Category Archives: Economics

Business, Economics, Political Commentary

Obama’s Plan To Reduce The Deficit

66 Comments

He doesn’t have one:

The president keeps promoting an “adult conversation” about the budget, but that can’t happen if the First Adult doesn’t play his part. Obama is eager to be all things to all people. He’s against the debt and its adverse consequences, but he’s for preserving Social Security and Medicare without major changes. He’s for “tough cuts,” but he’s against saying what they are and defending them. He pronounces ambitious goals without saying how they’d be reached. Mainly, he’s for scoring political points against Republicans.

And doesn’t really want one.

That’s been obvious for a long time. Reducing the deficit will require cutting non-defense spending and entitlements, and Democrats can’t bring themselves to do it. People forget, but Bill Clinton never had a plan to balance the budget, either. He was forced to do it by a Republican congress.

[Mid-morning update]

He may not have a plan to eliminate the deficit, but he sure had one to jack up gas prices, and it’s working pretty damned well.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Jim Manzi has some thoughts on demand elasticity of fuel, and why forcing the prices higher is not a good way to wean ourselves off fossil fuels.

[Another update a couple minutes more later]

Why have taxes at all? Why even have a debt limit? Keynesianism has failed, and the “liberals” remain economically incoherent.

[Update a while later]

Because most Americans aren’t as stupid as the Democrats want us to be, they think that the problem is too much spending, not taxes too low.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

OK, Does Trump Have The Goods?

21 Comments

…or is he just continuing to bluff out a poker hand?

In an interview with the Associated Press, Trump alleged that Mr. Obama had been “a terrible student,” and wondered how he could have been accepted to prestigious schools like Columbia and Harvard Universities.

“I heard he was a terrible student, terrible,” Trump told the AP. “How does a bad student go to Columbia and then to Harvard? I’m thinking about it, I’m certainly looking into it. Let him show his records.”

I would be very depressed about a choice between Obama and Trump, about as much as I was with the choice last time (partly depending on running mate — Palin was the only saving grace of the ticket), but I am popping lots of corn right now. Notwithstanding my current restrictions for salt and carbs…

If what I suspect is the truth eventually comes out, it will be a horrific indictment of affirmative action, which in this case may have resulted in the Peter Principle being accelerated to the nth power, having been instituted by the entire electorate. On the other hand, it may have inoculated the nation from making such a mistake again for decades. On the gripping hand, it will be bad news for good black candidates for decades, as I warned Obama supporters at the time.

[Update Monday evening[

But don’t say he’s not a conservative! Trump gave fifty grand to Rahm Emmanuel’s mayoral campaign. He must think that Republicans are stupid. Sadly, there’s a lot of evidence to support his belief.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Popular Culture, Space, Technology and Society

Just A Right-Wing Fantasy

5 Comments

No, of course Atlas Shrugged has nothing to do with life in modern America:

Ah, that must be the Anti Dog-Eat-Dog Law, or one of the Fairness Laws, or something, right? The WSJ isn’t sure what law the NLRB is talking about, either. Not only do businesses routinely relocate to find the most advantageous environment possible, states and cities compete for that business by calculating their business climate. If this has escaped the notice of the NLRB, perhaps they should get out more.

This will be an important court case, assuming it’s fought. Then again, it’s hard to feel too bad for Boeing — as Mickey says, live by crony capitalism, die by crony capitalism. Sadly, we’ve also seen this sort of corporatism/fascism wasting our space dollars as well, in addition to inhibiting innovation.

Business, Economics, Political Commentary, Technology and Society

China’s Train Wreck

14 Comments

High-speed rail in China isn’t all it’s cracked up to be:

Liu’s legacy, in short, is a system that could drain China’s economic resources for years. So much for the grand project that Thomas Friedman of the New York Times likened to a “moon shot” and that President Obama held up as a model for the United States.

Rather than demonstrating the advantages of centrally planned long-term investment, as its foreign admirers sometimes suggested, China’s bullet-train experience shows what can go wrong when an unelected elite, influenced by corrupt opportunists, gives orders that all must follow — without the robust public discussion we would have in the states.

And where we have robust discussion, it gets canceled (as in Florida). Unfortunately, the discussion in California hasn’t yet been sufficiently robust.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society

Earth Day Thoughts

19 Comments

Steven Hayward:

The ultimate reason environmental conditions in the U.S. have improved so much is economic prosperity and technological innovation. Of course regulation has played a role, but the problem is that our style of environmental regulation relates to the improvements in real conditions in much the same way that police brutality pushes down the crime rate (in other words, the EPA is the environmental equivalent of rogue cops). If you drop back and look at the data for the whole world (as I do in the Introduction to the Almanac), you will see that the nations with the best environmental conditions are those with strong property rights, economic freedom, and prosperity — three things environmentalists hate or define so narrowly as to be meaningless. The nations with the worst environmental conditions are poor and without property rights and economic freedom.

They love the “earth” more than they do their fellow humans. And they indoctrinate our children in their religion under the guise of “science.”

[Update a few minutes later]

A penitent CNN reporter confesses to his eco-sins. But don’t call it a religion!

[Update Saturday afternoon]

Breaking up over religious differences:

Sam started writing on my Facebook wall and sent me flirty messages packed with our inside jokes. Soon, we were messaging every other day. It was like old times, except, you know, without the sex.

But one day, I logged on and saw that he had weighed in on a virtual debate and assumed a staunch position.

“Global warming isn’t scientifically proven,” he wrote.

WHAT??? Does he think the world is flat, too? I thought in horror. I’m from California. I’ve been recycling and saving dolphins since I was in the womb. Suddenly, memories came rushing back to me like a horrible movie montage: The arguments we had about hybrid cars—he contended that it didn’t make a damn difference, since car companies still pollute in other ways. I thought he was just defensive about his decidedly not-green race car. And the way he would constantly rib on Al Gore, even after “An Inconvenient Truth” won the Academy Award… He was always so skeptical about the merits of organic food, too. And, hey, did he even have a recycling bin?!

And poof! Just like that, my desire for him zoomed off into the sunset. We’re still in touch, but we’re not going to get touchy-feely again.

He’s better off without her.

[Bumped]