Tag Archives: politics

Another Welfare Cliff Example

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A small business owner having direct experience with employees, hiring, and welfare schema, wrote in his Letter in a recent Wall Street Journal:

We are seeing a segment of the workforce, usually single mothers, who want to work but can’t work too many hours because they would lose their federal, state and local subsidies.

This is by the design of the Progressive-Democrats: their goal is to keep these unfortunates trapped in their welfare cage, dependent on Progressive-Democrat politicians’ handouts because…votes.

The letter-writer went on:

Government assistance programs should be designed to allow people to make progress, earning more and building up savings so they can eventually be financially independent. Instead, many of these capable people are locked into a cycle of dependence.

Of course assistance programs should be structured that way rather than locking capable people…into a cycle of dependence. However, letting those people out of the cage would be a reduction of Progressive-Democrat political power.

Minimum Wage Mandate Outcomes

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A National Bureau of Economic Research-sponsored Georgia Institute of Technology study by Sudheer Chava, Alexander Oettl, and Manpreet Singh tells a tale.

For each $1 increase in the minimum wage, the authors estimate that loan amounts dropped 9% more in the affected states. The risk of default was 12% higher. The average credit score for small companies in those states showed “a sharp decline.” Business entries fell 4% in the year the minimum wage went up. A year later, business exits rose 5%.
These results, the authors say, hold throughout various statistical analyses, such as while controlling for local economic conditions. The effects are stronger in businesses like restaurants and retail, which rely on low-skilled labor. Smaller and younger companies are more severely affected as well. In short, the authors conclude: “We find that increases in the federal minimum wage worsen the financial health of small businesses in the affected states.”

It’s not only the loss of jobs and harder-to-get loans, though; a minimum wage increase has more broadly reaching outcomes.

It’s also the loss of job opportunity, the loss of entry-level experience as a necessary item for moving up, the loss of spending money and/or a taste of college money for teenagers.

It’s the loss of a second income for a family that needs—or just wants the flexibility of—a second income.

It’s an increase of welfare cost to Federal and State governments as those additional unemployables—now due to Government mandate—are driven out of the labor force and into the welfare force.

But, hey—future votes to be harvested from that last bit’s crop planting.

 

The study can be seen here (paywall for the whole article; the abstract is freely available).

Xi, Lam, and Hong Kong

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Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam met in Beijing with People’s Republic of China President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang earlier this week.  Li said, in a press conference afterward,

The city’s government must continue to make efforts in stopping violence and ending chaos in accordance with the law, and restore order.

On this, I agree.  Lam must have her police stand down from provoking violence in the protests by Hong Kong’s citizens and then using that violence as pretext for shooting tear gas at the protesters, beating them, and shooting them with live ammunition.

Lam must also have her government address in a serious manner—accepting the bulk of them, if not all—the five demands of the protestors:

  • withdrawal the extradition bill [lately done; although nothing has been done to prevent its being reintroduced]
  • Lam to step down
  • inquiry into police brutality
  • release of those arrested
  • greater democratic freedom

To which I add a sixth, a responsibility of the PRC press as well as of Lam’s Hong Kong government and of Xi’s PRC government:

  • To stop characterizing the protesters’ movement as an independence movement

It’s nothing of the sort. The protestors have been at pains to emphasize that they explicitly do not desire independence from the PRC; they want only their rights restored under the one nation, two systems framework promised by the PRC government at the time of handover from Great Britain.

When Lam has her government act responsibly, there can be a just peace and prosperous economic activity in Hong Kong.

The initiative is entirely hers. And Xi’s.

Time to Leave

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Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has announced that if the US goes forward with sanctions over this NATO member’s purchase of advanced weapons systems from one of NATO’s (and the US’) staunchest enemies, he’ll close the bases we use there. He also implied such action in response to Congress’ belated official recognition of the genocide the then-Turkish government perpetrated on Armenians 100 years ago.

If necessary, we’ll close Incirlik and also Kurecik. If the threat of sanctions is implemented against us, we’ll respond to them in the framework of reciprocity.

Aside from air operations staging from these bases, we also have some nuclear bombs stored there.

In light of Erdoğan’s current behavior, we should leave Turkey altogether.  Given President Donald Trump’s decision to greatly cut back on operations in Syria (whether that’s a good decision or a bad one is not relevant in this context), we don’t need to stage much of anything out of Turkey. Aside from that, other alternatives would seem readily available for staging operations around the Middle East while still being able to move promptly to protect southern and southeastern Europe and the Black Sea.

The bombs long since should have been transferred elsewhere, anyway, but it’s time for them, especially, to be moved out rather than leaving them at risk within the borders of so unreliable an ally.  Recall that this unreliability has not begun with Erdoğan’s cozying up with Putin or his beef with Trump. He also, at the last minute, refused to allow us to stage from Turkey at the outset of our last war against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, greatly complicating that operation.

It’s time to cut bait and move on from Turkey.  The nation was a good idea, once, but Erdoğan has ruined its utility as a friend and ally, and he’s ruining it as a nation.

Meetings and Talk

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Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam is in Beijing this week, her first meeting with her boss, People’s Republic of China President Xi Jinping, since pro-democracy parties rebuked and rejected Xi’s politicians in last month’s local Hong Kong elections.  It’s likely a Come to Jesus meeting, and Lam’s job may be on the line.

What’s truly cynical, though, is Lam’s Facebook postings.  (Use Bing Translator; it does a much better job than Facebook’s translation facility.) Deutsche Welle, at the first link above, has a sound summary of Lam’s words.

Lam stressed the importance of an open dialogue between community and officials in a post on social media platform Facebook on Saturday morning.
She said her governing team would continue to pursue “different formats of dialogue to listen to citizens sincerely” and that “our sincerity to have dialogue with citizens has not changed.”

Right.  She’ll talk and talk and talk.  She’ll listen the sincere Hell out of what Hong Kongers might say to her.

She’s already given her game away, though.

Just this week [the week of 9 Dec], Lam said a cabinet reshuffle was not an “immediate task” after the election defeat and she would focus her efforts on restoring law and order in Hong Kong.

She’s also clear that public meetings are meaningless.  This is from her weekend post:

The first “community dialogue” was enthusiastic, but as the event was held in an open format, it was important to consider whether the public who spoke would be “bottomed down” as they were last time….

Only private, secretive meetings are to be trusted by her.  Of course, it’s only in those secretive meetings that she can employ her metaphorical cudgels and lay down the…law…to those impudent citizens.

No, yap, yap, yap isn’t concrete action; it’s just Lam’s mouth talking. She has no intention of acting on Hong Kong citizen’s concerns. And neither does her boss.  They do, though, have every intention of extending mainland despotism to the city.