Will this year be the year that history finally turns against totalitarianism?
I hope so, but fear it won’t.
Category Archives: Economics
Gridlock
Why aren’t we thanking it for the economic recovery?
Because it doesn’t fit the narrative. But as Jefferson said, it’s a good demonstration that that government that governs least, governs best. If only we could roll back a lot of this crap.
It’s worth noting that things started to go to hell after the Democrats took over Congress in 2006, and didn’t really start to recover until the Republicans took the House back in 2010.
That Stupid Slate Article About Space Billionaires
I don’t know if I mentioned this foolish piece by Charles Seife last week (what would we do without “journalism” professors?). At the time, I merely tweeted that I didn’t understand why I was supposed to care whether or not Virgin Galactic and SpaceX were about “exploration.”
Jeff Foust commented that Slate editors must have taken the week off (which I think gives them too much credit during the non-holidays). Anyway he has taken it apart.
It’s difficult to imagine a student of Professor Seife’s turning in a class assignment with such factual errors and getting a passing grade.
Zing.
And speaking of “space exploration,” I’ve decided that this is the year I make all-out war on the phrase. It has held us back for decades in thinking about space in a sensible way.
The Government Shutdown Option
How to end it [behind a paywall, though usually you can read by Googling the headline):
The GOP almost always bears the blame for a shutdown, because the smaller-government message of Republicans is easily portrayed as aiming to deprive the public of government services. President Clinton faced off against House Speaker Newt Gingrich in 1995, and Mr. Clinton won. President Obama dueled with the Republican House in 2013 and Mr. Obama won.
The advantages to the political party that favors higher spending—i.e., the Democrats—reflect the existing legal regime. But the next Congress can change the law (the most relevant one being the Antideficiency Act) so that the public suffers less inconvenience when the political parties cannot agree on spending levels. In case of a government shutdown, the government would continue to spend on discretionary programs at a level close to the amount authorized by the previous year’s budget. A reasonable default target might be 95%.
Such a law could be a political game-changer. The public would be less likely to suffer serious inconvenience with spending at this default target, and a 5% solution would strengthen the leverage of the party favoring less spending, i.e., the GOP. A 5% cut would in any event be closer to what Republicans ultimately want. They could hold out for a deal preferable to the default, since there would be very low costs imposed on the public in the interim.
Yes, if the Republicans were smart, they’d deprive the statists of this weapon. Unfortunately, there are lots of things the Republicans would do if they were smart, that they don’t. Which is why I’m not a Republican.
Minimum Wage Hikes
Everything we don’t know about them:
It wouldn’t be all that surprising if a small hike in the minimum wage had little effect on unemployment. But that doesn’t mean that you can extrapolate that result to very high minimums, like the Sea-Tac law, which hiked the local minimum wage by more than 50 percent from a level that was already well above the national average. To illustrate the problem, imagine raising the minimum wage by a penny. It’s extremely doubtful that anyone would fire workers in order to save 40 cents a week. But you’d be foolish to conclude that it would therefore be safe to raise the minimum wage to $100 an hour. The size of the increase matters.
Quantity has a quality all its own.
Another Dumb Space Piece
If it weren’t for that fiasco at The American Spectator yesterday, this would take the prize for the week, if not the month.
After reading this "Billionaires' Space Club" piece, I can only assume Slate's editors are taking this week off. http://t.co/eZFGoyLofB
— Jeff Foust (@jeff_foust) December 30, 2014
The “Affordable” Care Act
The very name of the law was a calculated lie:
Gruber said that Obamacare had no cost controls in it and would not be affordable in an October 2009 policy brief, presented here exclusively by TheDC. At the time, Gruber had already personally counseled Obama in the Oval Office and served on Obama’s presidential transition team. Obama, meanwhile, told the American people that their premiums would go down dramatically.
“The problem is it starts to go hand in hand with the mandate; you can’t mandate insurance that’s not affordable. This is going to be a major issue,” Gruber admitted in an October 2, 2009 lecture, the transcript of which comprised the policy brief.
“So what’s different this time? Why are we closer than we’ve ever been before? Because there are no cost controls in these proposals. Because this bill’s about coverage. Which is good! Why should we hold 48 million uninsured people hostage to the fact that we don’t yet know how to control costs in a politically acceptable way? Let’s get the people covered and then let’s do cost control.”
So, they were consistent.
The Climate-Change Debate
Jessica Chastain
…buys the BS about SLS/Orion, sadly.
Elizabeth Warren
We are in the midst of a record wealth gap between America’s rich and middle class, according to the Pew Research Centers. That has fueled the populist opposition to Washington among Main Street Americans on both sides of the political line — and Warren is trying to cash in on it.
That’s fine; that’s what we do in America. But it isn’t populism, as will be seen when people do not rise up.
Populism is an ideology extolling the virtues of the people against the depravities of elites — such as Harvard Law professors like Warren, according to Baylor University political science professor Curt Nichols.
The notion that the Democrats are the party of the “little people” is insane. The two biggest donors of the 2014 election were Tom Steyer and Michael Bloomberg, who promoted insane green policies and gun restrictions that would be devastating for the majority of Americans.
[Update a while later]
Will Warren sell outside her bubble? No better than Wendy Davis, I suspect. I’m hoping that she’ll be this cycle’s Barack Obama, when it comes to knocking off Hillary and being the nominee.