiss is not and he will not be outside of anything as a result of this move of Garland/Biden.

One more one more thing: all a special council can do, all the teeth that one has, is write up a report on his findings. He cannot require, or even recommend, prosecution or exoneration. Nor is there a deadline even for that senior thesis to be delivered.

A Step toward Downsizing the Federal Government

Posted on by
Reply

Rightsizing is what the cool kids call it in their desperation to avoid notice, but what the House’s Republican Party’s Freedom Caucus is proposing represents a small, but needed, initial step toward downsizing our bloated Federal bureaucracy. Some of the State Department cuts being proposed include

  • State’s US Agency for Global Media would be reduced from $798 million to $734 million
  • State’s Democracy Fund and the United States Agency for International Development would be reduced from $355.7 million to $227.2 million
  • State’s US Global Health Programs would be reduced from $6.3 billion to $5.7 billion
  • State’s Global Environment Facility would be eliminated altogether, cutting $139.5 million

And so on.

In absolute terms, these are, individually, chump change cuts, for all that they represent significant reductions in each agency’s budget. They do, however, add up to $1.2 billion, including other State cuts not listed here, and so are an initial cut of 2% of the $58.5 billion 2022 State budget.

Over at the Energy Department, the Freedom Caucus is proposing elimination of the Aquatic Decarbonization and the Algae-Related Bioenergy Technologies, cutting $80 million from Energy’s 2023 $149 billion budget.

Freedom Caucus is proposing similar reductions for Agriculture.

I don’t often agree with the Freedom Caucus’ “my way or nothing” approach, but on matters regarding our nation’s morbidly obese Federal spending (and a deficit of $1.62 trillion just in the first 10 months of this fiscal year) and our resulting even more dangerously fat national debt, the Republican Party as a whole needs to stand tall on actual cuts.

Even if it means shutting down (some of) the Federal government next fall and winter. And spring. And summer. That, in itself, would result in badly needed spending cuts.

Vivek Ramaswamy’s Brief Thought on Taxation

Posted on by
Reply

And my brief response. Ramaswamy has said in the past that he favors an estate tax as high as 59% on his theory that passing wealth from parents to children breeds inequality and “hereditary aristocracy.” Stipulate that’s reasonably accurate: he needs to show that he’s considered other means of preventing that aristocratic development and how those alternatives are inadequate to the task.

More importantly, though, is this underlying theory of his:

I do believe in a vision of bringing income taxes as low as possible, if one could collect it back on the back end[.]

Collect what back, exactly? The money in question belongs solely to the one who has, or had, the income. Money being retained by its owner rather tautologically leaves nothing for government to “collect back” at some later time; government has lost nothing and so has nothing to regain.