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It’s the Republican National Convention week, or as pundits on the right call it — Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanza, and whatever other major holiday you want to thrown in there. We break it all down: the pluses, the minus, the hits and the misses. And we make some predictions for the next couple of months. As you’re hear, we recorded this show on Zoom in front of an audience of our beloved Ricochet members. We’ll be doing a few more of these on Zoom before the election, so if you’d like to participate, join us!
Music from this week’s show: Street Fighting Man by the Rolling Stones
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I suppose it depends on how badly you need low-skill workers and you don’t have enough low-skill American workers to do those jobs.
It was never about the supply of labor. There are plenty of Americans willing and able to do the dirtiest of dirty jobs. Its about the price. If you get a $15 minimum wage, you’ll suddenly have a spike of unemployment, and a spike in illegal immigration as workers willing to work (off the books) for less get into the American work force.
The “jobs Americans won’t do” is a canard. More accurately it should be “jobs American’s won’t do cheaply”. Raise the wage enough and someone will take that job.
With increasing automation and globalized labor markets you have to have a more libertarian economy and central bank. There is no other choice.
If we actually did that, it would be less problematic to accept more legal immigration. We are obviously need this because we don’t have enough FICA slaves to pay for Medicare.
We are going to pay through the nose for some absolutely terrible decisions made since World War II.
Well said. It may be possible hat we only could have gotten Trump on the extremes and he chose to let the other Americans shine through. In that sense he should be praised for his discipline to the plan so that he can win. He has the most messaging discipline during elections so hopefully this is the way he plays it.
Plus this always assumes parties don’t change. Look at the potential realignments happening right now. Parties adapt. Maybe they sell out some groups to capture others. If the demographics become impossible than Republicans will be replaced by some sort of european Christian democrat party or whatever.
Robs reaction to the small pushback he got from the online question was unhinged. I am a very reluctant Trump supporter who has plenty negative to say about him personally, but I really hope he wins so NeverTrumpers have to eat it for 4 more years.
It was also nice to hear Peter talk about Trumps success in the middle east without Rob there to downplay it.
The RNC was great. I know Trumps speech wasn’t great because my wife is the opposite of a NeverTrumper and she didn’t make me watch it or talk about it much. But…the parts I saw of the RNC were simply amazing. The message I saw was that the Republicans have a giant tent for average Americans and thats good. Win or lose I think this Republican party has more appeal than in years.
If Trump can be magnanimous he would crush this. By Nov jobs will be increasing, the worst of the second wave of corona will be behind us. Thing will be looking good for him. He just needs to stay on message.
Finally, Rob should have been more specific about what the Kenosha shooter did that was insane. Defend himself? Defend property from looters? Volunteer to go to somewhere else not his home and defend them? I will grant you maybe the last…but exactly why do we have to just stand by and tolerate riots? This is what guns are for.
And its a reminder what scoundrels the GOP is that in the two first years they would not allocate some money for this.
I really dont buy into the automation will kill the job market stuff. There are just too many jobs that can’t be easily automated. Yes, if you’re working on an assembly line, you may not finish out your career assembling cars. Plus the jobs that will be created by automation, every machine needs a repairman. I think there will be plenty of jobs to go around for generations to come, we may not know what those job tittles are yet – but they’ll be there.
Hillary Clinton once said that it was important for girls to see women doing jobs, because they wont imagine doing it if they havent seen it. I called BS on this quote – not because of the gender politics, but because (I think) nearly half of all job titles or descriptions that people are working now – did not exist when they where in grade school. So there is a major piece of the workforce doing jobs they never imagined doing.
Yes – the west has made some terrible decisions since WWii, those consequences will be coming no mater what… They maybe delayed a year or 2 here or there – but not permanently denied.
The issue is, it both destroys jobs and it creates wage deflation. Then you combine that with everyone insisting on we have to have a globalized trade because it lowers prices, that just makes it worse.
We really need to go back to a deflationary economy because prices are going down no matter what. That is what progress looks like. You make your money more off of purchasing power rather than wage increases. This would collapse the government in the financial system, so there’s that.
Watch this video. What if he’s even half right? Notice that he doesn’t even talk about trade. I swear this is the number one reason conservatives and libertarians have so much trouble making headway.
Then tell me what you do about this:
(2) Central Banks: Fed New Inflation Target Will Hurt Consumers – YouTube
Immigrants, if they don’t arrive with capital, change the politics of a country because they overwhelmingly support the Looting Party — the Democrats in the US, Labor in the UK, Socialists in France, etc.
I’d say there are more variables than that. People from certain countries have a great track record and others tend to engender big government.
Michael Walsh said something about this. Our country was started with basically yeoman and farmers. Countries south of us had more of a plantation crony capitalism thing going on. We tend to get the smart and honest guys out of Africa, when you leave out stupid generalized economic refugee programs disguised as political refugee programs.
If they don’t assimilate and become prosperous you did something wrong.
In 1996, I looked forward to voting for Steve Forbes, who was then by far the most libertarian legitimate candidate ever to seek the GOP nomination.
Steve Forbes is a gold-standard fetishist. Serious question: Can a gold standard exist in a libertarian economy and central bank?
Why could it not?
It gets complicated. I didn’t say I had a solution.
The main thing is it can’t be so discretionary.
We wouldn’t be in this mess if every central banker in the Western countries read the riot act to their politicians about the deflation from automation and globalized trade.
Inflation was never that great of a thing and now it’s really bad. Look at that second video I posted.
Just to be clear CPI inflation and asset inflation are both equally bad. We are experiencing tons of the second right now. It’s all phony prosperity from central banks.
Uh . . . commercial plants don’t use nuclear weapons technology. However, the left loves to imply “there’s a nuclear bomb being built ten miles from your city” . . .
Asian immigrants have mostly joined the Looting Party, even though their median income is way above whites’, just like Irish immigrants did, and later Italian immigrants. It takes generations before they gradually abandon the Looting Party.
The quality of immigrants is correlated with how expensive it was for them to get here. The lowest quality immigrants, regardless of race and creed, are the ones who walk across the border.
I referred to nuclear-weapon-TYPE technology. Nuclear power plants can be designed and built around much less high-temperature/high-pressure levels of operation than we’ve seen up to now.
Your opinion is stronger than mine.
But it makes sense: the less work someone has to do in order to do something – including getting to another country – the less they are likely to value it.
My beef is more with the rate from certain countries. Certain areas clearly aren’t working out. I guess it’s against the law to do it that way.
I think what Michael Walsh says is very true. There are certain cultures that have to be slowed down. Basically this country is just a culture and the constitution.
All of these people that think Puerto Rico needs to be made a state are nuts. That’s like making a state out of Chicago. Forget it.
I think that refugees shouldn’t be given the right to vote for a few years until they can unlearn the culture that destroyed Californians.
We’re taking in quite a few Chicago refugees. Texas is getting a lot of the Californians. I wonder where the rest are going.
I’m sorry, but it’s not even the same type. The only common technology is enrichment. Commercial power plants have nowhere near the same enrichment as nuke weapons. As for pressure-temperature operating parameters, commercial nuclear plants still have no connection to nuclear weapons. Nuke weapons explode, they don’t “operate.”
Perhaps I’ve misunderstood the basis for your comment.
Nuclear Energy is very green and very reliable.
If solar or wind should ever produce enough energy to be practicable the left would turn on a dime and immediately find a reason to be against it, energy means civilization and it’s civilization they are trying to obstruct and destroy.
This issue it not the issue, the issue is never the issue, all that matters is the revolution.
I remember Dennis Miller interviewing a former Secretary of Energy who said that there’s SOME group against EVERY kind of energy production.
I seem to recall that Claire Berlinski was referenced on this podcast. In case anybody’s interested, she’s in rare form right now on Twitter. Wow. lol