Tag Archives: spending

Progressive-Democrats and Economic Recovery

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Progressive-Democrats don’t seem to care about economic recovery, only about using the current Wuhan Virus situation and the economic dislocation the virus has spurred for their own political power gain.

This is made plain by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D, CA) in an interview she gave to CBS News‘ Face the Nation Sunday.

…what we will not support is the following. What they’re saying to essential workers, you have to go to work because you’re essential. We’ve place no responsibility on your employer to make that workplace safe and if you get sick, you have no recourse because we’ve given your employer protection.

This is completely disingenuous. There already exist a plethora of labor law making employers explicitly liable for the existence of workplace negligence as well as any injuries resulting from that negligence. There already is responsibility on your employer to make that workplace safe.

There’s also this exchange between FTN‘s Margaret Brennan and Pelosi regarding the Federal addendum to unemployment insurance payments:

MARGARET BRENNAN: Well- but specifically on what has just expired, that- that boost of $600 to federal unemployment. Republicans and the White House are saying that they want to keep some money going, but bring it down to about 70 percent of prior wages. Is that something you can accept?
SPEAKER PELOSI: Well, let me just say this. The reason we had $600 was its simplicity.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Right.
SPEAKER PELOSI: And figuring out 70 percent of somebody’s wages. People don’t all make a salary. Maybe they do. They make wages and they sometimes have it vary. So why don’t we just keep it simple? Unemployment benefits and the- the enhancement, which is so essential right now and that’s really where we are starting and–

Seventy per cent of somebody’s wages might be a little bit more complex than a flat rate, but the arithmetic is something any third grader can do. And we have these neat, new machines—the technology for which was first developed almost 100 years ago and constantly, rapidly improved since—even the Federal government has them, computers, that can do the mass calculations and record keeping necessary.

No, this is just an excuse to justify another piece of Progressive-Democrat obstructionism.

And this:

MARGARET BRENNAN: Will you stay in session until a deal is negotiated?
SPEAKER PELOSI: We can’t go home without it.

After months of hiding out in their several basements instead of convening to conduct the nation’s business—which the Senate has been doing all along, in person, in the Senate chambers. Pelosi is just cynically virtue-signaling with that.

Pelosi and the Progressive-Democrats she leads are simply raising all of this obstruction because they do not want serious support for our economy, for getting businesses back into production, workers back to work, consumers back to spending and saving, our economy back to thriving.

Economic chaos works for the Left. Prosperity works for everyone else.

A Misunderstanding

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In an article centered on reports that President Donald Trump is planning to withdraw 9,500 troops from Germany—relocating at least some of them to Poland—Bernd Riegert had the following:

[T]he US personnel [to be removed from Germany] essentially work within the framework of NATO for the Pentagon’s European and Africa Commands. They operate the Ramstein airbase, a military hospital and a military training facility. They are important pillars of NATO infrastructure, but they do not, strictly speaking, contribute much to Germany’s national defense.

Wow.

At least some of those reassigned soldiers would be sent to Poland. Shoring up Polish defenses, militarily and politically (as that reallocation also would signal), against Russian aggressions doesn’t contribute to Germany’s defense? Again, wow.

If the troops allegedly to be removed work in important pillars of NATO infrastructure, but they’re not supporting Germany’s national defense, if those important pillars—Ramstein AB, European Command, Africa Command, training, hospitals—don’t contribute to Germany’s national defense, then in what way does NATO contribute to Germany’s national defense?

It’s already clear that Germany has chosen to not fulfill its obligations to NATO and therewith to not support the (mutual) defense of the other member nations. If Germany does not believe that NATO contributes to Germany’s defense, then what’s the point of any NATO forces in Germany?

New Jersey Wants Federal Dollars

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But it’s not a bailout, Governor Phil Murphy (D) insists.

“I wouldn’t call it a bailout. I would just say this is a war, we’re at the front lines,” Murphy said, stressing that his state does not want federal help at this time for “legacy” budget issues that predate the pandemic.
“We know what we got to do with the old legacy stuff, we need help with the here and now: educators, police, fire, EMS, the front-line stuff.”

Of course…. To the extent that any Federal dollars should go to States, New Jersey for instance, those dollars should go directly to the educators, police, fire, EMS, the front-line stuff; they should not pass through the State government on the way.

And: to mitigate the fungibility of money, those Federal dollars should be matched by State dollars. A State government should not be able simply to reallocate the funds it would already have been sending to “the front-line stuff” to other purposes on the premise that Uncle Sugar is picking up the front-line tab.

…if we do not get significant direct and flexible financial support from the federal government, we will be forced to make many difficult decisions about programs we all rely upon and which we will lean on in the months ahead.

What decisions to make vis-à-vis excessive public pension commitments and payouts, for instance. Regarding excessive and overwrought regulations that cost tremendous amounts to enforce and tremendous amounts for businesses and individuals to satisfy, and so that divert monies from their more efficient allocations and thereby restrain economic activity and reduce revenues to the State’s government.

Difficult decisions, indeed.

Bernie Budget

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Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate and Senator Bernie Sanders (I, VT) has released the outline of his budget, which he claims would pay for all of his Free Stuff spending.  Here are a couple of the high points of his budget.

  • tax the investing process
    • 5% tax on stock trades
    • 1% fee on bond trades
    • 005% fee on derivative trades
  • wealth tax on the “top 0.1%”

These, without inhibiting investments, including those of the mutual funds in our 401(k)s, 403(b)s, etc, are supposed to raise more than $6 trillion over ten years, and—poof—there go all college expenses and housing costs. Never mind that this would drive up the cost of investing by a factor of five—but no, there’d be no effect on investing.

  • sue the lights out of fossil fuel companies

This is supposed to raise another $3 trillion. Never mind that with the courts being returned to ruling on the Constitution and the law rather than ruling on the feel-good social issue du jour, that’s a bit chancy.

  • cut defense spending by $1.215 trillion

This one, in the end, may be the most effective at eliminating concerns about paying for the Sanders Free Stuff industry. Once we’re no longer able to defend ourselves, we’ll be easy prey for our enemies. Or the least effective, depending on whether the perspective is ours or our enemy’s.

And as an aside, one non-economic cynical contradiction:

[A]fter arguing that people should not be judged solely by their skin color, Sanders promised that his vice president “definitively” would not be an “old white guy.”

Contradictions

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Japan raised its sales tax—consumption tax/value added tax—and promptly saw a 6.3% year-on-year drop in GDP in the last quarter of 2019. Consumer spending (did I mention that the tax was a consumption tax?) fell by 11.5% that quarter.

Color me—and hosts of others much smarter than me—unsrurprised.

Now come the contradictions, from the just US Congress-revived IMF, yet.

The International Monetary Fund thinks the consumption-tax rate will have to rise to 15% over the next decade, and to 20% by 2050. But first the fund’s wizards say Tokyo must expand its Keynesian spending to make the economy “strong” enough to bear the tax hikes to pay for the spending.

Increasing government spending, which is tax increases now or later, reduces consumption by a number of paths: it takes money out of consumers’ hands directly via those taxes; by competing for the same goods and services as consumers’, it drives up the prices of those goods and services to consumers, which reduces consumers’ purchase of them; by competing for the same resources that private enterprises need to produce it drives up the price of the resources, which drives up the prices of the end-product goods and services to consumers, which….; and it crowds out many private enterprises and consumers altogether.

And so, of course, it’s necessary to raise even further the taxes on all that reducing consumption.

Business is falling off. Gotta raise prices to make up for the decreased revenue.

Make sense? It does to the IMF. And to the Japanese government.