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Blogging surprises me by its continuing to exist, but then I surprise myself by continuing to look at it. Where’s the freshness? In comments; though rarely, and barely. I glided over something Steve Sailer wrote about Irish demographics, and found, way out in the peanut gallery, someone who wrote even longer on the same theme, […]

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Turkey Day is behind us and we’re back to business. Elon Musk has gone to war – with Media Matters, with the woke corporations being manipulated by them and literally walking into a war zone in Israel.

At home we check in for the latest from Arizona politics with fellow podcaster Amber May and then Dennis fights a little battle of his own – with a billionaire of a different stripe.

Joe Selvaggi discusses the consequences of record structural deficits and debt with budget expert Brian Riedl, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. They delve into how these factors could impact the financial stability of Medicare and Social Security and examine the limited time available to avert a potential crisis.

Guest:

Net Zero by 2050 Has Zero Chance of Succeeding

 

Arizona State University President Michael Crow believes we are in such danger that we should amend the US Constitution to empower the government to deal more expansively with climate change. Dr. Crow’s view that constitutional protections of our liberties should be eliminated when they become inconvenient wouldn’t square with the founders’, but his estimate of the dangers and required remedies for our changing climate are quite mainstream.

“Net Zero by 2050” has become an article of faith among our corporate and academic elites, no longer requiring proof or intellectual defense. The notion that we must eliminate all carbon emissions by midcentury if we want to save the planet is the organizing principle for environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) investing. In 2022, it was mentioned more than 6,000 times in filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The SEC has helpfully proposed climate disclosure rules to help investors “evaluate the progress in meeting net-zero emissions and assessing any associated risk.” Skeptics are sidelined as “climate deniers.”

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I’m hoping someone can answer this question: Why is the Federal Reserve target inflation rate set at 2%? Why not zero? What benefit do “we the people” get from losing 2% of the value of our currency every year?  Sorry if this has been covered recently. I haven’t been here in a while. Preview Open

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In Chasing Amazon, the FTC Ignores Consumers

 

To no one’s surprise, last week the Federal Trade Commission, joined by some fourteen mostly blue states, launched its antitrust attack on Amazon by charging that the firm enjoys durable market power in two adjacent markets—the “Online Superstore Market” and the “Online Market.” The basic charge of monopoly insists that Amazon, like other monopolists, raises its prices above their competitive level in ways that reduce welfare for consumers.

But in Amazon’s case, the FTC’s claim is unique in at least two ways.  The first is that the complaint does not make any reference to the well-established consumer-welfare standard, lest it call attention to the Chicago School of Economics whose analysis the FTC rejects. Nor does its complaint ever consider any efficiency justifications, even though these are part of any balanced assessment of Amazon’s business model that has benefited some 170 million Amazon Prime customers, all of whom are free to take their business elsewhere.

But there is indeed a deep ambiguity in the FTC’s complaint that must be identified. The New York Times ran a story that describes a “cage match” between FTC chairwoman Lina Khan and Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder and executive chair. The Times notes that Khan has been “relentless in exposing what she sees as Amazon’s monopolistic ways,” while Bezos “would stop at nothing to deliver the low prices and speedy delivery that shoppers craved.” These two titans are talking past each other. Bezos’s search for lower prices should normally be regarded as a lust to outdo the competition, which would mean that the only conceivable antitrust claims that the FTC could bring are that of predation: offering prices so low that it drives out the competition, leaving it free thereafter to raise prices once all competitors have abandoned the field. Indeed, in her oft-cited student note in the Yale Law Journal—“Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox”—Khan puts this predation theory front and center when she writes that “the economics of platform markets create incentives for a company to pursue growth over profits, a strategy that investors have rewarded. Under these conditions, predatory pricing becomes highly rational—even as existing doctrine treats it as irrational and therefore implausible.”

The UAW Gets (Too) Tough

 

At the stroke of midnight on Friday, September 15, to no one’s surprise, the United Auto Workers union, led by its hawkish new president, Shawn Fain, called for strike action at all three of the major traditional American automotive companies: Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis (the owner of Chrysler through merger). The workers have gone on strike to secure major wage gains and other concessions from the three companies, all of which have made offers that contain some major contract improvements.

There had already been movement on both sides, so that on the eve of the strike, the basic wage rate increase that the companies had offered moved to 20 percent over the life of the four-and-a-half-year contract, while the union had come down from over 36 percent. The union also wanted to end the tiered system of employment that pays new workers substantially less than senior employees, and reached for a major change: getting five days’ pay for a four-day workweek. There are always myriad other demands involving collateral issues characteristic of virtually every collective-bargaining agreement.

Against this backdrop, Fain takes a very simple view: “The money is there. The cause is righteous. The world is watching.” His basic argument is that it is galling for union workers to see GM CEO Mary Barra pull down some $29 million in 2022, a 40 percent wage increase over the past four years, while worker pay has gone up only 6 percent during that same period. Indeed, relative to inflation, the hourly wages for autoworkers in both the union and nonunion sector have dropped by close to 20 percent since 2008, as the worker concessions made in the 2008 bailout have never been restored.

Joe Selvaggi discusses the cost and consequences of the $1.5 trillion decade-long subsidies in the farm bill with Chris Edwards, Chair of Fiscal Studies at the Cato Institute. These subsidies have the potential to negatively impact incentives for consumers, producers, and those concerned about the environment.

Joe Selvaggi talks with Pacific Legal Foundation’s state legal policy deputy, attorney Jim Manley, about home equity theft, a practice that has taken 350 properties in Massachusetts, dispossessing homeowners of more than $50 million in equity. They discussed the case that the PLF took to the Supreme Court and won, rendering the laws in the 21 other states that practice it unconstitutional.

Guest:

Member Post

 

Slow News Day       We are doing some controversy out on The Patio this morning. We do not claim to have any particular insight into what is happening at your place, but one of the major legacy media markets had one of those bottom-screen creeping headlines crawling across the screen announcing it was […]

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Race-based Reparations Don’t Make Sense

 

When the notion of race-based reparations was first advanced, I didn’t take it seriously. Surely, something so costly and unhelpful would never gain traction with the American public, so why worry about it?

But on further reflection, it seems several ideas have graduated from the unthinkable to reality over the last few years in today’s America. The idea that reputable physicians would actively encourage even pre-adolescents to retard their sexual development and permanently mutilate their bodies, based on nothing more than a probably transient feeling of gender dysphoria, would have seemed absolutely bizarre not long ago.

So would the idea that the schoolchildren should learn to reject the teachings of Martin Luther King, Jr., and instead be taught that there were irreconcilable inborn racial differences that warranted further discrimination? Spending trillions of dollars we don’t have on unnecessary programs. Allowing immigrants by the millions to illegally breach our border. Even allowing a top government official to walk after intentionally destroying thousands of evidentiary emails during an active investigation. We can no longer count on rational thought to prevail.

Is the Fair Tax in Our Future?

 

Critics of Donald Trump once counted tax evasion among his many faults. But it turned out that he wasn’t breaking any tax laws. He was simply utilizing the complex web of exemptions, deductions, and other rules available to reduce his tax bill to near zero.

It would be hard to imagine a worse tax system than our federal government’s. It is based on taxing economic productivity, which in a free market system benefits us all. Politicians use taxation not only to generate revenue but to pursue a grab bag of policies ranging from welfare programs to “climate change,” home ownership, and subsidization of state and local taxes.

The tax code is hopelessly complex and expensive to operate. Individuals and businesses spend around $37 billion and over 3 billion hours annually in tax compliance, up to 10 times as much as taxpayers in other wealthy countries.

Member Post

 

Student loan forbearance will be lifted September 1st, 2023 resulting in student payments resuming in October.  As we approach the October pivot, expect the Administration to whip support for a modified version of loan forgiveness, e.g. something beyond REPAYE, further payment postponement, or some other restructuring of student loan obligations.  More, expect them to assert […]

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Return to Cash?

 

Will a significant portion of the American public soon return to using old-fashioned cash currency, driven by some combination of merchant fees on card transactions or concern about government monitoring of personal activity and possible retaliatory consequences?

I first saw a “convenience fee” (1% – 3%) added to credit card and debit card transactions at local businesses (mostly restaurants) during the 2020 Covid-oriented restrictions on businesses. OK. I understand. The business is desperately trying to cope with the shock of the sudden loss of revenue.