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This week on America’s Most Trustworthy Podcast®, we talk about the meaning of the word “spying” and try to determine exactly what the definition is. Then, a bracing and brilliant discussion on reparations with the great Shelby Steele, who unlike most candidates for President, actually knows something about it. Then, our long time amigo Arthur Brooks calls in to talk about his new book, Love Your Enemies; How Decent People Can Save America from the Culture of Contempt. Actually, come to think of it, we really don’t like Arthur. Finally, some thoughts on the newly photographed Black Hole, and tomorrow is Record Store Day and to celebrate, we asked the hosts what the first record they ever bought was. What was yours? Tell us in the comments.
Music from this week’s show: Supermassive Black Hole by Muse
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In theory. But at the moment, the wealthy Japanese aren’t reproducing at all, and most of Europe isn’t either—their birth rate only begins to gesture towards normal because their recent immigrants are doing the “quiver-full” thing, at least pro tem.
That’s what is so strange about human beings; one would think that widespread health and fabulous wealth (it’s pretty darned fabulous by any historical standard) would do for human beings more or less what an absence of predators and an abundance of hosta does for suburban deer, but the richest and most secure people in the world are anything but the most fecund. Well, in evolutionary terms, we’re a young species and perhaps an experimental one. If we all go the way of AOC’s gloomier predictions, we and all our creations will barely register as a nanosecond against the backdrop of geologic time. But maybe God will be just as glad to have had us around, if only for a little while, to learn, admire and love.
You don’t need kids for survival anymore, especially given Social Security and Medicare. Which are going broke partly due due to lack of procreating FICA slaves.
Seriously, why should you have kids?
I’m not going to get into a big argument about it, but I also think the Fed and the government discourage procreation by jacking up the cost-of-living.
Procreate For The State Comrade!
Central planning is worthless.
I did a post on that over a year ago. My first album would be more embarrassing if I wasn’t 9 at the time.
http://ricochet.com/481162/archives/remember-the-first-album-you-bought/
I’m not proud to say the first album I purchased was The Carpenters Close To You.
And as for:
James Lileks
How about the ability to detect asteroids heading our way, so we can send up Bruce Willis?
Do we really need astronomy to provide a reason to send Bruce Willis up in space?
It’s mostly the liberals who don’t have kids, which is fine with me. Conservatives tend to have larger families, especially religious ones.
But that points toward a survival trait too, or rather a lack of one: those who tend to favor nanny-state government and then not having kids, are natural-selecting themselves out of existence, or at least out of FURTHER existence via descendants. To quote a book I read years ago, “Think of it as evolution in action.” We usually just don’t see it right in front of us.
Is it possible we might weave together and simplify two extremely complex issues here, i.e reparations and evolution?
Suppose some of my ancestors acquired some of your ancestors (from some of your other ancestors) and took them to America to be slaves. Then suppose this inhumane but relatively short-lived cultural behavior actually “improved” the chances that future offspring of your ancestors would survive and thrive long into the future.
I don’t see how this outcome doesn’t count as a win-win. That is up to this point. Nobody knows how it will play out in the future. That goes for any speculation about what is an evolutionary “improvement.”
Well I’m confident that you don’t want to be making any public comments that slavery turned out pretty well for black people.
As for the rest, none of this is short-term. It may take several generations before liberals not having kids, is sufficient to (un-)breed them out of existence. And even then there will probably be the occasional variation. But I guess that’s okay, since as one wag suggested there need to be enough of them for each college campus to have one as a reminder of what NOT to do/be.
Richard Nixon was a big fan of The Carpenters.
I think it’s really neat how the birth rate goes down while the unfunded liabilities and tax hungry government increases. Pure genius.
There are many poor and lower middle class white voters who see affirmative action as political spoils that discriminate against them and their children solely because of their race, not their income. Very few were adults during the segregation era. Many had no ancestors here during the slavery era. Among those who did have ancestors back then, many served in the Union Army. This is especially the case of the upper Midwest areas that swung from voting for Obama to voting for Trump. This creates a lot of racial tensions.
The reparations proposals are seen by these people as political spoils that discriminate against them and their children solely because of their race, not their income. This will make racial tensions worse.
I think the formula for GDP growth is 1/3 productivity increases and 2/3 population increase.
W-2 income and capital assets have to be constantly going up nominally (inflation and asset bubbles) or in reality or the government collapses.
Relying strictly consumption taxes puts a brake on this stupidity.
If you tax something, in general, you get less of it. Taxing consumption means an incentive against consumption, which means less need for production, which means less employment and less income for those who ARE employed…
Rewarding capital formation over consumption is the only way to progress. You need capital to supply things before you consume. Supply comes before consumption.
Income taxes grow useless government. Furthermore there is zero value added from politicians pointing a gun at our heads and forcing us into an auction of tax brackets and deductions. All tax law is just dead weight drag on the economy.
Increased capital formation for what? To produce more products and services that people are buying less of, because of the disincentive of the consumption tax?
I’m going to need an electric head-scratcher for this one. And make it 220-volt.
Stop your Keynesian Democrat. The economy would have more output. Prices and efficiency would get better faster.
It’s a risky argument. But Richard Pryor, who made a trip to Africa and looked at the conditions average Africans lived in during the 1980’s was greatful he lived in the United States even though his ancestors came as slaves.
He notes that in his stand up comedy film, Live on the Sunset Strip.
Another valid argument that falls on deaf ears is the Great Society programs that ended up breaking up poor families by encouraging women towards out of wedlock births, and subsequent to that kicking out the men who were all too willing to be kicked out. The way the welfare programs were structured played a big part.
This devastated poor blacks and retarded their economic growth. Perhaps that is what we really owe reparations for.
As people get richer in a growing economy, they consume more in spite of consumption taxes, and save more in spite of taxes on investment income.
Taxes will always do damage to economic growth, at least in the short run, but the idea is to mitigate the damage by taxing spending instead of investment.
I highly doubt you can find a conservative or libertarian economist that wouldn’t want to press a reset button so we could only have consumption taxation.
There is no “only” when it comes to government’s desire to tax. If we had started with “only” taxes on consumption, the desire to tax something else would still be there.
I’ve never heard discussed another set of people who might have a legitimate claim on reparations: the families of those who lost their lives fighting to free the slaves. If fighting a war to free the slaves isn’t sufficient compensation for the freed slaves, then it seems to me that those who died in the insufficient effort are due some sort of compensation.
Steven Miller got into trouble for simply mentioning that there was discussion of giving all of the slaves 40 acres and a mule. That reminds me of this article.
It would be nice if Our Rulers recognized the truth of this generally.
We’re Living in the Age of Capital Consumption | Ronald-Peter Stöferle https://mises.org/wire/were-living-age-capital-consumption#.XLNy7QyXAU4.twitter
I’m just saying that is what sophisticated economists say. If the constitution only allowed consumption taxes, we would be living in a much better world right now.
I’ve also heard that only taxing fossil fuel or the unimproved value of land is good too.
Sing it, Dr. Jones. This fact is as obvious as the noontime sun, yet it is so rarely mentioned, even by conservative/libertarian economists. Consumption occurs later in the economic cycle than income. In a consumption tax system, more economic activity occurs before the economy-hampering tax is applied. Therefore, a consumption tax should be able to raise a larger amount of revenue at a lower rate compared to an income tax.
Two points immediately come to mind. First, politicians/central planners know that a consumption tax gives the taxpayer the greatest control in choosing how much he will pay in taxes. Politicians and central planners are loath (not loathe) to surrender control of taxpayers’ money to taxpayers.
Second, the concept of income occuring before consumption thus permitting more economic activity to occur before consumption taxation reminds me of a column I read in the early 80s that advocated investing in an IRA. This was before 401(k) accounts were widely available, though the advice applies to 401(k) account investing as well. After describing how the IRA functioned, he closed with a quick discussion designed to allay fears of higher income tax rates at retirement than at the time of investment. His point was simply that since your IRA is funded with pre-tax money, there’s more of your money to invest, and over time it will surely be worth so much more than any after-tax alternative that such “what if after 30 years … ?” considerations were moot.
I credit Rep. Jason Lewis for beating Say’s Law into my head with his great radio show. He guest hosts for Rush Limbaugh now.
When you look at that article I posted in #52 or Say’s Law, it’s obviously true, but no one in power thinks or leads like that.
It would require that the people who in power to have taken at least some basic economics somewhere in their education. From what I can tell, it seems that most politicians are lawyers, and are completely illiterate in any school of thought.
This is one of the things that interested me about Justine Trudeau, he’s not a lawyer. I had hoped that would give him an alternative perspective – instead turned out to be a openly corruptible liberal.
I’m with the Commentary podcast guys. Reparations for slavery is the end of America.
Or as Heinlein put it, a male warthog thinks a female warthog is pretty fine.
He won’t be around forever.