In general, this tax idea fits into the increasing trend toward “slopulism” in Democratic policymaking — the idea that a modern government can be funded solely on the backs of the super-rich, while the merely-rich get big tax cuts.
-Noah Smith, as he looks at California's "one time" billionaire tax
Our country is often accused of rank imperialism, but in truth we’d rather putter around our own backyards.
Now and then, though, we need to peek over the garden wall and see how the rest of the world is doing.
If we do so today, we’ll find our sitting president, Donald Trump, feverishly rearranging the scenery and props on the geopolitical stage.
If the play he inherited from his predecessor was “The Decline and Fall of the American Empire,” Trump’s new production is an updated remake of “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.”
-Martin Gurri, from this New York Post contribution
trailer for the 1963 movie by that name is here
"the decline of the heavy manufacturing industry in the American “Rust Belt” is often thought to have begun in the late 1970s, when the United States suffered a significant recession. But theory suggests, and data support, that the Rust Belt’s decline started in the 1950s when the region’s dominant industries faced virtually no product or labor competition and therefore had little incentive to innovate or become more productive."
The rust-belt’s problems were caused not by its industries' and workers' confrontation with economic competition but, instead, from their insulation from competition— . . .
-Don Boudreaux, from this post
....................................anti-Brahminization:
In reality, the party maintains a meticulous commitment to fiscal responsibility, democratic governance, and material populism.
But what frustrates me most is that by insisting on degrowth over abundance, progressives are hurting themselves much more than they’re hurting any billionaires, oligarchs, or conservatives.
-Noah Smith, from this blog post
Net Zero is dead. Keir Starmer must in whatever way he can to sway his backbenchers and the chattering class, put NZ into the side of the road. That might mean sacking energy secretary Ed Milliband. Deindustrialisation must stop. Windmills, solar energy and happy thoughts cannot build a submarine, artillery shell factory or a bunch of anti-missile batteries. And screwing the British economy to make a tiny dent in C02 emissions so we feel all virtuous is a luxury belief. Luxuries are out.
-from this Samizdata episode
I'm probably wrong about all this, but methinks he mis-reads Trump.
A quick review of history shows Lowenstein is likely correct about tariff wars being bad from an economic perspective. But....it looks to me that Trump is using his willingness to unilaterally impose tariffs - on our allies as well as our foes - to get his way in international politics. Economics has nothing to do with it. But, I'm probably wrong.
. . . if a new type of technological product is being pushed by government in order to meet national policy targets, that means that it has not been through the filter of large numbers of people freely deciding to buy it and telling their family and friends that it benefited them as individuals.
I am told that there is no danger because there are no riots; I am told that, because there is no visible disorder on the surface of society, there is no revolution at hand.
Gentlemen, permit me to say that I believe you are mistaken. True, there is no actual disorder; but it has entered deeply into men's minds. See what is preparing itself amongst the working classes, who, I grant, are at present quiet. No doubt they are not disturbed by political passions, properly so called, to the same extent that they have been; but can you not see that their passions, instead of political, have become social? Do you not see that they are gradually forming opinions and ideas that are destined not only to upset this or that law, ministry, or even form of government, but society itself, until it totters upon the foundations on which it rests today? Do you not listen to what they say to themselves each day? Do you not hear them repeating unceasingly that all that is above them is incapable and unworthy of governing them; that the distribution of goods prevalent until now throughout the world is unjust; that property rests on a foundation that is not an equitable one? And do you not realize that when such opinions take root, when they spread in an almost universal manner, when they sink deeply into the masses, they are bound to bring with them sooner or later, I know not when or how, a most formidable revolution?.........shares opinions not often found in the mainstream media. He starts this week's essay:
I expect my columns to be gems of lucidity and concision, such as to arouse despair in other writers. I have been expecting this for decades now. It may still happen. Meanwhile I fear today’s effort will be helterskelter, having the literary aspect of a tossed salad. I beg patience.
In this paragraph he suggests that one should be careful about what one wishes for:
A very, very important point: Wars usually do not turn out as expected. Here i repeat myself but I ask regular readers, if I have one, to be patient. Let’s look at some actual wars and how well they matched expectations. The American Civil War was supposed to be over in an afternoon at First Manassas. Wrong by four bloody years and 650,000 dead, equivalent to about six and a half million today. Nobody had the slightest idea of what that war would be. When Napoleon invaded Russia, he had no idea that Russian troops would soon be marching in Paris. Which is what happened. When the Germans launched WWI, they expected a short, victorious war of maneuver. They got four years of bloody, losing trench warfare. When Hitler invaded Russia, having Russian and American GIs divide up Berlin was not a major war plan. It happened. When the Japanese army urged war with America, it did plan on American sailors doing the boom-boom, as the Vietnamese used to say, with its daughters in the bars of Tokyo. When the French recolonized Vietnam after WWII, they did not expect to be outfought and outsmarted at Dienbienphu. When the Americans repeated the French mistake, they also did not foresee being handed their ass, as is said in the military. It happened. When the Russians invaded Afghanistan, they did not expect to lose. But did. When the Americans, seeing the Russian defeat, also did not expect to lose. But did. The current war in the Ukraine goeth not as expected.
Economic sanctions against Russia failed just as 70 years of sanctions on North Korea, 60 years of sanctions on Cuba, and 40 years of sanctions on Iran all failed. One big reason is dictators really don’t care about their economies because they get rich — Fidel Castro reportedly died a billionaire. In fact, the worse the economy, the more powerful the dictator because poverty forces reliance on the government for sustenance.
-Don Surber, from here
The nature of appeasement—what it was, how to implement it, when to stop it—became the key issue of British politics for most of the 1930s.
It is important to remember that a narrow but strong strain of sympathy for fascism, and even for Hitler, ran through part of the English aristocracy. Most prominent of those seen friendly to Germany was Lord Londonberry, a relative of Churchill's who served in the Cabinet in the early 1930s and then briefly was leader of the House of Lords. Orwell once commented that "whether the British ruling class are wicked or merely stupid is one of the most difficult questions of our time, and at certain moments a very important question." It is possible that he had Lord Londonberry in mind when he wrote this.
-Thomas E. Ricks: Churchill & Orwell: The Fight For Freedom
..................Arnold Kling gives some thought to our health care system:
The most
important policy problem is that people
want unlimited access to medical services without having to pay for them.
When the political system tries to accomplish this, the result is excessive
spending on medical care.
Today, industrial policy’s political purpose is to defuse angry populism that is blamed on “deindustrialization” displacing workers. But declines in the portions of labor forces devoted to manufacturing are normal as nations become richer, regardless of wide variations in nations’ economic policies. And the U.S. government’s would-be industrializers should hope that surly populists, who are eager to cause society’s upper crust to crumble, do not notice how industrial policy makes eager bedfellows of government bureaucrats and corporate elites — for their mutual benefit.
-Don Boudreaux, channeling George Will
There is one policy I regret not having promoted, however; for no one else seems to have taken it up. This is to make the tax system, at every level, entirely voluntary.
............................with Cardinal Richelieu on the goings-on in the Ukraine:
You solicited my advice, Spengler, because you cannot bear the self-satisfied moralizing of the well-meaning people who set this tragedy into motion, and you are appalled by men of action who clean up the mess left by practitioners of the politics of virtue. Get a stronger stomach if you want to see under the surface of history – including the history that is unfolding before your squeamish eyes.
.............will be much easier than the second and third:
We need to eliminate the Federal Reserve, and cause Congress and the Executive Branch to take responsibility for their failed policies.
-David Merkel, from this post
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